Apropos of Nothing

By Woody Allen

The Long-Awaited, Enormously Entertaining Memoir by One of the Great Artists of Our Time—Now a New York Times, USA Today,
Los Angeles Times, and Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller.
 
In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Annie and Her Sisters to his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure.
 
This is a hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time. 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcade
• Release date: Mar 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781951627379

Book preview

Anyhow, the bar mitzvah comes. Today, they have theme bar mitzvahs: Star Wars, King Arthur, the Wild West. My theme was Gorky’s Lower Depths. My initiation into manhood is not held at some fancy place but at our house near the railroad tracks. Uncles and other men on their feet, smoking two packs a day despite a medley of massive heart attacks and strokes, wink and smugly shake my hand with a ten spot in theirs. Big deal. Like they’re duking me with a G. My aunts, cousins, Rita, her older sister Phyllis the nurse, hallowed by her profession like Eve Curie, Phil Wasserman, and of course the other Phil Wasserman. Phil (the original) is a very amusing character who works as a press agent. In a few years when I try writing my first jokes, I will bring them to him and he will encourage me to mail them in to the various Broadway newspaper columnists who run gags usually attributed to celebrities. I am going to follow his advice, and my feeble quips will open up the entire world to me.

But at thirteen I was still an obnoxious youth, a wise guy full of wisecracks with a growing feeling for show business. Speaking of show business, let me describe the entertainment that ensued at this little Ashkenazi luau, wherein a young Jew is supposed to become a man, although I remained a mouse. My father was then a waiter, one of his myriad occupations, which included a surefire get-rich scheme to sell by mail beautifully boxed pearl necklaces, a venture that couldn’t find a single human who wanted even one pearl, so our house was inundated with beautifully boxed necklaces for many months. The stock was finally liquidated for about fifteen cents on the dollar. But now he was a waiter at Sammy’s Bowery Follies, where he toiled from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. every night.

Sammy’s was a Gay Nineties joint on the Bowery complete with sawdust on the floor and where buxom, Sophie Tucker–type dames would sing turn-of-the-century favorites, in floozy gowns while wearing big hats. Mabel Sidney was such a blousy singer, sister of the actress Sylvia Sidney, her brother was George Sidney, a successful Hollywood director. I knew none of Mabel’s pedigree, only that she could belt out Who’s Sorry Now and You Tell Me Your Dream, among many other vintage gems. As a favor to my father she came to my thirteenth birthday party and put a little oomph into an event otherwise indistinguishable from laying my uncle Abe to rest at Riverside Chapel. In those years, the family always benefited from my father’s working on the Bowery, with its enormous drunkard population crowding every street, bar, and flophouse under the El. Example: We needed the house painted. Among many of the inebriants, one could find any profession from carpenter to archeologist, from stockbroker to merchant seaman, from actor to housepainter. Men whose dreams had run out of steam and were now hopeless alcoholics. All these poor souls wanted was the price of a single drink. And so for a few bucks, our house would be transformed by a squad of rummies with paintbrushes who would work cheaply—if they’d show up. The job might take longer because of an interrupting bender but it got done, by God. Mom always fed them well, but they had to drink out of a special glass cordoned off for strangers, which I believe was then shipped off to the Marshall Islands, where our government buried toxic waste.

Another perk of working among the sad dipso populous of the Bowery was that many of them stole. Their clear-cut goal was money to buy the next whiskey, and so if anyone left anything around it would vanish in seconds. John Bananas, as they were sometimes called, would walk into a bar like the one my father worked at, or they might accost my father while he was on the street and offer stolen merchandise: an overcoat, a tape recorder, a bag of steaks. All the thief wanted in return was enough for a single shot. My father, always open to a proposition, would oblige. It was in this fashion we had an Underwood typewriter for a dollar fifty, a Mixmaster, and a fur coat for my mother, just to name a few hot items. I typed my first one-liners on a stolen typewriter and made my first malted on a purloined Hamilton Beach machine. And so, Mabel Sidney made my bar mitzvah livable doing her mugient rendition of My Man for a farrago of scraggly Hebrews.

It was at said fete that I received among all the other swag a book on magic. This book, with its photos of exciting equipment, Chinese boxes, a vanishing bird cage, billiard balls and silks, a guillotine, and myriad other paraphernalia whetted an interest in me that grew into an obsession, and it wasn’t long before I was spending all my spare time practicing and like the John Bananas, using any penny I could beg, borrow, or steal not for bourbon but on magic tricks. I had all the standard stuff: the linking rings, cups and balls, a red velvet changing bag, Passé Passé bottles—all startling effects you don’t know by name but have enjoyed many times. The Miser’s Dream means nothing to you, but there I was plucking coins from the air and tossing them into the bottom of a pail. As times went on, I matured beyond the allure of flashy-looking apparatuses with rhinestones and tassels and fake bottom chests.

I began to see that it was magic books that counted, and they were among the first books I read, if not the first. I understood that to buy a piece of equipment that anyone could purchase and learn to perform was not worth my time or the lunch money I saved by going hungry in school. The real deal was learning the secrets of sleight of hand from books and practice, endless practice, to palm coins or steal from the bottom of the deck, cut and restore ropes and manipulate silk handkerchiefs, billiard balls, and cigarettes. And that was what I practiced, digital dexterity. I thought I got pretty good, but when I see the level of sleight of hand today, one’s breath is taken away. Practicing as much as Jascha Heifetz or Glenn Gould, there are any number of artists who are their equal in dedication to this other demanding field of exotic art. But I’m not one of them, and this is my story, so let me get on with it.

Simultaneous with being bitten by the magic bug and already a movie addict who longed to live on Fifth Avenue, shake my own cocktails, and have a sharp bantering relationship with a beautiful woman on loan from Paramount who would share my penthouse, I experienced another apocalyptic event. A few years earlier, at eleven, I had developed the practice of taking the subway to my beloved city across the river, and spending my allowance on a day in Manhattan. This was unheard of for a kid of that age, but I had plenty of freedom, or else my parents didn’t care if I was kidnapped. While I could never get a date to go with me, sometimes my friend Andrew would go along. Andrew also had a little letch for show business and was a good-looking kid whose parents had some dough and spoiled him much worse than I was spoiled, so much so that he ended up jumping out a window in his twenties when real life made its grinning appearance. Poor Andrew. Narcotics to escape, then the open window in the hospital. But these two precocious dreamers rode sporadically to Times Square, walked around, picked a movie to see, ate at Roth’s or McGinnis’s, and did the town till our stash played out. I loved walking on Park and Fifth Avenue and into Central Park. It was the Manhattan of the Hollywood movies I grew up escaping

Reviews for Apropos of Nothing

[Mark Fox · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My idol for the past 45 years. He never disappoints. Will read this again and again.

[mark Jackson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very happy to have read this account of Woody’s life, and he is so self-deprecating. I have followed the saga with Mia very closely, including here recent HBO documentary. I believe that there is a lot more truth in Woody’s side of this very sad story.

[Arthur Athas · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very funny through out. Just like the author. One of the most gifted story tellers of our day. And a lousy deal with the whole Mia debacle. Everyone I broach the subject thinks they were married. They didn’t even co-habitate. And that his young wife was a genetic daughter of Mia. Finally, I think Annie hall was a masterpiece.

[Bill Ryan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I started this book and finished this book. That's saying something. Lots of namedropping and without all the namedropping this book would have been under ten pages. Reading this book on Scribd really helped because I could immediately google people to see what they looked like, leading to lots of interesting rabbit trails. This book doesn't appear to be highly edited or if it was it doesn't show. He repeats himself a few times but who doesn't? Lots of pages devoted to refuting allegations of abuse that never happened. His quote of another author saying, "Guilt by accusation", was powerful and seems to sum up this period of upheaval in his long and productive life. Reading the book has made me want to go back and see again a few of his movies that I really enjoyed. Interesting book.

[Rafael Sisamon Galvan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A total ordinary genious
Gracias Woody por hacernos reír tantisimo?

[Jeffrey Kwitny · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Fascinating, every page. What a life! Being a movie lover, I found Allen's story hilarious and tragic.

[robeik_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

To cut a long story short: a funny guy with glasses makes films and out with quite a few women. His ex chucks hissy fit when one these women is her adopted daughter. Lawyers get rich. This is the inside goss. I first became aware of Woody Allen when I hear, self-deprecating humour about shrinks and embarrassing moments. I've never seen any of his films, but know there was a scandal about him marrying the adopted daughter of what I imagined was his wife; I did not pay much attention. Inappropriate I assumed. Anyway, this book popped up on my library feed, and so I read it. It reads a lot like what I heard 30+ years ago. There are some boring bits - lots of names of people in film. However, I am glad I read it.

[tytania-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Am I a bad person because when I saw Woody Allen had a memoir I immediately wanted to read it? Am I a bad person because I thought it was funny and I enjoyed reading it? Am I a bad person for finding his account of the whole molestation mishigoss is credible? No! I'm a bad person for other reasons, not these.He's funniest talking about his early life. Once his career takes off it seemed to get more matter-of-fact; once we are in his late career, the movie titles flying around and actors and actresses who were all wonderful, drop-dead sexy, beautiful, amazing, a joy to work with, etc. etc. and all the other famous people he's met and known, well, it makes your head swirl a little.So it wasn't wall-to-wall comedy, but it was enough to be worthwhile and remind me why I'm a fan.

[Craig Johnson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very informative and often amusing ramble through Woody's life. The writing is loose, and would have benefitted from a good edit for clarity, to avoid redundancy, typos, and general "umm, Woody, maybe don't go there." He is quite compelling exploring his innocence in the whole Mia/Dylan episode.

[Alison Reynolds · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It make me laugh out loud. Brilliant wit and honest descriptions of his early life and family.
The injustice of false accusations did not destroy him and he survived. I am glad.

[evertonian_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Brilliant. Hilarious. A must read. Buy it and give two fingers to the #MeToo morons. If anyone needs to be blacklisted and imprisoned it's that lying, jealous bitch Mia Farrow.

[Kaposi Viktor · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Heart-warmingly honest, surprisingly fresh (from an 84-year-old) and delivers the sense of humour Woody Allen has been a master of since his standup years.

[robert vee · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

How does such an insightful author with a prodigious work ethic write a memoir devoid of depth and insight. Shallow, superficial, and disingenuous. Hmm...