Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

A story so old that the very first tale in Boccaccio's Decameron is a hilarious take on this phenomenon.

yeah it's an age old tale. exploitation and the entertainment industry. there is the talent and there are the gatekeepers, leeching off both artists and the public. makes you tempted to say, fuck it, just go DIY, just go local. but these abusive power structures exist pretty much everywhere, whether you are CEO of movies or a local promoter who controls access.

this story in particular certainly explains how most movies are largely morality-free power fantasies and have been for decades. it's all cynical, there is no hope for humanity, just self-referential consumerism. Superman just stands there with a dumb look on his face while a room full of people explodes. when is the last time you left a movie feeling something, anything, that perhaps pointed to a universal truth or insight? look who is making them, amoral privileged power mongers.

when is the last time you left a movie feeling something, anything, that perhaps pointed to a universal truth or insight?

Last night.

thanks for sharing, that sounds like a great movie

yeah that happens

/when is the last time you left a movie feeling something, anything, that perhaps pointed to a universal truth or insight?/

Last night.

weren't you just lolling about an publically elected official twice accused of sexual harassment and using his position to silence his abusers?

see, people are fine with it to a degree, even if it is sick, because the tribal thing is so strong, the consumer aspect of branding to one side or the other. to centrist liberals Bill Clinton's transgressions are a laughing matter, and if you are a leftist and bring it up, you are called a sexist or a Russian plant. "oh no! he has to apologize to his wife!" dismisses the voices of the abused. belittling the shit he did normalizes that behavior.

silence his victims

like if there is going to be a moral ground, it needs to apply to everyone, not just "the good guys" or "the bad guys".

Yeah hollywood's been a cesspit for, what, a century? But it's produced great films anyway. Its hit rate may be worse now than at certain points last century but here's the thing, films are being made outside of that particular system. It's kinda on you if you only watch flying punchman movies. Whether good films still exist is kinda a side issue to the topic at hand tho

Sorry on train, missed xposts. I'm against bill Clinton

Dying

lol sorry

man Weinstein made "Velvet Goldmine" and "Princess Mononoke". those are two solid films.

"Holy Smoke" is really good.

yeah there are sickos in any profession it would be better for people to stand up against this. this is the big tragedy here, that many people knew about this and tolerated it because it was good for their careers. it is a selfish act. the internet is good here because now it is easier to get your story out, and seeing all these people come out after something like this drops, it shows that you are not alone. this must be encouraging, and is relatively a new hing, compared to the isolation of pre-internet social media.

Let me get this straight, you said Weinstein “made” Princess Mononoke.

How the hell hasn’t adbru gotten the 51 yet, I wonder to myself daily

ha, I'd never heard this story

Miyazaki met with Harvey Weinstein, Miramax's chairman; Weinstein demanded that edits should be made to Princess Mononoke.[38] In response, Toshio Suzuki sent Weinstein a katana with a message stating "No cuts."[38]

Miyazaki commented on the incident: "Actually, my producer did that. Although I did go to New York to meet this man, this Harvey Weinstein, and I was bombarded with this aggressive attack, all these demands for cuts. I defeated him."[14] Weinstein has always insisted that such editing was done in the interest of creating the most financially viable film. "I'm not cutting for fun", Harvey Weinstein said in an interview. "I'm cutting for the shit to work. All my life I served one master: the film. I love movies."[9][15]

Harvey Weinstein telling Hayao Miyazaki how to make movies, give me a break.

ha, I'd never heard this story

_Miyazaki met with Harvey Weinstein, Miramax's chairman; Weinstein demanded that edits should be made to Princess Mononoke.[38] In response, Toshio Suzuki sent Weinstein a katana with a message stating "No cuts."[38]_

Kind of a mixed message, though. Why would you send someone a sword if you DON'T want them to cut things.

Harvey's lawyers are fleeing

http://gothamist.com/2017/10/07/lisa_bloom_resigns_weinstein.php?_ga=2.21294075.19607542.1506960782-484564342.1476232601

Fired yesterday. Apparently NYT had expose on him in 2004 but killed it under pressure:

I traveled to Rome and tracked down the man who held the plum position of running Miramax Italy. According to multiple accounts, he had no film experience and his real job was to take care of Weinstein’s women needs, among other things.

As head of Miramax Italy in 2003 and 2004, Fabrizio Lombardo was paid $400,000 for less than a year of employment. He was on the payroll of Miramax and thus the Walt Disney Company, which had bought the indie studio in 1993.

I had people on the record telling me Lombardo knew nothing about film, and others citing evenings he organized with Russian escorts.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/actress-rose-mcgowan-calls-entire-103350145.html

After intense pressure from Weinstein, which included having Matt Damon and Russell Crowe call me directly to vouch for Lombardo and unknown discussions well above my head at the Times, the story was gutted.

Those must have been some surreal calls, jesus.

Who signed off on this headline? pic.twitter.com/213KJQMPzA

— Dan Scary (@djperry1973) October 9, 2017

Jesus, Ronan Farrow's piece in the New Yorker is nauseating. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories

Asia Argento, an Italian film actress and director, told me that she did not speak out until now––Weinstein, she told me, forcibly performed oral sex on her—because she feared that Weinstein would “crush” her. “I know he has crushed a lot of people before,” Argento said. “That’s why this story—in my case, it’s twenty years old, some of them are older—has never come out.”

. . .

Three women––among them Argento and a former aspiring actress named Lucia Evans—told me that Weinstein raped them, allegations that include Weinstein forcibly performing or receiving oral sex and forcing vaginal sex. Four women said that they experienced unwanted touching that could be classified as an assault. In an audio recording captured during a New York Police Department sting operation in 2015 and made public here for the first time, Weinstein admits to groping a Filipina-Italian model named Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, describing it as behavior he is “used to.” Four of the women I interviewed cited encounters in which Weinstein exposed himself or masturbated in front of them.

. . .

Other employees described what was, in essence, a culture of complicity at Weinstein’s places of business, with numerous people throughout the companies fully aware of his behavior but either abetting it or looking the other way. Some employees said that they were enlisted in subterfuge to make the victims feel safe. A female executive with the company described how Weinstein assistants and others served as a “honeypot”—they would initially join a meeting, but then Weinstein would dismiss them, leaving him alone with the woman.

. . .

Multiple sources said that Weinstein frequently bragged about planting items in media outlets about those who spoke against him; these sources feared that they might be similarly targeted. Several pointed to Gutierrez’s case, in 2015: after she went to the police, negative items discussing her sexual history and impugning her credibility began rapidly appearing in New York gossip pages. (In the taped conversation with Gutierrez, Weinstein asks her to join him for “five minutes,” and warns, “Don’t ruin your friendship with me for five minutes.”)

And it goes on and on.

I know, I know, the Weakly Standard, but I liked this piece.

wonder if there's any chance of criminal charges against Weinstein

no

2. Audio: Harvey Weinstein admits to assaulting model Ambra Gutierrez. Keep in mind NYC DA Cy Vance had this audio. https://t.co/8W4s5CrLy7 pic.twitter.com/Ft4P70g6Mm

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) October 10, 2017

Good lord

Weinstein had a reputation for insisting on edits when he acquired foreign films, but obv his recently revealed crimes are in a more distressing category.

yikes

it's all just horrific. i choose not to read any comments on these articles, there are so many trashy people in this town who are more than willing to sling mud at those coming forward.

That's the same DA involved in the Ivanka/Don Jr. fraud case -- and who took donations from Trump's lawyer. https://t.co/1sf2NVGd5V https://t.co/Oh20lqTyRo

— Rachel Glickhouse (@Riogringa) October 10, 2017

(Cy Vance, that is)

Two sources close to the police investigation said that they had no reason to doubt Gutierrez’s account of the incident. One of them, a police source, said that the department had collected more than enough evidence to prosecute Weinstein. But the other source said that Gutierrez’s statements about her past complicated the case for the office of the Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr. After two weeks of investigation, the District Attorney’s office decided not to file charges. The D.A.’s office declined to comment on this story but pointed me to their statement at the time: “This case was taken seriously from the outset, with a thorough investigation conducted by our Sex Crimes Unit. After analyzing the available evidence, including multiple interviews with both parties, a criminal charge is not supported.”

“We had the evidence,” the police source involved in the operation told me. “It’s a case that made me angrier than I thought possible, and I have been on the force a long time.”

So it's pure victim blaming. Just the fact that she claimed to have been sexually assaulted before was enough to invalidate recorded evidence.

It sucks that this stuff is coming out so late after the NY primaries, Vance clearly should and could have been primaried.

isn't Ronan Farrow ...? Impressed how the writer's personal life did not get inserted into the story at all!

I guess Ronan Farrow was investigating this independently of the NYT reporters? I wonder how many simultaneous investigations were going on.

Ben Affleck clears his throat:

pic.twitter.com/f5AgemRXds

— Ben Affleck (@BenAffleck) October 10, 2017

Looking forward to "THE BOURNE APOLOGY" in which Jason fights off attempts to expose a pimp

— Anthony Bourdain (@Bourdain) October 10, 2017

damn

This in response to Ben also very good/cold:

how's your brother doing https://t.co/KRIjzRtC53

— pilot (@pilotbacon) October 10, 2017

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DLvlgmeVoAA20FB.jpg:small

uh

Meantime, is this the angriest I've ever seen or heard this man, about anything?

“I will go anywhere I can learn more about myself.” Try prison you fucker. https://t.co/Wy6fQyTqAw

— david sylvian (@davidsylvian58) October 10, 2017

"fucker" maybe not the best choice of insults there

I had to check Schrader's FB page to see if this was real *and it was*

buddy. pic.twitter.com/I29HkMT7UN

— Ken Greller (@kengreller) October 10, 2017

Good thread

Yet last year Nate Parker, who was acquitted of a rape charge almost 2 decades ago by a jury had to be gotten out of the paint immediately?

— Neo Liberal (@RickyRawls) October 10, 2017

someone dig up that Shcrader/Nastassja Kinski excerpt