“A Rainy Day” Ahead For Woody Allen’s Film Future & Legacy

After all this time, the demise of Woody Allen feels as anticlimactic as any of his usual resigned endings. With so much buildup to an event that one expected would be characterized by much more bombast and fanfare (one tends to think of the lynch mob pursuit of Kleinman in Shadows and Fog as the angry villagers that awaken him to ask his aid in chasing down a serial killer ultimately turn on him after he somehow becomes the accused), all it took was the effortlessly abortive gesture of Amazon Studios to shelve what was once the forthcoming fifty-third film (this includes projects where he was attached solely as writer as well) from the auteur, A Rainy Day in New York. The production company had already played with fire when they agreed to greenlight his six-episode TV series, A Crisis in Six Scenes, which hardly merited enough critical acclaim to be worth taking the flak they received for distributing the project.

That details of the screenplay for A Rainy Day in New York soon revealed that the maestro of the May-December romance had yet to give up his penchant for depicting grossly older men pursuing much younger women did not help matters. Nor did it bolster the morale of any of the last three or so champions of his work. Yes, Allen once again chose to imbue one of his main male characters with an unquenchable thirst for a nubile “concubine” (direct quote from the trailer). Because, shock of all shocks, Jude Law plays a middle-aged married man who “makes a fool of himself over every ambitious starlet and model.” One such starlet and/or model being Elle Fanning, twenty years old to Law’s present forty-five years. It’s not exactly something that Allen has avoided criticism for before, but, this time around, it would appear he can no longer eke by on the basis of no one (not even pseudo-intellectual New Yorkers at this point) watching his movies, therefore no one being affected by his psychosis–one that, now more than ever, has no place in the United States.

That Allen has managed to get away with this familiar plotline so many times before in the twenty-first century is already a marvel in and of itself. Yet still somehow not as much of a marvel as the fact that some institution finally denied him his artistic license. For Allen has been a man so long outside the expected boundaries of the film industry, of being reined in by “the suits with the money,” that, at this point, no one still watching ever could have imagined it (i.e. an embargo on his movies) might be capable of happening. And even despite golden boy and golden girl Timothée Chalamet and Selena Gomez’s attempt to placate potential audiences by donating their salary from the film to the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, it has not been enough to sate those lusting for the Semitic blood of a man they feel has gone too long unpunished.

In a somewhat similar vein as Scarlett Johansson backing down from her art, the climate of censorship in the movie business as of now is getting a bit frightening. Yes, we want to do a Noah’s Ark cleanse of all, as Bridget Jones would say, “alcoholics, workaholics, commitment-phobics, peeping Toms, megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits or perverts” but, at the same time, it’s causing undeniable conditions of fear and oppression in those who would dare to even hint at being politically incorrect or exhibiting a way of life too repugnant for most vanilla soft serve mentalities.

While Allen has been steadfast and consistent in his denial of adopted daughter Dylan Farrow’s abuse accusations, with his longtime friend and ex-girlfriend Diane Keaton seeming to remain his sole supporter, it has not been enough to quell the whispers turned roars. The flames stoked gradually over time until finally exploding into one final kabluey spelling the undignified end of Allen’s career, and with it, any respect that might have remained for his legacy had he chosen to “step down” when the rumors wouldn’t desist. Then again, it is said that only a guilty party surrenders to such allegations.

As Fanning asks Law in character in a scene that will now likely never see the light of day, “Were all these women for pleasure, or were you researching a project?” Knowing Allen, it was probably the latter. But now, that’s all come to an abrupt close, his life’s work cut short before he could adequately conclude it. And anyone familiar with Allen’s neurosis knows that to castrate him from filmmaking (the only thing his inherent OG Brooklynite jadedness could ever be shed for in terms of displaying ardor) in this way is a severe punishment for his alleged crime. Yet, don’t be surprised if, after he’s dead, the hordes come clamoring for the movie to be released.