Woody Does PR for NYC

New York magazine has published a recent interview with Woody Allen. Allen delivers good, matter-of-fact answers to a set of bland questions. If any of our international readers have footage of Allen discussing 9-11 on European television, we'd love to see it.

NY: Were you in the city on September 11?

WA: Yes, I remember exactly where. Someone in my house—I lived on 92nd Street then—said, “A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center,” and then we turned on a television set and then another one crashed, and we saw that. Two days later I was scheduled to go to Europe. A lot of people canceled going to Europe, there was a lot of fear. I wasn’t afraid, not because I’m anything but a major coward, but I was flying privately. I didn’t think that I could be hijacked. And because I went and I was a New Yorker, I became the spokesman for New York City and September 11. And I was on all the Sunday-morning news shows in France and England and Italy. I was suddenly on their versions of Face the Nation. And they were asking me, is this going to be the end of all humor? (They have a way of putting these things in European countries.) Is this the end of New York? And I said no, not at all. Not for a minute. I feel I was completely right. If you drop a person in New York City now and you drop them before September 11 and they didn’t know, they wouldn’t know the difference. I felt New York would metabolize it, and it would go on. New York would be the same vibrant city. And it is.