From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment, which you can also hear at KCRW.com.

My guest, writer, director, Bob Whitey, has a taste for comedy, well, that runs towards the absurd. He's made documentaries on Mort Saul and Lenny Bruce, his film on W.C. Fieldson and Emmy. He worked with Larry David for years on Curb Your Enthusiasm, And his newest film on Woody Allen is simply called Woody Allen, a documentary

at Renan American Masters.

It's now available on home video.

Bob, thanks much for being here.

It's a pleasure to be here, Elvis.

Tell me, though, I mean, because some of these people you've been interested in,

and going to Marks Brothers as well, are these people who have this kind of interest in

commenting on the absurd or creating absurdity around them.

What did that come from for you?

I always loved comedy.

As a kid, I loved stand-up comedy.

I'd watch comics on the Ed Sullivan show, and I'd stay up late and watch comics on the Tonight Show.

And I love film comedy.

I love film comedians. In junior

high school, I discovered the Marx Brothers. And I think I can literally say it changed my life

and sort of gave me a direction. And then from that, I mean, the earliest obsessions were with

early comedy, the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy. And I discovered the silence when I was in

high school, you know, Keaton and Chaplin and I discovered the silence when I was in high school,

you know, Keaton and Chaplin and all of that. And I loved Woody Allen. Take the Money and Run

came out when I was nine or ten years old. That was his first feature as a writer and director,

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