In conjunction with Woody Allen’s upcoming question-and-answer session, Princeton University’s Firestone Library is set to display a selection of his film scripts.
The exhibition is scheduled to be on display in the library’s Eighteenth-Century Window Oct. 21–28.
The display includes versions of What’s New, Pussycat? (1965), Sleeper (1973), Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Vicki Cristina Barcelona (2008) and Midnight in Paris (2010).
The scripts are from the Woody Allen Papers, in the manuscripts division of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
Allen donated the papers to Princeton in 1980. Since then, the papers have grown to 48 boxes of manuscripts, typescripts and other materials documenting Allen’s writing life, from television and stand-up comedy writing in the 1950s and ’60s to the present.
Allen is best known for writing, directing, and acting in many of his own films, and has been the recipient of many honors and awards, including four Academy Awards: Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Annie Hall in 1978, Best Original Screenplay for Hannah and Her Sisters in 1987 and Best Screenplay for Midnight in Paris in 2012.
The papers show the stages of crafting film scripts, from handwritten drafts and notes on yellow legal pads to successive corrected typescripts and bound mimeographed production scripts.
Allen has also been a contributor in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Kenyon Review, and other magazines. The papers contain drafts, typescripts, and proofs of articles, short stories, plays, and other works.
More information is online at princeton.edu.
