TALES OF LOHR: WOODY AND ME(TOO)
On the challenge of formative creeps; plus, "Factory Roll Call" taps into Taubin
Woody Allen has a new movie out.
I’m old enough to remember when mentioning that to someone wouldn’t potentially make them suspicious of you.
I have not yet seen the French-language domestic drama Coup de Chance, Allen’s 50th film as a director. It has, like Allen’s previous two features, 2019’s A Rainy Day in New York and the following year’s Rivkin’s Festival, been given a severely foreshortened theatrical release in the United States. It has recently been made available for viewing on a number of streaming platforms, including YouTube, which is where I noticed it just the other day among their “New to Rent” options. And, as has been the case with all of Allen’s new films since the fall of 2017, I have found myself torn about the idea of consuming the work of an artist who has been tried, and fairly effectively condemned, in the court of public opinion.
Autumn of ‘17, as we all know well, marked the ascent of what has become known as the #MeToo movement, a massive and necessary groundswell against the misogynist, predatory stances, systems, and behaviors of the whole of political, social, and creative culture. This movement made itself vividly manifest in the calling out, by name and in pitilessly explicit detail, of the abusive attitudes, language, and actions of a host of prominent men in media, entertainment, and the arts; the at-long-last serious examination of accusations against and rumors about a number of suspect individuals; and the prosecution and conviction of several of the most spectacularly transgressive offenders. This final list includes adult film star Ron Jeremy, independent cinema mogul Harvey Weinstein, and R&B star R. Kelly, all of whom have been brought to court, and, in the cases of Weinstein and Kelly, received substantial jail sentences for their crimes.
Many of us have spent the seven years since the rise of the #MeToo movement coming to grips with the reality of some of our favorite art having been created by people of dubious if not blatantly criminal character. And our reactions to these revelations have often operated on a shifting scale, depending on our particular fealty to the creators in question. I, in this regard, am no different than anyone. For example, despite a perverse curiosity about the idea of being one of the few people to see I Love You, Daddy, the Louis C.K.-directed film that, in the wake of revelations about his sexual improprieties, was pulled by its distributor just days prior to its release, I have never been invested enough in C.K.’s work to make refraining from further engagement a challenge. Kelly was trickier for me, as I had been a great fan of his music and had even bought albums well after his initial trials for committing sex acts with a then 14-year-old girl. But once the full scope of his crimes became apparent, any pleasure I once derived from songs like “Step in the Name of Love” paled next to the idea of continuing to support a virtual sex-cult leader.
Woody Allen is, for me, a horse of a different color. I first took an interest in Allen in early 1992, when I was 14 years old and just diving in earnest into what would become a lifelong devotion to cinema. I began exploring his work with the moody, black-and-white German expressionist pastiche Shadows and Fog. This mildly received production was released mere months before the explosive revelation, during the making of the same year’s Husbands and Wives, that Allen had cheated on his longtime partner and co-star Mia Farrow with Soon-Yi Previn, Farrow’s much younger adopted daughter, whom Allen had known since she was a child. Allen and Previn have been married since 1997, and they have two children together. But from the moment the news of their affair first broke, the cultural narrative had been set: Woody Allen preys on young girls.
Allen’s counter-narrative that he was not a genuine predator was not helped by the existence of his 1979 film Manhattan, in which his 42-year-old character is engaged in a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old high school student. Farrow added further fuel to the fire by accusing Allen, in the wake of the destruction of their relationship, of molesting his adoptive daughter Dylan, who was seven at the time of the alleged incident. Several police and state’s attorney’s investigations, as well as multiple psychological examinations, concluded that no credible evidence existed to support Farrow and Dylan’s claims. But the Farrows have maintained to this day that their version of events is the truth, a stance backed by Farrow’s son Ronan, an investigative reporter who was one of the major figures in breaking the accusations against Weinstein (whose Miramax Films had distributed several Allen pictures released after the scandal). What’s more, the findings of the police, state’s attorneys, and psychologists have carried minimal weight with the general public, whose judgment of Allen as a sex creep at best, child molester at worst, has only intensified with the years.
Much of this was known to me in the 25 years between the Soon-Yi Previn revelations and the birth of #MeToo. And yet, I continued my consumption, study, and appreciation of Allen’s work. Husbands and Wives was one of the first R-rated films I attended by myself. I took a college crush to a screening of Allen’s Deconstructing Harry (1997), a story about a pill-popping, prostitute-patronizing novelist, played by Allen himself, who justifies his transgressions with the simple claim that he is much better at art than at life (my viewing companion, an active feminist with whom I have remained close in the decades since, maintains that she has never not found Allen creepy). I rooted for Allen when his surprise 2011 box office hit Midnight in Paris was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar; the film won Allen his third, and almost certainly last, Best Original Screenplay prize. And even during my short residency / extended midlife crisis / depressive episode in Dublin, Ireland in 2017, I streamed the two Allen works that immediately preceded the #MeToo surge: the Kate Winslet-starring period drama Wonder Wheel and the Allen-featuring, Miley Cyrus-co-starring miniseries Crisis in Six Scenes. Both the film and the TV program were the first products of a multi-project deal the filmmaker had inked with Amazon. The studio would ultimately back out of this contract, in the wake of renewed furor against Allen that also saw his 2020 memoir Apropos of Nothing dropped by its initial publisher, like C.K.’s film, days before its scheduled release. The book was eventually put out by a smaller publisher, to largely hostile reviews.
So, what’s kept me from just pulling the plug entirely as a viewer? What has me, still, looking at the “Rent” button under the Coup de Chance trailer on YouTube and thinking “neeeeh I dunno…”? It’s not simply a matter of faith in the investigators’ conclusions. After all, the recently deceased O.J. Simpson was found not guilty in court, and that has done little to shake my perception that the opposite is the case, just as I imagine a not-guilty verdict would scarcely sway my belief in Donald Trump’s complicity in the crimes for which he is currently under indictment and on trial. This is more closely related to the kinds of emotions swirling within people who persist in their support and patronage of Michael Jackson’s music despite all the accusations of child-related indiscretions. For hardcore Jackson fans, his music is not simply something they listen to in order to pass the time. It is intimately connected to their memories, wedded to their personal histories, sewn into the fabric of their very selves. In forsaking that, no matter the reason, they are being asked to turn against a critical part of their own beings. And that is never an easy thing to do.
For better or worse, the films of Woody Allen were formative for me in the same way Off the Wall and Thriller have been for others. Experiencing the world Woody created, a world where contemporary people, even the young, are unashamed to read antique novels and attend screenings of classic black-and-white movies and listen to scratchy old jazz records, was like a license to pursue my own personal tastes and interests down whatever esoteric avenues they might lead. It was permission to take seriously the big, bold, intractable questions of life, love, death, sex, and faith, and to engage with them directly in both my life and my own creative work. It was a balm to a person that has never fit smoothly into conventional codes of physical or sexual attractiveness, an assurance that sometimes, intellectual curiosity, a quick wit, and genuine interest can indeed win over potential partners. Granted, it has taken some time to wean myself of the more problematic concepts advanced by the Allen worldview, most notably a near-fanatical belief in the power of quixotic romantic stick-to-it-iveness. (A doomed fixation during my L.A. days on a substantially younger, not to mention already attached, woman got me shut of that nonsense; the emotional fallout instigated by my foolishness ultimately led me to therapy and a diagnosis of chronic depression…so that saga at least had a very Allenesque denouement.) But Matt Lohr is who Matt Lohr is today, warts and all, at least partly thanks to Woody Allen and his films.
Ultimately, the cultural taint clinging to Allen, a stink that could by association seep into my clothes, has made continuing uncritical support of him, for me at least, increasingly impossible to justify. In the post-#MeToo era, Allen, once good for a picture a year, has released only those three features mentioned in this article’s first paragraphs. I did see A Rainy Day in New York, which I didn’t hate, because my library’s online streaming program allowed me to watch it without any financial outlay. (The film’s star, Timothée Chalamet, was greeted with severe backlash for appearing in a Woody Allen production, eventually issuing a public statement in which he essentially apologized for accepting the role.) I have not seen Rivkin’s Festival because said library program has not offered it, and as of this writing, Coup de Chance is likewise only viewable in a pay-for-streaming option. Do I think the Farrows’ accusations against Woody Allen are true? Even at this late juncture, I don’t honestly know, which is why, when the opportunity arises to keep up with his output, I don’t simply turn away entirely. These are, after all, what may come to be the final dispatches from one of my life’s signal influences. But until definitive proof of Allen’s innocence emerges, I will hold off from giving him any more of my money. It’s not a lesson his films contain, but it’s a worthwhile one nevertheless: If you can do so, avoid, even by accident, backing a creep.
FACTORY ROLL CALL
AMY TAUBIN (1938 - )
In 1964, a New York-based actress named Amy Taubin sat for a pair of Screen Tests shot by Andy Warhol at the Factory. The shooting of these reels, which later appeared in one of Warhol’s Thirteen Most Beautiful Women omnibus programs, followed an authentic studio screen test Taubin shot in Hollywood, prompted by the performer’s acclaimed stage performance in Lewis John Carlino’s one-act duology Doubletalk. Taubin was invited to the Factory by avant-garde filmmaker and primordial Warhol superstar Naomi Levine; according to her, the Pop artist was primarily curious to meet Taubin because of her recent experience in Tinseltown.
After her Screen Test filming session, Taubin made several other appearances at the Factory, usually in the company of filmmaker and underground impresario Barbara Rubin. She shows up again in one of the reels Warhol filmed for Couch, enjoying a banana alongside Levine, 1964 “Girl of the Year” Baby Jane Holzer, and principal Factory assistant Gerard Malanga. Despite these visits, Taubin has said in later interviews that she never quite felt at home at the Factory, primarily due to its emphasis on the physical beauty of its female and femme-presenting attendees, at the expense of any of their other attributes.
And the Sarah Lawrence and NYU-educated Taubin’s skills and abilities extend far beyond matters of mere aesthetics. Her stage work included a 1968 Broadway production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and in addition to her Warhol film appearances, she is one of the few human presences seen in Michael Snow’s legendary experimental mystery film Wavelength, and also performs in Journeys from Berlin / 1971, directed by Yvonne Rainer. Taubin would eventually make her own avant-garde films, including 1975’s See!/Like/Duck and In the Bag (1981).
But Taubin has most undoubtedly made her central impact as one of the most prolific and powerful voices in contemporary film criticism and curation. From 1983 to 1987, she was the film and video curator for The Kitchen, a Manhattan-based non-profit avant-garde art performance space. Her writing on film has appeared regularly in such publications as The Village Voice, Artforum, and The Millennium Film Journal, and she has served as contributing editor for both Film Comment and Sight & Sound. Taubin’s books include studies of filmmakers Agnès Varda and Douglas Gordon, and a BFI Film Classics monograph on Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. She has also been a trustee for the Anthology Film Archives; a member of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s selection committee; and a distinguished art historian and teacher at New York’s School of Visual Arts.
In 2020, Amy Taubin was told by Andy Warhol, by proxy at least, that she is indeed far more than a pretty face, when the Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts awarded her a grant to support her ongoing writing endeavors.
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"But until definitive proof of Allen’s innocence emerges, I will hold off from giving him any more of my money. It’s not a lesson his films contain, but it’s a worthwhile one nevertheless: If you can do so, avoid, even by accident, backing a creep." First off, there IS a preponderance of evidence that Allen is not guilty and that Ms. Farrow has brainwashed both Dylan and Ronan. And, by your reasoning, we should not support: Roman Polanski, Jackson, Ezra Pound, Robert Mitchum, Fyodor Dostoevsky, TS Eliot, Roald Dahl, Céline. Genet was a thief, Rimbaud was a smuggler, Byron committed incest, Flaubert paid for sex with boys. What do we do about them? Getting back to Allen vs Farrow, check out Marilyn Moss' book "The Farrows of Hollywood: Their Dark Side of Paradise."