Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking » (Bargain)

Eric Lax is also the author of Woody Allen: A Biography and coauthor (with A. M. Sperber) of Bogart. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and the Los Angeles Times. He is an officer of International PEN and lives in Los Angeles.

In discussions that begin in 1971 and end in 2009, Allen talks about every facet of moviemaking through the prism of his own work as well as the larger world of film, and in so doing reveals an artist’s development over the course of his career. He speaks about his influences and about the genesis of his ideas; about writing, casting, acting, shooting, directing, editing, and scoring—and throughout shows himself to be thoughtful, honest, self-deprecating, always witty, and often hilarious.

The New York Times - David Kamp

Allen is a big Orson Welles fan—he tells Lax he considers "Citizen Kane" the greatest American film ever made—and Conversations with Woody Allen is essentially the Woodman's chance to do his version of This Is Orson Welles, a magnificent book (published in 1992) that collected years of talk between the orotund "Kane" auteur and his interlocutor-protege, Peter Bogdanovich. Lax is well positioned to play the Bogdanovich role: he first met Allen in 1971, when he interviewed the then fledgling director for an abortive New York Times Magazine profile, and has since spent a significant chunk of his adulthood in Allen's company, sometimes on set, sometimes in the intimacy of his subject's screening room or apartment. Conversations reveals, happily, an Allen who's game to range freely over his oeuvre.