Woody Allen, who during his stand-up days couldn't bear to hear the audience's applause, was understandably uncomfortable introducing his new film, "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion."

"I'm really the worst person in the world to have to introduce a film of my own. I've never done it before," he told a Seattle audience before a screening earlier this month. "Because, if you ask me, when I start out to make a film, when I'm in my bedroom writing it, I always think that this is gonna be the greatest film in the world, this is gonna be my 'Citizen Kane.'

"And then, I actually start to make the film and, as my friend Marshall Brickman says, the truck with compromises pulls up every day, and by the time I'm finished and I start editing it, I just pray that I'm saved from humiliation."

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