 half a dozen different psychoanalysts trying to cure him, he faces an even greater struggle to live a normal life - or to find love.
Structured as a pseudo-documentary, this is a film with more than just a clever gimmick. Its special effects, not only in altering Allen's appearance but in integrating him into numerous film clips from the period, were stunning in their time and still look good today. There's sharp political satire and black humour. It's as erudite as any of Allen's work, playfully exploring the popular philosphies of the period, then veering into darker territory as Zelig flirts with Nazism, blending in to survive as some Jews did in real life. Mia Farrow's devoted psychiatrist strives to understand her peculiar patient, but if he should be cured, wouldn't he lose the thing that makes him unique?
Intelligent and inventive throughout, Zelig doesn't quite have a strong enough human story to hold the whole thing together, but considering the scale of what it takes on, it acquits itself very well indeed. It's an essential curiosity for Allen fans and a pleasure for any lover of unusual films.
Pseudo-documentary charting the story of a man whose physical appearance changes so he resembles those around him.People would often ask Luciano, and sometimes me, if he was worried that working in the field of substance use put him at risk for relapse. The question made us both impatient. If there was ever someone who had outgrown his drug using days, moved on to better things, and had no desire to revisit that life, it was Luciano.  It was also a point of pride with him that he “could kick any drug” — as evidenced by the past he’d overcome. Relapse was a non-issue, for us.
What people should have worried more about, but didn’t, because no one including me nor Luciano, himself, knew about it, was his bi-polar disorder. The story of Luciano’s meth use is impossible to tell without it — in the same way that trying to live our marriage without understanding and factoring in this powerful, unseen force shaping the narrative of our life together is part of how our story went very wrong.
Like most new relationships, ours was fun and exciting in the beginning. However, unlike previous relationships, for me, the bad was harder to ignore. Of course, I did still ignore it — that’s always been one of my areas of expertise: looking past the clear warning signs, exercising my highly-developed ability to turn even the most clear-cut situation gray. I have a theory, now — too late to be of much practical use, for me: Whatever the first thing is that sounds a warning somewhere inside of you, but that you shake off so that you can keep on enjoying your new relationship unimpeded by doubt — that will be the thing that comes back as the relationship’s central problem.
The first time I got that feeling with Luciano was on an outing, early on. We weren’t even a couple, yet. We were on a bike ride on the hilly, rural roads of Western Massachusetts, and he was in over his head. It’s not my fault that he’d presented himself as an athlete and an avid biker — though I probably should have known by the fact that he was a two-pack-a-day smoker, saiddrive my bike instead of ride it, and skimmed a foot flat down on the ground to corner.
That day — maybe because he was tired and irritated and ego-bruised from pushing his bike up a long, steep hill, dressed all in black in the summer heat, as I pedaled past him and then didn’t take his need for an extended smoking break at the top seriously — he snapped at me, then became broody, then angry, then implacable, and refused to get back on his bike.
This was a scene that would play out many times in our future life together: Luciano would become suddenly angry and hijack the situation, either refusing to move — for example sitting down on the sidewalk of a busy city street — or the opposite: stomping away and disappearing, leaving me high-and-dry wherever. International airports were a favorite place of his to do this. Or unfamiliar cities, or in throngs of people, or, once, in a tiny town in the middle of the desert — though that one backfired on him: In the absence of knowing what else to do, I decided to go for a hike, and found him sitting on a bench in front of the town’s one restaurant, six hours later, sunburned and desolately smoking a cigarette, asking where I’d been for so long. Or he’d refuse to get on an airplane, scuttle a long-planned trip, refuse to get in the car on Thanksgiving Day, threaten actions that would cost us a shitload of money to correct, get loud in places you could get yourself arrested for making a scene.
When I’d look back later, I’d fixate on my decisions in these early days: Why didn’t I trust the feeling that I’d get, sometimes, as I spent more time with Luciano and these incidents began to accrue: That these strange, out-of-proportion rages were much bigger than me — and not something I was supposed to know how to handle?
Instead, I decided that what Luciano had was a “temper problem.” I liked everything else about him: It was just this one thing (though it was a pretty big thing). I thought we’d deal with it. I thought we would be able to communicate our way through it. I thought his love for me — which was real, and big — would drive him to want to change; that he’d start to understand that his rages were damaging and unnecessary; that he’d see how much better our relationship could be, once he started to get them under control. I thought maybe, partly, the rages were a sign of immaturity, because he hadn’t had practice being in a real relationship before. I thought he would grow out of them.
That day in the backwoods of Western Mass, I didn’t understand what I was seeing: My brand new love interest — who purportedly adored me and was lobbying hard to become a permanent fixture in my life — was ranting at me for no reason. I found it mostly odd. Finally, when it had gone on for a while with no sign of abating, I just got on my bike and pedaled away. Yeah, he was a city guy with a terrible sense of direction, he didn’t have any water, and there were a number of long hills between him and home. But the place was more-or-less inhabited, and he was only a couple of miles from home — I figured his legendary ability to survive anything would carry the day. He called me hours later, completely at a loss as to why I’d abandoned him.
I’d subsequently look back a little fondly at that brief time — when I could pedal away and feel no responsibility for what might happen to him, which became less and less possible, the more our lives intertwined.
My father was a musician, which meant that my family spent a lot of time chasing cheap rent, moving from apartment to apartment, and staying with relatives when we had no other choices. Having no siblings and no friends, I spent a lot of time alone, mostly thinking and daydreaming, and, as I never had a room of my own — just a pull-out bed in the various living rooms of wherever we were staying — hiding under a pile of clothes in a closet.
I always knew that there was something very wrong with me.
 And said there’s only one reason you husband stays with you! It’s because of the BABY! BABY! BAAAAAAABY!!!!”  I had an imaginary friend named Charlie who was made up of three small rocks.
“I want to kill myself,” I told her. For which my mother promptly slapped me. I don’t remember if there was an event or series of events that led up to this, but when I was about six years old, I’d begun thinking myself to sleep with thoughts of suicide and martyrdom. I knew about bridges and guillotines. Soon, my storehouse of scenarios expanded: I’d lie in bed imagining being put to death by firing squad, the electric chair, hanging, crucifixion, slitting my wrists, ingesting pills and poison. I’d use these images to soothe myself to sleep almost every night, for most of my life. The longest they were ever gone was while I was using meth, probably because I hardly slept, but they’re back today.
And while I’ve always known there was something wrong with me, there was also something wrong with the people around me.  My uncles and cousin were always hiding out at one another’s houses, which made no sense to me. The men in my family only smiled when they were drinking, and the women never seemed to smile. Flowers and birds were not allowed in the house. No hats on the bed. No upside-down bread on the table.
Even though the closest I came to murder was through reading about our notorious crime family in the headlines of the Daily News and the New York Post, there was no shortage of violence in my daily life. Everybody threw things, for example, especially the women — usually knives