Woody Allen on cancel culture: 'It's had no impact on me whatsoever'

His latest film has been slated by critics, struggled to find a distributor, and disowned by its cast. But if you imagine Woody Allen is troubled by this turn of events, you would be wrong.

"I have no interest in any of that," the 84-year-old director of more than 50 features says from New York. "I make the film and give it over to business people and I never hear about it again. I don't follow the box office, I don't follow the reviews, I don't follow anything. By the time the film comes out I'm well at work on another one."

Woody Allen in 2019. 'It's had no impact on me whatsoever,' he says of the backlash against him and his work.Credit: AP

That's been Allen's way for decades, so there's no reason to doubt him. Even so, you have to wonder at his capacity for studied indifference given just how much vitriol has been directed his way since he wrapped A Rainy Day in New York in late 2017.

This mildly diverting tale of a young well-to-do student (Timothee Chalamet) who takes his college girlfriend (Elle Fanning) to New York for a weekend only to end up drifting aimless and alone while a bevy of older men attempt to seduce her hardly ranks among Allen's finest works. But the opprobrium it has drawn owes more to the resurfacing of allegations that he had molested his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow in 1992 than to any artistic failings.

Allen was never charged over the claims. However, in ruling against his application for custody of Dylan, Moses and Satchel (now Ronan) Farrow in 1993, Justice Elliott Wilk wrote while "the evidence suggests that it is unlikely that [Allen] could be successfully prosecuted for sexual abuse ... I am less certain ... that the evidence proves conclusively that there was no sexual abuse".

The case resurfaced as a flashpoint as the #MeToo movement gathered steam during 2017. In October of that year, actor Griffin Newman, who has a small role in the film, announced he would donate his fee to an organisation that works against sexual violence and assault, because he believed Dylan. In January 2018, actress Rebecca Hall followed suit, donating her fee to Time's Up, which campaigns against sexual harassment and abuse. A few days later Chalamet did likewise. Selena Gomez also made a donation, that reportedly "far exceeded" her fee for the film, to the organisation.

In June 2018, while the film was still being edited, Amazon informed Allen it was terminating a four-picture deal that was set to earn him at least $US68 million.

Only Cherry Jones, who played Ali's university lecturer lover in Transparent (and plays Chalamet's mother in Rainy Day), took a different line. "There are those who are comfortable in their certainty. I am not," she told The New York Times. "I don’t know the truth." A year later she went further, telling The Guardian: "I did my homework. I went back and studied every scrap of information I could get about that period. And in my heart of hearts, I do not believe he was guilty as charged."

Either way, Allen insists it makes no difference.

"It was not even remotely painful," he says of his cast turning against him. "It doesn't matter to me for a second. They were nice kids, I thought they were great in the movie. If it's fashionable to say they don't want to work for me, that's fine."

Woody Allen (right) and Timothee Chalamet on the set of A Rainy Day in New York.

He's made a film since, Rifkin's Festival, and “there were actors who didn't want to work with me, but there were actors who did work with me". On the next one, he predicts, "there will still be actors who say, 'Oh God, I don't want to work with him', and there will be others who will have no problem with that."

And there's the rub: for all the noise and fuss, Allen has been able to continue to make films in pretty much exactly the same way he has for more than 50 years.

"It’s had no impact on me whatsoever," he says. "If it actually came down to some kind of smothering blacklist, that would be a problem. But it hasn't."

If so-called cancel culture has largely failed to rub out Woody Allen, it has tarnished his reputation at home, where A Rainy Day In New York has yet to be released.

But you won't hear him lashing out about that either. He sued Amazon over that broken deal, the parties reached a "very amicable" settlement, and he got the rights back to his movie; no hard feelings.

"I like Amazon very much," he says. "They're selling my book [his memoir, Apropos of Nothing], they show my movies. Amazon behaved very well, actually, in the end. It turned out to be not such a bad experience."

In fact, the only thing Allen does have a bad word to say about is COVID-19. "This summer I was going to Paris to make a film until this stupid pandemic hit – that's the real problem. When the pandemic is over I'll go and make my next film."

By now you will be unsurprised to learn that whether it's a hit or a miss makes little difference to him.

"That’s not out of any arrogance or anything, it's because there's nothing you can do about it," he says. "I made Midnight in Paris, and for some reason everybody in the world flocked to see it. I have no idea why. Then I made Cassandra's Dream and nobody wanted to see it. I have no idea why.

"For me, when I make the films, I'm doing the best I can. When it's finished, it's totally out of my control. It's in the lap of the gods."

A Rainy Day in New York is released on DVD, Blu-Ray and digital platforms on August 5.
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