‘Shallow’ Allen does himself no favours in score-settling memoir
‘MY biggest regret? Only that I’ve been given millions to make movies, total artistic control, and I never made a great film.”
It’s quite a way for celebrated filmmaker and cultural icon Woody Allen to sign-off this much-discussed memoir. To conclude that not one of his scores of movies would come under the heading “great” shows a bizarre lack of acceptance of the evidence to hand (awards, acclaim, honours, retrospectives, etc).
But to also have nothing in the “regret” ledger about his personal life is perhaps a greater sign of the 84-year-old’s rigidity. It attests to what may be Allen’s most resounding and clear-cut shortcoming — an inability to see the reality of his surroundings at ground level.
Apropos of Nothing is, to put it mildly, as hot a potato as you’ll see in publishing this year. Hachette, its original publishers, dropped the title after its staff staged a walkout in early March in protest, demanding that the project be dropped and an apology be made.
Behind the protest was the continuing allegation by Allen’s expartner, Mia Farrow, and the couple’s adoptive daughter, Dylan, that Allen molested the girl when she was seven. Allen has outright denied the claims, and despite losing custody, was subsequently cleared by two separate investigations.
Dylan and brother Ronan (an investigative journalist who helped expose Harvey Weinstein) have taken Farrow’s side and are estranged from Allen. Meanwhile, Moses, another of Farrow’s adoptees, has extensively written in support of Allen, claiming gross inaccuracies in their story and physical and psychological abuse at the hand of Farrow herself. This is backed up by another adopted child, Soon-Yi Previn.
Soon-Yi herself, of course, would end up having an affair with Allen, 35 years her senior, behind Farrow’s back. Even though she was a young woman at that stage, the revelation seemed to become a piece of supporting evidence in the court of public opinion, the weirdness of it all too much for many people, despite the fact that Allen and Soon-Yi remain devoted partners to this day.
Arcade stepped in to publish Allen’s memoir, knowing he was giving his own account of what was at one stage the most lurid tabloid episode in Hollywood. In an industry hit by pandemic slump, Arcade saw an opportunity in a quiet market.
And despite one’s view of the man and his personal life, he has been cleared of any wrongdoing in the eyes of the law. To burn his manuscript would indeed, as Stephen King put it, be cause for unease.
The Jewish upbringing, the cinephilia, the rise as a comedy writer and a stand-up of renown, and then a move to screen acting and finally directing; all of this becomes akin to preamble as soon as Allen meets fellow New Yorker and Hollywood heiress Mia Farrow.
From here, his tone — selfdeprecating, wise-cracking, neurotic (surprise, surprise) — changes gear slightly as he meets this axial relationship head-on. A large central chunk becomes devoted to the ins and outs of their time together, and the painful ongoing saga that ultimately the youngest family members would bear the brunt of.
In the great tradition of the showbiz memoir, some scores are settled. He decries both the policy of “#MeToo zealots” to always believe the woman (“tell it to the Scottsboro Boys”) and the actresses afraid to besmirch their careers by defending him (“I thought it was ironic as that was the exact reason women gave for not speaking up over the years against their various harassers… not working with me had become the thing to do — like everyone suddenly being into kale”).
Note the glib tone, as if Allen is an exasperated character in one of his films. Elsewhere, he is bruised but transparent. He openly regrets the amount of pages devoted to accusations and admits he is under no illusions it will sway opinion (“I believe if Dylan and Mia recanted today and said the whole thing was one big practical joke, there would still be many who would cling to the notion that I abused Dylan”).
“There are still loonies who think I married my daughter, who think Soon-Yi was my child, who think Mia was my wife, who think I adopted Soon-Yi, who think that Obama wasn’t American. But there was never any trial. I was never charged with anything, as it was clear to the investigators nothing had ever occurred.”
No one will be forced to read
Allen having his say in the winter of his years, and those that do will also have a remarkable career detailed to them from the horse’s mouth, often in amusing fashion. But Allen also does himself no favours, especially when writing about the women he encountered on-set and off.
As he charts his filmography and love life, it begins to feel inevitable that he will recall the women involved in slightly “old school” language.
He boorishly describes French actress Lea Seydoux as “a ten plus”, adding: “Maybe if I’m lucky there’ll be a role she’s perfect for in one of my films, like maybe she could play a love-starved lonely housewife and I could play her personal trainer.” When he cast Penelope Cruz (“one of the sexiest humans on the face of the earth”) opposite Scarlett Johansson (“sexually radioactive”) in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, he can’t help but remark how the pairing “caused each woman’s erotic valence to cube itself ”.
To be fair, it must be remembered that Allen has a track record in wonderfully complex, vivid female characters, everywhere from Annie Hall to Blue Jasmine. There is certainly a gushing air of reverence in his gaze that transcends mere lechery, and craft and skill are always mentioned.
But it is unbecoming of someone his age and stature to be drooling on the page like this, even if ultimately he is always the brunt of his own jokes.
“I’m extremely uninteresting, shallow, and disappointing when you get to know me,” he shrugs in the closing pages of this frustrating book, seemingly resigned to this fate like it’s out of his hands.