Woody Allen: A Biography

Rating:
Summary: ITS REALLY NOT THAT BAD
Review: If you are a big woody allen fan,like myself.you would see it gave good imfo.even though the author seems to lack research and made him come out as sort of a cold man .woody as an artist still overcomes and wins the readers liking towards him by his work.this book dwells more on his work as apose to the man himself ,explaining his onscreen charecter better than the off screen charecter but there are great storys in on the movies of allen ,and tells how he got the ideas for them.all in all though it is still an enjoyable read i recomend it for any allen fan.....whos only regret is that thier not someone else

Rating:
Summary: Too much and not enough
Review: This book is supposedly a complete look at Woody Allen but apart from the details of the split with Mia, adds little to the Eric Lax biography of several years ago (Baxter takes a few jibes at Lax, calling attention to those people he failed to interview; perhaps someone should remind Mr. Baxter that he didn't interview absolutely everyone who has come into contact with Woody Allen in the past 60 years either). To his credit, Mr. Baxter seems to have a wealth of financial and contractual information about Woody's films that's seeing the light of day for the first time. The question is, who cares? The book often bogs down in these behind-the-scenes passages and I found myself having to resist the urge to put it down for good. There's also a fairly obvious attempt to create "balance" by throwing dirt Woody's way, none of which is too successful. Let's face it. This imperfect man is a creative genius and, biographies or no biographies, deserves to be respected as such. I still recommend the book to Woody Allen fans, if only to say you've read this latest biography.

Rating:
Summary: A balanced biography
Review: This is a very fair, even-handed look at the life of Woody Allen and his films. It is NOT critical of him, as several of the negative reviewers below seem to suggest. The author writes with candor and doesn't censor himself. Those are qualities I expect from a biography. Why read a bigraphy if you don't expect to come across a few warts? I've been a fan of Woody's for over 25 years. I like him. And, I like this book.