Woody Allen: Rabbit Running

"I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear."

HIS deciduous, mud-red hair has been dried in a wind tunnel. His posture would be unsatisfactory for a question mark. His adenoidal diction suggests that he learned English from records —played at the wrong speed. He has the kind of profile that should not be painted but wallpapered.

Peering dolefully at the world through weed-colored glasses, Woody Allen looks like a one-man illustration of the blind leading the halt. Nonetheless, at 36, he has become one of America's funniest writers and certainly its most unfettered comedian. He is also among its most amply rewarded artists. He has produced three bestselling record albums, and written two Broadway hits. Six movies using the Allen talent have grossed more than $35 million. The New Yorker publishes his prose. His last movie, Play It Again, Sam, is doing brisk business in neighborhood theaters across the U.S., while he is feverishly finishing his latest film, soon to be released, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). The relationship to Dr. David Reuben's bestseller is tenuous, and the movie will probably deserve an R rating (for Rabelaisian). In it, Gene Wilder plays a doctor madly in love with a sheep; and Allen plays, among other wonders, a sperm cell, a libidinous fail ure named Victor Shakapopolis, a spider, and a court jester caught by a king in the arms of a queen. For the film, Allen has written sketches starring Burt Reynolds, Heather MacRae, Lynn Redgrave and John Carradine as victims of everything from satyriasis to frigidity. Sex is certain to escalate Woody's current price for writing and directing a film to 10% of the gross. So why is this man weeping?

Family Curse. Well, according to Woody, his ascent has been a series of painful falls. Success hasn't changed him, Allen insists: he's still a schlemiel. "I'm afraid of the dark and suspicious of the light," he says. "I have an intense desire to return to the womb—anybody's." Ineptitude, Woody goes on, is a family curse. The Allens date back to Rome, where they catered orgies. They later surfaced in England in 1500—they wanted to go to Italy for the Renaissance, but couldn't get hotel reservations. They came finally to Brooklyn, where, when Woody was born, the family put a Teddy bear—a live one—into his crib. As a boy, Woody was heavily burdened by the Judaeo-Christian tradition: "When we played softball, I'd steal second, then feel guilty and go back." He wanted a dog desperately, but there was no money. "So my parents got me an ant. I called it Spot."

Obscurity and hard luck dogged him as an adult. He got married, but in union there was alimony. "I kept putting my wife under a pedestal." True, he has enjoyed outsize success, but Allen is 5 ft. 6 in. and 122 Ibs.; almost everything he tries on is too large. His new book, Getting Even, contains a capsule biography of the author. The last line: "His one regret in life is that he is not someone else."