Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

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)

fine, "as comfortable as possible" then. my point stands.

you could certainly get a better teacher for that than James Franco

i agree with you about sex scenes shakey

Roz otm
Franco offering sex scene classes should never have gotten the green light any more than a class about alcohol temperance should be taught by like a Richard Burton or something.

idk i'm pretty sure it's possible to perform sex scenes comfortably

I would honestly think a course about performing sex scenes would be about learning how to do them comfortably? Most people know how to have sex.

i also assume we're all professional actors here and we all know what's involved in a sex scene

Most people know how to have sex.

don't think this is true either lol

i think people are also forgetting what Franco's public image was like less than a decade ago - he was Renaissance man, the dude juggling a busy acting career with pursuing multiple degrees, releasing poetry and essay collections etc. Hey *I* thought he was hot too. So it's not surprising that people enrolled in his classes would expect at least a basic level of professionalism.

huh. I would expect a "hot" actor to act like an asshole.

that's cool, they, reasonably, didn't

If you want to read about predatory acting workshops / directors, this is the doozy:

https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/profiles-theatre-theater-abuse-investigation/Content?oid=22415861

so the shakey view is "because franco was obviously a sleaze, you can't complain about what happens when you take a sex scene workshop with him"?

v interesting perspective

I just don't think "I signed up for a sex scene class and then the sex turned out to be really uncomfortable" is grounds for a lawsuit or the same thing as a producer raping an actress in a hotel room. It's gross and stupid but also really predictable.

the tendency to say "this isn't like Weinstein" reduces all forms of sexual assault to "Is Weinstein" and "Is Not Weinstein" when in fact its a wide spectrum of shitty behavior

Like, Weinstein is a level 10 creep and Aziz Ansari is a level 3 creep and the tiny percentage of people who actually think about any of this shit at all ever are gonna make up their own mind