Woody Allen's Ticking Bomb Scenario

Just when you thought the war of legal words between filmmaker Woody Allen and American Apparel's Dov Charney couldn't get any more bitter, it appears that AA plans to add even more vitriolic verbiage to the mix. Specifically, from Mia Farrow, whom the company's attorneys plan to call to the witness stand in a forthcoming civil trial.

Image: Curbed L.A.

For scandal connoisseurs with catastrophic memory loss, Allen and longtime companion Mia Farrow split up in 1992 when she discovered Allen was having an affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn -- whom he later married. Then -- well, hopefully you do remember the rest. Let's just say the corrosive rancor that bust-up produced did not allow Allen and Farrow to enjoy the kind of worldly, post-affair friendship we associated with the French.

Anyhow, last year American Apparel departed from its signature sleazy billboards filled with submissive-looking immigrant girls in suggestive poses to use, instead, Woody Allen's 31-year-old image as a Hasidic Jew from Annie Hall. American Apparel never thought to clear this with Allen who then, as people will, sued the company for $10 million. American Apparel's strategy has been both novel and bare-knuckled: It is seeking dismissal on the grounds that Allen's sexual shenanigans have so tainted his reputation that it isn't worth the $10 million he claims it's been damaged.

This is where Farrow comes in and you have to wonder if, over the years, Allen hasn't harbored a fear in the back of his mind that she would one day be summoned for such a task. Nay, rather, that Farrow has been quietly -- if seethingly -- biding her time, like one of those ticking time bombs whose locations, we're always being told, only torture can reveal.

Except now the only person on the rack figures to be Allen, which is why yesterday his lawyers sought an injunction in New York to prevent American Apparel from calling Farrow, Soon-Yi Previn and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt to prove, as AA lawyer Stuart Slotnick said last month, the company's belief that "after the various sex scandals that Woody Allen has been associated with, corporate America's desire to have Woody Allen endorse their product is not what he may believe it is."

This would be the Michael Phelps template of scandal-devalued endorsements, except Allen hasn't been outed as a pot-smoker. Jury selection in New York is scheduled to begin May 18.