October 4 , 1976Stuart Hample, who died last year, in 2009 explained how he convinced Woody Allen to let him create the comic strip "Inside Woody Allen" which ran from 1976 to 1984.
I often wondered why Woody gave the concept a green light. In 1977, he related the following anecdote. He had cast the actress Mary Beth Hurt in his movie Interiors. Hurt regularly phoned her mother in Iowa to reassure her that she was safe and happy. During one of those calls, she proudly announced that she was going to play Diane Keaton's sister in a movie "by somebody you probably haven't heard of, a director named Woody Allen". "I know about him," said her mother, "he's in the funny pages." Woody's manager figured it was no bad thing if his image was disseminated daily out in the heartland.
Ad for the compilation Non-being and Somethingness, 1978.
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