I’m a big fan of his and have always thought that a lot of the things Woody Allen does are figuratively worth about a million bucks. But last week, the filmmaker/actor/professional self-deprecator settled a lawsuit with American Apparel for the sum of $5 million dollars. That money could get you over 166,000 pairs of AA leggings or a crummy studio apartment on the Upper West Side.
Here’s what happened: In 2007, American Apparel used an image of Allen dressed up as a Hasidic Jew from his 1977 movie “Annie Hall” on a billboard advertisement but immediately took it down when Allen’s people asked them to, claiming that the image was used without his permission. The lawyers for American Apparel said that the use of the image was legal because it was intended as parody, which is protected under the First Amendment.
While the lawsuit was settled in Allen’s favor, I think Charney, founder and chief executive of American Apparel, made some interesting non-legal points in a 1500-word statement defending his use of Allen’s image on the billboard.
We should take some of his arguments with a grain of kosher salt though. It’s a bit hard to believe that the ad’s intention wasn’t to sell clothes, but “were designed to inspire dialogue,” as Charney said in the statement. He cited American Apparel’s promotion of immigration reform as an example of using a billboard “for something other than to promote our products. Before and since we’ve used them to express social messages … without purely commercial intent.” Charney also cited market research that apparently found that the Allen billboards “had no impact on anyone’s decision to shop at our stores.”
I’m not sure I believe this part. I think the honchos at American Apparel recognized that there’s a fairly large market of people who want to appear activism-minded to sell sloganed t-shirts to.
On the other hand, I can’t really see how the image of Allen as a Hasidic Jew would spur people to buy gold lamé booty shorts, so that point could easily go to Charney. Unless there’s a Hasidic fetish trend I don’t know about, but I don’t think I want to go there right now.
It was also a pretty weird stretch for Charney to compare Allen’s sexual scandals with his own, as if alleged sexual deviancy is something that can automatically connect people. If that were the case, I want to see a Larry Craig American Apparel ad up on Sunset Boulevard stat. Wait, no. I don’t want to see that at all.
Given his recent legal issues regarding bizarre sexual harassment suits, it’s kind of hard to take Charney’s words seriously because he has this sleazy, distrustful vibe surrounding him. But, not knowing him personally, it’s also impossible to know his genuine intentions in using Allen on the billboard. We could make assumptions about him and the case all day, but they’d be pointless.
Either way, this case got me thinking about how profoundly Allen, and specifically “Annie Hall” has affected my life personally. It’s far and away my favorite Woody Allen film, if not one of my favorite films of all time. For me, it’s worth more than five million dollars.
For Halloween in 2007, I dressed up as the Diane Keaton-played Annie Hall. You might be surprised to know that this was like my most normal Halloween costume ever (for a more in-depth look at my weird/ disturbing adolescent Halloween costumes from the late 1990s, refer to one of my previous columns from October).
Anyway, as I was dressed up in my Annie Hall outfit (which ironically included pieces from American Apparel) on the bus to West Hollywood, a gorgeous man with an exotic accent struck up a conversation with me, addressing me as Annie Hall. This gorgeous man was not a surprisingly cultured drifter-psycho-genius like some of the characters I’ve met on the bus (I’m talking about you, Sergei) but would actually turn out to be my BFF and soul mate Eduardo. I remained in Eduardo’s phone during his year abroad here at UCLA not as “Devon,” but as “Annie Hall.”
I credit Woody Allen for immaculately conceiving this meeting, which would turn out to be the catalyst for one of the most important relationships I’ve ever had. So I’d like to say, “Toda la’el” to Allen for this one.
My love of Allen and “Annie Hall” has also informed much of my life philosophy. Allen’s character Alvy Singer narrates at the beginning that life is “full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.” That’s a statement I can get behind for reasons that I’ll save for my memoirs, so stay tuned.
Allen was probably legally (and morally) correct in suing American Apparel for the billboard, and honestly, I’m not sad to see my favorite filmmaker triumphing over Charney.
Although my absolutely minimal legal knowledge was accrued in 12th grade government class, I’d say this was a pretty fair deal ““ as long as Charney isn’t paying him in the form of AA gift cards.
If you bow down to Woody Allen, e-mail McReynolds at dmcreynolds@media.ucla.edu