All you need to know about Woody Allen

Yes, it's balanced on the fulsome side of the scale, but one doesn't come to an "American Masters" treatment for the skeletons. These are celebrations of vaunted careers, and Weide has convincingly established -- for those who may actually need convincing -- that there's much to celebrate.

What's best here are the endless details devoted to Allen's creative process, as musician, stand-up, actor, writer and director. He works on an ancient Olympic typewriter that lost its metal cover years ago; in a bedside drawer he has stashed papers on which he has scrawled hundreds of ideas for movies (and revisits them often); in casting matters, he would sometimes -- oftentimes -- spend just about 10 seconds with an actor before making a decision; as a director, Allen was and is a minimalist, too, telling his stars they needed to hurry up so he could get to a Knicks game. Says he: "I'm influenced by Groucho Marx, Bob Hope and Ingmar Bergman. There's not rationality to it. . . . "