Hayley Atwell is actress and temptress Angela Stark in Cassandra's Dream Courtesy of Keith Hamshere/The Weinstein Company

What about stuff your fans would be interested in, like the lost scenes from the Anhedonia cut of Annie Hall? The one with you playing basketball against the Knicks, and other scenes?
All that stuff is probably non-existent. I probably destroyed that twenty years ago.

Really? It's not moldering in some warehouse?
Not that stuff. We keep stuff from the last current couple of films and as they become three and four down the line we throw the stuff away.

Does it matter to you if your movies are seen on a big screen, versus a television screen or something smaller?
Yes. I would rather they're seen on the big screen. That's the whole idea of movies. Now, eventually I guess you'll be sitting in your media room at home and you'll have high-definition and a 1.85 screen that's seven feet by ten feet or something, and there won't be much difference, but the truth is it's made to be on a movie screen, a larger than life screen, with audiences filing in and buzzing about it and coming out and giving their opinions. It's a social experience and a communal experience. So, I don't love that they're seen for the first time on DVD, but there's nothing you can do because the culture has moved that way.

Now you're back in Manhattan, gearing up to start shooting in the spring after four films abroad. Does absence make the heart grow fonder?
It makes my heart grow fonder. I did the first film [in London], Match Point, because they put the money up. I had finished it for New York, the script, and I was getting ready to set it up in New York and they came along and said "We'll give you all the money you need to make it in London, make it here." I went there trepidatiously, but had such a nice experience because the weather was so good, the skies so grey and good for camerawork that I went back the next summer and did a little picture with Scarlett [Johansson], just for the fun of the two of us working together, a trivial little picture that we did for our own personal amusement. Then I went back again and did Cassandra's Dream because I was enjoying it and they were financing it. Then the people in Barcelona said that if I would come there and make a film, they would finance it. So I went there and did this film this past summer.

So it's all very practical.
It's very practical, yes. Now I'm gonna start shooting in New York in about eight weeks or so, or six weeks. But after that it would really be depending on what I set up. People have spoken to me about financing movies in Paris and Rome, so I could conceivably do a film there, or if I was able to raise the money easily enough my guess is that I'd probably do it in New York.

By the way, what are you and Scarlett doing for that anthology film, I Love New York? The paper said you're each directing one of the shorts?
That was a total, total fabrication on my part. Not on my part, I mean about me. I have no idea if or what she is doing for it. I've heard nothing. I am in no way connected with it, nor have I ever been.

Is Scarlett sort of your student?
She's just a very, very talented girl. She's a very beautiful, very sexy, very, very gifted girl with a big range. She can play drama, she can play comedy, she's in this romantic film I did over the summer and she's wonderful. She's a pleasure to work with. If there's a part for her in my script, I always wind up calling her because, you know, I know her and I've gotten friendly with her and she's very easy to work with and she always delivers. So if the part is good for her I'd call her first rather than go to some stranger.

Is there a part for her in the spring project?
No.

How often are you getting out to the movies these days?
Well, I have a screening room where I do my editing, so I usually screen at my screening room. My assistant will call up and borrow a film on the weekend. I usually, just like every other person in America, habitually I'll go on Saturday night. On Saturday night I'll generally screen a film for myself and my friends at my screening room.

You don't enjoy the atmosphere of a public theater?
I do, yeah, but I've gotten lazy over the years and it's right near my house and I can just go over there. I do see it on a full screen in an actual theater. It's a projection theater and I see it big, on the screen with good sound and all of that. I'm not watching it on video — it's just a little more convenient for me. But once in a while, I'll drop in. I'll take a walk in the daytime with my wife and we'll just drop in on a movie, because it's easy to go in the daytime. There aren't many people, and you know, we'll sit in the movie house. It's still pleasurable for me.