Woody Allen, the writer-director now eschewed by most of Hollywood, has been unsuccessfully pitching a memoir to major publishing houses for the last year, a New York Times report found Thursday.
Representatives of Allen, whose adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow has long alleged that he sexually abused her when she was a child in 1992, would not comment on the matter. However, publishing executives speaking off the record to the Times said that Allen approached them late last year and that they turned him away because of the “toxic” challenges working with him would present.
According to the report in the Times:
Executives at multiple publishing houses said that an agent representing Allen approached their companies about the memoir late last year, but that they made no offers, largely because of the negative publicity that working with Allen may have generated. Some publishers declined to even read the material, which apparently consisted of a full manuscript. The executives said they knew of no other publishers who offered Allen a book deal; if one has, it has been kept tightly under wraps, and the manuscript does not seem to have been widely pitched. Some publishing executives used the word “toxic” when describing the challenges of working with Allen in the current environment, noting that while he remains a significant cultural figure, the commercial risks of releasing a memoir by him were too daunting.
Though the abuse allegations left Allen largely unscathed throughout the last three decades, the rise of the Me Too movement in 2017 gave new life to the longstanding demands for people to stop working with him.
In February, Allen sued Amazon Studios for dropping a four-movie deal and refusing to distribute his film “A Rainy Day in New York.” Earlier this month, Amazon Studios defended its decision and said it was based on Allen’s dismissive comments about the Me Too movement.
Still, Allen, who denies the abuse allegations, hasn’t been totally shunned. Just a day before the Times’ story came out, actress Anjelica Huston said in an interview with Vulture that she’d work with him again “in a second.”
You can read the full New York Times article here.