First of all, this concerns his relationship with his wife. Let’s not get into whether or not it was appropriate or inappropriate for them to have a relationship-there are plenty of threads already on that topic. That said, he gave an interview to NPR about the relationship where he said:
Really? He couldn’t say he was more worldwise, or had more diverse experiences to share or a million other ways to phrase it? He had to use the word paternal when he had to know how it would sound? Is he that much of an idiot?
She is an adult and was when they got together, but yea that is gross personally and personally not what I’d be looking for in a romantic relationship.
I rather like taking a quasi-parental role in relationships (and for whatever reason, most of the girls I end up going out with seem to have, uh, absent fathers). That having been said, I’m revolted by the idea of dating anyone who you were actually in a parental or quasi parental role. There were literally half a million 19-year old Korean women that this freak could have chosen, instead of his partner’s adopted daughter.
Woody Allen does for age disparate relationships what the Nazis did for Nordic mythology.
I kind of assume he simply, honestly doesn’t realize how it looks. While I don’t recall him making particular efforts to defend himself, I read the quoted statement as a justification (“Hey, if it were unhealthy, would we still be together after 20 years?”). I wouldn’t be surprised if he thinks that everyone’s making a big deal over nothing — after all, she was over 18 and they weren’t biologically related.
I see nothing wrong with his comment. Even if I disagreed with his phraseology, the two seem to have a working relationship and it is of no importance to me how it is defined.
Lucked out, no shit. Should be explaining to his prison rapists one by one how he’s not guilty.
“Hey!! Uh… nana wanna… she was my wife, ha know. And it’s different in other countries. The shooplahs don’t hurt the frapplas and just look at Zelig! Proof!”
Good filmmaker, sure. His works’ almost at par with Michael Bay. Actors love the attention and they couldn’t get it without the roles that were needed to be in charge.
I will digress saying Hannah & Her Sisters was one of my favorites, but now I can only think fornicating a minor relates to hiring the shittiest actor to head a film. Midnight in Paris was clearly an experiment in casting a guy like Chris Elliot in a reading of Phantom Of the Opera.
What he is, is guileless. He has no idea how such things sound because his mind doesn’t run the way those of his detractors do. It bespeaks a certain innocence, and perhaps helps to explain how he could get himself into the situation with Soon-Yi in the first place. He simply saw nothing wrong with it, probably because to people of his generation such an age gap was unremarkable. Mia Farrow seduced and ultimately married Frank Sinatra and she was 30 years younger than him. Also, Mia was a year younger (19) than Soon-Yi was (20) at the time her affair with Allen began. And absolutely no one at the time thought Sinatra was some sort of pedophile.
Allen has gone on record as saying that Mia’s discovery of Soon-Yi’s nude photos was one of those great pieces of luck that change your life for the better, and he doesn’t understand why everyone calls his relationship with Soon-Yi a scandal. He honestly thinks there was no scandal, he just fell in love and followed his heart. These comments bespeak a certain guilelessness too, as most people would be unlikely to view Farrow’s discovery of the photos as lucky nor have any problem thinking of the situation as a scandal.
FWIW, Soon-Yi has gone on record stating that Allen was never a father figure to her and that the idea was laughable. He was simply a guy who dated her mother. And while it’s been reported that he spent a lot of time with his children, they were the much younger children he either adopted or (apparently mistakenly) thought he’d fathered with Farrow.
And here I was stuck on the idea of him “gifting” some of the decision making. Sounds like a really healthy setup there, buddy. You even let her choose the color of the paint in the powder room! Isn’t it cute to watch a woman make decisions?
Hasn’t his basic tone-deafness been at the center of this ever since it hit the media a couple of decades ago? Why is it a surprise to see it again?
I think that is what is at the heart of all this: this artist is supposed to speak to complex emotional situations and insights in his films, but is obliviously un-self-aware in how he presents himself IRL…
“Paternal” does have the definition of “showing the type of kindness usually associated with a father.” One can show a paternal interest in, say, a younger colleague who’s not of the sex you look for in a romantic partner. Nowadays, you would call it “mentoring.”
Allen’s use of the word is perfectly legitimate for what he is saying. His mistake is not realizing that people would immediately confuse it with “parental” and ignore the obvious (and legitimate) meaning he was using.
Hah - YES! That was the part that grossed me out, too. Gee, I’m sure as an adult woman now in her 40s, she’s really grateful for the autonomy you gave her.
Count me in with everything who thinks the ‘decision making’ line was positively disgusting, and says a lot about the kind of massive insecurities that he must harbor. Taking that into consideration, it’s not a surprise that he’d seek out barely legal women for relationships.
I assume he doesn’t really care what we think and so feels free to paint as skeevy a picture of himself as he pleases. Why should he bother to pretend with what he’s gotten away with so far?
What he seems to be saying is that Soon-Yi liked having an older person to take a leadership role, and he was comfortable in that role. Within that dynamic, he as happy to let her make the actual hands-on decision-making, and she is happy to make them while continuing to have him in an overall paternal leadership role. In that sense, it was a “gift” because he could have pressed his advantage to actually make all the decisions as a practical matter and she would have been happy with that, but he deferred and let her take that role.
The problem with this type of thing is that it’s very difficult to get across in a magazine interview, especially when people already widely despise you and are not really looking to tease apart any nuanced point you might be making.
