Woody Allen has announced his retirement & Hollywood is now officially completely bereft of famous comedy directors. Perhaps for the first time in a century. A strange situation, but somehow fitting our times. In 2020, Allen published his memoirs, a reflection on his times & on America, timely in the sense that he was canceled. I reviewed it for L&L:
The funniest man in Hollywood in 50 years has finally published his autobiography at 84. But Woody Allen’s Apropos of Nothing was almost stifled. It was scandalously pulped by Hachette before being picked up by the smaller Arcade Publishing. A publisher attempted to destroy a book just because hysterical wokies, from Allen’s son, Ronan Farrow, on down, wanted it destroyed. Moralism triumphed over decency & appreciation for comedy. Elite liberals overwhelmed one of their own out of cowardice & humorlessness.
Hopefully, conservatives will defend Woody Allen before he dies, both because it’s the noble thing to do, he should have the right to publish his story, & because comedy is in short supply. The account of his childhood is wonderful, better even than most of his movies. He lives up to his reputation as a humorist in that section, as well as with his reflection on how out of place comedy is in America: The deviant comic poet is a depressive in a nation of compulsive enthusiasts.
Read the essay & maybe watch Stardust Memories or Crimes & Misdemeanors. Allen should be remembered for his best work.
The Hollywood that he entertained for half a century, full of silly, vain people who were desperate to appear in his movies, has abandoned him, or worse, whether to avoid bad publicity or out of misplaced moralism. The press & social media are full of envy & malice, as one might expect. For his part, Allen deserves to be called the hardest working man in Hollywood, having made a movie a year for half a century…
One of my teachers, the great Aristotle/Thucydides/Plato scholar Mary Nichols wrote a fine 1998 book on his films: https://www.alibris.com/booksearch?mtype=B&keyword=Mary+Nichols%2C+Woody+Allen&hs.x=0&hs.y=0