Woody under the SPOTLIGHT
AFTER TWO YEARS OF SEX ABUSE CONTROVERSY AND ACTORS DENOUNCING HIM, WOODY ALLEN’S FILM A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK IS FINALLY GETTING A UK RELEASE. JAMES MOTTRAM FINDS HIM DEFIANT
IN THESE days of lockdown, it’s comforting to know some things don’t ch change. Woody Allen, the controversial B Brooklyn-born veteran film-maker be behind Annie Hall, hasn’t converted to Zoo Zoom – instead, we speak on the phone. He He’s in New York ‘just hiding under the bed until the virus goes away’. So how has he coped with Covid-19?
‘I pretty much stay in the house mo most of the day and I take a walk with [w [wife] Soon-Yi for an hour or so,’ he say says. ‘But it’s pretty grim.’
Even before coronavirus, it’s been a difficult period for the 84-year-old Oscar-winner. His new film, A Rainy Day In New York, a sprightly romantic comedy starring Timothée Chalamet as an inveterate gambler who takes Elle Fanning’s rosy college student for what turns out to be a wet weekend in the Big Apple, is finally getting a UK streaming release after a year’s delay.
Shot in 2017, its production coincided with the #MeToo movement forged following the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal – a case partly exposed by reporter Ronan Farrow, Allen’s estranged biological son. Allegations resurfaced that Allen had, in 1992, sexually abused Dylan, his then seven-year-old adopted daughter with actress Mia Farrow – despite the case twice being investigated and dismissed by the authorities.
Actors – including Colin Firth, Rebecca Hall, Greta Gerwig – publicly stated they’d never work with him again.
‘I think that’s foolish of them,’ says Allen, whose wife, Soon-Yi, is another of Farrow’s adopted pted daughters.
‘I feel the actors ors who don’t want to work with me just don’t know better. etter. They just don’t understand and the case.
And they think k they’re doing something ing good and noble, and protesting otesting correctly. But in fact they are enabling a bad thing to happen. What hat can one say? They y made a mistake.’
Even Chalamet met donated his salary alary for the film to various rious causes including ing Time’s Up but Allen notes that the e actor may have been n more concerned ed about damaging ng his chances of f winning an Oscar scar for his 2017 film lm Call Me By Your ur Name.
‘He did tell my sister [Lenny Aronson] on] that he and his agent thought it would be best to say he publicly denounced me because they had a better chance then of getting an Academy Award. I think he made a mistake. In the end, he didn’t get his Academy Award and he just made a ridiculous pronunciamento.’
Allen holds no ill will towards any of his ex-cast, which also includes Jude Law and Selena Gomez.
‘I would be happy to work with them,’ he says. But his damaged reputation led to backers Amazon Studios dropping A Rainy Day, while his autobiography, Apropos Of Nothing, was ditched by publishers Hachette after protests from staff – though it was snapped up instantly. Did he want to bring his side of the story, surrounding Dylan, to light?
‘I never thought of it as my side of the story,’ he says. In fact, Allen claims he wrote down events objectively. ‘It comes from people that lived in the house. It comes from first-hand witnesses. I never injected myself into it, I did not want it to be a “my version” – he says this but she says that. I wanted it to be the facts, completely independent of any influence of me or anything I had to say. I think I presented it that way fairly well.’
Allen was due to shoot in Paris this summer, until the pandemic struck. And last year, he made Rifkin’s Festival, with Christoph Waltz, a romcom set around Spain’s San Sebastian Film Festival – where he hopes to premiere the movie in September.
‘I’m hoping the virus will be under control sufficiently then so there is the San Sebastian festival,’ he says.
For the moment, though, it’s back to hiding under the bed.
A Rainy Day In New York is available on various streaming platforms in the UK from Friday