On Sunday, November 2 at 3 pm Eastern we will have a Casual Conversation with independent scholar Patrick McGilligan about Woody Allen. Mr. McGilligan comes to us through the good offices of his friend Foster Hirsch who spent time with us a few months ago to discuss his marvelous book on films of 1950s and will be with us again in just a few weeks to discuss the films of the 1960s, about which he is writing his next book.
In the immediate future, Patrick McGilligan will be speaking with us about the subject his book Woody Allen: A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham (Harper 2025) ISBN 978-0-06-294133-6. Our guest has written a dozen books including his current volume. All biographies, he has written about filmmakers famous and less so, the latter including Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang, and George Cukor. In Woody Allen, our guest has picked a subject whose career as writer, director, and actor in film has spanned nearly our entire moviegoing lives, and it is probably fitting that among his other subjects has been with us nearly as long, Clint Eastwood. And both are still making movies.
You will find in Mr. McGilligan a fair biographer, which is something that is difficult to find nowadays for any living (or even dead) subject, and especially so for Woody Allen. We all, I would hazard a guess, think we know the (perhaps) sordid truth about Allen, but are we willing to put our preconceptions—born of little knowledge and strongly biased sources (who except for our guest is free of prejudging of Woody?)—to the test? Maybe the real test is whether we are still willing to challenge ourselves to learn about something that we think we already know the answers to. If Mia Farrow knew Allen, so did late Diane Keaton; one accused him and the other defended him.
Allen’s “pervasive pessimism and melancholy” developed in him early: in kindergarten or first grade “he began to view the world as a coffin half-empty, lying in wait for him.” In this I find Allen strikingly similar to the world view of the Master of Noir, Cornell Woolrich, who from age eight or nine, saw life merely as a prelude to death. In his 50 films (yes, 50!) Allen has explored the darkness that he started his life with, but also humor, often mordant admittedly, but love figures prominently in them as well, as well as its impossibility.
Mr. McGilligan provides a gimlet-eyed view of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen: “It seems reasonable to argue Farrow knew as little about conventional motherhood, and she was as intolerant of anything outside her own way of family life, as Allen was ignorant of conventional fatherhood and blind to his own faults.”
In exploring the dark corners of Allen’s life, the issue that is presented is what, if anything, this has to do with appreciating his art, the films he has created. Perhaps more than most, many of Allen’s films seem to be drawn from his autobiography, the obsessed and insecure nebbish that forms at least some part of his personality, if not a big part.
The reviews of our guest’s book have been laudatory:
Once you get past the sordid stuff — if you can get past it enough to pick up the book in the first place — you’ll find an engaged, engaging and tirelessly insightful account of Allen’s life and career, from a writer who has few peers in the film biography business.
. . .
Unlike Eric Lax’s 1991 “Woody Allen: A Biography,” which was celebratory if not terribly inquisitive, McGilligan’s book is unauthorized. This means McGilligan had nobody and nothing to answer to but himself and the truth. As we have learned, however, the truth about Woody Allen can be elusive, which was the case even before the fog that surrounds his various scandals descended. Not for nothing did Variety dub him “Mr. Secretive.” All the more impressive, then, that McGilligan was able to piece together what he has here. This isn’t the takedown that Allen foes might have wanted, but nor is it hagiography. It is, for the time being, the definitive study of a man and an artist about whom it remains hard to be neutral.
Chris Vognar, Los Angeles Times (January 31, 2025).
And this from John Carvill at theartsdesk.com (April 9, 2025):
In a famous scene in Manhattan, Allen’s character Isaac lies on a sofa, monologising into a tape recorder about the vicissitudes of life, and enumerating the things that make it worthwhile: “Groucho Marx, to name one thing... Wilie Mays... the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues... um... Swedish movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... uh... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra…” For many of us, Woody Allen movies would have been on that list. There is no reason to strike him off just because he’s a collateral victim of cancel culture. McGilligan’s biography is comprehensive, diligent, and fair. It may well become definitive. It deserves to be read with an open mind.
Bring your open mind to our Casual Conversation with Patrick McGilligan next Sunday, November 2 at 3 pm Eastern. As in the past, let me know of your intentions by the Friday before, Halloween, October 31, by emailing me at arthur.fergenson@ansalaw.com .
Arthur Fergenson
P.S. My favorite Woody Allen film reference is his mocking of Wilhelm Reich’s nutty Orgone Energy Accumulator (Reich finding a devoted follower in Orson Bean, by the way) through the equally nutty Orgasmatron. I escaped, barely, the professional obligation of reading nine of Reich’s books when I served as a law clerk to a federal trial judge who was sitting on a copyright case involving Reich’s wacko writings. The case settled.