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Taking Woody Allen Seriously Seth Feldman Foster Hirsch.Love, Sex, Death and the Meaning of Life: Woody Allen's Comedy. NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1981.231pp. EncLax.OnBeing Funny: Woody Allen and Comedy. New York:Manor Books, 1977.242pp. James Monaco.American Film Now. NewYork: Oxford UniversityPress, 1979.540pp. Maurice Yacowar.Loser Take All: TheComicArt of Woody Allen. NewYork: Frederick UngarPublishing Co., 1979.243pp. In his American Film Now, James Monaco advances the not too startling thesisthat Hollywood has become big business. Sophisticated marketing techniquespackage artists and ideas. Talent comes to fruition by following acircuitous route through the many subsidiaries of interlocking conglomerates .Ultimately, the independents become less so. Monaco's Hollywood, like hisdiagrammatic presentation of the importance of various film artists, is a Copernicansolar system. Some stars illuminate; most simply revolve around thecenters of power and influence. Some spin off from the centers; others fallinto them. Monaco is at his best when, with pointed teeth and hardened nose, he pinpointsthe congruence between his inside information and the available statistics.Hisresearch is impressive. And, most interestingly, his findings lead usawayfrom the cliched notion of an entertainment machine grinding inspiration down to the lowest common denominator. His vision is of a giant ''cottage industry" that has lost faith in its ability to develop systematically itsproduct. The mergers and takeovers that followed the collapse of the old studiosystem have not buoyed up the remaining producers. Nor have they sheltered these producers from the accidental nature of creativity and the whimsof public taste. Just as in the old days, there is a scramble after talent, after formulas, after anything that looks like success. But today, that scramble has no real direction. The officially sanctioned patience and Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 14, Number 3, Fall 1983, 353-57 354 Seth Feldman foresight that once nurtured careers in every aspect of the industry have been replaced by a milieu that rewards swarms of interlopers for their ability to thrive on a general absence of standards. Given his understanding of the current Hollywood malaise, it issurprising that Monaco has so little to say about the system's most successful prac~ titioners or its most interesting products. His passages on a multitude of successful '70s directors provide few surprises. At best, American FilmNow is an update for general film references. This, in itself, is no small achievement when, for instance, Monaco provides synopses of the careers of black artists and producers. Monaco's filmographies (to 1978) of his ten favorite contemporary American directors (Woody Allen, Robert Altman, John Cassavettes, Francis Coppola, Brian de Palma, George Lucas, Paul Mazurskv, Michael Ritchie, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg) are similarly worthv desk-top material. His "Who's Who" of other major figures throughout th~ industry is a useful compendium of trade guild directories. Yet-to be just a bit unkind-too much of Monaco's text reads likehis appendices. Films and their makers are categorized rather than criticized. A given film may be influential or typical or in some way out of place, but it is seldom explained in terms of idiosyncratic technique or seen as the inevitable function of a well-honed sensibility. There is not, in this particular book, time or space to let a work stand by itself. Perhaps that isa function of the book's subject, an industry that is better at market research than at product analysis (much less quality control). Nevertheless, there isin Monaco's book very little incentive for someone outside the industry tofind worth in the entire exercise of film production. But what worth is there to be found? One measure of the success of the American film establishment might well be the efficiency with which it links a given sensibility to a mass audience. Can the industry reward someone who doesn't spend the majority of his waking hours simply trying to geta foot in the door? Woody Allen is a case in point. A gag writer, first for gossip columnists, then for television comics and finally for his own stand-up act, there was nothing in Allen's career to warrant consideration for a major film project. It was by ·accident that he became the head writer for a...

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