With Cafe Society, his 47th film in a 50-year career, set to open the Cannes film festival and a direct-to-Amazon television series on the way, director Woody Allen recently discussed his life and career with The Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Galloway for a wide-ranging interview that is both guarded and unintentionally revealing. The resulting article is mostly about how Allen has not changed over the decades. The 80-year-old filmmaker admits to living “in a bubble” and claims, convincingly, not to be haunted by the scandals that have plagued him for years. When Galloway asks him if he’s “traumatized” by the criticism of his marriage to Soon-Yi Previn, Allen breezily responds, “Oh, no, not in the slightest.” His disengagement from the world seems almost total. Here’s Allen on literature: “I never enjoyed reading.” Allen on cinema: “There aren’t a lot of films that interest me.” Allen on TV’s most-praised shows: “I don’t watch them.”
But it is the director’s views on his own marriage that are apt to raise the most eyebrows. Critic Alison Willmore shared a damning passage from the interview in her Twitter feed:
Allen unironically paints himself as a Daddy Warbucks figure with Previn as his Little Orphan Annie. Quotes like this could further harm the filmmaker’s already damaged reputation. It doesn’t get better in context either: When Galloway asks Allen what Previn gets in return for all those “enormous opportunities,” he responds, after a long pause: “Well, she’s given me a lot of pleasure.”