{"id":363162,"date":"2026-10-02T20:43:27","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T20:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/363162\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T20:43:27","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T20:43:27","slug":"reconstructing-woody-www-splicetoday-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/363162\/","title":{"rendered":"Reconstructing Woody | www.splicetoday.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

After weathering investigations, blacklists, slander, libel, and worst of all, financing issues, Woody Allen will begin shooting his 51st feature film<\/a> this Monday in Madrid. It\u2019s an English language comedy starring Jemima Kirke (Girls) and Alexi Wasser (Messy), and per Spain\u2019s agreement with the production, the title will feature the word \u201cMadrid.\u201d\u00a0Allen\u2019s 90, and by all accounts the only thing that interrupted his movie-a-year routine was the public re-litigation of abuse allegations from the early-1990s. Allen was cleared of abusing his daughter Dylan in both investigations, but never mind that, please don\u2019t get in the way of Ronan Farrow, eager to parlay the beginning of #MeToo into a media career and gaslight an amnesiac nation into believing that Allen was never cleared of any wrongdoing. Mia Farrow got a little less out of it: a few documentaries, some op-eds, and the belated cancellation of her ex-husband.<\/p>\n


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She successfully smeared him and made him into the pariah she never could in the 1990s when everything was still fresh and people weren\u2019t pressured into believing \u201call women\u201d no matter what. The fact is Dylan Farrow claims she was abused by Allen, Ronan backs her up, but their siblings Moses and Soon-Yi Previn not only dispute Dylan\u2019s claims but allege that Farrow abused them. Taking sides in and determining innocence and guilt in the saga of Allen vs. Farrow is obscene in and of itself, because you\u2019re pitting two sets of kids against each other and automatically calling one of them liars. Allen was investigated, cleared, and his career continued uninterrupted into the 1990s, 2000s, and most of the 2010s. In fact, he had one of the strongest runs of his career immediately after his divorce from Farrow.<\/p>\n


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Manhattan Murder Mystery came first, a \u201clightweight\u201d movie that originated in one of the earlier drafts of Annie Hall (when it was still a murder mystery called Anhedonia); Allen put it off for years, comparing it to airport fiction, but the stress and strain of his very public divorce and Farrow\u2019s allegations\u2014and the disclosure of his relationship with Soon-Yi\u2014drove him to make something fun, a film that he could enjoy making. By all accounts, Diane Keaton\u2019s the one who made Manhattan Murder Mystery a particularly easy and near-buoyant set; co-star Anjelica Huston said the shoot was, \u201coddly free of anxiety, introspection and pain.\u201d It\u2019s a light movie, but thoroughly enjoyable and a significant step up from Allen\u2019s first two films of the 1990s, Alice and Shadows and Fog (1992\u2019s Husbands and Wives, released just weeks after Farrow made her allegations, is one of Allen\u2019s masterpieces, and among the best of the Farrow\/Allen collaborations).<\/p>\n


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Manhattan Murder Mystery\u2019s relatively small cast\u2014Allen, Keaton, Huston, Alan Alda (and a 17-year-old Zach Braff in a single scene role)\u2014is an indication that people largely hadn\u2019t made up their minds yet regarding Allen. Michael Caine (Hannah and Her Sisters) initially said he wouldn\u2019t work with Allen again, but retracted his statement when Allen was cleared of any wrongdoing in 1994; Alda was similarly equivocal, but ultimately insisted that due process must be followed and respected. Who knows what would\u2019ve happened if Allen were found guilty of abusing his daughter? Manhattan Murder Mystery might\u2019ve been the end of a film career that was already unparalleled. Luckily, Allen was permitted, even encouraged, to flourish in the 1990s and 2000s when the Farrows\u2019 claims were dismissed.<\/p>\n


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You have to remember that Allen was in a serious relationship with a woman most mistakenly referred to as his stepdaughter; in fact, because Allen never married Farrow nor adopted Soon-Yi, he never had a stepdaughter to marry! But even then, and especially now, it looks odd, I\u2019ll admit that. This was a local story when I was growing up, and I learned about the case when I was very young because Allen was so prolific and the \u201cfact\u201d that he \u201cmarried his stepdaughter\u201d was brought up annually. That people continued to go to his movies and make them hits speaks to the decline in general intelligence today, because while no contemporary writer called the 1990s a particularly enlightened period when it came to pop culture, people were able to \u201cseparate the art from the artist\u201d and make the distinction that it \u201clooks weird,\u201d but it\u2019s not against the law, so what are we talking about here? Nothing. Let\u2019s return to the movies.<\/p>\n


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1994\u2019s Bullets Over Broadway was Allen\u2019s proper comeback, with an ensemble cast of returning collaborators (Dianne Wiest, Jack Warden) and stars of the moment like Chazz Palminteri, Jennifer Tilly, Mary-Louise Parker, Jim Broadbent, Tracey Ullman, and John Cusack. A period piece set in 1928 New York, Cusack plays the Allen archetype, a neurotic playwright fresh in from Pittsburgh looking for his big break. His manager (Warden) finds a financier in the mafia, but there\u2019s a catch: the gangster\u2019s girl (Tilly) has to be in the play, and she gets to futz with the script and ad-lib as much as she wants. Cusack runs around with his hair on fire, getting absolutely nowhere, until Palminteri, Tilly\u2019s handler, makes a deft plotting suggestion that turns the entire company against Cusack. The play gets better as Palminteri continues to tinker with it, changing plot points, adding dialogue, and cutting entire scenes to the delight of both the producers and the very loopy theater people. It gets to the point where Palminteri resents Tilly for ruining \u201chis\u201d play (\u201cSorry, \u2018ours\u2019\u2014you know what I mean\u201d he tells Cusack), so he takes the liberty of rubbing her out. Just as he\u2019s about to shoot her, he tells her, \u201cI think you should know that you\u2019re a terrible actress.\u201d<\/p>\n


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Bullets Over Broadway was widely lauded and won Wiest her second Oscar (the first was for Hannah and Her Sisters); it\u2019s still widely regarded as one of Allen\u2019s best films, and a musical version would\u2019ve been staged in early-2018, if not for the return of the wrath of the Farrows. Although it\u2019s a straightforward comedy, Bullets Over Broadway has two significant meta-textual elements: the casting of Palminteri as a mafioso-savant mirrors the actor\u2019s own struggle and success in staging his hit A Bronx Tale, and the speech that Wiest gives in her first scene. After introducing herself to the cast and crew, she walks upstage and delivers an hilariously overblown monologue pointing out the ghosts of \u201cCordelia!\u2026 Ophelia!\u2026 Clytemnestra!!\u201d and comparing every opening night to a birth, \u201cand every curtain\u2026 a death\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n


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Although it\u2019s played primarily for laughs, Allen crucially doesn\u2019t mock Wiest\u2019s character. The camera remains in the front row, with Wiest at the top of the frame, and her co-stars in the back, silent and skeptical but too struck to make fun or undercut the very real sentiment that Wiest is getting across. It\u2019s one of the great serio-comic moments in all of Allen\u2019s films, and is likely the scene that won Wiest her Oscar. Allen had some success in drama (Interiors) and some misfires (September), but it\u2019s his serio-comic films\u2014Crimes and Misdemeanors, Husbands and Wives, Blue Jasmine, Annie Hall\u2014that distinguish him as a major film artist, not merely a prolific comedian. The 1990s were golden years in Allen\u2019s career\u2014and all it took was a public death.<\/p>\n


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\u2014Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NARCFILM<\/a><\/p>\n


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