Will the final episode be the nail in the coffin for Woody?
Hopefully this will get the case the proper trial it deserves.
shareIf somebody tries to charge Allen at this point, the whole trial would live and die in the jury selection. I wonder if truly impartial people could be found who would respond only to the evidence given at the trial and not be swayed by an adherence or reaction to the #metoo movement, the multiple propaganda machines that have been grinding away for decades, and so forth?
Consequently, I think any trial would basically be over the minute the jury was selected. Get a majority opinion on the jury of angry buzzfeed types or of men's rights activists and the whole trial is just pomposity and show at that point.
Allen was investigated by two counties in two states, and there was no evidence found enough to prosecute. I believe Mia Farrow coached Dylan up to the point of making her believe this happened because, if it didn't happen, her whole world would crumble realizing her mother manipulated her.
I honestly think it's super-super creepy for a man to fall in love with his girlfriend's stepdaughter, I have to say that. But to come home to her kids and sexually assault his favorite one a few days after he got caught with some incriminatory pictures makes this way less credible.
I was not happy seeing Dylan showing her husband and daughter at the end of the doc. It was unnecessary showing her face on TV. Dylan should have protected her but no, decided to use her in this case where investigations showed no evidence found.
They accuse Allen of being surrounded by powerful people in New York who wanted him to keep making movies and bringing money to New York. Regarding movies and money, when was the last time Allen made a blockbuster? I am talking about a movie so good and popular it boosted the image of New York as a city up to the point people want to visit or move there just because of an Allen Movie. The investigation in 1992, at least in my opinion, seemed to be a thorough one.
This was a really biased documentary towards Mia Farrow. Allen ended up looking as a monster, a predator, an evil guy nobody should ever go see his films. But let me tell you something, after the release of Leaving Neverland in 2019, Michael Jackson's songs got a lot of streaming airplay. Expect Woody Allen DVDs to hike up in prices.
I was not happy seeing Dylan showing her husband and daughter at the end of the doc. It was unnecessary showing her face on TV. Dylan should have protected her but no, decided to use her in this case where investigations showed no evidence found.
Agreed. Parent's duty is to shield their children until they're grown enough to handle those issues. Putting the daughter in the spotlight is terrible parenting.
When it comes to people who have been abused, there's basically two options: the ones that break apart from it and become healthy and supportive people (Moses, Soon Ye), and the ones that never manage to break apart and end up repeating the pattern of abuse. I remember one interview to Erin Pizzey (who studied that problem) and who said that this is one elephant in the room which has become taboo nowadays: abuse is not a gender issue, it's something that runs in the family, that it's transmitted from parents (fathers and mothers) to children, and the cycle starts again.
Dylan is not a little kid anymore. She never managed to break apart from Mia, so chances are she'll (sadly) become the abuser. share
I'm with you on your analysis of the case generally. I was more speaking to the fact that a trial would be difficult at this point because of the vast amounts of publicity this case has received. Finding an impartial jury, one with no knowledge of the case or axe to grind on the politics around cases such as this, would be nigh-on impossible; thus, my speculation that the trial wouldn't be about evidence or arguments, but more about jury selection.
Yeah, my theory is basically yours. I think Farrow was PO'd at Allen for his affair with Soon-Yi, she considered that to be paedophilia and incest, but because it wasn't *legally* those things she worked the Dylan angle. I think Dylan and the other kids were brainwashed, and the evidence of this is Moses' testimony that they were brainwashed. I take the word of the escaped cultist over those still in the cult; so here I take Moses' word because it explains Dylan's story, but Dylan's story doesn't explain Moses'.
Then the believability of the case comes into play, and it gets even dicier. Allen's pointed out his claustrophobia, for instance, making the crawlspace an unlikely area for him to do something that would produce anxiety, anyway. He also has only one alleged incident of paedophilia. All his other young girlfriends were post-pubescent, and while one might arch an eyebrow at the age gap, they were still age of consent. I've seen a lot of these cases over the years, I've never heard of a paedophile who offends once.
Allen does have clout, so the power angle sorta makes sense, but Farrow has clout, too.
You're also right to point out the lack of evidence, the investigations, etc.
Allen points out in his autobiography that he and Soon-Yi were allowed to adopt two girls who have grown up healthy, well-adjusted, and happy. So, while I wouldn't take his autobiography as Gospel (it's his memoir; it's got to be biased as f---), the *fact* that he was cleared by the adoption process and there were no molestations there says a lot.
Yeah, I've been meaning to get more serious about collecting the Allen DVDs. I've got a bunch, but I kinda feel like I might want to get a complete set before they become impossible to find, either because Allen gets cancelled, people start swarming to collect them, or DVDs just plain go away...
I also agree with you that Allen's relationship with Soon-Yi probably shouldn't have been started. It's weird dating the daughter (or step-daughter) of a girlfriend, even a short-term one, let alone a long-term girlfriend like Farrow. Now, that said, they've been together so long... the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, and that relationship has been going for some time. Is it happy? Is it healthy? I don't know. But from outside appearances, it's doing just fine.
From what I've read, HBO was also behind Leaving Neverland? My guess is that they were going for the same thing. They wanted the scathing expose on a celebrity icon with the dark secrets of molestation. They should pick a better target.
Heck, they should do real documentaries instead of hit-pieces. The best documentaries, in my opinion, are the ones that give a full and comprehensive look at the story.
The final thing to consider, and it's just a creepy feeling, not fact, is John Charles Villiers-Farrow, Mia's brother, who was convicted for molesting young children.
Abuse tends to spread within families. Allen's family was kinda wacky (see also his memoir), but nothing about molestation.
This is a 0.000001% chance, but is it possible that some of these memories might have been Uncle John Charles, not Woody?
The weirdest thing about John Charles Villiers-Farrow is that he's got no Wikipedia page at all. You'd think this would be something that would come up more, encyclopaedically-speaking, but bubkiss. Even on Mia's page, this guy gets mentioned only once in her Early Life section and once as a footnote. Who scrubbed that one?
Look, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, so I want to make it clear: I don't think there's any credible truth to this, and I doubt that his not having a Wikipedia page is some Illuminati crap - I don't think Mia and Ronan are some propaganda machine removing John Charles from the internet - but it's odd that "documentaries" can latch onto things like movie plotlines to build a "case" against Woody, but nobody seems to make a big deal about Mia having a convicted paedophile in the family, or associating with (and defending!) Roman Polanski.
The makers of this crime, because that is what it is, took every bit they could twist against Woody, distilled it, and conflated it with #MeToo, and all kinds of nonsense, intentionally leaving out anything that would make Woody seem human in the least, and dumped this out in public to get Woody Allen cancelled, based on one vetted case that they complain about over and over for 30 years. How is that legal? How is that not a crime? This really disgusted me.
shareEvery documentary, and it's important to remember this, is still a story. They shot hours and hours of footage and selected certain footage to put in. Even the "fly on the wall" style of the '60s and '70s was edited together to build to a climax. The story is important. In "Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?" - an animated (literally: cartooned) conversation between a French filmmaker and Noam Chomsky, the director starts out by telling viewers that he had the movie animated to remind them constantly that he made editorial choices after filming conversations with Chomsky for a couple days. He tried to be accurate and represent Chomsky in-context, but maybe he got that wrong... so he animated it to remind viewers of that fundamental aspect of filmmaking, even documentary filmmaking.
I notice narratives in things like Gimme Shelter, which clearly tells a story: Altamont. Now, that said, they thought they were just chronicling a tour and concerts and a festival. So, they didn't start with that story in mind, and here's the rub for me:
The best documentaries aren't the ones that are dry and just throw images at you (ie, have no story), they are the ones that told the story the *found*, not necessarily the one they went looking for. In this case, the filmmakers had a particular narrative in mind: scandal and abuse, and they went with that.
It's entertainment.
And while most reviews mentioned the one-sided nature of the documentary, I was very disappointed that most of them went, "But it's still compelling". Perhaps reviewers should have said, "It's entertaining, and it presents a good case for one side of this argument, but it's hardly what you think of as being a documentary; it is an entertainment," but they don't say that. They just say it's a good documentary.
This is such a legalistic story though that the merely consideration of doing it should have not been attempted if they thought they could not be objective in telling the story ... implied in Allen V. Farrow ... in the form of a legal lawsuit ... is implied that there is a legal consideration here. That is the first thing that flew out the window!
When they did not do that this just turned into a hit piece by HBO, and I think HBO ought to be legally liable for it.
This is in no way entertainment ... maybe in the sense that feeding the Christians to the lions was entertainment in ancient Rome. This was a call to cancel Woody Allen. Personally I think it was despicable and could only have been done based on lies, and that just what they did.
Notice how as the series moves forward the symptoms Dylan exhibits on screen get worse and worse until she is crying, feeling sick and shaking. I went from having an open mind and feeling really torn for her to finding her completely unsympathetic and a conscious liar going along with a family project.
Yeah, documentary is a misnomer or a joke. And, yes, the title misleads deliberately.
That said, I think libel should be carefully applied. As long as HBO didn't say anything untrue and damaging, there should be nothing to hit them with. In this case, they're presenting a narrative that is plausible by certain accounts and while it is far from verifiable, it's far from HBO saying, "Allen's a guilty little skunk". I'm a big believer in free speech, free expression, that kind of thing. I think application of muzzle laws needs to be extremely sparse.
Cheap entertainment is entertainment. I'd put Jerry Springer in the same category. I wouldn't watch Springer myself, but Springer isn't really a "talk show", either.
Reality TV isn't that real.
This isn't really a documentary inasmuch as it doesn't really document things in a serious manner.
I mean, that could be editing, right? They could have asked her the same questions for six days straight and she cried on the last day. Or maybe they just opened up with the darkest stuff right away and got her to dive in. She felt shocked, wept and so-forth, then they took a day off, asked the rest of the questions, and she was calmer and less nervous. Then they edited it backwards to give the impression they wanted - the difficulty increasing overtime.
I suspect Dylan of very little (if any) manipulation. I think it's mostly/entirely Mia.