A couple weeks ago, Woody Allen said in an interview that he’s been “toying with the idea” of returning to standup after seeing Mort Sahl perform recently. Now, Andrew Dice Clay, who played a supporting role in Allen’s latest film, Blue Jasmine, tells THR that Allen talked to him about doing standup again. “We got into the whole conversation about how he started, and then we talked about where I started, and it really got his juices going again,” said Clay. He added, “I hope he does it. I think he should do Radio City with me, personally.”
There may be no comedian pairing more mismatched than Allen and Clay, and Allen doing a joint gig with another of his Blue Jasmine actors, Louis C.K., seems like a much more logical fit. We’ll see if this Woody Allen standup comeback ends up happening, although I doubt it will since he left standup behind for movies in 1968 and hasn’t really looked back. Here’s what Allen said on the matter in mid-July:
I saw Mort Sahl [do standup recently] … He’s not as rapid as he was when was he was 35. But all the stuff is still there. Watching him, I had the same feeling now, in 2013, as I had when I saw him in 1950-something. Of, “Hey, I’d like to get back onstage and do standup again.” He inspired me then to be a standup comic, and all these years later, I thought of it again because of him … Since I saw him, I’ve just been toying with the idea. I would love to see if I could. Just getting together an hour of stuff to talk about would be a lot of work.
