That's where HBO has taken the country -- back into the cesspool.
Mia Farrow and her daughter Dylan, hungry publicity whores, are back. With a bad documentary entitled ALLEN V. FARROW. Back again. And the first question to ask is the most important one: Why?
Because Dylan's a White girl.
Because Dylan's a White girl we get a four-part mini-series about what she claims happened back in 1992. What she claims.
It's the '00s all over again with the media ignoring the disappearances of African-American girls to instead have the entire nation fretting over the missing White girl. It's so ingrained into the culture, this discrimination, that both FAMILY GUY and AMERICAN DAD have episodes riffing on it.
And now comes HBO. Help us out, how many documentaries did HBO do on Aiyana Jones? Police shot and killed her during a raid. She was seven-years-old. She also wasn't White. So HBO doesn't give two s**ts. Where's the HBO documentary on Breonna Taylor? That young woman was 26-years-old when police killed her. Where's the HBO documentary on that? Oh, wait, Breonna Taylor is African-American.
HBO and Dylan and Mia only care about White girls.
Do you doubt it?
If it's time to make a documentary about Mia Farrow's family, it's time to make a documentary about Soon-Yi. And that includes how Mia beat her and abused her. Even Mia admits to some of the abuse. Wah-wah, she beat her because she was jealous Mia used to 'explain' and the press would just write it up as if that's normal.
Especially coming from a grown woman notorious for throwing herself at every man she could and being enraged when so many rejected her. She still turns crimson when anyone has the nerve to laugh at her failed attempt to steal Mike Nichols from Diane Sawyer in the 90s.
America knows that Mia beat her daughter Soon-Yi, it's even noted, Mia beating Soon-Yi, in the New York State Supreme Court verdict written by the judge. If only Soon-Yi were White, the American media might give a damn, right?
So much has to be ignored.
Mia, you may remember, used a Golden Globes TV presentation to start the latest wave of attacks on her former lover Woody Allen. She and her loopy child Ronan took to Twitter to protest . . . forgetting to note that the Golden Globes tribute that she was so 'offended' by actually took place with her permission: She had approved the clips of her from Woody's movies that were used in the tribute.
It's been non-stop since then. And we were all screeched at that it didn't matter what Mia did. Forget the public record, it didn't matter -- they insisted.
Mia stood by Roman Polanski and defended him -- an admitted child rapist.
"It has no bearing!!!!!"
That lie had to be repeated over and over.
Yes, it does have bearing. She dismissed the accusations against Polanski but she wanted sympathy for her daughter.
Does that really sound like someone whose child has been abused or does it actually sound, yes, like someone who uses abuse charges when they're handy.
Mia and Dylan have a molester in the family but we're not supposed to note that either. Too bad for the White girls but that molester is actually back in the news. Roger Friedman (SHOWBIZ 411) notes:
This is not in the HBO doc “Allen vs. Farrow,” directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering. It’s the forgotten story of Mia’s brother, John Charles Viller-Farrow, convicted child molester who spent 7 years in Maryland’s Jessup Correctional Institution for abusing two little boys over an 8 year period.
Farrow was given a 25 year sentence, which was turned into 10 years. He served only 7, even though he destroyed the lives of two young men who have to live with what he did to them. He was released on February 12, 2020.
Mia Farrow never acknowledges this happened. Neither does Ronan Farrow. Or any of their defenders. Woody Allen was never formally accused of anything, arrested or charged in the case of his adopted daughter, Dylan.
But Mia’s brother was successfully prosecuted and imprisoned for sex crimes. This fact alone upends the so-called “devastating” documentary that paints Woody as a mastermind criminal.
They pretend don't they -- Mia, Ronan and Dylan -- that they care when children are abused.
But not one of them has ever spoken of brother John despite his being a huge part of their lives both before and during the time he molested two young boys.
To make the Farrows look good, you have to ignore reality.
In the documentary, we get to see Dylan on videotape. Mia, instead of taking her to the police, decided the 'legal' thing to do was to tape her daughter. You don't see it on the documentary but there are a lot of starts and stops in that taping as Dylan was coached or, if you prefer, steered.
Not mentioned in the documentary is that this video ended up at a TV station. How did it end up there? Only Mia had a copy. As Soon-Yi noted in 1992, "I was not surprised that Mia made a videotape of Dylan saying these terrible things as I think the motive is obvious, but I was stunned that the tape would somehow find its way to the TV news."
It's such a curious outcome -- putting her daughter Dylan on blast -- and one that the filmmakers avoid addressing.
It's curious how people react as well. We were honestly going to ignore this crap. We'd never noted the documentary here though we were aware of it. The only reason we're noting it now is NPR. They claimed -- no link to trash, no matter how hilarious it is -- that Mia and Woody met in 1979 when they were both stars. (Per Mia's own mouth, they didn't go on their first date until April 17, 1980 -- so everyone citing some idiotic NYT article that says they started dating in 1979, no, you're wrong. At the end of 1979, Michael Caine introduced Mia to Woody when Mia arrived at Elaine's to lunch with Michael and Mick Jagger.)
Mia a star?
We couldn't stop laughing.
Again, no one must ever challenge Mia on the veracity of her claims -- no matter how absurd they are.
We're all just supposed to pretend and nod along while saying idiotic things like, "Yes, Mia was the first person on the cover of a PEOPLE magazine." No, it was Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton (August 1973). PEOPLE, in 1994, put Mia on the cover of their 20th anniversary issue (it wasn't) and only did so after Elizabeth Taylor turned them down (she noted that it was her and Richard on the cover and Richard had passed and she wasn't posing for them). Since then, the lie has been perpetuated non-stop that Mia was on the cover of the first issue of PEOPLE -- even leading to a Taylor Swift spoof of the cover. It was Elizabeth and Richard and it was covered by Nora Ephron in her "People Magazine" column for ESQUIRE in March of 1975 -- the column is collected in Nora's SCRIBBLE SCRIBBLE: NOTES ON THE MEDIA.
In 1979, the only term for Mia Farrow was "freak" -- although you could add the modifier "fading" in front of ''freak." She'd appeared fully nude in THE WEDDING and disgusted many with that body. The film had bombed. So had her big 'action' film AVALANCHE -- forget the snow, Mia was the real disaster of that film. She had a small role in DEATH ON THE NILE, the film that was supposed to turn Agatha Christie's Poirot into a film franchise. Instead, DOTN killed it (it made half of what the previous Poirot film, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, did). Then came HURRICANE, a bomb that, in ticket sales, barely made 1/4 of its shooting budget.
She was 34 and her film career, such as it was, as a leading lady was dead. From 1964 through 1979, she'd starred in 14 films and only one, 1968's ROSEMARY'S BABY, had been an actual hit. If Woody Allen hadn't put her in 13 films, she wouldn't have gotten three Golden Globe nominations, two BAFTA nominations, or a David di Donatello nomination or, honestly, have anything to show for her 'career' after 1968.
Is that why we're not supposed to be surprised that as late as the fall of 1992, Mia was planning to star in Woody Allen's MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY? Mia had a fit, remember, when she found out Diane Keaton would be in the film instead. Woody was shocked that she thought the two of them could be in court, that she could be accusing him of molesting Dylan and yet she thought he was going to direct her and co-star with her in a film. As he told 60 MINUTES, he told her in August 1992, "You're accusing me of child molestation and you think we're just going to go on with the movie?"
It's not just that she thought she was going to make the movie, it's that she wanted to make the movie. If you had just accused someone of molesting a child, would you be eager to work with them? No, not if you really believed the accusation.
We're not supposed to remember that and both the documentary and the so-called timelines -- POP SUGAR and THE NEW YORK TIMES -- go out of their way to ignore that and so much more.
Dylan has never changed her story. Not one bit.
That's the lie, right? Another one we're never supposed to challenge.
Because as the NYC case made clear, Dylan was changing her story constantly. Read the State Supreme Court Decision (June 7, 1993). Read it and wonder what the hell was going on where Mia had Dr. Nancy Schultz coming out to Mia's Connecticut home from New York and Dylan and Satchel "put glue in Dr. Schultz's hair, cut her dress and told her to go away." Why did they have a bad opinion of the doctor? What was Mia telling the two children? These are questions you should be asking because, no, this is not normal behavior for toddlers.
For Dylan, the therapy ceases that month, August 1992.
And why was Dylan denied therapy after that. The judge writes, "Ms. Farrow did not immediately resume Dylan's therapy because the Connecticut State Police had requested that she not be in therapy during the investigation. Also, it was not clear if the negotiated settlement that the parties were continuing to pursue would include Mr. Allen's participation in the selection of Dylan's new therapist." Hmm.
Doesn't sound like Dylan's state of mind was a pressing need for Mia, does it?
And yet, if Dylan needed therapy, it was during this time. It's during this non-therapy time that Dylan has all those breakthroughs, right?
Oh, wait, we're not allowed to talk about that. The official lie has always been that Dylan told the same story from the start and it never changed. But it was December 30, 1992 when Dylan suddenly retrieved a previously unknown memory. As noted in the court verdict, "at a time Ms. Farrow calculates to be the fall of 1991 -- that while at Mr. Allen's apartment, she [Dylan] saw him and Soon-Yi having sex."
And here is how Mia writes about that new development in WHAT FALLS APART:
She also recounted a time, more than a year earlier, when the weather was warm, and she was at Woody's apartment with Satchel and Soon-Yi. She said that she and her little brother were left in front of the television while Soon-Yi and Woody disappeared. After a while Dylan went upstairs to look for them. She saw them out on the terrace with their arms around each other. She called to them and they told her to ''go away,'' they wanted ''a little private time.'' Dylan said she pretended to go away but she hid on the staircase next to the bedroom door facing the glass doors to the terrace. She saw them walk into the bedroom, and the door was left partially open. Dylan crept up and watched. She saw Woody and Soon-Yi on the bed, on top of the covers, and "they were doing compliments and making snoring noises.'' That is what she said. And that "he was putting his penis into Soon-Yi's vagina."
Wow. Dylan would have been six-years-old. Quite the detective. Mia quotes Dylan stating that Woody "was putting his penis into Soon-Yi's vagina." That's interesting. She recalls that incident a year later in December 30, 1992. And she's using the terms, per Mia, "penis" and "vagina."
She's just a therapeutic breakthrough, that Dylan. In August, she's unable to talk about that area -- which she refers to as "my private parts" -- with a doctor. She can only say "my private parts" -- and that's to Mia. And then, also in August, her therapy ends. But there she is sailing along to awareness and self-actualization as she retrieves apparently repressed memories and is now using words like "penis" and "vagina."
If the story's true.
If it is. And if it is, it reveals a certain obsession on Dylan's part with Soon-Yi. That matters because? Mia introduces the term "child molester" into the family -- with a posting on a bathroom door. And when was that? July 11, 1992. She explains to the children that she's referring to Soon-Yi. And less than a month later, Dylan's claiming to be molested by Woody.
Obsessed with Soon-Yi? Yes, you could postulate that. There's plenty more evidence to support that claim.
The documentary avoids that. And it also avoids the snapshots of Soon-Yi. January 13, 1992, while in Woody's apartment (she let herself in), Mia discovers photos of Soon-Yi nude. That's how she learns of the affair.
Now if Dylan's 'breakthrough' in December of that year is real, one wonders why she never mentioned to Mommy that Soon-Yi had a boyfriend who was putting a penis in Soon-Yi's vagina a year prior in 1991?
We're bothered by what Mia did with the photos. She took them. She held onto them. Even after the case, she did not return them to either Woody or Soon-Yi. She made photo copies of them and kept the originals. All this time later. Exactly why? And exactly what does that say about her state of mind?
That's a little perverse and obsessive, isn't it?
And a lot pathetic.
Because Mia Farrow is a pathetic person.
And that's why it's highly likely that Mia coached Dylan -- as many believed including the Yale - New Haven investigators -- because she's that pathetic.
Mia and her groupies love to attack actual investigations -- the same way Mia likes to attack therapy, she thinks psychology and psychiatry are pseudo sciences and loathes them even more than Tom Cruise does. She and her groupies try to act as though Woody hired the people involved in the real investigation into these claims that took place back in the 90s. It was the Connecticut State Police who referred the matter to the Child Sexual Abuse Clinic of Yale-New Haven Hospital.
The police. The Judge. Legalities.
The documentary has a lot of clips from Woody's films.
That does make sense. Mia has no career without Woody. She's a one-time movie actor -- ROSEMARY'S BABY. It's only under Woody's direction that Mia truly comes alive onscreen -- ZELIG, BROADWAY DANNY ROSE, THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, his segment in NEW YORK STORIES, RADIO DAYS, etc. But while it makes sense to feature those films remember how Mia launched this wave of the ongoing vendetta? Using the Golden Globe tribute and playing on Twitter like she was surprised and aghast.
And that played with a lot of people ignorant on the issue of usage. They didn't realize that for Mia's clip to have appeared in that tribute, the Golden Globes had to get her permission.
Guess who didn't get permission? The filmmakers behind ALLEN V. FARROW. They're using those clips without permission which can result in a lawsuit.
Now that lawsuit wouldn't hurt Mia.
That one.
But another one?
From the state of Connecticut, Mia taped Woody Allen on the phone without his knowledge. What's the law in Connecticut? Glad you asked: "It is illegal for a person to record a telephone conversation without the knowledge of all parties to the conversation (CGS§ 52-570d)." So Mia handing that over to the film makers, that audio? She can be sued. She broke the law. Woody can sue her for that and, in our opinion, he should. He should also sue the filmmakers who chose to amplify an illegal act. HBO should be sued for airing the documentary -- they should have demanded, before airing, a look at all the permission forms required and they should have immediately asked, "When Mia taped Woody, she was in Connecticut, before we air this documentary, what was the law there at the time she taped him without his knowledge?" Ignorance of the law is no excuse but, to be clear, Mia knew the law and knew what she was doing was illegal because her friend Chris Rush had told her that in 1992 as they were plotting to tape various people (Woody, his chauffer Don Harris and others).
Maybe if she finally faced some legal challenges, Mia would give up her vendetta? Maybe. Maybe not.
Mia does realize Ronan's in the midst of another identity crisis, right? And that her IRS filings from 1987 to 1992 have really picked up as a topic among her friends and 'friends.' We're not really sure Mia's strong enough of an actress to get through an IRS audit.
But maybe she can.
We just know that if we were Mia and we'd written several judgmental letters about a friend and her abortion (Mia is anti-choice, strongly anti-choice) and this friend was one of the few friends left willing to go on camera for Mia (and appears in the documentary), we wouldn't be trying to stir up so much, we'd keep her head down and not try to garner attention. And hope that someone in possession of such a letter from Mia (she sent that letter to one of us) didn't feel the need, all these years later, to forward it to ______.
But that's Mia, she craves attention and has no censor. She tried to make Frank Sinatra, during their marriage and immediately after, believe that one of his employees and friends had slept with her. It was a lie. It was a lie and it destroyed a friendship and it destroyed the man's life. But that's Mia, she's always had a hostile relationship with the truth.
Dylan, as we've noted before, is beginning to question some of what she says publicly. She's only questioning it privately. So far. But even Dylan realizes the story Mommy Mia tells the world does not add up. Especially not August 4, 1992. The story Mia tells is that everyone knew Woody was never to be alone with Dylan. Dylan had her birthday in July and Woody visited Connecticut for that. And the rules were followed. But then he visits in August and instead of protecting her daughter, Mommy Mia decides to go shopping. Even Dylan's questioning that. Even Dylan.
Mia's created an argument against Woody Allen and the filmmakers are happy to run with it and offer a one-sided documentary short on truth and reality. ALLEN V. FARROW really doesn't document so much as it proselytizes. It's a weak documentary but that was always going to be the case for yet another look at what some White girl claims happened to her -- decades ago -- and what resulted in a police investigation and an investigation by the most august bodies in the US at that time on the topic of abuse. Her story got a hearing. And was found lacking.
Now it gets another hearing and another and another and another . . . .
There's no justice for the non-White children. None at all. They don't get four-part documentaries on HBO. Not even Soon-Yi. She's just cast in a racist role ("the dragon lady"). Mia has told one lie about her after another. Remember when Mia called her slow? Publicly. Mia wasn't even talking to her then, had kicked Soon-Yi out of her life. And Mia told the world she was slow. Another lie she told the public over and over in 1992 and 1993? That Soon-Yi wasn't 18. Soon-Yi was 20 in 1992 at the youngest, 22 was her legal age -- and Mia can thank herself for that because Mia's the one who filled out the legal forms when she adopted her. Her legal age in 1991? 21. Mia has taken to insisting that the affair may have started in 1990. If so, Soon-Yi's legal age then was 20. Never was Soon-Yi underage despite the lies Mia told.
Mia abused Soon-Yi throughout the child's life. Mia is not the saint she pretends to be. She has had many screaming fits at her children in front of outsiders. If they do not do what she says, if they do not toe her line and repeat her lies (as her son Moses Farrow has noted), she freaks out and becomes this cruel and abusive person.
The court talked about how she attacked and abused Soon-Yi in their 1993 custody verdict. This is not speculation, it's in the official court record. Equally true, college student Soon-Yi had no home in 1992. Mia didn't want her around, told her she couldn't be around her. That's public record as well -- Mia writes that in her book WHAT FALLS AWAY. While everyone's enjoying a relaxing summer in 1992, Soon-Yi's shipped off to a summer camp. Mia doesn't want her around and, get this, Andre Previn doesn't want her around.
Andre who cheated on Mia constantly (she cheated on him too) wants to get on a high horse about who his daughter slept with? Mia and Andre were unfit parents, that's reality. They demonstrated that by disowning Soon-Yi. Before she disowned her, Mia put all the kids on the phone after telling Soon-Yi that she'd hurt them all. Soon-Yi was supposed to go through each of the children (Mia would eventually mother 14 children) on the phone apologizing and blaming herself and seek absolution.
Bulls**t.
She was a college girl who fell in love. And for that she was punished. And because she's Asian, she doesn't get the sympathy for what was actually done to her -- the sympathy we're all supposed to give Dylan for what Dylan claims happened. That last beating, the one Mia gave to her after Soon-Yi was in college, what did Mia beat her with again? Oh, that's right a telephone receiver.
Mia is a cruel person and a vindictive person. She and Woody were over for some time by 1991. He'd slept with various actresses he worked with from 1985 to 1991 and Mia believed he'd slept with her sister Stephanie. Mia and Woody were over as a couple before 1991. By the end of 1988, Mia was telling friends (in person, over the phone and in letters) that she and Woody had stopped having sex. This continued in 1989 and 1990. And back in 1986, everyone was talking about Woody's affair with Dianne Wiest -- this is the affair her son Fletcher tells Mia about on page 234 of her book WHAT FALLS AWAY -- though Mia doesn't name Dianne. Later, in 1989, Woody had a particularly well known affair in NYC -- one Mia was fully aware of. They were friends, that was really about it. Friends and parents of Dylan, Moses and Satchel (Ronan). When not filming one of Woody's films, Mia spent less and less time in NYC.
By the way, that state of the relationship, just friends, was noted by Soon-Yi in 1992:
Please don't try and dramatize my relationship with Woody Allen. He was never any kind of father figure to me. I never had any dealings with him. He rarely came to our apartment before his own children were born. Even then, he never spoke and the truth is I never cared that much for him. He was always preoccupied with work and never talked to me. Not really to any of us. Only when Dylan was born did he start visiting regularly and then only to play with the baby. My own father is Andre Previn, who came to visit pretty often and took us all out frequently. When I first got friendly with Woody, he and Mia were finished with their romance and were just friends. I think Mia would have been just as angry if he had taken up with another actress or his secretary.
It was long over between Woody and Mia, but she was offended that she was replaced with a younger woman and her own daughter at that. Her daughter. Not Woody's daughter. And an adult despite Mia tacking her "child molester" note on the bathroom door in July of 1992.
Moses backs up Soon-Yi's accounts of abuse. Ronan, who was too young to witness anything or know what was going on, only knows the story that Mia has drilled into him and into Dylan. Moses wrote about the abuse he suffered from Mia. That's two for Mia and two against. Then there's Tam and Thaddeus who are both said to have taken their own lives. There's Lark Song Previn who lamented how her own mother had kicked her out of the family before she died. There are the twins -- her first children, the twin boys she gave birth to -- and Mia, an anti-vaccer, by the way, likes to claim that she cured one of them from autism via the use of red candy wrappers. It's a ludicrous claim but it fits right in with Mia's ego and she didn't just repeat this story socially, she also wrote about her 'scientific' cure in WHAT FALLS AWAY. How long are people going to continue to pretend that Mia's not a wack-job?
Mia got seven of the kids to talk about how they knew Dylan had been abused and molested by Woody Allen. This included Quincy Farrow. We got to say it. Mia has made fun of Woody Allen repeatedly because his name -- birth name -- is not Woody. We always found that strange because Mia's birth name is Maria and not Mia. And strange because Satchel became Ronan and Dylan's been Malone and other names. But we're talking about Quincy and we need to note her original name. Kaeli-Shea. That's the child's original name. We put it in for those who want to fact check us when we tell you the child was adopted in March of 1994.
Do you see the problem with her signing off on the 'we know Dylan's telling the truth' article?
Kaeli-Shea/Quincy Farrow wasn't even born, let alone part of the family, in 1992. Seven of the 14 children Mia mothered signed the note for Dylan -- five of them weren't members of the family at the time of alleged incident. And we're saying mothered and not adopted, by the way, because Mia adopted more than 14, She returned a few that she adopted. Kind of like you'd give a puppy back to the pound. So we're just sticking with 14 that were mothered and part of her family for more than a few weeks or a month. So five of the seven were adopted after the alleged incident. That leaves two plus Dylan. Three. 14 kids in the family but only 9 were around at the time of the alleged incident and, of that nine, counting Dylan, only three were speaking in defense of Dylan. Lark and Tam couldn't speak, they had both passed away. Fletcher, who had always hated Woody, was the one speaking besides Dylan and Ronan.
That really doesn't speak well of Dylan's claim or Mia's mothering. Nor does the fact that Lark has passed away and Mia has nothing to do with Sara and Christine McKenzie -- Lark's daughters. Lark spoke, at the end, about how she was used as a maid growing up. She wasn't a child, she was Mia's maid. This was observed by many people over the years including actress, writer and producer Jane Read Martin who testified that Mia treated Lark like "a little scullery maid." It's one reason Mia has such a difficult time wrapping Daisy around her finger today. Daisy joined the family after Lark and was close to Lark -- both were close to Soon-Yi.
There was a way Mia treated the White kids, Soon-Yi has publicly spoken about it, Moses has publicly spoken about it. That's the documentary that needs to be made. But Dylan's White so a police investigation, an abuse investigation, and Woody's life just don't matter. Woody and Soon-Yi by all accounts have a very satisfying marriage and they have two daughters. And in his long life, he's 85-years-old, Woody's only been accused by Dylan. Pedophilia isn't a one-time thing. If he was a pedophile, there should be others coming forward. And if he was a pedophile, why did he, according to the memory Dylan 'retrieved' in December of 1992, send her away in the fall of 1991 so that he could have sex with the 21-year-old Soon-Yi? By Dylan's account, Ronan was mesmerized by the TV so Woody could have sent Soon-Yi out for food or given her cash to go get some outfit to wear to the next Knicks game and had Dylan all to himself. But that didn't happen, did it?
And, if you apply logic to ALLEN V. FARROW, none of the documentary makes sense either. Mia's dragged us back into the cesspool and, honestly, hasn't that been The Mia Farrow Story since day one? It's really sad that HBO elected to wallow through the sewer with this nonsense.
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Previous pieces on this tawdry tale include:
"The award for best self-created drama goes to Mia Farrow (Ava and C.I.)"
"TV: Another idiot for the idiot box"
"Mia and the meanings for America"
"Mia and her brood drag whatever's left of the name through the mud"
"Dylan whines to Maureen Orth who passes it on to Janet Maslin"
"Media: "It's very rude of him," she said, "To come and spoil the fun!""
"He's a criminal (Ava and C.I.)"
"Natalie Wood: The lies that remain repeated (C.I.)"
"Deep Thoughts From Roh-Roh Farrow"
"MEDIA: Hannah Gadsby is the 21st century's Jimmy Swaggart"