Woody Allen’s Café Society has already come and gone from American theaters, but it’s getting its release in the UK next week, so Woody Allen is back on awkward promotional duty. Much like the promotion earlier this year, Woody tends to choose one or two big publications and he’ll give those outlets a lengthy interview. He never had a publicist/handler with him on these interviews, which is interesting to me. He obviously thinks he’s capable of “handling” the persistent questions about the accusations of child abuse. Woody usually makes it worse by brushing off those questions in a blasé way, like when he said in May that he “never thinks about” Dylan Farrow’s accusations, and that he never read Ronan Farrow’s op-ed.

Woody chose to speak to The Guardian to promote Café Society in the UK. He says at the very beginning that he doesn’t even think interviews help or hurt a film’s chances, but he still likes to feel like he’s pitching in on promotion. When asked directly about Ronan and Dylan, Woody gives a different kind of answer this time around, and he also cites this “open letter” to Ronan, where the author questions Ronan’s motives and arguments. You can read the full Guardian piece here. Some highlights:

He doesn’t hate the rich: “I’m not one of those people who has knee-jerk antipathy to wealth. I like to look at rich people. I enjoy taking a tour of a very wealthy estate.”

He spends $100 a week on lottery tickets, but doesn’t think life would change if he won: “I’ve talked this over with my wife. We would still go on living in the same house, I would go on working, I don’t want a boat, I don’t want a plane.” So why do it? He seems stumped. “The odds are bigger than astronomical. You’d have a better chance of shuffling a deck of cards and naming them all in row. I’ve never got more than two numbers. I’d probably shoot myself if I got five and missed by one. That would really be a killer – but I don’t have that problem.”

Whether some people are more driven by sex, wealth, art or politics: “Sex is the ultimate end. The ambition is so that they can fulfil their sexual drives; that’s what everybody is going for. This is what animals are. People are in a kind of meaningless jumble to recreate, and nobody knows why. The same woman who says, ‘People are terrible, life is awful, it’s sad, it’s short, nasty and meaningless’ still wants to have a couple of children. It defies any intellect. It’s strictly emotional.”

On the reported rise of antisemitism: “It doesn’t surprise me. It’s in the nature of people to have someone to scapegoat. If there were no Jews in the world they would take it out on blacks. If no blacks, they’d move over to Catholics. No Catholics? Something else. Finally, if everyone is exactly the same, the left-handed people would start killing the right-handed people. You just need an other [on whom] to vent your hostility and frustration… Hopefully, the wave will ebb and people will realise that’s not the problem and focus more on what the problems are. But the world is full of intolerance and prejudice. Freud said there would always be antisemitism because people are a sorry lot. And they are a sorry lot.”

Ronan’s letter, Dylan’s accusations: “I have no interest in all of that. I find that all tabloid stupidity. That situation had been thoroughly, thoroughly investigated up and down the line by New York social services in a 14-month investigation. It had been investigated by Yale and conclusions were clear and I have no interest in that whole situation. I get harassed all the time on it. But it doesn’t affect me and I just have no interest in it.”

His teenage daughters Bechet & Manzie with his wife Soon-Yi: “You can count on them until adolescence. You’re king in the house and you’re much needed and much loved and depended on. Once they start to come into their adulthood they start to field their oats, then, all of a sudden, it’s a different story.”

Relationships: “[They] are not my strong point in life. I’ve always been dependent on the generosity of the woman; nothing I could do ever seduced them.” That was the case with Diane Keaton, with whom he is still close: “She had come to the conclusion she liked me. It was always the other person who decided.”

He doesn’t do therapy anymore: “I don’t have to any more. I’m functioning OK. I’m in a happy marriage. I haven’t needed that support.”

[From The Guardian]

Does your skin crawl a little bit when you read some of these quotes? The way he discusses sex and the need to procreate, the way he discusses his teenage daughters, the way he says he’s never been able to seduce a woman, that the women have always chosen him? And once again, brushing off Ronan and Dylan’s accusations as harassment. *shiver*

Photos courtesy of WENN.