The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen Read Online Free PDF

sixteen-year-old Allan Konigsberg having performed magic tricks there. Recent Allen biographies have also established that the Danny Rose character was inspired in part by Harvey Meltzer, the agent Allen had before signing on with Charles Joffe and Jack Rollins. Meltzer is said to have used phrases similar to Danny’s signature expression, “Might I interject a concept at this juncture?” Fox, p. 151.
    8. Vincent Canby, “‘Danny Rose’: Runyonesque, But Pure Woody Allen” (review of Broadway Danny Rose), The New York Times, January 29, 1984, II, 13, p. 1.
    9. Gilbert Adair, review of Broadway Danny Rose, Monthly Film Bulletin, September, 1984, p. 272.
    10. David Denby, review of Broadway Danny Rose, New York, February 6, 1984, p. 64.
    11. The union of Danny and Tina would also confirm the prediction of Tina’s favorite fortune-teller, Angelina, that Tina would marry a Jew. That confirmation might be said to balance somewhat the film’s dramatization of Danny’s ethic so clearly triumphing over her cultural beliefs. That Tina’s culture is largely reduced to “fortune-tellers and meat hooks” is admittedly one of the film’s less pleasing comic strategies.
    12. Allen’s decision to have the comedians portray themselves rather than providing them with fictional identities creates a minor fact/fiction tension in the film, reversing the juxtaposition of the fictional Leonard Zelig with actual documentary footage, which was the central rhetorical ploy of Zelig, his previous film.
    13. Andrew Sarris, review of Broadway Danny Rose, Village Voice, February 7, 1984, p. 47.
    14. Daphne Merkin, “Comedy on Three Levels,” (review of Broadway Danny Rose), New Leader, March 5, 1984, p. 19.
    15. Joseph Gelmis, review of Broadway Danny Rose, Newsday, January 27,1984, II, p. 3.
    16. Jack Kroll, “Woody’s Bow to Broadway” (review of Broadway Danny Rose), Newsweek January 30, 1984, p. 69.
    17. William K. Zinsser, “Bright New Comic Clowns Toward Success,” Saturday Evening Post, September 21, 1963, p. 26.
    18. Maurice Yacowar, Loser Take All: The Comic Art of Woody Allen (New York: Frederick Unger Inc., 1979), p. 21.
    19. In a very grumpy review of the film, Pauline Kael suggests, “Although Woody Allen knows how repulsive Lou Canova’s act is, Danny Rose doesn’t. He isn’t permitted to have either taste or consciousness” ( State of the Art [New York: E.P. Dutton, 1985], p. 124). Whether Allen’s film is as insistent upon the repulsiveness of Canova’s act as Kael is highly questionable—Nick Apollo Forte’s performances in the film apparently differ little from the stage show he once regularly performed. The value system of Broadway Danny Rose is the showbiz ethic of the Carnegie comics and cruise ship lounges and Joe Franklin’s Memory Lane television show, and much of the viewer’s pleasure in the playing out of the film’s fable is her/his immersion in that frankly and unapologetically vulgar realm in which singers perform medleys of “crooners who are now deceased.” Consequently, “taste or consciousness” are expressly not what this film is about, except in that Danny has too much of either to sacrifice human beings to the showbiz winner-take-all worship of success. The question Kael might have posed to herself before dismissing the premises of Broadway Danny Rose was the one with which she closed her review of Another Woman: “How can you embrace life and leave out all the good vulgar trashiness?” ( Movie Love [New York: E.P. Dutton], 1991, p. 16).
    20. Woody Allen, Zelig, Three Films of Woody Allen, p. 126.
    21. Yacowar, p. 215.
    9. The Fine Art of Living Well: Hannah and Her Sisters
    1. Woody Allen, Hannah and Her Sisters (New York: Vintage Books, 1987), pp. 96,97–98.
    2. Bjorkman, p. 157.
    3. Allen’s original, preferred ending, he told Anthony DeCurtis, focused upon Elliot rather than Mickey and Holly. Lee had married again, and Elliot had reunited with Hannah, but he remains in love