While we’re presently living in a period that has allowed little attention to be given to Allen v. Farrow (certainly not even half as much as was given to the likes of Framing Britney Spears) because Allen’s audience is not the type to express the same level of millennial outrage. If any outrage at all. The defenses that might exist of Allen are fewer and farther in between than they’ve ever been. And perhaps one early indication based on Allen v. Farrow’s lens is Allen believing in his story as much as he feels Dylan believes in hers. Without commenting on the cracks in both sides of the narrative, let us go with the Believe Women mantra in this case. Which makes a certain rather “random” episode of the hit NBC series Just Shoot Me! stand out all the more in hindsight for its highlight of how, when you continue to fortify and corroborate someone’s delusions, they will only envelop themselves in and believe them all the more. Like perhaps Woody Allen does with this long-standing story about how Dylan was coached by Mia Farrow to say he molested her.
Because ever-crumbling patriarchal society (and the media juggernaut that went with it) was on his side for so long, his belief in this story was allowed to flourish in a way that made him possibly genuinely buy into it. The same way the Woody Allen impostor (Ed Crasnick) who walks into Maya Gallo’s (Laura San Giacomo) life does. And, thanks to Maya being amenable to perpetuating his own very clear self-deceptions, he is allowed to further delight in them.
The season two episode, which first aired in November of 1997 (one month before Deconstructing Harry would come out), opens with Maya riffing off the opening to Annie Hall by talking into the camera and saying, “There’s this old joke Woody Allen told at the end of Annie Hall—which, by the way, is my favorite movie of all time—and it goes like this: This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, um, ‘Doc, my brother, he’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken. And the doctor says, um, ‘Well why don’t you turn him in?’ And the guy says, ‘I would but I need the eggs.’ This joke, coincidentally enough, explains how I recently found myself in the most bizarre pseudo-relationship of my life.”
She then talks about writing an article called “My Dinner With Woody,” a “fantasy piece about having a meal and an incredible conversation with my intellectual hero.” Again, we must remember this was the 90s, when Allen was still easily passing himself off as a great mind when, in fact, he himself will assert that thanks to having an arsenal of handy, esoteric references memorized—paired with black-rimmed glasses—he has managed to fool the world all this time about his purported genius. But alas, he is a mere huckster in the spirit of his own father, constantly running a game—one spurred by growing up in Shyster City a.k.a. South Brooklyn.
A far cry from the likes of publishing mogul Jack Gallo (played by recently deceased George Segal), Maya’s father and the head of the fashion magazine she writes for. It is Jack who suggests maybe next time she could write an article about having dinner with Claudia Schiffer instead. When she asks why, he responds, “Claudia Schiffer sells magazines, and after this silly Woody Allen piece, we may have to.” How unexpectedly prescient, considering anyone who speaks favorably of Allen in print now would also have to sell their publication (what’s left of them, anyway).
At first excited and incredulous when Dennis (David Spade) informs her that Woody Allen is on the phone to speak with her, that enthusiasm dwindles while the doubt escalates upon “Woody’s” arrival. But it’s not Woody, so much as your average New York schlub with “writer’s clothes” and black-rimmed glasses on. Again giving tribute to Annie Hall, Maya speaks a line of dialogue so that the subtitle of what she really means can come out (e.g. “So you read the article and called… that was so sweet” translating to, “Oh Lord, he’s a loon”). Likewise for Woody.
Ironically, “Woody” claims to simply adore an article idea he snooped on Maya’s desk called “Cinderella and the Glass Ceiling.” Seeming to forget that the man she’s talking to isn’t Woody, she takes his opinion as high praise, asking him if he really likes it. He assures, “I’m getting goosebumps. My forearm looks like a relief map of the Poconos.” Incidentally, the place where Allen would get his start in theater at Tamiment.
Wanting to help her get her idea sanctioned by Jack, Woody suggests she pitches something worse than what she actually wants to make the cut by noting, “When I was pitching Sleeper to the studio, I first pitched them the worst idea I could think of.” “Let me guess: Interiors,” Maya ripostes—proving the geekish nature of this episode in terms of how big a Woody fan one needs to be to pick up on the references. And clearly, the writer of the episode (as well as the show’s creator), Steven Levitan, is just such a Woody fanboy, pawning off that admiration on Maya. Other trivia-laden lines from “Woody” include, “I haven’t heard screaming like that since I told Tony Roberts he couldn’t be in The Purple Rose of Cairo.”
Indulging him in his fantasy by getting into a discussion about what his best work is, she suddenly catches herself and cuts off the meeting with, “To quote the real Woody Allen, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m due back on Planet Earth.’” Likely what Woody also said after departing from that now illustrious attic. “Ooh, I love it when women quote me,” he returns, practically splooging. And it’s true, Woody definitely does, especially when it’s “young” girl like Maya. Maybe not nineteen young, but still young.
The pervert side of “Woody” shines through in not only his stalking of Maya by showing up to her apartment window (never forget how normalized stalking has been in pop culture), but also when he explains how he got there: “I climbed up the fire escape. I would’ve been here sooner, but the couple on four likes to watch TV in the nude.”
The next day at the office, when she admits of her dalliance to Elliott (Enrico Colantoni), the reaction is one of horror. “He’s sweet and smart and funny,” Maya offers as a justification for blithely accepting someone stalking her. “He’s not Woody Allen!” Elliott reminds her—as though Woody really is all of these things in the eyes of the public now (or even then).
For their next officially consenting date, Levitan makes it full Manhattan, giving the black and white treatment as “Woody” makes annoying, spidery hand gestures at every turn, including grabbing a hot dog from the stand.
This little rom-com sequence is interrupted when Elliott announces, “I told you he was crazy,” after slapping down a file back in the land of color. One that confirms “Woody” a.k.a. Preston Beckman has been institutionalized in the past for his impersonations (previously, Little Richard, because, again, it was a different time when white people were getting away with so much more).
Elliott elaborates, “He sells office supplies over the internet.” Maya, not understanding the relevance of the internet yet, replies, “Oh, that’s so sad.” Elliott balks, “Oh save your tears, he’s worth twelve million bucks.” Because the craziest kook of all is one with the money necessary to indulge their fantasy world.
Elliott continues, “According to his psychiatrist, who, by the way, wants to meet Cindy Crawford so badly, he’s willing to violate doctor-patient confidentiality, Beckman holds onto his delusion only as long as someone’s there to support it.” For “Woody,” it’s Maya. For Woody, it’s Soon-Yi. And also the French.
“No more Woody?” she asks sadly. Elliott demands, like anyone else wondering why people still cling to the real Woody, “Come on, what is it with you and this guy?” Maya offers, “…maybe I let myself forget [who he really was] because suddenly life was like my favorite movie.” Elliott is unmoved, insisting, “Maya, end it. He won’t stop living out this fantasy until you do.” “I’ll just miss him, that’s all,” she seems to prophetically say on behalf every fan forced to now feel a certain way about his retrospectively “tainted” work.
In the final scene of them together at a dinner, Maya admits, “I’ve been living my fantasy at your expense. You’re a wonderful person as Woody Allen. You can be a wonderful person as Preston Beckman.” But who will be there to tell the real Woody he can be a wonderful person as someone else (which he actually can’t at this point)? As in, after changing his identity—complete with facial reconstructive surgery in order to be able to ever release a movie in the U.S. again.
To poetically iterate Allen’s go-to with writing off women’s views that don’t align with his own reality, “Woody” then tries to flip the script by breaking up with Maya and saying she ought to see a therapist. She then replies, “Oh so now I’m crazy?” Woody shrugs, “Didn’t say crazy…obsessive, yes, but crazy? Well, maybe that too.”
The big tag at the end is that the real Woody actually does call her (maybe this was his best attempt at somehow promoting his latest movie). Assuming it’s Preston again, she starts chewing the true auteur out, only to see Preston arriving with flowers. She’s now, for all intents and purposes, sandwiched between two Woodys. Every woman’s worst nightmare in a post-Allen v. Farrow world.
