As a lifelong Woody Allen fan, I was expecting his autobiography, Apropos of Nothing, would have lots of witty and wise anecdotes about being a man. Basically I was expecting a Woody Allen movie of his own life. That would have been the case if he had only written about his battle with Mia Farrow and allegations of sexual abuse. Instead he mixes all of that mostly with insignificant details about the making of his movies and the people he worked with. It was an unsatisfying read. But to me, he did achieve what must have been his primary mission: prove he’s innocent. Not beyond a doubt, but close enough.

Excerpts

On being born: Finally, I enter the world. A world I will never feel comfortable in, never understand, and never approve of or forgive.

***

God is silent, I used to say, now if we can only get the teachers to shut up.

***

“He’s always flirting with the girls,” one of the sterile drones said to my mother. Yes, I liked the girls. What am I supposed to like, the multiplication tables?

***

I didn’t believe in an afterlife, so given my utterly dismal appraisal of the human condition and its painful absurdity, why go on with it? In the end, I couldn’t come up with a logical reason why and finally came to the conclusion that as humans, we are simply hardwired to resist death. The blood trumps the brain.

***

As much as we whine and moan and insist, often quite persuasively, that life is a pointless nightmare of suffering and tears, if a man suddenly entered the room with a knife to kill us, we instantly react. We grab him and fight with every ounce of our energy to disarm him and survive. (Personally, I run.) This, I submit, is a property strictly of our molecules. By now you’ve probably figured out not only I’m no intellectual but also no fun at parties.

***

I hated Hebrew school as much as public school and now I’m going to tell you why. First of all, I never bought into the whole religious thing. I thought it was all a big hustle. Didn’t ever think there was a God; didn’t think he’d conveniently favor the Jews if there was one. Loved pork. Hated beards. The Hebrew language was too guttural for my taste. Plus it was written backwards. Who needed that? I had enough trouble in school where things were written left to right. And why should I fast for my sins? What were my sins? Kissing Barbara Westlake when I should’ve been hanging up my coat? Fobbing a plug nickel off on my grandpa? I say live with it, God, there’s much worse. The Nazis are putting us in ovens. First attend to that. But as I said, I didn’t believe in God. And why did the women have to sit upstairs in the synagogue? They were prettier and smarter than the men. Those hirsute zealots who wrapped themselves in prayer shawls on the premier level, nodding up and down like bobbleheads and kissing a string up to some imaginary power who, if he did exist, despite all their begging and flattery, rewarded them with diabetes and acid reflux.

***
I led the dullest off-screen life of any actor in film: a nondrinker, a nonsmoker, totally uninterested in any mind-altering experience. I was always wary of changing my perception and would not even wear sunglasses for that reason. To this day, I’ve never had a puff of marijuana. Even Jack Benny in his seventies told me he was eager to try it, and he did and he enjoyed it. But I never had any curiosity and would not join him. That’s another thing about my alleged intelligence: my total lack of curiosity. I have no desire to see the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall, the Grand Canyon. I don’t want to visit the pyramids or stroll through the Forbidden City. And I definitely do not want to be on one of those first rockets to outer space, to glimpse Earth from afar and experience weightlessness. The truth is, I hate weightlessness; I am a big fan of gravity and hope it lasts. I don’t even wonder what all that steam coming out of the ground in Manhattan streets is about.
***

My first Broadway show and I see only actors on stage right. When the broker said box seats, I thought of Yankee Stadium or Ebbets Field, where box seats are great. We watch the show and Roxanne is a good sport. She doesn’t complain but when we leave she passes on drinks and is suddenly stricken with a mysterious illness. I can’t remember; I think she said she was coming down with the flesh-eating virus. Nearing her apartment house, she has already phoned her brother saying she’d be home in six minutes. He is waiting at the open door to let her in, precluding any chance of me making a pass at her. I think how funny it would be if I simply kissed him good night.

***

After all, we are an accident of physics. And an awkward accident at that. Not the product of intelligent design but, if anything, the work of a crass bungler.

***

I hated being a car owner. Like all mechanical objects, we were instantly archenemies. I’m not a gadget lover. I own no watches, carry no umbrellas, own no cameras or tape recorders, and to this day I need my wife to adjust the TV set. I own no computer, never have gone near a word processor, have never changed a fuse, emailed anyone, or washed a dish. I’m one of those addled seniors who needs to have all the buttons on the TV rendered unusable by having them taped over so I can only operate the on-off and volume buttons.

***

For better or worse, I sort of live in a bubble. I gave up reading about myself decades ago and have no interest in other people’s appraisal or analysis of my work. This sounds arrogant, but it’s not. I do not consider myself superior or aloof, nor do I have a particularly high opinion of my own product. I was taught by Danny Simon to rely on my own judgment, and I don’t like to waste precious time on what can easily become a distraction.

***

You have a vision, try to execute it. Simple as that. Judge it yourself. You know if you’ve made the movie you envisioned when you started. If you did, great, enjoy a warm feeling of accomplishment, wink at yourself in the mirror, and move on.  If you struck out by your own lights, learn what you can, which is rarely anything in an art form, and try harder next time. The fact that What’s New Pussycat was a big success did not soften my embarrassment over the film. Yet a film like Stardust Memories, which was not particularly well received, gave me a great sense of achievement. All I’m saying is the fun is in the actual labor. The rest is drivel or piffle—take your choice. I think I prefer piffle.

***
Zelig was about how we all want to be accepted, to fit in, to not offend, that we often present a different person to different people knowing which person might best please. With someone who loves Moby Dick, for example, the protagonist will go along and find things to praise about it. With one who dislikes the book, the Zelig character will get with the program and dislike it. In the end this obsession for conformity leads to fascism.
***

People ask me do I ever fear I’ll wake up one morning and not be funny. The answer is no because being funny is not something you put on like a shirt when you wake up so suddenly you can’t find the shirt. You simply are funny or you’re not. If you are, you are, and it’s not a thing or a temporary madness you can lose. If I woke up and was not funny, I wouldn’t be me. This does not mean you can’t wake up in a bad mood, hating the world, angry at people’s stupidity, raging at the empty universe, which I confess I do on schedule every morning, but it serves to bring out my humor, not erase it. Like Bertrand Russell, I feel a great sadness for the human race. Unlike Bertrand Russell, I can’t do long division. And maybe I can’t transmute my suffering into great art or great philosophy, but I can write good one-liners, which distract momentarily and gives brief relief against the irresponsible consequences of the Big Bang.

***

In Deconstructing Harry I got to work with Judy Davis yet again. I’d worked with Judy on Husbands and Wives and found it an unnerving experience. Why unnerving? Because it was clear she was such a great actress that I was always intimidated by her. I never wanted to say anything to her and give away the truth: that I’m extremely uninteresting, shallow, and disappointing when you get to know me. Consequently I never spoke to her, and she, instinctively sensing I had nothing of value to say, never spoke to me. So we did several pictures where I’d nod hello to her at the wardrobe tests, a weak smile on my lips, and then not see her again till she’d show up on the set. Action would be called, she’d act, always wonderful, always exciting, sexy, unpredictable. Cut. I’d say, Great, let’s move on. She’d exit the premises and I’d see her again on the set later that day or the next or the next week with the same silence between us. Hire great ones, is my motto, and get out of their way.

***

In my lifetime I had written gags for nightclub comics, written for radio, written a nightclub act for myself and done it, written for television, played clubs and concerts and TV, wrote and directed movies, wrote and directed in the theater, starred on Broadway, directed an opera. I’ve done it all from boxing a kangaroo on TV to staging Puccini. It’s enabled me to dine at the White House, to play ball with major leaguers at Dodger Stadium, to play jazz in parades and at Preservation Hall in New Orleans, to travel all over America and Europe, to meet heads of state and meet all kinds of gifted men and women, witty guys, enchanting actresses. I’ve had my books published. If I died right now I couldn’t complain—and neither would a lot of other people.

***

Anyhow, imagine my sadness when not only did [my daughter] Dylan not want to see me but instead wrote an “open letter” saying I molested her. The “openness” is important, as the strategy behind going public is not to resolve anything but to smear me, her mother’s goal. With the emergence of the #MeToo era, the letter could then be fobbed off as “speaking out” and taking advantage of a legitimate movement. The fact that pushing a false accusation exploits genuinely abused and harassed women does not seem to matter.

***

Anyhow, an appearance on TV by Dylan weeping had great weight with the press and public. Remember, please, what Moses wrote, how he described the way Mia would rehearse him over and over to lie. Remember also when Judy Hollister, the woman who worked as housekeeper in the country house, asked Dylan why she was crying and Dylan said, “Because Mommy wants me to lie.” It also struck me as interesting that no one cared that the detailed investigations made at the time concluded unequivocally Dylan had not been molested. For some reason, this fact has always remained an inconvenient truth. I found it fascinating that so many people chose to ignore the facts and preferred to buy into the molestation claim, almost eagerly. Why was it so important that I would be thought of as a child molester? Why, given my unsullied life and the sheer illogic of the allegation, would it not be met with more skepticism?

***

Well-meaning citizens, brimming with moral indignation, were only too happy to nobly take a stand on an issue they had absolutely no knowledge of. For all these crusaders knew, I could be a victim on a par with Alfred Dreyfus or a serial killer. They wouldn’t know the difference. (Even Mia’s own lawyer publicly said she didn’t know if the molestation took place or Dylan imagined it.) Still, that didn’t stop actors and actresses from rushing to outdo one another in profiles of courage. By God, they were against child molestation and were not afraid to say it, particularly with these new scientific discoveries in physics that the woman is always right.

***

Meanwhile, the press lumped me in with any number of men who were charged, convicted, or admitted to sex crimes or harassment of large numbers of women on numerous occasions, despite the fact the accusation against me had repeatedly been found not to have occurred.  Not only did my fellow actors boycott me, Amazon breached my contract and didn’t want to work with me. Schools stopped giving courses on my films. I was cut out of a documentary about the Carlyle Hotel. I was cut out of a series on poetry by PBS. My completed film, A Rainy Day in New York, lay around undistributed in America, though, mercifully, the rest of the world was not so nuts. When I stepped back, I must say it was very amusing to view all of these people running helter-skelter to help a nutsy woman carry out a vengeful plan. So fascinating and, as I say, not a bad idea for satire.

***

Finally, there’s a very different perspective one has when you view something as an innocent person rather than what a guilty man must go through. You relish the close looks and investigations rather than fear them, because you have nothing to hide. You’re eager to take the lie detector test rather than ducking it. It’s like sitting at a poker game and holding a royal flush. You can’t wait till all the bets are in and the hands are shown. But what if I never get a chance to play my cards? What if I’m gone before I scoop up the chips? Well, as someone who’s never had any interest in a legacy, what can I say?

***

I’m eighty-four [in 2020]; my life is almost half over. At my age, I’m playing with house money. Not believing in a hereafter, I really can’t see any practical difference if people remember me as a film director or a pedophile or at all. All that I ask is my ashes be scattered close to a pharmacy.

***

I regret I had to devote so much space to the false accusation against me, but the whole situation was grist for the writers’ mill and added a fascinating element of drama to a life otherwise pretty routine. To a guy whose high point of the day is his walk on the Upper East Side, a lurid tabloid scandal certainly gets the adrenaline going. I agree with what Francine du Plessix Gray wrote when she interviewed me years ago: “There are no great Woody Allen stories.”

***

For students of cinema, I have nothing of value to offer. My filming habits are lazy, undisciplined, the technique of a failed, ejected film major. As for writing, for those interested, I rise and after breakfast, work in longhand on yellow pads lying across my bed. I work all day and usually work at least part of every day of the week. This is not because I’m a workaholic but because work keeps me from facing the world, one of my least favorite venues. I go to my drawer to fish out notes I’ve accumulated throughout the year with ideas. If none of these ideas pan out after I think them through, then I force myself to think of a story to write, even if it takes weeks. It’s the worst part of the process as it entails me sitting or pacing in my room alone day after day, trying to focus my concentration and not get sidetracked thinking of sex and death.

***

I like making movies, but if I never made another one it would not bother me. I’m happy to write plays. If no one would produce them, I’m happy to write books. If no one would publish them, I’m happy to write for myself, confident that if the writing is good, it will someday be discovered and read by people, and if it is bad writing, better no one sees it. Whatever happens to my work when I’m gone is totally irrelevant to me.

***

If I had my life to do over, would I do anything different? I would not purchase that miracle vegetable slicer the guy advertised on TV. And really, no interest in a legacy? I’ve been quoted before on this, and I’ll leave it this way: Rather than live on in the hearts and mind of the public, I prefer to live on in my apartment.