Just Noticing: Observations of a Blogger
Posted by Michelle Moquin on July 17th, 2016
Good Sunday morning!
From Vanity Fair:
Is It Wrong to Work with Woody Allen?
Kate Winslet and Justin Timberlake just signed onto the filmmaker’s latest project.
If you’ve been waiting for Hollywood’s casting gods to unite a scandal-plagued filmmaker, an Oscar-winning English actress, and a former boy-band member, you’re in luck. On Thursday, in a Mad Libs-style casting announcement, Woody Allen confirmed that he has cast Kate Winslet and Justin Timberlake in his upcoming film, along with Juno Temple and James Belushi.
Allen has a habit of keeping details about his upcoming projects close to the vest, and this untitled feature is no different. The only additional details a press release allowed were the city where the film will shoot—New York—and the producers of the project.
It may be surprising to see Winslet and Timberlake’s names together in a casting report, but the actors’ partnership with Allen should not come as a surprise for the following reasons:
- In 2008, Allen revealed that he and Winslet had originally planned to make Match Point together—until Winslet’s exhausting schedule required her to bow out of the role that would ultimately go to Scarlett Johansson. As for Timberlake, Allen recently revealed himself to have a soft spot for Disney-bred actors/mainstream musicians when he cast Miley Cyrus in his upcoming Amazon series. And with regard to the sexual-abuse allegations that seem to follow Allen wherever he goes, remember that Winslet chose to partner with another professionally esteemed filmmaker mired in decades-old controversy when she made Carnage with Roman Polanski, the filmmaker who pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old decades ago.
While promoting that film, Winslet said she had no doubts about working with the Chinatown visionary.
“When Roman Polanski invites you to join him in any project you really don’t say no,” she said, per The Telegraph. “I felt extremely fortunate to be included.”
At the time, though, several asked why Winslet and her co-star Jodie Foster might work with the filmmaker in spite of his personal history. While the answer might seem obvious—great filmmaking is not mutually exclusive from personal flaw—The Atlantic’s Alyssa Rosenberg offered her own hypothesis:
Ultimately, I’ve come to believe that actors and actresses don’t keep working with Polanski because they believe art is a higher imperative or because there’s some kind of kinship between artistic spirits. Rather, I think famous actors and actresses can justify working with Polanski because they’re privileged enough not to see him, and people like him, as a threat.
The latest Allen casting news arrives only months after Allen’s estranged son Ronan Farrow called out Allen’s collaborators for continuing to work with the 80-year-old filmmaker in spite of the sexual-abuse allegations that have plagued him for decades. In an essay published this past May, Farrow wrote:
Actors, including some I admire greatly, continue to line up to star in his movies. “It’s not personal,” one once told me. But it hurts my sister every time one of her heroes like Louis C.K., or a star her age, like Miley Cyrus, works with Woody Allen. Personal is exactly what it is—for my sister, and for women everywhere with allegations of sexual assault that have never been vindicated by a conviction.
In 2014, Ronan’s sister Dylan Farrow penned an open letterdetailing the alleged sexual abuse she says she suffered as a child at the hands of the filmmaker. Like Ronan, she also called out some of Allen’s young creative partners.
What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett? Louis C.K.? Alec Baldwin? What if it had been you, Emma Stone? Or you, Scarlett Johansson? You knew me when I was a little girl, Diane Keaton. Have you forgotten me?
Woody Allen is a living testament to the way our society fails the survivors of sexual assault and abuse.
Afterward, as Blanchett sailed towards her Blue Jasmine Oscar win, the actress was asked about the essay.
“It’s obviously been a long and painful situation for the family,” Blanchett said, “and I hope they find some sort of resolution and peace.”
Her co-star Alec Baldwin took to Twitter to offer his own unfiltered explanation for why he would not be commenting on the essay.
“So you know who’s guilty? Who’s lying? You, personally, know that?” Baldwin responded to a Twitter user badgering him for comment. “You are mistaken if you think there is a place for me, or any outsider, in this family’s issue.”
Earlier this year, Kristen Stewart, who co-stars in Cafe Society,adopted the same strategy in an interview—separating the actor’s work from the personal rumors. “We don’t know any of these people involved,” she told Variety. “If we were persecuted for the amount of shit that’s been said about us that’s not true, our lives would be over.”
Even Lena Dunham, who has said she is “decidedly pro-Dylan Farrow and decidedly disgusted with Woody Allen’s behavior”—suggested to Marc Maron that she can still appreciate his films for their artistic merit. “I’m not going to indict the work,” she said.
Sarah Silverman similarly shared her own internal conflict when Tweeting out Ronan’s essay earlier this year. “My comedy hero Woody Allen, and his untouchable P.R. machine and our not wanting it to be true,” Silverman wrote. “But it is.”
Allen, meanwhile, has a foolproof strategy for separating the allegations and controversy from his life. When we sat down with the filmmaker at the Cannes Film Festival this year, he did not seem to be bothered by the negative press. The reason?
“I never read anything about me, these interviews I do, anything,” Allen told us. “I have moved so far past it. I never think about it. I work.”
If the allegations don’t seem to bother Allen himself, then why might they concern the actors on the other side of his camera?
In 2014, author and screenwriter Rafael Yglesias offered a rare perspective on this moral gray area, writing an essay for Slate about his decision to write a screenplay for Allen’s fellow-in-controversial-filmmaker-arms Polanski, in spite of the fact that Yglesias was molested himself when he was 8 years old.
“Roman Polanski was, and is, one of a handful of directors who have made movies that deserve to be called great works of art,” Yglesias explained, adding that he was so eager to work with Polanski that he even accepted a lower rate for the collaboration than he usually does.
He described the partnership as “an opportunity that was too rewarding to my artistic aspirations as a writer” to turn down. But perhaps the sharpest line, that might explain the rationale of Winslet, Timberlake, and the hundreds of others who have appeared in Allen’s nearly 50 movies, arrives towards the end of the essay.
“Working with a rapist is not the same as condoning rape,” Yglesias wrote. “Actors, writers, and producers are not cops, judges, or jurors. In the work they choose to do, writers, actors, producers, and directors can be held accountable solely for its quality and its ideas.”
*****
Readers: I’m not surprised that men wouldn’t skip a beat to work with Woody. But the women…I would think (HOPE) they would react differently. But then, he is a white men and these are white women. So much more to say here about the article, so I’ll open up the forum and invite you to do the talking.
What do you think? Is it wrong to work with Woody Allen, (the LSOS)?
Blog me.
PS: I’ve had family in town since Tuesday and birthdays all around, so my time has been limited here. But anxious to catch up with you all and respond to some comments.
✌🏽&❤️
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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