Woody Allen

Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg, December 1, 1935) is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker and playwright, whose career spans more than five decades.

He worked as a comedy writer in the 1950s, writing jokes and scripts for television and publishing several books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, Allen began performing as a stand-up comedian, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comedian, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.

By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into dramatic material influenced by European art cinema during the 1970s, and alternating between comedies and dramas to the present. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late 1970s. Allen often stars in his films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. Some best-known of his over 40 films are Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), although he considers Stardust Memories (1980), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and Match Point (2005) to be his best films. Critic Roger Ebert described Allen as "a treasure of the cinema."

Woody Allen filmography

Woody Allen is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, author, jazz musician, comedian and playwright. He has contributed to many projects as either writer, director, actor, or a combination of the three. Allen has also written four plays for the stage, and written sketches for the Broadway revue From A to Z, and the Broadway productions Don't Drink the Water (1966) and Play It Again, Sam (1969).

His first film was the 1965 comedy What's New Pussycat?, which featured him as both writer and performer. His directorial debut was the 1966 film What's Up, Tiger Lily?, in which a dramatic Japanese spy movie was re-dubbed in English with completely new, comic dialog. He continued to write, direct, and star in comedic slapstick films, such as Bananas (1971) and Sleeper (1973), before he found widespread critical acclaim for his romantic comedies Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979); he won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for the former.

Inside Woody Allen

Inside Woody Allen was an American gag-a-day comic strip about the comedian and filmmaker Woody Allen. Drawn by Stuart Hample, the strip ran from 1976 to 1984.

Characters and story

The strip was based on Allen's comedic persona and focused on his neuroses, angst and frequent psychiatric treatment.

Writers for the strip included David Weinberger.

Collected editions

A collection of some strips was published in 1978 as Non-Being and Somethingness: Selections from the Comic Strip Inside Woody Allen (ISBN 0-394-73590-0) and featured an introduction by Buckminster Fuller. Another volume, Dread and Superficiality: Woody Allen as Comic Strip was published in 2009 (ISBN 0810957426).

In Annie Hall

Allen's film Annie Hall contains animated scenes based on Hample's artwork.

See also

References