Entertainment

Oh Good, Woody Allen Won't Retire Until He's Dead

The disgraced director said he has no plans to stop working, adding that he "doesn't think about social movements."
Drew Schwartz
Brooklyn, US
Woody Allen
Photo by ANDER GILLENEA/AFP/Getty Images

Woody Allen won't go away. Despite the fact that the director's adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was seven years old—along with the fact that he cheated on Mia Farrow with his stepdaughter, Soon-Yi Previn, 35 years his junior, whom he then married—he's continued to find work in film. It looks like that won't change anytime soon: During a press conference for his next movie, Allen said he's "never thought of retiring" and doesn't have plans to, Deadline reports.

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“Since I started, I’ve always tried to focus on my work, no matter what happens in my family or with politics," he said. "I don’t think about social movements, for example. My cinema is about human relationships, about people. And I try to have humor in them. If I were to die, I would probably die on a film set, which may well happen.”

Great: The man seems to think he might be immortal—note the strange, troubling "if" above—and he will continue to make movies until he literally cannot anymore, because he is dead. He's had a harder time doing so in the wake of #MeToo, as much of Hollywood, and much of the country, has publicly condemned him. Actors who worked with him in the past, including Timothée Chalamet, Ellen Page, and Colin Firth, have vowed they never will again. And Amazon canceled a four-movie deal with him in 2018, forcing him to self-release his latest, A Rainy Day in New York, in the US.

But for whatever reason, some actors are still signing on to his projects. His forthcoming movie, a romantic comedy tentatively titled Rivkin's Festival, stars Christoph Waltz and Gina Gershon, whose comments on why she's participating in the film meant, uh, absolutely nothing?

"I am very aware of the subject of women’s rights, but I am also delighted to be in a Woody Allen project," she said at the press conference. "I think the #MeToo movement has promoted very good things, but it’s also really important that people take a look at every situation individually and really make up their own minds about them.”

Cool! Looks like we're doomed to keep on getting movies no one wants to see from a man pretty much everyone hates for years. Let's just hope this nightmare ends soon, and that Woody Allen is not, as he confusingly hinted above, literally immortal.

Correction (7/10): This post has been updated to reflect the fact that Woody Allen and Mia Farrow were never married.

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