Woody Allen - by Patrick McGilligan (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Woody Allen was once made a knight commander by France, but he didn't know because the paperwork got lost in the mail. A decade later, he found out about the award by reading about it in the New York Times. Across nearly nine eventful decades, Allen's life has been full of surprises. Writing jokes got him a gig as the youngest writer of Sid Caesar's television dream team. As a rising comic, he boxed a kangaroo on TV. He made a blank-check deal with a major studio for terms unmatched in Hollywood apart from early titans like Chaplin and Welles. All before Annie Hall. Yet despite once being one of the most consequential American cultural figures, Allen is now persona non grata. In this judicious biography, acclaimed biographer Patrick McGilligan charts the meteoric rise and fall of the comedian whose nonconformity proved both his secret genius and Achilles' heel. Drawing on meticulous research, McGilligan reconstructs Allen's Brooklyn boyhood, his salad days as a television comedy writer, his rise to stand-up, and the thoughtful, award-winning film-making of his golden years in the 1970s and '80s. His messy relationships with wives and girlfriends, including Annie Hall costar Diane Keaton, were essential to his artistic development and undo-ing. Yet no one could have predicted his tumultuous personal and professional relationship with actress Mia Farrow, his alleged abuse of their adopted daughter Dylan, and his subsequent marriage to Mia's daughter Soon-Yi Previn ... [In this] rigor-ous account of Allen's life and career, McGilligan astutely reveals the writer's writer beyond the smoke and controversy, and paints a compelling portrait of the most creative, productive, and influential film-maker of his time." --book jacket.

Book Synopsis

Woody Allen was once made a knight commander by France, but he didn't know because the paperwork got lost in the mail.

A decade later, he found out about the award by reading about it in the New York Times.

Across nearly nine eventful decades, Allen's life has been full of surprises. Writing jokes got him a gig as the youngest writer of Sid Caesar's television dream team. As a rising comic, he boxed a kangaroo on TV. He made a blank-check deal with a major studio for terms unmatched in Hollywood apart from early titans like Chaplin and Welles. All before Annie Hall.

Yet despite once being one of the most consequen-tial American cultural figures, Allen is now persona non grata. In this judicious biography, acclaimed biographer Patrick McGilligan charts the meteoric rise and fall of the comedian whose nonconformity proved both his secret genius and Achilles' heel.

Drawing on meticulous research, McGilli-gan reconstructs Allen's Brooklyn boyhood, his salad days as a television comedy writer, his rise to stand-up, and the thoughtful, award-winning film-making of his golden years in the 1970s and '80s. His messy relationships with wives and girl-friends, including Annie Hall costar Diane Keaton, were essential to his artistic development and undo-ing. Yet no one could have predicted his tumultuous personal and professional relationship with actress Mia Farrow, his alleged abuse of their adopted daughter Dylan, and his subsequent marriage to Mia's daughter Soon-Yi Previn.

In this comprehensive, sweeping, and rigor-ous account of Allen's life and career, McGilligan astutely reveals the writer's writer beyond the smoke and controversy, and paints a compelling portrait of the most creative, productive, and influential film-maker of his time.

Review Quotes

"Comprehensive . . . illuminating . . . teeming with fascinating details about Brooks's life and career." - New York Times Book Review on Funny Man: Mel Brooks
"The author ably chronicles Brooks' career arc from the Brooklyn kid born Melvin Kaminsky to the loudest member of Sid Caesar's writing staff on NBC's Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour in the 1950s to the driving force behind some of the most successful film comedies of his time." - Kirkus Reviews on Funny Man: Mel Brooks
"Well researched, engaging, and of interest to all of Brooks fans. McGilligan has found a good critical balance as he extols his subject's comedic and artistic virtues while being forthright about Brooks's occasional stubborn attitude toward creative and financial control. McGilligan is one of the few film biographers not to indulge in extensive criticism of the projects themselves, instead offering commentary through the contemporary reviews or financial results of a given work." - Library Journal on Funny Man: Mel Brooks
"[Young Orson] takes the directorial hero from his birth to the threshold of 'Citizen Kane.' I've only just started it and can so far confess to fascination and pleasure; the wealth of detail and the measured tempo are up to the Shakespearean complexity of Welles's character." - The New Yorker on Young Orson
"McGilligan's Orson is a Welles for a new generation. . . . McGilligan's book vibrates with uncertainty and risk, and it hums with the possibility that talented people actually can realize their dreams in the forms they choose." - BookForum on Young Orson
"No one writes biographies of film legends like Patrick McGilligan. . . . It is a meticulous recreation of Welles's life and achievement up to 1941." - Daily Beast on Young Orson