Oops. Woody Allen’s latest movie is the Hiroshima of box office bombs:
Woody Allen has posted the lowest box office opening weekend of his career with his 49th film, “Rifkin’s Festival,” grossing just $24,000 on Friday and Saturday from 26 theaters, according to box office sources.
Most of the theaters screening the film are owned by Landmark Theaters, whose flagship Los Angeles location posted the highest single theater total for the film with $2,300. Other theaters outside of Landmark’s circuit screening the film include the Quad Theatre in New York City, where the film grossed $1,600 over two days.
By comparison, Allen’s previous film “Wonder Wheel” earned approximately $125,000 from five screens on its 3-day opening weekend in 2017, when the rise of the #MeToo movement brought long-standing allegations by actress Dylan Farrow against Allen — her adoptive father — returned to the public eye. Farrow, whose brother Ronan helped expose Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual assaults in The New Yorker, has accused Allen of molesting her as a child in several interviews as well as in the HBO docuseries “Allen v. Farrow.” He has never been charged or prosecuted and has denied the claims.
There are specific tropes in movies that don’t age particularly well and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Movies are mirrors fixed in a specific time and place and seeing what’s reflected in them with new eyes in a different era can inform us whether we’ve evolved or regressed as a society. As an example, think about the vast ideological chasm seperating Birth of a Nation from Twelve Years a Slave. Although D.W. Griffith’s racist glorification of the KKK would never be tolerated today, back in the day it was a vision of America that Griffith and the majority of white people in movie theaters across the country were emotionally invested in. It was where white Americans wanted to live.
Sometimes, in spite of what the plot of the movie is supposed to be about, a movie can also be a peepshow inside the filmmaker’s head that accidentally reveals way more than what they originally intended and what’s brought out into the open can get pretty ugly. There are Monsters of the Id that should never be seen but they’re here and they are hiding in plain sight.
Another example of a tiresome, offensive and misogynistic conceit in Hollywood that just won’t go away are the infinite number of “romantic” movies glorifying May-December relationships. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t think it’s heartwarming seeing a senior citizen dating a young woman who probably wasn’t even born yet when he bought his first VCR. Ick.
But remember, these movies are the reflections of what some men in this culture fantasize about every day. The movie is a mirror, and the mirror is only the messenger. The mirror is just reflecting what’s already there.
What makes Malcolm & Marie, Lost in Translation, Silver Linings Playbook, Autumn In New York and other movies of this genre problematic is how they gloss over the inherent power imbalance in these type of relationships. No matter how intelligent and perceptive some young women might be, there are hard lessons that can only be learned by experience. A young woman usually won’t see the big red flags that an older woman would recognize right away.
What comes to mind is a scene from Ron Howard’s Parenthood where Julie (Martha Plimpton) is telling her mother (Dianne Wiest) about being betrayed by her dirtbag boyfriend and Julie doesn’t understand why he lied to her.
Julie: He said that he loved me.
Helen: Men say that. They all say that. Then they cum.
There are predatory men with power who will definitely try to take advantage of a naive and vulnerable young woman because that’s what they do. That’s what Woody Allen tried to do to Mariel Hemingway.
In Woody Allen’s 1979 comedy Manhattan, the filmmaker, then 44, dated a 17-year-old character played by Mariel Hemingway. The part earned Hemingway an Oscar nomination, and, according to the actress in a forthcoming memoir, also the unwanted romantic attention of Allen.
In Out Came the Sun, which will be released on April 7, Hemingway claims that Allen attempted to lure her to Paris once she turned 18—two years after she had filmed Manhattan. “Our relationship was platonic, but I started to see that he had a kind of crush on me, though I dismissed it as the kind of thing that seemed to happen any time middle-aged men got around young women,” writes Hemingway. The actress suggests that Allen attempted to act upon the crush by flying to her parents’ home in Idaho and inviting the teen to Europe.
According to an excerpt obtained by Fox News, the actress cautioned her parents “that I didn’t know what the [sleeping] arrangement was going to be [in Paris], that I wasn’t sure if I was even going to have my own room. Woody hadn’t said that. He hadn’t even hinted it. But I wanted them to put their foot down. They didn’t. They kept lightly encouraging me.”
Hemingway says that she woke up at night with the realization that “[n]o one was going to get their own room. His plan, such as it was, involved being with me.” She says that she went into his guest room and woke him up asking, “I’m not going to get my own room, am I? I can’t go to Paris with you.”
The actress says that Allen left Idaho the next morning.
The moment Woody stepped inside the house, Hemingway’s home suddenly became a place where she wasn’t safe anymore. Hemingway was caught inside Woody’s fantasy where he was the landlord and she was expected to pay the rent. Worse, Hemingway’s parents ignored what was going on. They should have had their daughter’s back but instead her mother and father decided to turn their backs. People are often mesmerized by celebrities and Woody knew that.
But incredibly, in spite of being outnumbered and surrounded, an 18-year-old Mariel Hemingway still found the strength to say “No”. But although Hemingway was able to protect herself back then, it’s still absolutely disgraceful she was painted into a corner at home in the first place.
Even though Woody didn’t get Hemingway into his bed, he probably said to himself, Better luck next time, because I’m damned sure this wasn’t the first time he tried a stunt like this because that’s what men like him did.
But all bad things must come to an end. Years later, Mariel Hemingway finally got the last word:
Now, on the podcast Better Together with Anne & Heather, Hemingway spoke at length with hosts Anne Heche and Heather Duffy about Allen’s Manhattan and the current controversy surrounding Allen v. Farrow. Hemingway says the film “100% couldn’t come out” today due to the now-infamous underage relationship at the heart of the film, according to Variety. “I’m not condoning any behavior, but that movie probably couldn’t come out today,” she added.
The world has moved on but Woody didn’t, so he got left behind. Nowadays the public thinks of Woody Allen as that creepy old guy who married his ex-wife’s adopted stepdaughter.
Annie Hall, the crown jewel of Woody’s filmography, happened a lifetime ago. Instead, moviegoers have Rifkin’s Festival, an odd, stupefying cinematic misfire where the only people laughing in the multiplex are Mike Nelson, Crow and Tom Servo.
Sadly, what’s reflected in Woody Allen’s tedious, pretentious and unfunny movies of late is the frozen mindset of a man who reads the same books, listens to the same music and sees the same movies over and over again. “Cancel Culture” didn’t kill Woody’s movies; it was a self-inflicted wound.
Woody Allen’s movies are mirrors, and the mirrors are only the messenger. The mirror is just reflecting what’s already there.
Or not.
Eggbert
What was the May-December relationship in Silver Linings Playbook?
WereBear
I don’t even want to watch his old movies. I suspect they might not be that funny.
Betty Cracker
Excellent post! My favorite Allen film is “Crimes and Misdemeanors
and Punishment,” and I’ve often wondered if he wasn’t telling on himself in that movie too: the rich, talented man who got away with murder.Mild disagreement on one point: I don’t think there was a troubling experience/age disparity in “Silver Linings Playbook.” It’s true Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence aren’t the same age, but I think their characters in the movie were supposed to be roughly the same age, and they pulled it off, IMO.
Baud
I never got into Woody Allen.
germy
I remember a joke in one of Woody’s films:
I remember thinking at the time that he had pretty good comedy chops to write a classic-sounding joke like that.
And then recently I saw the same gag in a Three Stooges movie from 1952.
Chief Oshkosh
Seems to work for the Macrons — the exception that proves the rule? Occasionally when I see them on TV together, I start humming “Stacy’s mom has got it going on.” Sadly, Trump apparently thought similar when he met Mme Macron. EEEWWW!
Other movies that I found totally icky along these lines? Sabrina and the remake of Sabrina. No WAY would Audrey Hepburn dump William Holden for Humphrey Bogart. Eeewwww! But at least in those movies the December Daddy figures weren’t anywhere near as twisted as the typical Woody Allen DD.
Ken
Slightly more insidious, sometimes the plot isn’t a May-December romance, but the casting has a man in his late 50s and a woman in her early 20s, playing a couple in their mid-30s.
Walker
I am not so sure this is Woody Allen so much as it is the pandemic. Non-event films (e.g. anything not a Marvel Blockbuster) have essentially collapsed as they have all moved to streaming. It is unclear if that market is ever coming back.
germy
I wonder how Mr. Kaplowitz is doing with his standup comedy career, though.
Jerry has a lot of friends in the business, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they froze him out of that career.
The Thin Black Duke
@Betty Cracker: I hear what you’re saying but it would be nice if older actresses weren’t always passed over for these type of roles when studios decide to go for someone younger. Toni Collette talked about how awful it was when she started getting roles to play grandmothers once she hit 40.
Betty Cracker
@Chief Oshkosh: I read Lauren Bacall’s autobiography, where she recounts falling for Bogart in real life. No one was more surprised than she was! She thought he was an unattractive old fart until she got to know him.
MazeDancer
Woody Allen is a pedophile. Marrying someone tantamount to being your step-daughter changes nothing.
Can’t imagine anyone agreeing to view one of his movies, much less be in one.
May he never get financed again.
Jerzy Russian
Great essay. I was blissfully unaware that Allen was still making movies. It is good to see that the few people who are aware of him still making movies don’t care.
Off topic, but if I may ask a personal question: How are you keeping yourself so thin during these pandemic times? The dial on my scale must be stuck or something, since it seems it only goes towards larger numbers.
JMG
There’s a definite break in Allen’s career between his early movies, where he played a nebbish who never got the girl, to the ones where he does get the girl. Annie Hall, where first he has then loses the girl, was sort of the transition from one to the other.
germy
@The Thin Black Duke:
This is a classic now, and still truthful.
Miss Bianca
Oh, man…Manhattan.
I remember seeing it in the theater when it came out, so I would have been 15 or 16. Thought it was a great movie then, even tho’ I remember thinking, “why would a smoking hot babe like Mariel Hemingway’s character want anything to do with a schlub like Woody Allen’s character?”
Saw it again a few years ago and was utterly repelled. And knew the answer to my question was: “She wouldn’t. But Woody Allen made the movie, and Woody’s fantasies prevailed.”
ETA: Not that I couldn’t see the attraction to older men. I mean, I dated guys who were a lot older than I was, too, back in the day. But they were good-looking, charming, *fun* men who were well aware that I was doing them a solid by sleeping with them and treated me like a princess. Not the case with Allen or his characters.
Chief Oshkosh
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, that was a weird one to me. She was 19 and he was 40? 50? going on death when they met on the set of To Have and Have Not.
Betty Cracker
@The Thin Black Duke: Good point. The Brits seem to have a better track record of putting older women (and women who don’t necessarily look like underwear models) in lead roles, which is one reason I’ve always been a fan of British film and TV. One interesting thing I’ve noticed about the ongoing fragmentation of the old studio/network system is that this seems to be changing. Good!
MomSense
In cool celebrity news, kid saw Anson Funderburgh on the street today and stopped to talk to him. He’s going to hear his band play tonight. Last show before they go back to Texas is in Maine.
Jess
When I was young, everyone thought Allen was brilliant. My husband (ex) was really into him, and got me to watch some of his classics. I hated them, and saw immediately that he was creepy and misogynistic. I tried to explain this to my husband and others, and no one else seemed to be able to see it. And then he left Farrow for his stepdaughter, and everyone was sooo surprised. I’m glad people are more clued in now to creeps like him. He’s always disgusted me.
The Thin Black Duke
@JMG: One of the reasons I think Annie Hall is Woody’s best film is because it’s his most honest film since the punchline of the story is how he loses this relationship as the result of his own self-centered behavior. Woody was never that introspective again.
Miss Bianca
@The Thin Black Duke: Yes, that is an infuriating casting trend that needs to die in a thousand fires.
The Thin Black Duke
@germy: Excellent! Thank you.
BGinCHI
Totally agree.
No desire to watch anything after “Bullets Over Broadway.”
What a schmuck.
debbie
@WereBear:
I don’t want to remember that I liked any of them.
Brachiator
Apart from the ugliness of Allen’s personal life, the bad box office may also be due to the fact that people have shifted away from going to movie theaters for all but the biggest and blockiest of blockbusters, and decided that most other films are meant to be watched via their streaming service.
The studios are still sitting on a ton of movies made before the pandemic hit that they are afraid to release to theaters. And aside from the Spiderman movie, most have not fared well.
JR
@Eggbert: probably more may-august with the 15 year difference with Jlaw and cooper
germy
@The Thin Black Duke:
I wonder how much of that was because of Marshall Brickman, his co-writer.
hueyplong
Man, I was aware of how creepy Manhattan was at the time. Might have been less repelled by the age thing if it hadn’t been for the fact that it had been really creepy in previous movies when women Woody’s own age actually felt something for him.
Maybe it was just easier to see if you couldn’t stand Allen’s character in any of his films.
germy
@Brachiator:
Didn’t Allen have a netflix deal, or with one of the other streaming services? He wrote himself as a creative advertising executive, but he’s 80.
It got bad reviews and even Allen admitted he hated it.
Chief Oshkosh
What’s your all’s verdict on Hannah and Her Sisters?
UncleEbeneezer
Great post. Agreed that there has always been creepiness to Allen’s work that really stands out now in hindsight. Similarly, Quentin Tarantino’s work (which I love aesthetically) always has that not-so-subtle, getting-a-little-too-familiar-with-the-N-word vibe of racism that can make it hard to watch.
More related to this post though, I have read that there has been some criticism of Licorice Pizza for PTAnderson’s use of the flip-side version of pedophilia using the old underage boy romance with an older woman. I’ll still probably watch it because I love Anderson’s style in general, but I know some people say it’s a big turn-off for them.
Another Scott
It’s good that things are finally, finally changing to some extent, but rich old white guys still have too much feeling of entitlement and too much power.
That Seinfeld clip is amazing.
Thanks.
(See the original for embedded links.)
Cheers,
Scott.
The Thin Black Duke
@Brachiator: What occured to me recently is I think there’s another reason why the MCU is so popular: other than animation, superhero movies are movies where you can bring the entire family. They don’t pretend to be deep but they’re not dumb, there’s no gratuitous sex and violence, the casting is reflective of what the world looks like and they’re not cynical.
Ben Cisco, MSCIS Padawan
Never really thought he was that funny to begin with; the pedo bit sealed the deal for me.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
There are days when I wonder whether he was always a monster, or whether something happened to him as he got successful. I found his early farces like Sleeper and Bananas enjoyable back in the day, much more than his later work, but now I have to wonder if even those early works are tainted.
Major Major Major Major
Haven’t seen much Allen but I did like Annie Hall. And I will sometimes reference the “they usually come in pairs” joke from the Sex movie…
Re: May/December, Harold & Maude, I enjoyed.
BellyCat
Same verdict about Harold and Maude”?
PJ
@The Thin Black Duke: Annie Hall and Manhattan were co-written with Marshall Brickman. I have no idea who wrote what, but it may be that the greater self-awareness of the character and story in those movies was something that Brickman brought to the scripts.
hueyplong
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: There is a possibility that he was always a monster-in-waiting and success gave that part of him room to operate.
The Thin Black Duke
@Chief Oshkosh: Barbara Hershey’s relationship with Michael Caine and Max von Sydow is kinda creepy now.
debbie
@Miss Bianca:
Wasn’t that the film where he prepared to meet her goyim parents by buying a jar of Hellmans, a loaf of Wonder bread, and a crucifix?
The line I remember most is from Radio Days, where the narrator (Allen) remembers his parents as being more than happy to argue about anything, even whether the Atlantic or the Pacific was the greater ocean.
But now, you couldn’t pay me enough to even rewatch the films I liked.
The Thin Black Duke
@germy: Good point, thank you.
International_Mikey
Ageism isn’t okay. It seems to be acceptable in most places. I stopped reading after it was mentioned in May – December relationship paragraph. That was out of bounds.
Major Major Major Major
@The Thin Black Duke:
Angela Lansbury in Manchurian Candidate played the mother to an actor older than her, right? It’s crazy to think how she was an “old woman” before I was born, had a famous show start around I was born where she played an old woman, and is still (or finally?) an old woman.
Although I hear Wilfred Brimley had the same thing going on.
gene108
@MazeDancer:
I think one of the great debates now is how to separate the personal sins of the artist* from the art they created, with regards to displaying and enjoying their work.
*This can apply to any historical figure, in pretty much any subject.
The Thin Black Duke
@BellyCat: No. That is a marvelous anomaly.
geg6
Anybody been watching W. Kamal Bell’s We Need to Talk About Cosby? A real tour de force, IMHO. It’s a great overview of Cosby’s groundbreaking early career and everything after. A good explanation of his cultural importance, especially in the Black community. The survivors are the center and the stars all the way through. And a gut wrenching ending. Excellent stuff.
Allen v. Farrow was also excellent and, if you haven’t watched it yet, you should. You’ll never have an ounce of nostalgia for Annie Hall or, dog forbid, Manhattan ever again.
Roger Moore
@UncleEbeneezer:
One of the interesting things is that in the news, at least, men chasing after underage girls seem to be treated much more harshly than women chasing after underage boys. If a high school teacher has sex with his female students, nobody has a big problem describing this as statutory rape. If the genders are reversed, the news seems to go out of its way to avoid using the term.
I assume some of this is that men are assumed to have more sexual agency than women. This makes it easier for us to see an older man forcing himself on younger women as wrong, since the disparity in power aligns with the presumed difference in sexual agency. In the reverse situation, the disparity in power is partially countered by the assumed difference in agency, so we have a harder time seeing it as wrong, or at least we treat the wrong as less severe.
RaflW
“Maybe it’s me, but I don’t think it’s heartwarming seeing a senior citizen dating a young woman who probably wasn’t even born yet when he bought his first VCR. Ick.”
David Brooks is ever so slightly uncomfortable today. Maybe he’ll blame some progressives for his unease (oh, wait, that’s all he does.)
The Thin Black Duke
@geg6: Bill Cosby broke my heart. I can still remember how excited I was when my favorite Uncle gave me Cosby’s Why Is There Air? for my birthday.
WereBear
@Miss Bianca: I hated that movie and didn’t know why. Now, as you said, it’s obvious.
oatler
About Allen’s frozen mindset. In his heyday era (the 70s) he referenced the same crap he studied in college- Freud, Nietzsche, Kafka, Bergman etc. They didn’t have Led Zep at his college.
Roger Moore
@The Thin Black Duke:
I would agree with this except for the “violence” part. Yes, the violence is cartoonish- what do you expect?- but a huge chunk of these movies is devoted to various kinds of fights.
The Thin Black Duke
@oatler: I bet Woody studied the movie Gaslight extensively.
jonas
I like Woody Allen films, except for that nervous fella that’s always in them…
germy
One thing the Cosby case and the Woody situation showed me was how many people see their journalism jobs as opportunities to defend their friends. There were so many attempts to discredit victims.
Lana Clarkson was even derided by a few “journalists” as some sort of grasping bimbo, and this was when she wasn’t around to defend herself.
Miss Bianca
@geg6: Cosby is a wrenching figure for me. I was thinking about it just the other day, how much I loved Bill Cosby as a kid, and how ground-breaking he was as an artist, and yeah – how much it must have meant to Black America to see how popular and influential he became.
I think my reflections were prompted by seeing a trailer for The Cosby Show – the early one, from the 70s, remember that? – on a DVD I saw recently and thinking, “wow, this DVD must have come out before he got busted.”
@The Thin Black Duke: Why Is There Air? is *exactly* the album I was thinking of the other day. We had that record when I was a kid and I *wore it out*.
germy
@oatler:
I don’t think Woody went to college. He wasn’t much of a student or a deep reader.
I really think his “neurotic intellectual” image was a gimmick. Like Jack Benny being “cheap” or Chico Marx being an Italian.
I think lots of Woody’s male fans in the 1970s thought he was deeper than he really was, because he peppered his comedy with references to stuff they read in college.
John Revolta
Does Lost in Translation belong in this category though? Murray’s and Johannsen’s characters don’t have a romantic or sexual relationship in the film. They’re basically just hanging out.
RaflW
@WereBear: Whenever I drive up I-70 near the “Sleeper” house west of Denver, I think of how much my brother and I laughed at that movie in the later 70s (when we were old enough to be allowed to see it).
I suspect I’d find it awful now. Better to recall the memory than be disappointed. The mirror has warped a lot since then.
The Thin Black Duke
@Roger Moore: Sure, but you expect there’s going to be fighting in an adventure movie. Westerns have shootouts, there’s swordfighting in Tolkienesque fantasies. But the violence in movies like Nobody or any of the Saw movies is very different, and I’m not comfortable with children becoming desensitized to that aspect of cinematic violence.
Scout211
@Roger Moore:
Mary Kay Letourneau went to prison.
Percysowner
I saw several Woody Allen movies when they came out. I quit after Annie Hall. I was never that big a fan anyway, but it was something to do with my boyfriend on a Friday night. Now, I really don’t care at all, partly because of the ick factor, but also because his films didn’t really appeal to me.
MazeDancer
@gene108:
J.K. Rowling is dead to me. And, fortunately, I unsubscribed from the NY Times, so I do not have to read Lianna on Harry Potter.
The Founders owned slaves. Despicable. It was legal and another time. Still wrong, but can’t separate from the Constitution.
Rowling is alive today and her POV is despicable, wrong, and calculatedly cruel.
What about the fact that every creator could be a creep? Case-by-case.
CaseyL
@oatler: This! Allen’s movies may suffer from public revulsion, but they definitely suffer from the fact he hasn’t grown as an artist in 30-40 years. Same themes, same treatments, same attitude. It’s no longer the Zeitgeist; it’s not even well-preserved vintage.
I did see one recent Allen movie, “Midnight in Paris,” and enjoyed it. I particularly liked how, in ever era the main character visited, the people he met always yearned for the time period their parents or grandparents lived in; always thought “the (recent) past” was better than “the present.”
germy
What was the deal with Woody and Armenians?
I remember a gag from Love And Death (I think that was the film) where he says he attempted suicide by “inhaling deeply next to an Armenian.”
I remember sitting in the theater as a teenager thinking “Wait, what?”
UncleEbeneezer
@Roger Moore: I think it’s as simple as the fact that our society is Patriarchal. Men have the power, and pretty much everything (including mores), panders to us. The torrid affair with a sexy older woman is a common fantasy for boys/men because while it is a predatory relationship with an underage male, most males don’t feel like we’d be a victim in those scenarios. Deep down most men probably understand that if we felt victimized, we could get the older woman held accountable if we wanted to. She would absolutely lose her job, go to jail. People would believe us. definitely can’t say the girls who are victimized by older men. Their cries are mostly ignored or they themselves are blamed for the abuse they receive from creepy men.
The Thin Black Duke
@John Revolta: Don’t middle-aged men ever find women their own age interesting? Confession: I liked Lost in Translation very much in spite of myself, although it was mostly because of Bill Murray. Scarlett Johansson’s character was sorta “meh”.
Miss Bianca
@RaflW: The Sleeper House! Yeah, I cracked up whenever I drove past it too!
(I don’t think I ever watched Sleeper before I moved out to CO and starting seeing the house.)
waspuppet
I finally saw Manhattan about five years ago (it was a LOOONG flight). That movie would’ve been as creepy as fck even if they were the same age. Do NOT understand the appeal.
waspuppet
@WereBear: The moose-in-the-Holland-Tunnel standup bit, the “gun or gub?” scene from Take the Money and Run and “That’s a big chicken” from Sleeper. That’s it, as far as I’m concerned.
And for a roughly 60-year career, that’s not that much.
John Revolta
@The Thin Black Duke: @Miss Bianca: I feel the same about Cosby. I had five or six of his albums as a kid and I knew every word. And Chet Kinkaid, his character on his TV show seemed so wise & strong and funny too…………………. *sigh
The Thin Black Duke
@waspuppet: I think something similar happened to Dave Chappelle. Once a comedian is redefined as a “serious philosopher”, they don’t feel the need to be “funny” anymore.
Miss Bianca
@CaseyL: The one movie of his I think I would enjoy re-watching would be Zelig. And maybe The Purple Rose of Cairo. OK, two movies. But neither of them feature him in his squicky “romantic” mode.
John Revolta
@The Thin Black Duke: It’s a fair point.
Also remember that the movie was directed by a woman………
Chip Daniels
Nerds are often lovable because of their being misfits, but often people are misfit not because society has wrongly rejected them, but because they haven’t learned the essential rules and norms of human behavior.
One of the cliches of movies, and Allen’s in particular, is the nerd and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but there is an underlying ugliness to the story.
For every nerdy boy, there is a lonely nerdy girl, but instead, the cliche has a nerdy guy inexplicably adored by a beautiful girl. The injustice of a guy rejecting a nerdy girl for the same shallow reasons society rejects him is rarely explored.
The Thin Black Duke
@Miss Bianca: There’s scenes from Stardust Memories that I like.
The Thin Black Duke
@Chip Daniels: Yes. In Rifkin’s Festival, the audience is expected to believe in a world where Wallace Shawn, a loudmouth toad, is married to Gina Getshon.
Betty Cracker
@gene108: True, and I don’t think there’s an objective truth we can apply to agree on who gets tossed from the canon. It seems like people decide on a case-by-case basis. The amount of bad shit the artist/founder/whatever did is weighed against their positive contributions, and since those are valued individually too, there will rarely be a broad consensus on controversial figures except in extreme circumstances.
Miss Bianca
@CaseyL: And to be fair, Annie Hall is a genuinely great movie.
Ohio Mom
@germy: I think that is an old joke from the Jewish/Yiddish Eastern European/American Borscht Belt tradition.
Another one of those jokes is one person complaining, “The food at this resort (or on this cruise) isn’t any good” In reply, the other person says, “And the portions are so small!”
The Three Stooges, like Woody Allen were Jewish and steeped in that tradition (which is rapidly fading).
MazeDancer
Apologies to go OT, but Putin is recognizing the two “separatist” regions of Ukraine as independent. And now he’s sending troops in “at their request” for protection.
Someone might want to put up a thread so we could leave this one on topic.
Brachiator
@The Thin Black Duke:
I thought that Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Mighty Aphrodite were all very good.
Miss Bianca
@The Thin Black Duke: Damn, I know I’ve seen Stardust Memories, but I don’t even remember it now.
Roger Moore
@Scout211:
Sure. The law doesn’t make a distinction on statutory rape depending on the gender of the perpetrator or victim, but the media absolutely does. Seriously, look at the article you linked to. Even though this is describing an adult woman having sex with a 13 year-old boy, nowhere does it use the term “statutory rape”. Instead, it dances around when describing what happened. In the subhead, it says Fualaau “had an affair with his teacher”, while in the body it says their relationship was “forbidden by law” and mentions Letourneau going to prison without ever mentioning what she was convicted of. They do everything they can to avoid calling it rape.
fancycwabs
I was gonna ask who keeps giving Woody Allen money to make movies, but since they’re such low-budget affairs (if you call $10-25M low budget) they generally all break even, and then the occasional Midnight in Paris or Blue Jasmine comes along and makes 5x its budget and its all box office gold, in ROI terms.
Rachel Bakes
Random thoughts: The only Allen work I’m familiar with is Don’t Drink the Water, the play we did in college. It stood up as funny in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. We tried watching a movie he made and starred in in the early 2000s and left the drive in due to a stupid plot and his incredible annoying character.
the film Twilight (no, not that Twilight. The one with Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, susan Sarandon, and James Garner hit a great note with 20-something me. They were all approaching older and played that age. In age appropriate couples. The story was fair looking back but it struck me for the appropriate casting
sab
@Roger Moore: I don’t think that is true at all. Male high school teachers having affairs with students provoke outraged gossip. That happened in my high school. He got an athletic field named in his honor. They only get in trouble if the girl gets pregnant. Women teachers often go to jail.
Steeplejack
@The Thin Black Duke:
I haven’t seen it in a while, but I don’t remember Lost in Translation as a May-December romance. It was about the two main characters hanging out for a while at an inflection point in their respective lives. There was an element of attraction, but I think it turned more on Scarlett Johansson’s character’s curiosity about Bill Murray’s character’s celebrity status and his reaction to her.
John Revolta
@germy: I think the gag was simply that “Armenian” kinda sounds funny, or did at the time anyway.
I liked Zelig, as much for its technical accomplishments as anything, and ditto for Midnight in Paris for the way it brought ’20s Paris and La Belle Epoque to life.
geg6
@The Thin Black Duke:
Yes, that is the consensus of pretty much everyone in the doc. It’s very well done. I highly recommend it.
Barbara
@Miss Bianca: I have the same reaction. I still remember scenes from his first eponymous series. My family watched it every Sunday night. I am still shocked that he used his cachet to carry out criminal assault on unsuspecting women over and over again. I cannot even pretend to understand where such predatory instincts come from.
germy
@John Revolta:
He did another joke about Armenians in “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex” so I’m not sure it’s just based on Armenian sounding funny.
FelonyGovt
@John Revolta: Agreed. In Lost in Translation the relationship between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansen is very sweet, with no indication of any sexual component or coercion. That’s one of the things I love about it.
marcopolo
@The Thin Black Duke: Well, the fact that Padma Lakshmi was married to Salman Rushdie does come to mind, lol. I do have a pretty good imagination and can see how two people (no matter how far apart in age) can fall in love because of their minds but making it work over a long (even middle) amount of time, there’s the rub. Marilyn Monroe & Arthur Miller also seem an unlikely pair.
As for Allen movies, I will always have a fond spot for the early comedies: Bananas, Sleeper, Love & Death, EYWTKASBWAA. A the time I also loved Manhattan & Annie Hall (though as everyone here has noted they have become more fraught with age). After those, I pretty much stopped enjoying/watching him. Maybe it was just the sameness of his work–that he did not (could not?) change his way of viewing the world. And for the last 20 years or so all the other creepiness. Just blech now.
I do think an interesting topic to explore someday would be artists (whatever field) who have successfully managed to produce interesting work over many years; who have managed to keep it fresh and engaging. As a sometimes writer I understand you have that one (or two) really amazing ideas that you bring to fruition but after that…that’s when it gets so much harder.
Percysowner
@Roger Moore:
And then when she got out after serving 6 months as part of her plea bargain, she broke her terms of parole, saw him again and got pregnant by him AGAIN. As soon she served her fill term and he was old enough, they got married and lasted for 14 years. The whole story is pretty sickening, especially since the papers never really called it what it was, rape.
Ohio Mom
Like a lot of others have said, there were Woody Allen movies back in the day I adored. I don’t know if I would still like them or find them sophomoric (I myself was pretty sophomoric back then), and I haven’t any desire to find out. He repels me and I can’t separate that out.
marcopolo
@Steeplejack: It’s been a while since I’ve seen it as well, but I think also ScarJo’s character is also charmed (?) that Murray’s character finds her interesting (affirmation) whilst her newlywed husband isn’t around while Murray finds in her character an escape from the “aging celebrity grind,” combined with a bit of “fond remembrance of the openness of life’s opportunities” at her age, plus a sort of fatherly/unclelike compassion for her situation. And then she has a nice smile and butt.
I dunno, I’m a guy approaching 60 and I rememberer having lunch with a fellow, a kind of mentor to me at the time, 30 years ago when he was about my age now, and he was just flirting & admiring our really attractive early 20s waitress & I asked him (called him gently out on it, on it’s appropriateness) if he didn’t feel a little uncomfortable and his reply was along the lines of “looking is free, youth is so beautiful, appreciating it is fine if you don’t make an ass out of yourself.” There’s definitely truth to that but now I’m closing in on 60 I’m also aware of the beauty that comes with age and experience, and I don’t remember ever having that conversation with him.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
For me, it’s about how tied the person’s ugly inner self is tied into the art they make. I have the ability to separate, say, Roman Polanski the rapist and pedophile from the greatness of Rosemary’s Baby. It’s a lot harder to do that with Allen and Cosby. Allen because he continuously ties himself romantically to co-stars who are decades younger than himself. And Cosby being the moralizer and everyone’s “dad” is impossible to separate for me. I grew up listening to my older brothers’ Cosby comedy records and then, in college, the big tv show and I was also brokenhearted to find out what a piece of shit he was. I had been a bit turned off by his NAACP speech and other times he tried to act like how low someone wore their pants or how they weren’t necessarily married to the mothers of their children was some great moral failure for which he had the moral superiority to chastise them. I just thought it was an old guy getting old and saying the stupid shit older people always say about the younger ones. But I never thought he was doing the shit he was doing. It’s really discouraging.
Brachiator
@The Thin Black Duke:
I have been following this and looking for an appropriate thread, but apart from some MCU movies, even family films have been failing at the movie box office.
The old paradigm has been broken. People would go to the movie regularly to see what was there. Now, apart from select blockbusters, movie theaters do not have a regular inventory of product.
And the bigger deal is that many people now do a mental judgment where streaming is the default choice, and the question is “is this movie worth the extra money of a movie ticket and popcorn, etc?”
Murder on the Orient Express did well at the box office pre-pandemic. Death on the Nile, similar in style and also featuring Poirot, has not done well.
MCU’s Black Widow and DC’s Wonder Woman 2 both under-performed. The MCU martial arts movie also under-performed.
The latest Spiderman movie did so well that the studio is still holding off on releasing it to streaming.
The movie studios are scared out of their minds. Ghostbusters Afterlife was wholesome and had a lot of pre-release buzz, but did not catch fire.
I think the studios are sitting on the Top Gun sequel and a new Mission Impossible movie, both of which might have been sure fire hits before the pandemic.
My sister likes Marvel movies, but also takes care of our mother. My sister will not go to a movie theater and risk bringing Covid back home. Doesn’t matter how family friendly a film might be.
Betty Cracker
@geg6: That makes sense — the closer the art is linked to the artists’ creepiness, malevolence, etc., the harder it is to separate the art from the artist.
Miss Bianca
@Brachiator: Caught in a dilemma here because we would like to start showing movies again at my theater, but…our mission is changing because the whole movie industry has changed. We may be reduced to showing old movies again.
Steeplejack
@marcopolo:
I agree with you about Lost in Translation. Your take is more in-depth than mine was.
FridayNext
I was wondering how this same conversation plays out in regard to professional musicians, especially classic rockers from the 60’s and 70’s, the latter decade even had a movement called “Baby Groupies” Many of or biggest rock stars from this era were having sex with girls as young as 13 and 14, sang songs about it, and we continue to idolize them. I used to love Iggy Pop, but after considering the truth behind his lyric, “I slept with sable when she was 13” I can’t even watch a commercial playing Lust for Life (and there are so many) without turning the channel.
Now, granted, most of them aren’t still churning out new music on this theme, but they keep replaying the old hits.
Brachiator
@geg6:
I note that Polanski is a great filmmaker, but decided that I will not watch any of his works while he still lives.
He is unapologetic about his crime.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
We still quote from “Annie Hall”. I think that was a highlight. And we’ve seen most of his films since then, though nothing was as ha-ha funny as his earlier films.
Yeah, but when he was a young wunderkind writer for Sid Caesar he was considered kind of a joke machine.
First weird Woody Allen moment for us was “Stardust Memories”. The recurring line through that film was fans saying “I like his earlier, funny stuff”, and those fans were made to look like idiots. It was a direct slap in the face to those of us who liked his earlier, funny stuff.
I think some of his films in recent years have been interesting. Not great, certainly not funny, but interesting. We’ve managed to enjoy many of them at some level. I’d argue that “Midnight in Paris” is one of the best things Owen Wilson has done.
I agree that the relationship in Manhattan was weird and creepy, and I thought so at the time.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@FridayNext: We will quote Ringo Starr, “She’s 16, she’s beautiful, and she’s mine” when we want to skeeve each other out.
Why would you write that?
J R in WV
Never cared for any of Allen’s movies. Don’t care for “film” as opposed to fun movies. Will confess that Rosemary’s Baby was a great movie, no matter how fucked-up Polanski is. Still shudder at the moments of inflection in that movie. Amazing to watch.
Loved Cosby back in the day, made me laugh so hard, but can believe he turned out to be such a monster. Not surprised about Allen, tho, always felt off center to me…
PJ
@The Thin Black Duke: Gina Gerson dated Ron Perelman, who is not more handsome than Wallace Shawn (though substantially wealthier), for a while.
Miss Bianca
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: He didn’t write it, as I recall – I think it was a cover song.
But yeah, I used to cringe when I heard that one come on the radio. (And I think it made it to #1 on the Top Forty, if you can believe that!)
geg6
@Brachiator:
What you say is true and I will have to really think it through should I decide to watch any Polanski films any time soon (which I doubt). But I think I can concentrate on the actual film and its story rather than spending all my time parsing every word and gesture and relationship based on what I now know of Allen and Cosby. Their oevre is so tied into their own personalities and egos that it’s simply impossible to separate.
debbie
@geg6:
Bell was interviewed on Fresh Air a couple of weeks ago. It really was an excellent interview.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Most people simply don’t know the biographies of artists, even artists they admire. And many painters and novelists of earlier years have had their biographies cleaned up.
“The Talented Mr Ripley” and other works by Patricia Highsmith are undeniably great novels and films. The 2015 adaptation of her novel about a lesbian romance, is a very sweet film. But as she grew older, Highsmith became a particularly nasty and virulent racist. You can detect his in some of her work, but it has been deliberately overlooked by some of her admirers.
Director Victor Salva was imprisoned for molestation. It is arguable that his fascination for young boys is represented in his films, as well as some of the elements of his crime. But people can view his horror films (Jeepers Creepers) as typical of the genre if they do not know Salva’s biography.
Many people thought his film Powder was a gentle story about a boy who is just not understood by other boys, a metaphor for gay life. And this may well be the case. It is an interesting idea whether Salva was able to produce a work which moved beyond the worst of his behavior, but still had biographical elements.
Geoduck
Sort of off-topic, but since it was mentioned… I’ve read that Birth of a Nation was considered problematic even when it first came out, and did not receive universally glowing reviews.
And to offer another artist example, I still enjoy the works of H. P. Lovecraft, even though the man was a miserable racist in real life. (Miserable in more than one sense, the man did not have a very happy life.)
FridayNext
@Miss Bianca:
It may have been a cover, but there are probably hundreds of songs out there written and sung by and/or about adult men dating and having sex with teenage girls.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
(Raises hand)
I have never understood the attraction for teenagers. Even when I was a teenager, I was mostly attracted to girls at least 2 years older (which as you can imagine, did not lead to a lot of success. 16 is not going to date 14).
Now that I’m waaaay over 40, I’d say that women under 40 can be pretty in the way a sunset is pretty, but sorry, I’m going to reserve the word “beautiful” for women with maturity. My wife being perpetually the ideal of beauty, at every age.
Bill Murray? The more I hear about how he treated Harold Ramis because he didn’t like the idea that he was funnier in a partnership with Ramis than alone, the more I can’t stand the guy.
But as for non-romantic relationships, one of my favorite movies is one called “Morning Glory”, where a very young Rachel McAdams is the producer of a morning show which hires old curmudgeon Harrison Ford. It has the beats of a rom-com, and eventually Ford has to do the “running after her to win her back” thing. But it’s to win her back as a producer. There’s no romance at all, it’s a professional relationship. And it’s absolutely wonderful.
Villago Delenda Est
Harold and Maude. A different kind of May-December romance.
Steeplejack
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Uh, because the entire edifice of pop music is 90% teenage love and angst? “You’re Sixteen” first came out in 1960, right in the middle of that.
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
I really would like to see regular movie going make a comeback. But it will be tough.
Pre pandemic, I would go to the movies on the weekend as a treat after work. But two movie theaters nearest me went out of business during the pandemic. So, apart from my virus related reticence, it is just not as easy for me to get to the movies.
But I knew of some people who would go to the movies for, say a Marvel movie, but would have access to pirated movies if they did not want to pay a ticket price. And anything else, they would wait for streaming. They were already cutting loose from regular movie going before the pandemic.
On the other hand, I would see students, seniors and people with families regularly go to the second-tier theater after a movie had completed its main theatrical run. These people loved movies, but also wanted a night out with their friends and families. They just could not afford to pay top tier ticket prices.
Tenar Arha
I’m not chancing carrying COVID even though I prefer going to the movies & was reliably at the movies at least 4x/month. (Before the pandemic I was a regular at the discounted Tuesday shows at the AMC or Showcase Cinemas, plus the occasional weekend social event). Anyway, the past month and a half of Omicron, I didn’t go out many places at all because I wasn’t going to risk my Aunt not being able to get her lumpectomy or starting her treatment.
OTOH I was starting to go back into theaters before January & Omicron, but only because there were local ones doing vaccination checks. The one time I went to a chain, to see Never Say Die last fall, I really spent some of the movie more concerned about the people eating around me than watching Craig’s final act in the part. I just couldn’t relax into the spectacle at all.
I’ll note, it’s not like I’m incapable of spending a couple hours or more inside ? ventilation, post a COVID spike & KF94 masked up the whole time, in order to be entertained. I did just go to see the Eroica Trio at Calderwood Hall yesterday. It’s just that knowing there’s an extra layer of protection for everyone in the audience let’s me relax into the experience in a way it’s not possible otherwise.
I think layered protective measures will get movie junkies like me back out to theaters & talking up the experience & the films. & I think the the movie producers & the chains are making a big mistake, leaving $ on the table by ignoring this, while ignoring the effects of spiking COVID on their box office. It’s not a simply a comment on what people want to go outside their homes to see (though that’s part of it), it’s a comment on their willingness to do whatever it takes to get an audience into theaters.
John
Even when I was a Woody Allen fan, this exchange from Annie Hall skeeved me out:
Talent doesn’t excuse being a scumbag.
Ruckus
@Jerzy Russian:
I put on a mask and walk 2+ miles a day.
I do skip a day on occasion if I’m doing some actual physical work…
Ruckus
@germy:
Never seen that before, it is great.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
This is a really good way of saying it. I feel as if this explains why people react so strongly to people like JK Rowling or Joss Wheedon turning out to be awful. So much of what people liked about their work was the positive message, so finding out the creator betrays that message in real life creates a huge backlash.
Dopey-o
Power doesn’t corrupt, it reveals.
Bill Dunlap
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Ed Abbey once wrote that the two most overrated things in America are Mack trucks and teenage pussy.
Roger Moore
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of rock-and-roll music was written for an audience of teenagers, for whom romance with a 16 year-old would be perfectly appropriate.
Miss Bianca
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I’ve never heard of that movie, and I speak as a fan of both Rachel McAdams *and* Harrison Ford! I will have to check it out!
Ruckus
@The Thin Black Duke:
They can and often do.
But look at movies, it’s rare that the woman is the same age as the leading man. germy’s link at #15 is great actually explaining this, with real actresses. A lot of our societies are based around age, and yes sex. Most of us become less “attractive” as we age but how much of that is the entertainment business? If Woody Allen was a more classically good looking male, would he be perceived the same as he is in this post? Possibly not. Also society is changing, slowly as it always does, and look at the history of film/TV, it really isn’t that old in overall human terms and it has changed a lot, along with society. Which is one reason that the group of people who don’t like any kind of change, conservatives, are trying to go backwards in time.
Miss Bianca
@Tenar Arha:
We have a mask and social distancing mandate in our theater, and we have reduced the house size to half-capacity in order to accomplish that. So, movies are problematic for us in two ways: one, being that with house at half-size, there’s no way we can make a profit on showing a movie; and two, even tho’ our concert and play audiences have been willing to comply with masking, I dread the redneck assholes who are going to be all like, “whaddya mean I gotta wear a mask to see the movie!”
(Actually, dread or no, I would feel little compunction about saying, “yep. No mask, no movie. Them’s the rules.”)
Tony Jay
@FridayNext:
Every time My Sharona comes on the radio I am aghast. Have they really not listened to the lyrics? It’s not even trying to hide what it’s about, and it ain’t teenage kicks.
Z. Mulls
I have the same Woody Allen problem with MANHATTAN, and a number of films of that period. And I agree he has been repeating his same shtick, just in different locations for a while. But when he does hit the mark, it is very enjoyable. I found myself watching HANNAH AND HER SISTERS and enjoying it quite a bit, and I think CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS is a classic. (And I loved PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO…..MIDNIGHT IN PARIS has a similar feel). But I don’t seek out his work anymore.
LOST IN TRANSLATION worked so well because any *other* film would have had Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson sleep together. But this was written/directed by a younger female artist, and the approach was different. There is definitely an attraction between them, but they both know they are not going to act on it. Remember the moment in the film where Bill Murray sleeps with the lounge singer, and Scarlett Johansson “catches” him the next morning with a woman in his room. She clearly experiences jealousy, which confuses them both. That scene where they go out to lunch after has so much tension in it. So the film does take the May-December romance plot, and deconstructs it into something surprising and touching.
Dopey-o
The mystery of Cosby, to me, is that he is rich, famous and charismatic. If he were feeling a little horny, I think he could invite 4 women up to his room, and 1 would accept gladly.
”We Need to Talk About Cosby” covers his obsession with Spanish Fly and coercing women. Teenage boys view women as inaccessible, but grow to understand that arrangements can be made.
If a grown-ass man has to drug a woman instead of conversing, there is something very wrong with him. He doesn’t want sex / intimacy / friendship. He wants revenge. For what?
“Paging Dr. Freud to the white courtesy phone!” That’s all I got.
ETA: TBD, beautifully written. You truly have the gift.
FridayNext
@Roger Moore:
That’s true. But it’s also true that the people who wrote and/or sang many of those songs WERE ALSO engaging in inappropriate relationships with teenager girls. Even stars from a more “innocent age” like Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Jerry Lee Lewis had relationships with underage girls. (In Mr. Lewis’ defense the 14 year old in question was his wife and his cousin)
Ruviana
@germy: No one will see this by now but he’s 86! I thought 80 sounded “young.”
Roger Moore
@Dopey-o:
I don’t know if it’s revenge that Cosby was after or control. He didn’t want to have sex with whatever woman was interested. He wanted to have sex with the woman he had chosen, whether she wanted to or not.
stinger
@Dopey-o: The DVD set of I Spy includes commentary by Robert Culp, recorded in the early Aughts. Though they became friends for life, Culp says his initial impression was that Cosby was “the angriest man I’d ever met”.
Culp died before Cosby’s assault allegations came out, and I’ve wondered if Culp knew or suspected, or what he would have thought had he lived long enough to know.
debbie
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Blame their insecurities. They fool themselves into believing the teenagers find them overwhelmingly attractive. Them, not their money or whatever,
BellyCat
@The Thin Black Duke: Agreed…. Harold and Maude is a genuine delight.
(Just wanted to be sure I wasn’t swayed by the amazing soundtrack into accepting reverse gendered predation!)
Mart
@FelonyGovt: I was kind of surprised Lost in Translation did not follow the “script”. Really liked that.
Grum Grumby
@jonas: The Allen movies I have mostly enjoyed have all primarily been ones in which he was NOT in the cast. Bullets Over Broadway, to take a relatively older one, and even A Rainy Day In New York, filmed in 2019. The nerdy Jew schtick is not fascinating enough to build the bulk of your filmography around.
Grum Grumby
@Betty Cracker: I struggle with this now and then. I’ll just say that while I don’t in any way condone or excuse Michael Jackson in his final years, I still feel some sympathy for him, because I see him ultimately as a deeply damaged person who became the family breadwinner at age 6, had an abusive exploitative father, and never got to experience a normal childhood. He reached the peak of fame and had too much money and NOBODY had the guts to ever tell him NO, DO NOT DO THAT, THAT IS A BAD IDEA, THAT DOES NOT LOOK GOOD. And so he bleached his skin, carved off his nose, dressed ever more ridiculously, and lived in a place called Neverland Ranch with a pet chimp and wanted young boys to sleep over. Yeah, he was probably gay and in an earlier period when that was a career killer, and he was probably also attracted to young boys, BUT, I think he probably had zero ability for self reflection or real awareness of what he was doing or how it was wrong, and I suspect his MAIN motivations were that he had arrested development and wanted to have kid friends he didnt get to have when he was a kid. Again, NOT excusing anything he may have done, BUT I sort of feel like he was just so damaged by that point that I’m not sure who in the world wouldn’t do fucked up shit if they were as fucked up as he was. And, again, it goes back to really his being exploited for income since early childhood. That sort of fame and pressure and parental approval or withholding of approval can destroy most people, and clearly it destroyed him.
I say this as someone who has never really considered myself all that big a Michael Jackson fan per se, but who does appreciate some of his best shit and am not terribly conflicted by that fact. For all is flaws, he was still talented.
I can’t really think of anyone else I might think of myself as feeling problematic, but as for Woody Allen, it’s much easier to just toss him out the proverbial airlock because I don’t know of any tragic backstory that could remotely explain any of his problematic actions. He’s creepy, has been for ages, and most of his shit now is all retreads of the same few themes. I don’t have any sympathy for him at all.
Grum Grumby
@Brachiator: To be fair, Black Widow was released last summer somewhere just before the Delta surge, and COVID was still very much a worry not just for studios and theaters but for audiences (or, at least, sensible audiences). So HBO Max got all of Warner’s 2021 releases day-and-date, which royally pissed off Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve, both because they legit felt their movies NEEDED to be experienced in theaters, not on TV, AND because their deals were heavily slanted towards box office gross and not at all tied to streaming numbers or subscriptions or anything like that. It was a hard needle to thread, and I honestly dont know what the right thing to do was.
BUT, Black Widow was released to theaters AND Disney+ simultaneously, and I watched it at home, as probably the majority of people did. Spider-Man: No Way Home came out roughly 6 months later and had a MALE hero (7 if you count Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Jamie Fox, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire along with Tom Holland), and it STILL has not gotten onto streaming. The only place to see it is in theaters.
It’s not PROOF of sexism, exactly, but it sure feels like it to me. I suspect that if Black Widow had not been on Disney+, its box office would have been much better. (Scarlett Johansson sued Disney for $50 million and settled with undisclosed terms, but I suspect Disney ended up having to pay her a boatload of money to make up for the fact that streaming on Disney+ undoubtedly cost her tons in lost box income)
As for moviegoing more broadly, I do not know where things will settle if COVID ever finally becomes a minor issue. 4K gigantic TVs and premium sound bars and so forth are legitimately a fine way to watch probably 90% of films that aren’t genre SPECTACLES full of special effects. I enjoy going to theaters, but I’m not exactly all that bothered by not going to them, either. I probably would have been somewhat more wowed by Dune in a theater, but I was more than capable of appreciating ENOUGH of it at home to be satisfied.
I’ve honestly felt that Hollywood was eventually due for some kind of horrible reckoning, because at this point, an ensemble movie like August: Osage County probably cost nearly $100 JUST to pay Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Juliette Lewis, Dermot Mulroney, Benedict Cumberbatch, and then throw in Chris Cooper and Margo Martindale, and yep, i would bet real money that cast cost $100 million. Non-spectacle character-driven dramas cannot possibly cost $150-175 million to produce (and they say marketing is equal to production cost, so that would be $300-350 million to make and market). And everything theatrical is measured by box office in total dollars. TV is built around ratings and ability to command top dollar for ads, but streaming has no commercials and NONE of them release ANY metrics on views. Nobody has any idea at all how many people actually watch anything on streaming – at best we’re told how many subscribers they have and how much they’re growing over time. Individual films/shows have zero way of being budgeted based on success/popularity/views.
I do not see how this ever escalating production cost and go on indefinitely. It seems to me that for every $300 million spent on ONE movie, they could just as easily make 6 movies for $50 each, and multiplexes would suddenly have 6x as many options to pick from. None would be make-or-break risks, thus they could all be more free to be a bit more edgy or experimental or less mainstream, which would bring in people who find Hollywood too boring, and yet the ones that aren’t hits would ultimately be break-even or small losses. Yeah, nobody would be getting $20 million per film anymore, but — and I LOVE me some Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts and {INSERT TOP HOLLYWOOD ACTOR} as much as anybody, but does the job of FILM ACTOR really DESERVE that kind of pay??? I submit it does not, and cinema would just be BETTER if that stopped being a thing.
I honestly am baffled at how Netflix and Hulu and Prime are able to get people like Streep, Amy Adams, Nicole Kidman, etc, to be in their shows, because they cannot possibly be paying them anything remotely close to what they would get from a theatrical film. Netflix produces like 500 hours of tv and movies per year. They spend a lot, but they are not paying A-list actors $20 million to star in Big Little Lies, or Sharp Objects, or Nine Perfect Strangers, or whatever. It’s just impossible. But these stars are taking these roles anyway, because a lot of them are genuinely very worthy. So streaming is working using the model I suggested previously, it seems to me.
I have no written 5x more than I meant to and dont remember what my original point was, so I will just wrap it up here.
Grum Grumby
@PJ: I actually used to run around in social circles with Ron Perlman in the mid 90s when my roommate was an independent manager of new bands who wanted to produce films. 25 years later, she is one of the most prolific non-studio film producers around, and a WOMAN, no less (Mary Aloe). Ron Perlman was one of her friends who I got to know, albeit only very casually, and while he is not matinee idol hot, he was genuinely one of the nicest, most down-to-earth, grounded and pleasant people I have ever met who works in the industry. Not one bit of ego at all. So I’m not at all surprised that women might find him attractive. (It does not hurt that women are not nearly as single-mindedly interested in physical attractiveness and youth as men are).
Grum Grumby
@geg6: This.
For whatever sins Polanski is guilty of, his movies are not ABOUT HIM. Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, etc, they ARE the story. So if they’re repulsive to me, it follows that their work is also going to be repulsive to me.
I can at least watch Chinatown, The Pianist, Death and the Maiden, or whatever, and appreciate the craft and the performances and not NECESSARILY have to drag his private reputation into things. I mean, I know all about it, and frankly i would be A-OK if he would just stop getting hired and went into retirement. I’d prefer the Academy and other groups around the world stop treating him as one of film’s grandees and instead treated him like a pariah. I’m not chomping at the bit to watch anything new he may or may not put out. But I can still separate him from his films.
YMMV
stinger
@Grum Grumby:
Excellent point. I think that may make the difference for me, too.
Grum Grumby
I just turned 50, but I have loved women older than me for as long as I can remember. Whether a few years older or many years older, I’ve always found them very alluring. Someone like Jessica Lange is 72, and I have loved her since “King Kong” when she was an unknown ingenue, loved her in “Frances” and “Tootsie”, kept loving her in “Broken Flowers” and finally “American Horror Story” and “Feud: Bette & Joan”. I cant be the only male who can appreciate women at all their ages, can I?
In 1990, Esquire magazine had Michelle Pfeiffer on the cover. it was a folded cover. The outside cover was a picture of her, mostly from behind, her face not very visible, with the words “What Michelle Pfeiffer Needs…”
The inside image showed her from the front, with the words “Is Absolutely Nothing“. The implication being that she was flawless as is, with zero work necessary to improve her at all. Spy Magazine (R.I.P.) followed up a few months later with a biting article that calculated how much those photos cost, for the clothes, hair, makeup, retouching, etc., and found it to be $300,000 or so.
Now, I adore Michelle Pfeiffer, so this is not intended to diss her. But NOBODY is perfect and flawless, not even her. Not when they are young, not when they’re Michelle Pfeiffer’s age in 1990 (32). Not at 62, in 2022. But I find just as gorgeous at all those ages. She most recently starred in “French Exit” along with Lucas Hedges, and just 4 years or so ago she had a moderate part in “mother!” starring Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem.
I adore Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson, Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bette Midler, Judith Light, and countless other women who are way past 40. They may have wrinkles or have had work done that may not look terrific, but i do not care. Still adore them.
I think culture, or at least American or “Western” culture, is way way way too infected by the toxic beauty standards laid down by commercials and fashion magazines like Cosmopolitan or Vogue, runway models, and A List TV and film actors, etc. Nobody can possibly live up to those beauty standards, not even those models and actors themselves. THEY need makeup and hair and retouching and shit, same as everybody else does, whether photographed or filmed or not.
But those beauty standards are so ingrained into us all from such an early age. It’s musicians, actors, models, magazines, ads, movies and TV, ALL of it. It’s the driving factor behind eating disorders for girls and women. And, in recent decades, the same unattainable beauty standards are now just as pervasive for male stars, models, musicians, actors, etc as they’ve always been for women. This seems to screw up gay men’s self-esteem and body images worse than it does straight men, but it is definitely a thing now, and it was NOT a thing 20-25 years ago.
Men are hard-wired, USUALLY, to place way more value on physical attractiveness and youth, tits and ass, far more in women than women are hard-wired to value male physical beauty, and that’s probably never going to change. They say men fall in women they find attractive and women find men the fall in love with attractive. Men LOVE porn, women not really so much.
But the rest of that stuff could absolutely change if magazines and movies and TV shows and musical artists, modeling agencies, etc, were not so determined to mainline youth and beauty into everything they produce.
I adore Emma Stone, Kristen Bell, Anna Kendrick, Leighton Meester and Jennifer Lawrence as much as anyone possibly can, but I do NOT think that once an actress hits 40, they must be banished to supporting roles as mothers and grandmothers, or generally absent from modeling and ads and fashion. That is just so stupid. I am thrilled at every chance to see Jessica Lange, Nicole Kidman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Angela Bassett, Kristin Scott Thomas, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Kathy Bates, Michelle Yeoh, Queen Latifah and Tracy Ullman. They’re all fantastic actors, some conventionally beautiful, and others perhaps less so, but if i only want to look at pretty faces/bodies, that’s what photos are for. If I want to see good acting, or enjoy a good musician, or check out fashions, or just have to be subjected to advertising—whatever—their talent and the performance matters to me way more than their age or relative degree of “absolute beauty”.
I feel like MOST people probably think this way. Everyone I talk about this with feels the same. It’s just studios and modeling agencies and magazine editors and record labels forcing this tiny narrow ideal of beauty onto us, and failing to come up with stuff to do with women over a certain age or women who aren’t model-beautiful, and I frankly think it’s a huge mistake on their part. Wasted opportunities. I mean, give me Helen Mirren in the espionage movies “Red” and “Red 2”. Give me Michelle Pfeifer in “French Exit”. Glenn Close in “Damages”. Jessica Lange in “American Horror Story”. Kathy Bates in “American Horror Story”. Michelle Yeoh in ANYTHING. There are SO MANY stories these great women could be a part of if only the powers-that-be were not be so damn short-sighted.
Women, or at least women with means or who are performers, can and frequently do manage to stay gorgeous well past 60 or 70. In my humble opinion, very very few men can pull that off. For every George Clooney (60) or Keanu Reeves (57) who still have enormous sex appeal and charisma, there are 20x as many men that age who look, well, like old men. Hair loss, wrinkles that are RARELY improved by plastic surgery, the fact than men don’t wear make-up or rarely have hair that sets them apart. Most men just do not stay hot and sexy once they reach a certain point. The women do.
(Men typically EARN a lot more than women, and women are typically less obsessed with looks and age as men are, which is why you can find so many women with men much older, and rarely find men with much older women. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is the exception that proves the rule. I’m not trying to call women gold diggers, just observing that women often will sacrifice their own earning potential in order to raise their kids and be homemakers and support their husbands, in a way that men far less often)
I dont know if this rant leads to any conclusions, or any belief that this may change substantially. Who knows. I just know its a phenomenally short-sighted perspective and all of us are worse off by not letting these women shine.
POSTSCRIPT: Yeah, this is all about public figures, celebrities, etc, and that probably wasn’t what @Ruckus was saying in the first place. But my views apply just as much to all the ordinary women out there: the mothers, wives, aunts and grandmothers. Employees and bosses. Etc. The world is big enough to carve out worthwhile value to these women just as much as the entertainment-beauty industrial complex is capable of doing.