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?

In short, despite all the things that are apparently selective or incomplete about Allen v, Farrow, “friendo” was half-sold. Despite the fact that there’s no mention of the fact that three of the 11 children Mia Farrow adopted died young and traumatically (one from suicide), or that Mia’s brother, John Charles Villers-Farrow, did seven years in jail for multiple charges of child molestation. And there’s no mention of the testimony of ex-Farrow nanny Monica Thompson.

I’m going to leave this alone and let it simmer, but Moses Farrow needs to watch the HBO Max doc and post a reaction piece, point for point, detail by detail. There are many angles and corners that the doc allegedly explores. Moses has to respond about the train set, and about whether or not he took a long walk and missed all the razmatazz.