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May 15, 2002 11:19 AM ET
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By Joelle Diderich
CANNES, France (Reuters) - Woody Allen rejected on Wednesday a call by
American Jews to boycott France's Cannes film festival, saying that was the kind of
protest the Nazis used before the Second World War.
Allen is opening the world-famous festival with his latest comedy "Hollywood Ending,"
which marks his first appearance at the glitzy French Riviera resort.
"I've never felt that the French people in any way were anti-Semitic," said the
director
and actor, a comic legend in France, who is Jewish.
"I think one can be very proud of France for the way they've acquitted themselves in
the last election and I don't think a boycott is in order. I just don't feel that it's
right."
Allen told a packed news conference he did not think France was intolerant because
extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen had made it to the presidential runoff this
month.
President Jacques Chirac trounced Le Pen in the May 5 runoff with 82 percent of the
vote, but Le Pen's place in the final aroused concern abroad about France. Le Pen,
an anti-immigrant populist, once dismissed the Holocaust as a "detail" of history.
The Pacific Southwest chapter of the American Jewish Congress, citing Le Pen and
a string of recent anti-Semitic attacks in France, called last week for a boycott of
the
famed festival in protest.
'ANY BOYCOTT IS WRONG'
"I think any boycott is wrong," Allen told RTL radio in an interview earlier Wednesday.
"Boycotts were exactly what the Germans were doing against the Jews."
The controversy was a footnote at the festival, where Allen delighted reverential
journalists with his wisecracks.
Allen confessed he was panic-stricken at the idea of walking up the red carpet for his
film's opening Wednesday.
"I'm suppressing panic," he said. "But I've already rented a tuxedo and it's too late
to
back out."
Allen said there was no link between his coming to Cannes and his much-remarked
appearance at the Academy Awards in March.
"It looks like I had some kind of religious conversion and I'm suddenly out of the
house but no, I'll be back in the house in a few hours and you won't have to put up
with me again," he said.
Allen had harsh words for the Hollywood executives he sends up in "Hollywood
Ending," in which he plays a washed-up film director who goes blind just before
shooting his comeback film.
The U.S. auteur shoots most of his films in Manhattan and has always steered clear
of large studios. "In Hollywood ... the idea behind the films is to make as much
money as possible. If the film is good, that's incidental," he said.
"They're very happy when the film comes out good, but they would be happier really
making a bad film that made a lot of money than making a good film that made less
money," he added.
But the director of "Manhattan," "Annie Hall" and "Hannah and Her Sisters" saved the
harshest words for himself.
"I don't think my films have been influential in any way whatsoever," he said.
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