Section:GDN 1N PaGe:18 Edition Date:190907 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/9/2019 17:21 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
- The Guardian Saturday 7 September 2019
(^18) News
‘I’ve done everything #MeToo
would love to achieve’ – Allen
Catherine Shoard
Andrew Pulver
Woody Allen has reiterated his sup-
port for the #MeToo movement and
his feeling that he was an early adop-
ter of their objectives.
Speaking before the French pre-
miere of A Rainy Day in New York ,
Allen was asked if he regretted com-
ments made in 2018, in which he said
he “should be the poster boy for the
#MeToo movement”.
“Not at all,” he told France 24’s
Vincent Roux. “I’ve worked with hun-
dreds of actresses. Not one of them has
ever complained about me; not a single
complaint. I’ve employed women in
the top capacity for years and we’ve
always paid them the equal of men.
“I’ve done everything the MeToo
movement would love to achieve.”
Earlier comments about #MeToo by
Allen were cited by Amazon as a cause
for their termination of a four-movie
contract with the director, to which
Allen responded with a $68m lawsuit.
At the time, Allen was reacting to a
saying that Johansson “has a long way
to go in understanding the issue she
claims to champion”.
Farrow was commenting on an
interview in Harper’s Bazaar in which
Johansson said that the director
“maintains his innocence” of alleg-
ations of sexual abuse against him by
Farrow, and that she “believe[s] him”.
Farrow wrote on Twitter: “Because
if we’ve learned anything from the
past two years it’s that you defi nitely
should believe male predators who
‘maintain their innocence’ without
question. Scarlett has a long way to go
in understanding the issue she claims
to champion.”
Farrow’s 2017 op-ed in the Los
Angeles Times, at the start of the
#MeToo campaign , triggered a wave of
controversy in the fi lm industry, with
actors such as Timothée Chalamet ,
Greta Gerwig and Rebecca Hall pub-
licly stating they would not work with
Allen again. The director was defended
by other actors , including Javier Bar-
dem and Anjelica Huston.
Speaking in France yesterday, Allen
said the current lack of a US distribu-
tor for A Rainy Day in New York did not
concern him, nor did a future in which
he no longer made movies for a main-
stream studio.
“It doesn’t matter to me for a sec-
ond,” he said. “If tomorrow nobody
would fi nance my fi lms and my plays
or publish my books, I’d still get up and
write because that’s what I do.”
renewed allegation of molestation by
his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow,
which dates back to 1992, when she
was seven years old. The allegation,
made during a custody battle after
Allen’s split from the actor Mia Far-
row, was consistently denied by Allen.
Two investigations were launched at
the time and no charges brought.
In 2018 Allen told an Argentinian
news show: “This is something that
has been thoroughly looked at 25 years
ago by all the authorities and every-
body came to the conclusion that it
was untrue,” said Allen. “And that was
the end, and I’ve gone on with my life.
For it to come back now, it’s a terrible
thing to accuse a person of. I’m a man
with a family and my own children.
“Everyone wants justice to be done.
If there is something like the #MeToo
movement now, you root for them. You
want them to bring to justice these ter-
rible harassers, these people who do
all these terrible things. And I think
that’s a good thing.”
On Thursday, Dylan Farrow
responded to Scarlett Johansson’s
defence of Woody Allen this week by
Harping on
A gittern
and a harp
feature in
the Medieval
Music in
the Dales
festival, which
continues until
tomorrow
at Bolton
Castle in the
Yorkshire
Dales national
park.
PHOTOGRAPH: DANNY
LAWSON/PA WIRE
‘I’ve worked with
hundreds of
actresses. Not one
of them has ever
complained about me’
Woody Allen
Film director
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