Overview

The acclaimed film biographer and author of Young Orson and Funny Man returns with the definitive look at the life and legacy of Woody Allen. The writer, director, and frequent star of more than fifty popular, award-winning, and internationally successful pictures over seven decades of filmmaking, Woody Allen is one of the most consequential American cultural figures of our time. Yet this national icon has fallen from grace nowadays. In this even-handed biography, Patrick McGilligan explores the public rise and fall of this hilarious comedian with a serious bent in his work, whose singularity and non-conformity has proved an Achilles heel.     This is the most comprehensive portrait of the creative prodigy that is Woody Allen. Drawing on exhaustive research, McGilligan brilliantly reconstructs Allen’s misbegotten Brooklyn boyhood and salad days as a comedy writer for Sid Caesar and other television personalities, his struggles to connect with audiences as a bright stand-up comedian, his sidelines as a New Yorker writer and Broadway playwright, and his first side-splitting movies as writer, director, and star, leading to his Oscar-winning Annie Hall and golden years, in the 1970s and 80s, of making some of his best films still beloved by fans.  But it is also a scrupulous account of the darker side of Allen, his three marriages, famous liaisons and furtive flings, and especially his tumultuous personal and professional relationship with actress Mia Farrow, his affair with her daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, and the alleged abuse of his adopted daughter Dylan. McGilligan presents the known facts, parsing questions of guilt and innocence, and examines the case, with its charges and countercharges that accrue to the present day.  McGilligan’s compelling biography astutely links the ideas and themes of Allen’s career to his singular personality and character. He makes it clear Allen is a writer’s writer, and that beyond the smoke and controversy, no American filmmaker has had a greater cultural impact; none has been as creative, productive, or influential in his lifetime.

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9780062941336

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Reviews

""Comprehensive . . . illuminating . . . teeming with fascinating details about Brooks's life and career."" - New York Times Book Review on Funny Man: Mel Brooks ""The author ably chronicles Brooks' career arc from the Brooklyn kid born Melvin Kaminsky to the loudest member of Sid Caesar's writing staff on NBC's Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour in the 1950s to the driving force behind some of the most successful film comedies of his time."" - Kirkus Reviews on Funny Man: Mel Brooks ""Well researched, engaging, and of interest to all of Brooks fans. McGilligan has found a good critical balance as he extols his subject's comedic and artistic virtues while being forthright about Brooks's occasional stubborn attitude toward creative and financial control. McGilligan is one of the few film biographers not to indulge in extensive criticism of the projects themselves, instead offering commentary through the contemporary reviews or financial results of a given work."" - Library Journal on Funny Man: Mel Brooks ""[Young Orson] takes the directorial hero from his birth to the threshold of 'Citizen Kane.' I've only just started it and can so far confess to fascination and pleasure; the wealth of detail and the measured tempo are up to the Shakespearean complexity of Welles's character."" - The New Yorker on Young Orson ""McGilligan's Orson is a Welles for a new generation. . . . McGilligan's book vibrates with uncertainty and risk, and it hums with the possibility that talented people actually can realize their dreams in the forms they choose."" - BookForum on Young Orson ""No one writes biographies of film legends like Patrick McGilligan. . . . It is a meticulous recreation of Welles's life and achievement up to 1941."" - Daily Beast on Young Orson

Author Information

Patrick McGilligan’s biographies include the acclaimed Oscar Micheaux: The Great and Only; the Edgar-nominated Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light; Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast; and George Cukor: A Double Life. The author of several New York Times Notable Books, he has also penned biographies of Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Robert Altman, and James Cagney, along with the oral history Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (with Paul Buhle). McGilligan lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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