Then there’s last year’s dramedy Together Together, starring Ed Helms and Patti Harrison, which used the font for its opening credits and critics at the time noted was in and of itself an act of “subversion.” It’s true: The movie is a platonic story about a single, middle-aged man asking a younger woman to be the gestational surrogate for his baby, and it includes a scene in which Harrison’s character specifically criticizes Allen. According to director Nikole Beckwith, the scene (and presumably the title design) was inspired by her frustration with the familiar Allen narrative in which an “old decrepit, nebbishy guy who’s an asshole is going to get these beautiful young women who look to him for approval all the time on everything. And that’s not true.”
But no doubt the greatest revisionist use of the font was in the recent HBO docuseries Allen v. Farrow — yeah, the same show that the Los Angeles Times called the “nail in the coffin of Woody Allen’s legacy” used the famous font for its poster, creating an unsubtle graphic link between the horrific allegations against Allen and the artistic achievements that he arguably used to help deflect said allegations.
Hopefully, this means that more Woody Allen-appropriated elements will be wrestled away from the director and re-purposed for films that either subvert his themes or flat-out crap all over him. Watch out, clarinet music!
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Related: Louis C.K.’s Creepola Movie Tried To Get Woody Allen
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