Maurice Yacowar

As the projectionist at the Andy Warhol Museum, I've probably projected every Morrissey film there is. & I've watched them indepedent of that. When Morrissey came & talked at the Warhol, someone asked him why he doesn't make movies anymore. He replied "Because I don't like making them." Weird. That sortof sums him up for me. He made some great films w/ some great alternative culture characters - esp drag queens. He seems to appreciate that their personalities are what make the movies. & yet show more he seems to think of his stars as TRASH. I mean, Holly Woodlawn? Fantastic. What did he pay Woodlawn? $25 a day, no royalties. Something like that. Certainly he cd've given them more. The actors were desperate, Morrissey contemptuously exploited them.

if you think of Morrissey as some sort of champion of the blatantly perverse, forget it. This bk, at least, portrays him as a sortof ultra-right-wing republican whose filmic morals are somewhat less than enlightened. Take "Spike of Bensonhurst" - one might think that the depiction of the Mafia's destroying other neighborhoods w/ their addicitive drug dealing (while keeping their own neighborhood drug-free) might be criticized here as an indication of the Mafia's total racism. But, NO, not according to this bk - Yacowar claims that Morrissey ADMIRES the Mafia as a keeper of law & order & as an example to be followed. As for the drug-users? Apparently they're scum who get what they deserve for being so 'liberal'.

Can Morrissey really be this big of an asshole?! I like his films, even though I think he's a ruthless exploiter, & even I find Yacowar's take on "Spike" a bit hard to swallow. STILL, the arguments are convincing enuf & Morrissey WAS a close associate of Warhol's - who exploited people as much as his greedy little hands cd manage. So, dunno. Morrissey's complex - or maybe he's not - maybe he's just a right-wing airhead gay guy (like Roy Cohn) who just happened to be in the right place at the right time to rip people off & run w/ the money. show less

I was unreasonably sceptical going into this, as there were too many simple coffee table volumes on Allen written in the 1980s and early 1990s. But this is actually a very well-sourced overview of Allen's work to 1979, now often considered pioneering for its sensible, scholarly study of the outsider status of Allen's comic persona and his comic stylings. Aside from Eric Lax's 'inside the bubble' books, this is the first really important book on Allen's films, albeit coming when he had only show more made a tiny percentage of his overall oeuvre. show less

A gift from Sherri Turner, this was a surprisingly good choice for my birthday. The book is a critique of Woody Allen's books, plays and movies, up to and including "Manhattan", perhaps my favorite of his movies and the point in his career when I most admired him. Yacowar's analysis is free of non-critical adulation, although he clearly admires Allen as an artist. So did I at one time. Now it's difficult to separate his art from his flawed personal life.

Great book if you need someone to explain Woody Allen's jokes.