What We Can See Now

Re-watching the "Allen v. Farrow" documentary after years of reading about pedophilia, grooming, and coercive control.

Woody Allen broke my heart.

For many years I described Allen as my favorite director. Like many others.

While in high school, I watched “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask” (1972). As a sophomore, I was invited into the chic, inner realm of a group of endlessly “cool” seniors. At Cheryl’s house, in the basement with the dark faux wood paneling, we ate waffles with butter and jam and laughed our asses off at the seven short sketches that constitute the film.

The film clued us in to some fundamentals of sex and made us laugh. Plus, the film has Gene Wilder— how can you go wrong?

Being introduced to a director when you are young— it shapes you. From that first film and the happy memory I associated with it— adolescent camaraderie, the rediculous silliness of it (a ginormous, lone boob terrorizing the countryside? hilarious!)— I embarked on a quest to watch all his films, and then to watch them again and again.

This happened throughout the high school and college years. It was an exploration of the movie-watching experience, of what films could mean in your life; how they might comfort you, how re-watching a film you’d met during a certain period of your life allowed you to savor a nostalgia for your own past.

Allen films became favorites. Each special in its own way, bookmarking the progression of my own life.

Allen is nothing if not prolific (or shall we just call him “nothing” now?), and with each new film, I would go to the theater as soon as I could, and affix the film to my life at the time. Humans do this with movies, with art; it colors the tapestry of our time on earth.

And when these near-sacred experiences stem from one person, over and over, it is a kind of anonymous intimacy. Woody Allen, as a director, played a significant role in my life. To him, I would be, at most, a data point in box office sales— an anonymous figure. A human being obscured within statistics. And thank God for this.

For to know Woody Allen, to be close to this man, results in a certain, life-long agony.

For the next few posts, we’ll be looking at the “Allen v. Farrow” (2021) documentary. If you have not seen it already, I highly recommend it; it is available online on multiple platforms.

Speak soon—