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Woody Allen’s First “Midnight in Paris” Was A 1971 Short Story.

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Here’s a fascinating piece by Steve Pond over at The Wrap, who notes that Woody Allen took a fantasy trip to the Lost Generation’s City of Light years before last summer’s sleeper hit Midnight in Paris.

As he got ready for an interview with the famed auteur, Pond stumbled across Allen’s 1971 short-story collection “Getting Even,” which contained a four-page story called “A Twenties Memory,” where the lead character hangs out with authors Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.

Here’s the nut graf:

And when I started leafing through the rest of the book, I was surprised to rediscover that the slim volume (which sported a 95-cent price tag) also contained “A Twenties Memory.” In that four-page, first-person story, the narrator hangs out with Hemingway and Stein; visits Picasso’s studio with Stein; goes to Man Ray’s Paris home and meets Dali; and spends time with F. Scott Fitzgerald, who’s troubled over his relationship with Zelda.

All of those characters (and some of the settings) resurfaced 40 years later in “Midnight in Paris” — though fortunately for Owen Wilson, the film doesn’t include a running motif in the short story, in which “we laughed a lot and had fun and then we put on some boxing gloves and [Hemingway] broke my nose.”

(On the other hand, Owen Wilson famously broke his nose as a teenager, so maybe that helped him get the part.)

The story also includes a cast of characters who don’t appear in “Midnight in Paris,” the artist Juan Gris and the bullfighter Manolete among them. And its events certainly differ from the film.”

Read the full story here.


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