Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

by Megan Bungeroth

Most New Yorkers don’t think about the Surrogate’s Court until it makes major headlines, but when it does, the cases are memorable. Here are some of the most famous and bizarre cases in recent memory.

1992- Woody Allen and Mia Farrow go to Surrogate’s Court to settle the custody battle for their three adopted children and biological son, Satchel.

1994-The court deems the total value of the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts collection to be $400 million, an amount three times higher than the foundation had placed its collection at. The jump resulted in a huge fee awarded to executor Edward Hayes, but the state Appellate Court reversed the decision four years later.

2002-Tobacco heiress Doris Duke died in 1993 and had appointed her butler, Bernard Lafferty, as executor of her estate of over $1 billion. But in 1995, the court stripped Lafferty of his role on teh basis that he was spending millions on luxuries for himself while living lavishly and drunkenly in Duke’s mansion. The court appointed several executors that had been named in one of the Duke’s previous wills, and they formed teh Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. In 2002, the court returned $12.1 million in legal fees to the estate.

2004-When East Village performance artist Jack Smith died in 1989 of complications from AIDS, fellow artists maintained his archives and restored many of his films, safeguarding his artistic legacy. But in 2004, the court awarded the entire estate to Smith’s estranged sister, 70-year-old Texas housewife Mary Sue Slater, on the basis that she was the sole legal heir.

2008-Real estate mogul Leona Helmsley bequeathed $12 million to her dog, a Maltese named Trouble, in her will, while leaving nothing to two of her grandchildren. The court later knocjed down the pooch’s cut to $2 million, to be managed by his caretaker for expenses like security and grooming costs, redirected the rest to charity. Poor Trouble died in 2011 as the world’s wealthiest (and most envied) four-legged friend.

2012-The Westchester County Surrogate’s Court settled one of the most contentious and famous cases in recent memory this year when it finalized the distribution of Brooke Astor’s estate. Astor, who died in 2007 at age 105, was an extremely wealthy philanthropist and socialite, and her son Anthony Marshall was accused of gutting her fortune in her waning years, taking advantage of his ailing mother to get his hands on her millions. The court ultimately directed more than $100 million of the estate to charities, cultural institutions and education funds, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park and the New York Public Library, and slashed the amount that Marshall was entitled to inherit.

Penelope Cruz, Woody Allen and Greta Gerwig.

Last night The Cinema Society, along with The Hollywood Reporter and Piaget, hosted a screening of Woody Allen’s newest flick, To Rome with Love. The A-list came out in full force for the screening held at Manhattan’s Paris Theater—including the film’s writer/director and star Woody Allen; stars Alec Baldwin, Penélope Cruz, Greta Gerwig, Allessandra Mastronardi who donned a Piaget timepiece, Italian import Fabio Armiliato and Carol Alt; producers Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum and Helen Robin.

Cinema Society founder, Andrew Saffir welcomed the movie’s stars in front of a boisterous audience that was littered with VIPs including: Jon Hamm & Jennifer Westfeldt, Chris Rock—who could be heard cheering and laughing throughout, Woody Harrelson, Mariska Hargitay, Regis & Joy Philbin, Ralph & Ricky Lauren, Cynthia Rowley, Kate Flannery, Hilaria Thomas, Rachel Dratch, Soon-yi Previn, Nicole Miller, James Mischka & Mark Badgley, Scott Adsit, Julianna Marguiles & Keith Lieberthal, Dylan McDermott, Calvin Klein and many more.

After the movie—which seemed to delight all in attendance, in that way that only Woody Allen can—all mentioned above, along with yours truly, moved over to Italian favorite and celebrity haunt Casa Lever for an after-party. Though the venue boasts a fantastic outdoor section, at the risk of melting in the NYC heat wave, most ventured indoors. Chris Rock parked himself in a banquette booth that quickly filled around him–hey, live comedy show. Alec Baldwin worked the room, with one arm around fiancé (suspiciously soon-to-be-wife) Hilaria Thomas, who STUNNED in Dolce & Gabbana. “They really know how to design for a woman,” she told me. That they do. The funny kids–The Office’s Kate Flannery, 30 Rock’s Scott Adsit and SNL’s Rachel Dratch kept each other in a protracted laughing fit, while gathered around a high top table for the whole night.

To read the full article at AVENUE Insider click here.

Ralph & Ricky Lauren

Mariska Hargitay

Chris Rock

Alec Baldwin and Hilaria Thomas

Prolific comedian Louis C.K. will star alongside Clay as well, reflecting Allen’s love of casting comedians, particularly one who has so closely paralleled Allen himself.

Allen has often made unexpected casting choices in the past, including the frequent practice of casting himself. He famously rendered Diane Keaton the eccentric star of Annie Hall, a character he modeled after the actress. In Midnight in Paris, Allen fitted ever-goofy yet endearing Owen Wilson into a persona modeled after Allen himself. Other notable surprising choices have included Shelly Duvall, Christopher Walken, Judy Davis and Jon Lovitz.

Allen explains to W magazine, accompanying a recent spread of some of his women stars, that he chooses women he would be thrilled to date, writing parts particularly for many of these women.  The director keeps audiences on their toes, but is hopeless when he falls in love with an actress. The oddball Allen is even reported to be pals with Lindsay Lohan.

—Alissa Fleck

By Mara Siegler, for AVENUE Magazine

Actress Greta Gerwig got her start in the mid aughts as the sweetheart of the awkwardly dubbed ‘Mumblecore’ movement, a low-budget film genre marked by stripped-down realism, trailing sentences, and a do-it-yourself ethos. Slowly evolving into more mainstream fare, the 28-year-old has impressed even the toughest critics with The New York Times speculating she “may well be the definitive screen actress of her generation.” It’s a grand statement, but with upcoming roles in films by upper crust chronicler Whit Stillman and New York’s hometown auteur Woody Allen, she seems poised to prove it true.

Working with such quintessential New York directors seems a perfect match for Gerwig. The sandy blond Sacramento, California transplant came east to study English and philosophy at Barnard, graduated in 2006 and decided to call the city her home. “New York gave me my direction and purpose,” she gushes. “This city lit me on fire! My dad spent some time working in New York when I was a child and on one of my trips to visit him I saw 42nd Street on Broadway. That was it for me. Nothing else would compare. Acting and New York were tops.”

Being the type of woman that can say “tops” with no trace of irony is part of what makes Gerwig so endearing. Whether she is sitting in a bathtub with a friend wearing goofy goggles in the relatively obscure cult film Hannah Takes the Stairs, receiving the most uncomfortable oral sex ever filmed from Ben Stiller in Greenberg, or playing across Russell Brand as the quirky girl with an unabashed love for Grand Central in the big studio remake of Arthur, she exudes a sort of nuanced innocence and authenticity. She has brushed off the ‘It Girl’ label confessing, “I don’t even really know what that means,” and remains nonplussed about the recent attention she’s getting for her upcoming roles and new leading lady status. “I feel pretty good in general,” she says.

This month, Gerwig takes the lead and shows off her comedic and tap dancing skills in director Whit Stillman’s  Damsels in a Distress, his first film in 13 years. Known for focusing on the “urban haute bourgeoisie” with Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), and The Last Days of Disco (1998), his new movie focuses on a group of preppie women promoting hygiene and dancing at a suicide prevention center as they desperately try and cope with the male population at their cloistered college.

Later in the year she will follow in the footsteps of Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow and Scarlett Johansson and many other beauties in the role as Woody Allen’s muse in Nero Fiddled, playing alongside Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Alec Baldwin and Penelope Cruz. Fresh off Allen’s Oscar-winning and box office success, Midnight in Paris, the film was shot in Rome and is set for theaters this June.

The roles are a perfect fit for Gerwig. “In a way, New York City is the reason I wanted to be an actress. I was in love with the city through films —Woody Allen especially,” she exclaims. “I adore them both [Allen and Stillman]. I want more. If I could, I’d spent a few years making films only with them—perhaps alternating.”

It is sure to be a whirlwind year for the rising star who is already signed on for the 2013 HBO adaptation of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, but we are convinced she won’t let fame get to her head. When asked what she loves in the city, she told us unaffectedly, the subway. “Especially where all the subways converge at Times Square. There is an area where everyone is running from the NRQ to the 123 to the Shuttle – it is my favorite. It makes me feel alive and calm and part of something just by living here.”

Contributors to the Best of Manhattan issue: Nancy J. Brandwein, Wickham Boyle, Thomas Chan, Shoshana Davis, Leonora Desar, Sharon Feiereisen, Danny Gold, Matt Harvey, Andrea Hilbert, Regan Hofmann, Anna Margaret Hollyman, Layla Khoury-Hanold, Amy Kraft, Roland Li, Aspen Matis, Sherry Mazzocchi, Beth Mellow, Lorraine Duffy Merkl, Evan Mulvihill, Chris Opfer, Mark Peikert, Josh Perilo, Adam Rathe, Robby Ritacco, Josh Rogers, Max Sarinsky, Miral Sattar, Hilary Snell, Doug Strassler, Colin Weatherby, Tracy Weiss, Ashley Welch and Noah Wunsch.  All illustrations by Evan Soares.

Recently, GQ named Brooklyn the “Coolest City on the Planet” for foodies. While we agree that the borough is first-rate in a number of things—hipster watching, finding a cheap apartment with antique molding—we are inclined to believe that Manhattan is still king. Brooklyn isn’t a cocktail that people in Idaho can order. Woody Allen has yet to direct a film named after that borough. And there is one distinction that Manhattan will always hold: It’s the birthplace of New York City, an urban metropolis that captivates our collective imagination to this day.

Manhattan is the best mix of the old and the new, the elegant and the seedy, the popular and the obscure. This borough, the smallest of the five in terms of geography but the third largest in population, presents every flavor of society—if you know where to find it.

“Best of,” a tradition started here by the New York Press, is meant to inspire an air of wonder in New Yorkers, some of whom may be more ground down by their daily haul than others. Though “discovered” over 400 years ago, Manhattan still retains a sense of mystery and the same excitement of discovering a new land. This is the borough where you can find wares you didn’t know you needed, experiences you weren’t aware you were lacking and foods you never imagined were edible.

After a year in which Manhattan has survived an earthquake, a hurricane and a freak snowstorm in October, it’s time to put your stamp on this borough and claim it as the best in the universe.

“There’s not a spiritual bone in his body. How could he write books!” an exasperated woman says of her loutish son-in-law in Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. The same could be said of Allen, who has yet to show any sign of spiritual sensitivity, only that peculiar New York narcissism that takes pride in claiming its neuroses. Now, in his 30th-odd film, Allen presents another quasi-comic look at contemporary turpitude. It’s the story of a London family’s disintegration: As Sally (Naomi Watts) copes with her parents’ (Gemma Jones and Anthony Hopkins) recent divorce, her own marriage collapses. Allen compounds trouble by paralleling the parents’ middle-aged sexual insecurities with Sally and her American husband Roy’s (Josh Brolin) career anxieties, which lead to more infidelity, distrust and betrayal.

This interpersonal disaster is not an ingenious farce mechanism; it’s what the British call a “cockup.” Allen has transplanted his secularist cynicism, yet, once again, fails to capture a sense of place (the great Vilmos Zsigmond photographs England as if he were no longer the great Vilmos Zsigmond). Allen’s simply spread his virus. Some people laugh at it—nervously or out of habit—mistaking Allen’s comic reputation for a genial intent. But for others, Allen’s misplaced, soured sense of humor has become an unfunny, unending routine.

Happily, the perfect contrast to this faux-European phase of Allen’s interminable career is Criterion’s new box set Presenting Sacha Guitry—an almost official re-introduction of a once beloved filmmaking personality—showcasing four classics recently out of distribution. Writer-director-actor Guitry turned out a number of distinctly personal comic entertainments throughout the mid-20th century (he died in 1958) that not only teased the idea of European sophistication but also exemplified it.

In Guitry’s world, characters are motivated by an itch which not only complicates their immediate lives but may also determine history—as in his epic The Pearls of the Crown (1939), which burlesques English, French and Italian history, even a bit of Africa’s legacy. Through ingeniously connected episodic fables, Guitry illustrates how the Queen of England’s crown got some of its jewels. In essence, Guitry satirized the imperialist ideology that he—and his bon vivant audience—unapologetically enjoyed.

Even his minor masterpiece Quadrille (1938), featuring the flirtatious interplay of a Parisian newspaper editor (Guitry), his actress paramour (Gaby Morlay), their mutual friend (Jacqueline Delubac) and an American movie star (Georges Grey), provides some of the same social observation that informed Jean Renoir’s profound The Rules of the Game the following year. Guitry glossed profundity; his talent was insouciance itself—the cinematic immortalization of his era’s theatrical postures, diction and morality: updating Moliere’s moral ferment and turning it to contemporary fizz.

Quadrille is a condensed roundelay like You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, but Guitry’s excellence evokes the swanky world of Hollywood screwball comedies like My Man Godfrey and Twentieth Century—froth that was also culturally, spiritually authentic. Much of its pleasure derives from Guitry’s bulky, strutting persona, his infectious egotism and élan. Guitry was French showbiz’s equivalent to Orson Welles and Noel Coward in the mid-century. Later, only Mel Brooks similarly multitasked (his History of the World, Part I was a vaudevillian version of Pearls of the Crown), yet Brooks never matched Guitry’s grand example of a formally-audacious sophisticate. Re-watching Guitry’s boulevard comedies confirms that Woody Allen’s films aren’t just spiritually deficient—they lack true sophistication.

The real point of Allen’s title You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is to jab at faith as a form of superstition: Sally’s mother visits a fortune teller and clings to the suspicious, paid-for advice. Her pathetic search for guidance is a post-divorce response to insecurity and fear, just like her husband’s dalliance with prostitute/actress Charmaine (Lucy Punch). Each character switches partners and allegiance (aspiring novelist Roy even plagiarizes his best friend), but it all happens in Allen’s degraded appreciation of social climbing. Compare the clownish wrap-up Allen gives his Brit twits with Quadrille’s fugue-like dialogues, in which the characters amusingly articulate their world views, leading to a zesty finale that tilts into musical comedy—a tonal shift and spiritual distillation that was cinema’s damnedest denouement until Godard’s 1965 Band of Outsiders.

Without a spiritual bone, so to speak, Allen’s films have no emotional spine. His depiction/validation of inhumane behavior doesn’t get beyond his fascination with cruelty: Naomi Watts signs off with an ugly castigation against her silly mother that leaves everyone desolate. When Allen rewards the story’s most clownish characters with happiness, it’s an unfelt gimmick that plays the audience cheap. This is the opposite of Quadrille’s dance, the opposite of sophistication. Allen’s preoccupied with how people abuse and deceive each other (as his most recent films have been obsessed with murder).

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger continues the selfishness and lack of faith that in Manhattan once seemed to observe moral decay, and Hannah and Her Sisters became a symptom of. There’s been no real progress since—not with such drab, inert filmmaking. Allen’s made a career out of obtuseness. His narrator says, “Life is sound and fury and means nothing”—misquoted Shakespeare and serious misunderstanding.
_
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
Directed by Woody Allen
Runtime: 98 min.

The girl, Stacy, was a classmate of mine in the now-defunct Bentley school on the Upper West Side, which I attended through 6th grade. Stacy’s rosy complexion, big round eyes and button nose pushed the limits of my prepubescent amorous desires.

Stacy developed into a gorgeous teenager and became an actress, while I developed acne and became a nerd. We had several friends in common and I would sometimes gawk at her—I mean see her—at parties.

When I was in high school I heard rumors that Stacy was dating Woody Allen. One weekend I was walking on the Upper East Side with my best friend Steve, discussing our costumes for the next Star Trek convention, when we saw Stacy holding hands with an older man. We both meekly said “hi” to her as she sashayed by.

“Do you know who that was?” Steve asked.

“Woody Allen!” we said in unison.

Stacy met Woody on the set of Annie Hall, in which she had a bit part that was left out of the final cut. Stacy has talked publicly about their two-year relationship, but Allen never has. It is widely believed that the movie Manhattan was based on their romance, which began when Woody was 41 and Stacy 17.

The Tracy character in Manhattan, played by Mariel Hemingway, was supposedly inspired by a real-life Stacy.

Stacy is not my only link to the “Woodman” (an apt double entendre, if I ever heard one). My father and Allen attended Midwood High School together (“very strange” is my dad’s only recollection of the future filmmaker), and I have seen Allen several times around the city.

One time I saw him eating dinner with Diane Keaton at Primola on East 64th Street, and last summer he walked by me while I was eating at an outdoor café near Lincoln Center. My most recent brush with greatness took place earlier this year in the Upper East Side restaurant Café Boulud, when Allen walked in with Soon-Yi (I normally avoid expensive restaurants like General Motors stock, but it seems that every time I go to one, Woody, has to show up, just to prove that he can get a better table than I can).

For those of you unfamiliar with the Mia, Woody, Soon-Yi love triangle, here is the short version: Soon-Yi is the adopted-daughter of Andre Previn and actress Mia Farrow. After Woody and Mia adopted two children and had a third biologically, Woody commenced a sexual affair with Ms. Previn (as far as I know Woody does not belong to a Mormon fundamentalist sect), which Mia learned about after finding pictures taken by Allen of a naked 19-year-old Soon-Yi. A custody battle ensued over Mia and Woody’s children, during which Farrow accused Woody of having sexually abused their daughter Dylan.

At the trial, Woody explained that the pictures of Soon-Yi were “erotic” rather than “pornographic.” This distinction failed to impress the judge, who gave custody to Mia.

Soon-Yi and Woody eventually married. As for the child sex-abuse allegations, an appellate court called the evidence inconclusive, but added that it “suggest[s] that the abuse did occur.”

When I saw Woody and Soon-Yi at Boulud, they looked like any other happily married couple, with a 35-year age difference between them. Has Woody no shame, I wondered.

Even though he has carried on as though he believes that life is one long audition for the male lead in Lolita, I am a fan of Woody’s work. Yet whenever I open my wallet to see one of his movies or read one of his books, I squirm at the thought that I am giving money to a pervert.

I have otherwise never felt guilty about being entertained by lowlifes. I have watched Roman Polanski’s films and rooted for athletes whom I wouldn’t be seen in a nightclub with, unless I were wearing a bullet-proof vest, without the slightest twinge of disgust. But I take Woody’s misbehavior personally.

I resent that he has come to represent Jewish New York—my New York! When he introduced a film tribute to the city during the 2002 Academy Awards, I wanted to shout: farmers in Iowa, coal miners in West Virginia and all other people who have livelihoods that seem really exotic to urban dwellers like myself, please don’t think that Woody is one of us. We do not all deal with a mid-life crisis by dating high-school girls, and Judaism does not require us to have sex with our domestic partner’s children.

Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn out on the town.

But, of course, he is one of us. In the outsider mentality of his characters and his irony-based humor, I see a piece of every Jewish Upper East and West sider I know. And in terms of Jewish geography, Woody’s link to me through my father and Stacy practically makes him a relative—a famous cousin who has disgraced the family name.

Some readers may believe that my disgust with Woody is really just displaced jealousy over the fact that he got the girl I dreamed of having. But I know that Stacy was out of my league. After all, what chance would a scrawny, nerdy-looking guy like myself, have had with a girl like her? Then again…
–
Ben Krull is a lawyer and essayist who lives on the Upper East Side.

At first it seems Allen is satirizing his own arrogance when David, playing Boris, a Columbia University professor who teaches “string theory,” protests his superiority to the world—including his other middle-aged bohemian Leftist friends. Allen became good at deflating his admirers—especially in Deconstructing Harry—but then he started catering to them in his decadent European fare, starting with Everyone Says I Love You. Now that contempt seems to include the audience—whom Boris even addresses in one of those inept meta-stunts copied from Bob Hope movies that Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo boosters mistook for surrealism.

This big, I swear! Larry David stars opposite Evan Rachel Wood in Woody Allen’s latest.

Whatever Works’ vaudevillian gambit isn’t surreal; it’s insolent. The distinction comes from Boris’ crotchetiness: Only he knows the world is falling apart, that pollution, stupidity and hypocrisy are everywhere. He proudly opposes the “fallacious notion that people are fundamentally decent.”

Boris’ boiled-down philosophy is “Zilch—nothing comes to anything.” This would seem to put Allen in the Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant nihilistic mode (he employs Milk cinematographer Harris Savides for that artsy-deadened look, negating every room’s light source.) Boris is an old-fashioned prickly egotist like a Saul Bellow misanthrope—which helps connect this character to the one Larry David invented for his HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm. Allen must envy the urban archetype David originated. It developed from a nervy collision of Jewish intellectual hubris and stand-up comedy chutzpah. David’s personalized angst was candidly self-deprecating yet, through Allen’s ego, Boris flaunts superciliousness. He has the same pompous cultural taste that Allen sponsors in films from Annie Hall to Hannah and Her Sisters. When Boris takes in the homeless Southern girl Melodie St. Ann Celestine (Wood), he berates her pop music as “eardrum-bursting bilge.” It’s the 2009 version of the cultural arrogance Alvy Singer used to woo/intimidate unconfident Annie Hall.

Unattractive as all this is, it’s long been part of Allen’s woo/intimidation of the mainstream. Praising Allen’s films is a way media-folk disguise intellectual inferiority: you must enjoy his antagonism—as when Boris calls Melodie a “bedraggled microbe, a sub-mental baton twirler” or uses his pacification through Fred Astaire and Groucho Marx as a weapon of cultural authority. Allen’s arrogance is no longer entertaining. Deconstructing Harry already took it to the limit; that was his real Saul Bellow movie—an obvious response to the boomeranging honesty of assholism seen on TV’s Seinfeld (co-created with Larry David).

It gets worse with Allen’s humorless liberal points against Bible Belt Christianity: Melodie’s mother (Patricia Clarkson) comes looking for her daughter and falls for the lure of the Big City, then her cheating husband (Ed Begley Jr.) comes to town and falls for the lure of alternative lifestyles. It’s a Hello, Dolly! subplot with Boris as a sex-fixated matchmaker.

“I’m a sensitive soul with an enormous grasp of the human condition,” Boris says. “I’m the only one that sees the whole picture, that’s why they call me a genius.” But Woody Allen means it.

This might have half-worked if Larry David was an actor, rather than a performer parlaying his HBO shtick (answering the call of the master distorts David’s once-bracing skepticism). David cannot convey the affection that should come with Boris’ romantic change of heart. And striking as Wood has been in movies like Pretty Persuasion, her sweet young thing doesn’t get a chance to challenge the old goat as Diane Keaton memorably did in Manhattan. Wood becomes another of Allen’s female victims like Judy Davis, Mia Farrow, Mira Sorvino, Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz. If Allen wasn’t a filmmaker, these persistently demeaning female characterizations would stamp him a serial mauler.

Jerry Seinfeld’s canard that his celebrated series was about “nothing” was only taken seriously by people who want to ignore the assholism that was parodied. Allen, who could never repent his own condescension, misappropriates David and Seinfield’s candor. Now he preaches at the morons Deconstructing Harry simply excoriated. Instead of exposing liberal hypocrisy, Allen turns sanctimonious: The embittered Boris, who derided his friends’ “predictable unsatisfying love lives,” gets mushy. Resolving Boris’ anger issues with a homily about life as “a temporary measure of grace” proves that what Allen learned from Larry David and Seinfeld is exactly nothing.

–
Whatever Works
Directed by Woody Allen
Runtime: 92 min.