Woody Allen's New Movie Started As A Stand-Up Sketch

On Sunday, I went to see Woody Allen's lastest film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, which is awesome.  It reminded me of BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, though not as insane but more mellow and romantic.  It's about a writer wandering in Paris after midnight who stumbles into the Lost Generation of the 1920s and starts to pal around with them.  To say more than this would be to ruin the fun of this simple but delightful bit of movie magic.

I went with my friend Vanessa, who also loved it but thought the conceit sounded familiar. She referred me to a website that has printed out a transcript of Allen's comedy records from the 1960's in which Woody does a routine called "The Lost Generation" that places himself squarely amidst the writers/poets/ partiers of that era to highly comic effect.  If you click through above, you can scroll to the very bottom and read it. It's probably best to see the movie first but either way the routine is funny and clearly was the seed nearly 40 years ago for this funny new film of his.