This revised and updated edition gathers interviews and profiles covering the entire forty-five year span of Woody Allen's career as a filmmaker, including detailed discussions of his most popular as well as his most critically acclaimed works. The present collection is a complete update of the volume that first appeared in 2006. In the years since, Allen has continued making movies, including Midnight in Paris and the Oscar-winning Blue Jasmine.
While many interviews from the original edition have been retained in the present volume, ten new entries extend the coverage of Allen's directorial career through 2015. In addition, there are two new, in-depth interviews from the period covered in the first edition. Most of the interviews included in the original volume first appeared in such widely known publications and venues as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time Magazine the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Playboy. A number of smaller and lesser-known venues are also represented, especially in the new volume. Several interviews from non-American sources add an international perspective on Allen's work.
Materials for the new volume include pieces focusing primarily on Allen's films as well as broader profiles and interviews that also concentrate on his literary talent. Perhaps Stephen Mamber best describes Allen's distinctiveness, especially early in his career: "Woody Allen is not the best new American comedy director or the best comedy writer or the best comedy actor, he's simply the finest combination of all three."
Robert E. Kapsis, Great Neck, New York, is professor of sociology and film studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is author of Hitchcock: The Making of a Reputation and editor of several volumes in the Conversations with Filmmakers Series. Currently, Kapsis is collaborating with the Museum of the Moving Image and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in developing a major career retrospective on Steve Martin.
