Midnight in Paris

[CBStew]

If you love Paris and If you get off on the literature of Americans in Paris in the 20's this is your movie.  Owen Wilson does a pretty good imitation of a younger Woody Allen.  Thankfully, Woody is not going to cast himself as a young lover anymore.  The scenes of Paris are wonderful.  But my immediate reaction was, "Where the hell is everyone?"  No crowds.   No traffic. 
It is a clever film, especially if you liked Zelig.  Allen dragged everyone into it, from Ernest, to Scott and Zelda, Gertrude and Alice,  Pablo  and Matisse, Man Ray, Bunuel, Dali, etc.  It is about an American writer who is dislillusioned with his life as a sellout Hollywood hack who yearns for the inspirational life of Paris in the 1920s.  He gets his wish and every night at midnight an old Renault taxi picks him up and whisks him off to parties where Cole Porter is showing off his most recent composition and a burlesque Hemingway (redundant?) is offering to fight any man in the house.  He meets a young artist's model who believes that the Belle Epoch was the most wonderful time in Paris' history and sure enough a horse drawn carriage whisks them off to the Moulin Rouge and they meet Toulousse Lautrec, Degas and Gaugin.  You get the idea,  Owen (Woody) is Dorothy and learns that there is no place like home.

[Saul Goodman]

I guess this is as good a place as any to put this.

An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow

What'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.

[CBStew]

I guess this is as good a place as any to put this.

An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow

What'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.

When picking a jury read them Dylan's letter and then ask the prospective juror whether they believe Dylan and if so, why? 

[J. Walter Weatherman]

I guess this is as good a place as any to put this.

An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow

What'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.

When picking a jury read them Dylan's letter and then ask the prospective juror whether they believe Dylan and if so, why? 

FWIW.

[Quality Start Machine]

I guess this is as good a place as any to put this.

An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow

What'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.

When picking a jury read them Dylan's letter and then ask the prospective juror whether they believe Dylan and if so, why? 

FWIW.

Next they'll be accusing him of wanting to marry his stepdaughter.

[Tonker]

I guess this is as good a place as any to put this.

An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow

What'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.

When picking a jury read them Dylan's letter and then ask the prospective juror whether they believe Dylan and if so, why? 

FWIW.

Next they'll be accusing him of wanting to marry his stepdaughter.

If you'd actually read that article, you'd know that she's not his stepdaughter.

[Quality Start Machine]

I guess this is as good a place as any to put this.

An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow

What'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.

When picking a jury read them Dylan's letter and then ask the prospective juror whether they believe Dylan and if so, why? 

FWIW.

Next they'll be accusing him of wanting to marry his stepdaughter.

If you'd actually read that article, you'd know that she's not his stepdaughter.

Fine. "Wife's daughter" makes it so much less creepy.

I think his movies are pretentious crap. That's regardless of who he fucks.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

Fine. "Wife's daughter" makes it so much less creepy.

Ex-girlfriend's adult daughter.

Who, yes, he'd known since she was a child. But, creepy or not, that's a very different thing from the accusations regarding Dylan. And any lazy conflation of the two doesn't reflect terribly well on his critics.

[Tinker to Evers to Chance]

Fine. "Wife's daughter" makes it so much less creepy.

Ex-girlfriend's adult daughter.

Who, yes, he'd known since she was a child. But, creepy or not, that's a very different thing from the accusations regarding Dylan. And any lazy conflation of the two doesn't reflect terribly well on his critics.

I'm going to reserve judgement until I find out if Richard Cohen wants to punch him in the nose.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

Fine. "Wife's daughter" makes it so much less creepy.

Ex-girlfriend's adult daughter.

Who, yes, he'd known since she was a child. But, creepy or not, that's a very different thing from the accusations regarding Dylan. And any lazy conflation of the two doesn't reflect terribly well on his critics.

I'm going to reserve judgement until I find out if Richard Cohen wants to punch him in the nose.

Whatever the truth is regarding the Allen accusations, Farrow's continued relationship with admitted child-rapist Roman Polanski is kind of fucked up.

[Tonker]

I guess this is as good a place as any to put this.

An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow

What'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.

When picking a jury read them Dylan's letter and then ask the prospective juror whether they believe Dylan and if so, why? 

FWIW.

Next they'll be accusing him of wanting to marry his stepdaughter.

If you'd actually read that article, you'd know that she's not his stepdaughter.

Fine. "Wife's daughter" makes it so much less creepy.

I think his movies are pretentious crap. That's regardless of who he fucks.

I fucking hate his movies.  I'm still not going to suggest that he's a kiddie-fiddler when there's enough anecdotal evidence to at least suggest that he might not be.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

"Woody Allen Is Not a Monster. He Is a Person. Like My Father."

In America, we are prone to theatrics. Fox News loves a good sociopathic pedophile story. Nancy Grace goes rabid Bride of Frankenstein for it, snarling updates every five minutes until some ghastly fucking shell of a man lays dead in a hailstorm of Amber Alerts and SWAT team bullets. The kids survive, and I imagine Nancy sighing with relief, stroking her ego to sleep, reassuring it there will be follow-up stories and voyeuristic interviews for years to come.

This works on television because it reinforces the notion that the sociopath pedophile is not like you or me. We watch and wonder who would be so obtuse as to let him anywhere near so much as a pet rock, let alone a child. Without fail, there is a curious aspect of elitism in the spectacle. I can't say Rupert Murdoch calls in the script himself, but I've noticed how effectively these tabloid abuse stories often provoke the smug pity of the educated urban intelligentsia as they watch the catastrophically bad judgment of their poor under-educated brethren.

The problem is, this has next to nothing to do with the sexual abuse that happens in homes.

Those of us who were abused by a family member, or a family friend, have shared banal time and space with the sort of people who molest kids. We have sat in their cars in traffic and gone to diners with them, watched them scarf cheeseburgers or try to quit smoking, need an aspirin. And mostly, they are not utter sociopaths or sadists.

We are in the paradoxical situation of being subject to pure evil and knowing from experience that its representatives are rarely pure evil themselves. No one is. We have almost certainly seen at least a flicker of innocent joy or generosity in their face. We have puzzled over this person who hurt us, and considered the fact that they too were children once. And we know that many of them were also sexually abused as children. At some point in healing, we just know that there will never be, could never be enough jails to contain this – that it would never work anyway.

We are left with a problem: The greater the tenor of condemnation against these perps, the higher the stakes in telling our own stories, and the higher their own stakes in defending themselves.

...

We don't really just condemn the sexualization of children. Instead, we condemn the very existence of child abuse altogether. It's as if the crime includes being victimized by it, or responsible for bringing it into the light. We take an ontological roach spray to the whole event, either denying its status in reality altogether, or competing with one another to proclaim the most exquisite forms of torture for the perpetrators. I can't count how many times I've seen the most strident liberal break character to loudly call for the prison rape of perpetrators.

That this darkness is actually woven into and throughout the fabric of our society—that these abusers are among us—is simply too much to bear. So the darkness is ignored except for the most distilled, theatrical, and viscerally repellent cases.

This is why agnosticism reigns in the land of child abuse allegations. It is why a raging blowhard like Alec Baldwin can respond to Dylan Farrow as though this were simply a private family matter, effectively telling her to shut up and step back into the private family quarters where she was violated.

...

Most of us would sooner discard all parties who have been tainted by this event than we would look at how tenuous the sanctity of children really is, how commonplace abuse is, or see the capacity for the mostly good to do periodic evil. We live in the same universe as those who abuse kids. We walk among them. If we want to end the sexual abuse of children, it will begin with the recognition that we are simply not that different from them.

[J. Walter Weatherman]

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/02/woody-allen-sex-abuse-10-facts

This week, a number of commentators have published articles containing incorrect and irresponsible claims regarding the allegation of Woody Allen's having sexually abused his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow. As the author of two lengthy, heavily researched and thoroughly fact-checked articles that deal with that allegation—the first published in 1992, when Dylan was seven, and the second last fall, when she was 28—I feel obliged to set the record straight. As such, I have compiled the following list of undeniable facts...

[Bort]

And on the other side...

http://excrementalvirtue.com/2014/02/08/brainwashing-woody/

[Eli]

My favorite Woody Allen movie is Midnight in Paris. But I haven't seen that many of them. I think I'm fine with that.