Fan Fare

Writer-director Woody Allen doesn’t mince words when expressing the anxiety he feels about aging and death.

In a typically blunt, near-two minute tirade, seventy-four-year-old Allen, said he sees no advantage to the golden years at all.

“You shrivel, you become decrepit, you lose your faculties, your peer group passes away. You sit in a room gumming your porridge. I don’t see any advantage in this whatsoever,” he told reporters at a Toronto Film Festival press conference for his “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,” which opens in theaters on Sept. 22.

“It’s a bad situation. It’s a joke without a punch line. It’s an unpleasant thing. It’s kind of a nightmare. The best thing you can do … is to distract yourself. You do all these things that distract you and keep you from thinking about the tall, dark stranger that comes and gets you despite all your efforts to, you know, eat health foods and exercise.”

“Tall Dark Stranger” is a wry look at two married couples, Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) and Helena (Gemma Jones), and their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and husband Roy (Josh Brolin).

Upon listening to Allen’s latest distinctive life philosophy that he has forged a career out of, conference attendees broke out in laughter and Allen, sort of, apologized: “I don’t mean to be a downer,” he said.