Woody Allen has a new memoir called Apropos of Nothing. There was a lot of drama about Allen’s book deal, because he used the same publishers as his son Ronan Farrow, and there was a back and forth with all of that, which I mostly ignored because I don’t want to think about Woody Allen at all. But here we are. Woody’s book was published and gossip outlets got their hands on some of the first copies and… Woody talks about everything. He talks about Dylan Farrow, his daughter who has accused Woody of abusing her when she was a child. He talks a lot about Soon-Yi, his wife of many years, and the (de facto) step-daughter with whom he had an affair when she was just a teenager. Some assorted “highlights” via Page Six… I’m just trying to get all of this out of the way so we can all hork together and move on:
He dedicated the book to Soon-Yi: “For Soon-Yi, the best. I had her eating out of my hand and then I noticed my arm was missing.”
His affair with Soon-Yi Previn: “At the very early stages of our new relationship, when lust reigns supreme … we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.” Allen said he and Mia Farrow were basically apart by the time he began dating her adopted daughter, who is 35 years younger than he. He recalled the day Farrow learned of the affair after discovering erotic photographs of her 20-something daughter at Allen’s apartment. “Of course I understand her shock, her dismay, her rage, everything. It was the correct reaction.” But he also expressed no regret.“Sometimes, when the going got rough and I was maligned everywhere, I was asked if I had known the outcome, do I ever wish I never took up with Soon-Yi? I always answered I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
On Dylan Farrow: Allen has long denied sexually abusing Dylan, and in the book, he speculated that the accusations arose from what he calls Mia Farrow’s “Ahab-like quest” for revenge. “I never laid a finger on Dylan, never did anything to her that could be even misconstrued as abusing her; it was a total fabrication from start to finish,” he wrote. Describing a visit to Mia Farrow’s Connecticut house in August 1992, when he allegedly molested Dylan, he acknowledged briefly placing his head on his then-7-year-old daughter’s lap. “I certainly didn’t do anything improper to her. I was in a room full of people watching TV mid-afternoon.”
Why he married Soon-Yi: “As far as marriage was concerned, neither of us had any great need to formalize our relationship. We both felt that no contract is worth the paper it’s printed on if the parties are not happy. We loved each other and there was no need to resort to legislature. We would definitely not wed, and that was that. And then we married. Why? Not for romantic reasons but strictly financial. I adored Soon-Yi and knew I was much older and could drop dead at a moment’s notice. If I did, I wanted her to be legally protected, to get all I owned automatically with no hitches.”
Soon-Yi is now 49 years old and Woody is 85. For what it’s worth – and I’m only focusing on the creepiness of their marriage – I watched some authorized documentary about Woody doing a publicity tour through Europe with Soon-Yi at his side, and she’s 100% ride-or-die. She adores him and she absorbs all of his moods serenely. Yes, it’s creepy and yes, the way they got together was abhorrent. I guess my point is that Soon-Yi deserves the money. She earned that sh-t. And yes, Woody Allen is disgusting. *hork*
Photos courtesy of WENN.
