By Russ Fischer/May 15, 2015 4:30 pm EST

The interview is a career overview with Deadline, and it’s one of the better things Deadline has ever published. If you have even a passing interest in Allen’s work, it’s a must-read.

And that creative freedom is something Allen prizes. Elsewhere in the interview he talks about never having to suffer a script note, that he writes, casts, shoots and cuts as he wants.

Well, this went on for a year and a half, and they kept making a better deal and a better deal. Finally they said look, we’ll do anything that you want, just give us six half hours. They can be black and white, they can take place in Paris, in New York and California, they can be about a family, they can be comedy, you can be in them, they can be tragic. We don’t have to know anything, just come in with six half hours. And they offered a lot of money and everybody around me was pressuring me, go ahead and do it, what do you have to lose?

But a TV series isn’t just a movie split into half-hour segments.

Or, to sum things up, he told the LA Times,

I had the cocky confidence, well, I’ll do it like I do a movie…it’ll be a movie in six parts. Turns out, it’s not. For me, it has been very, very difficult. … I am not as good at it as I fantasized I might be. It’s not a piece of cake; it’s a tough thing and I’m earning every penny that they’re giving me and I just hope that they don’t feel, ‘My God, we gave him a very substantial amount of money and freedom and this is what he gives us?’

Which, for a person who has complete creative freedom and the status to work in whatever manner he desires, could actually prod the show into being something different and interesting. It’s weird and almost refreshing to hear someone as established as Allen express this sort of doubt, and we’re more curious than ever to see what he comes up with.

It was a catastrophic mistake. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m floundering. I expect this to be a cosmic embarrassment?.

On the other hand, there is an endless collection of other talented people who are trying to get their own shows made, many with great ideas and great stories, and they don’t have a company with deep pockets chasing them on the basis of their name alone. For them, this sort of thing has to be incredibly frustrating to read.