Woody Allen wins $5m legal pay-out

Woody Allen has been paid $5 million in an out-of-court settlement with the US clothing company American Apparel. It means he can avoid a public airing of dirty laundry with the company's bombastic boss Dov Charney in what was being billed by the New York tabloids as the "Jewishest" lawsuit the city has ever seen.
 
The film director had demanded damages of twice that amount - $10 million - after American Apparel used his image on billboards in New York and Los Angeles without his consent. The campaign showed Allen dressed as a Hasidic Jew, in a scene from in his 1977 hit film Annie Hall in which Allen, feeling out of place at a dinner hosted by his girlfriend's non-Jewish family, imagines himself as an Hasidic Jew.
 
Charney claims the campaign was intended to show how similarly he and Allen - both high-profile Jews - have been treated by the media. Both men have been involved in sexual controversies: Allen when he began an affair with his former partner Mia Farrow's adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, whom he has since married; Carney on more than one occasion when he has been the subject of sexual harassment suits, none of which have been proven.
 
The billboards displayed the slogan, 'der haileker rebbe', Yiddish for 'the highest level, extra-holy Rabbi' - the equivalent, in Catholic terms, of referring to someone as the Pope. In a statement following the 11th-hour settlement, Charney stressed that the billboard was "naturally intended as a satirical spoof and not to be taken literally".
 
In 2007, when the billboards were on display, Charney and his company were experiencing the "media fallout" from the sexual harassment lawsuits. The ads were meant to be a statement about this discomfort, said Charney. "At the time, some writers characterised me as a rapist and abuser of women, others asserted that I was a bad Jew, and some even stated that I was not fit to run my company." Allen, he said, had also faced a "bombardment of tabloid missiles".
 
Yesterday Charney noted the irony in having to explain the billboards to the film director, "a man who has long been one of my inspiration"... "Few people know as well as Woody Allen how difficult it is to explain a joke without killing its humour."
 
As for the 73-year-old Allen, who does not endorse products in the US, he seemed satisfied with the outcome, saying it was "enough to discourage American Apparel or anyone else from ever trying such a thing again". ·