woody allen

And his LPs were big sellers. I don't remember the Spanish fly bit but his material was generally inoffensive.

I still like Jello Pudding.

I'd bet around the mid 80s he was among the most broadly known and liked people in America

driving in SF is still a great piece. he was a very good stand up.

"Considering how Allen continued to thrive long after the Soon-Yi Previn scandal it's fair to ask if people knew about Cosby would it have triggered anything"

probably, because unlike Allen, Cosby is black and generally people are faster to condemn a black celebrity for shit than a white counterpart (though I guess R. Kelly is an exception here)

Cosby's victims were mostly white, though, while Kelly's are entirely black

good point

fuck Woody Allen for life; i wish i had not allowed him to colonize my brain when i was a teenager.

it's disturbing to me how i totally recognized the misogyny in his movies and how i talked myself out of being troubled by it.

yea wasn't the whole thrust of Jim DeRogitis's reporting that nobody really cares about young black girls

i will not be watching the documentary, but it seems to me that twentysomethings who don't already know all this stuff which has been a matter of public record for decades are finding out about it this way and are appropriately appalled.

yes, it's one of the especially salutary points about Dero's advocacy.

I'm not arguing anyone *should have suspected* Cosby was a serial rapist, just saying it was possible for human beings on planet earth born between 1940 and 1980 to encounter his work or existence outside of a 1980s sitcom.

certainly far more well known than anything you're talking about

The (also ghost-written, like his thesis) book was the fastest-selling hardcover of all time, spent half of its 55 weeks on the NYT best-seller list at #1, and as I anecdotally cited, was popular in at least one territory outside the US. More people surely watched the American sitcom, but that doesn't make the book culturally non-existent.

(Gratified to see that article confirms my memory/impression of flipping through it: the text was so scanty that a whole designer had to be hired to spread it out through the budgeted book's length when it was delivered too late to demand revision.)

Yeah. It's difficult to explain how unfathomably popular Cosby was starting in 1986, one of the more remarkable second acts after twenty years already as comedian/actor. I swear, every Waldenbooks and B. Dalton from 1986 to 1988 had ample copies of Fatherhood.

Some relevant wisdom in this interview with, of all people, Steve Albini (the interviewer is Eugene Robinson of Oxbow):

Some folks who have gotten their tickets punched I begrudgingly still embrace for a variety of complicated reasons. Mike Tyson because he served his time, Paula Poundstone, David Letterman, and Quentin Tarantino? I somehow want to grant a pass. Louis CK, Elvis Costello, Woody Allen, and Roman Polanski I cannot. It's not willful...I just find myself much less interested in their work. Who is on your Keep/Toss list?

STEVE: I respect fighting as a trade less than you, so I was probably off the Tyson bandwagon before it got rolling. Anybody who uses a position of power, status or authority to exploit people who are vulnerable to that power, status or authority is dead to me. I don't care what kind of movies a rapist makes, don't care if other people think they're good, they're rapist movies and I'm not watching them. I have limited attention to lend to other people's art, and I get to choose who deserves it. I'll admit I laughed at Bill Cosby's humor before I knew what a monster he was. Never since. Those Spanish Fly jokes just hit different now.

I've never had a problem with transgressive art, but it sure seems like you can tell when it's just a veneer used to justify being a fucking creep. Always hated Vice, still hate it. Just a parade of gawkers reveling in whatever misery they can observe from an ironic distance. Fuck that shit completely.

Rogan, Barstool, all the anti-woke comics, just fuck them all in the eye. It's trash garbage and I want it all to fail. What if all the stupid shit your racist neighbor you can't stand said was typed up and put on a blog? Nope, still trash, still fuck it. I want them all out looking for work. Into the chipper with all of it.

I was not aware of any Costello allegations.

I'm sure it's regarding his use of the n-word when talking about Ray Charles in the late 70's.

afaik Costello was just a one-time thing while he was drunk right? or is he more Claptony than I thought?

I've never heard anything untoward about Elvis Costello besides the stupid remark he drunkenly made during a Playboy interview.

I was aware of the Soon-Yi scandal at the time it broke and deeply disliked WA based on his annoying nebbishy phony “harmless guy” persona. The grossest thing I’ve learned from watching the show is his obsession with being a “starter man” for the women he victimized — a man obsessed with young virginal women. That’s fucking gross and also so very familiar.

Thanks to horseshoe for piping up ❤️

The thing I’ve always loathed about WA is his self-deprecation— it’s profoundly aggravating and a huge smokescreen

is he more Claptony than I thought?

Costello was drunkenly trolling in a private conversation and has apologised many times since for being a cunt

his use of the word (in character/in context) in Oliver's Army probably doesn't get airplay in 2021, but considering Amazon have multiple paid service reps spending an entire 2021 weekend publicly denying the existence of the invasion/war that the song was about, the context ship is probably permnanently sailed

I should have added scare quotes — “virginal”
bc I think the concept of “virginity” is harmful for this very reason. It fetishizes innocence, which is predator territory. Fucking disgusting and I’m glad it’s in the open at the very least for the young people who hear that his movies are “great” and feel like they should watch them. Don’t bother!

I saw Manhattan once in adulthood and was just blown away how fucked up it was

yeah, as I noted, it's fucked in a way that even stands out among (decades of minstream TV and newspaper) jokes about 60-yo Woody dating 20-something women in his post-Soon-Yi movies.

a vast majority of people didn't know about all that shit and just knew (Cosby) from commercials and the sitcom

Raw broke the record for the highest-grossing theatrical film of a live performance, set by Mr "tell him to have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up!" five years earlier. It still held that record when theatrical film exhibition ended, 49 weeks ago and 33 years later.

move that end paren two words on

don't get your point. Raw is an Eddie Murphy movie. It surpassed Richard Pryor's film take. What's Cosby got to do with it?

sic just move on

it also wasn't even in top 25 grossing movies of 1987

I... said it was Eddie Murphy? and Murphy cites Pryor's response to him as part of the story.

xp yeah not trying to dunk on you or anyone specifically, just had a mo to look up the bit, then checked the date relative to Fatherhood out of curiosity, and saw that coincidental stat.

xp
"... of a live performance"

(if "tell him to have a Coke and a smile and shut up" is a Pryor line outside of this anecdote I'm unaware. always assumed in context that it referred to a Cosby campaign, since Americans in '80s/'90s pop culture mainly talked about him as an advertising spokesman.)

yeah but I just watched it on YouTube, Eddie is just reinforcing and riffing on Cosby's image as America's Dad, he's acting like he's Theo getting lectured.

that was his image, I really don't understand the point you're making at all

he did commercials but he was known for the Cosby Show!


The Cosby Show (1984-1992) was one of a rare, and probably now extinct, breed of American television series that captured and held the attention of vast audiences from nearly every walk of life for year after year of its prime-time run. The show attracted more viewers than any series in television history, reaching more than 63 millions Americans in the 1986-1987 season and posting Nielsen ratings that had not been seen since Bonanza’s 1964-1965 season. The Cosby Show also made more money than any previous series, netting over $1 billion in domestic syndication sales and close to $1 billion in ad revenues for NBC during its eight years in prime-time.

Sorry to change the subject/ pull something from much earlier in the thread, but there's something that's been bothering me about the way the Moses Farrow essay gets discussed/ not discussed, and I wanted to go back to it.

the moses farrow piece everyone shares is weird too. not to blame moses -- who is a victim too in some ways, if nothing else of having a father who refuses to acknowledge boundaries -- but what kind of person thinks it's ok for their father to marry their sister?

Maybe someone who grew up in an abusive household where healthy relationships were never modeled for him, who has one parent who abused him directly and one parent who didn't, and is therefore eager to find justifications for everything Parent B does?

I think it's important to be specific about what's in his essay. What Moses is a victim of, according to Moses, is years of emotional, psychological and physical abuse, which he alleges was also directed at his older siblings and led to their unhappy lives and early deaths. I'm not suggesting that this makes Moses right about what happened to Dylan; he was a kid at the time, and he obviously has a lot invested in believing Woody Allen. He's not a particularly useful or unbiased source when it comes to what happened to Dylan. But he is, imo, still the primary source on what happened to him, and I don't think we should dismiss or diminish anyone's testimony about the abuse they suffered as a child.

Basically, I'd like it if we could find a way to take Dylan's testimony seriously that also involves taking Moses's testimony seriously.

i agree. i take moses seriously with regard to his abuse at the hands of mia. that's why i said "not to blame moses" but i should have been stronger on this point.

but his defense of allen isn't compelling

The thing I’ve always loathed about WA is his self-deprecation— it’s profoundly aggravating and a huge smokescreen

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Wednesday, March 3, 2021 12:17 AM (forty-nine minutes ago)

orson welles had a pretty amazing rant about how much he hated allen's "combination of arrogance and timidity"

yeah he really saw through him

Welles said that Allen had the “Chaplin disease” and that his dislike for Allen was physical. When Jaglom suggested that Allen was not arrogant but shy, Welles went into a monologue about how much he hated the man, as cited by Vulture: “He is arrogant. Like all people with timid personalities, his arrogance is unlimited. Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant. He acts shy, but he’s not. He’s scared. He hates himself, and he loves himself, a very tense situation. It’s people like me who have to carry on and pretend to be modest. To me, it’s the most embarrassing thing in the world—a man who presents himself at his worst to get laughs, in order to free himself from his hang-ups. Everything he does on the screen is therapeutic.”

yes that's exactly right. in his movies his self-deprecation is often immediately followed by a nasty cutting down of someone else.

xp

i hadn't read Moses Farrow's account of his upbringing until just now--it's very sad, and i believe the stuff about being a transracial adoptee of a white parent.

"Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant.

this is true of allen but idk about in general

annoyingly like a quarter of my mental landscape was formed by woody allen movies; i will say i think he's a good actor. annoyingly.

that Welles quote is a little over the top

I suspect the meaning is more “Anyone [with success in entertainment and the adulation of peers, critics, and the public] who etc.” not any miscellaneous shy person

i think Welles, being the more overtly arrogant type, probably had a self-serving irritation with retiring types, but he certainly had Allen's number.

yeah i agree with that.

Everything he does on the screen is therapeutic

get his ass, orson

No truly shy person makes that many movies or wants a stage that badly, bottom line. I feel the same about Louis CK.

I also think “shyness” can be a smokescreen for ppl who do bad stuff to other people — obviously?

"The Chaplin disease" is quite telling. In more ways than one, apparently.

weirdly i think this is acknowledged in the films. annie hall is the story of a young woman who gets into a relationship with an older man who condescends to her -- and who is drawn to her because of his own insecurities, and his sense that she isn't his true peer. and then she outgrows him. by the end she realizes that his "intellectualism" is shallow bitterness, a way for him to feel superior to people who he, deep down, feels inferior to. and he is just left spouting the same pseudo-cynical platitudes that he opened the movie with.

annie is the only character who experiences real growth in the film. she is the actual protagonist. he might be the narrator but he is ultimately a static character, going nowhere, doomed to repeat the same miserable cycle over and over again.