Woody Allen: A Documentary - Part One imagine...

If, like me, you love New York, then how could you not love Woody Allen?

And if, like me, you happen to be Jewish,

you love movies AND you love New York, then you're in for a treat.

No-one quite represents a city like Woody represents New York.

It plays a leading role in most of his films, alongside Woody himself,

of course, with his dark-rimmed glasses and his trademark neuroses.

It took the filmmaker Robert Weide

over 20 years to persuade the director of Manhattan,

Hannah and Her Sisters and Annie Hall to open up about everything,

from growing up in Brooklyn, to his life as a stand-up comic,

to his obsessive-compulsive career as a filmmaker

who, still in his mid-70s, insists on making at least one film a year.

And you know what? It's well worth waiting for.

He's funny, frank and forthcoming.

And tonight, in the first of two films,

Imagine tells the compelling story

of how Brooklyn-born Allan Konigsberg transformed himself

from full-time nerd into movie legend.

BRASS BAND PLAYS

Writing is the great life.

Cos you wake up in the morning,

you write in your room.

You know, in the room,

everything is great, you know,

cos you don't have to deliver.

So you write it, and you imagine

it's Citizen Kane or, you know,

everything you write is great.

But when you have to then take it out and do it,

then reality sets in.

Then all your schemes about making a masterpiece

are reduced to

"I'll prostitute myself any way I have to,

"to survive this catastrophe".

MUSIC: "Sing, Sing, Sing" by Benny Goodman

I don't think there is anybody like Woody.

I've never met anybody like Woody.

You can't compare anybody to Woody Allen.

His range is amazing.

You have only to look at Bananas and Match Point.

If you'd asked me what directors I wanted to work with,

Woody Allen would've been at the top of my list.

He is, without question,

the best actor's director I've ever worked with.

Not everybody has the staying power,

not everybody has the tenacity,

and not everybody has so much to say.

The day that he finishes editing a film

is the day he starts typing the script of the next.

He never takes any time off.

Fourteen screenplay nominations. Fourteen.

Who the hell is good for 20 years?

This guy has been good for 40 years.

He's kind of peerless.

It's not just that we're still interested in Woody Allen.

He's still interested in telling stories.

On the one hand, he'd be brilliant,

and his insights were amazing,

but on the other hand, he'd be an idiot.

He's also not normal.

You know, he's not of the normal stock.

Neurosis, fears, phobias...

A bit adolescent, to tell you the truth.

He is a little bit of a hypochondriac.

He's cripplingly shy.

Oh, he's definitely a little nutty.

He really wears his heart on his sleeve.

He's a big hugger.

LAUGHS

No.

I remember when Woody was the Antichrist.

And by the way, the one thing that I didn't mention

is that he's also very funny.

So much of what's filtered out

about me over the years has been completely mythological.

I mean, completely, you know, exaggerated

or downright untrue.

Some of it's been true, of course.

Would you enter, mystery challenger, and sign in, please?

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Speak of making a documentary about Woody Allen.

Which Woody Allen?

There are actually so many.

You know, you have the stand-up comic,

the author of casual pieces for the New Yorker

in the tradition of SJ Perelman.

Are you in the entertainment field?

HIGH-PITCHED VOICE: Yes.

You have the clarinettist.

Are you a nightclub entertainer?

Mm, yes.

You have the playwright.

Are you primarily known for your work in the films?

No.

He was many things before he became a filmmaker.

Are you female?

LAUGHTER

No.

I think film became inevitable because he could bring together

all the things that he excelled at.

To really contextualise Woody Allen

in the history of American cinema,

one does have to go back to Charlie Chaplin,

the idea of an actor who becomes the writer,

the director, the true auteur, who places himself

at the centre of that cinematic universe

consistently through a number of films,

so that ultimately, the persona does enter the culture.

I mean, the reality is,

Woody Allen has managed to do that in our own time.

I used to think that Woody was

essentially a writerly sensibility.

On the other hand, I've seen, you know,

just a steady, steady growth

in his skills as a filmmaker,

complementing his skills as a writer.

I think, you know, he's almost as good as we get.

My parents were not pro Woody going into show business.

CHUCKLES

They wanted him to be a pharmacist.

He was the wrong person born to those parents.

That's all I can say.

SWING MUSIC PLAYING

ALLEN: My mother always used to say

I was a very sweet, happy kid right from the start,

and then somewhere around five or so,

I turned grumpier or sour.

I can only think, when I became aware of my mortality,

I didn't like that idea.

What do you mean, this ends?

This, you know, this is -

this doesn't go on like this?

No, it ends.

You know, you - you vanish for ever.

Once I realised that, I thought, "Hey," you know, "deal me out.

"I don't want to play in this game."

And I never was the same after that.

He's been depressed.

All of a sudden, he can't do anything.

Why are you depressed, Alvy?

Tell Dr Flicker.

It's something he read.

Something you read, huh?

The universe is expanding.

The universe is expanding?

Well, the universe is everything,

and if it's expanding, someday it will break apart,

and that will be the end of everything.

What is that your business?!

He's stopped doing his homework!

What's the point?

And that thought over the years

took different forms as I later got older

and always used my concentration camp example

of people around me having fun, enjoying themselves.

And I wanted to say, "But don't you realise

"you're going to go up in a smokestack,

"you know, in a short while?

"So why are you so happy?

"I mean, doesn't that thought sort of put a damper on things?"

I'm not saying my grim appraisal is right.

Of course, I think it is,

but this is only my particular take on everything -

that we all know the same truth,

and our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.

TRAIN CHUGS

MUSIC: "Moonlight Serenade" by The Glenn Miller Orchestra

When I grew up, Brooklyn was a great place to live.

There was very little traffic.

You could stay out all day long playing ball on the street.

And you couldn't walk two blocks without coming to a movie house.

A 15-minute trolley ride to Coney Island and the beach.

Kids were safe. I'd leave the house at eight o'clock in the morning

and come back at seven at night.

And when I think back on all those wonderful stores,

you know, bakery stores and delicatessens

and Chinese restaurants

and movie houses and candy stores...

But if you could cut back

to when I was a boy in the early '40s,

you know, it was sensational.

We always lived with relatives.

I lived with cousins and aunts and uncles,

and we almost never lived alone.

You know, this was a carry-over from the Depression,

when families were getting together.

So it was always very lively,

people doing things and yelling at each other,

and activity.

It was a madhouse all the time.

Woody's original name, birth name,

was Allan Stewart Konigsberg.

Now, my parents always called him Allan.

They never stopped calling him Allan.

What was the most miserable thing about your childhood?

Probably the fact that I was young.

-LAUGHTER

-Oh, really?

Yeah.

It was.

If - if I could have been older at the time,

I think I could've carried it off more.

LAUGHTER

My mother used to leave me with these maids all the time

because she was working.

And I remember one of them when I was a kid,

and I was in my crib at the time,

explaining to me that if she wanted to, she could kill me,

that she could smother me, and she demonstrated it.

She could wrap me in a blanket,

completely cutting off all my air,

and smother me and then just dump me in the garbage outside.

It was just - but she did do it.

I couldn't breathe for a few seconds,

and then she let me out,

and, you know, one wonders how close I came.

So if that nanny were just like 10% crazier,

that could have been...

Sure. Sure.

That would have been, you know, the world would be poorer

a number of great one-liners.

My grandfather, on his deathbed,

sold me this watch.

LAUGHTER

His father was the sweetest man you could meet.

He was just so sweet and he'd call us every day.

He'd say, "It's going to rain.

"Do you have enough canned goods in the house?"

You know, we knew my father as Martin Konigsberg.

But actually, when - one year

when they had to get birth certificates,

my father's name was actually Max.

But we always knew him as Martin.

He was born in 1900 and lived to 100 years old.

My mother was Nettie Cherry.

She was born in 1906.

And she lived till 96.

FOLK MUSIC PLAYING

Our father's parents came to the United States

from Russia by way of England.

Our mother's family came from Austria.

But our mother and father were born here.

His father was quite wealthy

and at one time owned the movie theatre in Brooklyn,

Midwood Movie Theater, and then lost a lot of money.

And he was, like, egg candling or something like that,

and my mother was working for him.

He thought that she was, you know, responsible

and my father was not.

Anyway, he introduced my father to my mother,

and they got married.

They never got along.

There was a period of years when they never even spoke

when I was growing up.

It got better once they were much older.

They were married for ever and ever and ever,

but for my entire childhood that I remember,

they argued or didn't speak.

My little adorable father worked for the same firm for 14 years.

They fired him. They replaced him with a gadget this big.

Does everything that my father does,

only it does it much better, you know.

And the depressing thing is,

my mother ran out and bought one.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

What did your father do for a living?

That's a very good question.

He did everything over the years...

Jewellery engraving...

He was a bookmaker for a while.

A waiter at Sammy's Bowery Follies.

Then he was - he ran a pool room.

He was a taxi driver.

He was a bartender. He was a waiter. He was a jeweller.

You know, he was unskilled labour.

You know, he did all kinds of things,

small jobs over the years.

What DO you do, Dad?

It's none of your business.

All my friends know what their dads do for a living.

Don't you have any homework?

Hey, can I have 15 cents for the new Masked Avenger ring?

What am I, made of money?

Pay more attention to your schoolwork

-and less to the radio.

-YOU always listen to the radio.

It's different. Our lives are ruined already.

You still have a chance to grow up and be somebody.

You think I want you working at the job I do?

I don't even know what your job is.

My father was not the one saying, "You have to study, you have to go to school,

"you have to do this, you have to do that."

It was my mother. It was my mother who -

who really had to push,

you know, to get anything accomplished.

You were a very bright child.

You spoke young, you were - you were very young when you spoke.

You were always running,

whether it was the street or the house or your room.

You never stayed put for five minutes.

I didn't know how to handle that type of a child.

You were too - too active and too much of a child for me.

I wasn't that good to you,

because I was very strict with you,

which I regret, because I think if I hadn't been that strict,

you might have been a more - not so impatient.

You might have been, what should I say?

Not "better" -

you're a good person - but maybe softer, maybe warmer.

And did you take up boxing really to escape from poverty

or just because you enjoyed it?

No, I took up boxing so I could deal with my mother.

LAUGHTER

Yes, there were a great many subjects

we disagreed on, and frequently the only way to settle matters

was to put on the gloves and get into the ring.

And I used to knock her teeth out all the time.

-Really?

-Yeah, and she's an old woman, you know.

-Yeah, so, that's why.

-LAUGHTER

I'll just grab my lid.

Give me a little protection.

CHUCKLES

-Can I get out on this side?

-Oh, no, wait up.

This is the house that I was born in.

And we were on the top floor.

The landlord lived on the bottom floor.

I remember as a little boy

infuriating the landlord because -

you see, the pot there

used to have big red geraniums in them,

and I just ripped them all out so I could hide my soldiers.

I used to sit on this stoop all the time,

and this was where - where we rooted against the Nazis,

you know, and I had all my -

you know, this is where I first went to school,

to kindergarten and then from here.

It doesn't look like much, but it wasn't.

I'll take you around the corner

and show you where the Midwood Theater,

the movie house, was.

Now, God, when you think of it, you know,

the amount of movies that I saw right here,

I mean, it was just astonishing.

This was a very glamorous place at the time, you know,

a very pretty theatre with plush carpets and sconces

and beautiful glass fixtures,

lines of middle-class people, you know, attractive girls

and nice-looking young guys,

and all going to see, you know, what now we consider

our classic movie heritage.

It was all - it was all here.

Now, when you look at it, it's not as nice.

I started on the clarinet at about 15.

Actually, I started on the soprano saxophone,

because I wanted to play like Sidney Bechet,

and then I realised in the first two or three minutes

that it wasn't going to happen.

And then I started playing the clarinet.

I like to play. It's just a hobby, you know.

I always liked jazz.

I liked to listen when I was younger.

I still like to listen, of course.

But the clarinet I mostly played by myself.

I called up a jazz musician, quite a well-known jazz musician

named Gene Sedrick, and asked him

if he would give me some lessons,

and he used to come to my house,

and he would just sit in my living room with me

and play something and say, "You do it now."

And gradually, I learned how to play.

You know, when we're on location doing a film,

there are times he brings his instrument with him

and practises in the car on a break.

But he practises all the time.

It's a pleasurable thing to play.

If you play an instrument, it's fun to play it,

and it's fun to play it with other people.

And as it turns out,

people come and listen to us.

He loves going to the Carlyle

every week and playing music there.

He doesn't see it as, "Oh, I have to go, it's Monday night."

He loves doing it.

And he'll never do anything that he doesn't feel he can do well,

and so the practice is necessary, and that's it.

It's, you know, it's a foregone conclusion that he'll do it.

He said to me that if he could do anything in the world,

he would have loved to have been a clarinet player

more than a filmmaker.

PLAYING JAZZ

His sensitivity to music

is key to his success as a filmmaker,

because very early on, right from the very first films,

he's got a sense of rhythm, a sense of timing.

Rhythm and timing are key to success in comedy.

But because he has this other, sort of melodic sensitivity,

I think it really makes it possible for him

to not only do excellent comedy,

but it makes it possible for him to be emotional as well.

It's more direct expression of everything,

don't you think, music?

You know, he always would talk about Sidney Bechet,

and he has that sweet, winsome sound.

Woody has that sound.

It's in his persona, his public persona,

but it's also in him.

It's just in him.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

ALLEN: Our last years of high school in Midwood,

you know, all my friends were

deciding what they were going to do with their lives.

They were going to become doctors and lawyers.

And someone suggested that I try writing gags.

And I did try it after school.

So he starts sending jokes in to the newspaper,

and they started printing them.

I was shocked.

My name would suddenly appear in Walter Winchell's column

and Earl Wilson, and there were many columnists at the time,

Frank Farrell, Hy Gardner, Leonard Lyons.

I did not want to appear in Broadway columns

and in the newspapers with my own name,

because I didn't want to go to school the next day

and sit in my math class or my history class

and have some guy or girl turn to me and say,

"Hey, I saw your name in Walter Winchell's column."

And, you know, I was shy.

I wanted to keep my first name, Allan,

and I just threw on the first thing that came to mind with it.

"Woody Allen" kind of had a nice comedic ring to it,

and it seemed that that would be

a better guy to be signing gag lines than Allan Konigsberg.

There was a press agent,

a public relations man named David Alber.

And his job was to come up with funny lines

to put in the mouths of his clients.

And he called up and said, "Who is this guy, Woody Allen,

"whose name I read all the time in the columns?"

And I think it was Earl Wilson

at the Post at that time that said,

"He's some kid in Brooklyn

"who sends me these jokes after school."

And he hired Woody to come in at 25 a week after school

to write jokes.

And I was doing about 50 jokes a day for a long time.

It was not hard.

Well, he thought he was in the heart of show business.

And one of the people he was working with

was a guy named Mike Merrick, who was in his early 20s.

And Merrick had these round, black glasses.

And I thought, "Hey, I would look good in those."

So I bought these black-rimmed glasses

and put them on and wore them, and never gave my glasses

a second thought for the rest of my life.

From there, I was asked in to write some jokes

for the Arthur Godfrey programme,

for Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy -

they did a radio programme.

And that eventually got to Herb Shriner,

who was a wonderful comedian, and I wrote for him.

And I never really stopped.

I was never out of work.

By the time he was 16 or 17,

he was making more than his parents,

and has been regularly employed every day of his life since.

CLARINET PLAYING JAZZ

This is where I work.

My house is always full of clarinet reeds everyplace.

I bought this when I was 16.

It still works like a tank.

And it's a German typewriter, and it's an Olympia portable.

I've had it my whole life.

It cost me 40, I think.

The guy told me it would be around long after my death.

And I've typed everything that I've ever written -

every script, every New Yorker piece,

everything I've ever done, on this typewriter.

It used to have a metal piece on top, covering this,

which I lost 30 years ago.

One advantage, obviously, to a word processor is,

you can electronically cut and paste.

What do you do when you have to cut and paste?

If I'm typing something, I have my scissors here,

and I have a lot of these things,

these little stapling machines.

So if I'm typing something,

I type the part that looks like this.

You know, nobody can really type my stuff.

It looks terrible on the page,

so I have to type it, because I have arrows

and all kinds of things. But when I come to a nice part,

then I cut that part off

and staple it onto something else with this.

It's very primitive, I know.

But it works very well for me, and I can type.

You know, I mean, I can touch-type.

So there's no problem.

Woody dated a lot,

but didn't really bring, that I recall,

didn't really bring girls home until he was dating Harlene,

whom he eventually married.

And he was very young.

He was, I think, about 17,

and then 18 when he married her.

It's funny - when you're really young,

you know, you go out and you go to the movies and you go bowling

and you go to the drive-ins,

and then there's nowhere to go but to get married.

You don't know what else to do. We've done everything.

We've eaten at all the restaurants,

and we've, you know, we've seen the movies

and been to the theatre, the ball games,

so what else is there to do?

It's eight o'clock, let's get married.

So we got, you know, we got married.

And we were both kids.

And it served a very good function for both of us.

It got us out of our parents' homes.

It got us up on our feet.

And I suddenly found that I was 20 years old.

I was married and had responsibilities,

but we just, you know,

were too young to have a lifetime together.

I married a very immature woman, and it didn't work out.

See if this is not immature to you.

I would be home, in the bathroom, taking a bath,

and my wife would walk right in whenever she felt like,

and sink my boats.

LAUGHTER

In 1956, after writing for a number of comics,

Woody gets an opportunity to go to Tamiment.

It's a resort in the Poconos that specialises in theatre.

People would flood up there Friday nights

and stay for the weekends.

And they had a staff of writers,

dancers, directors, choreographers,

who would put on an original live revue show

every single week.

I was advised to go there,

because you really get experience

writing for a live audience,

how to write not just individual jokes but, you know,

five-minute sketches, three-minute sketches, eight-minute sketches.

So, I went and I did three summers there.

The first summer, I wrote sketches.

The second summer, I wrote sketches and directed them.

And the third summer, I wrote sketches and directed them.

You know, you couldn't sit in a room

waiting for your muse to come and tickle you.

Monday morning came, there was a dress rehearsal Thursday.

You had to get that thing written.

And it was gruelling, but you learned to write.

And from there, I managed to go

directly to The Sid Caesar Show.

Sid was an acknowledged comic genius,

and everybody wanted to write for him.

And suddenly, I got hired, and I was just, you know,

20, 21 years old.

And I found myself writing with Mel Brooks

and writing with Larry Gelbart and Mel Tolkin.

Why don't you try to go upstairs

and get some rest, huh?

I said, "My God, I'm writing for Sid Caesar."

And it was a great experience in my life.

Best not to take any of the rooms upstairs,

because they all have memories of Cecily.

John, please, we have to talk about this.

-You can't live in a mansion...

-Don't sit in that chair!

Cecily used to sit in that chair.

It's like sitting on a memory.

John, please, this is...

Don't sit on that chair!

She used to put her feet on that chair

when she sat in that chair.

She was a very long girl.

JAZZ PLAYING

At that time, Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe

had a management business,

and they were the Rolls-Royce of management.

They were the ones that everybody wanted to go with.

And Woody said, would Charlie and I

be interested in him as a writer?

And I explained to him

that we had never handled writers as such.

We handled actors and personalities.

Well, we asked him to read something that he did.

And Jack and I thought he was hilarious.

He had never performed in his life.

And both of us just jumped and said,

"Don't let this guy out of the office."

The writing was fine, but he wanted me to be a comic.

He just felt I could be a comic.

Woody never dreamed of being a comic.

He was a writer.

And it was not easy.

And he said to me, and I remember this so clearly,

he said, "Do me a favour, just trust me.

"You just work and don't think about it,

"and let me think about it.

"Do what I tell you.

"And let's look up in a year and see where you are."

If you take my advice, I think you're going to become

one of the great balloon-folding acts of all time,

really, cos I don't see you

just folding these balloons in joints.

You know, you're going to - you listen to me,

you're going to fold these balloons

at universities and colleges.

You're going to - you're going to make

your snail and your elephant on Broadway.

You know what I mean? But the thing to remember is

before you go out on stage,

you got to look in the mirror,

you got to say your three S's -

star, smile, strong.

Star, smile, strong.

When you looked at the popular comedians of the time,

Mort Sahl was completely influential for Woody.

He was just amazing.

Everything about him was different,

the way he dressed, the way he spoke, his vocabulary,

and the references were all the things

that everybody was truly interested in -

artistic things and politics

and the flourishing of psychotherapy at the time,

and everything was so fresh and brilliant.

Oh, Richard Nixon's trip to Russia.

He's going to Russia, and he said

he hopes he gets along with them, and so...

Actually, you know, if he doesn't get along with them,

he'll kind of be in trouble, because, you know, you can't -

he can't call anybody a Communist

and hurt their career over there, you know.

LAUGHTER

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Sahl was the light that goes off with an idea for Woody.

He'd say, "Oh, you know, gee.

"This might be something that I can do.

"I can't be Mort Sahl, but I can do what Mort Sahl does.

"I can engage the audience in a different way than I've -

"than I've seen it before."

The first night I ever worked as a comic

was at the Blue Angel.

One day somebody said, "There's a kid appearing -

"there's a lot of talk about him,

"at the Blue Angel in New York" -

it's one of the great chic old nightclubs of New York fame -

"And why don't you go check him out?"

I didn't know what to expect, and I went to the Blue Angel,

and this somewhat gnomish man came out, and he began to talk.

And I realised, as line after line after line went by,

each of these is better

than any line any comic in the business has.

And the audience began to talk among themselves.

That's how it was, and there was a comedian on stage.

I wanted to kill them.

He was so shy.

He was so unused to being in front of an audience

that he would tie the mic cord around his neck.

He would frighten people.

They thought he would choke himself.

He was a non-performer.

He could hardly talk to people,

never mind perform for them.

And some nights he was god-awful,

but other nights he was absolutely brilliant.

I must pause for one fast second

and say a fast word about oral contraception.

LAUGHTER

I was involved in an extremely good example

of oral contraception two weeks ago.

I asked a girl to go to bed with me and she said, "No."

LAUGHTER

If you're a joke maker, it's hard not to make jokes.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, I'm always amazed when I see somebody

that can draw a horse.

I can't figure out how they can possibly do it,

because, you know, they actually reproduce the horse

with a pencil and paper, and it's terrific.

Now, I can't draw a horse or anything else,

but I can write jokes,

and it's hard not to write them.

I mean, if I walk down the street, it's almost -

it's like my normal conversation.

You know, it just comes out that way.

Do you know what I mean?

I played the Blue Angel and played some places,

and then someone told me about this place

called the Bitter End on Bleecker Street.

I opened the Bitter End in 1961.

It was located on Bleecker Street

near West Broadway.

The uptown clubs were completely different.

In the Village, there was just coffee shop kinds of places,

and the acts that were starting to happen were the folk acts.

Peter, Paul and Mary, of course, broke it wide open.

The Village in the '60s was the time

when sort of everything was happening.

It was a time when the Beats were very popular.

The pill came along.

The mixing of the races was starting there,

and Kennedy was elected.

And the Village was sparked like it hadn't been since the 1920s.

And some nights they'd play my club

and run down over to another club.

There were four or five different ones.

You didn't get paid, but you had a place to work.

And I would go down there every night with Jack and do my act.

Jack says, "Wait till you see him,"

and he went on, and he didn't make it at all.

Nobody understood. They didn't get it.

And then Jack came over, and he said,

"See? He's an industry!"

That was the first three words Jack said

when he came off the stage.

"He's an industry."

Pretty soon, it became apparent

that he was a completely unique

new face and a voice on the scene.

For the first year of marriage, I had what you would call

a bad basic attitude toward my wife.

I tended to place my wife underneath a pedestal

all the time.

And we used to argue and fight,

and we finally decided that we would either

take a vacation in Bermuda or get a divorce,

one of the two things.

And we discussed it very maturely,

and we decided finally on the divorce,

cos we felt that we had a limited amount of money

to spend on something, and that a vacation in Bermuda

is over in two weeks, you know,

but a divorce is something that you always have, you know, so...

But it turns out, in New York State,

they have a very funny law

that says you can't get a divorce

unless you can prove adultery.

And that's very strange, because the Ten Commandments say,

"Thou shalt not commit adultery."

But New York State says you have to.

LAUGHTER

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

I said, "Is it hard for you?"

He said he was suffering doing this act.

He was not a performer, really.

He vomited a few times, he said,

without any trace of humour in delivering that line,

that it really was hard.

Charlie and I would have to literally

shove him onto the stage

to do his little act.

I kept saying, "I'm not funny. I'm not a comic."

You know, "I can't do this.

"I hate it. I don't like the hours.

"I'm shy, and, you know, I don't like standing in front of an audience."

I mean, there was nothing about it I liked.

I mean, I kept saying, "I want to quit. I want to quit."

And Jack said, "Give it a little time, a little time."

I think his common sense told him that if he breaks through

on the level of the performer,

it will be a useful thing for him.

And then one night, he just bounded up on the stage,

and it was Woody.

He told the same jokes, and they worked.

And the audience really liked it.

The telephone company has this service

for emotionally disturbed types called Dial-a-Prayer.

LAUGHTER

They have a number that you dial if you are an atheist,

and you don't hear anything on the other end of the phone.

LAUGHTER

When Woody was there about four or six weeks,

there was an article in the Times saying,

"You gotta come down to the Bitter End.

"You gotta see this new performer. He's great."

And he raved about him.

It was the first great review

that Woody got from the New York Times.

I was real excited about it.

There were lines outside the block

that went all the way down to McDougal Street.

Newspapers started to become interested in me

and send reporters down to do stories,

and other nightclub owners would come and watch

and book me for places,

and television people would come down and book me on the TV shows.

I was kidnapped once.

Listen to this story.

I was standing by my schoolyard,

and a black sedan pulled up, and two guys got out,

and they asked me if I wanted to go away with them

to a land where everybody was fairies and elves and...

I could have all the comic books I wanted

and Tootsie Rolls and chocolate buttons

and wax lips, you know, and...

I said yes.

I got into their car with them,

you know, because - I figured, "What the heck?"

You know, I was home that weekend from college anyhow.

LAUGHTER

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

He had a heavy television exposure,

and that, of course, is what builds national figures.

LAUGHTER

In terms of those jobs, nothing was beneath me.

I boxed a kangaroo.

I sang Little Sir Echo with a talking dog.

# Little Sir Echo, how do you do?

# Hello

WHINES # Hell-hello

WHINES

He sang in rehearsal.

'This was part of Jack Rollins' game plan,

'cos Jack's theory was'

to saturate the country with me as much as he could,

so I would be a household name.

Once he was on a prime-time show starring Perry Como,

and it was a big production number,

and as the scene opened, "Woody" was spelled in 15-foot letters

in the background, backlighted,

and he came on in tails and twirling a cane and top hat.

And I remember his saying,

"I thought I would have a heart attack backstage

"before going on."

# Now here you certainly are

# Yes, now when I dash along the boulevard... #

'And I remember the columnist Jack O'Brian,

'who was a huge, huge supporter of mine,'

he said, "You know, we always use superlatives

"when we write about Woody.

"And I've got to say he is the worst singer

"that I've ever heard in my life."

And I'm sure I was, because - but it didn't matter.

This was all part of what Jack wanted.

He wanted me to seep into the pores of the multitude.

And he did that for a few years

and was making good success at it,

and he became very popular on The Tonight Show.

Johnny Carson loved him.

He performed on there many times,

was the guest host on a number of occasions,

and then also began appearing with Dick Cavett on his show on ABC.

And what's wonderful about those shows was

you could see that the two of them knew and liked each other

and really enjoyed playing off the other.

I would always grin

when I could look and see him in the wings

about to come out, cos I knew we were going to have fun.

And he did seem to enjoy doing the show.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

All right.

Woody's improv skill deserves to be legendary.

And on the air, I would throw something at Woody

and dare him to give examples of something,

and he would instantly go into something that ranked

with the very best of Second City's vaunted improvisers.

The British in India invented the game called poona.

Ah, I've played it.

Well, then good, because the question is,

is the game still played? And if so, how?

Um, it requires two consenting adults to play the game.

LAUGHTER

And one is the pooner, and one is the poonee.

APPLAUSE

I don't know if we need to go on with this or not.

You spin a dial,

and you can advance two squares if you like,

and you have to yell out, "Poonee! Poonee!"

And then they give you paper money,

or "scrip", as it's called.

And then you smear butter on the person you're playing with

and recite the word "nutmeg" seven times.

-CAVETT LAUGHS

-That's uncanny.

Yes. First one to reach the - the poonatorium is the winner.

LAUGHTER

It was just brilliant, and he could do that anywhere, any time.

Who was the first movie star that you met?

Can you remember?

Uh, yes.

I met Trigger,

who was Roy Rogers' horse, at a party.

Actually, I picked him up at a party,

and we had an ongoing relationship

for two years after that, which I'm very proud of.

Did you ever meet Roy Rogers at that time?

No, I had no interest in meeting Roy Rogers.

But I loved living with his horse.

But what about the smell?

He didn't mind that so much.

There was one time

I had a show that was mostly Woody,

and then the great Ruth Gordon came out, in her 70s.

And as a surprise, Gina Lollobrigida appeared,

looking glamorous.

-Do you know Mr Allen?

-He's very funny.

Thank you. I was just figuring out... LAUGHTER

I was just sitting here trying to figure which -

how are we going to split 'em up, you know - who gets which one?

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

How Woody got into the movies was, when he was playing

the Blue Angel, we had a lot of stars come in to see him.

Shirley Maclaine brought in a friend of hers,

Charles K Feldman,

who was one of the all-time

Hollywood motion picture producers.

So the great Charles K Feldman

was very taken with Woody's work,

you know, wisely.

And the next thing I knew, Monday morning,

they offered me 20,000 to write

the script of "What's New Pussycat?"

I wrote it and wrote a small part for myself in it.

That was his first entrance into motion picture world.

Yeah.

-Absinthe.

-Coffee.

Mineral water.

Did you find a job?

Yeah, I got something at the striptease.

I help the girls dress and undress.

Nice job.

20 francs a week.

Not very much.

It's all I can afford.

They hired a very lovely director, Clive Donner,

a very nice man and good director, to do it,

but the studio would not leave him alone.

They had their hand in every pie,

and so they were taking my script and mangling it.

There are places where Woody shines through,

but his work, which had always been successful,

was suddenly in the hands of someone else.

He had no leverage whatsoever in what went on.

And he found that the script that he had presented

had turned into this antic farce that was just really

the antithesis of Woody's comedy.

I have often said that if I could've directed that,

you know, it would've been

a much, much, much funnier picture

but made much less money.

The film was so financially successful

that I think it was the greatest,

biggest-grossing comedy to that date.

It was a boring picture, as I recall.

I rather enjoyed it.

Yes, but you're mistaken.

Charlie Joffe kept saying,

"You know, settle down, settle down.

"You're acting in a movie,

"you're getting your credit on this,

"you're going to be able to go forward from this."

I knew Woody was going to continue

to make films after that experience.

And I knew it was not going to be for Charles Feldman.

I mean, I didn't even go see it.

I just was so angry at the whole thing,

vowed never to work in movies again

unless I could be the director

and have control, not just the director.

And the great lesson that came out of that

was the sense of, nobody was ever

going to mess with his stuff again.

The next thing I did was,

I wrote a script with my school friend Mickey Rose

for Take The Money And Run.

The only way I wanted to get it on was me directing that.

At that time, I knew nothing about producing,

so I wanted to learn to do it so we could control it,

keep the control as close to us as we could.

And Jack was instrumental in making a deal for him

after that, where he didn't spend a lot of money

but he had control of the film.

We sold 'em the idea that if you want Woody,

you must understand how to work with him,

which is, leave him alone.

He's doing the movie and he's doing it his way,

and nobody is going to ask questions,

and nobody is going to interfere with him

and get him tripped up in any way.

He wants no contact with anybody.

That's what we got in our contract.

LAUGHING

He was going the next day to direct his very first thing,

and he was nervous about it.

And I walk into the bedroom, and he's sitting on the bed,

you know, with legs up, how you sit on the bed and read?

And on the front of the book it says, "How To Direct."

I didn't know the first thing about filmmaking or -

not the first thing. I knew this, though,

that it was going to be a pseudo-documentary in style.

So I had a structure to hang on to right from the start.

-NARRATOR:

-Virgil steals to pay for cello lessons.

And although he does not achieve greatness on the instrument,

he is soon good enough to play in a local band.

Take The Money And Run

I saw when I was in the army.

It was playing on the base.

And, of course, I had just been through like the worst hell

I'd ever been through in my life.

Like six, I can't even -

like, they were firing bullets over my head,

I was crawling on the ground, I was in basic training.

So, all of a sudden, we get this break

that we can go to the movies.

You know, after being in the army

and going to see that movie,

it was the most exhilarating,

amazing experience to just be able

to sit there and laugh like that

after the hell that I'd been through.

And I always thought that, "Oh, boy."

And I thought, "Boy, I got a connection to this guy."

What does this say?

Ahem! Can't you read that?

I can't read this. What's this? "Act natural"?

No, it says,

"Please put 50,000 into this bag and act natural."

It does say "act natural."

"I am pointing a gun at you."

That looks like "gub."

That doesn't look like "gun."

No, it's "gun."

No, that's "gub." That's a "b."

No. See, that's an "n." It's g-u-n.

It's "gun."

George, would you

step over here a moment, please?

What does this say?

"Please put 50,000

"into this bag and abt natural."

-What's "abt"?

-It's "act."

Does this - does this look like "gub" or "gun"?

"Gun."

-See?

-But what's "abt" mean?

It's "act," a-c-t. "Act natural."

Please put 50,000 into this bag.

Act natural.

Oh, I see.

-This is a hold-up?

-Yes.

May I see your gun?

Oh.

Well, you'll have to have this note

initialled by one of our vice presidents

before I can give you any money.

Take The Money And Run was financed by Palomar Pictures,

which was a division of the ABC television network.

And when it was finished, the executives looked at it

and didn't know what to make of the film.

And Woody said that when he was screening

Take The Money And Run for the executives,

that after ten minutes of the first reel,

one of the executives leaned to him

and said, "Is the rest like this?"

When we showed it to Palomar,

they suggested bringing in Ralph Rosenblum to help me.

Ralph was a wonderful editor.

And he came in and saw it

and looked at all the stuff I had taken out

and said, "You gotta put all that stuff back.

"All that stuff is funny. Why did you take it out?"

And I said, "Well, you know."

He said, "You can't go, you gotta give it a fighting chance.

"Put it in, put a piece of music behind it.

"Show it to an audience of people."

So we did, and Ralph was right.

And the picture played very well.

And it opened and was very successful, right off the bat.

And the film launched my career.

So from my first movie on, Take The Money And Run,

when I certainly had done nothing

to earn complete control, nothing,

I had complete control,

and have never done a movie in my life

where I didn't have complete control of it.

When Woody set his sights on play writing,

he enjoyed great success with his very first stage comedy,

called Don't Drink The Water, on Broadway,

starring Lou Jacobi, who later turned up in some of his films.

It had a good run.

And in it, playing the young romantic lead,

was an actor named Tony Roberts whom Woody befriended

and also cast in his next play,

which was Play It Again, Sam, in which Woody starred.

# You must remember this... #

It was a little

stage play that - that I wrote many years ago,

mostly to give myself an opportunity

to appear on stage.

The fact that they asked me

to play the movie a couple years later,

that was fine and a nice opportunity for me.

I was very fortunate that Herb Ross directed it

and did a very good job on it.

I'm 29!

The height of my sexual potency was ten years ago.

Oh, Allen,

look at the bright side.

You're free.

You'll go out. There'll be girls.

You'll go to parties and have affairs with married women,

sexual relations with girls of every race, creed and colour.

Oh, you get tired of that.

Because we were acting together in the play,

we bonded, and we got to be friends and became close.

And of course, Keaton was a large part of that.

# This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius... #

Diane had been in Hair

right before we started rehearsals

for Play It Again, Sam.

And I was very impressed with that.

I remember that Diane was the only one

who wouldn't take off her clothes.

CHUCKLES

I was sent up for Play It Again, Sam

and I auditioned, along with a lot of young New York actresses.

And that's what I did, I read.

And I got the part.

At the time, they were concerned

because I might be too tall for Woody.

So I got up on stage and we did that back-to-back thing

that kids do at birthday parties,

and we were just about the same height.

And we looked at a number of other women during the week,

but Keaton was in a class by herself.

What I remember about Woody

was that he was short, and he was cute.

And that's what I remembered about Woody on that day,

was just that, "Oh, my God, he is..."

I - you know, I just had a big crush, instantly.

The three of us had a good time together.

We got along very well. We had a lot of fun.

One of the things that I always remember

is that, you know, Woody seemed to have

no discipline onstage.

And he would sometimes do his impression of James Earl Jones

while we were supposed to be doing it during a matinee,

and I would crack up and destroy the scene.

That was always a lot of fun,

and we would hang out and eat dinner together,

and that's how I really got to know him.

My game plan was really to force Woody to like me.

So I was always plotting and scheming about how he could grow

to see me as an attractive woman.

I was always directing my attentions

to "How can I make him like me more?"

Now, tell her she has the most irresistible eyes

you've ever seen.

You have the most eyes

I've ever seen on any person.

Allen, your hand is trembling.

"That's because you're near."

-Pardon me?

-Tell her that.

That's because you're near.

LAUGHS

Oh, you really know what to say, don't you?

Now, tell her that you've met a lot of dames,

but she is really something special.

Oh, that she won't believe.

Oh, no?

I have met a lot of dames,

but you are really something special.

-Really?

-She bought it.

It was obvious that he was crazy about her, on all levels.

You could see that happening, absolutely,

especially when I stopped being asked to dinner.

She was always beautiful and incredibly gifted.

We went out together, and we lived together for a while.

She's remained a very close friend of mine to this day.

I worked it, you know.

I really worked trying to get him to fall in love with me.

He didn't quite fall in love with me,

but I was around a lot.

And we made a good team.

We were a good team.

David Picker was President,

Arthur Krim, Chairman of the board of United Artists.

And this man came and introduced himself.

It was David Picker.

And he said, "I want Woody to make pictures for my company."

I said, "Great." He said, "What will it take?"

I said, "Put 2 million in a paper bag,

"give it to us and go away, and we'll bring you a picture."

And I said, "And do that three times."

And he said, "You got a deal."

And it was that simple.

Come back, back, back.

More, more, more. Back, back.

CRASH!

I play a character who lives in New York

who works as a tester of products.

I test new products to see if they're safe for the public.

We can show you how you turn it out.

We can show you how you can save money...

Oh, boy, I'd like to do that over.

I go to a Latin American country,

and through a circuitous series of events,

I become the leader of that country during a revolution.

EXPLOSION

And come back to the United States,

bearded and well tanned and ebullient,

and I get into a lot of trouble

with the American government as a result.

I am Mr Hernandez, the official interpreter.

Welcome to the United States.

Welcome to United State.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Did you have a good flight?

Did you have a good flight?

Yes, I did.

Yes, I did.

Woody's love interest in Bananas

was his second ex-wife, Louise Lasser -

a very funny woman.

They were married on Groundhog's Day in 1966,

but by the time they got to making the movie,

they were still friends,

but they had been divorced for some time.

For me, Louise was something that stepped out of a fantasy.

Hi.

'She was a beautiful young girl, very gifted.

'It was just overwhelming to me.'

She was such a captivating figure.

She was very funny. She had a nice laugh.

She was pretty, sexy,

and she, you know, was perfect.

You know, I was just saying to someone the other day

that the Scandinavians seem to have

such an instinctive feel for the human condition.

It's very wise, you know.

That's, I think, pithy.

Oh, well, it was pithy.

It had great pith.

Yeth. Pith.

Pith.

I remember I had periods of time where I couldn't sleep.

And I would get, like, really bored.

I would go crazy, and he would just sleep.

And I would think, "I can't believe this.

"Here, I'm with America's foremost humorist,

"and I can't sleep, and I'm bored," like that.

And I would just nudge him and go, you know,

"Woody, Woody, wake up, I'm bored.

"Say something funny."

We never worked together while we were married,

because we felt that it would ruin the marriage.

LAUGHTER

So, now that we've been divorced for a year,

we felt that we could work together,

and, of course, I got her much cheaper.

MOANING I love you. I love you.

Oh, say it in French.

-Oh, please, say it in French.

-I don't know French.

Oh, please? Please?

-What about Hebrew?

-Oh.

If I had to pick, personally, the funniest one,

I would pick Bananas.

CHEERS AND APPLAUSE

Ready, aim, fire!

GUNSHOT

Oh, let's see.

21. Who has 21?

Ready, aim, fire!

In December, I'm going to go into production with a film that I wrote

based on Dr Reuben's book,

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, But Were Afraid To Ask.

I've written a script that can only be described

as Rabelaisian and...

What would be another word for it?

Uh, trashy. LAUGHTER

It's an exploration of the ins

and outs, every little nook

and cranny of our sexual motivations

and interests, and graphically illustrated.

It would be sexual relations

if the Marx Brothers were doing them.

Hey! We're going to make babies!

INDISTINCT MURMURING

Here we go again!

I'm not going out there!

I'm not going to get shot out of that thing.

What if he's masturbating?

I'm liable to wind up on the ceiling.

No!

But in retrospect, I don't think it was a very good idea,

and would not do it again.

If I had it to do over, would not do it again.

Woody Allen was building a fan base at this time

in the '70s, but he never became,

you know, a huge box office attraction.

But he was clever.

He made his films economically,

he didn't pay himself very much at all,

if anything, and he adopted the philosophy

that if he made the films economically

and they made even one dollar,

he'd be given the go-ahead to make another film.

You know, he's not everyone's taste,

and never was.

It's one thing to be appreciated down in the Village

at the Bitter End and another across the country.

My working with him professionally

in being a producer, it still amazes me lots of times

when people recognise him or know his name,

because to me he was always my brother.

No, I think she looks good in the clothes.

I think this is - this is really good.

It looks nice.

When I was born, Woody was eight years old.

You know, he was a very devoted brother.

Very - we were always very close,