Ed says this is his favorite scene from a Woody Allen movie
I can’t disagree. Best scene in a glorious movie, and an elegant celebration of the best parts of our culture. More than enough reasons to keep an existentialist in clover. Allen is a genius.
But, alas, a Sisyphean one. One of the main story lines has to do with Allen’s 42 year old character (and all male and many female characters in all of his movies are Woody Allen) is dating, meaning fucking, a 17 year old girl, Tracy whose face is mentioned. Make that raping, as in statutory. And the uptown sophisticates in the movie take in in stride, without a pause. I remember when I first saw the movie, that bothered me.
OK, time for this
[DISCLAIMER: Woody Allen is a truly detestable person, not less so for being a genius film maker. Don’t go to his movies until they are at the Crest.]
His real life is soooo much creepier. from Wikipedia
Around 1980, Allen began a relationship with actress Mia Farrow, who had leading roles in most of his movies from 1982 to 1992. Farrow and Allen never married and kept separate homes.[111]
Allen and Farrow separated in 1992, after Farrow discovered nude photographs that Allen had taken of Soon-Yi, Farrow’s adopted daughter who was around 20 years old then.[112][113] In her autobiography, What Falls Away (New York: Doubleday, 1997), Farrow says that Allen admitted to a relationship with Soon-Yi.[114]
In a 2005 Vanity Fair interview,[115] Allen estimated that, despite the scandal’s damage to his reputation, Farrow’s discovery of Allen’s attraction to Soon-Yi Previn by finding nude photographs of her was “just one of the fortuitous events, one of the great pieces of luck in my life. . . It was a turning point for the better.” Of his relationship with Farrow, he said, “I’m sure there are things that I might have done differently. . . Probably in retrospect I should have bowed out of that relationship much earlier than I did.” In 2011, Allen said,
“What was the scandal? I fell in love with this girl, married her. We have been married for almost 15 years now. There was no scandal, but people refer to it all the time as a scandal and I kind of like that in a way because when I go I would like to say I had one real juicy scandal in my life.”[116]
That last quote reflects the dark side of existentialism, if there is no meaning there are no rules, any messed up thing that one feels like doing is justified. Good for me. Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me!
And, it gets way, way worse if you believe what Mia Farrow’s other kid has to say. Too creepy for this blog.