Last night I marathoned through all four episodes of Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering‘s Allen v. Farrow (HBO Max, 2.21.). Speaking as a longtime Woody Allen admirer and defender, I found it unsettling, more than a little disturbing and, I regret to say, a half–persuasive hit job. I was impressed with the chops, the craft and the sculpting, but I took notes as I watched and here’s a sampling:

“This is a hit job, probing but selectively so…a one-sided presentation, a stacked deck…Mia’s tale is so sanitized, so chaste…beware the perverted monster…I have to admit that it feels creepy…’smothering energy, suffocating closeness‘….Woody was clearly too invested in an emotionally intense, overly touchy relationship with Dylan…directions on how to suck his thumb?…this is so FOUL…give me a break!…so the Yale-New Haven investigators were determined to exonerate Woody?…why would they go to such lengths to distort?…why would they destroy their notes?…Paul Williams was muzzled?…what about the three kids who died under Mia’s care, two of them by suicide?…this is very bad for Woody but at the same time it’s not an open book, warts–and–all approach…the doc is totally in the tank for the Mia narrative.”

All through the first three hours (the fourth is mostly wrap-up) I was…be honest…quietly horrified. A pit of my stomach feeling that began to spread into my spleen. A terrible sensation. As in “oh, no…”

For 29 years I never realized (and nobody ever told me) that Soon-Yi is pronounced Soon-EEE, not Soon-YEE. Five words: “Jeff, the ‘Y’ is silent.”

Allen v. Farrow is a hit job, all right, but at the same time I was persuaded that what was being presented was honest as far as it went. The doc DOES lie by omission quite a lot, but I was also persuaded that the overly intense affection that Woody exhibited for Dylan was wrong. I could feel it. Diseased. Not right.

Then again Showbiz411‘s Roger Friedman might have had a point when he wrote that someone needs to give Mia a special Oscar for the performance of her life.

I just can’t understand Moses Farrow and his 5.23.18 “A Son Speaks Out” essay. What he wrote doesn’t square AT ALL with the Mia, Kirby & Amy narrative that sank into my system last night. So who’s lying? Mia is obviously lying by omission, but so, it seems (what else am I to think?), is Moses apparently, and I feel so angry about the possibility that he might’ve led me down the garden path.

What kind of diseased dysfunction would goad Moses into blowing that much smoke? How could he write what he wrote and not mean it? I’m almost beside myself with fury.

Moses’ essay, after all, has been the cornerstone of my belief in Woody’s presumed innocence for three years now.

And really…how is it that in all of his 85 years Woody never ONCE violated or over-stepped with anyone else? It’s so baffling. One single five-minute horror episode that happened on 8.4.92 when he was 57 years old, and the rest of his life is essentially spotless. My understanding of human behavior argues with what I saw last night. At the same time there was that awful feeling…

How in God’s name did those nannies let Woody take Dylan away like that? They had been put on HIGH ALERT, for God’s sake. “Don’t let him be alone with her,” they were told. He clearly had what seemed like pervy or at the very least inappropriate inclinations, etc. What kind of sociopath nanny would let Dylan go off with him? They looked for Woody and Dylan for 20 minutes and couldn’t find them? Frog Hollow isn’t that big.

I just took Clayton Davis‘s “How To Avoid Being Too Much of a White Person When You Vote for Year-End Awards” quiz. The idea is to check off all the current award-seeking films that (a) meet the Academy’s forthcoming diversity requirements, and (b) fall under the categories of Representative (20), LGBTQ (10), Taboo Issues (5), Disabilities (5) and Women Filmmakers (15). One point per film. 55 points total.

Clayton’s minimum passing score is 30. I got a 29. 16 out of 20 “Representative” films. Big fail on LGBTQs, 3 out of 5 “taboos”, etc. I pledge to do better in ’21.

Clayton statement #1: “It’s important to say what this form is NOT. It is not a demand that you vote for these films. It is not a guide for a diversity quota so more people of color are represented in the film industry. It is not a document made to make a voter feel guilty about liking Green Book more than Roma or preferring Crash to Brokeback Mountain.” [HE comment: In 2018 and early ’19 there was definitely a coordinated campaign to shame and belittle fans of Green Book — it won the Best Picture Oscar anyway.]

Clayton statement #2: “It’s deeply believed that if industry voters have enough films of diverse and inclusive voices, there will never be a need for any quota or mandate, as people fear or suggest. To go further, Hollywood executives and producers will see the return on those investments with box receipts. Films like Lee Daniels’ The Butler ($116 million) and Get Out ($176 million) were smash hits with modest budgets, with the latter winning an Academy Award for best original screenplay (Jordan Peele).”

2020 films that are vaguely or mostly Anglo-favoring, non-representative, non-LGBTQ, non-taboo, etc.: Underwater, Dolittle, The Gentlemen, The Last Full Measure, The Rhythm Section, Birds of Prey, The Lodge, Horse Girl, Fantasy Island, Downhill, The Last Thing He Wanted, The Night Clerk, The Invisible Man, The Way Back, The Burnt Orange Heresy, Swallow, The Hunt, Lost Girls, The Roads Not Taken, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Resistance, The Main Event, Extraction, Bad Education, The Wretched, Capone, Blood and Money, The Lovebirds, Artemis Fowl, The King of Staten Island, You Should Have Left, Irresistible, Greyhound, Palm Springs, An American Pickle, Waiting for the Barbarians, Tesla, Bill & Ted Face the Music, I’m Thinking of Ending Things , The Devil All the Time, The Nest, Blackbird, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Kajillionaire, The Boys in the Band, On the Rocks, The War with Grandpa, A Rainy Day in New York, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Jungleland, Let Him Go, Hillbilly Elegy, Mank, Dreamland, Sound of Metal, The Christmas Chronicles 2, Uncle Frank, The Prom, Let Them All Talk, Wonder Woman 1984, News of the World, Promising Young Woman, Pieces of a Woman.

When your constituents are suffering from a lack of electricity during extremely cold temperatures, only a stone sociopath Senator would fly to Cancun in order to bask in mid ’80s heat. It doesn’t matter what Ted Cruz‘s administrative abilities may have been to help alleviate the situation. Winging off to Mexico at the height of a major disaster is comically atrocious theatre.

It’s basically a rightwing thing — the world is for the few — some are able to climb to the top but most struggle in the middle and many slide to the bottom….that’s life!

Truth-Serum Cruz: “I happen to be one of the few creme de la creme types with the option to escape this Arctic nightmare. What do you want me to do, hand out free blankets and extra underwear off the back of a truck? Hand out free hot coffee? If you don’t like the fact that I’m in Cancun, tough shit. Try and vote me out if you can, but let me tell you something — the dumbshits who support me like the fact that I’m chlllin’ in Cancun. Because they’d like to be here with me.”

Directed and written by Melville Shavelson and starring Charlton Heston and Harry Guardino, The Pigeon That Took Rome (6.20.62) is a comedy set in the final days of World War II. Don’t forget that Rome was captured by the Allies on 6.4.44.

“In 1944, during the last stages of the war in Europe, American officers Paul MacDougall (Heston) and Joseph Angelico (Guardino) are sent to Rome to act as spies for the Allies, even though they have no experience in espionage. Working with Partisan resistance soldier Ciccio Massimo (Salvatore Baccaloni), MacDougall and Contini send regular reports to their superiors by carrier pigeon.

“Angelico also finds himself falling in love with Massimo’s pregnant daughter Rosalba (Gabriella Pallotta), while her sister Antonella (Elsa Martinelli) has her eye on MacDougall. Angelico proposes to Rosalba, and Ciccio prepares a feast to celebrate his daughter’s upcoming wedding. However, Ciccio prepares squab for the occasion, killing all but one of the carrier pigeons. Ciccio scrambles to replace them, but the new pigeons he finds are German, and they deliver MacDougall’s and Angelico’s messages directly into enemy hands, creating new confusion.”

…you’re basically telling the audience, “Okay, guys…time to grim up and grapple with those uh-oh Jesse Plemons vibes. One look at that kisser and it’s like “okay, here we go.”

Plemons was just cast by Martin Scorsese in a major role in Killers of the Flower Moon, as a top-dog FBI agent investigating a string of murders of Native Americans in 1920’s Oklahoma. Plemons can be best described, no offense, as (a) a funny-looking Matt Damon, (b) a creepy looking Matt Damon with a drug problem or (c) a space-aliens version of Matt Damon after being kidnapped 40 years ago and just returned to earth except he hasn’t aged a day — kidnapped at 45, still looks 45.

You can’t go wrong with Plemons…those demon eyes, that copper-meets-carrot cake hair.

I love the “big smelly fish in the back seat of the maroon-colored sedan” scene in The Irishman. Plemons played Chuckie “dumb shit” O’Brien. Questioned about what kind of fish has stunk the car up, Plemons is too dumb to simply say “look, a friend of mine ordered it…I just picked it up.” Instead he prolongs it, fucks around, refuses to tell the guy that it’ wasn’t his fish. O’Brien was also too dumb to put the fish into a bucket of ice and then put it in the trunk. Instead he wraps it up in newspaper and then places it on the back seat, and smells the whole car up.

…for all those millions of Midwesterners and particularly suffering Texans who are all but freezing to death as we speak, I’m sorry. I hate extreme cold — the kind of windy cold that sometimes descends upon Boston and Chicago around thus time of year. 26 degrees in Austin, 18 degrees in Park City, etc.

CBS News: “A Texas mayor resigned after seemingly telling residents to fend for themselves in a Facebook post amid a deadly and record-breaking winter storm that left much of the state without power Tuesday. ‘No one owes you [or] your family anything,” Body said on Facebook. “Nor is it the local government’s responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim — it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and fired of people looking for a damn handout.”

A “friendo” whom I know pretty well and whose opinions I don’t always agree with but whose observations are always fairly spot-on…this person has seen Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick‘s four-part Allen v. Farrow (HBO Max, starting on 2.21), and I’m upset and alarmed about what he told me, which is that he found the doc persuasive. Not in a conclusive smoking-gun sense, but in a way that registered. He went into it with a “show me” attitude and came out with his mind…well, nudged to some extent.

“Friendo” has read tons of material about Woody Mia Dylan Soon Yi over the last 28 years — he knows the turf pretty well. And he shares my view that certain adamant kneejerkers from the film realm were all too willing in years past to cast Woody aside. The doc nonetheless persuaded him as far as it goes that Allen may (emphasis on the “m” word) be guilty of committing an act of one-off incest with Dylan Farrow on 8.4.92. Just allowing for the possibility that the Woody haters…I don’t want to think about it. I’ve been on the Woody-is-innocent team for such a long time.

“Friendo” didn’t arrive at this conclusion suspicion without thinking it over good and hard. And he says the doc is “not” a hatchet job, in part because of the craft levels.

I’ve requested a link to Allen v. Farrow but until HBO coughs one up I’ve obviously no basis from which to accept or argue. The Woody friendlies (including Showbiz 411‘s Roger Friedman and Allen friend and confidante Bob Weide, who posted a sight-unseen assessment roughly a week ago) have vented suspicions and logical counterpoints all along, as I have. But Weide hasn’t seen the doc and even says he doesn’t want to.

Another journo colleague who’s never been part of the lynch mob says the doc is not a slam-dunk or dispositive, and yet Moses Farrow’s landmark 2018 essay (“A Son Speaks Out“) is challenged in the doc by members of the family, as well as by Allen’s own testimony in a child custody hearing. Allen allegedly stated, I’m told, that Moses had “gone for a walk that afternoon and was not in the house.”

Plus, I’m also told, the doc shows a police drawing of the attic in which the alleged molestation took place. Despite Moses’ claim that were no train tracks or toy-sized trains of any kind in the attic, the drawing allegedly shows train tracks and a toy train set-up of some kind.

Not in the house? A plain-spoken offering of first-hand testimony from a then-14 year-old kid who was there on that fateful day, and who is currently a licensed marriage and family therapist…I’m sorry but I was sold early on. Moses’ claim that there was no operating train set in the attic has always been, for me, one of the most important pieces of testimony. Moses states in the essay, in fact, that the train set was sitting in a kind of downstairs play room for the boys.

Now comes an alleged image, supplied by the Connecticut police, that argues with this? And Moses wasn’t even around when the alleged incident took place? What’s going on here?

Jerry Zucker‘s Ghost (’90) implanted a creepy idea in the minds of millions — that when a seemingly evil or at least dastardly person dies (like, say, Tony Goldwyn‘s “Carl” or Rick Aviles‘ “Willie”), his soul is surrounded by a crew of shadowy growling demons who grab hold and take him down to hell. I’d be lying if I said this image didn’t manifest when I read about the death of Rush Limbaugh, a victim of lung cancer at age 70.

A truculent and blathery broadcaster of a long series of Big Rightwing Lies since he became a nationwide brand in the early ’90s (although he’d been making a lot of noise as a radio talk-show guy starting in the late ’80s), Limbaugh is, was and always will be the grandfather of rightwing disinformation and bullshit, right up to a radio show statement he made on 2.24.20 about the coronavirus: “I’m dead right on this…the coronavirus is the common cold, folks,” adding that it was being “weaponized” to bring down Trump.

When Limbaugh’s lung cancer diagnosis was announced three weeks earlier, or on 2.3.20, I posted the following: “I want to say this plainly but carefully: I did not feel profound sadness when I read of Rush Limbaugh’s condition. His strident-rightie rhetoric did a lot to inflame Bumblefuck Nation and rupture the fabric of civility in this country and fortify the toxicity that fuels the culture-war fires to this day. In the eyes of many millions Limbaugh is a flat-out villain. Anyone on my side of the battlefield (i.e., with a liberal or left-center attitude or philosophy) who says he/she feels badly about Limbaugh’s misfortune is just ‘saying that’, trust me.”

But of course, there is no cosmic moral judgment system that sends guys like Limbaugh to the caverns of hell and others into the clouds of heaven. I regret to say that death is a non-judgmental, non-denominational agent of flatline finality and that’s all. Nothing would give me more comfort than to learn otherwise…to learn that the 21 grams of spiritual matter that used to reside inside the body of Rush Limbaugh is hovering in some dark, self-loathing place. Wherever and whatever that is, it’s probably safe to say that Donald Trump‘s soul will be joining him down the road.

The Robert Towne-David Fincher commentary track is perfect. You don’t need to concurrently re-watch the film for the 17th or 18th time. Dialogue + commentary, smooth as silk. Incidentally: All these years in Los Angeles, and I’ve never once visited Walker’s Cafe (700 W Paseo Del Mar San Pedro, CA 90731).

From the 2.15 edition of “The Conversation“, co-authored by N.Y. Times columnist Gail Collins and Bret Stephens:

Bret: “From a political standpoint, Nikki Haley has played her cards pretty astutely. She might be the only potential GOP candidate who can unite the party. She’s smart, charismatic, has a great personal story, did the right thing as governor of South Carolina by getting rid of the Confederate flag from the State House soon after the Charleston church slaughter, and was effective as U.N. ambassador. If she wins the nomination she’d be a formidable challenger to the Democratic nominee, whoever that winds up being.”

Gail: “Wow, Kamala vs. Nikki.”

Bret: “Interesting that Kamala ’24 already seems like a foregone conclusion. Shades of Hillary ’08? Haley’s dodges and maneuvers are a bit too transparent. And her brand of mainstream Republican conservatism is just out of step for a party that is increasingly out of its mind.”

Gail: “Still, you’ve got me obsessing about an all-female presidential race.”

Bret: “About time.”

HE reaction: Stephens is probably right. Republicans don’t want to nominate a classic conservative as much as a lunatic — Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, somebody who might capture the nut fringe. The only thing that worries me about Kamala is her speech-giving voice — shaky timbre, uninspired phrasing. I’d be just as happy with Gretchen Whitmer. And I’d be extra-delighted if Pete Buttigieg runs again.

“The art of cinema is being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned and reduced to its lowest common denominator — ‘content.’

“As recently as fifteen years ago, the term ‘content‘ was heard only when people were discussing the cinema on a serious level, and it was contrasted with and measured against ‘form.’ Then, gradually, it was used more and more by the people who took over media companies, most of whom knew nothing about the history of the art form, or even cared enough to think that they should.

“’Content’ became a business term for all moving images: a David Lean movie, a cat video, a Super Bowl commercial, a superhero sequel, a series episode. It was linked, of course, not to the theatrical experience but to home viewing, on the streaming platforms that have come to overtake the moviegoing experience, just as Amazon overtook physical stores.

“On the one hand, this has been good for filmmakers, myself included. On the other hand, it has created a situation in which everything is presented to the viewer on a level playing field, which sounds democratic but isn’t. If further viewing is ‘suggested’ by algorithms based on what you’ve already seen, and the suggestions are based only on subject matter or genre, then what does that do to the art of cinema?

“Curating isn’t undemocratic or ‘elitist,’ a term that is now used so often that it’s become meaningless. It’s an act of generosity — you’re sharing what you love and what has inspired you. (The best streaming platforms, such as the Criterion Channel and MUBI and traditional outlets such as TCM, are based on curating — they’re actually curated.) Algorithms, by definition, are based on calculations that treat the viewer as a consumer and nothing else.” — Martin Scorsese in a Harper‘s essay about Federico Fellini, titled “Il Maestro.”

After the Blake Lively Boone Hall wedding catastrophe of a few years ago, who could have possibly failed to understand that attending any kind of Antebellum South event was extremely unwise if not flat-out stupid? Bachelor contestant Rachel Kirkconnell nonetheless “went” there in 2018.

In a 2.9.21 discussion with Extra‘s Rachel Lindsay (herself a former Bachelor contestant), Bachelor host Chris Harrison tried to wave off Kirkconnell’s naivete while concurrently blaming “this judge, jury, executioner thing,” etc. Which of course landed Harrison in hot water, the result being that he’s temporarily withdrawn from hosting duties.

When will this finally sink in? Anything Antebellum is best ignored or avoided. Forever.

The Ryan Reynolds-Blake Lively Boone Hall nuptials were obviously ill-advised, but nine years ago there wasn’t this instant socio-political condemnation thing associated with Southern plantations. 12 Years A Slave hadn’t even been filmed at that point. Eleven years before the Reynolds-Lively wedding a scene from Peter Chelsom and Warren Beatty‘s Town and Country was partly filmed on a storied Southern plantation. And Forrest Gump, of course, had been filmed on a similar Georgia plantation eight years before that.

A little more than five years ago (on 10.29.15) I joined Scott Feinberg and a friend of his for a scooter journey to Wormsloe, a Savannah location used in Forrest Gump. A three-century-old plantation with a long straight driveway shaded by an entwined canopy of moss-covered oak trees, etc. We didn’t attend any sort of planned event there, thank God — we just wanted to see it, take pictures, etc.