You have to hand it to French comic Laurent LaFitte, he pulls no punches…no matter who the audience may be…in this case it was the opening night ceremony at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.
Good taste and a sense of decorum be damned, there’s low hanging fruit to be grabbed for cheap laughs!
And the irresistible target of the evening was none other than filmmaker Woody Allen, the director of the opening night gala screening “Cafe Society.”
And wouldn’t you know it, Laurent launched into a good ol’ fashioned rape joke at Woody’s expense just for good measure…
“You’ve shot so many of your films here in Europe and yet in the U.S. you haven’t even been convicted of rape,” Lafitte proclaimed before a black-tied crowd at the Grand Palais, his joke translated from French in to English and projected on a massive screen so that even those that couldn’t hear would be able to understand why the room became so awkward all of the sudden.
The jab appears to be in reference to fellow sexually deviant director Roman Polanski, who has been living in exile following a 1977 L.A. County court indictment for the rape of a 13-year-old girl while at a party on Jack Nicholson‘s property.
As for Woody Allen, the 80 year old director may never have been convicted of rape, but he raised more than eyebrows back in 1997 when he married his adopted daughter Soon-Yi…a relationship which began as an affair while Woody was still married to Soon Yi’s adopted mother and he was still her legal adopted father…
