Allen’s surprise appearances at this year’s Academy Awards and Cannes Film Festival are merely two examples of a puzzling trend, Allen experts say, with more than 837 documented Woody Allen sightings in the calendar year so far.
While Woody Allen sightings have long been the stuff of urban legend, many have recently occurred in rural areas as well, further baffling Woody Allen experts such as Dr. Adrian Keough of the University of Minnesota. “It’s not like Woody to show up in areas where there’s no easy access to psychiatrists or Gershwin recordings,” Dr. Keough says. “What’s happening here is completely off the grid.”
Case in point: Frank Hargus, a farmer in Ruxton, Kans., said he spotted “a short, skinny guy with glasses who answered to the name Woody Allen” walking across his cornfields at dusk on Tuesday of last week.
Allen offered no explanation for what he was doing among Mr. Hargus’s crops, but sat in Hargus’s kitchen for several hours regaling the farmer with stories of actor Tony Roberts, the New York Knicks and Allen’s European jazz tour of several years back.
After several hours, farmer Hargus finally asked the bespectacled auteur to leave.
“I have to get up pretty early in the morning,” Hargus explained.
Allen expert Keough has simple advice for those who might suddenly find Woody Allen on their doorstep: Remain calm. “I’ve studied Woody Allen for years,” Professor Keough says. “He means no harm.”
