Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, comedian, and playwright.
Allen's distinctive films, which run the gamut from dramas to screwball sex comedies, have made him one of the most respected living American directors. He is also distinguished by his rapid rate of production and his very large body of work.[1] Allen writes and directs his movies and has also acted in the majority of them. For inspiration, Allen draws heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, European cinema, and New York City, where he was born and has lived his entire life.
Allen is also a jazz clarinetist. What began as a teenage avocation has led to regular public performances at various small venues in his Manhattan hometown, with occasional appearances at various jazz festivals. Allen joined the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the New Orleans Funeral Ragtime Orchestra in performances that provided the film score for his 1973 comedy Sleeper, and a rare European tour in 1996 featuring Allen was the subject of the documentary Wild Man Blues.
| Woody Allen | |
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.jpeg) Woody Allen in concert in New York City, 2006 |
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| Born | Allan Stewart Konigsberg December 1, 1935 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Years active | 1950 - Present |
| Spouse(s) | Harlene Rosen (1956-1962) Louise Lasser (1966-1969) Soon-Yi Previn (1997-) |
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[edit] Early years
Allen was born and raised in New York City, the son of Nettie (née Cherrie; November 8, 1906 - January 27, 2002), a bookkeeper at her family's delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg (December 25, 1900 - January 13, 2001), a jewelry engraver and waiter.[2] His family was Jewish and his grandparents were Yiddish- and German-speaking immigrants.[3] Allen has a sister, Letty (born 1943), and was raised in Midwood, Brooklyn.[4] His parents were both born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.[3] His childhood, while middle-class, wasn't particularly happy. His parents didn't get along, and he had a rocky relationship with his stern, temperamental mother.[5] Allen spoke Yiddish during his early years and, after attending Hebrew school for eight years, went to Public School 99 and to Midwood High School. During that time, he lived in an apartment at 1402 Avenue K, between East 14th and 15th Streets. He was Nicknamed "Red" because of his red hair; he impressed students with his extraordinary talent at card and magic tricks.[6] Though in his films and his comedy persona he has often depicted himself as physically inept and socially unpopular, in fact Woody Allen was a popular student, and an adept baseball and basketball player.
To raise money he began writing gags for the agent David O. Alber, who sold them to newspaper columnists. According to Allen, his first published joke "was in a gossip column. It read: 'Woody Allen says he ate at a restaurant that had O.P.S. prices—over people's salaries.'"[7]
At sixteen, he was discovered by Milt Kamen, who got him his first writing job with Sid Caesar. He began calling himself Woody Allen. He was a gifted comedian from an early age and would later joke that when he was young he was sent to inter-faith summer camp, where he "was savagely beaten by children of all races and creeds".[6]
After high school, he went to New York University (NYU) where he studied communication and film. He was never committed as a student, so he failed a film course, and was eventually expelled.[8] He later briefly attended City College of New York.
[edit] Comedy writer and playwright
After his false starts at NYU and City College, he became a full-time writer for Herb Shriner, earning $75 a week at first.[7] At age 19, he started writing scripts for The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, Caesar's Hour and other television shows.[9] By the time he was working for Sid Caesar, he was making $1500 a week; with Caesar he worked alongside Danny Simon, whom Allen credits for helping him to structure his writing style.[7][10]
In 1961, he started a new career as a stand-up comedian, debuting in a Greenwich Village club called the Duplex.[7] Examples of Allen's standup act can be heard on the albums Standup Comic and Nightclub Years 1964-1968.
He began writing for the popular Candid Camera television show, even appearing in some episodes. Together with his managers, Allen turned his weaknesses into his strengths, developing his neurotic, nervous, and intellectual persona. He quickly became a successful comedian, and appeared frequently in nightclubs and on television. Allen was popular enough to appear on the cover of Life in 1969.
Allen started writing short stories for magazines (most notably The New Yorker). He also became a successful Broadway playwright, writing Don't Drink the Water, which opened on November 17, 1966 and ran for 598 performances. It starred Lou Jacobi, Kay Medford, Anita Gillette and Allen's future movie co-star Anthony Roberts. A film adaptation of the play, directed by Howard Morris, was released in 1969 starring Jackie Gleason. In 1994 Allen directed and starred in a third version for television with Michael J. Fox and Mayim Bialik.
His next Broadway hit, Play It Again, Sam, he not only wrote, but starred in. It opened on February 12, 1969 and ran for 453 performances. It also featured Diane Keaton and Anthony Roberts. Allen, Keaton and Roberts would reprise their roles in the film version of the play, directed by Herbert Ross.
Allen is also an accomplished author having published four collections of his short pieces and plays. These are Getting Even, Without Feathers, Side Effects and Mere Anarchy. His early comic fiction was heavily influenced by the zany, pun-ridden humour of S.J. Perelman.
[edit] Film career
[edit] Early films
His first movie production was What's New, Pussycat? in 1965, for which he wrote the initial screenplay. He was hired by Warren Beatty to re-write a script, and to appear in a small part in the movie. Over the course of the re-write, Beatty's part grew smaller and Allen's grew larger. Beatty was upset and quit the production. Peter O'Toole was hired for the Beatty role, and Peter Sellers was brought in as well; Sellers was a big enough star to demand many of Woody Allen's best lines/scenes, prompting hasty re-writes. This experience with meddling producers, egotistical stars, and directors ruining jokes, along with a similar experience on the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (for which he did uncredited rewrites of his own scenes), led Allen to decide that the only way filmmaking was worthwhile was if he was in control of the film.
Allen's first directorial effort was What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966 co-written with Mickey Rose), in which an existing Japanese spy movie (Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi no kagi [1965] — "International Secret Police: Key of Keys") was redubbed in English by Allen and his friends with completely new, comic dialogue.
[edit] 1960s and 1970s
His first conventional effort was Take the Money and Run (1969), which was followed by Bananas, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), Sleeper, and Love and Death. Take the Money and Run and Bananas were both co-written by his childhood friend, Mickey Rose.
In 1972, he also starred in the film version of Play It Again, Sam, which was directed by Herbert Ross. All of Allen's early films were pure comedies that relied heavily on slapstick, inventive sight gags, and non-stop one-liners. Among the many notable influences on these films are Bob Hope, Groucho Marx (as well as, to some extent, Harpo Marx) and Humphrey Bogart. In 1976, he starred in, but did not direct, The Front (that task was handled by Martin Ritt), a humorous and poignant account of Hollywood blacklisting during the 1950s.
Annie Hall marked a major turn to more sophisticated humor and thoughtful drama. Allen's 1977 film won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture – an unusual feat for a comedy, and Best Actress in a Leading Role for Diane Keaton. Annie Hall set the standard for modern romantic comedy, and also started a minor fashion trend with the unique clothes worn by Diane Keaton in the film (the offbeat, masculine clothing, such as ties with cardigans, was actually Keaton's own). While in production, its working title was "Anhedonia," a term that means the inability to feel pleasure, and its plot revolved around a murder mystery. Apparently, as filmed, the murder mystery plot did not work (and was later used in his 1993 Manhattan Murder Mystery), so Allen re-edited and re-cut the movie after production ended to focus on the romantic comedy between Allen's character, Alvy Singer, and Keaton's character, Annie Hall. The new version, retitled Annie Hall (named after Keaton's grandmother), still deals with the theme of the inability to feel pleasure. Ranked at No. 35 on the American Film Institute' s "100 Best Movies" and at No. 4 on the AFI list of "100 Best Comedies," Annie Hall is considered to be among Allen's best.
Manhattan, released in 1979, is a black-and-white film that can be viewed as an homage to New York City, which has been described as the true "main character" of the movie.[citation needed] As in many other Allen films, the main characters are upper-class academics. Even though it makes fun of pretentious intellectuals, the story is packed with obscure references which makes it less accessible to a general audience. The love-hate opinion of cerebral persons found in Manhattan is characteristic of many of Allen's movies including Crimes and Misdemeanors and Annie Hall. Manhattan focuses on the complicated relationship between a middle-aged Isaac Davis (Allen) and a seventeen-year-old Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) – which presages Allen's complicated personal relationship with Soon-Yi Previn.
Between Annie Hall and Manhattan Allen wrote and directed the gloomy drama Interiors (1978), in the style of the late Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, one of Allen's major influences. Interiors is considered by critics as a significant breakthrough past Allen's "earlier, funnier comedies" (a line from 1980s Stardust Memories).
[edit] 1980s
Allen's 1980s films, even the comedies, have somber and philosophical undertones. Some, like September and Stardust Memories, are often said to be heavily influenced by the works of European directors, most notably Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini.
Stardust Memories features a main character, a successful filmmaker played by Allen, who expresses resentment and scorn for his fans. Overcome by the recent death of a friend from illness, the character states, "I don't want to make funny movies any more," and a running gag throughout the film has various people (including a group of visiting space aliens) telling Bates that they appreciate his work, "especially the early, funny ones".[11]
However, by the mid-1980s, Allen had begun to combine tragic and comic elements with the release of such films as Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors, in which he tells two different stories that connect at the end. He also produced a vividly idiosyncratic tragi-comical parody of documentary, titled Zelig.
He also made three films about show business. The first movie is Broadway Danny Rose, in which he plays a New York show business agent; then, The Purple Rose of Cairo, a movie that shows the importance of the cinema during the Depression through the character of the naive Cecilia. Lastly, Allen made Radio Days, which is a film about his childhood in Brooklyn, and the importance of the radio. Purple Rose was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best films of all time, and Allen has described it as one of his three best films, along with Stardust Memories and Match Point.[12] (It is worth noting that Allen defines them as "best" not in terms of quality, but because they came out the closest to his original vision.)
Before the end of the eighties he made other movies that were strongly inspired by Ingmar Bergman's films. September resembles Autumn Sonata, and Allen uses many elements from Persona[citation needed] in Another Woman.
[edit] 1990s
His 1992 film Shadows and Fog (1992) is a black and white homage to German expressionists and features the music of Kurt Weill. Allen then made his critically acclaimed drama Husbands and Wives (1992) which received two Oscar nominations; Best Supporting Actress for Judy Davis and Best Original Screenplay for Allen. His film Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) combined suspense with dark comedy, and starred Diane Keaton, Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston.
Next, he returned to lighter movies, such as Bullets Over Broadway (1994), which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Director followed by a musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996) -- his first and only one as of 2008[update]. The singing and dancing scenes in Everyone Says I Love You are similar to the musical starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but the plot is comical. The comedy Mighty Aphrodite (1995), in which the Greek and Roman drama plays a large role, won an Academy Award for Mira Sorvino. Allen's 1999 jazz-based comedy-drama Sweet and Lowdown was also nominated for two Academy Awards for Sean Penn (Best Actor) and Samantha Morton (Best Supporting Actress). In contrast to these lighter movies, Allen veered into darker satire towards the end of the decade with Deconstructing Harry (1997) and Celebrity (1998). Allen made his only sitcom "appearance" via telephone in the 1997 episode, "My Dinner with Woody" of the show Just Shoot Me!, an episode paying tribute to several of his films.
[edit] 2000s
Small Time Crooks (2000) was his first film with DreamWorks SKG studio and represented a change in direction: Allen began giving more interviews and made an apparent return to his strictly comedy roots. Small Time Crooks was a relative success, grossing over $17 million domestically, but Allen's next four films floundered at the box office, including Allen's most expensive film to date, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (with a budget of $33 million). Hollywood Ending, Anything Else, and Melinda and Melinda were given "rotten" ratings from film-review website Rotten Tomatoes and each earned less than $5 million domestically.[13] Most critics agreed that Allen's films since 1999's Sweet and Lowdown were subpar, and some critics expressed concern that Allen's best years were now behind him.[14] Woody gave his godson, Quincy Rose, a small part in Melinda & Melinda.
Match Point (2005) was one of Allen's most successful films in the past ten years and generally received very positive reviews. Set in London, it starred Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Scarlett Johansson. It is also markedly darker than Allen's first four films under the DreamWorks SKG banner. In Match Point Allen shifts his focus from the intellectual upper class of New York to the moneyed upper class of London. While different from Allen's many critical satires, Match Point still has undertones of social critique. This is clearest in the theme of luck which works on several levels in the film. Match Point earned more than $23 million domestically (more than any of his films in nearly 20 years) and earned over $62 million in international box office sales.[15] Match Point earned Allen his first Academy Award nomination since 1998 for Best Writing, Original Screenplay and also earned directing and writing nominations at the Golden Globes, his first Globe nominations since 1987. In an interview with Premiere Magazine, Allen stated this was the best film he has ever made.
Allen returned to London to film Scoop, which also starred Johansson, as well as Hugh Jackman, Ian McShane and Kevin McNally. The film was released on July 28, 2006, and received mixed reviews. He has also filmed Cassandra's Dream in London. Cassandra's Dream stars Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor, and Tom Wilkinson and was released in November 2007.
After finishing his third London film, Allen headed to Spain. He reached an agreement to film Vicky Cristina Barcelona, in Avilés, Barcelona and Oviedo, where shooting started on July 9, 2007. The movie stars international and Spanish actors and actresses, including Scarlett Johansson, Javier Bardem, Patricia Clarkson, and Penélope Cruz.[16][17] "I'm delighted at being able to work with Mediapro and make a film in Spain, a country which has become so special to me,".
Allen has said that he "survives" on the European market. Audiences there have tended to be more receptive to Allen's films, particularly in Spain and France, both countries where he has a large fan base (something joked about in Hollywood Ending). "In the United States things have changed a lot, and it's hard to make good small films now," Allen said in a 2004 interview. "The avaricious studios couldn't care less about good films – if they get a good film they're twice as happy, but money-making films are their goal. They only want these $100 million pictures that make $500 million".[18]
In April 2008, he began filming for a movie focused more towards older audiences starring Larry David, Patricia Clarkson[19] and Evan Rachel Wood.[20] He revealed in July 2008 the title of this film, to be released in 2009: Whatever Works.[21] Good Small Filmsdescribes the film as a dark comedy, following the story of a botched suicide attempt turned messy love triangle.
Reports suggest that Woody Allen's next three projects will be filmed in Europe, in the summers of 2009, 10 and 11, respectively[22].
[edit] "Woody Allen" character
Allen continues to write roles for the neurotic persona he created in the 1960s and 1970s; however, as he gets older, the roles have been assumed by other actors such as John Cusack (Bullets Over Broadway), Kenneth Branagh (Celebrity), Jason Biggs (Anything Else), Will Ferrell (Melinda and Melinda), and Larry David (Whatever Works).
[edit] Awards, nominations and distinctions
Over the course of his career Allen has received a considerable number of awards and distinctions in film festivals and yearly national film awards ceremonies, saluting his work as a director, screenwriter and actor.[9] When premiering his films at festivals, Allen does not screen his motion pictures in competition, thus deliberately taking them out of consideration for potential awards.
- Allen's film Annie Hall won four Academy Awards in 1977, including best picture.
- Allen won the 1978 O. Henry Award for his short story "The Kugelmass Episode" published in The New Yorker on May 2, 1977.
- Allen twice won the César Award for Best Foreign Film, the first in 1980 for Manhattan and the second in 1986 for The Purple Rose of Cairo. Seven other of his movies were nominated for the prize.
- In 1986, Allen won the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay for The Purple Rose of Cairo. He was also nominated four times as Best Director, four times for Best Screenplay and twice for Best Actor (Comedy/musical).
- At the 1995 Venice Film Festival, Allen received a Career Golden Lion for lifetime achievement.
- In 1996, Allen received a lifetime achievement award from the Directors Guild of America.
- In 2002 Allen won the Prince of Asturias Award. Subsequently, the city of Oviedo, Spain erected a life-size statue of Allen.[23]
- In 2002, Allen received the Palme des Palmes, a special lifetime achievement award granted by the Cannes Festival and whose sole other recipient is Ingmar Bergman.[24]
- In a 2005 poll The Comedian's Comedian, Allen was voted the third greatest comedy act ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
- In June 2007 Allen received a PhD Honoris Causa from Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain).
[edit] Academy Awards
Woody Allen has won three Academy Awards and been nominated a total of 21 times: fourteen as a screenwriter, six as a director, and one as an actor. He has more screenwriting Academy Award nominations than any other writer; all are in the "Best Original Screenplay" category. He is tied for fifth all-time with six Best Director nominations. His actors have regularly received both nominations and Academy Awards for their work in Allen films, particularly in the Best Supporting categories.
Annie Hall won four Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Actress). The film received a fifth nomination, for Allen as Best Actor. Hannah and Her Sisters won three, for Best Screenplay and both Best Supporting Actor categories; it was nominated in four other categories, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Despite friendly recognition from the Academy, Allen has consistently refused to attend the ceremony or acknowledge his Oscar wins. He broke this pattern twice. At the 2002 Oscars Allen made an unannounced appearance, making a plea for producers to continue filming their movies in New York City after the 9-11 attacks.[25] He was given a standing ovation before introducing a montage of movie clips featuring New York. The second time was at the 2007 Oscars.
[edit] Best Original Screenplay
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[edit] Best Actor
[edit] Best Director |
