The Long-Awaited, Enormously Entertaining Memoir by One of the Great Artists of Our Time–Now a New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publisher’s Weekly 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 … 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 Annie 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.
This is a hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.
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Everyone Deserves to have their side of the story told. Woody Allen has over six decades of entertainment experiences for which he takes you on a circuitous and tangental journey. The book is unstructured and written as if this self-described octogenarian misanthrope talks to you during a rainy afternoon in his living about his unvarnished thoughts of his life and the people he has come across. He can be unkind about himself and others which makes the book semi-refreshing to read. Often, when someone writes an autobiography, the author wants to be honest but smooth out the bumps to make it less of a contentious read. Not here! If you read the book, you will see for yourself. He has been in the news lately, and it often appears one-sided. It feels appropriate to hear his side of the story and do your fact-checking rather than what the media spews into us. Aside from his journey, it is fun to read about the golden age of television and his unlikely ascent into one of the world’s greatest auteurs. He has going for him because he never seems to read his press when he was on an artistic high and feed into the Hollywood machine. Also, he is not an obsessive Martin Scoresee type who looks back at his previous films’ technical failures. Once it is done, then it’s done. It helped him cope with his continual descent in Hollywood stature and denunciation by feckless actors and actresses who feel pressure to denounce his work to keep working for themselves. The book is close to 400 pages, but it reads like 250 (big font tends to help). If you are curious and can find the book for a decent price, give it a read.
What a funny guy—and a good writer. He should be, he’s written a zillion movie scripts. Allen’s writing is engaging, honest, and stripped of self-serving comments. His style reminded me a lot of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s, Unmasked, as well as Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run.
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“All that I ask is my ashes be scattered close to a pharmacy.” Woody Allen
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This chapterless book moves at a steady pace with a liberal sprinkling of one-liners. It starts with his lively childhood in Brooklyn and his steady progress in the field of professional comedy, handing out accolades along the way to those who helped him. If you like his movies, you’re in luck as he tackles each one at a perfect pace; not lingering, but saying enough to satisfy the average fan. His difficult years with Mia Farrow are detailed as well, laid out bare with the facts as much as anyone could know them.
Allen is a man who gets up and writes every day and has done so for nearly 65 years. Many of his later movies were set in foreign cities—London, Paris, and Rome. He recounts how he lived in a hotel with his wife Sonn-Yi and their children, for six months or so each time while shooting the films. He admits the lifestyle was hard to beat. And as much as he is associated with New York, he wonders—could it have been Paris all along?
Fascinating and funny as he relates his career path from a kid in NY to a comic who knew all the great comics in the past 60 years. Also covers making his movies over the years and focusing on his writing regardless of what was happening in the world. Covers the Mia Farrow catastrophe quite thoroughly.
A lot of down-memory- lane on his important and prolific career as a filmmaker; lots of name-dropping but, of course, he knows all those people. The stuff on the vengeful Mia Farrow is very compelling. Woody may not have got the last word here, but he definitely has his say about the keelhauling.