Woody Allen and me
When I was a kid, I listened to a lot of “Weird Al” Yankovic. I still do, actually. But, a lot more when I was a kid. Anyway, listening to Al got me into parody, and I developed a blanket love for anything that parodies something else. That got me into Mad Magazine and Cracked Magazine (which was basically a Mad rip-off and bore no resemblance to the website it has become).
I used to go to the library and ask the librarians to direct me to parody books. And I remember in the Spring Garden Road Library, in the humour and satire area, that was my first brush with Woody Allen. I borrowed one of his books, Without Feathers. And it was hilarious. I didn’t get the references to Kierkegaard (I just thought it was a funny name), but I loved his absurd humour. I borrowed a lot of his books from the library. I must have been 10 or 11 or something. My writing at the time was heavily influenced by Woody Allen’s absurdity.
Mighty Aphrodite: This was the first Woody Allen movie I ever saw. It was in my Philosophy 12 Advanced English 12 class. The teacher, Mr. Wolno, was using it to teach us about Greek choruses (I think he probably also wanted to teach us that Woody Allen is hilarious). It had been a while since he’d seen the movie, so he was caught off guard by the swearing and sexual dialogue. But he left the movie on. My friend Cameron and I loved it, and so we decided to seek out further Woody Allen films. (I remember almost nothing about Mighty Aphrodite. I haven’t seen it since high school, so I don’t know if it holds up.)
Annie Hall: Cameron downloaded it and we watched it at his house during one of our free periods. I remember liking it, but being disappointed that it wasn’t as funny as Mighty Aphrodite. Of course, I’ve since seen Annie Hall several times and I was just an idiot then. Annie Hall is crazy-good.
