Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

i dont know how that gets around im unabashedly enthusiastic about lots of stuff

god man have some self-respect

I thought The Ref was good but didn't trust my memory. Glengarry is "good" but just too gross to spend time in, and I don't remember him in it

LA Confidential sucks, why even bother adapting mid-period Ellroy if you're going to be so basic. there are plenty of 150-pp pocket paperback potboilers he did earlier that let you put his name on the poster, and they're cheaper

anyway to Dench's point:

Are we going to negate 10 years at the Old Vic and everything that he did [as artistic director]

1) sorry, yes, those years are #cancelled. the sole reason you can't buy a ticket to see Niamh Cusack and Ruth Negga in Playboy Of The Western World tonight is because we're fomenting a vendetta against Spacey, not because it was staged in 2011

2) "everything he did" includes widely-reported predation on teenage boys throughout his tenure, both at the time and after his official me-too-ing in 2017. aren't you saying we should negate this

also zomg the theatre was owned and restored by Honest Ed Mirvish!

A judge said the young man came from a good family, attended an excellent school, had terrific grades and was an Eagle scout. Prosecutors, the judge said, should have explained to the girl and her family that pressing charges would destroy the boy’s life. https://t.co/KYK1Bj3jXP

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 3, 2019

(it can be argued that a 16yo should never be tried as an adult . . . but if any deserve to be, it's this one imo)

christ that whole story is awful

has anyone else watched the Hulu doc? idk why i watched it but i did. the interviews are essential; one thing that really stuck with me was an interview with "celebrity journalist" aj benza where he said that he had heard the rumors that actresses had "slept with" harvey to get their parts and he just assumed welp yeah that is how it is. the perniciousness and ease of digestion of this utter falsehood really reminded me how everyone is complicit with/to blame for rape culture. it's way deep in there.

also let's not kid ourselves, the 90s sucked.

the whole gossip industrial complex is designed to keep the status quo firmly in place. it’s even more apparent on newer outlets because the editing is so poor

i haven't paid attention to celebrity gossip in ages, i felt like it was sort of a bygone pastime -- is it still as popular as it was 15-20 years ago?
erika rosenbaum's story hit esp hard because she describes a very relatable sensation of wanting to "take a risk" and also feeling deeply unsafe. ugh.

celebrity gossip powers the internet afaict

The authors of She Said gave a long (20 mins!) interview at of all places Morning Joe today.

100%. also US Weekly, People magazine and the like still circulate to millions

really? i admit that i don't pay any attention to entertainment "news" (though i do read music stuff). all the 90s/early 2000s stuff in the doc seemed like a thousand years ago. i see the magazines in the checkout aisle and they all look grotesque.

it’s a pernicious influence and it’s very much there. popbitch (!) has done some excellent digging on AMI (owner of enquirer etc) and its mucky dealings

yup. nothing's changed, just the names and the royalty. a lot more reality show "stars" to cover if anything

the Lisa Bloom stuff is pretty disgusting

the NY Post page 6 folks (current and former) still have a bit to answer for too.

Another reason there more be more smears ahead...Weinstein switched his legal team earlier this summer, and here's a profile of who he hired:

https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/February-2018/The-Defender/

Regarding Rose McGowan, an early accuser, Bloom told Weinstein, “I feel equipped to help you against the Roses of the world, because I have represented so many of them.” She suggested a “counterops online campaign to push back and call her out as a pathological liar.” She educated Weinstein on “reputation management,” and encouraged him to stage preemptive television interviews, wherein he would invoke his deceased mother and claim that her passing had caused him to “evolve” on women’s issues.

placido out

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/arts/music/placido-domingo-met-opera-harassment.html

1/Just In: Actresses Sarah Tither-Kaplan and Toni Gaal tell NPR in an exclusive interview that they are suing actor and filmmaker James Franco for sexual exploitation and fraud, stemming from their time involved in his Studio 4 acting school in Los Angeles.

— NPR (@NPR) October 3, 2019

Took long enough for that shoe to drop

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/03/robert-de-niro-sued-for-gender-discrimination-by-former-assistant.html

Pretty thrilling read by Ronan Farrow, investigating the two guys assigned to tail him in 2017, with two more parts on Black Cube coming this week,

Well here's a read (from Farrow's reporting partner at NBC).

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/10/how-nbc-killed-its-weinstein-story

At the time, I wondered if there was some sort of connection between NBC’s decision to stop me and Ronan from investigating Weinstein—a decision for which Oppenheim and Lack had offered no credible explanation—and the network’s rejection of any institutional responsibility for what Lauer had done. Weinstein was a staggeringly powerful man whose serial predation went on for years, in part because he was able to insulate himself via aggressive legal tactics that included payoffs and nondisclosure agreements. Could it be that NBC News knew it couldn’t risk having our reporting on Weinstein presented by a powerful news anchor with his own history of serial predation?

I asked a former NBC executive that very question. Was our Weinstein story killed because NBC knew it had a Matt Lauer problem?

“One thousand percent,” the former executive told me.

surprise surprise: AMI cited as Harvey's go-between, threatening to expose Lauer's multiple harassment, assault and rape cases in the Enquirer if NBC published on Weinstein

When Ann Curry departed NBC, it was clearly a very tension-filled thing, there was some clear issues she had w/Lauer and vice-versa. And now we know she went to NBC execs to report what she'd heard about his predatory behavior, and the one who was effectively forced out shortly thereafter was her.

weak cowards

that story is appalling

yikes

Lauer's disgusting flex laundry-listing all the sex stuff he 'consensually' did during his 'affair' w/his rape accusor...

having dissed him plenty in the past I want to give Chris Hayes some credit for his little segment on this the other night

powerful article about sexual abuse at Mount Sinai, the last line is devastating
https://www.thecut.com/2019/10/mount-sinai-david-newman.html

There's an abuse tolerance story growing around the World Series, i guess this will do for the uninitiated:

https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/10/22/houston-astros-roberto-osuna-suspension

Follow @bellykachman who stood on stage last night and confronted Harvey Weinstein who was in the audience.

Some of the men in the audience booed and told her to shut up...

Follow @bellykachman https://t.co/oz0RviDaTL

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) October 24, 2019

https://www.yelp.com/biz/downtime-bar-new-york

Good. Glad to see that place dragged. I saw screenshots of their instgram story bullshit excuse about being a "safe space" that completely put the onus on "the heckler" that they threw out instead of his ass.

Hmm

NEWS: NBCUniversal offers to release "any former NBC News employee who believes that they cannot disclose their experience with sexual harassment" because of an NDA "from that perceived obligation." pic.twitter.com/zr2dewKDmR

— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) October 26, 2019

David Simon talks about why he chose to keep James Franco on The Deuce despite sexual misconduct allegations and it’s... not pretty.

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/deuce-finale-david-simon-interview-part-2-james-franco-allegations-904238/

The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on.

Simon’s arguments are all over the place. First he claims that Franco didn’t use his power over the women but later goes on at length about how on his own set (!) there were examples of how Franco’s celebrity and power made other actors uncomfortable. Also claims that Franco has been a star for so long that he wasn’t aware that he had all this power? Which is just pure bs given that he spent several years being all James Franco acting as James Franco.

I've said it before and it bears repeating: David Simon is a pretty great showrunner and an irritating dumbass otherwise.

also "taking plastic guards off actors' vulvas and having oral sex with them during a scene" does not count as "exploiting his power"

This ^^ is truly nauseating

gross

what?? i didn't hear about that

the original LA Times story: https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-james-franco-allegations-20180111-htmlstory.html

There was also a woman he dated who claimed he forced her to give him a blowjob. and he's also admitted to trying to pick up an underage girl on Instagram.

the lawsuit/LA Times stuff about the complaints is p bullshit imo. The women enrolled in a class that was literally about performing sex scenes - with James Franco - and then complained that the course made them uncomfortable. To be fair Franco even offering a class like that seems like a p bad idea on paper, but the situation is not analogous to others like Weinstein or Louis CK or whoever.

the girlfriend + instagram thing sound skeevy but idk

How is it bullshit?

You can have an acting class about performing sex scenes in a way that would make everyone involved comfortable e.g. by having an intimacy/sensitivity coach present, or by not storming off and throwing a tantrum if women refused to take their tops off, or by not uploading footage with nudity that they had shot for class online without the women's consent, or by not removing the protective guards that you know, WERE SUPPOSED TO MAKE THE WOMEN COMFORTABLE (this btw was not part of the class but was a shoot for an unscripted movie scene that Franco invited his students to be part of, which makes it even more gross.)

To be fair Franco even offering a class like that seems like a p bad idea on paper, but the situation is not analogous to others like Weinstein or Louis CK or whoever.

Well Louis CK defenders would say his situation was not analogous to Weinstein either since he never actually assaulted anyone but that's bullshit too. Being a woman is constantly having to deal with men shifting the goalposts, being all like "This is OK, but *this* is not OK". NO. None of them are fucking OK.

an acting class about performing sex scenes in a way that would make everyone involved comfortable

I don't think you can, actually

(but then I think the large majority of sex scenes in film are gratuitous and stupid and unnecessary)