Well, I basically think whoever wrote this list didn't pay attention to the actual ups and downs of Woody's life and career.
1. Woody was pretty universally popular in the '60s and '70s. He was a big name in comedy and crossed genders. Saying "women were never huge Allen fans," is not true. But then saying, "Many men were also uninterested..." is basically to say, "No human liked Woody Allen," which doesn't explain his massive success.
2. & 3. This scandal caused problems for Woody, but not career problems. Major, A-listers continued to work with him for decades. He won a bunch of awards during and after being at the epicentre of the scandal. How he responded wasn't a problem for a lot of people, either. This smacks of a writer saying, "I think X, and three or four people I know agree with me, so therefore, everybody feels this way." Or "I don't personally know people who don't agree, so EVERYBODY thinks this!" It's just not true.
4. This also didn't really change his box office numbers.
5. This one is really asinine. It seems like the writer doesn't understand Allen's films. Any of them. Seriously: how does somebody watch Annie Hall where the main character stagnates while Annie grows as a person and eventually leaves him, somehow come up with, "Welp, I guess she was just there for him." The point of the movie is that she wasn't and he couldn't deal with that and the relationship faltered. Mighty Aphrodite has a train-wreck female character needing help to get back on her feet. It's the OPPOSITE of "...whose agency seems to be taking care of their men..." Also, "the same movie!" critique is odd and seems like this person didn't watch more than one or two (at most) or had made up his or her mind going in. Who watches Sleeper (a sci-fi satirical farce), Annie Hall (a bittersweet rom-com shot in a fly-on-the-wall style with surreal elements), Zelig (a mockumentary with archival footage and a political message), and Match Point (an erotic thriller about the meaninglessness of life), and goes, "Yup. Those are basically the same movie!" ???
6. Allen's movies didn't turn huge profits (save for a few like Annie Hall and Midnight in Paris - and even then, "huge," is relative) - that's true, but they were award gold-mines. Allen brought prestige and always made a little money. That's one of the biggest reasons WHY he had such a long-running career. This author did any research on Woody?
The reason people turned on Allen is because the MeToo movement shone a light on abusers in the film industry AND around that time, Mia, Dylan, and Ronan Farrow started a campaign to lump Allen into that category without any of the nuance or understanding of what happened. Because online mobs don't like nuance or research, because "believe all women" was the de rigeur, and because Woody Allen has zero internet presence or social media savvy, this went completely unchallenged and unquestioned. It because unacceptable to defend Woody, in a social shaming sense, and so most people just either believed what they heard (knowing nothing else about Allen's history - like the writer of the article) or they went along to get along.
And there's more nuance than that (like his slump in the '90s/early 2000s when, "He's not as good anymore!" was the mantra of a lot of reviewers) but that's much more accurate to the reason why than any goofy goobledegook this "journalist" coughed up before breakfast.
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CaptBeefBlower (243)
5 days ago
This is the correct answer. There's a guy called Roy Price who built Amazon Studios. He was cancelled for telling a dirty joke in a taxi, though it likely never even happened. He reckons that about 40% of entertainment industry cancellations were based on nothing whatsoever - they were purely made up. Many of the other cancellations were for minor infractions that deserved no more than a slap on the wrist.
Like all witch hunts, metoo was based on initial wrongdoing but then ballooned and ruined innocent people's lives, often with women strategically killing men's careers out of spite or for personal advantage.
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