woody allen

upfront, I'm going to be clear that I've seen I think 10 of his films…and so I am seeking informed views…

what other artists full stop are there whose entire oeuvre revolves around presenting rewritten iterations of their own lives, and thus defenses of their behavior IRL ? I believe the majority of his films represent his public persona i.e. the way he sees himself, typically involved some other professional pursuit that he considers to be part of the Manhattan/UES milieu to which he is tethered to an obsessive degree… a college professor, a novelist… in these films, he's a neurotic, anxious nerd… but in that he is always the moral victor; the women (or teenage girls) who he seeks see the error of their ways and realize that this little nerd fucks them better than anyone else and is so smart and funny……and the men he is intimidated by initially always realize that he is their superior…and of course, like it is said in the doc, he is grooming the audience re: his preying on teenagers by presenting cute charming versions of such behavior in his films…

are any of these Mary Sues ever shown to have acted in bad faith? Do any ever get their comeuppance? I don't think so but let me know…and seriously, are there tons of other filmmakers or novelists who are so childish that the overwhelming majority of their work is devoted to presenting idealized, heavily defended versions their own lives and behaviors (I guess the Seinfeld was like this)? how many of his films are about something other than his need to compliment himself? It seems that no one has ever been in a position to say to him "this is not a good idea…" his sister must have been the closest but evidently never did…of course he thought he could get away with this shit in 1992…he had encountered very little other than profound ass kissing for the entirety of his adult life…

I also find his version of New York —which is the UES that he as a child wanted to escape to from Coney Island — deeply annoying, as does the impression I have that his cultural interests have not budged since he was fucking, what, 20, 15? Dixieland jazz, european art film, New York sports and the western literary and philosophic canon, mixed and matched over and over…does he ever express interest in anything newer than that, other than fucking females who are decades his junior?

Blue Jasmine is especially annoying because it's supposed to be set in San Francisco but Allen just transplanted NYC to the West Coast, with Bobby Cannavale pretty much doing a 'fuggetaboutit!' kinda thing the whole time

I think the autofiction element of most of his movies is a shitty ripoff of philip roth, who was also a misogynist and a cruel partner and hudband, but one who, to his credit, wasn’t really complimenting himself in these portrayals either. I see allen as a very unsophisticared reader of roth and the movies are like that sensibility shoehorned into the simplistic form of romantic comedies.

It’s like if someone tried to make a version of the brothers karamazov starring mickey mouse and friends, attempting to adapt the themes to that audience

I think you’re right that woody tries to make himself lovable in these films and normalizes his own desire doe young women to boss around. But it is worth noting—maybe—that he doesn’t get the girl in the end of most of these. He is like a stop on their road to self-actualization.

I think the autofiction element of most of his movies is a shitty ripoff of philip roth, who was also a misogynist and a cruel partner and hudband, but one who, to his credit, wasn’t really complimenting himself in these portrayals either.

hence why Deconstructing Harry ranks among his best.

He knew enough about storytelling to disguise the wish-fulfillment aspect, at least a little, add some ambiguity. But that doesn’t discount the way in which the films romanticize himself and the type of heterosexual relationships he preferred.

xps appropo of nothing to trees: i own the english translation of this and it's fun

http://static.wikia.nocookie.net/scrooge-mcduck/images/0/01/Papercutz%27s_First_Page_of_Mickey%27s_Inferno.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000

https://bookriot.com/reading-mickeys-inferno/

uh, here:
http://i.imgur.com/gY2zMhv.png

Lol! That sounds amazing. I have a guilty pleasure interest in “the brick testament,” which is a comic book in which the bible is illustrated with legos

I also have enjoyed woody allen movies fwiw. But they’re not really very original, just entertaining pastiche, which is ok too.

woody allen movies that i think i still like based on my memories of the last time i saw them: Annie Hall, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, Crimes and Misdemeanors... mmmmaybe Purple Roe of Cairo, Sleeper and Alice too.

i loved stardust memories last time i saw it

i think i was in college then though. rented it from the library.

It's the one I tried to watch right after Dylan published her letter, and the misogyny of it is incredible.

I haven't seen Love and Death in ages, but that might be about the safest film of his you can watch now.

Take The Money And Run

So in case anyone else stuck through this doc until the end, thoughts? Frankly IMO this eviscerated each defense point Allen and his defenders have brought up through the years: the Yale clinic 'diagnosis', the polygraph, even the fucking train which Moses was stating a few years ago wasn't there (it is indicated in the initial investigation docs and they showed exactly where it was in relation to where the abuse allegedly happened). I've seen a fair amount of criticism of the documentarians, mainly around their last project (which I still haven't seen, the Russell Simmons one), but that criticism seemed to circle around whether they were sufficiently nice to their interviewee (who was called in by Oprah, and not them, at the last minute). I've seen no substantive take downs of what they've revealed, all of which seems to be fairly factual and damning.

the yale clinic diagnosis thing was the most suspect thing ever. almost unbelievable situation. they had the interviewers destroy their notes, they had woody allen come to do a press conference to reveal that they had decided he was innocent. makes you wonder what other shit was going on over there (or still is?)

The Simmons doc is good

another thing that stuck out to me was the recorded phone conversations: I barely recognized Allen in these recordings, his voice sounded an octive deeper half the time, and none of his mannered stuttering, etc. He sounded downright menacing at times, and at one point sounded ... nuts? drunk? It was in the second episode I think, and he just starting responding to her in some weird, disconnected manner, repeating some words.

If you watch his press conference and every other interview, it seems almost glaringly obvious he's lying. He coughs, for one thing, right before he is asked something direct.

and my take on Moses' flip: I'm guessing he got paid off. Mia was at his first wedding. They have a mothers day card from him to her from not even that long ago. They mentioned his first wife believed Dylan. Wonder what that divorce was like.

How does Mia Farrow come off?

Fine? Like... a loving mother who didn’t really want to do any of this. She certainly doesn’t come across as crazy, manipulative, scheming, or ditzy.

It’s very clear the only reason this wasn’t prosecuted was because the state investigator didn’t want to put dylan on the stand an retraumatize her. He is also clearly haunted by this decision and he apologizes to her for that in the last episode.

I tend to believe the worst of Woody Allen while also believing she was manipulative and scheming. Both things can be true. Does the documentary challenge this?

It’s hard to see how she would be manipulative in this case since there is lots of evidence that she didn’t know that the doctor would call the police; that she wanted to handle everything privately; and she had to be coaxed into even participating in this doc.

yeah, on some of the phone calls it sounded like she didn't want to believe it, which is how an ordinary parent would react if they were in shock.

Look, I've said this before in this thread, but I'm really uncomfortable with assuming that someone describing a childhood of abuse must be lying for money. I'm also uncomfortable with taking alleged abuse victims' complicated and shifting attitudes toward their abusers as evidence that they are lying. Can we please find a way to talk about this that does not involve accusing Moses Farrow of lying about his personal experience of growing up in the Farrow household? It is entirely possible imo that both Woody and Mia are bad people; we don't have to make Mia into a saint in order to believe Dylan.

this was very hard to watch, particularly the clips of 7-year-old dylan telling her mom about what happened to her. horrifying.

one thing that was new to me was how quickly, in 1992, the media accepted woody allen's self-serving version of what happened: headlines reading "woody's in love" and shit like that.

I'm also uncomfortable with taking alleged abuse victims' complicated and shifting attitudes toward their abusers as evidence that they are lying. Can we please find a way to talk about this that does not involve accusing Moses Farrow of lying about his personal experience of growing up in the Farrow household?

Thanks for saying this, Lily.

I tend to believe the worst of Woody Allen while also believing she was manipulative and scheming. Both things can be true.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, March 16, 2021 11:31 AM (five hours ago)

NB that Mia is still a vocal supporter of Polanski:

I'm upset that apparently the Farrow family decided to use a clip of me, without my permission in their film. I hear it clearly does NOT represent my feelings. Sad how so many "victims" will abuse another if they see some benefit to themselves, even a family member in some cases.

— Samantha Jane Geimer (@sjgeimer) March 15, 2021

(and in response to a sympathetic reply:)

Thanks, having my life used by others who seek advantage for themselves is nothing new. You would think anyone who has had someone in their family victimized would behave differently.

— Samantha Jane Geimer (@sjgeimer) March 15, 2021

one thing that was new to me was how quickly, in 1992, the media accepted woody allen's self-serving version of what happened: headlines reading "woody's in love" and shit like that.

There was the lazy guff about autobiographical connections between his romantic life and Husbands and Wives, perhaps to sell an uncommercial film (and still one of his best for those who can still watch him).

Speaking of, several Woody films - including my personal fave Crimes & Misdemeanours - are basically about how there's no morality to existence, you can do heinous shit and not get punished for it at all. Which I realise isn't a thought he came up with himself.

https://www.journaloftheplagueyear.ink/blog/the-germaphobe

I've never been a Woody Allen fan, but I'm also not comfortable making inferences based on the themes or subject matter of his films. There's well enough gross stuff on its own.

I agree in broad terms but woody spent his career inviting us to blur the line between him and his onscreen persona

and it's not like you have to do "reading" on Manhattan, it's the text not the subtext

I know, it's gross. It just seems a precarious road to go down, whether in film, music, literature, whatever. As does the contrary, for that matter. Cosby was a family man, etc., a role model, "The Cosby Show," and so on.

I think we can think about how artist's work dovetails with their personal lives without then jumping to the conclusion that any artist whose work expresses troubling themes must be a bad person in real life

What I found interesting years ago was the non-stuttering, focused guy he was in serious interviews.

I don’t think it changes anything about Allen’s terrible behavior (including trying to paint Farrow as a monster in the press), but white ladies who adopt a bunch of babies from other parts of the world give me pause, and, as Lily says, there’s no reason not to believe Moses’s account of his own experience growing up in that family.

I think some of the stuff from Moses is at least a little suspect. He was clearly enamored with Woody and he may not have had a great relationship with Mia. You can kinda surmise that Mia had her own issues as a parent, but his take that she was the real monster seems at odds with the other (nine?) kids and he seems essentially estranged from the entire Farrow clan. And according to Ronan, Woody was not above bribing his kids to publicly back him. And that major minor authoritative detail Moses dropped about there not even being a train set in the attic was contradicted by police reports.

Some stuff in this was new to me. Woody had to see a therapist about his inappropriate behavior towards Dylan. And that Yale clinic stunt punctuated with a press conference out front “clearing” him was transparently bogus and ridiculous. Some of those taped phone conversations were chilling. Mia point blank asking him, multiple times, where he and Dylan disappeared to for 20 minutes that day and his repeated blank non-answer of “just wait and see, all that will come out, just wait and see” “why can’t you tell me now” “the truth will come out” etc.

Stacking the accusations (which seem entirely credible) with his public handling of it reveals a genuinely fucked up human being. Woody’s charming persona in press conferences seriously dropping this *cough cough* “the wild imaginative vindictiveness of a woman scorned” bullshit delicately stepping around the fact that this scorning was you fucking her (and borderline your) daughter since she was in high school. Also you’re here in the first place because you’ve been accused of sexually abusing another daughter, this one 7 years old. The one you’ll sue for sole custody of shortly.

Fuck Woody Allen tbh. I suspect he’s not a good guy.

he should be shot. i'm extremely bitter about how his fans have behaved over the years tbh

This sent me down a rabbit hole that led to my discovering that Woody Allen has been featured on postage stamps in Togo and Mozambique https://t.co/ol1p2RzXF7 pic.twitter.com/TWO8JcRnhW

— Screen Slate (@ScreenSlate) July 21, 2021

Sorry for the huge embed, but that Mozambique stamp is too good

the eyes on the Togolese one...

i almost want to torrent his new film because i suspect it would be enjoyable in a "so bad its good" manner but i probably won't bother.

A Rainy Day in New York? It's on Prime. There's actually another one, filmed afterwards, called Rifkin's Festival. It has only been released in Spain.

Not even released in Togo, that's how bad it is.

yes, rifkin's festival was the one. i wouldn't even want to watch on prime as i wouldn't like to boost the analytics.