When a joke is an autobiography

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

18 January

Take this:

For most of his childhood he was a loner, undoubtedly suffering from an inferiority complex. Consistently depressed and fearful of death, Allen learned to overcome his neuroses with comedy. His perception of his childhood and his inadequacies is now central to his humor. "I was in analysis for years because of a traumatic childhood. I was breast fed through falsies," is just one example.


And this:

Nettie and Martin Konigsberg naturally didn't understand the prodigy they had brought forth [elsewhere described as 'semi-literate'], and were very hurt by his college performance. "My mother was a sensitive woman. When I was thrown out of college she locked herself in the bathroom and took an overdose of Mah-Jongg tiles."


And this in a biography of not Allen, but Diane Keaton!


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