The Hollywood Reporter recently published an interview with Woody Allen in which he said several narcissistic things regarding his wife (who is also formerly his kinda/sorta-stepdaughter) Soon-Yi Previn. When asked how Soon Yi had effected his life, Woody Allen nattered on about how good HE was for HER … so much so that the reporter had to ask the question THREE times before the nebbish little egomaniac could understand that he was supposed to explain how SHE had made a difference for HIM:
How has your wife, Soon-Yi, changed you? Oh, well, one of the great experiences of my life has been my wife. She had a very, very difficult upbringing in Korea: She was an orphan on the streets, living out of trash cans and starving as a 6-year-old. And she was picked up and put in an orphanage. And so I’ve been able to really make her life better. I provided her with enormous opportunities, and she has sparked to them. She’s educated herself and has tons of friends and children and got a college degree and went to graduate school, and she has traveled all over with me now. She’s very sophisticated and has been to all the great capitals of Europe. She has just become a different person. So the contributions I’ve made to her life have given me more pleasure than all my films.
You’re saying how you changed her. How has she changed you? (Allen pauses.) Well, she’s given me a lot of pleasure. I adore her, and she’s given me a wonderful life. We’ve been married 20 years. And we were together for a few years before that. And she has given me the great years of my life, personally. She’s a great companion and a great wife. She has given me a stable and wonderful home life and great companionship. I guess whenever you meet somebody and they’re the right person for you, there is a great emotional contribution they make to your life.
But has she changed you in any way? (Pauses.) Changed me? I don’t know if you could say she changed me. I don’t know if I’ve changed. I might be the same person I was when I was 20. I’m not sure. I mean, I seem to have the same habits, the same work habits, the same phobias, the same enjoyments. I don’t think I have changed much over the years at all. When you mention it, I try and think about the ways [I’ve changed]. I don’t know if I’ve changed much.
First, let me just say that Woody Allen is under some sort of misapprehension – to the point of delusion – about WHO it was that rescued Soon-Yi from Korea after she was abandoned by her biological parents. The person who saved Soon Yi and adopted her and gave her a whole new life full of opportunities and got her help with learning disabilities and emotional problems (as a result of surviving on the streets before she was taken to an orphanage) was MIA FARROW and her husband Andre Previn. When Mia Farrow and Andre Previn adopted Soon Yi in 1978, her “precise age and birth date [were] not known, but a bone scan estimated her age as being between 5 and 7 years old at the time.” Thus, Soon Yi was born sometime between 1971-1973.
Mia Farrow began dating Woody Allen in 1979, when Soon-Yi was somewhere between 6-8 years old. Below are two pictures taken in 1983 and the cute little girl is Soon-Yi Previn, whom Woody Allen would have already known and been interacting with for the four years he had been dating Mia Farrow.
Mia left Woody Allen in 1992 when she found graphic sexual photos of Soon -Yi that Woody Allen had taken. Woody Allen didn’t “leave” Mia Farrow for Soon-Yi; she kicked his butt to the curb when she found out he was sleeping with her daughter behind her back. If Woody Allen had “fallen in love” with Soon-Yi, why wasn’t he the one to leave? Why was he still in a relationship with Mia? Soon-Yi was in college by then; why didn’t he leave Mia and start dating her in the open?
Soon-Yi was already legally an adult in 1992, being somewhere between 19 and 21 years of age, but no one knows WHEN the photos were taken. No one knows how long Woody Allen had been having sex with her when Mia Found the photos. Even if Soon-Yi was an adult before Allen started crawling on her, the photos and the relationship were still grotesque because Woody Allen had been her de facto father figure since she was a traumatized child and was in a long-term relationship with her mom and was the adopted and/or biological father of three of her younger siblings. It is beyond detestable that Woody Allen took advantage (and with Soon-Yi’s childhood she was hella vulnerable to sexual abuse) of a young woman he had an acting step-father for since she was a child.
Allen has sworn up and down that he was never a father figure to Soon-Yi, but pictured below are some family pictures with Allen and Soon-Yi and her siblings and her mother Mia Farrow and golly he sure looks like he is being the Daddy to me. Maybe not actively Soon-Yi’s daddy, but she is there and he’s clearly acting in a paternal role.
Having an affair with his stepdaughter in all but name wasn’t a problem for Woody Allen, though. “I didn’t find any moral dilemmas whatsoever,” Woody told Time about his relationship with Soon-Yi. “I didn’t feel that just because she was Mia’s daughter, there was any great moral dilemma. It was a fact, but not one with any great import. It wasn’t like she was my daughter.” In fact, according to Allen, “Farrow’s discovery of nude pictures he had taken of Previn — the catalyst that brought their affair out into the open — as one of “the fortuitous events, one of the great pieces of luck in my life… It was a turning point for the better.”
Yeah, I bet Woody Allen saw nothing wrong with it considering the disgusting things he’s said about young girls in his past that he obviously considers NORMAL sexuality. For example, he said in 1976 that, “I mean, if I was caught in a love nest with 15 12-year-old girls tomorrow, people would think, yeah, I always knew that about him.” Just, YUCK.
Woody Allen also gives away the vile and semi-incestuous nature of his relationship with his former lover’s daughter when he describes his relationship with her as “paternal”. Notice how he keeps up this “paternal” vibe with the way he describes how he “really made her life better” and provided Soon-Yi with “enormous opportunities” which she “sparked to” and “contributions” he has made ? That’s the way a proud parent describe how his adopted child has flourished in her new environment; it is not how an adult describes his relationship with another adult. I am not alone in noticing how (for lack of better word) creepy it is that Woody Allen talks about his wife like she’s still a child.
His warped idealizing of a daughter-wife figure also leaks through in his films, where the love/adoration of a MUCH younger woman (who is often a student or student-like just yearning to hear all about the older man’s wisdom & pain) almost always serves as a catalyst for the much older hero’s self-discovery and happiness. Worse, his fantasies bleed over into reality. Remember when the 49 yr old Woody Allen had a relationship with the 17 year old Mariel Hemingway in his movie Manhattan in 1979? Well, when he was 50 and she was 18 the wrinkly old pervert tried to get her date him in real life. Come to think of it, Mia Farrow was so girlish she could have been mistaken for a teenager in 1979.
God Almighty, even if he didn’t rape his daughter when she was seven (which I would bet you dimes to little green apples that he DID and I’ll write about that tomorrow), how are his gross films still getting made? Could it be that Hollywood itself is obsessed with old men always being able to snag themselves a pretty young thing, and therefore Woody Allen’s films are a delight to the patriarchal establishment?
The fact that disgusting predators like Woody Allen and Roman Polanski still have careers and defenders is an indictment against Hollywood and the whole of Western culture.