Oh, Goody! Here’s Woody

Woody Allen’s first published joke didn’t show much promise of a three-time Academy Award-winning American film director, writer, actor, jazz musician (clarinet), comedian, and playwright. The joke, written when he was 14 and published in the gossip column of a newspaper, read “Woody Allen says he ate at a restaurant that had O.P.S. prices—over people's salaries." But by age 16, he was writing for Sid Caesar, and later, after attending New York University where he studied communication and film, began writing for Herb Shriner. At the age of 18, Allen was writing one-liners for Guy Lombardo, Danny Kaye, and Bob Hope; and by the time he was 19, he was writing scripts for the Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, and Caesar’s Hour on TV, making $1500 a week.

Noted for his cerebral film style, mixing satire, wit and humor, he later became one of the most respected and prolific filmmakers in the modern era. His films rely heavily on literature, philosophy, and psychology for developing the stories and characters. Allen was greatly influenced by the French philosophers such as Sartre and Camus who wrote scholarly and fictional works with themes associated with existentialism, which has its origins in the 19th century thought of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Kierkegaard focused on the deep anxiety of human existence - the feeling that there is no purpose, indeed nothing, at its core. Finding a way to counter this nothingness, by embracing existence, is the fundamental theme of existentialism, and the explanation for the philosophy's name. While someone who claims to believe in reality might be called a "realist," or someone who believes in a deity a "theist," someone who believes fundamentally only in existence, and seeks to find meaning in his or her life solely by embracing existence, is an existentialist.

In 1961, when Woody Allen became a stand-up comedian, he developed his persona: a comical New Yorker in nebbishy glasses, brainy, neurotic, nervous, and intellectual in outlook. This persona also permeates his films.

When Allen started out doing stand-up comedy in Greenwich Village clubs, young people sat in cafés reading books like Sartre's "Being and Nothingness," and debated man's fate late into the night. In the 1950s, when the French existentialists loomed large, philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus argued that life has no God-given purpose, and that only man's choices and struggles give it meaning. Allen found himself turning to the same questions. "What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists?" he wondered. "In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet." In “Getting Even”, Allen has a man asking his uncle: "Could it not be simply that we are alone and aimless, doomed to wander in an indifferent universe, with no hope of salvation, nor any prospect except misery, death, and the empty reality of eternal nothing?" The uncle replies, "And you wonder why you're not invited to more parties."

Here are some of my favorite Woody Allen quotes:

1. I took a speed reading course and read “War and Peace” in twenty minutes. It’s about Russia.
2. Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.
3. Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.
4. Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.
5. Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.

6. Eighty percent of success is just showing up.
7. I am not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.
8. I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it's the government.
9. I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick. Not wounded. Dead.
10. I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.

11. I'm such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own.
12. My luck is getting worse and worse. Last night, for instance, I was mugged by a Quaker.
13. The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.
14. Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
15. You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred

16. I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.
17. His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy.
18. I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.
19. If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank.
20. A fast word about oral contraception. I asked a girl to go to bed with me, and she said, “No!”

21. I remember when I was a little boy, I once stole a pornographic book that was printed in Braille. I used to rub the dirty parts.

22. What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?

23. The only time my wife and I had a simultaneous orgasm was when the judge signed the divorce papers.

24. Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over again. God - I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.

25. But she was so sweet, and we just walked in the park, and I was so touched by her that, after fifteen minutes, I wanted to marry her and, after half an hour, I completely gave up the idea of snatching her purse.

26. To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.

What favorite Woody Allen lines do you have to add to my post?

ADDENDUM:

To those bloggers who condemn Woody Allen as a child molester, here are the facts:

Woody’s Defense

If you know Allen is a “Child Molester” you better have something more concrete than Mia Farrow’s word. Just as relying on Jerry Falwell’s assertion that Bill and Hillary murdered a dozen or so people in Arkansas while running drugs out of Mena lacks corroboration.

Soon-Yi was 8 years old when adopted by Mia Farrow and the conductor Andre Previn during a trip to Korea.

Mia Farrow, who starred in many of Allen's films, was his companion for more than a decade, although, as Allen has pointed out, the couple never lived together, and spent their nights at separate homes. In 1992, the relationship between her adopted daughter Soon-Yi and Allen came to light when Mia discovered nude pictures of Ms. Previn, who was then 21, in Allen's apartment.

The messy aftermath centered on a bitter custody battle for Satchel, the biological son of Mia and Allen, and their adopted daughter, Dylan.

During the custody case, Mia accused Allen of fondling Dylan. Allen WAS CLEARED of all charges.

Moviegoers may be more willing to accept a married Allen, said former Mayor Edward I. Koch. "Like many, I had trouble with the fact that people thought that she was his unofficial stepdaughter," he said. "But with the passage of time, I don't feel that anymore. And I think this marriage will play well."

He added, "Who knows, maybe this marriage means that Woody Allen can get off the psychiatrist's couch."

Please note that after being accused of molesting Dylan, Woody Allen was cleared of all charges. Also, note that the nude pictures of Soon-Yi were taken when she was 21 years old.