The Unruly Life of Woody Allen (47 page)

One year after Judge Wilk's decision, the Appellate Division of (he Supreme Court unanimously confirmed his ruling. Its harshest criticism was reserved for Woody's involvement with Soon-Yi because, as Justice David Ross wrote, "continuation of the relationship, viewed in the best possible light, shows a distinct absence of judgment. It demonstrates to this court Mr. Allen's tendency to place inappropriate emphasis on his own wants and needs and to minimize and even ignore those of his children." The Appellate Division also upheld Wilk's restrictions on the amount of time Woody could spend with Satch, although two of the five justices dissented because they felt unsupervised visitation for twelve hours a week, plus alternate weekends and holidays, would be more reasonable. As for the famous Polaroid phoros, which Woody always argued were nothing but ordinary erotic pictures between rwo consenting adults, the all-male panel delivered its opinion: "We have viewed the photographs and do not share Mr. Allen's characterization of them * Case closed

Woody had no intention of giving up Soon-Yi. Their relationship was one of the best—maybe
the
best—of his entire life, he told friends. Besides, he saw no reason why he shouldn't have both his girlfriend and his kids. As he declared earlier, "the heart wants what it wants." Still convinced that he had been the victim of an unjust legal system, he tried to overturn the Appellate Division's ruling. The case went to the State Court of Appeals, New York's highest court. It was dismissed. There was no other court to which he and his lawyers could mount an appeal. Finally, after three years, the case was over

The emotional cost of the proceeding proved to be exorbitant, but Woody also paid dearly in dollars. Before the roller-coaster ride even began, be had spent "a couple of million already on seven lawyers, and we're not done yet." Subsequently, his expenses for attorneys and private detectives continued to

York's highest court. It was dismissed. There was no other court to which he and his lawyers could mount an appeal. Finally, after three years, the case was over.

The emotional cost of the proceeding proved to be exorbitant, but Woody also paid dearly in dollars. Before the roller-coaster ride even began, he had spent "a couple of million already on seven lawyers, and were not done yet." Subsequently, his expenses for attorneys and private detectives continued to climb astronomically. Over and above the cost of the hearing and his fight against Mia in Surrogates Court, there were also the costs of appealing Wilk's ruling, along with his complaints against Frank Maco. And finally, Wilk ordered him to foot the bill for Eleanor Alter, Mia’s gilt-edge matrimonial lawyer, an expense that Woody aggressively resisted because, as he initially estimated, her lawyers fee could run him as much as $300,000. As it turned out, he had gravely underestimated the fee. In 1995 he would be forced to enrich Rosenman & Colin with a cool $1.2 million.

All told. Woody's romance with Soon-Yi set him back upward of $7 million, a king's ransom that would have meant nothing to him had it accomplished his two main goals: clearing his name of the child-molestation charge and winning back his daughter. But for all the energy and time he poured into the struggle, in the end it proved to be money down the drain.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Cost of Running Amok

At the Carnegie Deli on Seventh Avenue, where Woody had filmed
L\
scenes from
Broadway Danny Rote,
hungry diners could care less
A.
JL about sex scandals involving young women and continued to order the overstuffed, overpriced "Woody Allen" sandwich—"Lotsa corned beef plus lotsa pastrami, Si3.45." But on Park Avenue in the peach-colored brick St. Bartholomew's Church, the question of character was bound to count. The rector of St. Ban's had once brightened up his sermons with quotes from Woody's writings, generally a surefire means of drawing delighted chuckles from his Anglican parishioners. One of Reverend William Tully's favorite quips was: "There is no question there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?" But after Woody's transgressions. Reverend Tully discovered that any reference to Woody Allen was "radioactive because the jokes just didn't play well."

The story that had transfixed the country continued to glow like Chernobyl. On television.
The Simpsons
joked about a child molester, and the cartoon characters Beavis and Bun-head called their penises "my Woody Allen." More devastating was the continuing contempt of columnist Murray Kemp-ton, the Joe DiMaggio of American journalism, who had attended the custody hearings and in six columns over a period of ten months could find no redeeming qualities in such "a hateful creature." Another harsh critic was the
New York Times
op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd, who compared one of his recent movies to "an infomercial with bad into." In her opinion, it was obviously "a propaganda film, a sentimental exercise in self-promotion," that he had made to rehabilitate his image. Woody bridled at the image of himself as a person in need of rehab. "It's the public that needs rehabilitation, the press," he retorted. Dowd had it backward; he was the real victim. "I'm the one who was suddenly smeared."

Persecuted in his own country. Woody turned to Europe for appreciation. For years he had been one of France's most popular entertainers, a hero in their cultural pantheon. In 1989 he was named a Chevalier de 1'Ordre des Arts et des Lett res, even though the French government neglected to inform him of tile honor and he only learned of the medal by accident in 1998. Interviewed on French television about
Bullets Over Broadway,
whose subject he summarized as one dealing with compromise and aesthetics. Chevalier Allen said with exasperation, "How do you expect Americans who spend their time watching television, going to church and to shopping malls, to understand this?" The French couldn't figure out why Woody had become a pariah in his own country. "For the French, a man who does not have several loves, several mistresses, is not an interesting man," said a French film producer. "What Woody Allen did is very European and we appreciate his attitude: not being ashamed, and especially not apologizing."

But what Woody did is also very American. Certainly he did not invent the older man—younger woman romance, especially in Hollywood Babylon, possibly the most decadent city in the world, where sexual license has been traditionally enjoyed by male stars ever since its inception. As Woody himself tried to point out, Soon-Yi was as old as Mia Farrow was when she married Frank Sinatra. But the national press, unwilling to make allowances, continued to treat him just as if he had driven up to Soon-Yi's playground in his Mercedes and waved a Snickers bar at her.

March of Time:

"Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends."

—Woody Allen, 1969

On the evening of Tuesday, February 28, 1995, Woody's attorney, Elkan Abramowitz, was invited to dine at the Park Avenue home of Eleanor Alter, who was newly remarried to a psychiatrist. The recent adversaries who had jousted against each other in Elliott Wilk's courtroom were now friends. Promptly at 8:00, they made themselves comfortable in front of the television set and prepared to watch
Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story,
the first part of a four-hour miniseries. Produced on a low budget and filmed mostly in Toronto, the television movie was cast with look-alike actors and actresses who skillfully impersonated the famous real-life people. Dennis Boutsikaris, a well-regarded but little-known New York stage performer, played Woody, and Mia was portrayed by Patsy Kensit, a British actress who had debuted at age three as Mia's towheaded daughter in
The Great Gatsby
When he learned of the miniseries. Woody pretended to be surprised that that there's a job opening," he deadpanned. Despite the joke, his amusement was hollow because the Fox Network production was based largely on a book he had never wanted to be published. The author was a former nanny to Mia’s children, who had transformed herself from country hired help into a published author with her own book tour.

In the summer of 1991, Mia had hired the daughter of a Bridgewater neighbor to look after Dylan and Satchel in the country. Kristi Groteke, who lived two miles away, was a pretty, athletic, easygoing young woman of twenty-one, who seemed to fit right in with the family as more of a big sister than an employee. She was attending Manhattan College in Riverdale on a track scholarship and needed one semester to graduate with a B.S. in education. Over the next two years, however, Kristi began spending more and more time helping out in the city, especially when Tarn needed extra attention and then during the frantic months when Mia was preoccupied with the custody hearing. As genuine ease and affection grew between employer and employee, Mia came to depend on the loyal Kristi.

During the hearing, Kristi had approached Mia with the idea of using her inside knowledge of the family to write a sympathetic book that would picture Mia as a devoted mother coping with the disintegration of her family. Aware of how much she owed Kristi, Mia gave the project her blessing and cooperated by allowing her to inspect copies of court transcripts and conduct interviews not only with herself but also with Daisy, Lark, and other friends of the family. If Mia had qualms about the project, she did not express them to Kristi. Perhaps she had doubts that a college student with no previous experience as a writer would be capable of completing a book, let alone finding a publisher. There was the possibility that nothing would come of it.

With the help of Marjorie Rosen, a senior writer from
People
magazine, Kristi produced a three-hundred-page book that, despite a tight deadline, was professionally researched, expertly written, and published by Carroll & Graf. In the spring of 1994, the proud author delivered to Mia an advance copy of
Mia and Woody: Love and Betrayal
and expected her approval. But two days before publication, Mia called Kristi in a fury. "Just stop the book!" she yelled. "Stop it!" Kristi, however, was in no position to stop the presses. Besides, she was booked on
Larry King Live.

As Mia informed Kristi, she objected to the depiction of her marriage to Frank Sinatra as an abusive relationship. But what truly upset her was the speculation that she and her close friends had shared information with Kristi and that now Kristi was making public: Mia's suspicions of a secret affair between Woody and her sister Steffi, after she had discovered photos of Steffi in his apartment; his romance with Diane Keaton's younger sister Robin; and his obsession with one of Mariel Hemingway’s sisters. Of course Woody had never made a secret of his fascination with the relationships between sisters, which, as he told the
New York Times,
probably resulted from growing up among a multitude of aunts and female cousins.

Mia never spoke to Kristi again. She had counted on her to be an advocate, "which she was," pointed out coauthor Rosen, "but not in the hysterical way Mia would have liked." When he read the book. Woody was shocked by Kristi'* reliance on sealed court transcripts, which were obviously provided by Mia and included confidential details about Satch's therapy and his desire to pretend he was Cinderella. Litigious as usual, he instructed Elkan Abramowitz to stop publication of
Mia and Woody.
In the end, these threats were idle ones because the book contained only what Kristi saw for herself, heard from Mia, or read in the transcripts.

NBC was the first network to consider Kristi's book for a television movie, but it dropped out after network executives decided the story might be too lurid for prime time. The option finally went to Fox, which already had a Woody-Mia movie in development but without the juicy, fly-on-the-wall details Kristi could offer. Mia, full of righteous indignation that any network should profit from her personal miseries, wanted to legally block production of the "biopic." In the end, however, she decided not to sue fox, however ill-considered their movie, because she already owed a fortune in unpaid legal bills.

Although Kristi Grotcke felt that she had been fair in her portrayal of Woody, the Fox movie seemed to demonize hlm as a whining, neurotic middle-aged man whose main concern in life was the New York Knicks. Dennis Boutsikaris managed to capture the superficial Woody: the bald spot, the glasses, die famous stutter played to the hilt. But the expert portrayal added up to character assassination. Mia’s main annoyance with the minis-cries seemed to be its emphasis on her talent for attracting powerful men. "Do people say that about Diane Keaton?" she fumed. "She's gone out with some pretty famous people."

As it turned out, neither Mia nor Woody should have worried about the movie's impact on their public images.
Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story
would be the lowest-rated miniseries in Fox history. " People were really sick of Woody and Mia by then," Marjorie Rosen concluded.

Hollywood Vignettes:

"All over Hollywood on Monday mornings, there are people living in their palaces, surrounded by riches that you and I could never imagine, and who look at the weekend grosses, and kvcU when their competitors have done poorly. 'Wonderful!' they say.

'Oh, great!' Their only happiness comes from the failures and misfortunes of others."

—Retired Hollywood power broker, 1996

When the Woody Allen scandal first broke in the summer of 1992, film pundits began searching for parallel calamities. Of course, the movie industry had never treated its erring comics well. Chaplin was forced to flee the United States after four marriages to teenagers, a paternity suit, and sundry other sins, including an affinity for communism. And in 1921 Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was accused of murdering an actress, whom he supposedly raped with a Coke bottle during a party. The film industry disowned Arbuckle, one of its biggest silent stars. Even though he was acquitted of murder, his life and career were ruined. Attorney Raoul Felder ventured a dramatic prediction. Woody Allen, he said, "can put his career in an envelope and mail it to Roman Polanski." Felder was referring to the Polish-born film director, whose pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate, was gruesomely murdered by members of the Charles Manson "family." Later, Polanski became a fugitive from American justice after he was convicted of raping a thirteen-year-old and then fleeing the country to avoid a prison sentence.