'There are two short passages in Woody Allen’s autobiography Apropos of Nothing that will forever change the way I think about him. I cannot unread, unhear, unknow them. I wish I could.' MarkHarrisNYC writes
Photo: Snap/Shutterstock/Snap/Shutterstock There are two short passages in Woody Allen’s autobiography Apropos of Nothing that will forever change the way I think about him. I cannot unread, unhear, unknow them. I wish I could. I’ll get to them shortly.
I understand those moviegoers who have no desire ever to watch or rewatch another Woody Allen movie. But as a film historian, I can’t remove his films from my cultural vista, because they’re not only his. Annie Hall is also an essential part of Diane Keaton’s filmography, and of Gordon Willis’s, and of Colleen Dewhurst’s, and of Jewish filmmaking, and of New York romantic comedy.
I wondered if the man who has, incredibly, directed more actresses to Oscar nominations than any living filmmaker would have anything to say about how that happened. He does not. Of Husbands and Wives nominee Judy Davis, with whom he has worked five times, he writes, “I was always intimidated by her … I never spoke to her, and she, instinctively sensing I had nothing of value to say, never spoke to me.” And his cultural horizons are, he says bluntly, limited.
So it’s unsurprising that when Allen embarks on his long history of romance, marriage, and lust, it’s all about the looks. The relatively vivid and lucid account of his early adult life as a gag writer and emerging comedian is the only part of this book that could be called introspective. Of his first, infrequently discussed marriage to a woman named Harlene Rosen , he writes, “Harlene’s parents never should have let their daughter marry me.
Holy shit. It is fine not to care about awards; it is even fine to profess not to care while referencing them as frequently as this book does. But that phrasing, for the rest of Apropos of Nothing, felt like a splinter in my skull.
I will not speculate on the accuracy of an account of the tragic end of three lives that are granted, collectively, two sentences. But what I can comment on, because it’s sitting right there, is the prose. This is writing about coldness so coldly that you can’t tell what’s giving you chills, the content or the tone, the cruelty alleged or the casualness with which three deaths are enlisted to allege it.
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