Longtime Woody Allen defender (and onetime collaborator) Bob Weide had this (above) to say about Ronan Farrow leading the charge to get his father's memoir canceled.
How ironic that he and sister Dylan think the director's fame, power and money have b(r)ought him undue control over the narrative and now this.
Here's my take: Don’t buy the book. Organize protests against buying the book. That’s how rational people voice their disagreement -- not suppressing its publication. (I'm in GOOD COMPANY here.)
If we're being honest, shouldn’t Woody Allen have been canceled for the declining quality of his films instead of a dubious allegation by a woman he publicly humiliated -- who was accustomed to being the humiliator?
How pathological is Mia Farrow? Some believe song lyrics written by Mia's close friend Dory Previn -- whose husband impregnated Farrow with twins during their extramarital affair -- influenced the "Peyton Place" star to accuse Woody of molestation.
And the hypocrisy of Farrow -- who also ran off and married a famous man decades her senior -- doesn't stop there.
A friend writes: I love hearing Mia gush about Roman Polanski at a little after 16:00 in this documentary and throughout.
Bob Weide wrote this in an open letter to Ronan Farrow:
How would you feel if you unearthed this quote from a prominent friend of Woody Allen‘s, citing his artistic merit, as a defense in the face of child molestation charges? “[He’s] a loyal friend, important to me, a distinguished director, important to the motion picture industry, and a brave and brilliant man, important to all people.” Would you be outraged? Would you issue a Tweet, calling out the friend as a rape enabler? Think about it. What would you do? The quote actually has nothing to do with your father. It appears in the probation report of Roman Polanski, written after the director had been charged with statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl. The statement was submitted by the director’s friend and colleague, Mia Farrow. Now read it again.
Polanski was convicted of drugging and then anally raping a 13-year-old girl.
Hate Woody Allen. Don’t see his movies anymore. He’s definitely a sleaze. (Starting a relationship with your girlfriend's adult daughter is unseemly at best.) But a DEEP DIVE convinces many that Mia Farrow is a bigger one to use her child to exact revenge. God knows it didn't go as quickly as planned. But here we are 28 years later and he is toxic because well-meaning but uninformed millennials are finally falling for her vindictive tricks.
For the uninitiated, the molestation allegation suddenly came up 72 hours after Mia begged a therapist to DO SOMETHING about Allen's affair with Soon-Yi and the therapist said nothing could be done. (The timing wouldn't pass muster in a fictional account.) After initially not supporting his sister’s claims, Ronan began trolling his father and writing essays against him, despite two investigations (one by the New York Department of Social Services and another by the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of Yale-New Haven Hospital) that concluded Dylan hadn’t been assaulted, and was likely coached into saying she was.
But #MeToo supporters don't seem interested in knowing the inconvenient details about this case -- they're too busy patting themselves on the back for telling Dylan they "believe" her. While believing people who say they have been abused is good, blind acceptance is not.
For me, #MeToo is about stopping men from abusing their power and creating new norms about what is and isn't acceptable -- not about settling 30-old-year scores.
If you're still unpersuaded, ask yourself this: Have you ever heard of a child molester acting on his urges just once? (Ditto for other predators -- Cosby, Weinstein, Spacey, et al.)
Speaking of hypocrisy: Hachette Books canceled Allen’s memoir over a three-decade-old claim that two investigations found to be untrue, but it will publish a memoir by Calum McSwiggan, the vlogger who did inextricable damage to LGBTQ people by allegedly faking a hate crime? (And he was actually convicted in a court of law.) Brave.
7 comments:
Well said Kenneth, I agree with you completely. I've always thought that Mia was nuts.
100% agree. Mia is nuts and now we're into censorship territory that is unbelievable. Dont buy the book, simple as that.
The employees of Hachette walked out in protest. I don’t like Woody Allen, pre Mia Farrow. I don’t find him funny going all the way back to “Everything you always wanted to know about Sex “ Strange the only publisher in the world that would take this extremely famous and popular actor and filmmakers autobiography on ,was the one that had dealt with his sons book. His story deserves to be heard but he is extremely polarizing, no matter how much you write about him.
I would have liked to read the book for Allen's point of view. I wouldn't have paid for it, I'd have gotten it from the library. The whole situation is creepy, and I agree, Mia Farrow is batshit crazy. After 28 years, the momentum is tiring. I would like this whole thing to fade the same way I would like Donald Trump to just shut up!
The lesson's been learned. It's in the public's mind. Let's move on!
Oh what a mess. So not interested.
Hell has no fury as woman scorned.
It seems to me that everyone who has the guts, the time, and the brains to acquaint themselves with the REAL facts of this case, will unavoidably arrive at the conclusion that Allen is the victim of a viciously false abuse allegation.
And even if not fully convinced of that conclusion, will anyway understand why there is a heap of reasonable doubt, and why reasonable people may believe it is a mistake to consider Allen as if he were guilty.
#MeToo was supposed to bring (much) more justice to the world, to support victims of heinous crimes. It is a total perversity if #MeToo is now being used to create another category of victims: those of a false allegation, punished not by law but by ill-infomred, angry groups of protesters.
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