The Reeler had the chance a while back to talk with Scarlett Johansson about the romantic comedy/thriller Scoop, her latest collaboration with Woody Allen. The film is a pleasing-enough trifle, with the passable Johansson portraying a student reporter chasing down the identity of London’s notorious Tarot Card Killer; her quest is aided by the spirit of a deceased journalist (Ian McShane) and a D-grade American magician (Allen), whose counsel and conspiracy lead her to the suspect arms of dashing aristocrat Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman).

Scarlett Johansson sizes up her source in Woody Allen’s Scoop (Photo: Clive Cooke / Focus Features)
Despite a mildly sclerotic screwball comedy vein and the grating dead-guy-sending-news-tips tack too underused to be anything but a contrivance, seeing Allen onscreen remains one of cinema’s grand treats–no matter how corny the jokes (“Land is so difficult to come by, especially outdoors,” he kvetches to an assemblage of bluebloods) or how self-referential his schtick (had Danny Rose not turned to repping talent, he would have become Scoop‘s Sid Waterman). And his climax is so exquisitely crafted–it lasts about 20 seconds, totally eschews melodrama and works better as any of the clunky exposition preceding it–that one cannot help but cherish its invention. Nevertheless, as Allen is on the record as wanting to pay homage to “first-rate investigative journalism,” his depiction of a 20-year-old who sleeps her way to her scoops is a little more Judy Miller than Nellie Bly.
And as Scoop‘s brilliant conclusion implies, Johansson’s Sondra Pransky knew exactly what she was doing–even if the actress backs away from the tactic and its sordid implications.
“Woody finds it very humorous to just have sort of the way that people kind of use sex as a means of getting things out of one another,” Johansson told me. “I think that he comes from a time when sexuality was something that was very kind of frivolous and young pretty girls sleeping around was not seen as being scandal or anything like. I mean, we live in such a conservative society today–it seems to be a huge deal. But I think it’s so great how Woody kind of makes light of that, because the truth is that people are probably having as much sex now as they ever did. But for some reason nobody wants to talk about it. But he never really spoke about that drive or that ambition. Clearly, I don’t think my character is forcing herself into sleeping with Hugh’s charcter, Peter Lyman. I mean, she’s totally head over heels. He’s gorgeous and charming and rich and everything that she kind of isn’t. So I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch.”
Let us forget for a moment Johansson’s transposition of sexual eras. The bottom line is that comedy or not, head-over-heels or not, all of Scoop‘s sex is goal-oriented sex. Allen sets it up in his introduction to Sondra, who stakes out a famous filmmaker in a hotel lobby, badgers him into an interview and then, we find out later, fucks him to no good end. “I slept with him and I didn’t even get the scoop!” her character cries to her roommate, who rejoins her with the consolation, “So you blew the story; it’s not life or death.”
Which is fine, I guess; the film’s DNA is too innocuous to be that outrageous. But Allen’s, on the other hand… “first-rate investigative journalism” my ass.
“I think she’s just kind of drunk and kind of taken by this popular, successful, sophisticated guy,” Johansson said. “There was actually a longer chunk of that where she gets more and more drunk, but it was probably getting over the top and she was trashed. But it was very funny. The key is Woody thinks it’s funny.”
Got it. Woody thinks it funny. At least somebody does.

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