Being a huge fan of Robert Weide‘s Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl docs, I’m delighted that he’s assembled a three-hour “American Masters” Woody Allen doc that will air this fall on PBS.

Cynthia Littleton‘s 4.13 Variety story says that Woody Allen: A Documentary will cover the whole magilla (childhood, early career as a TV writer and standup comic, What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, Louise Lasser, What’s New, Pussycat?, the stage play of Play It Again Sam) through his most recent pic, Midnight in Paris, which will open the Cannes fest next month.

“The prolific nature of Woody’s output has provided me with an embarrassment of riches,” Weide told Littleton. “Even with three hours at my disposal I feel the heartbreak of all the things I have to leave out. In fact, Woody will have made three features just in the time it’s taken me to make this one documentary.”

Things he’s going to leave out? Like what? He’s got three hours to fiddle with.

Allen, meanwhile, has locked down a cast for the Rome-based feature that he’ll shoot this summer — Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Penelope Cruz and Alec Baldwin. (The Eisenberg casting is hilarious — on his own steam JE is the GenY embodiment of Allen’s attitude, personality and philosophy.) I’m just hoping that the untitled film will at least try to use backdrops like the Foro Romano, the Colliseum, Campo di Fiori, Vatican City, Trastevere, etc. in an atypical way.