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    Woody Allen’s Muted Milestone with “Coup de Chance”

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    “Coup de Chance,” a milestone, is being released in the United States after opening in Europe months ago.This weekend, 13 movie theaters around the country will be showing “Coup de Chance,” a brisk French-language thriller about a bored wife in Paris who cheats on her wealthy, aloof husband with an old high school classmate, triggering fatal consequences.Minus the opening credits and certain trademark elements — jazzy score, moneyed setting, themes of murder and luck, dry cosmopolitan banter — a typical viewer could watch the movie without knowing it is the 50th film directed by Woody Allen.The foreign language (one in which Allen is not fluent — his original script was translated for filming), the absence of the kinds of American stars that typically crowd Allen’s casts, the low-key reception with which this milestone has been greeted: All suggest the awkwardness surrounding this new release by a filmmaker as distinctive as he is polarizing.“We just continue to do what we’ve been doing, and we’re happy that it’s opening,” Letty Aronson, Allen’s sister, who has produced his films since 1994, said in an interview this week. She said “Coup de Chance” was financed in Europe, and declined to disclose its backers.“I’m happy that it’s opening,” she added. “Woody is only interested in the creative part — once that’s done and he makes the film, he never sees it again. If you told him it wasn’t opening in the United States, it wouldn’t matter to him.”Allen, 88, has a more than half-century career as a writer and director of influential classics such as “Annie Hall” (1977) and “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (1989). A late period commencing with 2005’s “Match Point” has featured collaborations with stars like Scarlett Johansson, Timothée Chalamet and Cate Blanchett, who won an Oscar for “Blue Jasmine” (2013). Allen’s 2011 comedy “Midnight in Paris” brought him his fourth Oscar, for original screenplay, and took in more than $150 million worldwide — a megahit by the standards of independent cinema.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Coup de Chance’ Review: Woody Allen’s Usual With a French Twist

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      Despite its Parisian setting, the setup is familiar from any of Allen’s New York movies: An act of infidelity presents a dilemma. Some of the jokes are funny.“Coup de Chance,” the latest from Woody Allen, looks and plays like many of his recent movies, only better; it sounds like them, too, except that it’s in French. Set entirely in France, it features well-heeled, loquacious narcissists who circle one another in a comic-dramatic story that touches on existential worries and folds in lightly jaundiced observations about life. There are pretty people and handsome homes, repressed lives and unleashed desires, the usual. As is often the case in Allen’s movies, there’s also an act of infidelity, which presents a dilemma, if not an especially torturous one. The jokes are fairly muted; some are funny.In a pleasant surprise, it centers on a woman, Fanny Fournier (Lou de Laâge), who didn’t make me cringe once. She’s intelligent as well as attractive, for starters, somewhere in her 30s and on her second husband, Jean (Melvil Poupaud). She lives in Paris, works at an auction gallery and seems interested in the world. Her life has texture and perhaps meaning, even if it’s a haut bourgeois bubble. There’s a Birkin bag on her arm when you meet her, as well as a maid to fetch drinks and a driver to deliver her and Jean to their country house, one of those quietly expensive retreats that most of us read about while waiting to get our hair cut. More

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      At Venice Film Festival, Trapped Women and Controlling Men

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      This year’s lineup includes films from Sofia Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos and Bradley Cooper in which female characters squirm under the thumbs of egocentric men.The press room at the Venice Film Festival has to be the most beautiful film festival press room in the world. Taking over the third floor of the imposing Palazzo del Casinò, the main atrium is a gargantuan, triple-height space carpeted in soft cream, with columns clad in marble extending up past Murano glass chandeliers, and floor-to-ceiling windows hung with gold-sheened drapes giving way to a sparkling blue sea. On a clear day — which it almost always is — you imagine that, were it not for the curvature of the earth, you could see forever. Or at least to Croatia.It is an eternal contradiction that this lofty space should be peopled with dozens of perspiring journalists hunched over their laptops, hammering away at their keyboards like birds beating their wings against the bars of a particularly gilded cage. Or maybe such dark thoughts in a such a light-filled structure — designed by the architect Eugenio Miozzi in 1938 to embody the monumentalist fantasy of Mussolini’s fascist regime — are a symptom of a festival lineup that, this year, features a profusion of stories about women similarly chafing against the restrictive, but often luxurious, enclosures built by controlling men.Some of these men were towering real-life figures. Penélope Cruz turns in the standout performance in Michael Mann’s “Ferrari” as the long-suffering wife of the Italian motoring magnate (Adam Driver), and Carey Mulligan does much the same as Leonard Bernstein’s wife Felicia in “Maestro,” directed by and starring Bradley Cooper. In both these cases — and arguably to the detriment of both well-made but strangely evanescent films — the portrayal of genius pales in comparison to the portrait of a woman who supported and nurtured that genius, even when it threatened to engulf her. in “Ferrari,” Penélope Cruz plays Laura Ferrari, the wife of the Italian car mogul Enzo Ferrari.Lorenzo SistiOf two memorable scenes in “Maestro,” only one — Bernstein’s performance of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony at Ely Cathedral in 1973 — is about his music. The other is a lacerating domestic argument in the couple’s bedroom, during which, in every shaking nerve, Mulligan embodies the resentment of a bright, ambitious woman whose devotion to and indulgence of her famous spouse has cost her so much of herself.The life-draining capacity of egocentric men is even more strikingly literalized in Pablo Larraín’s mordant, monochrome “El Conde,” in which the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (Jaime Vadell) is recreated as a 250-year-old vampire. In Larraín’s scabrous, grisly alternate history, Pinochet is a decrepit immortal, drowning in self-pity since faking his death to evade justice. And Pinochet’s wife Lucía (Gloria Münchmeyer) is imagined as his equal, or even his better, in sheer perversity; much of the misery the terrorized nation experienced under the dictator is suggested to have been at her behest.But although that gives Lucía, who constantly petitions her husband to bite her so that she too can live out her depravities forever, a degree of apparent agency, that is robbed from her in one brief scene where “The Count,” as he likes to be called, casually trades her off to his obsequious Renfield-style butler (Alfredo Castro). The Count is then free to pursue an affair with a nun, including fantasy play that involves her dressing up as Marie Antoinette. (The Count has been obsessed with the ill-fated Queen of France ever since, in one of the film’s most provocatively gruesome early scenes, he licked the guillotine blade that severed her slender neck.)Marie Antoinette is perhaps the ultimate emblem of decorative married womanhood. And of course, she was the title star of a previous film from Sofia Coppola, whose Venice-competing “Priscilla” is yet another tale of a woman’s tentatively self-engineered escape from the influence of a dominant man.Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny as Elvis and Priscilla Presley in “Priscilla.”Philippe Le SourdBased on, and clearly in deep sympathy with, Priscilla Presley’s memoir “Elvis and Me,” the film follows the famous couple’s relationship, from their first meeting when then-Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) was just 14 years old and living on a U.S. Army base in Germany, to the moment, almost a decade-and-a-half later, when Priscilla Presley drove through the gates of Graceland for the last time as the house’s mistress.This is unmistakably a Sofia Coppola movie, in its luxuriant feel for fabrics and facades, but as in “Marie Antoinette,” here the surfaces become the substance. It is a story about how, especially to a naïve teenager, the trappings of an outwardly tantalizing lifestyle can be sprung upon you like a trap.During their first tearful goodbye in Germany, Elvis (Jacob Elordi) makes the schoolgirl Priscilla promise to “stay exactly the way you are.” But the banner film investigating the icky desire on the part of some men to keep their womenfolk infantilized is Yorgos Lanthimos’ joyously macabre “Poor Things.” The biggest hit of Venice so far, it is deeply — if twistedly, and often hilariously — concerned with the idea of female emancipation, as Bella, played by a riveting, inventive and highly physical Emma Stone, shucks off the psychological bondage first of her adoptive father (Willem Dafoe) and then of her caddish, pompous lover (Mark Ruffalo).Even the film’s hyperreal aesthetic, in which Lisbon and London are depicted by intricate, steampunky set-builds with lurid computer generated skies and seas, reinforce the concept: The film’s self-consciously airless and artificial universe makes the vigor of Bella’s adventures in sex and self-discovery all the more striking.In “Poor Things,” Emma Stone plays Bella, a woman trying to unburden herself from both her adoptive father and her vain lover.Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight PicturesThere are still more women trapped under the thumbs of domineering men dotted throughout the lineup, most notably in two black comedies that both feature contract killers (another feature of Venice 2023, if you also take David Fincher’s “The Killer,” Harmony Korine’s “Aggro Dr1ft” and the Liam Neeson thriller “In the Land of Saints and Sinners” into further account).Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man” stars and is co-written by Glen Powell, who deserves to leap up to major-league stardom on the back of this effervescently amoral exaggeration of a real-life story: Gary, a diffident English professor who moonlights as a fake hit man, finds love getting in the way of his mission when an abused wife, Madison (Adria Arjona), tries to enlist his services. She is driven to it as a means to escape. But the murder-solicitation in Woody Allen’s French-language “Coup de Chance,” is far less morally defensible, prompted by jealousy and again, a loss of control, as the possessive rich-guy Jean (Melvil Poupaud), discovers that his young, vivacious wife (Lou De Laâge) has taken a lover.“Coup de Chance” is, in some respects a return to form for Allen, even if one suspects that some of its breeziness is down to the attractive cast compensating for the staleness of Allen’s recent English-language quippery by mercifully speaking in French. (Native French speakers of my acquaintance tell me that the dialogue, to their ears, sounds similarly unnatural.)But it does feel more current than most of Allen’s recent output, not least in how it syncs up neatly with this Venice edition’s chief preoccupations: hit men and trapped women, and all the poor things who find themselves in plush Central Park or central Paris apartments, in press room palaces or fantastical Lisbon hotels, surrounded by luxury, but longing to be free. More

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      Venice Film Festival 2023: What to Watch For

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      New films from David Fincher, Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay and Michael Mann will make up for the absence of stars kept away by the Hollywood strikes.A year ago, the Venice Film Festival had enough star power to put even celebrity-worshiping Cannes on notice. Highlights were quickly beamed all over the world, including the notorious “Don’t Worry Darling” kickoff that fueled endless speculation about the film’s director, Olivia Wilde, and her stars Florence Pugh and Harry Styles; the news conference where an unexpectedly sagacious Timothée Chalamet predicted imminent societal collapse; and the tearful Brendan Fraser comeback that began on the Lido and culminated in his best actor Oscar win.But without all of those celebrities, can Venice still go viral?The 80th edition of the festival, which begins on Wednesday, will be significantly affected by continuing strikes by the Screen Actors Guild (or SAG-AFTRA) and the Writers Guild of America, since the actors’ union has instructed its members not to do press for any studio movies until the strike against those companies is resolved. That puts Venice in a bind, as it’s regarded as one of the best places for Hollywood to unveil starry awards-season titles. Few major actors will even be permitted to attend this year.The actors’ strike has already cost Venice its original opening-night film, Luca Guadagnino’s sexy tennis romance, “Challengers,” since MGM delayed it from September to spring in the hopes that its lead, Zendaya, will be allowed to promote it several months from now when the strikes might be resolved. (A low-profile Italian film is opening instead.) And I’ve heard of a few more starry fall films that were earmarked for Venice but opted for the Telluride Film Festival instead, since that event is less driven by the photo ops and news conferences that are no longer feasible in Italy.Despite some of those trims, the Venice lineup is still enticing, with an auteur-heavy list featuring directors nearly as famous as their leads. And Venice has proved before that it can adapt to unfavorable limitations: Amid the pandemic in August 2020, the festival opted for a smaller, partly open-air edition that still went on to premiere the eventual winner of the best picture Oscar, “Nomadland.”Emma Stone, left, and Mark Ruffalo in “Poor Things,” from Yorgos Lanthimos. Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight Pictures, via Associated PressThis year’s program includes two films about assassins-for-hire: David Fincher’s new thriller, “The Killer,” stars Michael Fassbender, while Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man” features the “Top Gun: Maverick” breakout Glen Powell, who also served as a co-writer. I’m curious about the off-kilter comedy “Poor Things,” directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favourite”) and starring Emma Stone as a sexually curious Frankenstein’s monster. Ditto “Maestro,” Bradley Cooper’s second directorial effort, after “A Star Is Born.” He’s cast himself as the composer Leonard Bernstein, opposite Carey Mulligan as Bernstein’s wife, Felicia, and his decision to wear a prosthetic nose has already set off controversy.Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” was a big hit last year, but what will that story look like through Sofia Coppola’s lens? The “Lost in Translation” and “Marie Antoinette” director puts her spotlight on Elvis Presley’s wife with “Priscilla,” featuring Cailee Spaeny as teen bride Priscilla Presley and the “Euphoria” star Jacob Elordi as the singer. Ava DuVernay has adapted the Isabel Wilkerson book “Caste” for her new film, “Origin,” which stars the Oscar nominee Aunjanue Ellis in an examination of racism and systemic oppression. And though Michael Mann has secured a guild exemption that would allow the cast of “Ferrari” to promote it in Venice, I’m curious whether his new film’s press-shy lead, Adam Driver (as the racer-turned-car-magnate Enzo Ferrari), is willing to do a full-blown media blitz for the movie, which the hot indie studio Neon is releasing in theaters on Christmas Day.Two years after the release of his Oscar-winning breakthrough “Drive My Car,” the director Ryusuke Hamaguchi returns to the festival circuit with “Evil Does Not Exist,” which originated as a dialogue-free short and became a feature-length film about ecological collapse. And two months after releasing his feature-length “Asteroid City,” the director Wes Anderson is opting for something shorter with “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” a 37-minute Roald Dahl adaptation for Netflix.Harmony Korine premiered his biggest film, “Spring Breakers,” at Venice back in 2012, and he’ll return with the mysterious “Aggro Dr1ft,” which stars the rapper Travis Scott and was shot solely using infrared photography. He’s not the only director taking chances: Pablo Larraín, the director of “Jackie” and “Spencer,” has set the divas aside for a moment to make “El Conde,” a black-and-white supernatural fable that reimagines the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as a bloodsucking vampire.And then there are the chances that Venice itself is taking when it comes to three auteurs: It is premiering “Dogman” from Luc Besson, who was accused of sexual assault but cleared by prosecutors; “The Palace” from Roman Polanski, who was convicted of unlawful sex with a minor but fled before he could be sentenced; and “Coup de Chance” from Woody Allen, who has denied sexual abuse accusations by Dylan Farrow, his adopted daughter.Venice will also serve as an elegy of sorts for the director William Friedkin, who died earlier this month and whose final film, the naval drama “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” will premiere posthumously on the Lido. Adapted by Friedkin from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Herman Wouk, it stars Jake Lacy and Kiefer Sutherland. More

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      Douglas McGrath, Playwright, Filmmaker and Actor, Dies at 64

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      His one-man Off Broadway show, “Everything’s Fine,” directed by John Lithgow, had opened just weeks ago.Douglas McGrath, a playwright, screenwriter, director and actor who was nominated for an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony Award, and whose one-man Off Broadway show, “Everything’s Fine,” opened just weeks ago, died on Thursday at his office in Manhattan. He was 64.His death was announced by the show’s producers, Daryl Roth, Tom Werner and John Lithgow. Their representative said the cause was a heart attack.Mr. Lithgow also directed the show, a childhood recollection of Mr. McGrath’s about a middle-school teacher in Texas who gave him an inappropriate amount of attention.“He was a dream to direct,” Mr. Lithgow said on Friday. “None of us had ever worked with someone who was so happy, proud and grateful to be performing his own writing.”Mr. McGrath in his one-man play “Everything’s Fine,” which opened Off Broadway last month to good reviews.Jeremy DanielMr. McGrath had a wide-ranging if under-the-radar career in television, film and theater. In the 1980-81 season, just out of Princeton and still in his early 20s, he was a writer for “Saturday Night Live.” Over the next decade he wrote humor pieces for The New Republic, The New York Times and other publications.By the 1990s he was making inroads in Hollywood. He wrote the screenplay for the 1993 remake of the 1950 romantic comedy “Born Yesterday,” and the next year he and Woody Allen collaborated on the script for Mr. Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway.” The two shared an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.In 1996 he adapted the Jane Austen novel “Emma” for the big screen and also directed the film, which starred Gwyneth Paltrow. In 2000 he and Peter Askin shared directing and screenwriting duties on the comedy “Company Man,” in which he also starred, as a schoolteacher who stumbles into a career as a C.I.A. officer.That movie drew some unflattering reviews. But his next, “Nicholas Nickleby” (2002), an adaptation of the Dickens story that he both wrote and directed, was well received. In The Times, A.O. Scott said that Mr. McGrath’s adaptation was rendered “with a scholar’s ear and a showman’s flair.”“The director has produced a colorful, affecting collage of Dickensian moods and motifs,” Mr. Scott wrote, “a movie that elicits an overwhelming desire to plunge into 900 pages of 19th-century prose.”Mr. McGrath, center, on the set of his film “Nicholas Nickleby” (2002), with the cast members Barry Humphries, left, and Alan Cumming.United Artists, via AlamyIn addition to his screenwriting and directing credits (which also included “Infamous,” a 2006 film starring Toby Jones as Truman Capote), Mr. McGrath occasionally took small acting roles in other people’s projects, including several of Mr. Allen’s films. In 2016 he directed “Becoming Mike Nichols,” an HBO documentary about the film director, on which he was also an executive producer. He shared an Emmy nomination with the other producers for outstanding documentary or nonfiction special.Throughout, he continued to work in the theater. In 1996 he wrote and starred in “Political Animal,” a one-man comedy that played at the McGinn/Cazale Theater in Manhattan, in which he played a right-wing presidential candidate.“Beyond the stand-up parody,” Ben Brantley wrote in his review in The Times, “the larger point of ‘Political Animal’ is that it takes a hollow, desperate man to run for president these days.”In 2012 his play “Checkers” — the title refers to a famous 1952 speech by Richard M. Nixon — was seen at the Vineyard Theater in Manhattan, with Anthony LaPaglia as Nixon and Kathryn Erbe as his wife, Pat.Then came Broadway: Mr. McGrath wrote the book for “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” which opened in January 2014 and ran for more than five years. His book was nominated for a Tony Award.Last month Mr. Lithgow told The Daily News of New York that Mr. McGrath had sent him “Everything’s Fine” unsolicited, and that he had no intention of directing a play until he read the piece.“It was so play-able,” he said, “I could simply imagine an audience being completely captivated by it.”The show opened in mid-October to good reviews.“It is impossible to overstate Doug’s pure likability,” Mr. Lithgow said on Friday. “In his solo show, he told a long story about his 14th year, and it worked so well because he had retained so much of his sense of boyish discovery.”Ms. Roth, another of the show’s producers, said that Mr. McGrath had been thoroughly enjoying the way audiences were reacting as he unspooled the tale.“The wonderful response from the audience was cathartic, meaningful and joyful to him,” she said by email. “He often told me he was in his ‘happy place’ onstage telling his story.”Mr. McGrath on the set of “Infamous,” his 2006 film about Truman Capote.Van Redin/Warner Independent, via Kobal, via ShutterstockDouglas Geoffrey McGrath was born on Feb. 2, 1958, in Midland, Texas. His father, Raynsford, was an independent oil producer, and his mother, Beatrice (Burchenal) McGrath, worked at Harper’s Bazaar before her marriage.“People often ask me what growing up in West Texas was like,” Mr. McGrath said in “Everything’s Fine.” “I think this sums it up: It’s very hot, it’s very dusty, and it’s very, very windy. It’s like growing up inside a blow dryer full of dirt.”He graduated from Princeton in 1980.“Planning my future,” he wrote in a 2001 essay in The Times, “I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do, but a very blurry one of how to do it. I knew I wanted to write and perform in my own films in the manner of my idol, Woody Allen. But when I went, that once, to the Career Counseling Center and faced the bulletin board, none of the cards said, ‘Needed: writer-actor-director for major feature, no experience required, must be willing to earn high salary.’”Yet when a friend told him “S.N.L.” was hiring writers, he sent in some sketches and landed an $850-a-week job.“It seemed too good to be true,” he wrote. “It was. My year, 1980, was viewed then and still as the worst year in the show’s history, which is no small achievement when you think of some of the other years.”In a 2016 interview, Mr. McGrath said his disappointment with the way his screenplay for “Born Yesterday” was handled changed the direction of his career.“I remember thinking, well, if I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing this, meaning watching someone else muck up what I did, there’s only one way around that,” he said. “I have to become a director.”Mr. McGrath, who lived in Manhattan, married Jane Reed Martin in 1995. She survives him, as do a son, Henry; a sister, Mary McGrath Abrams; and a brother, Alexander. More

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      Tony Sirico, an Eccentric Gangster on ‘The Sopranos,’ Dies at 79

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      A familiar face in Woody Allen movies, he became widely known for his portrayal of Paulie Walnuts on the hit HBO series.Tony Sirico, the actor best known for playing the eccentric gangster Paulie Walnuts on the hit HBO series “The Sopranos,” died on Friday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 79.His death, in an assisted living facility, was confirmed by Bob McGowan, his manager. No cause was given.Paulie Walnuts — that was Paul Gualtieri’s nickname because he once hijacked a truck full of nuts (he was expecting television sets) — was one of the mob boss Tony Soprano’s most loyal, oversensitive and reckless men. Paulie was the kind of guy who would participate in an intervention for a drug addict and, when it was his turn to speak, punch the guy in the face. He loved his mother (although he found out she was really his aunt), and she loved him because he wrote the checks to keep her in an expensive nursing home.Paulie wore track suits, slept with hookers, was phobic about germs, hated cats and watched television in a chair covered with plastic. He hated being stuck with an almost $900 restaurant check but could appreciate a tasty ketchup packet on a cold night in the Pine Barrens when there was nothing else to eat.When the “Sopranos” cast appeared in a group shot on the cover of Rolling Stone in 2001, Paulie stood with a baseball bat casually slung over his right shoulder. No hairdresser on the “Sopranos” set was allowed to touch Mr. Sirico’s hair — dark and luxuriant, with two silver “wings” on either side. He blow-dried and sprayed it himself.Mr. Sirico’s face was also familiar, in quick glimpses, to fans of Woody Allen films. He appeared in several of them, beginning with “Bullets Over Broadway” (1994), in which he played the right-hand man of a powerful gangster turned theater producer. He was a boxing trainer in “Mighty Aphrodite” (1995), an escaped convict in “Everyone Says I Love You” (1996), a matter-of-fact jailhouse cop in “Deconstructing Harry” (1997) and a gun-toting gangster on Coney Island in “Wonder Wheel” (2017).Gennaro Anthony Sirico Jr. was born in Brooklyn on July 29, 1942, the son of Jerry Sirico, a stevedore, and Marie (Cappelluzzo) Sirico. Junior, as he was called, remembered that he first got into trouble when he stole nickels from a newsstand. He attended Midwood High School but did not graduate, his brother Robert Sirico said.“I grew up in Bensonhurst, where there were a lot of mob-type people,” he told the publication Cigar Aficionado in 2001. “I watched them all the time, watched the way they walked, the cars they drove, the way they approached each other. There was an air about them that was very intriguing, especially to a kid.”He worked in construction for a while but soon yielded to temptation. “I started running with the wrong type of guys, and I found myself doing a lot of bad things,” he said in James Toback’s 1989 documentary, “The Big Bang.” Bad things like armed robbery, extortion, coercion and felony weapons possession.While serving 20 months of a four-year sentence at Sing Sing, the maximum-security prison in Ossining, N.Y., he saw a troupe of actors, all ex-convicts, who had made a stop there to perform for the inmates. “When I watched them, I said to myself, ‘I can do that,’” he told The Daily News of New York in 1999.Mr. Sirico was an uncredited extra in “The Godfather: Part II” (1974) and made his official film debut in “Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell” (1977), directed by Larry Buchanan, a self-proclaimed”cinema schlockmeister.” He followed that with more than a decade of small television and movie roles, capped by his part as the flashy mobster Tony Stacks in “Goodfellas” (1990).Mr. Sirico filming a scene from “The Sopranos” with James Gandolfini, who played Tony Soprano, in Kearny, N.J., in 2007.Mike Derer/Associated PressHis first advocate among directors was Mr. Toback, who put him in a crime drama, “Fingers” (1978), with Harvey Keitel; a romantic drama, “Love & Money” (1981), starring Ray Sharkey and Klaus Kinski; and a comic drama, “The Pick-Up Artist” (1987), with Molly Ringwald and Robert Downey Jr., as well as featuring him in his 1989 documentary.Before “The Sopranos,” he was a police officer in “Dead Presidents” (1995), a suburban mobster in “Cop Land” (1997) and a Gambino crime family capo in the TV movie “Gotti” (1996).Once “The Sopranos” hit the air in 1999, it became enormously and widely popular. Mr. Sirico soon knew he was very famous.“If I’m with five other Paulies,” he told The New York Times in 2007, imagining a fairly unlikely situation, “and somebody yells, ‘Hey, Paulie,’ I know it’s for me.”After “The Sopranos” ended in 2007, he often worked with his co-stars.He played Bert, to Steve Schirripa’s Ernie, in a “Sesame Street” Christmas special (2008), and went on to appear with Steven Van Zandt in the series “Lilyhammer” (2013-14), with Michael Rispoli in “Friends and Romans” (2014) and with Vincent Pastore and others in the film “Sarah Q” (2018).He also voiced a street-smart dog named Vinny in several episodes of the animated series “Family Guy.”He appeared in a crime drama, “Respect the Jux,” this year. Mr. Sirico married and divorced early. In addition to his brother Robert, he is survived by two children, Joanne Sirico Bello and Richard Sirico; a sister, Carol Pannunzio; another brother, Carmine; and several grandchildren. He brought at least one admirable lesson from the mob world to “The Sopranos”: He insisted that his character never be portrayed as a rat, someone who would snitch on his crime family. He was also reluctant to have his character kill a woman — Paulie smothered an older nursing home resident with a pillow when she interrupted his theft of her life savings — but he was pleasantly surprised that people in the old neighborhood didn’t seem to think less of him after the episode was shown.Early on, however, it sometimes slipped his mind that he had rejected the dark side.“I was this 30-year-old ex-con villain sitting in a class filled with fresh-faced, serious drama students,” Mr. Sirico recalled in the Daily News interview. The teacher “leaned over to me after I did a scene and whispered, ‘Tony, leave the gun home.’ After so many years of packing a gun, I didn’t even realize I had it with me.”Vimal Patel More

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      Woody Allen’s ‘Rifkin’s Festival’ Is Opening in U.S. Theaters

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      Following renewed scrutiny in recent years over the sexual abuse allegations against Woody Allen brought by his adopted daughter, it was unclear whether Allen’s latest film, “Rifkin’s Festival,” would get a U.S. theatrical release.Actors and producers in the United States have increasingly declined to work with Allen, but he has continued to find support in Europe. “Rifkin’s Festival” received backing from Spanish and Italian production companies and premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival in Spain in 2020.Starting on Friday, “Rifkin’s Festival” will get a limited run in some theaters in the United States — the list is currently 25 theaters long, according to the movie’s website. The only theater in New York City that is signed up to show the film is Quad Cinema, in Greenwich Village.It is also available to stream on several platforms, including Amazon Prime Video, iTunes and Google Play.The sexual abuse allegations against Allen, 86, received a new wave of attention last year after HBO released its docuseries “Allen v. Farrow,” which examined Dylan Farrow’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her at the family’s Connecticut country house in 1992. Dylan and her mother, Mia Farrow, participated in the project, walking the filmmakers through the events of that time, including the prosecutor’s decision not to press charges against Allen to spare Dylan the trauma of a trial.Allen, who has long denied the allegations, called the series a “shoddy hit piece” that “had no interest in the truth.”“Rifkin’s Festival” is about an ex-film professor and struggling novelist who accompanies his publicist wife to a film festival in Spain (the same one that premiered the movie). The husband (played by Wallace Shawn) only goes to keep an eye on his wife (Gina Gershon) and her flirtations with a hotshot director.The critic Jessica Kiang reviewed the film for The New York Times after its premiere, and compared it favorably to Allen’s 2019 film “A Rainy Day in New York,” which was dropped by Amazon as scrutiny increased over Dylan Farrow’s allegations and ended up having a limited theatrical run in the United States. (Allen sued Amazon for terminating his four-picture deal; the company settled.)“‘Rifkin’s Festival’ is far less objectionable,” Kiang wrote, “and though that is praise so faint it needs smelling salts, with latter-day Woody Allen, we must be thankful for small mercies.”In recent years, some actors have said that they would not work with Allen because of Dylan Farrow’s allegations, but others have come to the director’s defense.In November, Shawn defended his decision to take the role, writing in an essay in The Wrap that he has been “troubled by the speed with which some of my colleagues in the acting fraternity have distanced themselves from Woody.”In a recent interview with WGN television station in Chicago, Gershon said she chose to work with Allen because he is a “genius.”“It serves no one to keep great artists from working, even the alleged victims, right?” she said.A representative for Dylan Farrow did not comment.Letty Aronson, Allen’s sister and a producer on the film, did not respond to requests for comment. More

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      ‘Allen v. Farrow’ Episode 4 Recap: An Adult Dylan Farrow Speaks Out

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Allen v. Farrow’ Episode 4 Recap: An Adult Dylan Farrow Speaks OutThe finale of the HBO docuseries delves into the changing perception of Woody Allen and Ms. Farrow’s decision to go public with her allegations of sexual abuse.Frank Maco, the former Connecticut state’s attorney who decided not to press charges in an investigation, with Dylan Farrow, in “Allen v. Farrow.”Credit…HBOMarch 14, 2021The final installment of “Allen v. Farrow,” an HBO documentary series examining Dylan Farrow’s sexual abuse allegations against her adopted father, Woody Allen, covers the years from 1993, when a state’s attorney declined to prosecute the filmmaker, to the present.The previous three episodes explored what Ms. Farrow says happened on Aug. 4, 1992, when she was 7 years old — that her father sexually assaulted her in the attic of the family’s Connecticut country home. The filmmakers combed through police and court documents, scrutinized the integrity of the investigations into her accusation and sought expert analysis of video footage of young Dylan telling her mother what happened.Mr. Allen has long denied sexually abusing his daughter and has accused her mother, Mia Farrow — Mr. Allen’s ex-girlfriend — of concocting the sexual-assault accusation because she was angry at him for having a sexual relationship with her college-age daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. (Mr. Allen and Ms. Previn later married.) A spokesperson for Mr. Allen, who did not participate in the documentary, said that it is “riddled with falsehoods.”The finale covers the world’s reaction to the events of the early 1990s, Mr. Allen’s continued fame and accolades and, in recent years, a growing unwillingness among those in Hollywood to be associated with him after the #MeToo Movement.The prosecutor’s decisionThe episode begins on Sept. 24, 1993. That day, Frank Maco, a Connecticut state’s attorney, announced that although he had “probable cause” to prosecute Mr. Allen, he had decided he would not press charges to spare Ms. Farrow the potential trauma of a trial.Mr. Maco, who was interviewed extensively for the documentary, says that earlier that month in 1993, he had met with young Dylan in his office, with toys in the room and a female state trooper there. When Mr. Maco asked about her father, he said, she froze up and would not respond.“The strongest proponents for prosecution just looked at me, and we all shrugged our shoulders,” Mr. Maco said. “We weren’t going anywhere with this child.”In a news conference, Mr. Allen said that rather that being happy or grateful for the decision, he said he was “merely disgusted” that his children had been “made to suffer unbearably by the unwholesome alliance between a vindictive mother and a cowardly, dishonest, irresponsible state’s attorney and his police.”“I felt if I had just kept his secret,” Ms. Farrow says, “I could have spared my mom all this grief, and my brothers and sister — myself.”Credit…HBODylan grows upIn the years after the police investigation and the custody trial, which ended in her mother’s favor, Ms. Farrow says she suffered through a long period of guilt, thinking that she was at fault for the family rift.“I felt if I had just kept his secret,” she tells the filmmakers, “I could have spared my mom all this grief, and my brothers and sister — myself.”Siblings say in the series that Ms. Farrow often kept to herself and seemed riddled with anxiety. She says that she didn’t talk about the assault in depth with anyone — not even her mother or her therapist. In high school, she recalls, she broke up with her only boyfriend after only three weeks because she anticipated that he would want to be intimate with her.Ronan Farrow, Ms. Farrow’s brother, tells the filmmakers that his mother tried to distance her children from Mr. Allen. But, he says, “there was always a lot of incentive to be drawn into Woody Allen’s efforts to discredit” his sister. For example, Mr. Farrow says, Mr. Allen had made him an offer that if he spoke out against his mother and his sister publicly, Mr. Allen would help pay for his college education.After an awards showThe saga returned to the public discourse in 2014, after Mr. Allen received a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes. In the past, Mr. Farrow tells filmmakers, he had discouraged his sister from speaking publicly about their father and the events of the 1990s with the hope that the family could put it behind them.But after the awards show, Mr. Farrow tweeted, “Missed the Woody Allen tribute — did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?” Ms. Farrow says that her brother’s willingness to speak publicly about the subject emboldened her to write about her memory of events, which were appeared in The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s blog. (Mr. Farrow, who helped his sister publish the open letter, said that after another newspaper declined to print the account, he took it to Mr. Kristof, a family friend.) Mr. Allen later published an Op-Ed in The Times denying his daughter’s allegations.For two decades, Ms. Farrow says, she felt isolated and alone because of her experience. After publishing her letter, she received an outpouring of messages from people she knew sharing their own experiences with sexual abuse.Loyalty to Mr. AllenStill, many Hollywood actors remained loyal to Mr. Allen despite the accusations, and his star power and industry reputation remained mostly intact..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pd7fgo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-coqf44{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-coqf44 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-coqf44 em{font-style:italic;}.css-coqf44 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-coqf44 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#333;text-decoration-color:#333;}.css-coqf44 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Understand the Allegations Against Woody AllenNearly 30 years ago, Woody Allen was accused of sexually abusing Dylan Farrow, his adopted daughter. A new docuseries re-examines the case.This timeline reviews the major events in the complicated history of the director, his children and the Farrow family.The documentary filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering spoke about delving into this thorny family tale. Read our recaps of episode 1, episode 2, episode 3 and episode 4.Dylan Farrow wrote an open letter in 2014, posted by the New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof, recounting her story in detail.Our book critic reviewed Mr. Allen’s recent memoir, “Apropos of Nothing.”A.O. Scott, co-chief film critic, grappled with the accusations and his complicated feelings on the filmmaker in 2018. Four days after Ms. Farrow’s letter was published, her brother Moses Farrow told People Magazine that she was never molested. He also said that Mia Farrow coached the children to hate Mr. Allen and that she often hit him as a child. When Dylan Farrow learned what her brother said, she burst into tears, saying, “It was like I had been told that this person that I knew and loved and trusted was gone.”In interviews with the filmmakers, Ronan Farrow along with two more siblings, Fletcher Previn and Daisy Previn, say that the abuse allegations against their mother were untrue.In 2018, Moses Farrow followed up with a blog post that continued to dispute his sister’s account of sexual abuse. He targeted a specific detail of her story, which she had included in The Times letter: that while Mr. Allen sexually assaulted her, she remembers focusing on her brother’s electric train set, which had been traveling in circles around the attic. Mr. Farrow said that there was no electric train set in the attic. In Mr. Allen’s recent memoir, “Apropos of Nothing,” he also disputed that detail, calling it a “fresh creative touch.”But, according to police documents, the detectives investigating the alleged assault did find a train set in the attic. A detailed drawing from 1992, which is shown in the episode, includes an object labeled “toy train track” in the attic crawl space.Ms. Farrow with her mother, Mia Farrow.Credit…HBODylan, decades laterThis episode captures Ms. Farrow’s adult life, 28 years after she says her father assaulted her. It shows her husband, Sean, whom she met on a dating site linked to The Onion, and Ms. Farrow, now 35, playing with their young daughter.At one point, Mia Farrow asks her daughter, “Do you ever feel angry at me?” referring to her choice to bring Mr. Allen into the family. In response, Dylan Farrow says that, first and foremost, she was glad that her mother believed her account of that day in 1992, saying, “You were there when it mattered.”Another scene in the episode shows Mr. Maco, the state’s attorney, meeting with Ms. Farrow — their first encounter since 1993.Mr. Maco said that he told Mia Farrow that when her daughter becomes an adult, he would be happy to answer any questions. That opportunity came last fall — and the documentary team recorded their conversation.“A part of me really, really wishes that I could have done it,” Dylan Farrow tells Mr. Maco, “that I could have had my day in court.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Allen v. Farrow’ Episode 3 Recap: Investigations and a Custody Trial

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Allen v. Farrow’ Episode 3 Recap: Investigations and a Custody TrialFilmmakers delve into dozens of boxes of records that documented the investigations into Dylan Farrow’s accusation of sexual abuse.Mia Farrow with her daughter Dylan in “Allen v. Farrow.” Episode 3 focuses on police and court documents, much of which had never been made public.Credit…HBOMarch 7, 2021In the previous episode of “Allen v. Farrow,” the HBO documentary series that examines Dylan Farrow’s accusation of sexual abuse against her father, Woody Allen, the filmmakers introduced viewers to key video footage of a 7-year-old Dylan explaining events to her mother.Although the footage, shot by Mia Farrow, had not been released publicly before this series, its existence has been the subject of controversy. Allies of Mr. Allen saw it as proof that Mia, Dylan’s mother, had coached Dylan. Others saw it as clear evidence that the accusations were true.Episode 3 revisits this footage and delves into the investigations, court proceedings and familial turmoil that followed.Mr. Allen has long denied the accusations of sexual abuse, and, after the first episode aired, a spokesperson for him said that the docuseries was “riddled with falsehoods.”This episode is built largely off police and court documents, much of which had never been made public, including a trove of more than 60 boxes of documentation that was in a lawyer’s storage room.Frank S. Maco, a state’s attorney in Connecticut, who worked on the case. He asked the child abuse clinic at Yale-New Haven Hospital to evaluate Dylan Farrow.Credit…HBOA high-profile police inquiryIt was Dylan Farrow’s pediatrician who first reported her allegations to the authorities, leading to investigations by the Connecticut State Police and the New York City Child Welfare Administration. (Dylan Farrow said the sexual assault occurred in the attic of the family’s Connecticut summer home.)In an extensive interview, Frank S. Maco, then a state’s attorney in Connecticut, says that he intended to investigate the accusation “quietly,” but that Mr. Allen held a news conference at the Plaza Hotel, where he shared the news of the investigation. Mr. Allen called the allegations a “gruesomely damaging manipulation of innocent children for vindictive and self-serving purposes.” He also declared his love for Soon-Yi Previn, Mia Farrow’s daughter, suggesting that the allegations were a result of Mia lashing out over that relationship.“They were doing a great job painting Mia Farrow as a scorned woman who would say anything,” said Rosanna Scotto, a broadcast reporter who covered the news at the time.Armed with that narrative, Mr. Allen went on a media campaign, while Ms. Farrow stayed relatively quiet. She told filmmakers that she was trying to establish some semblance of normalcy for her children.The Yale-New Haven reportMr. Maco, the prosecutor, said that he asked the child abuse clinic at Yale-New Haven Hospital to evaluate Dylan Farrow, to determine whether she would be traumatized by taking the stand at a trial and whether there were any “impediments” to her ability to testify — including any ability to “perceive, recall and relate.”During a seven-month inquiry, experts interviewed Dylan Farrow nine times, a number that child abuse and legal experts tell the documentary filmmakers was excessive for a child subject.“I would repeat the story over and over and over again,” Dylan Farrow says in the episode. “It was grueling and it was intense.”The final report stated that there were “inconsistencies” in Dylan Farrow’s statements and that she had “difficulties distinguishing fantasy from reality.” It found that her accusations were “likely reinforced and encouraged” by her mother. The clinic shared the results with Mr. Allen and Mia Farrow without telling Mr. Maco they were doing so, he said, and Mr. Allen announced the determinations at a news conference.Later on, during the custody battle between Mr. Allen and Ms. Farrow, the director of the clinic said in a deposition that its practice was to destroy notes; experts interviewed in Episode 3 say that this is antithetical to common practice in their field.The New York investigationThe inquiry by New York City’s Child Welfare Administration was being spearheaded by Paul Williams, a caseworker who interviewed Dylan Farrow and found her to be credible.Within two weeks of the investigation, Mr. Williams determined that there was sufficient information to open a New York-based criminal investigation, but he was told by superiors that in high-profile cases like this one, it was customary for the “big wigs” to take responsibility and for the welfare administration to relinquish control, according to case records reviewed by the filmmakers.A lawyer for Mr. Williams, Bruce Baron, says in the documentary that at the time, his client “wouldn’t shut up” about the case at work, and he was fired for insubordination. Mr. Williams sued the city over the firing, arguing in part that the city had suppressed information about the case; he won in court and got his job back..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pd7fgo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}Understand the Allegations Against Woody AllenNearly 30 years ago, Woody Allen was accused of sexually abusing Dylan Farrow, his adopted daughter. A new docuseries re-examines the case.This timeline reviews the major events in the complicated history of the director, his children and the Farrow family.The documentary filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering spoke about delving into this thorny family tale. Read our recaps of episode 1 and episode 2.Dylan Farrow wrote an open letter in 2014, posted by the New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof, recounting her story in detail.Our book critic reviewed Mr. Allen’s recent memoir, “Apropos of Nothing.”A.O. Scott, co-chief film critic, grappled with the accusations and his complicated feelings on the filmmaker in 2018. In looking through Mr. Williams’s case files, the filmmakers found notes about a conversation he had with Jennifer Sawyer, a social worker who had interviewed Dylan Farrow for the Yale-New Haven report. According to the notes, Ms. Sawyer told Mr. Williams that “she believes Dylan” and believed that the child had “more to disclose.”In a seven-month period, Dylan Farrow was questioned nine times by clinic workers.Credit…HBOThe custody battleOn Aug. 13, 1992, nine days after the alleged sexual assault, Mr. Allen sued Mia Farrow for custody of their three children: Dylan Farrow, Moses Farrow and Ronan Farrow.In a taped phone call between Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, Ms. Farrow brings up his lawsuit against her and accusations that she was an unfit mother, to which he responds, “And I’m going to make them stick.” Ms. Farrow begged him to drop the case.During the trial, which started in the spring of 1993, Mr. Allen testified that he believed Ms. Farrow had “brainwashed” her daughter and that he was not alone with Dylan on the day that she said he assaulted her.The judge ultimately sided with Ms. Farrow, saying that Mr. Allen exhibited grossly inappropriate behavior toward Dylan and that “measures must be taken to protect her.” The judge called the Yale-New Haven report “sanitized,” considering the destruction of the notes and the team’s unwillingness to testify at trial.Expert analysisAt the end of the episode, the filmmakers return to the footage of Dylan Farrow taken by her mother, and show child abuse experts analyzing the video for the documentary. At the custody trial, where the footage was entered as evidence, Mr. Allen said that Ms. Farrow had asked her daughter “in a leading way about molestation.”But after seeing the footage, one of the documentary’s interviewees, Anna Salter, a child abuse expert and psychologist, said that Ms. Farrow did not make any “overt suggestions” in her questioning. One “implicit” suggestion Ms. Farrow makes, Dr. Salter said, is asking her daughter if Mr. Allen took her underpants off. (Dylan responds that he hadn’t done so.)“From my point of view, what’s important is Dylan’s response: Does she go along with the suggestion?” Dr. Salter said. “But she doesn’t.”As Ms. Farrow says in a taped phone call between her and Mr. Allen played at the top of the episode: “Dylan’s a baby; how could you do that to her?”Mr. Allen’s response is inaudible.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More