Do you like Woody Allen? Then we have some great news. But only if you like Woody Allen.

Because if you don’t like Woody Allen, preferring to devote your time to clicking on pictures of scantily-clad girls on the internet in the desperate hope that you’ll be redirected to a pornography site, only to be disappointingly taken to a clothes retailer, we’ve got some bad news.

American Apparel has given Woody Allen $5 million for using an image of him on a billboard without permission. Just think how many smug, creatively-desolate Scarlett Johansson movies he can make with that. Joy.

It may not seem that way at first, but Woody Allen and American Apparel have a lot in common, in that you always know what you’re going to get from both of them.

In the case of Woody Allen, you’re going to get a hundred films that aren’t as good as Annie Hall that you still have to pretend to like because all your arty friends will disown you if you say that you thought Iron Man was better than Cassandra’s Dream. And with American Apparel you’re going to get hundreds of web adverts featuring sexy models writing around in leotards that you hope are porn before realising to your dismay that actually a) the adverts take you to a website selling overpriced clothes for wankers and b) that sexy model was actually a 14-year-old boy.

But when Woody Allen and American Apparel collide, you end up with a rubbish billboard poster and a slightly humiliating out-of-court settlement for $5 million.

Two years ago, American Apparel used an image of Woody Allen dressed as a Hasidic Jew in a billboard campaign. The trouble with that was that nobody had asked for Woody Allen’s permission first. But that was OK, American Apparel said after Woody Allen sued it for $10 million, because the billboard was a parody.

You know, one of those clever parodies where nobody can actually tell what it’s supposed to be parodying and it all ends up with Woody Allen getting $5 million because it was all done so cackhandedly from the outset. Parodies are brilliant. NYT reports:

The settlement, which was announced by both parties on the steps of the federal courthouse in Manhattan, came as a jury trial was set to start. After making a brief courtroom appearance, Mr. Allen read from a prepared statement: “It’s of course possible by going through the trial, a jury might have awarded me more money, but this is not how I make my living.”

No, Woody Allen’s right – suing annoyingly hipsterish clothing retailers isn’t how he makes his living. He makes his living by going from country to country asking people to finance all those dreary naval-gazing films that only about four people ever watch anyway. His way is better.

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She’s a style icon, a Hollywood megastar and a thoroughly beautiful girl. But when the ‘not sexy’ thing she’s talking about is getting off with another one of the most visually pleasing women in the movie business – Penelope Cruz – then, well, we wouldn’t hold it against you if you went and told Scarlett she was talking a great big pile of crud.

The kiss they shared wasn’t a subtle ploy to distract everyone in the world from the fact that all the Hollywood types seem to be getting struck down with one illness or another. No, it’s just a part of that new Woody Allen film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which is clearly going to be a great big bag of balls.

Aside from the scene in question, of course.

Yes, the thrilling news that Woody’s film wasn’t laughed off at Cannes – far from it, it received a thirty-six hour standing ovation or something – has got a lot of people convinced it’s for one reason and one reason alone, and the ethereal lifeforce that is hecklerspray agrees wholeheartedly: hot lesbian action.

But while most red-blooded males and, let’s face it, a hell of a lot of females, gay men, transexuals, hermaphrodites and everything else inbetween agree with the theory that ol’ Woody is using the technique of making two beautiful women lezz off on screen purely to get some artificial buzz surrounding the flick, the women themselves seem oblivious to the fact that it’s a really, really brilliant marketing ploy.

Speaking to some people who were trying not to gawk at her that little bit too much, Scarlett Johansson said:

“There were 60 crewmen eating salami sandwiches. It’s really the least sexy thing you can ever imagine.”

Actually, we can imagine something a lot less sexy, it’s just we’re not allowed to mention it here by law. There have been problems in the past that hecklerspray can’t really re-visit, unfortunately. Needless to say, salami is the last of the things to be worried about.

Penelope Cruz, on the other hand, took an altogether different view of things – speaking to some other people, or they might have been the same ones, we’re not really sure, the star of hecklerspray favourite Chromophobia said:

“We didn’t talk about it much, then Woody told us how the shot was going to be, but Scarlett and I don’t have any funny stories to tell about it. It felt [like] nothing, nothing happened.”

See – it’s always the same. Those that get all the breaks in life don’t bloody well appreciate it, whereas those underdogs who would take pleasure in the situation are forced to sit back and watch. Actually, come to think of it that’s pretty win-win, so we’ll stop complaining now.

Good lord it’s a slow news day.

Three cheers for Woody Allen and his much maligned interest in younger women!

The news should finally shut up all the player-haters out there – you know who you are! The ones of you who thought it ‘weird’ for a man to show a sexual interest in his own adopted daughter.

Well you can now jump off your high horses because, like World War 2 before, the ends always justify the means and the sight of Scarlett and Penelope lezzin’ off is no doubt a joyful scene.

The on-screen lezathon is being credited with reviving the career of the sputtering genius filmmaker, whose film received a ten minute standing ovation, which is a weird amount of time to clap for anything, but well done.

According to OK! Magazine, one critic said of the scene:

It woke up all the dopey critics and practically got a standing ovation.

The film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is a romantic comedy wherein Cruz’s character meets Scarlett’s character in Barcelona, things happen, they lezz off, more things happen, and it ends.

The film also stars Penelope Cruz’s real-life boyfriend, Javier Bardem, who plays a character in the film that gets caught up in the plot somehow, doesn’t matter.

The scene was apparently intended by Woody to be his most erotic scene to date, and that’s something, as only Cliff Richard, Bill Cosby, Bruce Forsyth and Dennis Norden have stayed in their respective games longer.

Woody Allen said:

I want people to see the romance, and I wanted some laughs. I wanted to see two young women who go to Barcelona…and gradually things start to disintegrate [lezz off].

‘Disintegrate’ eh? Is that how today’s old people are referring to it, hmm? What happened to a good, old-fashioned lemonfest? They’re a morbid bunch, aren’t they?

Yes, they are. It’s largely because they’ll be dead soon and as we have no idea what that’s like lets pity them and let them have their own slang, lets even incorporate it into our own speech, as a way of saying: Well done old people! Despite the appalling strain you put on society you’re quite like us youngsters in many ways, what with the way you like watching girls kiss and stuff, so with that in mind thanks for everything!

Because we too literally cannot wait to see Scarlett disintegrate all over Penelope Cruz’s face, and it’s OK if you can’t wait too.

Viva la dirty, old bastard!

Read More – Lesbian Kiss Saves Woody, OK! Magazine

Look, we know that most people would rather remove their bellend with the rough side of a cheesegrater than actually watch a Woody Allen film these days, primarily because they’re all uniformly rubbish, but this one – entitled Vicky Cristina Barcelona – is different.

OK, it’s probably not that different at all really – we’re willing to bet it’ll be as painfully rubbish to watch as anything else Woody Allen has released in the last 20 years – but in this one Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz have a bit of a kiss. We’ve got the video after the jump, effectively saving you the price of a cinema ticket. We’re good to you, no?

It must be brilliant being Woody Allen. Just because he made maybe three good films in the 1970s he can get actors to do pretty much whatever he wants now. One minute he’s all like “Hey Scarlett Johansson, swan around in a tennis skirt for me,” and the next he’s like “Hey Ewan McGregor, be in this film of mine even though it’s obviously going to be awful. And do a funny accent while you’re at it!”

And now that he’s started making films in Spain, Woody Allen can be all like “Hey Scarlett Johansson again, get off with Penelope Cruz while I film it! Do it! I’m Woody Allen, director of Annie Hall, for God’s sake! It’s art! What? No, this isn’t an erection, whatever gave you that idea?”

Woody Allen’s new movie is called Vicky Christina Barcelona. It’s been billed as a ‘comedy drama’, which mean it’s either a naval-gazing exploration of blah blah blah snore, or a film that Woody Allen thinks is a comedy but since he stopped being funny several years ago it had to have the word ‘drama’ bunged onto the end to stop people feeling sorry for him.

But that’s not why people will go and see Vicky Christina Barcelona. Actually, nobody’s going to see Vicky Christina Barcelona anyway, because it’s a late-period Woody Allen film and they’d rather spend two hours doing something more fun, like letting infected AIDS monkeys chew on their balls.

But if anyone does go and see Vicky Christina Barcelona it’s because there’s apparently a lesbian sex scene between Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz in it, plus a threesome with Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz and the bloke with the funny haircut from No Country For Old Men.

And guess what? There’s a hint of this Scarlett Johansson on Penelope Cruz action in the just-released Vicky Christina Barcelona trailer. Have a look…

Do you see what we did there? We made you watch one minute and 12 seconds of hopelessly dull, dialogue-free trailer for a film you’re never actually going to watch anyway just so you could see Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz kissing for less than two seconds. You pervert.

But has the promise of a Scarlett Johansson/ Penelope Cruz sex scene whetted your appetite to see Vicky Christina Barcelona? No, us neither. Looks rubbish, doesn’t it?

But you wouldn't know it to drive around America gawking out of your car window instead of concentrating on the road ahead of you. Because if you've been doing that, the moments directly before your gruesome death were probably spent looking at billboards of Woody Allen appearing to endorse American Apparel.

However, Woody Allen hasn't been endorsing American Apparel at all, which is why he's launched a $10 million lawsuit against the company. And he has every right to, because the billboards don't accurately representing him as an artist. No, they'd need to be 500% shitter and have Ewan McGregor in them to do that.

It's a marvel that Woody Allen's image hasn't been used in adverts for clothing before. After all, nothing sells threads to the cool kids like perpetually dour 72-year-old Jewish men who marry girls they've raised as their own daughter since the age of eight. Nothing.

So it was only a matter of time before some clever young hotshot decided that the best marketing strategy around involved dressing Woody Allen up in a fake beard, making him look even more Jewish than he already is and plastering him all over billboards in New York and Los Angeles.

And the company that hotshot worked for was American Apparel – you know, the company that puts scantily-clad adverts featuring androgynous models onto websites in the hope that people will a) think that it's porn, b) click the advert to be taken to the porn site, c) not be instantly angered when they find out that the website sells T-shirts and not porn and d) be so impressed by the produce that they end up buying some spandex one-pieces. You know American Apparel, right?

Well, long story short, American Apparel didn't bother asking Woody Allen if it could use his image on the billboard adverts and now Woody Allen is summoning up all the fury his puny under-developed body can muster to sue American Apparel back where it came from. Reuters reports:

Woody Allen on Monday sued American Apparel Inc, claiming the U.S. clothing company used his image in advertising on billboards and the Internet without his consent… Allen, an Oscar-winning U.S. director known for his work in films such as "Annie Hall" and "Crimes and Misdemeanors," said in the suit he was neither contacted by the company, nor compensated for the use of his image. "Allen does not engage in the commercial endorsement of products or services in the United States," according to the lawsuit.

It seems as if American Apparel hadn't thought to compensate Woody Allen at all for using his image in the billboard adverts. That was a big mistake for the company to make, because Woody Allen needs all the money he can get. God knows it's hard enough for him to finance his movies in his own country as it is. Perhaps the American Apparel lawsuit money will be enough for him to go back to New York and stop fouling up London all the time. If that's the case, we can only pray that he wins.

And maybe Woody Allen can even find inspiration in this lawsuit. It does have all the ingredients of a good movie after all, so all Woody Allen needs to do is remove all of those ingredients, replace them with several self-indulgent scenes of Scarlett Johansson looking off into the middle-distance, change the story completely until it's rubbish, dull, vastly unpopular, not as deep or as clever as it thinks it is and a waste of everyone's money and – bingo – there's his new movie.

Read more:

Woody Allen sues American Apparel over ads – Reuters 

The year that Tony Blair stepped down after a ten-year tenure as Prime Minister? The year in which California wildfires prompted a mass evacuation? The year of the monks and their Burmese protests?

Possibly, yes. But it seems that for some of you, 2007 will go down as the year that Hecklerspray made a boo-boo by including one too many syllables in the first line of a winning celebrity haiku. Yeah, yeah – we made a mistake. Sorry 'bout that.

Oh. And if, say, anyone was so enraged by an error in a bit-of-fun weekly poetry contest as to label the writer 'a pallid excuse for a human being', might we direct you to this. Or this. Maybe, y'know, take some notes or something.

Anyway. On with the show. This week we're looking at bespectacled director-type Woody Allen. But first, let's have a quick peek at last week's winner.

Seven days ago, we asked you to come up with yer best Celebrity haikus about the fact that Paul McCartney was reportedly dating actress Rosanna Arquette. The winner was someone called Wambachumba, who wrote:

Paul gets angry calls
from Heather. Because you see,
he still has the leg.

Well done, you. As for the rest of you – chin up. You can always try your hand at this week's challenge. We want you to write haikus about this:

Director Woody Allen has quit shooting his new movie in Barcelona following disputes with locals.

All you have to do is remember the golden rule of haiku (and, Christ, have we been reminded of it enough times this week): five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables. An example based on this week's story would look a little somethin' like this:

Woody Allen will

have to take cameras home

after arguments.

Okay, okay. That was rubbish. And that's why we need you to do better. Entries in the comments box below, if you please …

Read More:

Woodie Allen Quits Spanish Film Shoot - Femalefirst