Mickey: This morning I was
so happy. I don't know what went wrong.
Gail: You were miserable. We
got bad reviews. The sponsors are furious.
Mickey: I was happy, but I just didn't realize I was.
- Hannah and Her Sisters
Showing posts with label woody allen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label woody allen. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 16, 2025
'Tis Ever Thus
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Into the Archive: Merely Anarchic
Mere Anarchy, by
Woody Allen (2007, Random House)
After reading Apropos of
Nothing, I felt compelled to look into Woody Allen’s input again. Most of
his published work since Side Effects (1980) have been screenplays or
plays. He returned to comedic anthologies with Mere Anarchy, a
collection of 18 tales, 10 of which had previously been published in The New
Yorker.
I ordered Mere Anarchy
for a mere two dollars, with four dollars shipping fee of course, a softcover edition.
It arrived this Monday. I haven’t read it all, but I’m already noticing a difference
from his classic stories. I don’t know if it’s because I have changed, or because
Woody has changed.
If I had to lay my finger on
one difficulty, it’s that the comedy seems clotted. There are humorous effects
sometimes coming four to a sentence; there is no time to rest, no breathing
space. Some of the references take a moment or two to untangle. And the
formula, at least in the first few tales, is repetitive: a nebbish discovers a
popular new trend and hops on it only to discover it’s passing away with
inherent flaws being discovered. Perhaps it’s an effect of having them
collected all together; as Anthony of Anthony’s Animations on YouTube
says of the Warner cartoons, they were not originally made to be seen in
batches and so had no problems re-using styles and set-ups. Use of comedic or ironic
names – Millipede, Mealworm, Pontius – come thick and fast.
Still worth reading, however, and hilarious in its own right, if you can get over the speed bumps. I fully intend to get Zero Gravity (2020) if I find one for the right price, if only for completeness’ sake. Like most things I enjoyed in my youth, Woody’s writing doesn’t seem as enjoyable as it once was. But that may just be on me. Or the nature of life.
Thursday, March 6, 2025
Apropos of 'Apropos of Nothing'
Apropos of Nothing, by
Woody Allen (Arcade Publishing, 2020; First Paperback Edition 2021)
New York Times Bestseller “In
this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian,
writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life.
Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid
Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy
greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he
achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he
recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take
the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously
productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie
Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters to
his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way,
he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz
playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his
successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure.”
– Amazon.
Not in the Archive, but it
has been my daily reading for almost a week. I’ve been reading and enjoying
Allen since I was in high school; watching his movies, too, until about Radio
Days, after which his films became a little less ubiquitous. Then, of
course, there was that Mia Farrow business, and things became more fraught.
“In 1980, Allen began a professional and
personal relationship with actress Mia Farrow.
Over a decade-long period, they collaborated on 13 films. The couple separated
after Allen began a relationship in 1991 with Mia's and Andre
Previn's 21-year-old adopted daughter Soon-Yi
Previn. Allen married Previn in 1997. They have two adopted daughters. In
1992, Farrow publicly accused Allen of
sexually abusing their adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow. The allegation
gained substantial media attention, but two judicial investigations and a
custody trial did not find it credible. Allen was never charged or prosecuted
and has vehemently denied the allegation.” – Wikipedia. The situation was not helped by the libidinous persona he had projected through the years.
Apropos of Nothing is
a memoir, a little less formal than an autobiography, and most reviews
emphasize its humorous aspect, and it does have that. But it’s hard to read it
as anything less than an apology, in the old-fashioned Greek sense of the word,
an explanation and a plea for understanding, if somewhat wryly put. While Allen
gives all props to Farrow as to her talent and beauty, she comes across as less
than a Supermom, as she adopts children almost as fashion accessories, and more
like a Medea, striking back at Jason through the children.
Allen’s career cannot now be discussed without addressing this business, and the absolute truth may never be known. But he relates his narrative in a convincing manner, and I put down the book (which is hard to do in media res as there are no chapters throughout its 392 pages and few formal pauses) feeling more inclined to accept his side of things. He claims he does not care what anyone thinks of him or what his legacy will be when he's gone, but I think this may be the most disingenuous statement in the whole book.
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
Saturday, December 18, 2021
Love and Death: Into the Archive
Love and Death
(1975) is considered the last of Woody Allen’s “early, funny ones,” a comedic breakdown of
classic Russian literature and, of course, the themes of love and death. It
follows the adventures of self-proclaimed coward and poet Boris Grushenko
(Woody Allen) and his pursuit of his distant cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton)
through the ups and downs of the Napoleonic Wars. Despite constant visions of
the Grim Reaper and encounters on the battlefield and in a duel, Boris survives
to marry Sonja, only to have their lives interrupted by France’s invasion of
Russia. The two conceive an ill-advised plan to assassinate Napoleon and stop
the war, but it ends up with Boris captured and facing the firing squad at
dawn. Throughout the film Woody Allen pricks all the grim, intense pretensions surrounding
love and death (especially exemplified by war and marriage) with hilarious
deconstructions and all-too-literal readings, ending with a joyfully absurd
dance with Death.
An extra bonus, of course, is if you have a passing
acquaintance with Russian literature (especially the works of Leo Tolstoy, Ivan
Turgenev, and Fyodor Dostoevsky) and can spot the elements that are being
parodied. An epitome of this shtick can be seen in a conversation between Boris
and his father near the end of the film, which name-drops many famous novels
and episodes by Doestoevsky:
Father: Remember that nice boy next door, Raskalnikov?
Boris:
Yeah?
Father:
He killed two ladies.
Boris:
No! What a nasty story.
Father:
Bobick told it to me. He heard it from one of the Karamazov brothers.
Boris:
He must have been possessed.
Father:
Well, he was a raw youth.
Boris:
Raw youth? He was an idiot.
Father:
And he acted insulted and injured.
Boris:
I hear he was a gambler.
Father:
You know, he could be your double?
Boris:
Really? (strokes his chin) How novel.
If you want to watch a movie where War and Peace meets Borscht-belt comedy, Love and Death is the film for you, “a satire of contemporary mores, a spoof aimed more at the heart than the head!”
Sunday, August 2, 2020
Beautiful Browsers, Boring Covers
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