I Was Only A Meatball Person

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This speaks for itself. Wonderful. Via Nat via NYT:

In an interview on Monday, Linn Ullmann, the daughter of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, told us that her father never got to host his longtime admirer Woody Allen at his home on the Baltic island of Fårö, owing in part to a “mutual dread” on the part of both filmmakers. (A dread, mostly, of travel, not of each other.)

But in a 2001 interview in The Guardian, Liv Ullmann recalled that Bergman and Mr. Allen did meet in 1975, when she was performing “A Doll’s House” on Broadway and Bergman was married to his wife Ingrid.

As Liv Ullmann said in The Guardian:

Woody Allen came to get me, and he was so excited, he was shivering and talking, talking. Anyway, Ingmar opened the door and said welcome. That’s all he said. And the two of them looked at each other. Two geniuses met. We sat down at the table — and this is the honest to God truth, Ingrid was sitting there, I was sitting there, Ingmar there, and Woody Allen there — and they did not talk. They just looked at each other, almost lovingly.

Ingrid, for once, was allowed to talk at the table, so she talked to me about meatballs. We talked about meatballs because I didn’t know what to talk about. And in the middle of the thing she gave me my child support in an envelope and said this is for Linn next year. It was a little embarrassing in front of Woody Allen. So she did that and I hated her a little more. And the two of them would look at each other and smile, look at these two sweet women. I hated that — that I was only a meatball person — and probably she hated that, too. They never talked. They never talked. They laughed to each other but never said a word. Then it was over and they said goodbye. On the way home Woody Allen said, “Thank you. He is an incredible man.” I couldn’t believe it. Then, when I came home, Ingmar called, “Thank you, Liv, what an incredible meeting.”

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