Can't see the wood for the tease
It's fifty years since a rooky writer with the pen name of Woody Allen won a Sylvania Award for the year's best television comedy with Larry Gelbart, who was as great in his day as Mel Brooks. (Until his death, Brooks referred to Woody as "that rotten little kid.") By 1960, Woody was pulling a handsome weekly income of $1700 as a back-room boy for the Garry Moore show.
It's 45 years since Woody divorced Harlene, his first wife. She had to take him to court, years later, to staunch his tirade of cruel (and, it must be said, cruelly funny) jokes about her. Bizarrely, a condition of the settlement -- one she has graciously observed -- is that she not talk about their life together.
It's forty years since Woody made his first movie.
And, god, it's 35 years since I saw my first Woody Allen film. Sleeper. You know the one. Woody finds a VW Beetle in a cave, where it has sat, undisturbed, for 200 years... and it starts first time.
Bizarrely, I saw Sleeper with another new short feature, Brian De Palma's sicko slasher Sisters. Talk about an odd coupling! And I remember both vividly though I haven't seen either film since.
Woody [I initially typed Weedy!! What are the odds?!!] reckons he hasn't seen it since either!
"That's right. I've never seen any of my films after I've finished them. As soon as the process of opening the film is over, that's it. I did my first film in 1968, I think, and I've not seen it since."
At the risk of being a terrible tease, that's pretty much where my article on Woody Allen (in this weekend's Financial Review) begins.
Speaking of tease... here's Woody and his Scarlett woman!
And spare a thought for me later today... I'll be wrestling the black panther herself. Yep, I'll be speaking with Hurricane Grace Jones. OMFG!
It's 45 years since Woody divorced Harlene, his first wife. She had to take him to court, years later, to staunch his tirade of cruel (and, it must be said, cruelly funny) jokes about her. Bizarrely, a condition of the settlement -- one she has graciously observed -- is that she not talk about their life together.
It's forty years since Woody made his first movie.
And, god, it's 35 years since I saw my first Woody Allen film. Sleeper. You know the one. Woody finds a VW Beetle in a cave, where it has sat, undisturbed, for 200 years... and it starts first time.
Bizarrely, I saw Sleeper with another new short feature, Brian De Palma's sicko slasher Sisters. Talk about an odd coupling! And I remember both vividly though I haven't seen either film since.
Woody [I initially typed Weedy!! What are the odds?!!] reckons he hasn't seen it since either!
"That's right. I've never seen any of my films after I've finished them. As soon as the process of opening the film is over, that's it. I did my first film in 1968, I think, and I've not seen it since."
At the risk of being a terrible tease, that's pretty much where my article on Woody Allen (in this weekend's Financial Review) begins.
Speaking of tease... here's Woody and his Scarlett woman!
And spare a thought for me later today... I'll be wrestling the black panther herself. Yep, I'll be speaking with Hurricane Grace Jones. OMFG!
Labels: teaser, Woody Allen
posted by Chris Boyd at 5:24 AM
2 Comments:
Good Weekend beat you to it, Boyd. Big spread on Jones.
It's great piece. I enjoyed it a lot... when it was published in the Sunday Time eight weeks ago.
At least when the FR runs syndicated copy (a) they identify where it was sourced and (b) they rarely use material that's already freely available on-line.
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