Woody Allen says he'll 'never stop writing': 'It's what I do'

Many actors have distanced themselves from director Woody Allen. (Reuters)

Spike Lee’s two loves — apart from family — are his cinema and this city. Spike once told the Evening Standard: “New York’s the mecca of the whole world. Sports mecca, entertainment mecca. The max mecca of the whole world.”

Then, Woody Allen. I asked him what if bad publicity grows stronger and good stars get tougher and others announce louder how they won’t work with him anymore. His answer: “I’m a writer. It’s what I am. What I do. What I always will be. I’ll write. Since I continually have ideas it’ll be new ideas and I’ll write new things.”

Speaking of movies, Priyanka Chopra — whom you may know more for hitting any camera for every photo in each magazine — was to star with Chris Pratt in Universal’s “Cowboy Ninja Viking” (which sounds like a 7-year-old’s Halloween costume list). Seems the film’s been shelved.

In BC — back when we had bicycles, before cars — roamed sultry brunette screen siren Hedy Lamarr. Gal Gadot’s to be her in some Showtime thing.

Interstitials were tiny TV news insets that could be shoved into a broadcast to lighten, lengthen, or luster it. Now Jeffrey Katzenberg is turning what he called bite-size entertainment into full-time big business.

Soon emerging, as his p.r. gnomes informed us, from some limited-employment fog — which those p.r. gnomes don’t mention — is the not grumpy old Eddie Murphy, whose new project is titled “Grumpy Old Men.”

Olivia Wilde to the Hollywood Reporter about her Democrat wannabe congressperson mother, Leslie Cockburn, 66, running in wherever’s Virginia’s 5th district: “I’ll pound the pavement for her.”

Listen, here’s what they’re saying
So, before magazines disappear like phone booths, I bring you every quote I could find after it fell out of whatever open mouth:

“Westworld’s” Ed Harris: “Thandie Newton should run for office. She speaks her mind and isn’t afraid to be honest.”

Lake Bell on pot being legal in LA: “In the old days, I was a dabbler. Now it’s normalized in our house. We water the plants just like the tomato ones our kids play around with.”

Nick Cannon: “Why I’m here is because I can do so many things. I was put on this planet just to do what I do — entertain people.”

Ditto “Game of Thrones’ ” Peter Dinklage: “This is the role I was born to play.”

Les Moonves to a friend: “I’m being railroaded.”

Ted Danson, asked the same thing, said: “Let them ask about oceans. I’m working on stuff with oceans. I can babble forever about oceans.”

A Ricky Gervais tweet that got a lot of attention was about some polar bear someplace.

But exactly what he said, who remembers? I mean, look at it this way: How much quotable chitchat can anybody make with a polar bear?

“The Americans’ ” Matthew Rhys: “I’m proud of what we did on FX. We did it with no shark-jumping or shootouts.”

LeBron James: “I love attention. I’m not an anonymous guy.” (Like at 6-foot-8 he could — whoosh! — disappear?) “Understand, I’m an only child. I enjoy people.”

At Bobby Van’s West 45th Street restaurant, two gents loudly conversing through petit filet mignon and french fries: “If ‘con’ is the opposite of ‘pro,’ should we say CONgress is the opposite of PROgress?”

Only in New York, kids, only in New York.

This article originally appeared on Page Six.