Last night I spoke to a knowledgable industry friend who agrees with Mark Harris about Woody Allen’s career being toast. While he’s appalled and horrified by the current terror and believes that the only sane response is to duck and wait it out, he also thinks A Rainy Day in New York will be over, done and finito for the Woodman.
He also suspects that Amazon will jettison A Rainy Day in New York, although they’ll look like gutless political cowards if they do this. On the other hand Call Me By Your Name star Timothee Chalamet, who costars in Rainy Day, will have to answer very carefully when a questioner brings up the Allen hoo-hah on the next red carpet.
He said that Woody needs $25 million to make his films, all in, and that he’s not going to be able to raise this without significant name-brand U.S. actors along with general support from the U.S. film industry. My friend didn’t say that Allen’s films are obviously winding down anyway in terms of quality, but others have noted this.
What about the European market? I said. Allen is worshipped in France, etc. Allen’s producers won’t be able to raise $25 million from European financiers alone, he said, because the European market for his films isn’t large enough.
He’ll have to scale his fee and production costs way down to make a European-centric feature — $10 million or even $9 or $8 million. He’ll have to shoot guerilla-style, hip pocket, on the fly, available light, etc.
If the Gerwig/Hall/Sorvino/Portman/Witherspoon thing ignites and name-brand actors agree to the Allen blackball across the board, that’s what Allen will be facing, he believes.
I am disgusted by this as there is no factual basis to conclude with any certainty that Allen is lying and that Dylan Farrow is telling the absolute, unfettered truth. The Robert Weide piece makes this quite clear. The Robespierre current in the #MeToo finger-pointing and trial-by-Twitter was called out two days ago by Margaret Atwood, and lamented by Catherine Deneuve and dozens of other French women of note.