In its first response to a lawsuit from writer-director Woody Allen, Amazon Studios said Wednesday that Allen’s comments dismissing the Me Too movement and his denial of sexual abuse allegations “justified” its decision to cancel a distribution deal for his most recent movies. “Allen made a series of public comments suggesting that he failed to grasp the gravity of the issues or the implications for his own career,” Amazon’s lawyers said in a federal court filing. The director, 83, has repeatedly denied an allegation from Dylan Farrow, his adopted daughter, that he sexually abused her in 1992 when she was 7 years old. He has also criticized the broader Me Too movement. While promoting his 2017 film “Wonder Wheel” — released shortly after The New York Times and The New Yorker published bombshell reports on disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, catalyzing the Me Too movement — Allen expressed sympathy for Weinstein, saying he was “sad for Harvey that [his] life is so messed up.”Allen also lamented what he called a “witch-hunt atmosphere, a Salem atmosphere, where every guy in an office who winks at a woman is suddenly having to call a lawyer to defend himself.”

Source: Huffington Post April 04, 2019 13:32 UTC