Woody Allen memoir may still go ahead in France, despite controversy

The film director’s book Apropos of Nothing was dropped by its US publisher after staff walkouts, but the French publisher says ‘Allen is not Roman Polanski’

Alison Flood

Monday 9 March 2020

Woody Allen’s controversial memoir will still be published in France despite its US publisher dropping it, with his French publisher saying that the film director is “not Roman Polanski” and that “the American situation is not ours”.

Allen’s memoir, Apropos of Nothing, was acquired last week by Hachette in the US. The move was quickly condemned by the author’s daughter Dylan Farrow, who has alleged that Allen sexually abused her as a child, allegations that Allen has denied. Allen’s son Ronan Farrow, whose book Catch and Kill – also published by Hachette – details his investigations into institutional sexual abuse in the media and Hollywood, also blasted the decision and announced he would no longer work with Hachette.

Hachette staff in the US subsequently staged a walkout at its New York offices over the memoir. The publisher then pulled the book, saying that the decision was a “difficult one”.

Éditions Stock is hoping to go ahead with publication on 29 April, according to French reports, with chief executive Manuel Carcassonne telling Le Point: “Woody Allen is a great artist, film-maker, writer, and his New York Jewish humour can still be read in every line of this autobiography, in self-mockery, modesty, and the art of disguising the tragic in comedy. Including at his expense.”

Carcassonne told the French magazine that he was not sure he would be able to continue with publication plans – after Hachette US cancelled publication, the rights returned to Allen – but he said he would do everything he could to release the book. “We need to recover the rights which have been returned to the author. And above all, let’s be frank, it’s the author alone who will decide.”

He described Hachette US’s decision to drop the book as “sad for freedom of expression, but perfectly understandable in the American context”. This echoed the words of author Stephen King, who was criticised at the weekend for tweeting that the move “makes me very uneasy. It’s not him; I don’t give a damn about Mr Allen. It’s who gets muzzled next that worries me.”

Pen America also criticised the cancellation, with chief executive officer Suzanne Nossel saying that “if the end result here is that this book, regardless of its merits, disappears without a trace, readers will be denied the opportunity to read it and render their own judgments”.

“As a defender of free speech and the availability of a wide breadth of books and ideas, we also fervently hope that the outcome does not lead publishers to shy away from manuscripts that editors think are worthwhile but that are about, or even by, people who may be considered contemptible,” Nossel added.

Carcassonne told France Inter that Allen had been “entirely exonerated” and that “my belief is that he is completely innocent of what he has been accused of… Woody Allen is not Roman Polanski. Some of the facts of which Roman Polanski is accused are proven and recognised by him. This is not at all the case with Woody Allen, who has always protested his innocence and proven it with American justice.”

Asked if he worried about the reactions of some of his authors, Carcassonne said he had not warned all of them about his plans to publish the memoir. But he said that reading the book would “satisfy and reassure those who could be its detractors”.

THE GUARDIAN