Woody Allen's Apropos of Nothing

Finally bought Woody Allen's memoir, Apropos of Nothing. I'm just a couple if chapters in. His writing is very good. It's like some of his movies, the ones that are perfectly coherent and comprehensible but which you couldn't possibly write a synopsis of. Try writing an outline to Radio Days. 

I'm up to his late teen years.

Allen presents his teenage self as a failed athlete, a failed magician, a failed musician---he was good at all three but not nearly good enough. But that's how it was for all of us. We all had hobbies and interests that could never amount to anything even though there were people in the world who earned a living at them.

He eventually succeeded at joke writing. He was in high school and his uncle, an agent, suggested he send them to newspaper columnists who back then apparently threw in a few jokes. Terrible 1950's jokes.

It sounds like, today, Allen would have failed at that, too. It's just that the bar was incredibly low at the time. I've read joke books by successful comedians of the 1950's and they were awful. I just assumed that it was a different time, that if the comedians of today were whisked back in time, no one would understand them. Now I'm not sure that's true.

Allen went into how poorly educated he was which I think is probably true. You look at all the stuff he's said about how bad the schools were he went to. He says  he only started reading books so he'd be able to make conversation with the smart girls.

His great gift was the ability to throw in references that made people think he knew way more than he did. He told about a story he wrote in the fifth grade with references to Freudian psychology. It impressed the teachers, but he knew nothing about it.

Any lessons here for the rest of us? I guess that most of your dreams are probably a lot of work so don't pursue them. Find something that comes easily. Follow the path of least resistance. Allen had to work constantly practicing the magic and the sports and the music and they went nowhere.

I guess he was practicing the "jokes", too. He said he would sit in movie theaters and make "funny" comments about the film. Others sitting close by would either laugh or tell him to shut up.

Ironically, he doesn't want people watching his movies on TV. Wants them to see them in theaters. I still think it's because he gets a cut of the box office. Maybe he wants to give the next Woody Allen a chance to hone his skills.