Woody Allen's films appear as auto-fictions. This is implied by the mechanism of the wit, which calls for an author (the joker, Woody) sharing the same fear as the character involved (Boris, Alvis, a spermatozoid) but mocking its object (the unknown, death) through the character. At the same time, Woody Allen can deny having too close a relationship with his characters. It is not modesty, nor a form of self protection. It is that the fiction involves a fictitious author, Woody, who is not Woody Allen. There is no paradox. There is no paradox when, in Love and Death, the voiceover continues after Boris is taken away by death. Again, it is Woody speaking, as the implicit author of this alleged auto-fiction. But there is a paradox when Woody, through his characters, puts into question his ability to tell jokes. It happens once in Annie Hall, when Alvis Singer is watching an awful comedian for whom he should write jokes and thinks: “If only I had the nerve to do my own jokes.”

Here, the paradox may be solved through time. We could understand that Alvis Singer, and Woody, and probably Woody Allen, had trouble at first telling their own jokes, to stand up as comedians as it were, and in time surmounted this stage fright. We could also understand that Woody, and probably Woody Allen, have had to invent various characters, other voices, to do the jokes they could not tell in their own voices: disguised, in a way.

The problem is when Woody says: “I couldn't tell a joke if my life depended on it.”

It is an essential aspect of Woody Allen's comical wit, as a way to belittle our fears, that Woody should be able to make jokes when his life depends on it. In fact, he should only make jokes if his life was in jeopardy: standing on Pascal's plank, trapped in an elevator, waiting in his cell for his executioners. It may be a one-liner or a long story with a character ridiculous enough to belittle whatever scares him. But joking is his way out of fear, his method to cope with fear. Woody's therapy against phobia has no value if you can't make a joke when your life depends on it.

In an interview from the BBC, Woody says (yes, Woody rather than Woody Allen) that he cannot keep from making jokes, one-liners, all the time, for himself. That is the way his mind functions, the form of his internal discourse: “If I walk down the street, it is like my normal conversation. It just comes out that way.” The image shows Woody walking down a New York street, the eyes on the camera but quite absorbed as if mumbling to himself an endless series of jokes. 

Is it true? I want to believe it is, and that Woody's wit, this elegant solution against fear – the fear of death, and disease, and eight-legged beasts, and the emptiness below your feet – may work. Even if it does not work for me.