"Forthcoming, honest and very, very serrious." That is how Staff Writer Frank Rich describes Woody Allen, the film maker, comic and virtuoso jazz clarinetist he interviewed in Allen's Manhattan apartment for this week's cover story. Says Rich: "Because Woody is involved in none of the side-show glitter of the industry, from TV appearances to Oscar ceremonies, he is different from anyone else I've met in show business." Rich first met Allen while writing a profile of him for Esquire in 1977. Rich's own show business career began at age 13, when, as an aspiring actor in Washington, D.C., "I hung around the National Theater so much that the manager took pity on me and made me an usher so I could see the shows for free." Watching plays over and over as they were pruned, polished and otherwise primed for a Broadway run is, Rich believes, a great education for a critic: "I couldn't help learning what does and does not work well on stage." At Harvard, Rich decided he didn't work well on stage, gave up acting, and moved to the gallery as drama critic for the Crimson. He attributes his switch to film criticism to inspiration from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey and to overexposure. "You could see more movies in Cambridge in a week than in a year in Washington," he says. Before joining TIME as a film reviewer in 1977, he spent two years starring in that role at New Times magazine and two more at the New York Post. Says Rich: "I've always preferred movies to real life."

Contributor Richard Schickel, who wrote the story that precedes Rich's interview, has reviewed films for 14 years, long enough to have assayed every Woody Allen production since Take the Money and Run. Schickel first met Allen in 1963, when the comic did his stand-up routine on a TV show where Schickel was book critic. In this week's issue, Schickel examines Allen's maturation as a film maker on the eve of his latest and perhaps greatest triumph, Manhattan. To this task Schickel brings his experience not only as critic, but also as film maker himself, having produced, directed or written 14 TV shows about film history, including last year's comedy compilation Funny Business. Declares Schickel: "My list of truly great film comedians is very short. It consists of Chaplin, Keaton, W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers-and Woody Allen."

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