Woody Allen Is the Villain of Yet Another Documentary
Batman movies have The Joker, the Scream franchise has Ghostface, and documentaries have… Woody Allen?
The disgraced comedian and filmmaker was the subject of the 2021 HBO docuseries Allen v Farrow, which re-examined the 1992 criminal investigation that was launched in response to allegations that Allen molested his daughter, Dylan Farrow. Now Allen has popped up in another doc, and, yet again, his role is that of an antagonist.
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Hitting theaters in the U.K. this week is Twiggy, a new documentary from director Sadie Frost all about English model and “‘60s fashion icon” Twiggy, aka Dame Lesley Lawson.
Of course, the film covers Twiggy’s 1967 trip to New York City when she was just 17. She was accompanied by her manager/boyfriend who was 10 years older, and who, according to The Guardian, “became an oppressive and unfaithful controlling figure.” But clearly whoever put together this cheery newsreel footage at the time seemed to think that it was all perfectly on the level.
Speaking of giant creeps, as Lawson recently talked about during an appearance on The One Show with Alex Jones (not that one), during the New York trip she was paired with a “new, young, unknown comedian, jazz player” for an interview. That comedian was Allen, and he, unsurprisingly, decided to be a condescending dick.
“His opening question to me was, ‘What do you think of serious matters?’” Lawson recalled. “I kind of go, ‘Well, what?’ And then he said, ‘Who’s your favorite philosopher?’ At which point my whole stomach fell to my knees. It was horrible. It was so humiliating, because I didn’t know any.”
So, in a moment of “panic” she threw the question back at Allen, and he failed to come up with the name of a single philosopher that he admired, remarking “I like them all.” When she continued to press him for which ones, specifically, he responded, “All your basic philosophers.”
Since Allen later made a career out of name-dropping famous intellectuals, he may have been playing up his ignorance, realizing that it would be funny. But Twiggy still totally owned the 31-year-old man who had endeavoured to publicly embarrass a literal teenager — although, in the moment, Twiggy “just didn’t want to cry.”
Frost claimed that it was an important scene to include in the documentary because “it’s so shocking,” adding that “he just tries to completely shame (Twiggy), really. Put (her) on the spot and humiliate her.”
Allen further tried to demean Twiggy by sarcastically suggesting that she surely must have read the works of Charles Dickens. That, too, backfired because she had read Great Expectations and David Copperfield at school. As Lawson revealed in an earlier profile, the “unpleasant” interview ended when Allen “just kind of walked off.”
It’s no wonder Bob Dylan wanted to punch this guy in the face.
