I won’t beat around the bush. Though it will horrify my mother (who actually reads all my posts, and who, like me, isn’t always pleased with his positions on women) I’m a sizable fan of Woody films. I went to see him speak on American cinema at the 92nd Street Y last night and I now present you with the extra savory bits.

On the moral power of cinema: “Like Oscar Wilde, I believe that ‘all art is useless.’ If you want political action, you need guys in the street with rifles.”

On rifles again: There are some problems in life that, no matter how much of a liberal democrat you are, you have to get in there with a gun.”

On the scene where Shane (Alan Ladd) goes after justice with (you guessed it) a rifle: “That’s how life should be. He did something in the town that I would be too scared to do. It’s probably ritual murder of the father in Freudian terms. In fact, it’s a Mitzvah. It’s a nice poetic thing.”

(The Moderator’s reaction to the above: “O…kay.”)

On what “smart people” who go to see movies need: “A Mozart concerto or an Ingmar Bergman film.”

On westerns: “I like urban films. I’m not interested in saddles.”

On “urban” films: ““When you see Frank Sinatra playing a cowboy, you want to throw up.”

On how to tell if a movie’s funny: “You look at your stomach and see.”

On Marlon Brando’s talent: “Nothing short of pulverizing.”

On his favorite moment in a Marx Brothers movie, “When they paper the woman to the wall in A Day at the Races.”

On what movies pass his tummy-laughing test of comic authenticity: “I’ve made a number of comedies and I would exclude all of those.”

On why he uses long takes in his movies: “Because I’m lazy”

On the kind of comedy he doesn’t like: “broad.”

On the kind of comedy he does: “effete.”

On what that might look like: “Penthouses, men shaking martinis, women coming home in sables and making jokes about alimony.”

On Audrey Hepburn’s sex appeal: “She’s a lovely creature, beyond what you could expect to end up with in life.  Not my kind of woman--not hot enough.  For me, cheap is good.” (Film clip from Roman Holiday is shown.) “Now that I’m 74, she looks a little sexier.”

On Frank Capra’s work: “Wonderful, wonderful films that I never liked.”

On the perennial question concerning his Ingmar Bergman worship: “I was this Jewish nightclub comic from Brooklyn. Why was I getting my influences from films by a Swedish, religious filmmaker?”

On the Thin Man movies: “I loved when guys slept in pajamas—they were so urban they slept in pajamas.”

On why he stopped seeing sci-fi films: “My interest turned to girls.”

On Lebron James: “I don’t like the idea of buying a great guy and getting him to do it for us.”

On the actors that came after Brando: “They’re all living off the human poem of this guy, nourished by the poetry that he was.”