Allen's Alley
The following Woody Allen quote is from On Being Funny: Woody Allen and Comedy by Eric Lax, which was published in 1975.

"The more I was introduced to Perelman and Robert Benchley, I got crazy about them. I think those two are the great comedy writers. I think the most you can say about many of the others is that some of them are sporadically funny. Perelman and Benchley have a much bigger armory of tricks.... Benchley and Perelman are masters of all kinds of absurdities and non sequiturs. There's a certain funniness that Perelman and Benchley have, funny in a critical, hilarious way that Jonathan Winters is. They see life differently and have more funny ideas than Thurber or Lardner or any of those people.

"Perelman is so utterly unique and complex," Woody says. "You can't be influenced a little by him. You have to go so deeply that it shows all over the place. You can't write something that's a little Perelmanesque, just like you can't play a little like Errol Garner. There are so many points that are recognizable. It's interesting in a peripheral way that I'm trying to do names more like Benchley; they have a distinctive style and are hilarious but they are less descriptive than Perelman's."