Woody Allen can count on fellow New Yorker Spike Lee among his supporters in Mia Farrow’s never-ending battle to use the #MeToo movement to shun and destroy her ex-husband.
In an interview for New York's WOR 710 radio on Friday, Spike Lee defended Allen, noting he still calls the blacklisted director a friend. Asked to weigh in on the controversy around Allen, Lee said, "I'd just like to say Woody Allen's a great, great filmmaker, and this cancel thing is not just Woody. And I think that when we look back on it, [we're] gonna see that, short of killing somebody, I don't if you can just erase somebody like they never existed. Woody's a friend of mine... I know he's going through it right now."
EDIT: Lee has given in to the mob and written a Twitter apology, in the statement Lee said, “I deeply apologize. My words were wrong. I do not and will not tolerate sexual harassment, assault, or violence. Such treatment causes real damage that can’t be minimized.” Yeah, whatever, fuck off. What a lack of integrity. What a coward.
We've been covering the Woody Allen saga ever since Dylan Farrow's sexual abuse allegations against her 82-year-old father were reignited courtesy of the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements in late 2017. Mia Farrow and her kids, Ronan and Dylan, have vehemently stayed true to their convictions. Suffice to say, Allen's reputation took a major hit; his contract with Amazon annulled, and his films now blacklisted from the U.S. market.
By all means, read Robert Weide’s excellent dissections of Allen vs Farrow which were posted on 12.13.17, 5.30.16, and, most recently, 1.14.18.
Weide, and many others with enough knowledge to know better that to accuse Allen, have made the case that Woody Allen was alone with Dylan Farrow in his apartment countless times over the years and could have abused her, without witnesses, any of those times. Child molestation is a compulsive illness, it demands repetition. The fact that Allen's alleged sex abuse history is limited to just Dylan Farrow, that one time, goes against everything sexual abuse psychologists have been saying the last 100 years about sex abuse.
It gives me no pleasure to report that this is one of the worst films of Schrader’s career. Wooden acting, Jack Huston and Sofia Boutella are badly miscast, the script is dull, the photography is flat; nothing works.