Woody Allen hasn't endorsed any product since the Acme Adopted Stepdaughter That You're Allowed To Sleep With in 1992.
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.
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Toaster Pop Tart says
What’s wrong with Ewan (other than the Jedi order and any facial hair at all)?
American Apparel should sue Hotshot for linking their product to child molesters. That or Woody should start a business raising custom-made, domesticated wives. I’d buy stock in THAT for a dollar! *thumbs up*
peggyloo says
Give me a break. I thought Woody had a sense of humor. Apparently not though. The whole thing reeks of publicity stunt. He must have a movie coming out soon. There’s no way that this will make it to trial. Celebrity parodies are protected by the first amendment.
gir says
It really irritates me when morons on the internet toss out legal arguments that they don’t understand.
What is not a parody: A picture of Woody Allen in an advertisement
What is a parody: A picture of Woody Allen spooning naked with a Korean fetus with the caption “WOODY PUTTING THE MOVES ON ADOPTED DAUGHTER BEFORE ACTUAL BIRTH”
gir says
As long as it’s not real, obviously. Otherwise it’s just another slow news day.
wm says
American Apparel is sleazed through and through. From their image presentation to their business practices, they are sleazy and people need to recognized that.