One of the delights of Woody Allen’s recently released memoir,
Apropos of Nothing, is its celebration (all too-brief, alas) of Tennessee Williams. “I always wanted to be Tennessee Williams,” Allen writes. “I grew up idolizing [him]. The movie of
Streetcar is for me total artistic perfection… the most perfect confluence of script, performance, and direction I’ve ever seen.”
I wanted to be Tennessee Williams, too, when I discovered his works at age 18. And I’ve been a Woody Allen fan since seeing the Jazz-age romantic fantasy
A Purple Rose of Cairo when it was released a year later, in 1985. Yet only with