Woody Allen

Started by Pedro, March 20, 2003, 11:46:16 PM

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Pozer

might actually have to see a woody allen movie in the theater.

wilder

How Woody Allen Sees It
BY CHARLES MCGRATH
via The Wall Street Journal

Even as he approaches 80, Woody Allen remains one of the most prolific filmmakers working today. With the release of his 48th feature, "Blue Jasmine," the celebrated director opens up about playing the romantic lead, the hit-flop trap and why he just can't quit the business.



IN REAL LIFE, WOODY ALLEN isn't much different from the character he plays in his movies. He has the same reedy Brooklyn accent he uses on-screen and wears the same dorky, black-framed glasses he's worn since he was 17. He's shy, meek, insecure, a little phobic. When he showers, he makes a point of standing away from the drain, and he's not crazy about tunnels. Too much like the womb.

That such a person manages the existential crisis of getting out of bed in the morning, or accomplishes anything at all, let alone becoming a celebrated filmmaker, seems miraculous. But Allen's nebbishness disguises immense willpower and Stakhanovite work habits. Not long ago, Marshall Brickman, an old friend and collaborator (he cowrote Manhattan and Annie Hall, among other classic Allen movies), was reminiscing about Allen's career. They first met, he recalled, in the early '60s at The Bitter End, a club in Greenwich Village, where Brickman performed with the Tarriers, a folk group, and Allen, a stand-up comic, was the nervous opening act. Though Allen was an inspired joke writer, stand-up did not come naturally to him then. He didn't have the temperament and was often terrified and miserable. Yet he kept at it, even attempting stunts like boxing with a kangaroo if Jack Rollins, his longtime manager, thought it would help the act. "Some hole in his persona needed it so badly that he was willing to endure all the anxiety and humiliation of getting out in front of an audience and bombing," Brickman said. "And to think he went from that to being thought of in the pantheon along with people like Bergman."

These days, every month or so, Brickman and Allen go for a walk in Central Park. They follow the same route and have the same conversation every time. "We talk about the business"—the film business, that is—"and how awful it is," he said. "We talk about women. Years ago we'd see a couple of old guys unwrapping a sandwich on a bench, and now it's us—we're the old guys. We also talk about hearing."

But though he has gone gray and is a little stooped, Allen, who is now 77—how can that be?—doesn't look or act like an old guy. He's so busy you could say it's a little neurotic, a little overcompensating. Most Thursdays he rehearses with his jazz ensemble, and every Monday he plays clarinet at the Carlyle hotel. He frequently writes "casuals"—or humor pieces—for The New Yorker. He's working now with the theater director Susan Stroman on a Broadway musical version of his 1994 film Bullets Over Broadway, and he just finished making a movie written and directed by John Turturro in which he plays the owner of a failing bookstore who turns to pimping to make ends meet. And Allen continues to write and direct his own movies at an assembly-line pace, just as he has for five decades. Some are better than others, but there is no such thing as a really bad Woody Allen movie, and they come along—a new one every year—as reliably as the taxman. The critic Peter Biskind once called Allen the Joyce Carol Oates of moviemaking.

Allen's 48th feature, Blue Jasmine, starring Cate Blanchett and Alec Baldwin, opens in July. It's based on a story Allen's wife, Soon-Yi, told him about a woman she knew whose lifestyle became suddenly downsized after a financial disaster. Blanchett plays a pill-popping, vodka-swigging East Side sophisticate married to a Waspy version of Bernie Madoff (Baldwin). When he's found out, she loses everything and has to move into the San Francisco apartment of her adoptive sister—a bagger at a grocery store—and her two mouth-breathing sons. The story is more serious than comic, and though it's hard to take your eyes off her, the Blanchett character isn't always likable. Will it work at the box office? Allen can't stop to worry about that. He's already at work on the next one.

Chaplin, whose career in many ways resembles Allen's, stopped making movies in the late '60s. Fellini quit when he was 70. Allen, who used to say that filmmaking was a young man's game and that he would be done by the time he was 50, is edging into the rarefied territory occupied by Robert Bresson and Ingmar Bergman, who both made movies into their eighties. After a brief slump, he is even on a bit of a roll now. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) and To Rome With Love (2012) were well received, and Midnight in Paris (2011) was, by Allen standards, a big hit, making more than $150 million worldwide.

But despite his enormous body of work, Allen no longer occupies the place he once did in the moviemaking firmament. He might be more highly regarded, in fact, if he'd made fewer films. There are so many you can hardly keep track. Broadway Danny Rose, Mighty Aphrodite, Radio Days, Sweet and Lowdown: They're all packed away in the attic of our movie-going memory.



Some of his fans deserted Allen after the tabloid debacle of 1992, when Mia Farrow—with whom Allen had a son and two adopted children—discovered that he was also romantically involved with Soon-Yi, her 21-year-old adopted daughter with André Previn. Farrow's custody suit, in which she alleged, though it was never proven, that Allen had molested their adopted daughter, Dylan, made headlines for weeks. (Allen and Soon-Yi married in 1997 and have two adopted daughters, now teenagers. Meanwhile, Allen's son with Farrow, Ronan, remains estranged from him, claiming it's not possible to have a relationship with someone who is both your father and your brother-in-law.) And with younger moviegoers Allen has never established the kind of following he enjoyed in the '60s and '70s. By now, his movies—small, talky, with no action scenes or special effects, owing less to Hollywood than to arty European masters like Bergman, Fellini and Luis Buñuel—may even be a bit of an acquired taste.

None of this bothers Allen very much. His main regret these days is that he's getting too old to play the romantic lead. "It's an inevitable disaster of aging, and there's nothing I can do about it," he said recently, sitting in the cutting and screening room he rents in a swanky East Side apartment building. (It says "Manhattan Film Center" on the door, but in fact the place used to be a bridge club.) "I can't play the scenes where I'm sitting opposite Diane Keaton or Mia or Dianne Wiest or Judy Davis. If I think of parts for myself now, all I can be is Pop, the lovable doorman backstage at the theater who takes phone numbers for the guys, or the psychiatrist, or the amiable dad at the wedding." He sighed. "I like to be the lover."

Allen is fond of saying that the only thing standing between him and greatness is himself, and likes to come across not as a grand old director but as a self-taught schlepper. He insists, for example, that his characteristic use of long master shots—ones that record an entire scene from a single camera angle—is the result of laziness, not conscious technique. "I don't have a technical attention deficit disorder, but I have an honorary one," he said. "I don't have the patience or the concentration to shoot hours of us talking in a two-shot, and then your single and my single and from over your shoulder and over my shoulder. I like to do as many pages as I can in one take."

But Brickman maintains that Allen is in fact very canny about every aspect of the filmmaking business. "Some instinct told him what choices to make, like not going to the Academy Awards, keeping himself apart a little, and yet so often delivering on the promise," he said. "He's figured out how to survive in a very hostile and competitive environment."

One of the things Allen is shrewdest about is money. His films typically cost about $18 million to make, which is next to nothing these days. Most of them go on to make a modest profit—if not in the United States, then when they're shown worldwide—and once in a while he has a hit on the order of Midnight in Paris. It's a fairly foolproof formula, even if it seems to have little appeal to the studios now, who would rather make bigger bets in hopes of bigger payouts. Allen's modest budgets enable him to retain total control of his films, something that's seldom granted to directors anymore, and to be flexible when it comes to probably his greatest strength as a director: casting memorable actors in memorable parts. "I'm not in the hit-flop business," he explained. "I make a film and if it's a big hit it's not going to do anything special for me. If it's a disaster it won't ruin anything, because I'll already be working on the next. The people who play the hit-flop game suffer a lot when they have the flops. I don't, but then I don't get the highs either."

Juliet Taylor, Allen's casting director, who has been with him since Love and Death (1975), pointed out that because he makes movies so cheaply, Allen doesn't have to find the kind of bankable star on whom you hang all the financing. "He's very cognizant of how some people like to see certain actors," she said, "but that's not required of him in terms of putting a deal together. He doesn't get too attached to any one idea. He'll want someone, and if it doesn't work out, he'll just pick himself up and go on to someone else."

Allen doesn't pay star salaries. His actors get the union minimum, with no dickering. And yet he has no trouble finding stars to work for him. Actors—women especially—love to appear in Woody Allen films because he makes them look great, writes interesting roles for them and, based on his track record of 11 best actress or best supporting actress nominations so far, there's a decent chance they might get some Oscar attention. "We have very good luck because actors aren't always offered a lot of stimulating things," Allen said. "The kinds of films that get made now don't always have great acting roles. So when people get a chance to really act, even if it's for no money, which it is, they grab it."

Blanchett said she had been hoping to work with Allen for years, and when the phone call came she said yes immediately. Talking about her part in Blue Jasmine, she said: "This kind of opportunity doesn't come along all the time. The character's like a combination of Ibsen, Tennessee Williams and Shakespeare. There's such electricity in the gap between her knowing and not knowing."



Though he's good at it, Allen actually hates casting, and his process is so eccentric that, Taylor said, "We warn people beforehand." The whole interview typically lasts about a minute, and in most cases the actors aren't even asked to take a seat. "I find the whole experience very awkward, because I am socially awkward," Allen said. "I don't like meeting people. Once in a while a star will come in and Juliet will say you have to let this person sit down for a minute. This is an argument she and I have all the time. She thinks they want to talk. To me, the person always seems to be relieved. They're happy to be in and out."

On the set, Allen is famously nonintrusive. He doesn't meet the actors beforehand, doesn't discuss their characters with them and doesn't believe in rehearsing. The cast simply shows up on the first day and goes to work. "I've worked with amazing people over the years," Allen said. "Meryl Streep, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton, Judy Davis and Gena Rowlands, one after the other, these fabulous women—what do I have to teach them? If Cate, or anyone, is doing it too fast or too slow, or too theatrically or not theatrically enough, I might go over and say, 'Why don't you try that a little faster next time?' They do it, and that's the extent of my direction."


DIRECTOR'S CUT | The rented screening room on Manhattan's Upper East Side where Allen has been cutting his films since Stardust Memories.

By now there is a certain mystique about working with Allen. Actors want desperately to please him, and more often than not, by saying very little he gets exactly the performance he wants. He is always encouraging the actors not to stick to the script, for example—to change, cut or add to their lines however they see fit—and the more he does so, the more they tend to deliver their parts verbatim. Saying that she would do it again in a heartbeat, Blanchett called the experience of working with Allen "brutal and electric." "Everyone is on tippy-toes," she said. "I think he thinks the more he says, the more he screws it up. He wants to get out of the actors' way, and they want as much as they can get of him." She added: "He's incredibly restless, and that creates a sort of nervous energy on the set. He wants to get it done now. He wants all the energy of that day and then he wants to go and have dinner."

"Why does Woody still make movies?" Brickman asked. "Because he can. Because they still let him." He laughed and added: "I don't think people understand the degree to which Woody is relentlessly middle-class. From what I gather he's a good family man. He's a very good father, perhaps surprisingly so. He has a very strong, perhaps overwhelming work ethic. I don't think he knows how not to get up in the morning, get on the treadmill, practice the clarinet, write."

Allen ventured a slightly different explanation. "You know in a mental institution they sometimes give a person some clay or some basket weaving?" he said. "It's the therapy of moviemaking that has been good in my life. If you don't work, it's unhealthy—for me, particularly unhealthy. I could sit here suffering from morbid introspection, ruing my mortality, being anxious. But it's very therapeutic to get up and think, Can I get this actor; does my third act work? All these solvable problems that are delightful puzzles, as opposed to the great puzzles of life that are unsolvable, or that have very bad solutions. So I get pleasure from doing this. It's my version of basket weaving."


wilder

Woody Allen Wants To Write A Film To Star In With Louis C.K., Considering Return To Stand-Up Comedy
via The Playlist

While his work ethic hasn't paused for a single moment, Woody Allen has lately been more content to work behind the camera rather than act in front of it. While he does have a role in John Turturro's upcoming "Fading Gigolo," the writer/director has been fairly selective about appearing in his own films, letting six years pass between "Scoop" and "To Rome With Love." But not that he hasn't thought about it, and it turns out one of his "Blue Jasmine" stars may be inspiring him to act again. And it's a pairing we'd certainly endorse.

Chatting with the New York Times, Allen doesn't hold back on the praise for Louis C.K., and reveals that it was while he was casting Bobby Cannavale for "Blue Jasmine," that he discovered the comic actor. "I didn't know Louis C.K. at all. But someone showed me a tape of Bobby Cannavale – it was to see Bobby Cannavale, and he was in a skit with Louis C.K. Cannavale, I thought, yes, he's great and right for this part. And I said but who's that guy with him? He's wonderful," Allen explained. "So we had him originally for the Andrew Dice Clay part. And he read it, and he read it very well. We thought, he's so likeable. He's clearly such a sweet guy. I was dying to use him in something, so we used him to play the sweeter guy. I'd love to do a movie with him and me, a comedy. I'm looking for some idea that would work, for the two of us to do. Of course I hope that people aren't disappointed that I don't act with him [in "Blue Jasmine"], and he doesn't have a commensurately comic part with his talent. But some day, I will get something that we could do together, because I do think it would be fun. I'm such a great fan of his."

Undoubtedly, Louis C.K. must be thrilled that Allen -- who has clearly been an influence, particularly on episodes of "Louie" -- is taken with his skill, but the first attempt to pen something for the duo, didn't quite work out. "When I finished ['Blue Jasmine'], I went into my room and thought, 'What would be a fun picture? My first thought for a while was, 'Can I come up with something at the moment that I could do with Louis C.K.?' But I wasn't able to get the right idea, and time was starting to move," Allen said. "And I thought, well, here's an idea that would make a very fun movie, so I started writing it, and I finished it, and I thought, this is a perfect movie for Colin Firth and Emma Stone, so that's what I did."

And that film is currently gearing up, with Eileen Atkins, Marcia Gay Harden, Hamish Linklater, Simon McBurney, Jacki Weaver, Jeremy Shamos and Erica Leerhsen also slated for roles. And while plot details have largely been kept under wraps, The Film Stage did some diggin and learned the film will take place in 1920s and 1930s era in France.

Anyway, we'll have to keep waiting to see if/when the Allen/C.K. picture ever happens. But it appears the 77 year-old Allen still has few surprises up his sleeve -- he's thinking about returning to stand-up comedy. He recalled recently seeing legendary comic Mort Sahl perform at the Carlyle Hotel (where Allen plays weekly with his jazz band), and he became inspired to get back on the stage.

"Watching him, I had the same feeling now, in 2013, as I had when I saw him in 1950-something. Of, 'Hey, I'd like to get back onstage and do standup again.' He inspired me then to be a standup comic, and all these years later, I thought of it again because of him. He makes that phenomenon so enticing," Allen said, confirming he's thought about putting together a tour for himself. "I was thinking of it. Since I saw him, I've just been toying with the idea. I would love to see if I could. Just getting together an hour of stuff to talk about would be a lot of work."

wilder

Editor Alisa Lepselter Talks Blue Jasmine, Her 15th Woody Allen Collaboration
JULY 25, 2013 BY MATTHEW STEIGBIGEL
via The Credits

After working as an Assistant Editor on movies for the likes of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Nora Ephron, and getting her break cutting Nicole Holofcener's first feature Walking and Talking (1996), Editor Alisa Lepselter, A.C.E. got the job of a lifetime—she cut Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown (1999). Fifteen years later she is on her fifteenth collaboration with Allen for his newest movie, Blue Jasmine, which opens on Friday. We caught up with Lepselter to speak to her about her career and her work with the legendary director.



Alisa Lepselter

The Credits: You've been working with Woody Allen as editor since Sweet and Lowdown (1999). What's your work process with him like and has it changed at all over time?

AL: Not that much has changed, in that because of the way he makes films that are specific to him, he doesn't want to edit the film until he's shot the whole thing. It's unusual. Most directors have the editor doing a rough cut as they're shooting, because they don't have the time to omit that step. Woody has a lot more freedom to work at his own pace, and he wants to be in the cutting room with me from day one when he's done shooting. He comes in and we review all the material, and start cutting from the beginning, from scene one, sequentially, which is also very helpful, because you understand what the tone is as you're going along. But it's a luxury that most people don't have, to work that way, and that's the only way I've ever worked with him, and that's the only way he has, apparently, ever worked with anyone, so that's the same.

One thing that's been different is that he's been traveling more, to go shoot his films overseas, and I don't go overseas with the crew, mainly because we're not going to cut it anyway until he comes back, and I can screen the dailies here, and make notes and talk to him if there is anything I have issues with.

Over the years have his shooting and editing schedules remained consistent?

He does a film a year, almost like clockwork, and his shooting schedules are relatively the same every time because they're based on the kind of budget that he has, and that's pretty consistent. The editing is not always consistent, because it depends on the film. Some films are put together very easily and others are more problematic, and we'll just take as much time as we need.  And most people don't have that [opportunity] either. It's not as though there's a studio giving him a deadline. Yes we have some deadlines, we have a mix time set up, etc...so it's not like we have no schedule at all, but there's never a difficulty in getting our actual cut together. By the time we lock picture, and we move onto the sound editing and the color correcting, those are the kind of things that can take a long time, and get us up against deadlines, but actually editing the film – we always have enough time.

Have you been editing digitally or on film?

When I got the job [for Sweet and Lowdown, in fall 1998], I was told Woody cuts on film and don't even think about asking to do it any other way. And I asked to do it another way and he said OK! Sometimes people underestimate how flexible Woody is. He's very open-minded. I just had to explain to him why I thought he'd really benefit from working on the AVID [digital editing system], and he said ok, we'll give it a try. And so we've been working on AVID ever since. He's been very happy with it.  He still does shoot on film, and nobody's ever convinced him that he'd be better off shooting digitally, because the kinds of films that he makes really wouldn't warrant that switch just yet. The cinematographers he's worked with lately really do still enjoy working with film given the chance.

What's the process at the beginning when you get one of his scripts?

He writes an actual, real script. By the time I see it, it's about to go before the camera, and so if I have any issues that I think technically are going to be a problem for us, I'll bring it up, but it's usually rare or minor when that happens. The thing about Woody is that making a film a year and being the genius that he is, it's rare that there's going to be real problems. I don't feel that when we're editing we're trying to solve problems. We're trying to make it the best movie it can be, and tell the story that he wants to tell, and make it as resonant as it can be. He knows what he's doing when he's writing a script.

In Blue Jasmine, were the flashback sequences fairly well positioned at the script stage, or was there opportunity to move their location around a bit during the editing?

It was pretty well delineated in the script. There might have been a little bit of play in a scene or two. But it was clear from the script that it was going to be handled the way that we handled it. There's often a transition from the dialogue that led to Jasmine [Cate Blanchett] having a flashback.

Does Woody shoot variations of his scripted scenes to see how they might play out at the editing stage?

It depends on the scene. There are sometimes when he might shoot it a few different ways, and then when we're putting it together see which version feels right to him.

He seems comfortable shooting in the summer and editing in the fall.

Shoot during the summer, and then we edit during the fall, and then in the winter we do all the post, the sound mix and the color correcting, which he's very involved in. The color correcting is very important to him, and that takes a long time. That's an area where we've recently moved into the digital realm.

Woody seems pretty inexhaustible in terms of having plenty of material.

He already has said he has way more ideas for movies than he can possibly make in his lifetime. That's what his real genius is.  Nobody's prolific like that.

MacGuffin

Woody Allen Names New Film 'Magic In The Moonlight'
Source: Variety

Woody Allen has titled his new film "Magic in the Moonlight."

The movie takes place in southern France and stars Eileen Atkins, Colin Firth, Marcia Gay Harden, Hamish Linklater, Simon McBurney, Emma Stone and Jacki Weaver. Co-stars include Erica Leerhsen, Catherine McCormack, Paul Ritter and Jeremy Shamos.

The Gravier Prods. film is produced by Allen's longtime associates Letty Aronson and Stephen Tenenbaum. A distributor has not been set.

The story line has been kept under wraps but official set photos of Firth, Stone and Gay Harden show the actors in 1930s garb at a mansion.

"Magic in the Moonlight" is the 47th film directed by Allen. He's been nominated for 23 Oscars and won for directing and writing "Annie Hall" and for writing "Midnight in Paris" and "Hannah and Her sisters."

Allen's "Blue Jasmine" was released July 26 by Sony Pictures Classics — the sixth Allen film that Sony Classics has handled — with a cast including Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C.K., Andrew "Dice" Clay, Sally Hawkins, Peter Sarsgaard and Michael Stuhlbarg.

"Blue Jasmine" has grossed $31 million domestically and was still playing in 190 theaters last weekend. It's taken in another $18 million internationally.

"Magic in the Moonlight" will be the second film Allen has shot in France in the past three years following "MIdnight in Paris," which turned out to be his top grosser with over $150 million worldwide.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

jenkins

thought i'd hear more about this, and today i did

QuoteWhat's your favorite Woody Allen movie? Before you answer, you should know: when I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother's electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we'd go to Paris and I'd be a star in his movies. I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.
etc at http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/kristof/2014/02/01/an-open-letter-from-dylan-farrow/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

does this change your opinion on him as a person, probably, andbut does this change your opinion about him as an artist? i'd like to hear the reasons, and i know there are solid reasons, for this being a force of change on perspectives of his art. the parallel here, and it's slightly and surprisingly less disturbing, is polanski. i myself continue to be fascinated by and appreciative of the works of polanski, although from the details i know, polanski crossed a proper line. like, i wouldn't trust him with my daughter, but i trust his movies

wilder

Quote from: jenkins<3 on February 01, 2014, 05:25:52 PMi wouldn't trust him with my daughter, but i trust his movies

marquee that

Edit - Not to diminish or disgregard what could turn out to be horribly true, but when a blog like Gawker links to what is still only an accusation and labels the link "an account of the assault she experienced", something is very wrong. Obviously if it is seen through and turns out to be fact, it'll be very sick and disappointing, but it wouldn't change my perception of his films. Regardless, I see no reason to speculate about something this heavy and defaming before due process is sought.

Lottery

There's a thread on Mubi about a similar thing. Polanski and Allen are creeps but I still love Chinatown and Annie Hall.

And yes, Marquee that.

wilder

Just realized there might be a statute of limitations? I don't know.

Reel

QuoteWhat's your favorite Woody Allen movie?

Match Point


A lot of mixed feelings on this. I've gotten plenty of enjoyment from his films without this knowledge, as I assume we all have. And has this information effected my opinion of his films? No. But I question Woody's character, he's always been secretive and seemed off kilter. This confirms what has been rumored for so long, and it's a tragedy that it took so much time to get out, but I'm proud of Dylan for speaking up and would like to hear more of her experience and surely my support of Woody will wane in the process. I don't know how that would change what I've gotten from his movies. I'll see a deeper subtext, for sure. If I like his films made pre-molestation allegations, will I be clear?

Lottery

Quote from: Reelist on February 01, 2014, 06:33:48 PM
I don't know how that would change what I've gotten from his movies. I'll see a deeper subtext, for sure. If I like his films made pre-molestation allegations, will I be clear?

If I'm concerned about anything, it might be that. I mean how have their own life choices have informed their films- their writing or whatever. I think I heard the stuff that happened to Polanski's wife inspired the ending of Chinatown and the general style of Macbeth. And hey, Allen like the younger chicks in Manhattan.
I've probably felt oddly conflicted but I've enjoyed their films after I heard about all that.


Axolotl

QuoteWhat's your favorite Woody Allen movie?

Zelig/Manhattan

This doesn't change my opinion of him as an artist at all mostly because I'm not a huge fan of trail by media. Also I think making the argument that It's ok to like his pre-alleged-molestation films is a bit self serving. The mental constitution of Woody at the time that he molested the kid is the same as when he was making his earlier movies and the movies he made after. I'll have no problem enjoying his films even if these allegations are proven, Chinatown is still one of my favourite films.
It's also unfair to lump Woody Allen with Polanski because he's been *convicted* of raping a 13 year old and is a fugitive from the justice system. The worst thing Woody has been proven to do is marrying his girlfriend's adopted adult daughter, which might be a violation of your personal morals but not illegal in any jurisdiction of the world. I might seem like I'm equating laws with absolute morals which I'm not, but I think due process is an important thing when you're dealing with such grave allegations.
A kid lying about(probably in his mind he believed it) me stealing something as a child and my being corporally punished for it based on nothing but his word being a traumatic experience in my childhood might make me biased about this case. This sounds like a horrible blaming the victim spiel, but when piece of shit sites like Gawker publish allegations as facts some perspective is needed.

Gold Trumpet

Accusations for and against are pretty murky. If I can mostly separate my interest in someone very guilty of a crime and their work (Roman Polanski), I think I can do it for Woody Allen. The only problem is that unlike Polanski, Allen's filmography is a relatively unstable look at older man's fascination with younger women. Manhattan is wonderful, but I will have to admit Allen's character being interested in a 17 year old girl will come off a little differently now.

ElPandaRoyal

I firmly believe everybody is innocent until  proven guilty, so until then I won't even think of Woody Allen as guilty of anything. It's funny that comparisons to Polanski are being made here, because that article Alexandro linked to makes a very interesting point about that.
Si