HOW IT STARTED:

At The New Criterion, when we hear the name “Woody Allen,” we think first not of his movies but of an anecdote that Hilton Kramer, our founding editor, liked to tell.

ending a dinner at the old Whitney Museum on Madison Avenue and Seventy-fifth Street, Hilton was pleased to find himself seated next to an attractive and agreeable young woman. Woody Allen was also in attendance, but he was on the opposite side of the table facing a large window that looked out upon the street. Of course, the window also looked in upon the diners. Allen announced that he could not abide being seen by anonymous passersby and insisted that he change places with the young lady.

Settling into his new chair, he asked whether Hilton ever felt embarrassed when he met socially artists whom he had criticized in print. “No,” Hilton replied, “Why should I? They are the ones who made the bad art; I just described it.” Allen, Hilton recalled, lapsed into gloomy silence. It was only on his way home that Hilton remembered that he had written a highly critical piece on [1976’s] The Front, a PC movie about the Hollywood blacklist in which Allen acted.

—“Cancel culture comstockery,” the New Criterion, April 2020.

How it’s going: Woody Allen pens new short story for the New Criterion. “Manhattan-based literary magazine the New Criterion has published its first ever piece of fiction in its forty-two-year history. The author may raise an eyebrow: it’s legendary and controversial filmmaker Woody Allen.”

—Cockburn, Spectator World, today.