The definitive bio of the elusive Woody Allen begins with something that Allen has spent his entire career mocking: A windbag Columbia University professor waxing pretentious about his movies.
But if you watch long enough to get past that bloviator and then manage to put aside the loathing you might (rightly) feel for this terribly flawed man, then what you’ll be treated to are four very interesting hours of TV.
American Masters’ “Woody Allen,” a film created with Woody’s total cooperation by Robert Weide, begins with Allen growing up in a dysfunctional family in Brooklyn and goes all the way through to his latest films.
Yes, it glosses over — although doesn’t exclude — the disgusting affair with his now-wife Soon-Yi, then the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow, the mother of his three children.
What the film doesn’t gloss over is his career, going into minute detail about how Woody began his career in high school — by writing jokes and sending them into newspaper columnists like Walter Winchell.
Even then, the private and shy guy insisted his jokes be published under a pseudonym because he didn’t want the other kids in school to make fun of him. That’s how Allen Stewart Konigsberg became Woody Allen.
From there, he went on to work in the Catskills, where he was writing 50 jokes a day for the comics.
When he began working as a writer for TV and radio stars like Sid Caesar, he decided it was time to get a writer’s agent. He went to Jack Rollins and Charlie Joffe, who immediately decided he shouldn’t just be writing, but performing.
Allen talks about the terror of stand-up and how terrible he was for a very long time.
He talks about his first foray into film, “What’s New Pussycat,” and how embarrassingly bad it was and yet how it nonetheless became a success.
When after that his agents were approached by producer David Picker, they laid down the terms: total creative freedom and money.
“Put $2 million in a paper bag and go away. Do that three times.”
Allen does talk semi-frankly about the women in his life — and they about him, including second wife, Louise Lasser, longtime girlfriend, Diane Keaton and his latest muse, Scarlett Johansson.
Not appearing is Farrow, although Woody does discuss in a disconnected way the scandal that almost did him in, and the follow-up child custody battle.
He also discusses the scorn heaped upon him when he started making dramas and his shock over the media coverage his life has garnered.
With many stars who’ve worked with him speaking,“Woody Allen” is a warts-and-not-quite-all look into the man who changed American movies forever and has given us some of the best experiences many of us ever had while planted in a seat in the dark.
CRACK UP: Woody Allen on the “Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson in the ’60s.
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