A Rush to Judgment “Woody Allen and Mia Farrow”

Robert B. Weide “The Daily Beast”

Twenty-one years after the first allegations that Woody Allen abused his adopted daughter, that incident is back in the news thanks to the director’s ex-partner, Mia Farrow, and estranged son, Ronan Farrow. But what does a closer examination reveal?

As anyone with access to a computer knows, Woody Allen has been pilloried of late across the internet, over allegations that 21 years ago, he molested the daughter he and Mia Farrow adopted in 1985. Countless people have weighed in on this, many of them without the slightest idea of what the facts are in this matter. I consider myself allergic to gossip and tabloids, and go out of my way to avoid them. So when a celebrity is being devoured by the two-headed piranha of gossip and innuendo, I usually have minimal understanding of what they did, or were alleged to have done. Woody Allen is an exception.

I produced and directed the two-part PBS special, ”Woody Alen: A Documentary" that premiered in the U.S. on the “American Masters” series. I also supervised and consulted on the brief clip montage that aired as part of the recent Golden Globes telecast, when Allen received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement.

When I went online the morning after the Globes broadcast, I found more than one email asking if I had seen the previous night’s tweets from Mia Farrow and her son, Ronan. A quick search led me not only to the accusatory tweets, but to the explosion of internet chatter that followed in their wake. The more benevolent comments suggested Woody should rot in jail. Others were demanding his head on a pike.

Last fall, Vanity Fair magazine ran an article about Mia and her family, which included an interview with the 28-year-old Malone (née Dylan), who, at the age of seven, was at the center of Mia’s allegations that made headlines during the brutal custody battle between her and Woody. In the recent interview, Malone stands behind her mother’s accusation. It was the one-two punch of the Vanity Fair piece and the Farrow tweets that stirred up the hornet’s nest that had remained somewhat dormant over the past 20 years.

My documentary covered Allen’s relationship with Soon-Yi Previn (Mia’s adopted daughter and Woody’s wife of 16 years) and the ensuing fall-out, but I chose not to go down the rabbit hole detailing the custody case, as my film was primarily about his work, and I had no interest in allowing it to turn into a courtroom drama. I did, however, thoroughly research the entire episode in order to reach my own conclusions about what did or didn’t take place.

My association with Woody is primarily a professional one, though we’ve remained friendly since the documentary and still occasionally correspond by email via his assistant (since Woody still types on a 60-year old manual typewriter). When I wrote him the day after the ceremony, he was vaguely aware that Mia and Ronan had badmouthed him (again), but he wasn’t certain what Twitter was. (He’s heard of blogging and always confuses the two.) Because he doesn’t go online, he was blissfully unaware of how much ink (sorry, bandwidth) the story was getting. If he had known, he still wouldn’t have cared. Mia’s accusations were old business, and the fact that Ronan was publicly chiming in meant nothing to Woody, who hadn’t even seen his (alleged) son for 20 years. I also knew Woody would never publicly respond to any of this. His indifference to the gossip has always struck me not as a decision so much as an involuntary and organic reaction. In fact, during a written exchange that day in which I mentioned the tweet attack, he was more focused on giving me advice about a stye I had on my eyelid that I joked was probably a brain tumor: “I agree, you probably do have a brain tumor. You should get your affairs in order quickly as those things can move rather rapidly. You’ll probably start to have some problems with your balance—don’t panic—it’s quite natural for a brain tumor.” He then counseled me not to use up my “remaining days” fretting over Mia.

As the day progressed, it seemed the misinformation on the internet was growing exponentially spurious by the minute. The more even-keeled bloggers and pundits were asking, “Is it possible to separate the art from the artist?” or “Is America ready to forgive Woody Allen?” The very phrasing of these questions presumed that Woody had done something terrible, and we had to decide how much we would let it bother us. My wife suggested that in absence of a response by Woody, he was being swiftboated. His silence created a vacuum that everybody with a keyboard was going to fill with whatever they believed or thought they believed or heard from someone else who heard from someone who linked to the Vanity Fair article.

I considered whether to enter the fray, since my credentials were in order, so to speak. I had researched these events, I knew Woody—was friendly with him, but we weren’t so close that anyone could rightfully accuse me of being in his pocket. Quite the opposite in fact, as Woody had already advised me not to get involved. But as I came across more and more articles and blogs filled with misinformation, my wife said something to me that struck a chord: “You have just as much right to weigh in on this as anyone else, regardless of what Woody thinks.”

So here I go—contributing to the very noise I’ve been complaining about.

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There are basically two issues at play here. One is Woody’s starting a romantic/sexual relationship with Mia’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, in 1991. The other is Mia’s accusation—used during their custody battle for their three shared children—that Woody molested their 7-year-old adopted daughter Dylan. People tend to confuse these two issues, so let’s examine them separately.

First, the Soon-Yi situation:

Every time I stumble upon this topic on the internet, it seems the people who are most outraged are also the most ignorant of the facts. Following are the top ten misconceptions, followed by my response in italics:

#1: Soon-Yi was Woody’s daughter. False.

#2: Soon-Yi was Woody’s step-daughter. False.

#3: Soon-Yi was Woody and Mia’s adopted daughter. False. Soon-Yi was the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and André Previn. Her full name was Soon-Yi Farrow Previn.

#4: Woody and Mia were married. False.

#5: Woody and Mia lived together. False. Woody lived in his apartment on Fifth Ave. Mia and her kids lived on Central Park West. In fact, Woody never once stayed over night at Mia’s apartment in 12 years.

#6: Woody and Mia had a common-law marriage. False. New York State does not recognize common law marriage. Even in states that do, a couple has to cohabitate for a certain number of years.

#7: Soon-Yi viewed Woody as a father figure. False. Soon-Yi saw Woody as her mother’s boyfriend. Her father figure was her adoptive father, André Previn.

#8: Soon-Yi was underage when she and Woody started having relations. False. She was either 19 or 21. (Her year of birth in Korea was undocumented, but believed to be either 1970 or ’72.)

#9: Soon-Yi was borderline retarded. Ha! She’s smart as a whip, has a degree from Columbia University and speaks more languages than you.

#10: Woody was grooming Soon-Yi from an early age to be his child bride. Oh, come on! According to court documents and Mia’s own memoir, until 1990 (when Soon-Yi was 18 or 20), Woody “had little to do with any of the Previn children, (but) had the least to do with Soon-Yi” so Mia encouraged him to spend more time with her. Woody started taking her to basketball games, and the rest is tabloid history. So he hardly “had his eye on her” from the time she was a child.

Let me add this: If anyone is creeped out by the notion of a 55-year old man becoming involved with his girlfriend’s 19-year old adopted daughter, I understand. That makes perfect sense. But why not get the facts straight? If the actual facts are so repugnant to you, then why embellish them?

It’s understandable that Mia would remain furious with Woody for the rest of her life. If I were in Mia’s position, I’m sure I’d feel the same way. (Though I’d likely handle it as a private matter and not be tweeting about him being a pedophile, just before tweeting, “omfg look at this baby panda.”) I also understand the simmering anger of Ronan Farrow (née Satchel), who has famously said of Allen, “He’s my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression.” However, this particular dilemma might be resolved by Mia’s recent revelations that Ronan’s biological father may “possibly” be Frank Sinatra, whom Farrow married in 1966, when she was 21 and the crooner was 50.

While we’re on the subject, a word about this Sinatra business: To even say that Ronan is “possibly” Sinatra’s son implies that Mia was fooling around with her ex-husband decades after their divorce. Backdating from Ronan’s birthdate, it means that Farrow and Sinatra “hooked up” in March of 1987 when Mia was 42 and Old Blue Eyes was 71. This sort of dispels the myth that Woody and Mia had this idyllic, loving, monogamous relationship until Woody threw it all away in 1992, since Mia was apparently diddling her ex, five years earlier. If Mia was “just kidding” about the Sinatra scenario, it was an awfully insensitive thing to say, considering the fact that Sinatra’s wife, Barbara, is still very much alive. Did Mia stop to think how her coy tease might be perceived by the widow Sinatra? One can only wonder if this also fits Ronan’s definition of a “moral transgression.” (One may also wonder whether Woody is owed a fortune in reimbursement for child support.)

I am not here to slam Mia. I think she’s an exceptional actress and I seriously admire her political activism. (I even follow her on Twitter.) But those who hate Woody “for what he did to Mia,” should be reminded that if Sinatra was indeed Ronan’s biological father, it’s not the first time Mia had a child by a married man. In 1969, at the age of 24, she became pregnant by musician/composer André Previn, 40, who was still married to singer/songwriter Dory Previn. The betrayal is said to have led to Dory Previn’s mental breakdown and institutionalization, during which she received electroconvulsive therapy. She would later write a song called, “Beware of Young Girls” about Mia. Maybe sleeping with your friend’s husband doesn’t earn as many demerits as sleeping with your girlfriend’s adopted daughter, but if you’re waving the “Never Forget” banner in Mia’s honor, let’s be consistent and take a moment to also remember the late Dory Previn. (Or better yet, let’s forget the whole damn thing, considering it’s none of our business.)

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Now, on to the more delicate issue of Mia’s accusations during the custody case that Woody sexually abused Dylan/Malone.

A brief but chilling synopsis of the accusation is as follows: On August 4, 1992, almost four months after the revelation about Woody and Soon-Yi’s relationship understandably ignited a firestorm within the Farrow household, Woody was visiting Frog Hollow, the Farrow country home in Bridgewater, Connecticut, where Mia and several of her kids were staying. During an unsupervised moment, Woody allegedly took Dylan into the attic and, shall we say, “touched her inappropriately.” Later in the day, it was alleged that the child was wearing her sundress, but that her underpants were missing. The following day, Mia’s daughter allegedly told her mother what had happened, and Mia put the child’s recounting of the story on videotape as evidence.

Did this event actually occur? If we’re inclined to give it a second thought, we can each believe what we want, but none of us know. Why does the adult Malone say it happened? Because she obviously believes it did, so good for her for speaking out about it in Vanity Fair. Her brother Ronan believes it happened, so good for him for sticking up for his sister in 140 characters or less. They’ve both grown up in a household where this scenario has been accepted as indisputable fact, so why shouldn’t they believe it?

I know I’m treading a delicate path here, and opening myself up to accusations of “blaming the victim.” However, I’m merely floating scenarios to consider, and you can think what you will. But if Mia’s account is true, it means that in the middle of custody and support negotiations, during which Woody needed to be on his best behavior, in a house belonging to his furious ex-girlfriend, and filled with people seething mad at him, Woody, who is a well-known claustrophobic, decided this would be the ideal time and place to take his daughter into an attic and molest her, quickly, before a house full of children and nannies noticed they were both missing.

Even people who give Woody the benefit of the doubt and defend him on the internet are often confused on a few points. Some mistakenly say that the court found him “not guilty” of the molestation charges. The fact is there was never such a ruling because he was never charged with a crime, since investigative authorities never found credible evidence to support Mia’s (and Dylan’s) claim.

[Woody] was never charged with a crime, since investigative authorities never found credible evidence to support Mia’s (and Dylan’s) claim.

Let’s back up a bit: Mia’s allegations of molestation automatically triggered a criminal investigation by the Connecticut State Police, who brought in an investigative team from the Yale-New Haven Hospital, whose six-month long inquiry (which included medical examinations) concluded that Dylan had not been molested. I’ve since read a recurring canard that Woody “chose” the investigative team. Yet nobody has suggested how or why Mia’s team would ever outsource the investigation to a team “chosen” by Woody. Others have said that the investigators talked to psychiatrists “on Allen’s payroll” before letting him off the hook. The only way I can explain this is that the investigators, naturally, would have spoken with Woody’s shrinks before giving him a clean bill of health. So technically, yeah, Woody’s shrinks would have been paid a lot of money by Woody over the years. (Let’s even call it an annuity.) The same would be true of his dentist, his eye doctor, and his internist.

As for the evidentiary videotape of young Dylan’s claims, it’s been noted that there were several starts and stops in the recording, essentially creating in-camera “edits” to the young girl’s commentary. This raises questions as to what was happening when the tape wasn’t running. Was Mia “coaching” her daughter off-camera, as suggested by the investigators? Mia says no—she merely turned the camera on whenever Dylan starting talking about what Daddy did. Maybe we should take Mia at her word on this. Since I wasn’t there, I think it’s good policy not to presume what took place.

The videotape and the medical exams weren’t the only problems Mia faced in bringing abuse charges against her former lover. There were problems with inconsistencies in her daughter’s off-camera narrative as well. A New York Times article dated March 26, 1993, quotes from Mia’s own testimony, during which she recalled taking the child to a doctor on the same day as the alleged incident. Farrow recalled, “I think (Dylan) said (Allen) touched her, but when asked where, she just looked around and went like this,” at which point Mia patted her shoulders. Farrow recalls she took Dylan to another doctor, four days later. On the stand, Allen’s attorney asked Mia about the second doctor’s findings: “There was no evidence of injury to the anal or vaginal area, is that correct?” Farrow answered, “Yes.”

In the midst of the proceedings, on February 2, 1993, a revealing article appeared in the Los Angeles Times, headlined: “Nanny Casts Doubt on Farrow Charges,” in which former nanny Monica Thompson (whose salary was paid by Allen, since three of the brood were also his) swore in a deposition to Allen’s attorneys that she was pressured by Farrow to support the molestation charges, and the pressure led her to resign her position. Thompson had this to say about the videotape: ““I know that the tape was made over the course of at least two and perhaps three days. I recall Ms. Farrow saying to Dylan at that time, ‘Dylan, what did daddy do… and what did he do next?’ Dylan appeared not to be interested, and Ms. Farrow would stop taping for a while and then continue.”

Thompson further revealed a conversation she had with Kristie Groteke, another nanny. “She told me that she felt guilty allowing Ms. Farrow to say those things about Mr. Allen. (Groteke) said the day Mr. Allen spent with the kids, she did not have Dylan out of her sight for longer than five minutes. She did not remember Dylan being without her underwear.”

On April 20, 1993, a sworn statement was entered into evidence by Dr. John M. Leventhal, who headed the Yale-New Haven Hospital investigative team looking into the abuse charges. An article from the New York Times dated May 4, 1993, includes some interesting excerpts of their findings. As to why the team felt the charges didn’t hold water, Leventhal states: “We had two hypotheses: one, that these were statements made by an emotionally disturbed child and then became fixed in her mind. And the other hypothesis was that she was coached or influenced by her mother. We did not come to a firm conclusion. We think that it was probably a combination.”

Leventhal further swears Dylan’s statements at the hospital contradicted each other as well as the story she told on the videotape. “Those were not minor inconsistencies. She told us initially that she hadn’t been touched in the vaginal area, and she then told us that she had, then she told us that she hadn’t.” He also said the child’s accounts had “a rehearsed quality.” At one point, she told him, “I like to cheat on my stories.” The sworn statement further concludes: “Even before the claim of abuse was made last August, the view of Mr. Allen as an evil and awful and terrible man permeated the household. The view that he had molested Soon-Yi and was a potential molester of Dylan permeated the household… It’s quite possible —as a matter of fact, we think it’s medically probable—that (Dylan) stuck to that story over time because of the intense relationship she had with her mother.” Leventhal further notes it was “very striking” that each time Dylan spoke of the abuse, she coupled it with “one, her father’s relationship with Soon-Yi, and two, the fact that it was her poor mother, her poor mother,” who had lost a career in Mr. Allen’s films.

Much is made by Mia’s supporters over the fact that the investigative team destroyed their collective notes prior to their submission of the report. Also, the three doctors who made up the team did not testify in court, other than through the sworn deposition of team leader Leventhal. I have no idea if this is common practice or highly unusual. I won’t wager a guess as to what was behind the destruction of the notes any more than I’ll claim to know why Mia stopped and started her video camera while filming her daughter’s recollections over a few days, or who was alleged to have leaked the tape of Dylan to others, or why Mia wouldn't take a lie detector test. (Woody took one and passed.) In any event, destruction of the notes may have been part of the reason that, despite the very conclusive position taken by the investigators that Dylan was not abused, presiding Judge Elliot Wilk found their report “inconclusive.”

Judge Wilk would ultimately grant Mia custody of Satchel and Dylan. 15-year-old Moses chose not to see Woody, which was his right. It was a hard-won victory for Mia who returned home with eight of her nine children intact. She would go on to adopt six more, including Thaddeus Wilk Farrow, named in honor of the Honorable Judge Wilk.

Woody was granted supervised visitation of Satchel, but his request for immediate visitation with Dylan was denied until the young girl underwent a period of therapy, after which a further review of visitation would be considered. As a legal matter, the investigation of possible criminal abuse would continue.

Almost four months after Wilk’s decision, the Connecticut authorities abandoned the criminal investigation, resulting in an unusual statement from Litchfield, Connecticut County Prosecutor Frank Maco, who dismissed the abuse charges against Woody, but still maintained that he had “probable cause” to believe Dylan. In the minds of many, the decision would leave Woody in a kind of moral limbo. Legally, he was cleared of everything—except a dark cloud of suspicion. Woody was furious, and called a press conference in which he referred to the state’s attorney office as “cowardly, dishonest and irresponsible. Even today, as they squirm, lie, sweat, and tap-dance, pathetically trying to save face and justify their moral squalor… there was no evidence against me. There is none now. I promise you, smear as they may, they will always claim to have evidence; but notice that somehow they will manage to find reasons why they can’t quite show it to you.”

Woody’s ad-hoc press conference made for good television and was widely covered in the press. Less widely disseminated was a news item that appeared in the New York Times five months later (Feb. 24, 1994), which reported that a disciplinary panel found the actions of County Prosecutor Frank Maco (the “probable cause” guy) were cause for “grave concern” and may have prejudiced the case. It winds up that Maco sent his “probable cause” statement to the Surrogate’s Court judge in Manhattan who was still deciding on Allen’s adoption status of Dylan and Moses, which Mia was trying to annul. The panel wrote, “In most circumstances, [Maco’s comments] would have violated the prosecutor’s obligation to the accused. [His actions were] inappropriate, unsolicited, and potentially prejudicial.” The article states that the agency could have voted sanctions against Maco ranging from censure to disbarment. Though the decision was quite damning, Maco got what amounted to a slap on the wrist. Two years later, the reprimand was overturned, but Mia was unsuccessful in her bid to annul the adoptions. Legally, Woody remains the adoptive father of Dylan and Moses.

Moses Farrow, now 36, and an accomplished photographer, has been estranged from Mia for several years. During a recent conversation, he spoke of “finally seeing the reality” of Frog Hollow and used the term “brainwashing” without hesitation. He recently reestablished contact with Allen and is currently enjoying a renewed relationship with him and Soon-Yi.

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Life would go on for both Woody and Mia, respectively. Aside from tending to her growing family, Farrow would come to be recognized as a leading human rights advocate, with special concern for the plight of children in conflict-torn regions. She has worked diligently to bring attention to the Sudanese genocide in Darfur, and has made many trips to the region, receiving several awards for her humanitarian efforts in the process. Woody Allen would continue his ritual of writing and producing a film per-year—an unprecedented pace he’s maintained since 1969. The accolades and awards continue to pour in, and no one is less impressed than Allen, who has traditionally stayed away from all awards shows.

In 1997, Woody and Soon-Yi would marry in Venice, Italy, and over the next few years adopt two daughters. Anyone who has adopted is familiar with the vetting process conducted by social workers and licensed government agencies charged with looking out for the child’s welfare. Suffice it to say, the case of Woody and Soon-Yi was no exception, especially considering the highly-publicized events of 1992-93. Both adoptions, in two different states, were thoroughly reviewed by state court judges who found no reason why Woody and his wife shouldn’t be allowed to adopt. The girls, now aged 15 and 13, are named Bechet (after jazz saxophonist/clarinetist Sidney Bechet) and Manzie (after jazz drummer Manzie Johnson).

It took me little more than two years to complete my film, Woody Allen: A Documentary. I conducted hours of filmed interviews with Woody, who put forward no ground rules about questions I could ask, or topics to avoid. Although I shot some film on location with Woody in London and Cannes, most of our filming took place in New York City. On more than one occasion, when I was planning to interview Woody, I found I had to schedule around mornings when he’d walk his kids to school, or attend parent-teacher conferences. The normalcy of his domestic life was somehow surprising to me. I’ve not spent a lot of time with his kids, but I’ve met them on a few occasions where I’ve received the cursory “hello,” as they went about their business doing girl stuff with their friends. The only parent-child tensions I’ve been privy to are that his girls think their father’s mean for not letting them have a dog, and that he’s an idiot for not knowing how to work a computer. Lest anyone accuse me of being in Woody’s pocket, I’ll confess that I side with his kids on both counts.

My more recent professional association with Woody took place last month, when I was asked to work on the Allen clip montage for the Golden Globes. The montage editor, Nicholas Goodman, and I wanted to include a brief moment from The Purple Rose of Cairo, in which Mia appeared. The producers were concerned about whether she would sign a release for the clip. (The Screen Actors Guild maintains very strict rules about obtaining authorization from any actor who appears in a clip excised for compilations.) I thought it unlikely that Mia would object, as I had obtained a signed release for my documentary, in which she granted permission for her appearance in many lengthy clips from several Allen films. At the time, I was extremely grateful for her cooperation, for without it, I would have had a 12-year gap in my film, and Mia would have been extremely conspicuous by her absence. I even took it as a possible sign that 20 years after the fact, perhaps the healing process had begun to take hold. As a further sign of good will, Mia agreed to the use of her “Purple Rose” clip in the Golden Globe montage. The producers of the show were grateful. Everyone agreed it would have been a shame not to acknowledge Mia’s contribution to so many of Allen’s best films.

At the ceremony in Beverly Hills, actress Emma Stone, having just worked with Woody on his latest film Magic in the Moonlight, introduced the montage, followed by Diane Keaton’s surrogate acceptance speech, which was typically sentimental, loopy, and very Keatonesque. Woody, who would have never stopped throwing up had he been there, was instead in New York at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre for the opening of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, whose book was written by Woody’s friend Doug McGrath. Woody had already told me that if the show let out early enough, he was hoping to get home in time to catch the last quarter of the football playoffs.

Apparently, Mia and Ronan assigned more significance to the festivities than did Woody, seeing the televised occasion as a perfect opportunity to bring him down a few pegs. The first of Mia’s tweets, issued as the Woody segment commenced, was restrained and kind of cute: “Time to grab some icecream & switch over to #GIRLS.” I smiled when I read it, and thought, “Why not? You already saw the montage when you approved the use of your clip.” Her second tweet, referencing the recent Vanity Fair article, was nastier: “A woman has publicly detailed Woody Allen’s molestation of her at age 7. GoldenGlobe tribute showed contempt for her & all abuse survivors.”

This one puzzled me. I thought it was odd to say the Globe tribute showed contempt for abuse survivors when Mia willfully participated in the festivities by expressly agreeing to the use of her clip, when she had every opportunity to decline. She certainly wasn’t pressured, and we had an alternative version of the montage (sans Mia) all ready to go in case she passed. It seemed Mia either wanted it both ways, or simply assumed no one would ever learn that she was complicit in the tribute. By the time I saw her third tweet, asking, “Is he a pedophile?” and linking to the Vanity Fair article, my most charitable thought was that this woman needs to get over herself. A more mischievous part of me wanted to repost her tweet, but swap out her link for one leading to an article about the recent 10-year jail sentence received by her brother, John Charles Villiers-Farrow, for multiple counts of child molestation—a topic she’s been unusually quiet about, considering her penchant for calling out alleged (let alone, convicted) molesters to whom she’s exposed her children.

During a recent conversation, [Moses Farrow] spoke of “finally seeing the reality” of Frog Hollow and used the term “brainwashing” without hesitation.

I was actually somewhat impressed with Ronan Farrow’s now-famous tweet from the summer of 2012: “Happy father’s day—or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law’s day.” The target was fair game, and I remember thinking Ronan had inherited his father’s wit—before his actual paternity came into question. (A good sense of humor and the ability to think on his feet will serve him well on his own show on MSNBC.) But his tweet the night of the Globes was a bit more vicious: “Missed the Woody Allen tribute—did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?” Brevity may be the soul of wit, if not nuanced accuracy. Had he stated that a woman publicly “alleged” molestation, it probably wouldn’t have triggered quite the reaction Ronan was looking for, just weeks before his show debuts. To remind readers that the woman is recalling memories from the age of seven, when a six-month investigation characterized her as being “emotionally disturbed,” and making statements that were likely “coached or influenced by her mother,” takes a little more than 140 characters.

I’ve already said this, but it bears repeating: I know Dylan/Malone believes these events took place, and I know Ronan believes so too. I am not in a position to say they didn’t, any more than all the people on the internet calling for Woody’s head can say they did. The point is that accusations make headlines; retractions are buried on page twelve, and coerced accusations are as much a reality as coerced confessions. Since Woody literally pays no mind to this stuff, and he continues to work and have a happy home life, I would never suggest he’s a victim in this case. The real victim has always been Malone. For me, however, the real questions are: who’s doing the victimizing, and does pain really heal better in the public spotlight? I don’t pretend to have answers for either question.

Malone, who is now a writer and artist, and happily married to an information-technology specialist, had been living a seemingly quiet life out of the spotlight. Obviously, if she feels that an interview with Vanity Fair is a necessary part of her healing process, that’s her right. I can only hope it brought her some closure, and I sincerely wish her all the happiness and peace she’s been looking for. I can even clear up one tiny mystery for her, of which I have personal knowledge. In the Vanity Fair article, Malone says that while a senior in college, she received in the mail a stuffed, manila envelope from Woody, filled with old photos of the two of them. She didn’t recognize the handwriting, but “(the envelope) had a fake return name: Lehman.” When I was working on my documentary, I’d occasionally request material from Woody’s office, which would be mailed to me by his assistant whose name would appear on the return address. During Malone’s senior year in college, Woody had an assistant whose surname was Lehman. So there’s one mystery solved. If only all the others were so easy.

As to the overall reliability or objectivity of Vanity Fair, I can’t really take a position. I do know that the publication was sued for libel in 2005 by director Roman Polanski who, in 1977, pled guilty to unlawful intercourse with a thirteen-year-old girl in Los Angeles that year. The magazine published an article stating that in 1969, Polanski was seen fondling and hitting on a young model at Elaine’s restaurant in New York City on his way to the funeral of his late wife Sharon Tate, who had been brutally slain by the Manson family. One of the witnesses who testified on Polanski’s behalf was Mia Farrow, who, I’m told, remains friendly with the director to this day. I commend her for standing by her friend and going on record as a character witness. That’s what friends do. In fact, her support of Polanski is so steadfast that when he won the Oscar for best director for his 2002 masterpiece, The Pianist, Mia never even suggested that the Motion Picture Academy showed contempt for all abuse survivors in so honoring him. But then again, those were the days before Twitter.

Polanski won his libel suit against Vanity Fair. It was proven that the director wasn’t even in New York on his way to his wife’s funeral, which took place in Los Angeles

 

What Jesus Really Means

Jay Perini Daily Beast

Writing a book on Jesus showed me how polarized the opinions of him are. But for me, Jesus represents a third way—a symbolic example with the power to change lives.

Try writing a book on Jesus and see responses you’ll get. My short book,Jesus: The Human Face of God, appeared about a month ago, and I’ve been deluged with emails and letters, in quantity and passion of a kind that never followed from my earlier books on, say, Tolstoy or Walter Benjamin or Robert Frost. Let’s just say that readers often have their own very personal take on Jesus, and they’re looking for books that reinforce their idea of what it means to follow him.

One morning recently I woke up and, as usual, looked at my iPhone. Two nearly adjacent emails more or less summed up main kinds of responses I’ve had. One began with the salutation: “Dear Satan.” Another one started: “Dear Santa.” Until that moment, I’d never thought about how close these name are: a mere shift of a letter.

For those who think I’m Satan, or perhaps some lesser version of "the adversary" (which is what the name means in Hebrew), my book presents a challenge to their faith. I don’t take a literal view of the matter in many cases, suggesting that Jesus was probably not the product of virgin and God. The whole Christmas story was probably a later addition to the gospel narratives, presented only by the authors of Matthew and Luke. Mark and John seem never to have heard of the manger in Bethlehem, the Massacre of the Innocents, the hovering star, the three wise men, and so forth. Nor did the earliest Christian writings, the letters of Paul, make any mention of the birth of Jesus or his family circumstances. Paul, in fact, showed little interest in the life of Jesus. For the most part, the Christmas story, and the virgin birth, emerged from a passage in Isaiah 7, wherein the prophet assured the king of Judah that a child would be born (from a young woman, not a virgin) who would be called Emmanuel, “God dwells within.” It’s a lovely and important story, with theological meaning, yet it doesn’t withstand historical scrutiny.

But there is a mindset in the Christian community, largely found among conservative Christians, that regards the matter as black and white. The gospel narratives are literally true, or they’re crazy, even dangerous. C.S. Lewis famously embraced this notion: “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” In this view, there could be no third way.

I reject this as sheer nonsense by Lewis and those like him, who think it’s sheer fantasy to imagine that the gospels have anything deeply important to teach us without being absolutely “true.”

And then there is the “Dear Santa” crowd, who can’t tolerate the notion that anything in the gospels is useful as it’s so fantastic, such an insult to human intelligence. One stranger wrote to me: “You think Jesus came back from the dead? Give me a break! It’s a one-way street. You die. That’s it. Get over it.”

I’d guess that the majority of Americans today fall into the rationalistic camp—even those who go to church now and then. They bear a secret contempt for anything that smacks of the supernatural.

What I’m trying to argue, as passionately as I can, is that the Jesus story isn’t worth dying for, it’s worth living for. Jesus presents a third way, a way of being in the worth that embraces the Sermon on the Mount, with its challenge to violence and greed. The ethic of reciprocity lies at its center: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Jesus offered a “new covenant,” arguing that the old way—“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”—was finished. Now you must turn the other cheek, doing good to those who hate you. You must celebrate the peacemakers, the poor at heart, the meek. It’s a way of being in the world that embraces karma: be merciful, and God will show you mercy.

I argue Jesus offered a perfect example of God’s spirit in operation in the world. His life offered a pattern that said, implicitly: here’s how to do it. Even his death on the cross and the resurrection mean a great deal in symbolic terms.

I argue that the resurrection was not the Great Resuscitation. It was a total transformation. I just don’t accept the black-and-white thinking that goes along with needing to regard the gospels are literally true. These sacred stories offer a form of mythical thinking that is not only true but especially true. “The kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus said, when asked where it lay. He offered an example of transformation, and the fact that nobody recognized Jesus (at least at first) after the resurrection tells us something important: one should not expect that “eternal life” will look like anything you can imagine in these temporal lives.

I regard Jesus, like the Buddha, as a figure with the power to shape our lives. For me, the way of Jesus means daily focus, trying (through the hard work of “prayer, observance, disciple, thought and action,” my favorite line from T.S. Eliot’s “The Dry Salvages”) to salvage from the usual distractions and indirections of our lives some clear purpose. This is true salvation—from the Greek word soteria, which also means “enlightenment” and “peace.”

The 9/11 Scam: New York’s Disability Disgrace

Michael Daly Daily Beast

They said they were too traumatized to serve and protect. How the NYPD built a fraud case against dozens of police and firefighters who prosecutors say duped doctors and cashed in.

Dishonor became absolute disgrace with the news that more than half of the 80 retired cops and firefighters arrested in New York for fraudulently seeking Social Security disability benefits had used the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as a pretext.

“These links to 9/11 are not accurate,” Police Commissioner William Bratton noted at a big, multiagency press conference that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office held following the Tuesday arrests.

Bratton summarized his reaction in a word.

“Disgust.”

He reminded everyone of those who lost their lives at the World Trade Center and of those who continue to suffer from life-threatening illnesses related to 9/11. He said of the accused scamsters, “They disgraced themselves and embarrassed their families.”

On either side of Bratton and the other officials were two blown-up photos set upon easels. One was of retired cop Glenn Lieberman, who had received $175,758.40 from Social Security in addition to his NYPD pension after allegedly fraudulently attesting that he had been so traumatized by 9/11 that he was barely functional, unable to drive or shop or handle money. The picture shows him on a jet ski, flashing a big smile and giving the finger with both hands. 

The other photo is of retired cop Richie Cosentino, who received $207,639.70 from Social Security under the same pretext, using nearly identical language. This picture was posted on his Facebook page and it shows him triumphantly holding a big sailfish fish he has just caught.

“It was an awesome day off the coast of Costa Rica,” he wrote.  

He had better hope that the prosecutors do not take note of the date of the posting.

“September 11, 2012.”

On the 11^th anniversary of 9/11, Cosentino clearly did not imagine that this photo would be shown at a press conference with him, not the fish, on display as the captured one.

As Bratton explained it, the investigation had commenced after Social Security investigators noticed that a considerable number of retired cops who had secured psychiatric disability awards had also applied for pistol permits. 

“So we had a discrepancy,” Bratton said.

As the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau joined the probe, it was determined that many of these folks had used the same psychiatrists to substantiate their claims and described their symptoms as if from a common script:

“I nap on and off during the day… I have the TV on to keep me company… I was a healthy, active, productive person… I’m up and down all night long… My [fill in the family member] is always after me about my grooming…I’m unable to perform any type of work activity in or out of the house.”

The investigators also noted that the subjects used the same Long Island lawyer, Raymond Lavalle, a former FBI agent and onetime head of the Nassau County District Attorney’s rackets bureau. Some of the subjects were supposedly referred to Lavalle by John Minerva, who serves as a “disability consultant” with the NYPD Detectives Endowment Association. The subjects are said to have been coached by another “disability consultant” named Thomas Hale and by a retired cop named Joseph Esposito.

An intercepted phone conversation on January of last year recorded Esposito telling a subject who is about to be examined by Social Security officials, “When you get there, usually the first question they ask you is, ‘How did you get here?’ You’re gonna say, ‘My sister drove me.’ The next question they generally ask is ‘Who does the cooking, cleaning, shopping in your house?’ You’re gonna to say, ‘My mother.’”

Esposito goes on, “When you get to see the doctor, he’s gonna ask you questions. He’s not trying to trick you… They just want to see if you can concentrate. They’ll say to you, ‘But what do you do with yourself all day? How do you spend your day?’ You’re gonna tell ‘em, ‘I don’t sleep well at night. I’m up three, four times. Usually, I nap on and off during the day. I put the television on, you know, I keep changing channels ‘cause I can’t concentrate on the television. Just to hear a voice in the house.’”

Defendants can be seen playing softball or teaching martial arts or selling cannolis at a street festival at a time when they were supposedly too psychologically devastated to function.

Esposito continues, “And they’re liable to say, ‘Spell the word ‘world’, so you go 'W-R-L-D.’ Then they’re gonna say, ‘Spell it backwards.’ You think about it, and you can’t spell it backwards. Then, they’re liable to say. ‘From a hundred, subtract seven.’ You know, a hundred, 93, and then you’re trying to concentrate, and make it to 86 or 85, you know. You’re not too sure. Then they might tell you, ‘I’m going to tell you three things to remember. A spoon, a fork, and a dish,’ and they’re going to ask you later on in the conversation to remember them. You remember one of them.”

He advises, “When you’re talking to the guy, don’t look directly at him. You know, put your head down now and then, don’t answer right away. You know, pause for a second. You’re just trying to show that, you know,  you’re depressed. …You don’t have any desire for anything, and if you can, you pretend to have panic attacks.”

Esposito himself looked pretty depressed as he, Lavalle, Hale, and Minerva were led in handcuffs down an 11^th-floor hallway in a Manhattan courthouse on Tuesday afternoon.

The four alleged ringleaders sat in a row at the defendant’s table before Judge Daniel Fitzgerald. Their lawyers and the prosecutors had already agreed on $1 million bail each for the 81-year-old Lavalle and the 89-year-old Hale, $500 for 70-year-old Esposito and $250,000 for 59-year-old Minerva. 

The prosecutors told the judge that the case is just the first stage of a larger investigation of a scheme that ran for at least 26 years and may involve as many as 1,000 claimants who fraudulently obtained some $400 million. The 102 people presently charged, including 22 civilians as well as the retired cops and firefighters, collected a total of $21.4 million. Lavalle and his three pals allegedly pocketed a cut of the retroactive lump sum ofas much as $100,000 that each claimant received.

All four pleaded not guilty, as did each of the lesser defendants who appeared before the judge during the day. Those sorry souls arrived in handcuffs, their heads bowed, their shoes without laces as part of the standard procedure during booking. They included a retired NPYD sergeant named Scott Greco who sought to thwart the news photographers as he emerged from the courtroom after arraignment by pulling his black knit cap down over his face. He promptly walked directly into a wall.

“At least he laughed, too,” a photographer noted.

Among the other defendants was a onetime cop named Vincent LaMantia, who became a firefighter before retiring, He allegedly secured $148,876.40 in fraudulent disability payments.

“Which he then used to fund his lifestyle,” the prosecutor said.

The prosecutor reported that this lifestyle included travel to Indonesia and various other adventures.

“He brags about it in a series of YouTube videos,” the prosecutor said.

Another defendant, retired cop Michael DeMartino, was accused of securing $266,633.30 in fraudulent claims. He was already out on $750,000 bail after being charged with selling cocaine to an undercover cop.

DeMartino’s lawyer, Marc Cohen, contended that doctors independent of the purported conspiracy support his client’s disability claim. Cohen also said he had a report from DeMartino’s former commander commending him for his actions on 9/11 and during the days that followed.

“I have a hero they’re asking to remand,” Cohen said.

The judge said he could not just overlook the drug charge and ordered DeMartino held on $15,000 bail. Cohen asked that his client at least be placed in protective custody.

DeMartino stepped away, followed by another defendant and then another and then another, each of them given a big brown envelope with the name on it containing a copy of the indictment and a bail letter summarizing a case that seems devastatingly strong. 

The evidence includes photos as damning as the ones that were displayed at the press conference. Defendants can be seen flying a helicopter or playing softball or teaching martial arts or riding a motorcycle or selling cannolis at a street festival at a time when they were supposedly too psychologically devastated to function.

The 10 cops not yet in custody included Lieberman, the one seen in a photo giving the double finger from a jet ski. He was expected to surrender and be arraigned by Wednesday.

The image is the very opposite of the images of the cops and firefighters who answered pure evil with absolute good on 9/11.

“The brazenness is shocking,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance rightly said

 

 

Biography Casts Critical Light on Fox News Chief

By JULIE BOSMAN and BILL CARTER NY TIMES

Roger Ailes was so eager to influence national politics that in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, he told fellow Fox News executives point-blank: “I want to elect the next president.”

In the corporate thicket of News Corporation, according to a new book, Mr. Ailes dared to battle with Lachlan Murdoch, a son of Rupert Murdoch, the chairman, openly gloating when the younger Mr. Murdoch eventually left his post at the company and even commandeering his chair.

At Fox News, the book says, Mr. Ailes was disdainful of even his most bankable on-air talent, privately calling Bill O’Reilly “a book salesman with a TV show” and Brian Kilmeade, a peppy Fox host, “a soccer coach from Long Island.”

Those episodes are described in “The Loudest Voice in the Room” by Gabriel Sherman, a 560-page biography of Mr. Ailes being published on Jan. 21 by Random House.

The book aims to be an exhaustive look at Mr. Ailes’s life and his monumental career, particularly as chairman of Fox News Channel. Under his stewardship, the network, known best for its conservative opinion shows in prime time, dominates the cable news competition, frequently posting ratings better than those for its main rivals, MSNBC and CNN, combined. It has also become the most profitable division of 21st Century Fox, its parent, with annual earnings that have been estimated at $1 billion.

The book describes in detail Mr. Ailes’s professional ambition, his desire to influence American politics through a conservative prism, and his status as a visionary who possessed an intuitive understanding of the power of television to shape public opinion. Before entering the corporate world, Mr. Ailes was a political consultant, and Mr. Sherman’s book credits him with being a pioneer in using television during election campaigns.

In the months before publication, the book has drawn sharp criticism from a chorus of people connected to Fox News, including employees and contributors who have taken to Twitter to attack Mr. Sherman.

Mr. Ailes, in what some viewed as an attempt to pre-empt Mr. Sherman’s book, cooperated with another biography, “Roger Ailes: Off Camera” by Zev Chafets, which was published last year by Sentinel, a conservative imprint at Penguin.

In his book, Mr. Sherman, a contributing editor at New York magazine, follows Mr. Ailes, 73, from his boyhood in Ohio to his perch as one of the most powerful figures in the history of television.

Despite being unsatisfied with many of the Republican candidates for president in 2012, Mr. Ailes endeavored to promote Mitt Romney on Fox News programs, the book says. Before the Wisconsin congressman Paul D. Ryan was chosen as Mr. Romney’s running mate, Mr. Ailes advised Mr. Ryan that his television skills needed work and recommended a speech coach.

At the beginning of the general election, a four-minute video criticizing President Obama’s policies was broadcast on “Fox and Friends,” provoking outrage from the left and prompting the network to say publicly that Mr. Ailes had no involvement in its creation. In “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” Mr. Sherman writes that the video “was Ailes’s brainchild.”

The New York Times obtained a copy of the book in advance of its publication.

Mr. Sherman said in the source notes that he interviewed 614 people who knew or worked with Mr. Ailes for the book, which took more than three years to report and write. More than 100 pages are devoted to source notes and bibliography.

Former employees cited in the book talked of Mr. Ailes’s volatile temper and domineering behavior. In one anecdote, a television producer, Randi Harrison, told Mr. Sherman that while negotiating her salary with Mr. Ailes at NBC in the 1980s, he offered her an additional $100 each week “if you agree to have sex with me whenever I want.”

A Fox News spokeswoman said in a statement on Tuesday: “These charges are false. While we have not read the book, the only reality here is that Gabe was not provided any direct access to Roger Ailes and the book was never fact-checked with Fox News.”

The book also describes an explosive episode dating back to 1995, when Mr. Ailes was a high-ranking executive at NBC and locked in a power struggle with another executive, David Zaslav.

At a company dinner, according to the book, Mr. Ailes made clear he was ready to do battle with Mr. Zaslav. “Let’s kill the S.O.B.,” he told his dining companions, Mr. Sherman writes. At a separate meeting with Mr. Zaslav, the book says, Mr. Ailes was said to have unleashed a vulgar, anti-Semitic slur at his rival.

That episode was promptly investigated, at NBC’s behest, by a partner from the firm Proskauer Rose, Mr. Sherman writes. The partner concluded in his internal report that he believed the allegation that Mr. Ailes made an anti-Semitic remark — an obscene phrase with the words “little” and “Jew” — was true. Bob Wright, the former chairman and chief executive of NBC who was Mr. Ailes’s boss at the time, is quoted in the book as saying, “My conclusion was that he probably said it.” Mr. Sherman also cites documentation from the investigation.

Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Ailes specifically denied using an anti-Semitic slur against Mr. Zaslav.

Mr. Zaslav, now the chief executive of Discovery and one of the most powerful executives in television, also denied it. “We fought with each other and we fought with a lot of other people,” he said Tuesday in a phone interview. “But this allegation is false.” He added that he and Mr. Ailes were now friends.

In his source notes, Mr. Sherman quotes Mr. Zaslav as denying the episode.

Random House, which acquired “The Loudest Voice in the Room” in December 2010, said that Mr. Sherman was prepared to speak up in the news media to defend the book. An excerpt will run in New York magazine.

Both Mr. Sherman and Random House say they are girding for a counterattack from Fox News. Some Fox employees have already denigrated Mr. Sherman publicly, with the prime-time host Sean Hannity calling him a “phony journalist” on Twitter.

Last year, lawyers from Fox News met with lawyers from Random House to discuss Mr. Sherman’s book. Fox requested the meeting because it had heard about allegations that might be in the book that it said were inaccurate, and to emphasize that the book had not been fact-checked by Fox News.

Theresa Zoro, a spokeswoman for Random House, said in a statement that Mr. Sherman’s book was “an objective and rigorously reported account of Roger Ailes’s life and his running of Fox News. We fully stand by the book. If anyone has issues with it, we will respond with the facts as Gabe Sherman has reported them.”

Mr. Sherman said in an email: “I consider Roger Ailes to be one of the most fascinating, consequential figures in contemporary American life. I wrote this book to shed light on the full scope of his talents and power, which have found their fullest expression at Fox News.”

 

Jerry Seinfeld on how to be funny without sex and swearing

Jerry Seinfeld: 'I think of myself more as a sportsman than as an artist.' Photograph: Christopher Lane for the Guardian

Once or twice a week, towards the end of the day, Jerry Seinfeld leaves the Manhattan office where he spends his afternoons writing, but he doesn't head home to his family. Instead, he shows up unannounced at some minor comedy club in New York or New Jersey, and inserts himself into that night's lineup. Seinfeld reportedly has a private jet, owns more than 40 vintage Porsches and makes at least $32m (£19.5m) a year, in large part from syndication revenue, adding to a net worth estimated at $800m (£487m) in 2010. Having spent a decade making a celebrated "show about nothing", he could easily afford to just do nothing now. But he prefers – or feels compelled – to keep honing his act, trying a new line here, shaving a word off an old one there, analysing the audience's laughter: a scientist of comedy, painstakingly calibrating his equipment. By the time you hear a Seinfeld "bit" at one of his £70-a-ticket O2 Arena gigs, or on a TV talkshow, it will have undergone months or years of testing, and there won't be a syllable wasted. As in: "Why does moisture ruin leather? Aren't cows outside a lot of the time?" Or: "A two-year-old is like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it." Or: "People are never really sure if they have milk."

Because his material's never edgy or obscene, because his delivery is so laidback, and because he's so stupendously wealthy, it's easy to dismiss the Seinfeld of 2014 as altogether too slick, smug and mainstream. But in his best lines, buffed to a perfect shine, extreme professionalism crosses over into a kind of absurdist Zen – and that takes work. "To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information," Seinfeld says, on a bright winter morning in a photo studio three floors above Broadway. He has just posed for pictures in one of his trademark designer suits, but now he's back in dark jeans, a sweatshirt and blue-and-green sneakers, his tall frame slouched in a tatty armchair. "The timbre of it, the shape of it, the length of it – there's so much information in a laugh. A lot of times, you could play me just the laughs from my set and I could tell you, from the laugh, what the joke was. Because they match."

This April, despite being lodged in the collective consciousness as permanently fortyish, Seinfeld turns 60, which is the kind of age he used to tell jokes about. ("My folks are moving to Florida. They didn't want to move to Florida, but they're in their 60s, and that's the law.") He has become a grand old man of standup, a national treasure; don't audiences laugh simply because he's Seinfeld, especially if they hadn't been expecting him? "Maybe for a couple of minutes. But I've said it many times: nobody laughs at a reputation. They get excited in the beginning, but they can't lie to me. They cannot lie to me. I'm going to find out."

For years after the finale of Seinfeld in 1998 – an event only beaten, in sitcom viewership history, by the finales of M*A*S*H and Cheers – people speculated about his next major project. There was the 2002 documentary Comedian; and there was 2007's Bee Movie, a modest box-office success, which Seinfeld co-wrote and produced, and in which he voiced the lead role of a bee outraged to learn that humans are stealing honey. But even as he promoted it, he was ruling out the possibility of a Hollywood producing career. ("Oh my God, I'd kill myself," he told one interviewer. "Give me a gun.") Then came The Marriage Ref, a shortlived combination of gameshow and reality series in which celebrities cast judgment on real-life couples' marital disputes, panned in both its American and British incarnations.

These days, an alternative possibility is beginning to suggest itself: what if the post-Seinfeld Seinfeld just isn't a "major projects" kind of guy? His latest creation, a web series entitled Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, has frequent moments of brilliance, but it's not even a show about nothing; it's barely a show at all. In each of the episodes, which vary in length, Seinfeld collects a fellow comedian in a different vintage car (Chris Rock, Larry David, Mel Brooks and Ricky Gervais are among the participants); they then drive to a diner or cafe, drink coffee and talk. "The real action of the show," the New York Times's reviewer explained, "consists of this seemingly involuntary snorting, cackling laughter of middle-aged men so amused by each other's observations … that they rock in their seats and double over in helpless paroxysms." Actually, there are some women, too: the third season, which starts this month, includes Tina Fey. But apart from that, the analysis isn't unfair. What's strange is how well the idea works.

"My goal was to make it the effortless talkshow, where you don't have to show up, you don't have to think about what you're wearing, there's no makeup, there's no prep – there's nothing. It's literally getting in a car." The effort comes in the editing, but that's another opportunity to smooth and hone obsessively, "so I kind of enjoy it". The format doesn't allow for audience-tested Seinfeld one-liners, so much of the pleasure comes from the other comedians' contributions. One of the best episodes largely involves Mel Brooks eating pastrami in Carl Reiner's living room and retelling old jokes: "Guy gets hit by a car, little Jewish man, his friend says: 'Get a pillow! Do something! Put it under his head! All right. Are you comfortable?' And the guy says: 'I make a living …'"

A competing theory for Seinfeld's low profile since 1998 is that his comedy belongs squarely to the 90s – an era of economic plenty, before 9/11, before widespread anxiety about climate change, when the bottomless self-absorption of Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer felt excusable. Rewatching the show today is a curious experience. The haircuts are terrible, obviously. But the much-hyped focus on "nothing" – on overblown conflicts with doormen, restaurateurs and so on – feels familiar: it's central to many of the shows that count Seinfeld as a major influence, from Arrested Development to The Office to Curb Your Enthusiasm. (The latter's success fuelled yet another theory about Seinfeld's post-90s career: that Larry David had been the genius behind the sitcom all along.) What stands out, in those old Seinfelds, is the weird callousness: a total lack of concern with anyone other than the central foursome, unmatched even by Larry David's character in Curb, or David Brent, or the South Park kids. When George's fiancee dies, poisoned by the glue in the cheap wedding invitations he'd insisted on buying, his pure relief is certainly funny, and in keeping with the famous motto of the show's writers: "No hugging, no learning." But it's also more pathologically egocentric than anything you'd encounter, in a comedic context, on TV today.

The real-life Seinfeld has little time for this kind of analysis, professing zero interest in capturing zeitgeists, or in the postmodern themes that academics love identifying in his work. (He even claims, semi-convincingly, not to know what people meant when they called the sitcom "meta": "I've looked it up a number of times. Could you define it for me?") His preferred view of himself isn't the cliched one of the tortured comedian battling inner demons, but of a baseball player or a sprinter, obsessively cultivating a single skill, fighting not to lose his edge. "I think of myself more as a sportsman than I do an artist," he says, which explains his bafflement when he's asked, as he often is, about whether he'd like to take acting roles in films. "It's hilarious to me that anyone would think I would have the slightest interest in it. Baseball players don't think: 'I gotta get into soccer!' They think: 'I gotta do what I gotta do to try and hit that ball today. That's my life.' As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don't get that."

Keeping his act sex- and swear-free, the way he sees it, is part of this athletic challenge, since it denies him the easiest laughs: "A person who can defend themselves with a gun is just not very interesting. But a person who defends themselves through aikido or tai chi? Very interesting." Likewise his focus on minutiae. "It's so much easier when you're talking about something that really is important. You've already got a better foundation than someone who's bringing up something that does not need to be discussed." Such as? "I do a lot of material about the chair. I find the chair very funny. That excites me. No one's really interested in that – but I'm going to get you interested! That, to me, is just a fun game to play. And it's the entire basis of my career."

The cast of Seinfeld. Photograph: Nbcuphotobank/Rex Features

One episode of Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee does attempt to get more serious: it features Seinfeld's former co-star Michael Richards, and concerns the shockingly racist tirade , directed at black hecklers, that ended Richards's standup career in 2006. "It was a very bad miscalculation," Seinfeld says today. But a miscalculation, he insists, is what it was; it's a misunderstanding of standup to conclude that it showed Richards to be a racist himself. "Lenny Bruce already did that bit! He already did it! It's a knife-throwing act, and unfortunately Michael missed." On camera, Richards seems genuinely remorseful, and resigned to never working again.

In a recent New York Times profile of Seinfeld, another guest on the series, Sarah Silverman, called him "the least neurotic Jew on earth". But his early life was highly typical for Jewish New York. The son of Austrian and Syrian immigrants, he was raised in the Long Island town of Massapequa, which he likes to say is "an old Indian name, meaning 'by the mall'". The family kept strictly kosher and attended synagogue; the teenage Jerome spent time on an Israeli kibbutz. He seems never to have considered any career but comedy: as a college student in Queens, he managed to persuade his tutors to let him study standups – and perform himself – for course credit. (Jackie Mason, in the audience one night, delivered praise that kept him going for years: "It makes me sick, you're going to be such a big hit.") In 1981, he got his big break: the first of many spots on Dick Cavett's talk show. Seven years later, over coffee in a New York diner (of course) with Larry David, the sitcom, originally entitled The Seinfeld Chronicles, was born.

All the way through, from first standup shows to stardom, he forced himself to work by marking a cross on a calendar for every day he wrote material; soon enough, he had a long chain of crosses, and kept going partly because he didn't want to break the chain. Since he revealed this trick to a would-be comedian years ago, "Seinfeld's Productivity Secret" has achieved cult status online: there are at least three apps and one websitededicated to helping people emulate it. This amuses its inventor no end. "It's so dumb it doesn't even seem to be worth talking about," he says. "If you're a runner and you want to be a better runner, you say, well, I'll run every day and mark an X on the calendar every day I run. I can't believe this was useful information to anybody!" He spreads his palms, a gesture conveying the sheer obviousness of the insight. "Really? There are people who think, 'I'll just sit around and do absolutely nothing, and somehow the work will get done'?"

Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld in Central Park, New York. Photograph: Jamie Mccarthy/Getty Images for Baby Buggy

Earlier in his career, it was Seinfeld's life outside work that consumed the media most: first when, in his late 30s, he began dating the 17-year-old Shoshanna Lonstein, now afashion designer; and again at 45, when he began a relationship with a PR executive, Jessica Sklar, made public mere weeks after she'd returned from honeymoon with her husband, the scion of a family of Broadway theatre owners. But 15 years later, he touts the conventionality of his domestic arrangements: he and Sklar, now Jessica Seinfeld, have three children aged between eight and 13, and he is openly judgmental of celebrities incapable of such stability. "Comedians are known for having long marriages," he says. Why? "I have to apologise for the self-serving answer I'm going to give you, but: we're smart. If you're smart, you stay married if you can. Marriage is hard for everyone – that's a basic fact – but it's a better life if you can do it. Very nice. Very relaxing. Very enjoyable." One partof his standup routine stresses the importance of realistic expectations. "Here's the secret I'm going to tell you about relationships," he tells his audience. "They don't work … Do you know what works? Potato chips work. Fire extinguishers work. Relationships? They don't work."

Seinfeld has a theory about marriage and driving, which may explain his choice of post-sitcom projects. "They're the window into every aspect of human life," he claims. "There's just two things I'd need to find out everything I want to know about everyone: one, let me see them drive; two, let me hear them talk about marriage, whether they're married or not. That's going to tell me exactly your relationship to the world. I wouldn't need to know anything else." If he had the time, inclination or energy, he says – "and I have none of those three" – he'd make The Marriage Ref again, "just because I do find marriage to be the most interesting subject there is." (If there is a next time, I recommend not including Alec Baldwin on a panel of experts on marital harmony.)

The subject also offers him a guaranteed point of connection to audiences, counteracting the ironic fate of the extremely successful observational comic – which is that once you're travelling in private jets or a fleet of vintage Porsches, the life you're observing isn't one your audiences know. ("I may be dumb," he says, when I ask if he ever talks about his car collection in his act, "but I'm not that dumb.") Leaving LA also helped with that problem. "That's the nice thing about living in New York: just being on the street does a good job of breaking [the celebrity bubble]," he says. "LA? Not so much. You leave your gorgeous house, get in your gorgeous car, and go to some gorgeous place where you're feted. It's tougher. That was a conscious choice of mine, when I lived in LA: I thought, if I want to stay funny, I need to get out of here."

Jerry Seinfeld on stage in New York in 2013. Photograph: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for New York Comedy

To this day, Seinfeld still marks crosses on a calendar, keeping regular hours (albeit relaxed ones: most days, he says, he'll meet a friend for a two-hour breakfast) and spending 20 minutes a day doing Transcendental Meditation, which is the only topic to jolt him from his default nonchalance into real enthusiasm: "I could do the whole interview about TM, to be honest, but we'd just lose everybody. I'll describe it very simply: it's like you have a phone, and somebody gives you a charger for it. And so now you can recover from this exhausting experience of being a human, twice a day. It's deep rest. Now that's something that can help people. As opposed to this idiotic calendar thing."

Seinfeld talks about his comic routines as if they're discovered rather than created: observations that are out there, camouflaged against the patterns of everyday life, waiting for him to detect them. One example: the other day, his two sons were arguing, because one of them had farted. "They were accusing each other – 'he who smelt it dealt it!' – and I just thought, Jesus, these guys need some new material. That's the same thing I was saying when I was five. Fifty years ago! Kids! I can't believe they're still doing the same material!"

"Kids need new material": that was an idea with legs. With a bit of work, there could be a few minutes of an act there. Some things just have potential while others don't; he doesn't claim to be able to explain why. Chairs are inherently amusing. Salt-shakers, Seinfeld reckons, are not. Reflecting upon the comic possibilities of various other everyday objects, a thoughtful expression passes across his face. "I find the fork very funny," he says.

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