We can now add a new category to the long list of professional people who no longer want anything to do with Woody Allen: Book publishers, who have given a collective—and apparently resounding—“Hey, no thanks, pal” to Allen’s quiet efforts to shop around a memoir about his life. Per The New York Times, at least four major publishers—the sort that might have once flocked to pay Allen for the right to run his life’s story, back when his life’s story was a little less obviously clouded by #MeToo accusations from his daughter, Dylan Farrow—have all passed on Allen’s apparently already-written memoir.
Originally made back in 1992, the Farrow allegations have picked up renewed power in the wake of the #MeToo movement, causing any number of celebrities and powerful industry figures to distance themselves from Allen and his films. (Most notably, Amazon killed its multiple-picture deal with him including funding for his latest movie, A Rainy Day In New York.) Now, the literary world—once home to celebrated collections of Allen humor pieces like Without Feathers and Getting Even—has joined in the general backing-away.
The trouble, obviously, is that—in addition to the deluge of near-certain protests and internet opprobrium any interested publisher would receive—any book Allen wrote about the recent circumstances of his life would either be utterly disgusting, or full of lies, or, in all likelihood, both. Anyway, Allen will have to content himself with continuing to live his life with his millions of dollars, and his clarinet collection, and his closet full of ugly, shitty little hats, instead of the spectacle of renewed publishing fame.