Quiz: How much do you know about Woody Allen?

Undistracted by scandal, critical derision or advancing age, Woody Allen continues to produce movies at the rate of about one a year. How many have you actually seen?
  
  


  1. Which of these classic Woody Allen films did the great man NOT direct?

    1. Play it Again, Sam

    2. Annie Hall

    3. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask

    4. Zelig

  2. While still at college, Allen wrote gags for which famous comedian?

    1. Bob Hope

    2. Lenny Bruce

    3. Lucille Ball

    4. Phil Silvers

  3. What prompted Woody Allen's ex-wife, Harlene, to sue him in the 1960s?

    1. He joked about her being sexually assaulted and quipped, "knowing Harlene, it wasn't a moving violation"

    2. He wrote an article for the New Yorker magazine in which he claimed that Harlene would only have sex with him on Hitler's birthday

    3. He held up photos of her and her sister to ridicule them on primetime TV

    4. He allegedly borrowed $35,000 from her to make his first movie and then refused to give it back

  4. Who is the unlikely director of the 1986 documentary Meeting Woody Allen?

    1. Jean-Luc Godard

    2. Ingmar Bergman

    3. Mike Leigh

    4. Oliver Stone

  5. What is Woody Allen's personal favourite among all his films?

    1. Manhattan

    2. Stardust Memories

    3. Crimes and Misdemeanours

    4. Purple Rose of Cairo

  6. The girl who played Woody Allen's teenage girlfriend in Manhattan is the granddaughter of which great American writer?

    1. William Faulkner

    2. F Scott Fitzgerald

    3. Eugene O'Neill

    4. Ernest Hemingway

  7. Woody Allen's most famous stand-up monologue is about what?

    1. A deer who sets up his own taxi firm in Greenwich village

    2. A moose who attends an East Side fancy-dress party

    3. A cow who inadvertently cooks her family at the Carnegie Deli

    4. A skunk who provokes a panic in Radio City Music Hall

  8. What allegedly brought Woody's relationship with Mia Farrow to an abrupt end in 1992?

    1. He announced that he was returning to his first wife Harlene

    2. She discovered nude photos of her adopted daughter Soon-Yi in his apartment

    3. He announced, live on stage at the Golden Globes, that she had grown too old to star in his movies

    4. She discovered that he had made Soon-Yi pregnant

  9. As revealed in the 1997 documentary Wild Man Blues, what do Allen's parents still wish he'd become instead of a film-maker?

    1. A high school maths teacher

    2. A lawyer

    3. A pharmacist

    4. The president

  10. Which of these morbid quotes is NOT attributed to Woody Allen?

    1. "Death should not be seen as the end, but as a very effective way to cut down expenses"

    2. "Middle age snuffs out more talent than ever wars or sudden deaths do"

    3. "I'm not afraid of dying...I just don't want to be there when it happens"

    4. "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it by not dying"

  11. Which of Allen's movies had the working title Anhedonia (meaning the inability to experience pleasure)?

    1. Stardust Memories

    2. Bananas

    3. Alice

    4. Annie Hall

  12. Match Point includes a sequence in which the characters go to see a West End show. Which one?

    1. Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White

    2. Mel Brooks's The Producers

    3. Queen & Ben Elton's We Will Rock You

    4. Cole Porter's High Society

  13. In Hollywood Ending Allen plays film director Val Waxman, facing a serious problem as he tries to complete his latest assignment. What is it?

    1. He is accused of interfering with a young actress

    2. The film's producers demand he rewrite his script for an intense psychological drama as a knockabout comedy "like you used to make"

    3. Funding dries up when his previous film gets a cinema release and breaks records for commercial failure

    4. He develops hysterical blindness

Solutions

1:A, 2:A, 3:C, 4:A, 5:D, 6:D, 7:B, 8:B, 9:C, 10:B, 11:D, 12:A, 13:D

Scores

  1. 3 and above.

    Shadows and Fog. <Br> Nothing's really coming into focus for you, is it? You're a bit like the man in the Woody gag who says he "took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It involves Russia."

  2. 6 and above.

    Bananas. <BR> But don't let it get you down. As Woody Allen himself says, "There are only two things that you can control in life: art and masturbation"

  3. 9 and above.

    Play it again, Sam. <BR> Room for improvement. To quote Mr Allen, "My brain is my second favourite organ" (Sleeper). Maybe you should concentrate a little more on number two

  4. 13 and above.

    Stardust Memories. <BR> Well lah-di-dah. But does your intellect really bring you happiness? We think not. <BR>Alvy (to random couple): You look like a really happy couple? Are you? <BR>Woman: Yeah. <BR>Alvy: Yeah? So how do you account for it? <BR>Woman: I am very shallow and empty, and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say. <BR>Man: And I'm exactly the same way. <BR>Alvy: I see. That's very interesting. So you managed to work out something? <BR> Man: Right! <BR>

 

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