Woody Allen Quotes
Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.
Allen, Woody. Husbands and Wives. TriStar Pictures, 1992.
This quotation appears to be typical of critics’ complaints about modern media and political reform movements lowing their standards and just trying to provide entertainment for the masses. The reason that it is noteworthy is that it was written in 1909. It is typical of the same class of complaints of 100 years later.
Woody Allen is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career as a comedy writer on Sid Caesar's comedy variety program, Your Show of Shows, working alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart and Neil Simon. He also began writing material for television, published several books featuring short stories, and writing humor pieces for The New Yorker. In the early 1960s, he performed as a stand-up comedian in Greenwich Village alongside Lenny Bruce, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, and Joan Rivers. There he developed a monologue style (rather than traditional jokes), and the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish. He released three comedy albums during the mid to late 1960s, earning a Grammy Award nomination for his 1964 comedy album entitled simply, Woody Allen. In 2004 Comedy Central ranked Allen fourth on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians, while a UK survey ranked Allen the third-greatest comedian.
