Dylan Farrow's Letter to Woody Allen: Facing Your Tormentor

[Disclaimer: Woody Allen has never been convicted of child molestation, and probably, never will]

With the Super Bowl and the tragic death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, this past weekend was swarming with headline news. Unfortunately, one story was pushed to the side, as it often has been for the past twenty years: Woody Allen’s involvement with child molestation.

Image courtesy of the Guardian

Rising to fame in the late 60s and early 70s, Woody Allen soon became a house hold name, a respected artist inside of Hollywood. A deadly and disarming mix of talent; Allen was a writer, director, and actor. Over his 50 years of filmmaking, he would bring the world some of the best love stories of all-time, influencing viewers in unparalleled ways and earning an unbelievable 4 Oscars in the process.

However, the man that built a career writing about love and relationships may have been having a secret courtship of his own, a courtship with his daughter Dylan Farrow.

Originally published in November 1992 exposé, author MaureenOrth writes, “[Allen] could not seem to keep his hands off [Dylan]. He would monopolize her totally, to the exclusion of her brothers and sisters, and spend hours whispering to her.” As time passed, Allen’s deviance grew and his acts became more and more lewd and disturbing. Later in her article, Orth chronicles a sunny afternoon at Allen’s Connecticut ranch:

There was a brief period, perhaps 15 minutes, when Woody and Dylan vanished from sight. The baby-sitter who was inside searched high and low for them through the cluttered old farmhouse, but she couldn’t find them. The outside baby-sitter, after a look at the grounds around the house, concluded the two must be inside somewhere. When Mia got home a short time later, Dylan and Woody were outside, and Dylan didn’t have any underpants on. (Allen later said that he had not been alone with Dylan. He refused to submit hair and fingerprint samples to the Connecticut state police or to cooperate unless he was assured that nothing he said would be used against him.) 

Dylan was on the sofa, wearing a dress, and Woody was kneeling on the floor holding her, with his face in her lap. The baby-sitter did not consider it “a fatherly pose,” but more like something you’d say “Oops, excuse me” to if both had been adults. She told police later that she was shocked. “It just seemed very intimate. He seemed very comfortable.”

Image courtesy of Vanity Fair

Since its original publication, Allen has claimed that all of this is untrue and that his ex-wife, Mia Farrow, was trying to slander his name and take down his reputation because of an ongoing custody battle.

Flash forward to 2014: Woody Allen’s stock in Hollywood has risen to an all-time high. Last month, at the Golden Globes, Allen was awarded with a lifetime achievement award for his contributions to film. Allen, an aging and now physically decrepit man, rarely ventures out into public these days and did not attend the ceremony. But his presence can still be felt at every major Hollywood event. Next month at the Academy Awards, Allen is up for yet another Oscar (his 24^th nomination in total).

All of the praise and accolades and incessant chatter has swirled around daughter Dylan the entire time, never allowing the face and memory of her tormentor to fade. Instead, his presence and reputation grows more powerful with each year and with each film. This past Saturday, it became too much. Farrow’s open letter to the New York Times was published re-iterating that everything stated in the Vanity Fair piece was 100% true. She writes, “When I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies.”  

Dylan Farrow: Image courtesy of the New York Times

In the open letter, Farrow also calls out current actors and actresses like Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, and Scarlett Johansson for turning a blind eye to Woody Allen’s assaults and continuing to work and collaborate with him. All of them have stayed in support of Allen and/or said that the issue has nothing to do with them. Unfortunately, for Dylan and the public at large, this dismissal is the hip thing to do in Hollywood. Actors, producers, and executives continue to collaborate and fund his work with no second thoughts.

I suppose that it’s not surprising.

After all, Hollywood is a business first and foremost. Being in a Woody Allen film is a guaranteed ticket to stardom and respect. He’s directed everyone from Will Ferrell to Owen Wilson, pulling out some of the best performances of their career. Nobody wants to stop that money train. This type of repudiation is not unprecedented, either. Take a look at Roman Polanski, a man that was charged with rape and sexual abuse of a minor, then fled to France and never returned. Like Allen, Polanski went on to win an Oscar after the fact. Like I said, it’s hip to let molesters (alleged*) continue on.

Of course, a common argument out there is: “Well, Allen was never convicted, and every man deserves to be tried. You know, innocent until proven guilty.” Only, that doesn’t always work in cases of rape and molestation. In today’s world, there are countless predators roaming the streets, side stepping convictions and/or jail time. There are just too many loopholes in the legal system to bring them all in. There is too much gray area to “prove” anything. Allen, interestingly, was never declared innocent; the judge’s conclusions were simply: inconclusive and that Allen was not allowed to see his child.

But the public still knows the hard evidence, some of which include:

1. At least one person (the Connecticut babysitter) that has witnessed Allen performing lewd acts on Dylan.

2. Numerous undeniable incidents of inappropriate and unexplainable behavior.

3. Dylan Farrow has and continues at age 28 to give graphic descriptions of what has happened to her.

Image courtesy of Newsleader

Some may ignore the accusations against Allen, and some may say that the courts have declared him 

innocent. Actors may continue to jump at the chance to work with him, and audiences may continue to line up to watch his movies. We may never get the full truth or conclusive evidence about Allen or any other predator out there. But it’s important to remember that sometimes there are predators, sexual deviants, that have side stepped the law. Sometimes, these are the people that are taking your money, and garnering your praise, and sometimes, these are the people teaching you about love.

Spike Jonze' "Her" Raises Some Interesting Questions About the Future of Relationships

Being born into a certain generation is like being chained to a certain train of thought or set of ideals. Today, people can’t be expected to live without computers or cell phones. In the Middle Ages, it was caste systems and disease. If I spend too much time thinking about this, I’ll only get depressed because I realize that freedom is only an illusion that can be attained within a certain set of rules.

But sometimes I can’t help it. I often find myself wishing and daydreaming about living in the past. I think that part of this has to do with the fact that I’ve been watching people slowly drifting apart because of technology for my entire life. I’ve seen marriages- the ultimate of all intimate relationships- end because partners no longer live with their spouse; they live with their phone and their group of friends on Facebook. I’ve seen entire families sitting in the same room, all on their phones, barely noticing each other. These people spread their time thin over a hundred or a thousand people, instead of investing it into the person or small group of people that they really love. It’s not that they are trying to place distance; it’s just the world that they are chained to. 

Beneath the cool new shit and crazy special effects, movies almost always re-enforce this problem with technology, too. I remember one disturbingly funny scene in Demolition Man in which Sandra Bullock says she wants to have sex with Sylvester Stallone’s character. He agrees (duhhh) and gets ready for her to get naked. Instead, she hooks them up into a computer????? It’d be funny if it wasn’t so real.

This weekend, I watched Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams. The movie was funny at moments and incomplete in others, but its main focus is the role of technology in interpersonal relationships. Theodore Twombly- played by Phoenix- is an isolated, recently divorced man that leans on his operating system for comfort in the face of loneliness. Over time, he evolves with the “consciousness” (as it’s called in the movie) and falls in love. A pretty wild concept?

As I watched the film, I could hear other members of the audience scoffing at Phoenix as their laps lit up from cell phone lights. Other characters in the film roll their eyes and give him dirty looks as they have an earpiece in and they talk to themselves. It was surreal and funny and ludicrous all at the same time. The movie was mocking the audience and their destiny.

Today, people are already in relationships with their technology. Sure, for some, there are people on the other end of that line or computer screen. But this is superficial and distant. As people become more comfortable with technology, it’s going to take up more of their time. As technology is perfected, it’s going to become the tool that they rely upon for comfort. After all, why would anybody get too close to another person that is only going to hurt their feelings or make them confront something that they don’t like about themselves? Nobody. We’re a species that is all about minimizing pain. Why wouldn’t we cut that out, too?

In the end, Jonze’ film spends most of its time showing that getting too close to anything (computer or person) will only leave a person wounded. Everything is just evolving too fast and in too many directions for two beings to stay on the same path for an extended period of time. What Jonze says is a good point, but he seems to be of the group that is overly in love with technology and thinks that this destiny is inevitable. I, however, think that that is just a cop out. But who knows? I might just be too in love with the past.

Movie Grade- B

The Tumultuous Third Chapter...Before Midnight

Before Sunrise

A young Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in Before Sunrise.

About 8 months ago, my wife and I watched the charming Before Sunrise. It starred a young Ethan Hawke (being fully Ethan Hawkish, like he was in Reality Bites) and Julie Delpy (sweet and beautiful). It was a film that leaned on an hour and a half of wit and dialogue. I've heard some people say that it was pretentious and too romantic in its ideas. No way!!! I thought that the characters had the outlooks that I would expect from people in their early 20s. They had big ideas and even bigger hopes for what their lives and what love was all about. My wife and I walked away from the movie feeling satisfied and charmed. We were charmed enough to watch the 2nd one anyway.

Before Sunset

The second film in this masterful trilogy was Before Sunset. It came out in 2004, nine years after the original, and nine years after the characters' original meeting. Ethan Hawke's character has written a book about his one night romance with Delpy, and Delpy hunts him out at a book signing. My wife and I  weren't exactly

Nine years later they returned to the screen

sure what to expect, but we got way more than we bargained for. This movie was real and painful and one of the best romantic movies that I had ever seen. And, it was only 75 minutes!

I loved the 75 minutes concept, too. It fit the tone of the story and because this movie was even more reliant upon dialogue, it didn't ruin a good thing. More importantly, the time reflected the brevity of what this romance had become. Once again, both Hawke and Delpy were excellent. They were sweet and funny and completely likeable (which is pretty amazing because Hawke's character was married to another woman). The best scene in the movie comes at the end when Delpy sits down with her guitar and plays a song that she had written about Ethan Hawke's character. Magnificent.

In the extra features, there is an interview with the director, and he says, "We wanted to create a love story that develops over the years. We wanted to bring back the same people and chronicle them."

Before Midnight

That brings me to the third installment: Before Midnight. Before Midnight came out in 2013, nine years after the second, and nine years had passed in the story line. Hawke and Delpy were together and had twins, and it continued on its chronicle. This movie, however, stripped itself of much of the romance. Once again, we're brought into a dialogue heavy film. Only, this time much of the dialogue is filled with tension and fighting. My wife could barely stand to watch it (I, on the other hand, loved this realistic tension). It was good film, a great film really.

Before Midnight is a lot more tumultuous.

But, it is not romantic, not like the first two. In many ways, I wished they didn't make this third film because I needed some love story that was real and hopeful that I could cling to. They ripped the rug out from under me. But, there's another part of me that is grateful for this movie. I learned a lot, and I was pushed to think and evaluate myself as a man in a relationship. It was tough, grueling, and gritty. And, it sure wasn't the same as the first two. This year, Julie Delpy is up for a number of awards (well-deserved; she was vicious in this movie), and Hawke and her are up for Best Screenplay. I hope they win something. Not only for this movie, but for the beautiful trio of films they have crafted.

The Wolf of Wall Street- Welcome to the Family

Last night, my wife and I saw The Wolf of Wall Street. We would've saw it on Christmas Day after our family dinner, but the show sold out before we could get our tickets; everybody was clamoring over Scorsese's latest film. When we finally got to see the show a day later, The Wolf of Wall Street was still packed, and being there felt like going to another kind of family reunion, a reunion with Martin Scorsese at his house, the theatre.

Scorsese has created his own version of a
trilogy with The Wolf of Wall Street

Within the first 5 minutes of the film, my wife and I knew we were in for a treat. There were midgets being thrown around, drugs being inserted up people's asses, and a crazed office setting that we all would like to be a part of; basically, the kind of stories you'll hear from your extended family during holiday dinners. The film is three hours long, and for the most part, this maddening tone never ceases. There are too many scenes to be re-counted, so I won't try to repeat them all. All I will say is that there is not one dull moment, not one bad scene or exchange in the entire movie. It was just Scorsese, the master, at his best.

The Wolf of Wall Street is inspired by and closely related to Casino and Goodfellas. In fact, Scorsese has said that it is part of his trilogy (along with the other two) about money and greed. There were techniques in The Wolf of Wall Street that are directly from Goodfellas: DiCaprio replacing Liotta in the narrator/main star role, quick cuts, montages, etc. Also, the dynamics between DiCaprio and Hill are eerily similar to many DeNiro/Pesci collaborations. However, as far as romantic relationships go,  The Wolf of Wall Street is closer to Casino. Belfort, played by Leo, and his wife have the same mad love turned to dysfunction that we saw between DeNiro and Sharon Stone twenty years earlier.

DiCaprio gives a career defining performance as
Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street

Seeing Scorsese return to these subjects and themes for a third time was a true delight. His version of a trilogy is perfect; it's the way trilogies are intended to be, the way God wanted them. Too often, studios and audiences get caught up in wanting to have continuations of old characters and completed stories. This only leads to bad films. Scorsese, on the other hand, has avoided being dull by wrapping each of his films in different characters and in different settings and times. Instead, he explores very similar themes, which creates this familiar atmosphere that turns each film into a different sibling of the same family. Each has their different quirks, but they all come from the same place, and in many ways, all of their characters have similar fates. Going to see Scorsese at work in The Wolf of Wall Street is something that every film fan needs to do.

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Is Anybody Excited for "All is by my Side"?

"ALL IS BY MY SIDE"

How many times have we heard things like "Hendrix is God." Too many to count. Often, Jimi is thought of as a demi-god, but anybody that has read a great deal about his life would realize that he is a very complex person with a rich background. He spent time in the military, bounced around between family households, had a homeless brother that lived down the street, had an abusive father,  and the list goes on and on. The one constant for Jimi was always music. His entire life was a life dedicated to music. However, most people only think of Jimi's days of fame and fortune, but really, that is not the best part of the story.

The new Jimi Hendrix biopic, "All is by my Side," has been in the works for what seems like a long time. All I hear is negativity from every journalist that is covering the subject. Yes, I know that none of Hendrix' original songs are going to be in the film. Yes, I know that there are a lot of bad biopics out there. But, I do think this film could have great potential because Hendrix pre-fame life was so interesting and dynamic.

One reason that "All is by my Side" could be good is that Jimi was involved in all of the great movements of the 60s. Being an African-American, Jimi was forced to live in a very racist world. What is even more interesting about Jimi is that he was pushed away by both sides. Early in his life, Jimi was just another black guy from the street and faced the well documented persecution of African-Americans of the time. Eventually, Jimi moved his way up through the African-American music scene, but because of his rock n roll tendencies, he developed into an outsider in thAfrican-American world as well. Little Richard kicked him out of his band for a number of reasons, including wardrobe and his performance style. Also, in a memorable piece of journalism from Charles Cross biography, "A Room Full of Mirrors", Miles Davis expressed his displeasure with Jimi being a "white musician." While being cast out by his own race, Jimi embraced and was embraced by the "white" rock n roll community. He loved Bob Dylan, and during his time in New York, he would walk around with a Dylan record at all times. Jimi's time in New York could be a very fascinating study of racial dynamics during the 60s. For, Jimi would frequent caucasion, rock n roll clubs in Greenwich Village while other African-Americans were in jazz clubs miles away. Truly, there are a plethora of stories that could be used for "All is by my Side."

During a time that was filled with hostility concerning Vietnam, Jimi was doing time in the military. Jimi was a real soldier, for he spent more than a year in the army. During his time there, he went through training, was shipped around, and even had a sweetheart that he always wrote letters to. In all of his spare time, Jimi practiced his guitar and jammed frequently with Brian Cox (Cox would reunite years later to play at Woodstock and be a part of the Band of Gypsys). Eventually, Jimi was discharged because he claimed that he had homosexual tendencies, which was a story he invented to avoid military life and the Vietnam War. Jimi's time in the military could easily add to Jimi's life story being a representation of the 60s.

Then there is the music. The 60s is synonymous with music, and Jimi traveled the country and played with some of the world's biggest acts before he even wrote any of his own music. Some were even touting him as the greatest guitar player before he was even "discovered" by the mainstream music scene. While Jimi was frequenting New York's Greenwich Village scene, he was having countless run-ins with other famous musicians, including Keith Richards who will be featured heavily in "All is by my Side." That story will be very interesting! Jimi stole Richards' girlfriend at the time, Kathy Etchingham, and Richards scoured all of the bars, so he could kick Jimi's ass. I won't ruin the ending to that story, but it will play nicely on the screen.

One thing I do want to say is that the Experience Hendrix foundation is a joke. I can't stand those people up there. The Experience Hendrix foundation is run by Janie Hendrix, Jimi's half sister. Jimi only met Janie one time while he was alive, and she was just a child. Through technicalities, she gained control of his estate and has kept his closest relatives (especially brother Leon) out of the loop. Currently, she is refusing to work with producers on the film and won't let them use any of his original music. However, like I said, Jimi had such a great background that a great film could still be done.

Jimi Hendrix lived an exciting life in his pre-fame years. I am excited to see what will be brought to the screen by the writers, producers and actors (especially Andre Benjamin). For everybody that has lost excitement concerning the film, I just wanted to emphasize what a dynamic story/film this could be. Whether or not this will happen is another story.