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Woody Allen: A Biography
He was born Allan Konigsberg in the Bronx, but his personal destiny and some of filmdom's most celebrated comedies - Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors - have made Woody Allen the quintessential New Yorker.
This telling, new biography - the first since the tabloids headlined his rift with his long-term mistress, Mia Farrow, and his affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi - tells how a reclusive, melancholy kid achieved unparalleled success as a screenwriter, director, and star. It also explores the real Woody Allen, the critically acclaimed filmmaker from the Upper East Side, and his amusing movie persona of a neurotic and lovable loser.
Shrewdly and effectively deconstructing Woody, John Baxter's biography illuminates Allen's preoccupation with sex and mortality, his personal quirks and obsessions, his manipulation of celebrity, and his cinematic achievement as chronicler and court jester of Manhattan's intellectual elite.
"A splendidly written, exhaustive account and a major achievement" - The Observer
"Astute and highly entertaining biography" - Daily Telegraph
"A bracing corrective to the usual po-faced, sycophantic studies of the cult of Woody" - Mail on Sunday
"Full of interesting information for cinema enthusiasts" - The Spectator
"The saga [of Woody and Mia] makes compulsive reading" - The Guardian
This telling, new biography - the first since the tabloids headlined his rift with his long-term mistress, Mia Farrow, and his affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi - tells how a reclusive, melancholy kid achieved unparalleled success as a screenwriter, director, and star. It also explores the real Woody Allen, the critically acclaimed filmmaker from the Upper East Side, and his amusing movie persona of a neurotic and lovable loser.
Shrewdly and effectively deconstructing Woody, John Baxter's biography illuminates Allen's preoccupation with sex and mortality, his personal quirks and obsessions, his manipulation of celebrity, and his cinematic achievement as chronicler and court jester of Manhattan's intellectual elite.
"A splendidly written, exhaustive account and a major achievement" - The Observer
"Astute and highly entertaining biography" - Daily Telegraph
"A bracing corrective to the usual po-faced, sycophantic studies of the cult of Woody" - Mail on Sunday
"Full of interesting information for cinema enthusiasts" - The Spectator
"The saga [of Woody and Mia] makes compulsive reading" - The Guardian
- GenresBiographyFilmNonfiction
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
4 people are currently reading
133 people want to read
About the author
John Baxter
229 books123 followersJohn Baxter (born 1939 in Randwick, New South Wales) is an Australian-born writer, journalist, and film-maker.
Baxter has lived in Britain and the United States as well as in his native Sydney, but has made his home in Paris since 1989, where he is married to the film-maker Marie-Dominique Montel. They have one daughter, Louise.
He began writing science fiction in the early 1960s for New Worlds, Science Fantasy and other British magazines. His first novel, though serialised in New Worlds as THE GOD KILLERS, was published as a book in the US by Ace as The Off-Worlders. He was Visiting Professor at Hollins College in Virginia in 1975-1976. He has written a number of short stories and novels in that genre and a book about SF in the movies, as well as editing collections of Australian science fiction.
Baxter has also written a large number of other works dealing with the movies, including biographies of film personalities, including Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, George Lucas and Robert De Niro. He has written a number of documentaries, including a survey of the life and work of the painter Fernando Botero. He also co-produced, wrote and presented three television series for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, Filmstruck, First Take and The Cutting Room, and was co-editor of the ABC book programme Books And Writing.
In the 1960s, he was a member of the WEA Film Study Group with such notable people as Ian Klava, Frank Moorhouse, Michael Thornhill, John Flaus and Ken Quinnell. From July 1965 to December 1967 the WEA Film Study Group published the cinema journal FILM DIGEST. This journal was edited by John Baxter.
For a number of years in the sixties, he was active in the Sydney Film Festival, and during the 1980s served in a consulting capacity on a number of film-funding bodies, as well as writing film criticism for The Australian and other periodicals. Some of his books have been translated into various languages, including Japanese and Chinese.
Since moving to Paris, he has written four books of autobiography, A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict, We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light, Immoveable feast : a Paris Christmas, and The Most Beautiful Walk in the World : a Pedestrian in Paris.
Since 2007 he has been co-director of the annual Paris Writers Workshop.
Baxter has lived in Britain and the United States as well as in his native Sydney, but has made his home in Paris since 1989, where he is married to the film-maker Marie-Dominique Montel. They have one daughter, Louise.
He began writing science fiction in the early 1960s for New Worlds, Science Fantasy and other British magazines. His first novel, though serialised in New Worlds as THE GOD KILLERS, was published as a book in the US by Ace as The Off-Worlders. He was Visiting Professor at Hollins College in Virginia in 1975-1976. He has written a number of short stories and novels in that genre and a book about SF in the movies, as well as editing collections of Australian science fiction.
Baxter has also written a large number of other works dealing with the movies, including biographies of film personalities, including Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, George Lucas and Robert De Niro. He has written a number of documentaries, including a survey of the life and work of the painter Fernando Botero. He also co-produced, wrote and presented three television series for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, Filmstruck, First Take and The Cutting Room, and was co-editor of the ABC book programme Books And Writing.
In the 1960s, he was a member of the WEA Film Study Group with such notable people as Ian Klava, Frank Moorhouse, Michael Thornhill, John Flaus and Ken Quinnell. From July 1965 to December 1967 the WEA Film Study Group published the cinema journal FILM DIGEST. This journal was edited by John Baxter.
For a number of years in the sixties, he was active in the Sydney Film Festival, and during the 1980s served in a consulting capacity on a number of film-funding bodies, as well as writing film criticism for The Australian and other periodicals. Some of his books have been translated into various languages, including Japanese and Chinese.
Since moving to Paris, he has written four books of autobiography, A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict, We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light, Immoveable feast : a Paris Christmas, and The Most Beautiful Walk in the World : a Pedestrian in Paris.
Since 2007 he has been co-director of the annual Paris Writers Workshop.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 21, 2018
John Baxter has written this biography like a Wikipedia article, with all the clunky play-by-play prose, obtuseness and errors that you would expect. (In Crimes and Misdemeanors, it is not Daryl Hannah's character shown in Cliff's documentary, rather the brunette introduced in the Writer's Room, and Cliff eats Indian takeout with Halley, not Chinese; Jules Feiffer's comic satire of the Manhattan beau monde's response to Woody and Soon-Yi's coupling was two colour pages in the New Yorker, not three.)
Roughly a third of the book is taken up with bland summaries of each of Allen's movies with little analysis added, likely to make up for the lack of information occasioned by being an unofficial biography with (very) limited access to sources and private documents. To top it all off, the central contention of the book, that "the 'Woody' of Allen's films is as remote from the real man" as the Tramp is from Chaplin, is undermined by the constant highlighting of his films' biographical borrowings as well as the many fictionally concordant anecdotes told about the 'real' Woody Allen. Yes, he is more successful and driven, and often taciturn, than his comedic persona, but just because you take those few elements away does not mean Alvy Singer might as well be Rock Hudson.
I am happy however that Baxter has dug up a beautiful summation of Allen, from Clive Barnes' New York Times review of Interiors:
Roughly a third of the book is taken up with bland summaries of each of Allen's movies with little analysis added, likely to make up for the lack of information occasioned by being an unofficial biography with (very) limited access to sources and private documents. To top it all off, the central contention of the book, that "the 'Woody' of Allen's films is as remote from the real man" as the Tramp is from Chaplin, is undermined by the constant highlighting of his films' biographical borrowings as well as the many fictionally concordant anecdotes told about the 'real' Woody Allen. Yes, he is more successful and driven, and often taciturn, than his comedic persona, but just because you take those few elements away does not mean Alvy Singer might as well be Rock Hudson.
I am happy however that Baxter has dug up a beautiful summation of Allen, from Clive Barnes' New York Times review of Interiors:
A serious and intelligent funny man [but] a lightweight and trite serious man.
July 3, 2022
This is quite an odd biography - which was published shortly after Woody's affair - and subsequent marriage - to Soon-Yi Previn - in that Baxter will often make snide remarks about Woody's films (few of which, in Baxter's view, are wholly original and for which he seems to place commercial success above critical success), but yet he sits on the fence with regards to the Woody/Mia question where you would think from the earlier commentary he would take a more forthright stand. I can't quite work out if Baxter likes Woody or Woody's films at all.
Biographies don't have to be (and shouldn't be) obsequious towards their subject matter (the suggestion is that Eric Lax's earlier biography is, although it's been so long since I read it that I don't remember), but you would think that Baxter would at least have a passing interest and/or acknowledge the long tenure and critical acclaim of Woody's films. Whilst this is an easy read, and unlike some reviewers I appreciated Baxter's summaries of the films as plot reminders, I came out of it not liking Baxter at all. At every opportunity he derides Woody's work, for no apparent reason other than to be different. The overall impression is that Baxter - whose biographical credits are fine and numerous (I remember enjoying his book on Luis Bunuel) - has chosen Woody almost at random, then found he has had to shoehorn in the Woody/Mia situation retrospectively as if it happened whilst he was writing it, and then to go back and unpick the films to fit what we now 'know' of him. And of course, any biography which hasn't had the opportunity to directly interview its subject matter is always going to be a one-sided conversation.
Yes, I'm a fan of Woody's movies. No, they aren't all great. But the balance of this book is skewed. It's not uncompromising, it's not particularly illuminating, its not sycophantic. In many respects, I wonder why it was written at all.
My three stars are based on the readability and pacing and my own interest in the subject matter.
Biographies don't have to be (and shouldn't be) obsequious towards their subject matter (the suggestion is that Eric Lax's earlier biography is, although it's been so long since I read it that I don't remember), but you would think that Baxter would at least have a passing interest and/or acknowledge the long tenure and critical acclaim of Woody's films. Whilst this is an easy read, and unlike some reviewers I appreciated Baxter's summaries of the films as plot reminders, I came out of it not liking Baxter at all. At every opportunity he derides Woody's work, for no apparent reason other than to be different. The overall impression is that Baxter - whose biographical credits are fine and numerous (I remember enjoying his book on Luis Bunuel) - has chosen Woody almost at random, then found he has had to shoehorn in the Woody/Mia situation retrospectively as if it happened whilst he was writing it, and then to go back and unpick the films to fit what we now 'know' of him. And of course, any biography which hasn't had the opportunity to directly interview its subject matter is always going to be a one-sided conversation.
Yes, I'm a fan of Woody's movies. No, they aren't all great. But the balance of this book is skewed. It's not uncompromising, it's not particularly illuminating, its not sycophantic. In many respects, I wonder why it was written at all.
My three stars are based on the readability and pacing and my own interest in the subject matter.
December 3, 2008
This is a detailed description of the guy's life and work...what else do you expect? It's a biography. Anyway, being the nosy nutcase that I am, I really would have liked more on the Soon-Yi element. The book was published in 2000, I believe, and I had to read it for a Lifespan class and then write a paper on the developmental stages of his life. I have been a Woody fan since 8th grade and I will simply overlook his narcissism in a way that only true Woody Allen fans can. Next on the list: the Mia Farrow story!
July 6, 2021
I read /Woody Allen: A Biography/, by John Baxter:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archiv...
The book is meticulously researched, and while telling the story of Allen's life continually also highlights scenes from Allen's movies (and books and plays) that were inspired by Allen's life moments, or that tell that part of his story.
Some time in the coming months I'm ready for a Woody Allen marathon, to watch every one of his films in chronological order over a couple weeks+.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archiv...
The book is meticulously researched, and while telling the story of Allen's life continually also highlights scenes from Allen's movies (and books and plays) that were inspired by Allen's life moments, or that tell that part of his story.
Some time in the coming months I'm ready for a Woody Allen marathon, to watch every one of his films in chronological order over a couple weeks+.
July 3, 2020
If this didn't include so many tedious synopses of the films it would have been much better.
March 14, 2008
I dig him - but he's a weirdo.
July 27, 2011
This is an insightful and interesting read. I enjoyed it thoroughly....
November 2, 2012
chhhharming
August 15, 2013
I've never wanted to finish a book so badly.
Okay, maybe Rule of Four was worse, but this was bad.
Okay, maybe Rule of Four was worse, but this was bad.
January 29, 2016
Good book, I've read one or two Baxter biographies, they are reliable. And I very much like Woody Allen films.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews