Woody Allen Pitched a Memoir. Publishers Weren’t Interested. NY Times journalist, Alexandra Alter and Cara Buckley, find out why.
Woody Allen has been largely shunned by Hollywood. Celebrities who once vied for roles in his films now say they regret working with him. Amazon has backed out of a multimovie distribution deal with him.
Now, Allen appears to be losing stature in another quarter of the entertainment industry: publishing.
In the last year, Allen quietly tried to sell a memoir, according to executives at four major publishing houses, only to be met with indifference or hard passes. Before the #MeToo movement roared to life, Allen’s memoir would probably have set off a bidding war and commanded six or seven figures, given his cultural status. But with his career all but derailed by resurfaced allegations that he molested his daughter Dylan Farrow nearly three decades ago — allegations that Allen denies and that have left Americans unsure whom to believe — the prospect of publishing his memoir seems to hold little appeal.
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.
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