woody allen

Allen had been publicly funny as a stand-up, published writer and latterly a film performer/maker for nearly 20 years before "40-yo man fucks teenager" became part of his work, and much of that work was about sexual screwed-up-ness at whatever age he was at the time. And American mainstream film was largely in favour of teenagers fucking 40-yos until, approximately, last week: the extreme naif that Hemingway plays is what read as the larger red flag than her age.

CK acted his fetish out in public, making sexual inadequacy and mimed masturbation a major part of his work. It seems that he was sincere in expecting people to find this relatable, and the immediacy with which ppl realised it was him when blind items began appearing in 2012 show there was no fooling. It's far more horrifying that Dave Becky hasn't been cancelled yet (the Golden Globes were two days ago!) than that some audiences are still happy to pay CK.

I don't have enough of a handle on Cosby's rewriting of his persona from stand-up to movie star to TV paterfamilias to judge how much of any of them were crafted as a cover, but he was drugging and raping women through each phase of his career, from the 1960s on.

xps

Cosby as Cliff Huxtable presented himself as ambassador to Blackness. Dizzy Gillesie, B.B. King, the family dancing to "I Got the Feelin'" and "Nighttime is the Right Time," allusions to Zora Neale Hurston -- for a Latino in Miami, I can't separate my experiences with these artists from learning about them from The Cosby Show. He made rather a show of his smarts -- the last credit refers to "William H. Cosby, Ed.D."

sic you're being too harsh to treeship on Cosby at least, while those are aspects of his career that are well known now, his whole thing in the 80s and 90s at least was all about being wholesome and innocuous

yeah idk, maybe if you watched his sitcom or saw him in TV commercials. if you saw his book in every hospital and newsagent, had only seen him talking in a bit of Uptown Saturday Night or Mother, Jugs & Speed on TV. and knew the Eddie Murphy story from someone bringing the tape to a school camp, wholesome Cosby might seem like a fake cover for someone trying to impose control on others.

Yes Cosby had that spanish fly joke in the 70's but there was absolutely nothing else that would have led the public to believe he was capable of the shit he pulled.

He made rather a show of his smarts -- the last credit refers to "William H. Cosby, Ed.D."

I worked with Bill Cosby on fat Albert. He had two of the writers write his PHD thesis.

- Sam Simon (@simonsam), Dec. 17, 2014

sic you're being too harsh to treeship on Cosby at least, while those are aspects of his career that are well known now, his whole thing in the 80s and 90s at least was all about being wholesome and innocuous

yeah idk, maybe if you watched his sitcom or saw him in TV commercials. if you saw his book in every hospital and newsagent, had only seen him talking in a bit of Uptown Saturday Night or Mother, Jugs & Speed on TV. and knew the Eddie Murphy story from someone bringing the tape to a school camp, wholesome Cosby might seem like a fake cover for someone trying to impose control on others.

― grab bag cum trash bag (sic), Tuesday, March 2, 2021 4:09 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

a vast majority of people didn't know about all that shit and just knew him from commercials and the sitcom

like maybe fat albert was as far back as it went, and that was certainly far more well known than anything you're talking about

Being an annoying, scolding social conservative is one thing. Cosby was obviously that. But i think it’s a stretch to think that people in the 90s or whatever should have known he was a serial rapist.

There are different forms of badness.

i mean my first exposure to Cosby was on Picture Pages, teaching math to preschoolers while interacting with an animated marker. then graduated to the Huxtables and Ghost Dad. it's absurd to claim that in the pre-internet era his general audience was or should have been aware of the red flags in his behavior and story

Mine too.

totally

the cosby show, family ties, cheers, night court block on NBC thursday nights was like insanely popular in an era when network television still ruled everything in the U.S. all that other shit, uptown saturday night, mother jugs and speed was like so so so far out of what most people knew about

i feel like we're arguing whether more people heard of "jump" by van halen or "jump" by aztec camera

Considering how Allen continued to thrive long after the Soon-Yi Previn scandal it's fair to ask if people knew about Cosby would it have triggered anything.

i have literally never heard of mother jugs and speed until right now

Cosby was a regular on talk shows, where people would have seen his stand up.

important to note that the Cosby Show's prime was in a pre-Simpsons era where sitcoms were way more wholesome and formulaic - not far removed from the time where actresses routinely got booted off their shows for getting pregnant. someone like Charlie Sheen couldn't have come within 100 miles of a network sitcom back then.

Look at what happened with One Day at a Time's Mackenzie Phillips.

And his LPs were big sellers. I don't remember the Spanish fly bit but his material was generally inoffensive.

I still like Jello Pudding.

I'd bet around the mid 80s he was among the most broadly known and liked people in America

driving in SF is still a great piece. he was a very good stand up.

"Considering how Allen continued to thrive long after the Soon-Yi Previn scandal it's fair to ask if people knew about Cosby would it have triggered anything"

probably, because unlike Allen, Cosby is black and generally people are faster to condemn a black celebrity for shit than a white counterpart (though I guess R. Kelly is an exception here)

Cosby's victims were mostly white, though, while Kelly's are entirely black

good point

fuck Woody Allen for life; i wish i had not allowed him to colonize my brain when i was a teenager.

it's disturbing to me how i totally recognized the misogyny in his movies and how i talked myself out of being troubled by it.

yea wasn't the whole thrust of Jim DeRogitis's reporting that nobody really cares about young black girls

i will not be watching the documentary, but it seems to me that twentysomethings who don't already know all this stuff which has been a matter of public record for decades are finding out about it this way and are appropriately appalled.

yes, it's one of the especially salutary points about Dero's advocacy.

I'm not arguing anyone *should have suspected* Cosby was a serial rapist, just saying it was possible for human beings on planet earth born between 1940 and 1980 to encounter his work or existence outside of a 1980s sitcom.

certainly far more well known than anything you're talking about

The (also ghost-written, like his thesis) book was the fastest-selling hardcover of all time, spent half of its 55 weeks on the NYT best-seller list at #1, and as I anecdotally cited, was popular in at least one territory outside the US. More people surely watched the American sitcom, but that doesn't make the book culturally non-existent.

(Gratified to see that article confirms my memory/impression of flipping through it: the text was so scanty that a whole designer had to be hired to spread it out through the budgeted book's length when it was delivered too late to demand revision.)

Yeah. It's difficult to explain how unfathomably popular Cosby was starting in 1986, one of the more remarkable second acts after twenty years already as comedian/actor. I swear, every Waldenbooks and B. Dalton from 1986 to 1988 had ample copies of Fatherhood.

Some relevant wisdom in this interview with, of all people, Steve Albini (the interviewer is Eugene Robinson of Oxbow):

Some folks who have gotten their tickets punched I begrudgingly still embrace for a variety of complicated reasons. Mike Tyson because he served his time, Paula Poundstone, David Letterman, and Quentin Tarantino? I somehow want to grant a pass. Louis CK, Elvis Costello, Woody Allen, and Roman Polanski I cannot. It's not willful...I just find myself much less interested in their work. Who is on your Keep/Toss list?

STEVE: I respect fighting as a trade less than you, so I was probably off the Tyson bandwagon before it got rolling. Anybody who uses a position of power, status or authority to exploit people who are vulnerable to that power, status or authority is dead to me. I don't care what kind of movies a rapist makes, don't care if other people think they're good, they're rapist movies and I'm not watching them. I have limited attention to lend to other people's art, and I get to choose who deserves it. I'll admit I laughed at Bill Cosby's humor before I knew what a monster he was. Never since. Those Spanish Fly jokes just hit different now.

I've never had a problem with transgressive art, but it sure seems like you can tell when it's just a veneer used to justify being a fucking creep. Always hated Vice, still hate it. Just a parade of gawkers reveling in whatever misery they can observe from an ironic distance. Fuck that shit completely.

Rogan, Barstool, all the anti-woke comics, just fuck them all in the eye. It's trash garbage and I want it all to fail. What if all the stupid shit your racist neighbor you can't stand said was typed up and put on a blog? Nope, still trash, still fuck it. I want them all out looking for work. Into the chipper with all of it.

I was not aware of any Costello allegations.

I'm sure it's regarding his use of the n-word when talking about Ray Charles in the late 70's.

afaik Costello was just a one-time thing while he was drunk right? or is he more Claptony than I thought?

I've never heard anything untoward about Elvis Costello besides the stupid remark he drunkenly made during a Playboy interview.

I was aware of the Soon-Yi scandal at the time it broke and deeply disliked WA based on his annoying nebbishy phony “harmless guy” persona. The grossest thing I’ve learned from watching the show is his obsession with being a “starter man” for the women he victimized — a man obsessed with young virginal women. That’s fucking gross and also so very familiar.

Thanks to horseshoe for piping up ❤️

The thing I’ve always loathed about WA is his self-deprecation— it’s profoundly aggravating and a huge smokescreen

is he more Claptony than I thought?

Costello was drunkenly trolling in a private conversation and has apologised many times since for being a cunt

his use of the word (in character/in context) in Oliver's Army probably doesn't get airplay in 2021, but considering Amazon have multiple paid service reps spending an entire 2021 weekend publicly denying the existence of the invasion/war that the song was about, the context ship is probably permnanently sailed

I should have added scare quotes — “virginal”
bc I think the concept of “virginity” is harmful for this very reason. It fetishizes innocence, which is predator territory. Fucking disgusting and I’m glad it’s in the open at the very least for the young people who hear that his movies are “great” and feel like they should watch them. Don’t bother!

I saw Manhattan once in adulthood and was just blown away how fucked up it was

yeah, as I noted, it's fucked in a way that even stands out among (decades of minstream TV and newspaper) jokes about 60-yo Woody dating 20-something women in his post-Soon-Yi movies.

a vast majority of people didn't know about all that shit and just knew (Cosby) from commercials and the sitcom

Raw broke the record for the highest-grossing theatrical film of a live performance, set by Mr "tell him to have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up!" five years earlier. It still held that record when theatrical film exhibition ended, 49 weeks ago and 33 years later.

move that end paren two words on

don't get your point. Raw is an Eddie Murphy movie. It surpassed Richard Pryor's film take. What's Cosby got to do with it?

sic just move on

it also wasn't even in top 25 grossing movies of 1987

I... said it was Eddie Murphy? and Murphy cites Pryor's response to him as part of the story.

xp yeah not trying to dunk on you or anyone specifically, just had a mo to look up the bit, then checked the date relative to Fatherhood out of curiosity, and saw that coincidental stat.

xp
"... of a live performance"

(if "tell him to have a Coke and a smile and shut up" is a Pryor line outside of this anecdote I'm unaware. always assumed in context that it referred to a Cosby campaign, since Americans in '80s/'90s pop culture mainly talked about him as an advertising spokesman.)

yeah but I just watched it on YouTube, Eddie is just reinforcing and riffing on Cosby's image as America's Dad, he's acting like he's Theo getting lectured.

that was his image, I really don't understand the point you're making at all

he did commercials but he was known for the Cosby Show!


The Cosby Show (1984-1992) was one of a rare, and probably now extinct, breed of American television series that captured and held the attention of vast audiences from nearly every walk of life for year after year of its prime-time run. The show attracted more viewers than any series in television history, reaching more than 63 millions Americans in the 1986-1987 season and posting Nielsen ratings that had not been seen since Bonanza’s 1964-1965 season. The Cosby Show also made more money than any previous series, netting over $1 billion in domestic syndication sales and close to $1 billion in ad revenues for NBC during its eight years in prime-time.