Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

I have never liked Charlie Rose and couldn't bear to watch more than five minutes of him, no matter who his guest was. I am certain this was not because I have a highly sensitive "creep detector", but more because he seemed like there was nothing to him but an insufferable pose of gravitas.

I watched his PBS show religiously back in the day but oh well, peace out Crusty Paw.

aimless . . . otm

he was such an unbearable ass-kisser. drooling over the rich/powerful. it was hard to take. the big ego people definitely loved being on his show.

and he looked like the worst kind of '70s game show host drunk too

he had tons of big names and great artists on his show but was always so blatantly unprepared. he asked the most inane, softball, "I didn't do the homework" type questions. the David Foster Wallace interview is great, CR has obviously not read a word of any of his books and they start talking about movies.

CR: The English Patient.
DFW: ...you're seriously asking about The English Patient?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SIp6xSP7ds

creepypaws...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4uT6ou_ZGw&t=784s

sidebar: I hate this year for many reasons, but high on the list is having to even briefly think about naked Harvey Weinstein & naked Charlie Rose

This is on the vague tip...and yet.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/john-lasseter-taking-leave-absence-pixar-missteps-1057113

Not sure where to put this, touches on a bunch of the big names with a main focus on Woody Allen, but all through the lens of recent events.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/20/art-monstrous-men/#.WhSJRpJcrD0.facebook

those lasseter missteps might just be the Cars movies. they suck so bad!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DPLxwdhVoAAnQEA.jpg

yikes

http://www.toonzone.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/2014_11_07_28_toy.story_..c9534.jpg

go get 'em!

I really tried with that Paris Review piece but my god the word count

damn, lassetter. apparently he was hitting on rashida jones who was cowriting toy story 4 (which I had no idea she was doing), and she quit.

Yep, more here

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/john-lasseters-pattern-alleged-misconduct-detailed-by-disney-pixar-insiders-1059594

his statement is such flowery bullshit

Did everyone already say "he kept trying to show women his little Woody"?

no. no one fucking said that.

ok just making sure

man, pretty fucking disappointed in Lasseter

I really tried with that Paris Review piece but my god the word count

no.

but that's okay and here's why

New piece

http://variety.com/2017/film/news/john-lasseter-pixar-disney-whisper-network-1202620960/

Separately, this is still looming. Ashley Feinberg's update:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vice-sex-harassment-shane-smith_us_5a1063b9e4b045cf4371cbe4

xp eugh that Variety piece is so gross:

The company’s co-founder is known as a hugger.

check please!

A number of ex-employees described Lasseter as an overgrown boy, with a limited sense of boundaries.

Some told Variety that he would make inappropriate comments about women, or touch them on their legs or backs. Some described receiving hugs that went on a few seconds too long.

“There is a currency there — the currency is touch, and being touched by this person who is always in charge,” said another former Pixar employee. “It’s personal and intimate and probably not appropriate.”

Another former employee said that after Pixar grew out of its Point Richmond office and moved to Emeryville in 2000, Lasseter’s behavior became more brazen. She said he would walk up to women in the office and kiss them on the lips.

“I found it shocking,” she said. “That’s not a normal way of greeting a colleague.”

😳

from that paris review piece

Hemingway’s girlfriend, the writer Martha Gellhorn, didn’t think the artist needed to be a monster; she thought the monster needed to make himself into an artist. “A man must be a very great genius to make up for being such a loathsome human being.” (Well, I guess she would know.) She’s saying if you’re a really awful person, you are driven to greatness in order to compensate the world for all the awful shit you are going to do to it. In a way, this is a feminist revision of all of art history; a history she turns with a single acid, brilliant line into a morality tale of compensation.

And a further Lasseter piece

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/11/disney-pixar-john-lasseter-leave-allegations

"Hemingway’s girlfriend, the writer Martha Gellhorn" is maybe not the correct way to describe Martha Gellhorn.

Key line from the Lasseter Variety article:

She said she never reported these issues because the systems were not in place to address the problem.

after we delete men, can we delete everyone left in HR?

i dvr charlie rose & my local pbs station this morning aired antique roadshow instead in that slot & tbh im reasonably just as fine watching this

there’s a lot of egregious we usage and overreliance on rhetorical questions in the beginning of that paris review piece. i want to finish it but man i hate polemics in the platform age

he’s saying if you’re a really awful person, you are driven to greatness in order to compensate the world for all the awful shit you are going to do to it.

classic mid 20th century post-Freud twaddle, as if creation weren't often a matter of "I want to write, I can write, let me make stuff up."

what?

i think her point is just, if you're a shithead, try to channel shithead energies into making something good for other ppl

shower the people you love with shit

I liked that article. I did think the writing at the beginning was a bit...extra, but it smoothed out as she made her point.

yeah agreed. i had a similar convo w/ someone recently, the notion of art itself & success w/in creative milieu involves levels of selfishness and it creates lots of strange moral dilemmas...its unsurprising that many "great artists" are selfish to an extreme degree

shower the people you love with shit

Yeah I liked that piece on the whole. Seems like everybody criticising it didn't read the whole thing, which is understandable, but - maybe read the whole thing

Eg "egregious we usage" at the beginning is there specifically so that she can call it out like two paragraphs later

(Not that this exactly counters criticisms of overcooked rhetoric tbf haha)

As someone whose comic sensibilities were crucially shaped by Woody Allen, I've tried to make it clear that I find the Soon-Yi relationship creepy at best, as is his persistent fetishization of teens, but based on the evidence I find it curious to use WA as the #1 "monster" artist.

(assuming everyone is agnostic on the Dyan Farrow accusation, as I think the current established facts force us to be... those of us who remember the McMartin daycare scandal anyway)

also re "ugh the Manhattan character is dating a (17-yo) high schooler," I'd like to see the author's list of what makes the Call Me By Your name 24/17 affair not disgusting, or equally disgusting.

i’m trying to read the whole thing. there are a lot of other “whole thing”s out there that don’t barrage me with poorly edited writing for paragraphs on end.

even in the post editing age!

agree that piece is flat-out awful

xp ok it got better. still too many rhetorical questions though

and as someone who’s often pushed back at male supremacy defining a whole other art form - particularly when it comes to grossly “transgressive” (ie woman hating) masculinity being way overpraised from elite types - and been taken way less seriously as a critic for doing so, i’m like “...sigh”

like you can probably draw a bright line from that one dude getting super defensive about MANHATTAN to “the avant-garde need not be moral” and similar self-defensive statements

I think this is because WA uses his standpoint as his raw materials for writing these movies.

Which is not the same as Polanski or Weinstein..

the heck with woody, this was the male role model for generations of men:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16ZKTw9FA_o