Posted on 06/19/2015 2:01:25 PM PDT by Borges
Jack Rollins, a producer and a sharp-eyed talent manager who saw more than a shy gag-writer in Woody Allen and believed that the manic improvisations of Robin Williams would crack up audiences, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 100.
His daughter Susan Rollins confirmed his death.
Mr. Rollins did not just boost fragile young egos. To his clients — who also included Billy Crystal, David Letterman, Lenny Bruce and the team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May, an American pantheon of hilarity — he was a father-confessor, real estate agent, psychiatrist, marriage counselor and financial guru.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Nothing personal against him.
But another life that did not make us better as a culture via his professional life.
Comedy doesn’t make us better?
Pretty much every Woody Allen movie was produced by the partnership of Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe.
Their names were always the first title card of the movie.
I’d want that in my obituary even less than “aspiring rapper”.
RIP.
Allen, at his best, was one of the high points of American comic writing. Write there with S.J. Perelman.
Right there :)
Comedy does not make us better.
Comedy can be positive. It can also be negative, just like anything else.
Our nation would be better off if Woody Allen and Robin Williams had lived quiet lives of another profession.
I say this despite their often humorous and enjoyable entertainment.
The implication is that it’s good comedy. Allen at his best was great. How has his work made things worse? Please share. Or Williams for that matter...
Woody Allen never appeared to be managed by anyone.
Comedy does. The likes of Woody Allen, Robin Williams and David Letterman didn’t/doesn’t but that’s just my opinion.
RIP.
His “pantheon” was a pantheon of liberal leftist ethos being made mainstream under the guise of entertainment.
All helped greatly in spreading atheism and in breaking down traditional morality.
Because he was so talented and funny, he was able to have this negative effect.
Annie Hall and Manhattan were much more than comedy movies and were meant to be more.
You’re confusing your opinion of the person with the work.
Count me as one of those who don’t see ‘great’ and ‘woody allen’ together. Chalk it up to cultural differences.
As for comedy itself, at least we are and we still can make fun of ourselves (to a lesser and lesser degree it seems).
We are not under sharia laws yet.
“All helped greatly in spreading atheism and in breaking down traditional morality.”
All should be Allen.
Allen helped greatly in spreading atheism and in breaking down traditional morality.
Allen as much as anyone mainstreamed the New York leftist atheist ethos in to the general popular culture of the US.
LOL what are you talking about? Allen’s comedy routines and films had no effect on religious belief and morality at all.
Nichols and May pioneered an intellectual form of comedy. Nichols went on to direct the films ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ and ‘The Graduate’ which broke all sorts of ridiculous Hollywood censorship taboos. Is that what you’re talking about?
The urban NYC ethos had been around a long time before Allen.
When someone has to resort to LOL, you know they have no rational response.
Unfortunately, mainstream entertainment over the past 40-50 years has served more than anything else to change our morality and ethics as a nation.
Allen was hilarious. I will always remember the bit about how the bullet in his pocket saved him from the Bible hurled by a roving Bible salesman.
And how he was hanging out with Gertrude Stein and Hemingway in the left bank.
That he was talented doesn’t change or negate what I am pointing out.
And I should have to argue about such obvious historical facts at a web site like FR.
“The urban NYC ethos had been around a long time before Allen.”
Exactly my point.
It was just that - an urban localized ethos that had not infected the entire national culture.
Allen was the pioneer in bringing it to the mainstream of soon to be formerly conservative America.
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