Friday, September 19, 2014

Jasmine Dylwood.

"What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie? Before you answer, you should know: when I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me."
...
"What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett? Louis CK? 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?"
-Dylan Farrow.

I see. When Dylan Farrow's letter was published in February, I had never heard of Louis CK, had not seen Blue Jasmine and didn't know that all of the first three on Dylan's call-out list acted in Blue Jasmine. I did know that Allen was up for, or had received, some award and that Cate Blanchett was up for an Oscar for her performance in Blue Jasmine. I think I recall that the Allen camp's thinking was that Dylan's letter was a conscious attempt to derail all the awarding. 

Dylan's letter got to me; she was calling out people like me who watch Woody Allen movies in addition to stars who act in them. Farrow's letter made me think, and write, whether I should see any more Woody Allen movies. I thought and wrote quite a bit; decided I had a moral obligation to determine, as best I could, whether the allegations first made 21 years ago and re-made in that February 2014 letter were true. I got as far as writing about what the appropriate standard for me to stop watching Woody Allen movies should be: "Proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that Dylan's allegations were true? "Preponderance of the evidence?" I gave up. It was just too hard. So last night, when Carmen popped one of the DVD's she gets from Netflix into the player and I asked what movie it was, I watched Blue Jasmine.