Cannes Opened This Week With a Woody Allen Rape Joke

By Vivian Kane | Miscellaneous | May 11, 2016 |

By Vivian Kane | Miscellaneous | May 11, 2016 |

It hasn’t been a great couple of days for Woody Allen, between his son’s op-ed in The Hollywood Reporter, calling on actors to stop working with him, the “not great” word of mouth on his new film, and now this incredibly dark jab out of the opening ceremonies of Cannes. But since most of us couldn’t give less of a shit as to how Woody Allen’s day is going, that’s just fine.

The Cannes film festival opened this week, and comedian Laurent Lafitte served as M.C. for the official opening ceremonies. During the usual general roasting of attendees, he dropped this bomb, aimed at Allen:

You’ve shot so many of your films here in Europe and yet in the U.S. you haven’t even been convicted of rape.

Apparently the room was filled with “more gasps than laughs,” and most were uncomfortable.

Shocking opening joke: Woody Allen thanked for shooting films in Europe, but in US he's not been convicted of rape. pic.twitter.com/qujgnRMrKO

— Chris Gardner (@chrissgardner) May 11, 2016

GOOD. GODDAMN GOOD. This room, these people who keep celebrating Allen’s work and ignoring every monstrous thing that people have spent decades accusing him of, are the exact people Ronan Farrow was calling out in his THR piece. Though it’s not entirely clear who the real target of this joke is. It seems to be a murky cut at both Allen and Roman Polanski. I’m not familiar with Lafitte, and there’s no video of the joke (yet), so it’s not clear if this was meant to be flippant or actually biting. Let’s hope it was the latter.

At the very least, since Woody Allen makes such a big deal out of not ever reading ANY press about himself, at least we can be sure he finally heard someone reminding him that this is what a large portion of the world thinks of him.