It’s time to leave Woody Allen alone.
“What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie?’’ This was the pointed question — fighting words, really — that kicked off an open letter written by the adopted daughter of the iconic New York City filmmaker and posted last weekend on a New York Times blog.
Dylan Farrow, who now lives under another name, wrote that one day in 1992, Woody, a self-described claustrophobe, led her to a cramped attic in the Connecticut summer house owned by her mother, Mia Farrow, and told her to lie on her stomach and play with her brother’s electric train set.
”Then he sexually assaulted me,’’ wrote Dylan. She was 7 at the time.
“To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.’’
So is Woody Allen the lowest form of human excrement — a child molester? And is Dylan Farrow correct to slam Hollywood stars — from Cate Blanchett to Alec Baldwin and Diane Keaton — for working with a monster?
No. I don’t believe it’s true, although I think Dylan does.
It seems no coincidence that the letter spilled onto the Web about a month before the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles, where Woody has a shot at being honored for his cinematic brilliance with a Best Original Screenplay trophy that he’s bound to accept in absentia, since Woody shuns award ceremonies the way he rejects women his own age.
Now seems a good time for Mia, who turns 69 Sunday, to enlist her daughter in her scorched-earth revenge campaign against Woody, 78.
Mia’s former lover, a man she never married and with whom she never lived, shattered her life by romancing Mia’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, beginning in 1991. Soon-Yi was either 18 or 20 at the time — she does not have a birth certificate. Woody was 55. He married her in 1997.
For more than 20 years, Mia has harbored rage that is understandable, if not healthy. Now it’s clouding her judgment, leading Mia to trash-talk Woody, planting a seed in the mind of her vulnerable daughter that her own father is a no-good pedophile. And Dylan is the person who’s hurt most.
More than 20 years ago, I covered the bruising Manhattan Supreme Court trial in which Mia and Woody battled for custody of the three children they shared — Dylan, biological son Ronan (then called Satchel) and adopted son Moses.
I expected to see Mia as the victim of a degenerate. Instead, the woman who sauntered into the courtroom in a prim, pleated skirt and starched blouse was detached and emotionless. She seemed to be acting. I concluded Mia was as nutty as Woody.
On the witness stand, Mia was confronted by Woody’s lawyer with an incident in which she physically attacked Soon-Yi, pummeling and punching her daughter after she taunted her with “The person who is sleeping with [Woody] is the one with the relationship.’’
Observers murmured that they would have pounced, too. But Mia denied she had human feelings. “I’m not proud,’’ she said coolly.
Mia won custody of her kids, which was probably the right decision. The alternative was Woody.
Mia’s brood of biological children and those she adopted with her conductor ex-husband, André Previn, Woody and on her own would eventually top out at 15 kids, though two have died. They are remarkably loyal to their mom — with one exception.
“Of course Woody did not molest my sister,” Moses, 36, adopted by Woody and Mia, told People magazine. “I don’t know if my sister really believes she was molested or is trying to please her mother.’’
Did Mia brainwash her daughter? That’s one conclusion reached by Connecticut sex-abuse experts who determined that Dylan was either emotionally disturbed or “she was coached and influenced by her mother,’’ according to a 1993 statement by lead investigator Dr. John Leventhal of Yale-New Haven Hospital. Woody was never charged with a sex crime.
My answer to Dylan Farrow’s question is simple: I don’t have a favorite Woody Allen movie. I stopped watching them two decades ago after he shamelessly helped himself to his girlfriend’s daughter with a lame excuse — “The heart wants what it wants,’’ he infamously told Time magazine.
Clearly, he was thinking with organs not contained in his chest.
But after all this time, I’m ready to let it go. Mia should, too.
No welcome to the club, Lindsay
A doorman barred celebrity train wreck Lindsay Lohan from entering the hot Manhattan club 1 Oak, The Post’s Page Six reported. The “Liz and Dick’’ actress, 27, also was blocked from the door of the Meatpacking District club Up and Down, where LiLo tried to blend with actor Ryan Phillippe, models Bar Refaeli and Kate Upton, and celebrity slug Paris Hilton when she got left on the street like a commoner.
The convicted shoplifter and rehab regular hit bottom after claiming last week that half of her $75,000, two-piece fur coat went missing at 1 Oak — before it was retrieved inside the club by injured Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Sidney Rice, TMZ.com reported.
Stay home, Lindsay.
Shameless dopey pol
His girlfriend is grieving, his kids are hurting. But in Washington, a hack politician used the name of the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman — in a quest to legalize marijuana.
“It is ludicrous, absurd, crazy to have marijuana on the same level as heroin. Ask the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, if you could,’’ Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said at a hearing on the nation’s pot laws. He said heroin and methamphetamines take lives. “And every death, including Mr. Hoffman’s, is partly the responsibility of the federal government’s drug priorities.’’
Hoffman, 46, was found Sunday with a hypodermic syringe in his left arm. This tragedy was not the government’s fault.
Too bad politics rains on parade
Mayor de Blasio is boycotting next month’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade up Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue in solidarity with homosexuals, who are forbidden from carrying banners announcing their sexual orientation.
(Banner-free gays are welcomed by organizers of the expected million-person march,)
How did this annual celebration of Irish heritage become a litmus test for support of gay rights? Sex has no place at this party.
Hook, line & stinker
José Salvador Alvarenga of El Salvador has something to teach diet guru Jenny Craig. Alvarenga, 37, claims he lived on a meal plan of sushi caught with his hands — raw turtles, fish, birds and sharks — as he drifted more than 6,000 miles in the Pacific Ocean for 13 months.
Alvarenga told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper that a teen fishing-trip companion died of starvation.
But when Alvarenga washed up on a remote Pacific island a few days ago, he was remarkably fit.
Sounds fishy to me.