IN DEFENSE OF WOODY ALLEN

Recently O.A. Scott, in the New York Times, wrote a retrospective look at Woody Allen. For sport, he took the Freudian route in analyzing both Woody’s work and personal life and while that was intellectually clever it was emotionally empty. It was like reading the review of Hamlet without bothering to go beyond Hamlet’s obvious psychological hang ups.  

I get that he was stylistically trying to look at Woody through Woody’s famous eyeglasses, but instead, I think it distanced him from the deeper levels that run like a rapid human river through the DNA of this story.

A few things to get out of the way.

I have been a professional TV/film/play writer for over thirty years and the two biggest influences of my life have been and remain Woody and Neil Simon.  That being said I was a huge Bill Cosby fan too and just like you, I’m disgusted by his past.  But God just took his second child, so at this point, between his blindness and his losses, I’m ready to move on. Judgement has been passed.  Punitive damages have been paid.

But to me, there is a profound difference between Woody and Bill.

Being a Hollywood player I have long known about the sexual habits of Bill and Kevin Spacey and Harvey Weinstein so it was no surprise when the #metoo movement finally reached the slicing and dicing stage.   Hollywood, after all, is notoriously slow about getting things.  I mean it’s 2018 and they finally got that the black audience was craving an Panther?  It just dawned on them how brilliant and capable certain women are?  They just got that people come in different colored skin?

Let me tell you something about Hollywood.  While it has long been publicly Oscar LIBERAL, it has also long been full of prejudice and narrow mindedness.  Blacks, Asians, women, Latinos: what do those words mean?

Now in the world of comedy, I do feel a certain priority because American comedy was the invention of mostly Jewish men, beginning with the golden heroes of “Radio Days.”   We also claim ownership of virtually all of today’s superheroes.  Superman was the invention of two misfit Jews (American/Canadian).  His dad did have the Israeli name, Jor-el Tel Aviv did not look good on paper, so they went with Krypton, which does sound like the last day of Passover.

Also the invention of Jews: Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor and well, pretty much the entire Marvel Universe.

We also invented the studio system, as every single studio was initially run by Jews: Columbia, Universal, Warner Brothers, MGM.  

Over the decades, Hollywood was swallowed up by corporate America and with few exceptions (that being Disney, which is run by Bob Iger who I went to camp with) the town from that point on was run like IBM with bullet points and retreats.  Over time it has become a cold, calculating and clinical marketing business.

Which leads me circutitiously back to Woody.

After all these years of male dominance and female subjugation (yeah, we own Harvey Weinstein too.  But hey, you own Trump, the Trump family, Pence, Huckabee  and the entire GOP,  so if you are keeping score:  it’s One Bad Big Apple to all of THEM).

While I have been rapturously cheering on the whole new women’s movement I have long been concerned about it getting out of hand.

Full Disclosure I was a molested on the subway by a man when I was a kid and I worked for a man who abused me when I would not submit to his sexual advances.  It was the seventies and words like “harassment” simply did not exist.  So I did what every other woman in my, well, position, did: nothing.  Besides I was shamed.  How can you tell anyone that a man is lusting after you?

Fact: Over my thirty years, I have met A LOT of crazy/dangerous women (and men) in Hollywood.   In some ways Fatal Attraction was a Hollywood documentary.  At this point, it would be relatively easy for some nut job to condemn any man who dumped them.

I am NOT implying that is what is happening now.  We KNOW and have long KNOWN who the guilty are.

Which brings me back to Woody again.  Ah the comedy circuit.

Okay, let’s get the first and most obvious things out of the way.  

Woody has always loved young women.  But so have Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Jerry Lee Lewis to name a few.  Roman Polanski liked them even younger.  Too young.   I actually know someone who had a love affair with Woody when she was young and she is now in her sixties, still adores him and keeps in contact with him.  Women who are abused do not do that.   She loved him then.  She loves him now.  More importantly: she KNOWS him and you don’t.

“Manhattan” was not a film about child abuse.  It was about a man trying to grow up, caught between the love of a grown up woman and a high school girl.   The sexual relationship with the girl was mutual and consensual.  It was tender. It was loving.  It was a MOVIE.

Here’s one of the biggest points that I’m going to make today:  Woody Allen has long been singularly the most transparent man in America.  His films for the most part have been the warts and all MRI’s of his neuroses for all the whole world to see.  We GET his struggles.  We GET his passions.  We get what drives him and often drives him crazy. He LOVES Gershwin, great literature, art, music and women, not in that order.

He hides nothing.  He acts on his fantasies every time he writes or directs.

As far as I know, pedophiliacs cannot contain their urges.  See Jarod of Subway fame and the aforementioned Mr. Polanski.  They leave a well-populated path of disgrace from nursery to nursery.   So let’s begin with that: in your mind, he suddenly had one single urge to act out on his underage daughter and then that satisfied him for life?  Yeah, I don’t think so either.  No one in all these years has ever accused him of being inappropriate with any child.

NYPD exonerated him.  Not much more to say about that.

Look there is no getting around his incredibly awful, awful judgement with Soon-Yi, Mia’s adopted (and not his biological) daughter.  Woody, Woody, Woody.  Right there was the fatal flaw that made the lynch mob want to see him swing from the highest tree.

It is the habit and bloodlust sport of the American public to take on the overall personality of the spectators in the cheap seats of the Roman Coliseum of Ancient Rome.  When we can’t take down a fascist pig like Trump, we go after the next best thing: a big shot star who got caught with his pants down.  Some, like Hugh Grant, survive the embarrassment.  Others like Mel Gibson get town painted tainted.  It’s how we deal with our collective feeling of impotency. See the sexual connection?  That, O.A. Scott, is Freudian.

Now Woody taking naked pictures of the 19 year old daughter of his then girlfriend was, for a genius, incredibly fucking stupid and thoughtless.  But it was not pedophilia.

Let us jump ahead and remind you that they have been married for like 30 years now.

The Woman Scorned.

Mia is missing in action.   

She operates from the shadows world of the Upper West Side, in the most insidious and covert ways.

Things that I know to be true: she’s colossally unstable, over-reactive and given to rages.  Now logically that is the last person you want to infuriate.  So Woody: yeah, no.

Mia had an affair with Andre Previn while he was married to Dori Previn, got pregnant, and that literally drove Dori to madness.

Also: are you kidding me?  Ronan IS Frank Sinatra.  Look at those blue eyes. That face.  Why doesn’t Mia admit it?  Because that would have meant she was cheating on Woody I suppose.  The only thing I don’t get is if Ronan/Satchel wants to have a total biological break from Woody, why doen’t he submit to a DNA test?

Fact: even after the whole Woody and Soon Yi affair was made public, Mia  FOUGHT, despite Woody’s protestations, to keep her role in the film that they were currently shooting.  And there you have some perspective.  

Dylan Farrow.  I believe that Dylan believes that she was molested.  I do not think she’s lying.  What I do sense is that Mia has been working that particular room for years.  Parents can be hugely impactful on the tender hearts and minds of young, impressionable girls.

Fact:  Mia long ago sent Woody an estranged and enraged letter that said that she would destroy him.

Fact:  The week that Bullets Over Broadway opened is when Mia went after him.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Soon Yi:  Was adopted at age nine.  She was the product of a Prostitute who tossed her out.   So who does Soon Yi not trust and probably want to royally piss off?  Mom.

None of this is pretty.  Or savory.  Or without pain.

It’s all kind of Greek tragedy unseemly. 

In the end, Woody did what he had no choice but to: marry Soon Yi.  They have two children and have had a longer marriage than most.

Oh how that must eat at Mia’s kishkis.

The illusion of stardom, is that we have some kind of control and can even claim ownership over our celebrities, in Hollywood and Washington.   Because we see them SO often, we feel that we know them intimately.

Years ago, I went to Barbra Streisand’s house to pitch a movie idea and when she sat down directly across from me, knees to my knees, I shared with her my immediate and most surprising revelation: she was a total stranger to me.  

Because she was tribal royalty there was the same kind of bond that I felt with Al Jolson, Jerry Lewis, Shari Lewis and all the comics on Ed Sullivan.  They were all like family to me. In fact, anyone I loved, I immediately assumed was Jewish.  John Glen? Jewish.  The Beatles? Jewish.  Billy Graham?  Jewish. 

So now, in 2018, which for all intents and purposes is the new dawn of women, I think our wires are getting crossed and we’re short circuiting.

Woody was in the film “The Front” which was about McCarthy’s blacklist and ironically he’s in some ways, trapped in the very same movie.

The court of public opinion, 99.9% who do not know him, have already condemned him because, again, if we can’t destroy Trump, we in the cheap seats get to decide who should be thrown to the lions.

To remain PC in the eyes of the public, actors like Greta Gerwig and Kate 

Winslet have distanced themselves from him.  Extreme?  Uh. Yeah.

I hope that none of you, including Greta and Kate, are serving jury duty when I’m on trial for...I don’t know...stealing that Playboy from Joe’s candy store when I was 14.  I symbolically slipped it down my pants and enjoyed the centerfold all the way home.   If you could have married paper I would have.

We all do bad things.  

Sometimes disgraceful and unforgivable things.  

And you know that most of the time Karma wins.  We are living in Karma rich times now, but we have to be careful not to abuse it.

Power is a heady thing and it more often than not, clouds our narcissistic judgement.   To the sane, gun deaths are horrifying.  To gun owners, it’s all about them.  Who can win in that little debate?

You don’t know virtually any famous person.  You don’t know Mia.  You don’t know Woody.  You don’t know Jack.

I have a wonderful framed poster of Zelig from of all places Poland on my wall and for two seconds I wondered: hmmm. Should I retroactively take it down?

One more second in I knew the answer.  I love Woody’s work.  He is one of the greatest creative minds of the twentieth century.   Annie Hall alone should quality him for a statue.

Let us remind ourselves that Bill Cosby, Donald Trump, Kevin Spacey and Harvey The Invisible Grabbit, have had legions of accusers step up.

The pubic has long wanted to condemn him for the Soon Yi relationship, but this is not the way to do it.  That is a personal issue for the humans involved to work out.

The legal investigation into the mind of a young girl whose twisted mother twisted her malleable psyche,  is not enough for this writer to stand and send Mr. Allen to the gallows.

So unless proven and I mean proven otherwise,  I suggest that you all just back the fuck down and go after some other Trump surrogate, who is blatantly or even Mueller proven guilty, in order to satisfy your need to destroy the toxic, dispiriting, despicable characters who are on full public display in the Walter White House who have long earned your condemnation.

Or better yet, why don’t you head to those bibles of yours and see what Jesus, Mohammad and Allah had to say about judgement, hear say and gossip.

I mean, isn’t that the gospel truth?

Punish those who have been convicted, not accused.

After all, all we have in life is love and death.