“Woody Allen” is PBS’ American Masters documentary airing Sunday and Monday. It was directed by Oscar-nominated documentarian Robert Weide, who produced documentaries on The Marx Bros., W.C. Fields and Lenny Bruce before he produced (and directed 27 episodes of) “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” I gather Weide and Allen grew acquainted via “Curb” mastermind Larry David, who starred in Allen’s 2009 comedy “Whatever Works.”
(UPDATE: I gathered wrong! Weide emails:
Thanks for your nice coverage on the Woody doc. Just for the record, the Larry David/Curb connection had nothing to do with my access to Woody. That was just a coincidence. I've known Woody since 1982 when I filmed him for my Marx Brothers documentary. Anyway, I appreciate your taking the time to cull those quotes, and I hope the show lives up to your expectations.)
There are few individuals I revere more than Woody Allen. I stumbled across “Annie Hall” the other days and was floored by its magnificence. Add to that his books, his long-playing records, “What’s Up, Tiger Lily,” “Sleeper,” “Love and Death,” “Everything You Really Wanted to Know About Sex,” “Zelig,” “Broadway Danny Rose,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” “Radio Days,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors,” “Husbands & Wives,” “Manhattan Murder Mystery,” “Match Point” and “Vicki Christina Barcelona.” Not everything he did was good, but so much of it was perfect. There is no way I’m going to miss this.
... a two-part, three-and-a-half-hour feast for all Woody fans and anyone else who is interested in a prolific, persistent artist's creative world. ...
... Most of the best things in “Woody Allen” have to do with nostalgia, in fact. The first night of Mr. Weide’s straightforward talking-heads documentary also devotes ample time to Mr. Allen’s beginnings as a joke writer for newspaper columnists and comedians and his own career as a stand-up comedian, and while none of this is new, it’s fascinating material that will be unfamiliar to most viewers. ...
... Though silver-haired and perhaps a trifle jowly at 75, Allen is as he ever was — wry, self-deprecating and given much more easily to questions than answers. "Midnight in Paris" may be steeped in nostalgia and sentiment, but the man who made it is not. ... Given context by film critics and academics, fleshed out by a host of Allen stars, (including muses Diane Keaton and former wife Louise Lasser) and arrayed in anecdote by intimates (including manager Jack Rollins, cinematographer Gordon Willis, and co-writers Mickey Rose and Marshall Brickman,) Allen emerges as a man who defied every expectation save his own. …
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:
... Even if your first thoughts of Woody Allen go to his tabloid-ready personal life, there's no denying his talent and impact as a filmmaker. And that makes him ideal fodder for PBS's artist's showcase, "American Masters." …
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
... fascinating … Made with Allen's cooperation and participation, "Woody Allen: A Documentary" is directed with compelling attention to detail …
... does a nice job of surmounting all that has been said before and packaging it into a tidy, informative mini-epic. The film, part of the “American Masters” series, is helped immensely by the fact that Allen, who will turn 76 on Dec. 1, cooperated happily and at quite some length, granting Weide lots of access to his closest collaborators and his thought processes. He answers questions this time around about his work and life in ways that he’s been reluctant to do in the past. …
… delivers a strong sense of the director’s obsessive loyalty to his own vision. … There are tidbits along the way, including the fact that Michael Keaton, not Jeff Daniels, was the original star of “The Purple Rose of Cairo,’’ and that Annie Hall’s anti-Semitic grandmother was based on Keaton’s grandmother. Allen says that “Hannah and Her Sisters’’ is “more optimistic than I had intended.’’ There are also many insights into Allen’s evolution from spoofery to his more character-based comedies. …
... Writer and director Robert Weide got unfettered access to one of the country's great and most prolific directors whose private life and personal feelings about his work had never been adequately captured. Credit Weide, who spent a year and a half with Allen, including at home, traveling and on the set of a working film, for not botching such a grand opportunity.…
... An obvious labor of love, director Robert Weide's 3 1/2-hour "Woody Allen: A Documentary" might be called a warts-and-some look at the press-shy filmmaker, whose staggering movie-a-year pace over the last four decades has resulted in a highly impressive if flawed body of work. Shifting back and forth between the man and his movies, the two-part doc for PBS' "American Masters" includes interviews with a wide assortment of Allen collaborators, actors and exes (the notable exception being Mia Farrow) to create about as comprehensive and intimate a portrait of the comic genius as his personal quirks will allow. … accomplishes its most pressing objective: Providing fascinating insight into Allen's creative process. …
9 p.m. Sunday & Monday. PBS.
