Woody Allen gloats about his "lucky life" at Venice Film Festival

“[I’ve had a] very, very lucky life,” Allen told reporters ahead of the Venice premiere of his 50th and potentially final film Coup De Chance on Monday, per CNN. Allen’s invitation—coming in the wake of renewed attention to his controversial marriage to ex-partner Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, as well as sexual abuse allegations from his own adopted daughter Dylan Farrow—did not sit right with everyone, including a group of protesters who disrupted the red carpet proceedings last night.

Still, none of this very public outcry—or any of the backlash from over the years—seems to have phased the man himself. “I have had nothing but good fortune and I hope it holds out, although obviously it is early this afternoon,” he quipped, before continuing: “I had two loving parents, I have good friends, I have a wonderful wife and marriage, two children. In a few months I will be 88 years old. I have never been in a hospital. I have never had anything terrible happen to me.”

Still, being completely cut off by your own children—something that most people would consider a “terrible thing”—absolutely has happened to Allen, who told Variety in a separate interview that he doesn’t speak to Dylan or her brother Ronan Farrow at all. As for the #MeToo movement, which effectively barred Allen from the U.S. film circuit? It’s “silly,” he said. Specifically “when it’s being too extreme in trying to make it into an issue when, in fact, most people would not regard it as any kind of offensive situation.”