cafe international society blake lively french

She declined to comment on Ronan Farrow’s essay, which called out actors for continuing to work with the director, saying she hadn’t read the article.

“I think any jokes about rape, homophobia or Hitler is not a joke,” Cafe Society costar Blake Lively told Variety about Lafitte’s joke. The upshot? All that controversy has largely overtaken any buzz surrounding Cafe Society, a bittersweet comic romance set in ‘30s Hollywood starring Jessie Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, which has gotten generally positive reviews and which received a three-minute standing ovation at its premiere. “It’s only natural that I would show my displeasure when the press - in this case, The Hollywood Reporter - goes out of its way to be harmful to my client,” Dart said in a statement to the magazine. “Reporters on the receiving end of this kind of PR blitz have to wonder if deviating from the talking points might jeopardize their access to all the other A-list clients,” Farrow said.Īs if on cue, Allen’s influential longtime publicist Leslee Dart prohibited a quartet of reporters from The Hollywood Reporter from attending a luncheon for Cafe Society on Thursday. “Every day, colleagues at news organizations forwarded me the emails blasted out by Allen’s powerful publicist, who had years earlier orchestrated a robust publicity campaign to validate my father’s sexual relationship with another one of my siblings,” Farrow wrote, drawing comparisons with the culture of media acquiescence surrounding the growing Bill Cosby sex scandal.

Nonetheless, the rape joke arrived just hours after his estranged son Ronan Farrow published a widely discussed guest column in The Hollywood Reporter slamming the media - and in particular, The Hollywood Reporter’s cowardice in its own recent cover story on Allen - for failing to question the filmmaker’s alleged sexual assault. “I am completely in favor of comedians making any jokes they want,” Allen said at the premiere gala. He insisted he wasn’t offended by the joke. But more broadly, Lafitte’s remarks brought to mind accusations Allen has vehemently denied and been battling in the court of public opinion for many years: that the multiple Oscar winner sexually molested his daughter Dylan Farrow when she was 7-years-old.Īllen has never been convicted of any such charges and has denied the allegations consistently. It was an oblique reference to director Roman Polanski’s legal limbo on a 1977 rape charge. “It’s very nice that you’ve been shooting so many movies in Europe, even if you are not being convicted for rape in the U.S.,” the French comedian said. On Wednesday’s glitzy opening-night ceremony for the 69th installment of France’s most venerable film fest, things got off to a rocky start when Cannes master of ceremonies Laurent Lafitte aimed an off-color joke at Allen that drew audible gasps from the audience. Instead, events surrounding the ceremonial kick-off turned into a Fellini-esque public down-dressing, a media circus - with correspondents from The Hollywood Reporter barred from a publicity luncheon for being “harmful” - and, almost by default, a referendum on a too-deferential press corps that failed to question Allen about decades-old sexual assault allegations concerning the writer-director’s daughter.

Cafe international society blake lively french