Summarized at Gawker, after Mia and Ronan Farrow tweeted hostility when Woody was honored at the Golden Globes. Some interesting comments over there:
Yeah, you left out the part where an independent panel of child abuse experts and social workers interviewed all parties for months and formally determined that a) no sexual abuse occurred; b) Farrow manipulated her daughter, filmed herself and Dylan talking about the alleged incident and asked her leading questions to get her to accuse Allen after c) Allen dumped her for a grown woman whom he never raised or treated like a daughter.
Also, there's that pesky problem of Woody Allen never saying a bad word about any of those kids, despite the horrible things they've said about him, and leading a fairly quiet life (though not necessarily normal) life with his wife of 20 years, while Mia Farrow continues to be a batshit train wreck. Meanwhile, Dylan (for whom I feel a great kinship and sadness, so no victim blaming here) admits she has almost no memory of what she acknowledges was an isolated incident. And then there's Mia Farrow's brother, who is a convicted child molester and who had regular access to Farrow's kids. Funny how you skipped all that.
But thanks for the unbelievably loaded accusations and misrepresentations of a man who was never charged with such a horrible crime, or any crime at all for that matter, even after being investigated by a small army of psychiatrists and police for years. Classy move, Gawker.
p.s. If I were Woody Allen, I'd sue the shit out of Vanity Fair, because even a high school journalist can check the court records and find massive holes in the fluff pieces they've published for Farrow. But he doesn't sue, because, as he's said repeatedly, he doesn't want to put the children through that. And I'm supposed to think Mia Farrow is the dignified one for tweeting rape jokes?!
And:
Not saying this out of any fanboyish loyalty to Allen, or anything like that (I haven't seen most of his films, and those I have seen underwhelmed me), but I feel like the vitriol from Mia and Ronan is too much. I mean, Twitter has existed since 2006, social media in general for much longer than that, and only within the past couple years we're suddenly getting this big blitz from them over Allen's alleged wrongdoing? What new event has occurred—remember, the allegations from Dylan are old news, and were hashed out legally back in the 90s—that warrants this renewed verbal assault? It all feels so out-of-the-blue and spiteful, not exactly the best qualities for serious allegations regarding on sexual assault to have. Both Mia and Ronan seem like they're using these allegations not as a means by which Allen might be brought to justice, but as bludgeons to beat him with. As much as I would detest Allen for doing these things if they were proven true, I feel like there's a note of trivialization in how Mia and Ronan are deploying their statements. Allen, by contrast, has—whatever you want to think about the guy—been "classy" about it. He's not waging his own Twitter war or running to the media to tell his side of the story. I think it's too easy to jump to the conclusion that Allen "deserves" what he's getting here, but we need to remember that, as unconventional as his relationship with and marriage to Soon-Yi may be, that's really the only "bad thing" (and it's more weird than bad when you come down to it) that's been proven about him. People have chosen to assume that all the rest must be true, not knowing the truth itself, merely because his current marriage had a strange, highly uncommon genesis.
And:
For all of you, TLDR folks:
TLDR: I like his movies, therefore he's innocent
And:
I don't particularly like his movies, and I was raped by someone who never went to jail for it. I don't accuse victims, I don't defend predators. And yet I don't believe a word of Farrow's accusations because I've actually bothered to learn some facts about the case.
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49 comments:
There's reasonable doubt on the molestation charge, but without doubt he terminated his relationship with Mia in a way that was bound to inflict maximum pain on her and his family. He's not classy. He's a cad who's smart enough to know that anything he says in his own defense would simply confound the offense.......I like some of his movies, and many of his quips are witty and wise. But for all that he has some major deficits as a human being.
Hmmmm....I thought Ronan was going to follow the Obama plan, and keep an empty resume.
A tweet here, a twat there, and pretty soon people can really see who you are.
They are all weird. Roman Polansky could not be reached for comment. Vladimir Nabokov was unavailable.
Hey William,
"an independent panel of child abuse experts and social workers interviewed all parties for months and formally determined that a) no sexual abuse occurred; b) Farrow manipulated her daughter, filmed herself and Dylan talking about the alleged incident and asked her leading questions to get her to accuse Allen after c) Allen dumped her for a grown woman whom he never raised or treated like a daughter..."
is well beyond "reasonable doubt" and into "malicious and false accusations to gain advantage in the child custody hearing" territory.
Did Woody drug and anally fuck Soon Yi when she was 13? If he didn't, then why is Roman Polansky being brought up?
Because DIRTY OLD MAN?!?
What a bunch of teenage gossips some people become when it comes to this issue.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Just think, there probably would have been an uncontested winner in this media-PR battle if Farrow and Allen didn't have their own constituencies on the cultural left, or if one of them was conservative.
Mia is entitled to her grudge. So is Ronan. If your father or step fathe did something like that to your mother, wouldn't you? When someone inflicts a great harm on you or someone you love, it is extremely difficult to respond in a measured way.......Mia was an effective and loving mother. Her kids have passed into adulthood without serious problems. No thanks to Woody. He's definitely the bad guy.
Woody has been getting good publicity lately for his films. Mia has been getting no publicity for much of anything. Ronan is trying to make the transition from Whiz Kid to Important Person.
Thus the guaranteed front page reaccusations.
I'm biased, because Mia Farrow reminds me too much of Gwyneth Paltrow, but I have to take Allen's side on this. The allegations against him were thin to begin with, and this was dropped by the court system twenty years ago. At this point this "actress" who was never any good to begin with and her nobody of a son are crossing the line to defaming Allen. Leave the guy alone and go back to being forgotten by the movie-going public.
Mia Farrow was 19 years old when she married Frank Sinatra, who was 51. She maintains to this day that Frank was the love of her life.
That's why I've always thought that Mia's outrage at Woody and Soon-Yi was of the manufactured variety. She may have been motivated by the sight of the gravy train chugging off into the sunset.
Woody Allen is a bad dad. Mia Farrow is a terrible mom. Narcissists being narcissists. Ronan is old enough to start breaking the cycle of narcissism. Cut the apron strings and be your own man.
In ref. to Dylan": "She claims that Allen told her it was their secret, but said it made her feel that she was a 'bad kid', stating she told her mother because she was 'cracking' and wanted the alleged abuse to stop
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2538684/Mia-Farrows-artist-daughter-allegedly-molested-Woody-Allen-told-bitterly-regrets-never-testifying-against-him.html#ixzz2qOXqUj7N
Woody has the shtick of the wise, self deprecating humanist down pat. "The heart wants what the heart wants." Oh, bullshit.....I can understand and even sympathize with a guy who falls in love with a nineteen year old girl. I'm supportive of Charley Sheen. There's no better way of dealing with a mid life crisis than by holing up in a luxury suite with a mountain of cocaine and a tag team of porn stars, The heart wants what the heart wants......But Soon-Yi wasn't just any nineteen year old girl. She was his girlfriend's daughter and his son's sister. His seduction of Soon Yi was an act of calculated and profound malice......Did Mia Farrow overreact to the offense? Did George Zimmerman overreact to being punched and having his head pounded on the pavement?
A long time ago some actress Allen had been dating said he was incapable of having a relationship with an adult woman. They became his mother and his aunts in his mind--scary authority figures. And once he saw them that way he could no longer perform sexually with them. There has always been a lot of talk about the young actresses he surrounds himself with in his projects and before, in the planning stages--some of them underage. It's not intercourse with them--or at least nothing has come out--but it is touching, kisses, sniffing, taking clothing, and other conduct totally inappropriate.
Are there other examples? Elvis was said to have never touched Priscilla again after she had his daughter. She was a mommy then, in his eyes, someone to be completely separated from sexual thoughts.
How come people can't read that we are not talking about Soon Yi, but Dylan, then age 7?
"Vladimir Nabokov was unavailable."
Nabakov was not a child molester.
If anyone remembers Mia Farrow 50 years from now, it will be because she was once in a Woody Allen movie. I can see how that might fuel some bitterness.
William said...
His seduction of Soon Yi was an act of calculated and profound malice......
How do you know?
Gandhi proved that you could remain pure and celibate if you sleep with six or seven naked little girls each night, ages 7 to 12. And have them rub their bodies over you until you ejaculate--as a few of those girls told the BBC years later when they were tracked down. I remember talking to an English woman who an Indiaphile, and while not doubting these stories told me "You are trying to make this seem dirty some how." Yes, I was.
SGT Ted said...
Did Woody drug and anally fuck Soon Yi when she was 13? If he didn't, then why is Roman Polansky being brought up?
They are both appalling, just different kinds of appalling.
Isn't it amazing how we think we can know the truth about people and events we only read about on the internet or the movie magazines (if there are any movie magazines anymore). That's what stardom means, I guess.
Isn't it amazing how we think we can know the truth about people and events we only read about on the internet or the movie magazines (if there are any movie magazines anymore). That's what stardom means, I guess.
Darrell said...
"How come people can't read that we are not talking about Soon Yi, but Dylan, then age 7?"
I think most of us understand that we are talking about Dylan, then 7, who was brainwashed by Mia, her mother, who was pissed at losing her meal ticket, since he had fallen in love with Soon-Yi, her adopted daughter, who was the same age as her mother had been when she married a famous entertainer more than 30 years her senior.
Remember Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby? A film critic said something along the lines of "the problem with this movie is that Jay Gatsby built a beautiful mansion for Daisy, but nobody would build an A-frame for Mia Farrow". I always loved that snarky line.
From Wiki--The film Manhattan is said by the Los Angeles Times to be widely known to have been based on his romantic relationship with actress Stacey Nelkin. Her bit part in Annie Hall ended up on the cutting room floor, and their relationship, though never publicly acknowledged by Allen, reportedly began when she was 17, and a student at New York's Stuyvesant High School.
Darrell-
From the LA Times on Nelkin:
"Nelkin is widely known as the inspiration to Woody Allen's 1979 film "Manhattan" after the two dated when Nelkin was just 17."
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-hween-teen-nelkin,0,5813645.photo#ixzz2qOvbULcc
That's "dated," which is a far cry from what you imply. Also, it should be noted that the "relationship" is widely known because Nelkin has embellished the story for forty years to anybody willing to listen.
but without doubt he terminated his relationship with Mia in a way that was bound to inflict maximum pain on her and his family.
Well, no. His behavior inflicted great pain, certainly, but Mia's decision to fabricate claims of child molestation and involve her own children in them definitely made things worse.
I would say that collectively their actions combined to produce just about the worse outcome imaginable for the children involved. The thing is, Woody *stopped* twenty years ago, while Mia is still doing it.
She's a nutcase. Woody and Soon-Yi Allen at least seem normal.
His seduction of Soon Yi was an act of calculated and profound malice
That's a pretty silly thing to say. She was an adult at the time and is now in her 40s, still married to the guy. The idea that she was tricked into loving him and still hasn't caught on yet is retarded.
Hell, the idea of Woody Allen "seducing" anybody is questionable at best. How many women go for the neurotic scrawny guy look?
A lifetime of behavior is never "dated." It's part of the pattern. There are dozens more examples. He should have made it a point to stay away from girls and accept the fact that he himself is not a precocious 17-year-old anymore, no matter what he thinks. If he weren't protected by people in Hollywood--some who don't even like him--he would have found himself in real trouble with the law long ago. The people around him should have been keeping him away from trouble/temptation, rather than smoothing it over after the fact. Tip-toeing around the law by using them for masturbation fantasies (a guess) rather than actual sex, does not make him a good person.
How many women go for the neurotic scrawny guy look?
How many women (girls) go for the rich neurotic scrawny guy look?
FIFY
Hang out in Florida for awhile and it will surprise you.
Polanski committed the greater, provable offense, but I felt more offended by Woody's transgression. Polanski was acquainted with evil. You can only absorb so much evil and flirt with the devil for so long before you end up on his team. The surprise with Polanski is that he wasn't a worse man.......I bought into Allen's shtick of being wise and wary of life's potholes. Whatever you think of his transgression, it was not the act of a wise or moral man. It just didn't jibe with his persona. I can accept Tom Cruise as a homosexual, but if Sean Connery came out of the closet, I would feel betrayed........Well, it just shows that a lifetime of analysis is not in vain. Only an analysand like Woody could find the self awareness to acknowledge his attraction to his girl friend's daughter and find the strength to act on it and face down the subsequent scandal. Proof positive that psychoanalysis works.
Woody Allen is a dirty old man. I can't really see how staying married to someone for 20 years he basically groomed is "proof" of his righteousness.
How can anyone get involved with someone that you've known as a daughter since the age of 8? Creepy.
That said, I'd like to know how many of these Gawker Allen defenders think that the Duck Dynasty Guy is a dirty old man for marrying a 15 year old.
Its all political.
"as unconventional as his relationship with and marriage to Soon-Yi may be, that's really the only "bad thing" (and it's more weird than bad when you come down to it) that's been proven about him."
A marriage is always respectable.
Mia doesn't speak to Soon Yi. What a great mom. At least her Dad talks to her.
Vladimir Nabokov was unavailable.
I sure hope this isn't intended to insinuate that Nabokov was a pedophile. He wasn't. He wrote a work of fiction about a deeply unsympathetic and creepy pedophile who is an unreliable narrator. Nabokov died married to the woman he married at 23.
Time has been compressing for me since I became an adult. I was in high school when Woody Allen left Mia Farrow for Soon Yi Previn, and those two have now been together all this time, longer than he was with Mia Farrow.
If he's such a pervert, why didn't he get rid of Soon Yi when she turned 30 and move on to another teenager--didn't seem to do Larry King's career any harm.
Mia's hostile tweet was occasioned by Woody's Lifetime Achievement Award, which he got for producing two dozen movies that will live forever. Mia's lifetime achievement is that she used to be pretty. I can see how that might fuel some bitterness.
Mia's children are all grown. They have passed into adulthood without rehab, jail, or eating disorders. I bet they've got a few neuroses, but she seems to have been a successful mother. That's a lifetime achievement. There are people on this earth whose life would have been far worse had she not existed........She made one great movie--Rosemary's Baby. When she was young, she had a preternatural waifish and innocent quality. That's what made the movie so horrifying and convincing. That same waifish quality made her attractive to older men. She inspired paternal as well as romantic feelings in men. You wanted to protect her from all harm and teach her about weird sex practices in Borneo. It's interesting to note that she was involved with the two leading teen molestors of her era......This is an interesting story that will not soon die. Maybe like Marilyn Monroe her backstory will be more dramatic than her roles.
Althouse wrote:
) Allen dumped her for a grown woman whom he never raised or treated like a daughter.
That was still creepy. And I can see why Farrow would be incensed about that.
Even so, you are right about Farrow. Bat sh*t insane and obviously manipulative.
So if you take that into consideration, maybe Allen's actions concerning the daughter aren't as egregious.
Though, on the surface it does look really bad. And as bad as Farrow is, Allen is as neurotic as anyone on the planet.
They probably deserve each other.
smilin jack wrote:
Mia's hostile tweet was occasioned by Woody's Lifetime Achievement Award, which he got for producing two dozen movies that will live forever
Nah, a lot of his movies are derivative junk. Don't get me wrong, He has his share of classics, but since Annie Hall, and especially since he decided to become an auteur, with a few major exceptions he's been coasting.
I found it interesting that Mia Farrow was featured in Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, and did nothing but talk about what a great director he was. I guess if the guy didn't personally dump you the whole "child molestation" thing isn't a big deal.
"I bought into Allen's shtick of being wise and wary of life's potholes."
This is the only reason anyone cares. Allen had built an image of himself as a neurotic but lovable nebbish and the way this ended pretty much blew that out of the water even if the molestation charges were false. He has seemed a bit creepy and fake ever since thought he has still made some good movies. Without his original persona this would just be another pair of weirdos in show biz.
"I bought into Allen's shtick of being wise and wary of life's potholes."
This is the only reason anyone cares. Allen had built an image of himself as a neurotic but lovable nebbish and the way this ended pretty much blew that out of the water even if the molestation charges were false. He has seemed a bit creepy and fake ever since thought he has still made some good movies. Without his original persona this would just be another pair of weirdos in show biz.
How many women (girls) go for the rich neurotic scrawny guy look?
So Soon-Yi slept with him for his money? This conspiracy theory keeps getting better and better.
"Woody's Lifetime Achievement Award, which he got for producing two dozen movies that will live forever"
Nah, a lot of his movies are derivative junk.
He's made 48 films. "Two dozen movies that will live forever" and "a lot of his movies are derivative junk" are not contradictions. :)
Personally I'd put the number at closer to one dozen.
“It took her hours to do her homework; she had a tutor.” Soon-Yi also had trouble bonding.
Mia finds photos of a 20 year old Soon-Yi that are described in the article as "pornographic" and she shows them to Soon-Yi's brother Matthew and allows him to take them to show them to his girlfriend?
I guess a woman scorned trumps a mother's protectiveness.
"Gandhi proved that you could remain pure and celibate if you sleep with six or seven naked little girls each night, ages 7 to 12. And have them rub their bodies over you until you ejaculate--as a few of those girls told the BBC years later when they were tracked down."
Gandhi may have been a magician at being aggressive without looking it.
Mia and Allen's son are just supporting their daughter/sister. As recently as October of 2013, Dylan made a statement that she was definitely molested. If you think she's lying well...what do you do? But a good mother would continue to support her.
Also, there were not months of interviews. The judge let Allen off stating that the evidence was "inconclusive" due to the "bias" these supposed experts were showing in Allen's favor. The judge also stated that these supposed interviewers had no evidence of having interviewed Dylan and seemed to have "lost" the records.
And Soon Yi was not a typical young woman. Due to abuse and neglect in her early life from her birth mother, she was left with a below average IQ and had been poorly socialized. She was not his intellectual or emotional equal. She was the daughter of his lover of 12 years whom he had 2 or 3 children with, one of them biological. You can be a fan of his movies. I certainly have loved some of them. Does not make him a good person or Mia Farrow a crazy person.
And maybe back off the boy...seriously...his father left his mother for his own sister. That much is not being questioned. Cut him some slack.
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