Author: David Evanier

A Rainy Day in New York—A Review

Published by David Evanier

In spite of a fresh round of uninformed press attacks, celebrity denouncements, and calumnies catalysed by the #MeToo movement, Woody Allen has remained an irrepressible creative force. Amid the kind of controversy that might have destroyed any other artist’s sanity, he somehow managed to produce a memoir and two new films. Getting his work in front of an audience, however, has proved to be more difficult. The long-discredited allegation that Allen molested his adopted daughter Dylan when she was seven was most recently revived by Allen’s former partner Mia Farrow and their son Ronan during the 2014 Golden Globe ceremony at which Allen was being honored. Ronan Farrow is now an investigative journalist whose star rose rapidly during the #MeToo era as a result of his Pulitzer Prize-winning articles for the New Yorker about Harvey Weinstein, and he has not hesitated to use his newfound celebrity and moral authority to pursue a vendetta against his estranged father. It was he who led the public condemnations of Hachette in March for agreeing to publish Allen’s book, …

Woody Allen’s ‘Apropos of Nothing’—A Review

Published by David Evanier

A Review of Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen, Arcade Publishing (March 2020) 400 pages Rolling Stone has pronounced Woody Allen’s new memoir, Apropos of Nothing, “horrendously ugly.” The writer, David Fear, is not enraged that the book, originally scheduled for publication by Hachette, was cancelled and pulped after employees staged a walkout. Nor is he relieved that it was rescued by a smaller house, Arcade, and published this month. Instead he suggests that the book be thrown into the furnace, that Allen is guilty of being an “elderly man” and that he has “a whole lot of creepy comments about the younger women he’s cast.” The Washington Post suggests that the book be used as toilet paper, that it is “terrible” and “preposterous” and “a giant piece of belly button lint.” The New York Times says that Allen is “incredibly, unbelievably tone deaf on the subject of women… Every time a woman is mentioned, there’s a gratuitous pronouncement on her looks.” The most inchoate review came from a young woman at the Forward who …