Woody Allen's Apropos of Nothing: I finished a book

Finished Woody Allen's memoir. It was always interesting. At the end, he wrote at some length about the accusations against him by the ghastly Farrow clan. He noted the thing I've point out several times---that he pays actors the union minimum. They keep talking about stars like Timothee Chalamet who denounced him and donated the money they were paid for appearing in his movies but they never say exactly how much money that was. Millionaire pretty boy Chalamet donated far less money than the girls in the movie who refused to denounce Allen.

Earlier in the book, he mentioned the Mariel Hemingway thing. Allen violated his rule of never being a houseguest and went to visit the Hemingway clan in rural Idaho. He was a bad fit since they did a lot of walking outdoors. I don't know if it was a neurosis or just a strong personal preference, but Allen made arrangements to fly home when he found out he'd have to share a bathroom with Mariel's father. In the meantime, he invited Mariel to go Paris to promote Manhattan. She didn't want to go and Allen went home which she interpreted as his leaving in a huff.

Allen argues correctly that the accusations against him were investigated at length and proven to be false. In addition, he took a polygraph test which Mia Farrow refused to do. There were servants working for Farrow who saw her coaching Dylan. One found Dylan crying because, she said, her mother wanted her to lie about her father.

Some of the stooges who attacked the book accused Allen of self-pity, but I didn't see it. There are worse things than self-pity in any case, like mindlessly believing a false accusation of child molestation. They might explain what they think an innocent, falsely accused non-self-pitying person might say, hypothetically.

He talked a little about movie making. He tends to film in master shots, in long takes and doesn't shoot coverage, or not much of it anyway. Filming is more interesting when you don't shoot everything over and over from every possible angle, but it can make it difficult for the editors. For Hannah and Her Sisters, they used an intertitle to cover up a hole in the editing. A single intertitle would be weird, so they put intertitles at various points in the movie.

When he talked about the first movie he directed, Take the Money and Run, he said he wasn't nervous. One of the guys who put up the money thought he should be, but Allen shrugged it off. It wasn't rocket science. He knew what he wanted. He'd shoot retakes until he got it and move on to the next shot. This is actually controversial now. Allen has been attacked for laziness for not continuing to shoot retakes after he got what he was after, like not wasting time and celluloid was a moral failing. He brought that movie in ahead of schedule and under budget.