In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Annie and Her Sisters to his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure.

This is a hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.

Zero Gravity is the fifth collection of comic pieces by Woody Allen, a hilarious prose stylist whose enduring appeal readers have savored since his classics Getting Even, Without Feathers, Side Effects, and Mere Anarchy. This new work combines pieces that have appeared in The New Yorker along with eleven written exclusively for this book, each a comic inspiration. Whether he's writing about horses that paint, cars that think, the sex lives of celebrities, or how General Tso's Chicken got its name, he is always totally original, broad yet sophisticated, acutely observant, and most important, relentlessly funny. Along with titles like Buffalo Wings, Woncha Come Out Tonight and When Your Hood Ornament Is Nietzsche, included in this collection is his poignant but very funny short story, Growing Up in Manhattan. Daphne Merkin has written the foreword.

Zero Gravity implies writing not to be taken seriously, but, as with any true humor, not all the laughs are weightless.

In hysterical flights of inspirational sanity we are introduced to a cast of characters only Allen could imagine: Jasper Nutmeat, Flanders Mealworm, and the independent film mogul E. Coli Biggs, just to name a few. Whether he is writing about art, sex, food, or crime, he is explosively funny. In This Nib for Hire, a Hollywood bigwig comes across an author's book in a little country store and describes it in a way that aptly captures this magnificent volume: Actually, the producer says, I'd never seen a book remaindered in the kindling section before.

Praise for Mere Anarchy

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

The stories in Mere Anarchy deliver the same joys and foibles that have been with its author from the start.
-Janet Maslin, The New York Times

Uproarious . . . In each story the ornate and the vulgate slam together and make it rain polysyllabic absurdity.
-The Wall Street Journal

Nostalgically enjoyable . . . The stories in Mere Anarchy deliver the same joys and foibles that have been with its author from the start.
-The New York Times

Brilliant neurotica . . . unfailingly entertaining . . . an] obsessive and seriously funny book.
-Los Angeles Times Book Review

Like the Carnegie's one-pound sandwiches, Allen's literary slapstick is . . . comedy on wry.
-USA Today

The Insanity Defense reveals many sides of Woody Allen as he holds forth on the most human of urges (Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only for food: frequently there must be a beverage); reflects on death (I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear); and notes the effect on history wrought by trick chewing gum, the dribble glass, and other novelties. There is also an inspiring story of the futile race to beat Dr. Heimlich to the punch: The food went down the wrong pipe, and choking occurred. Grasping the mouse firmly by the tail, I snapped it like a small whip, and the morsel of cheese came loose. If we can transfer the procedure to humans, we may have something. Too early to tell.

All Woody Allen fans will cherish this uproarious treasury-and those who don't enjoy The Insanity Defense are just plain crazy.

If you don't care if you break into helpless whoops of laughter on buses, trains, or wherever you happen to be reading it.
-Chicago Tribune, on Without Feathers

Brilliant flights of fancy whose comic detail and inspired silliness are at once dramatic and controlled.
-The New York Times, on Side Effects

A cascade of comedy and a solid hit on Broadway this affair takes place inside an American embassy behind the Iron Curtain. An American tourist a caterer by trade and his wife and daughter rush into the embassy two steps ahead of the police who suspect them of spying and picture taking. It's not much of a refuge for the ambassador is absent and his son now in charge has been expelled from a dozen countries and the continent of Africa. Nevertheless they carefully

Comedy

Woody Allen

Characters: 18 male, 2 female (doubling possible).

Bare stage, simple props.

A maniacal killer is at large and Kleinman is caught between conflicting factions with plans on how to catch him. Kleinman, a logical man in a mad world, is indecisive and insecure; he doesn't want to get involved but everyone is after him to make a choice. He is even accused of being the culprit. When Kleinman confronts the maniac (who looks no different from anyone els

In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters to his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure.

This is the hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.

Woody Allen's first dramatic writing published in years, Riverside Drive, Old Saybrook, and Central Park West are humorous, insightful, and unusually readable plays about infidelity. The characters, archetypal New Yorkers all, start out talking innocently enough, but soon the most unexpected things arise--and the reader enjoys every minute of it (though not all the characters do).

These plays (successfully produced on the New York stage and in regional theaters on the East Coast) dramatize Allen's continuing preoccupation with people who rationalize their actions, hide what they're doing, and inevitably slip into sexual deception--all of it revealed in Allen's quintessentially pell-mell dialogue.

Comedy

Characters: 3 male, 8 female

Interior Set

Allan Felix has this thing about Humphrey Bogart. If only he had some of Bogart's technique... Bookish and insecure with women, Allan's hero, Bogey comes to the rescue, with a fantastic bevy of beauties played out in hilarious fantasy sequences. Fixed up by friends with gorgeous women, he's so awkward that even Bogey's patience is tried. Allan mostly resembles a disheveled, friendly dog and this is what ultimately charms

In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Annie and Her Sisters to his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure.

This is a hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.