Woody Allen
“A relationship, I think, is like a shark, you know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark. And a pregnant adopted daughter shark.”
Woody Allen (born Woodrow Wilson "Putz" Kaliningrad), 1951) is a neurotic, self-obsessed, potty-minded, sexually repressed auteur. He's also one of the finest examples of a Jew who does not control Hollywood and is increasingly based in Europe where he writes scripts in which middle-aged men who sound like Woody Allen get to have sex with young girls like Scarlett Johansson.
Allen's motion pictures are characterized by unrelenting courtship, neverending angst, the predictable elusiveness of sexual fulfillment, well, let's just say they're neither Fast nor Furious, and all of the chase scenes take place in taxis. The chicks wear peacoats, and there's not a shot of knee-high leather or sideboob in a one of them.
Early Life[edit]
Woody was born in Manhattan, a ball of self-doubt, snot, and peanut allergy from the very first squeak. As a young child he was prone to fits of introspection, refusing to finish his Cheerios until someone explained to him the logic of naming a sugarless circle of breakfast cereal after an emotion signifying happiness. Young Woody had few friends.
In middle school, Woody started a film club, taking ample advantage of the coterie of 12 year old girls who took an interest in his screenplay. Woody soon realized that film was not merely a refuge for boys so socially awkward that their closest companions were spot projectors nick-named Arnie, but also a way to meet ladies. The use of supposedly esotericart as a tool to get laid is a recurring them of Allen's life -- I mean movies.
As a high school student, Woody honed his game on the rough streets of the Upper West Side (West siiide), between dirty 3rd and Amsterdam. Puberty was not kind to him, but a regular rotation between his best boy grip and the third clarinetist in the weekend orchestra provided him with what he came to call, "artistic relief".
Film career[edit]
Woody Allen has made millions artfully recycling the following storyline. You can too--all you have to do is:
- 1. Move to New York.
- 2. Pick a female lead (pubescence optional).
- 3. Find a shrink and ask him to explain the basic ideas of Freud and Jung.
- 4. Walk around on a cloudy afternoon with a continuous chest-level mid-shot babbling about whatever will never get you laid in real life.
- 5. Repeat.
Don't ask why the shtick works; it just does. It's got something to do with men wanting to watch someone even more pathetic than them seduce women who are even younger than their children. And women wanting to watch a guy so emasculated that all of their issues dissolve away in their movie seats as they imagine riding that withered excuse of an artiste to ecstasy.
Allen's Gimmick[edit]
Woody's classic gimmick is that he cracks wise about things in society that everyone knows but few say out loud.
On the sidewalk in Manhattan, talking to Diane Keaton.
In a day when Socrates is a Halo handle, this schlock passes for philosophical observation.
Less plausible is that the earnest, sugar-sweet heroines of Woody Allen's movies actually go for (and go down on) just this kind of man. It's as if all their lives they secretly wanted to bone their dentured, spelling-bee winning grandfather and then one day Woody shows up on the subway seat next to them wearing a brushed corduroy blazer holding a lukewarm cup of Earl Grey, with a leather-bound Proust and a laminated pocket-copy of the Kama Sutra in his manpurse. Serendipitous!
The amusing part is, from Man Hat On (1979) onwards, Allen, writing his own lines, has his character initially refuse the pretty girl's advances. This is a widely found meme in pornography in which a worldful of diligent plumbers are reluctantly called into conjugal action by bored middle class housewives. It is not know whether Allen uses pornography or his own scripts as a masturbation aid.
Personal Life[edit]
Allen married his first wife, Harlene Rosen, in 1954 when he was 19 and she was 16. The pair divorced in 1959 when Allen discovered she was a Nazi, and what she had called her Papa's Chicken recipe was actually the notorious NSDAP dish Chicken Himmler.
After several years of disastrous dates, including one in which a blind date was arrested by Israeli agents, Allen hit upon the winning formula of getting it on with the female members of his cast, and married actress Louise Lasser in 1966. They divorced four years later but the split was said to be amicable. Lasser said in 1992, "I want to make it clear: he never slept with any of my adopted children."
Perhaps Allen's two most famous relationships never resulted in marriage. He had a 10 year romance with Diane Keaton either side of Annie Hall (Really Diane) (1977) but Keaton was said to tire of Allen's insistence that she allow him to script their off screen conversations too. The break proved to be an inspiration to Allen, who, instead of expending his energy on writing scripts for his real life interactions, started to do the reverse, and based Man Hat On on his then illegal relationship with 17 year old New York actress Stacey Nelkin. Except in the movie Allen's character is a professor. Which is funny.
In 1980, Allen met the love of his life, but unfortunately she was only eight years old at the time. Instead, he started going out with her adopted mother, Mia Farrow, and bided his time, making babies with that hideous old white woman while his Asian lotus flower bloomed.
The parody encyclopedia Wikipedia has an entry for Allen which contains the following sentence: "The relationship between Allen and [Soon-Yi] Previn has often been referred to as a father involved romantically with his stepdaughter because she was adopted and legally Farrow's daughter and his son's sister." This sentence is thought to be inspired by Lenny from The Simpsons.
Nonetheless Allen did the honorable thing and waited until his relationship with Farrow was almost over and Soon-Yi was almost legal. They married in 1997, and Allen reflected: "All my life I thought I wanted to be with a beautiful, creative, bohemian, Manhattan type. And it turns out, I just want a wife who shuts the fuck up and does what I say."
Pope Impersonation[edit]
At the turn of the century, Allen began using European cities for the setting of his films, conscious that people in his home country seemed to hate him. After brief forays into the upper class districts of London and Paris, Allen became interested in Rome and in 2013 began impersonating Pope Francis Ias a way to generate money for future movies. Allen's official pope website shows he still has a sense of humor, as he declares he is available for "weddings, funerals, and especially bar mitzvahs".
However, in a recent interview, it was apparent the impersonation had an effect on Allen. "There's an old joke - two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know; and such small portions.' Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. Unless you let our savior Jesus Christ into your heart."
Film directors of the world 