The rape joke directed at Woody Allen by French comic Laurent Lafitte on the opening night of the Cannes Film Festival drew gasps from the audience but the filmmaker says he was not offended by it.
The director, 80, said being a comic himself he did not mind the joke or the negative press that has accompanied him to the festival, which opened last evening with the screening of his latest movie "Cafe Society".
Allen said that he is a comic, and that he would never tell another comic what he or she can or can't say. He also said he wasn't offended at all by that as "everything possible has been written about me at this point in my life", according to Deadline.
During the pre-show introducing Allen's opening-night film, Lafitte said of the writer-director, "You've shot so many of your films here in Europe and yet in the US you haven't even been convicted of rape."
The remark drew gasps from the crowd.
Allen was accused of sexually abusing his adopted daughter Dylan with ex Mia Farrow but there were no charges against him.
The allegations resurfaced when Dylan detailed the alleged incident in a letter to the New York Times in 2014.
In reply, Allen had called the accusations ludicrous. He maintains that Farrow coached the child, then 7, during their bitter split.
He was involved with Farrow's adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, who was 21 at the time of the scandal. They later married in 1997.
The director's estranged son Ronan also criticised Hollywood for continuing to celebrate Allen and ignoring these allegations in a recent article.
