BULLETS OVER BROADWAY: what would Woody have done?

I've got just one problem with this Woody Allen comedy about a struggling playwright in 1920s New York who's forced to cast a gangster's talentless girlfriend in his latest production to get it produced.
Woody's not in it.

He wrote it and directed it but chose to cast John Cusack in the part of playwright David Shayne even though it's clearly written for him.
How do I know that?
Because Cusack's performance is not so much an interpretation of the part as it is a very obvious impression of Woody Allen playing the part.
And therein lies the problem.
When a character is so blatantly written to be played by one particular actor I want to see that actor in the part, not another actor playing it exactly like the actor it was intended for. It's so frustrating when Allen is standing there, just a couple of feet away behind the camera. He could just have walked out onto the set and taken over, for cripes sake!
Cusack does a great impression of Allen but he's too young to be convincing as Allen.Conversely Allen is too old to play the part as written. A struggling 60 year old playwright seems a little unusual - surely anyone with half a brain would have given up the struggle well before reaching the three score mark. The character of Shayne would have to have been re-imagined for Allen to have played him.
But I would rather have had that than Cusack's impression. Because it is so patently Allen, Shayne doesn't ring true as a character. And that kind of drags down the entire film.
Well maybe not entirely. On the plus side, there's impressive performances from Dianne Wiest, in an Oscar winning turn as a Broadway grand dame who's seen better days, and Rob Reiner as a pretentious fellow playwright who prefers to cling to his principles than write a hit play and trades philosophical barbs with Shayne even as he's stealing his girlfriend.
By no means is BULLETS OVER BROADWAY a disaster but it could have been so much better with Woody in front of the camera as well as behind it.

THE SUNSHINE BOYS: one last chance to get right back up there!

There's something about New York Jewish humour that gets me every time. I love the phrasing, the intonation and the delivery. And let's not forget the subject matter. From the fretting over the small stuff to the existential angst there's always something to obsess over or complain about.
Woody Allen and Jackie Mason are past masters of the art, and so are vaudeville veterans Willy Clark and Al Lewis.

You've never heard of Lewis and Clark? For forty three years they were The Sunshine Boys, treading the boards at theatres across the United States and becoming an important part of vaudeville history in the process.
They live on in the mid 70s as relics of an extinct art form; Lewis in comfortable retirement in the spare room at his daughter's house in suburban New Jersey, while Clark labors on, schlepping across Manhattan from one futile tv commercial audition to the next and refusing to accept that his time as an entertainer is up.
Then Clark's agent and nephew Ben (Richard Benjamin) lands them one last payday, recreating their famous 'Doctor sketch' for a big budget tv salute to America's entertainment heritage. The only problem is Lewis and Clark haven't spoken to each other in eleven years. Clark has never forgiven his partner for retiring when he wanted to continue with the act.
In the hands of Walter Matthau and a Best Supporting Actor Oscar winning George Burns and with an electrifying screenplay by Neil Simon THE SUNSHINE BOYS is comedy gold. 
Matthau as the cantankerous, resentful Clark is all sound and fury while Burns' Al Lewis is an oasis of absent-minded calm. But he's no pushover which only raises Clark's blood pressure further driving him into rages not befitting a senior citizen.
Despite the bad temper and the festering, decades-long resentment THE SUNSHINE BOYS really is a feel good movie. There is so much to enjoy in the performances of all three main characters and Simon's sparkling script that you're guaranteed to be left with a big smile on your face and a sense of having been thoroughly entertained.