This is really the whole answer to why Woody Allen’s autobio was dropped: money. Ronan Farrow + avoiding bad PR is worth a lot more to the publisher in the long run than one controversial book that could get boycotted anyway. I know which side I’d bet on.
Fortunately, we’re mostly not forced to consume his works - except that supposed DEBBIE DOES DALLAS tape (VHS) with ZELIG overdubbed. Bummer. :smack:
Here are three websites with statistics about how much money Allen’s films have made, with some of them adjusted for inflation.
He’s worth about $80 million at the moment.
His movies have always cost relatively little to make. The early ones tended to make more money (adjusted for inflation). Even when his movies lose some money, it tends to be a pretty small amount compared to the cost of the big-budget films that you think of being what Hollywood mostly does. Allen has always (at least up to recent times) been able to get well-known actors to appear in his films for reasonable salaries, and his films have mostly gotten good reviews. Until a few years ago, what the studios said to themselves was that Allen’s films never made large amounts of money, but on average they made enough to pay back their investments while winning some awards. However, in the past couple of years it’s become clear that they no longer are really worth it. There are enough people angry at Allen that the chances of the movies making money aren’t good enough to be worth any studio backing him. Given that Allen is 84 years old and has $80 million of his own money to invest in his films, he could keep making films for the rest of his life with only small contributions from distributors, but it’s not clear whether he would want to do that.
Ew
His movies are so small, he could fund his own productions.
Bret Stephens, a New York Times columnist, has a good columnon the controversy. His closing statement is worth quoting.
He sure lived the spirit of those words when he tried to get some random guy, who didn’t even tag him, fired from his job for making a bedbug joke as his expense.
That’s the bedbug guy? What a joke!
An imperfect messenger to be sure, but the message is valid.
Yep, that was idiotic. So now what? Do we cancel everything he says from here on in? Can we only cite people who are absolutely perfect and never have said or done anything stupid? Is there anybody in the public eye who can pass that test? Do we have to do homework on every cite to learn their entire histories?
We’re all entitled to make judgements about the worth of individuals and their opinions. We’re all entitled to make judgements about entertainers and whether we wish to support them. People always have and always will.
My judgement is that cancel culture is a really bad thing. I’m going to agree with those who also think so. Note that cancel culture is not at all the same as holding people responsible for acts of true harm. The latter is necessary to a functioning society; the former is a tantrum.
It’s a panic about “cancel culture”. These idiots are afraid it’s going to come for them. But it’s not… not unless they did something awful. The rich and powerful (or many of them, anyway) are terrified, because now their actions, past, present, and future, might have consequences. They thought that consequences were just for the little people - they thought wealth and influence would protect them. The idea that maybe they’ll have to face the same possibilities and risks that everyone else faces is absolutely terrifying to them.
We should mock idiots like Bret Stephens. No need to “cancel” him, mockery will do just fine. At least until he shows some self awareness.
I remember George Lucas saying he wanted to get money to do the film Red Tails. Clearly he had plenty of his own cash he could use.
It would be nice to live in that dream world. But it’s not reality. Any reading of the news over the past few years would reveal numerous people who were not rich and powerful who said the wrong thing and had their careers derailed. There is no reality in which cancel culture affects only the Harvey Weinsteins. Cancel culture is not synonymous with #MeToo. It is utterly arbitrary and depends more on Twitter rages than on evidence.
It is a parody of itself. I know no better example than Help Decide the Top 1,000 Comedians of 2019. Comedian Zack Broussard had been issuing comedic listings of the top 1000 comedians for several years, changing the rules constantly. For 2019 he topped himself.
The result. A list of 1988 canceled comedians. And a list of 1000 uncancelled comedians. I have no idea how the lists are ranked. Nevertheless, I couldn’t identify ten of the top 100 on the cancelled list. You think only the rich and powerful only get cancelled? You think being on that list won’t affect their careers from now on, even if the list was a joke? You really want judgement based on the effort people put into clicking a button on a screen?
#MeToo changed our world for the better. Cancel culture is a sewer washing over people, the guilty and the innocent alike. Want proof?
There’s a distinction worth making.
There’s no such thing as “cancel culture.” No one is losing their careers because of cancel culture. What happening now is that people who once had the privilege of being protected from the consequences of their speech now have to face the opinions of formerly silenced people. I don’t feel sorry for them.
For every celebrated, successful, rich _(full in the blank) who has revealed deprived, hateful beliefs or actions, there are countless _________ just as talented and with the same potential to be creators of cultural gems for the ages who haven’t had the right luck or opportunities and haven’t said or done something despicable. Let the former enjoy their riches in retirement and the latter step up to show their stuff.
Yes. Obviously. It’s a joke, and one most people have never even heard of unless they are in on the joke. No one looks for a list of cancelled comedians or any other group.
Being cancelled means that either (a) you lost your job (or equivalent) after you did something controversial and people complained to your boss, or (b) you’re self employed and people stopped wanting to pay for your stuff because of something you did.
So, no, I can’t see how such a list would hurt them, even if it were perceived as serious. Cancelling just doesn’t work that way.
…but apparently we’re not entitled to make judgements about the worth of Bret Stephens and his opinions?
:dubious:
The bedbug incident is highly relevant because it’s about freedom of speech. Stephens is defending freedom of speech, but he notoriously fails to practice it himself. He’s a hypocrite when it comes to freedom of speech.
Yet you seem to be getting upset about anyone making judgements about the worth of his statements on the subject.
Let’s be clear about one thing. Nobody is infringing Woody Allen’s freedom of speech. Nobody is stopping him publishing his book through another company, or privately on the internet. Hachette made a business decision that it was going to cause too much hassle to their company to publish, but there are probably 20 other publishing houses falling over themselves to publish it.
It’s the same with no-platforming. It doesn’t infringe anybody’s free speech. If a religious fundamentalist knocks on your front door and wants to come in and preach to you about his religion, are you obliged to let him in and listen to him? Are you infringing his freedom of speech if you refuse to do so? Are you not entitled to no-platform a religious evangelist in your own house?
How is that different from a university refusing to allow someone whose values are not compatible with the values of the university to speak on their campus? Are they stopping him from speaking anywhere else?
Freedom of speech doesn’t mean that other people are forced to listen to you. And it doesn’t mean that publishers are obliged to publish your book.
Why should a university promote only a certain kind of liberal, politically correct speech? That’s an odious notion.
It was refreshing to see this article trending on the NY Times site: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/magazine/title-ix-sexual-harassment-accusations.html
Maybe the moral panic has crested and will soon recede, just as happened in the 1990s. Fingers crossed.
Is a university not entitled to promote any point of view they like?
But yes, I agree that there are certainly cases where people have gone overboard. We do need to be careful of extremist ideology on all sides, and not condone witch hunts or character assassinations.
I’m sure Al Franken, Garrison Keillor and Neil DeGrasse Tyson don’t want you to feel sorry for them. I suspect they’d all like their careers from three or four years ago back. If they’re not undeserving victims of cancel culture, I don’t know who is.