The moment I was convinced about Woody
A lifelong fan of cinema’s neurotic genius watches Allen v. Farrow and comes to some painful conclusions
The breaking point for me came in the third episode of Allen v. Farrow, a gruelling four-part documentary from filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering (The Invisible War, The Hunting Ground) that delves into the allegations of abuse levelled against Woody Allen by Mia Farrow and her now-grown daughter Dylan.
Both women say Allen sexually abused Dylan in 1992, when she was seven. Allen has consistently denied the claims, and has never been charged.
During the subsequent court case over custody of Dylan, Moses and Satchel — Allen had earlier adopted Farrow’s adopted children Dylan and Moses; Satchel is his biological child — we hear Allen and Farrow speaking on the phone. They’re discussing whether she’s a good mother. She says she always has been. “You’ll have a chance to prove that,” he says levelly.
Then Farrow, who was secretly recording the call, asks Allen the same thing. “Is your phone taped?”
Instantly, his voice changes. You know how Woody Allen sounds? It’s like that. “No, my phone’s not taped,” he says. “I’m the last person in the world that knows how to, you know, work that stuff.”
Then a beep; another call coming in. When he picks up, his voice gets immediately deeper. “Yes, can I call you back?” he says to the unidentified caller. “I’m – I’m on the phone with Mia and I have been for the last 10 minutes. I’m not saying anything, but I’m just listening and taping.”
It’s not a smoking gun. But I was more than halfway through this very thorough documentary, which includes extensive interviews with Dylan and Mia Farrow, family friends and acquaintances, journalists and also Frank Maco, the state attorney who found probable cause to pursue the sexual abuse allegation, but chose not to in order to spare the child the trauma of a trial. Dylan says she wishes she’d been stronger at the time. Maco says the decision will “be with me for the rest of my days.”
I stopped the playback. I realized I was convinced. It hurt like hell.
Let me back up. As a child, I adored Woody Allen. Loved his films. I don’t know how old I was when I saw Bananas, Sleeper or Love and Death, but the comedy was infused into me. His word play was hilarious, his mannerisms endearing. He was romantic and funny and really smart, all in the same instant.
He had red hair and glasses! I had red hair and glasses! I wanted to be him. I even wanted to be Jewish. He made being Jewish cool. (Which, don’t get me wrong, it always has been, but not in the simplistic way my Catholic childhood brain saw it.)
A little older, and I started seeing his new films as they came out. I saw Hannah and Her Sisters in high school with a female classmate I fancied. She didn’t want to date me, but kidded that she’d always be my Diane Keaton — Keaton and Allen briefly dated in the early ’70s — and we stayed friends into my university days.
Then I discovered and devoured Allen’s hilarious collections of essays: Getting Even, Without Feathers, Side Effects. Together with the works of Douglas Adams, they remain the biggest influence on my writing. Allen’s quintessential quote, in a line of dialogue from Bananas: “Do I believe in God? I’m what you would call a teleological existential atheist. I believe that there’s an intelligence to the universe, with the exception of certain parts of New Jersey.”
I was hardly alone in my adulation. The New York Times film critic A.O. Scott has written about his long and increasingly troubled intellectual love affair with Allen. In Allen v. Farrow, several other critics profess an early admiration.
“I was a fan of Woody Allen well before I was a film critic,” says Miriam Bale of The Hollywood Reporter. “He makes neuroses hilarious.” Check.
“I felt that he represented me, which was a very weird way for a little girl to feel about a middle-aged filmmaker,” says Claire Dederer of The Paris Review. “He makes you think about that part of yourself that’s unsure and neurotic, and you don’t hate it quite so much because it’s being framed so appealingly by him. He shows something that’s uncomfortable in himself, and then you feel less alone.” On that last point, I know exactly how she feels.
And this quote is instructive. “I get why people can’t believe it, because who on Earth could believe that of Woody Allen? I couldn’t believe it.” That’s Mia Farrow.
The thing is, I believe it now. For many years I’d heard about the allegations. I’d heard Mia Farrow’s account. I’d heard Allen’s protestations that she made the whole thing up because she was angry at him for dating another of her daughters, Soon-yi Previn, an affair she learned about when she found naked Polaroids of her on the mantel in his home. (Allen and Previn have been married since 1997.) I knew Moses had taken Allen’s side in the very public scandal, and that Satchel (now going by the name Ronan) was on the side of Farrow.
But in the absence of a conviction or even a trial, I always maintained that I couldn’t know the truth, and therefore I wasn’t going to pass judgment either way. Yes, his relationship with Previn was weird and creepy, though I was always at pains to remind people that she was not his adopted daughter, because she was not. Yes, his films were full of older men in relationships with very young women, and his writings too. But that wasn’t proof either.
And was that disinterested stance made easier by the fact that Allen was a literary, cinematic and even philosophical hero to me? Yep. No question.
I won’t go through the case as laid out in Allen v. Farrow. It would take hours. But far from a trial-by-media account, it includes much information from the medical and legal establishments that became involved. There is also a video, taken the day after the alleged abuse, that seems to put the lie to the accusation that Dylan was somehow coached by her mother into fabricating the charge.
What emerges instead is a picture of Allen as a powerful, wealthy man with enough influence to, if not convince the world of his innocence, at least make sure that the official record did not find him guilty. Many people still take that view. Many always will.
Allen v. Farrow was not an easy film to watch, and this reaction to it was not easy to write. I almost gave up until my editor reminded me I’d promised to do it. I expect some readers may denounce me, although I must say I will give no credence to anyone whose comments begin: “I haven’t seen the documentary, but ...”
It’s not easy to have a hero dethroned. I loved Allen, and I still love his work, although I’m not sure I can ever again take such innocent joy in it. The question of what to do with fantastic art by problematic people, touched on in the final episode of Allen v. Farrow, is another huge discussion for another day. Do we lock it up? Destroy it? Engage with it knowingly? I don’t know.
I haven’t watched an old Woody Allen movie in a few years now. I might watch a new one (if one ever gets released here) out of professional curiosity. But I have to say I’m happy I saw them when I was younger. It makes what I’ve come to believe all the more painful, but I can still remember the joy I felt in discovering his work for the first time.
If there’s an intelligence to the universe, that’s where my appreciation for Allen’s work lives. The man himself has been banished to certain parts of New Jersey.