Woody Allen doesn’t care if Cate Blanchett wins the Best Actress Oscar for “Blue Jasmine” anymore than he cares if he wins for Best Original Screenplay.
So the auteur isn’t too concerned about any awards-related consequences from the accusations by his daughter Dylan that he sexually abused her as a child.
Allen has always disdained the Oscars. He has boycotted the Academy Awards every year — except for 2002, just months after 9/11, when he introduced a short edited by Nora Ephron of the greatest scenes ever filmed in New York.
Only George C. Scott — who called the awards a “two-hour meat parade” — was more dismissive.
But the academy voters have rewarded Allen over the years with 23 nominations and four Oscars, including the Best Picture award for 1977’s “Annie Hall.” The academy also loves accused sex offender Roman Polanski, who has been nominated five times and won once.
Allen has already finished his latest romantic comedy, “Magic in the Moonlight,” starring Colin Firth (with Emma Stone and Marcia Gay Harden) as an Englishman helping unmask a possible swindle.
Actors will continue to jump at the chance to work with Allen even if he were a serial killer, because it legitimizes them as serious thespians.
What would hurt Allen most is if financing dries up for his films, which don’t pull in big grosses at the box office. He has had to go abroad to find investors in recent years. But he could finance his movies himself.
“Woody Allen makes millions on each movie no matter what it does at the box office because he always comes in under budget,” one industry source told me.
Allen’s sister Letty Aronson serves as his producer, keeping all the money in the family. “If his budget is $20 million, he brings the movie in for $17 million and keeps the difference,” said my source. “It’s perfectly legal.”
Without OPM (Other People’s Money), he might have to let Letty go.