Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

Somebody tweeted at Kevin Smith the other day...his response:

He financed the first 14 years of my career - and now I know while I was profiting, others were in terrible pain. It makes me feel ashamed. https://t.co/T0hInW7EqJ

— KevinSmith (@ThatKevinSmith) October 9, 2017

Actress Tara Subkoff has opened up about her experience with Harvey Weinstein, alleging the producer sexually harassed her in the 1990s when she was up for a part in one of his movies.

“That night I was offered the role, and I went out to a premiere after party that Harvey Weinstein was also at,” she told Variety. “He motioned for me to come over to him, and then grabbed me to sit me on his lap. I was so surprised and shocked I couldn’t stop laughing because it was so awkward. But then I could feel that he had an erection. I got quiet, but got off his lap quickly. He then asked me to come outside with him and other things I don’t want to share, but it was implied that if I did not comply with doing what he asked me to do that I would not get the role that I had already been informally offered. I laughed in his face as I was in shock and so uncomfortable. I left the party right after that.”

Subkoff made her film debut in 1994’s thriller “When the Bough Breaks,” and appeared in the 1997 Jack Nicholson comedy “As Good as It Gets,” the 1997 “All Over Me,” and the 1998 Whit Stillman film “The Last Days of Disco.” Subkoff said after denying Weinstein’s advances that night, she was stripped of the informally offered part and blacklisted from acting in Hollywood.

“My reputation was ruined by false gossip, and I was called ‘too difficult to work with,'” she said. “It became impossible for me to get work as an actress after this, so I then had to start a new career path and started Imitation of Christ, a fashion and art label.

In 2015, Subkoff stepped back into entertainment and made her directorial debut with the feature film “#Horror.”

“The Weinstein company executives snuck into a cast and crew screening of my film and told me they loved it,” she recalled. “Then they took it to Harvey, who then refused to watch it but then bad-mouthed it to everyone all over Cannes.”

Still, the movie was picked up for distribution by IFC Midnight. “[IFC was] so supportive of me and the movie, even though Harvey tried to ruin any potential success it could have had,” she said. “It is challenging enough to get work in Hollywood as a female, let alone being a female filmmaker producer/director. And when people attempt to ruin your reputation on top of that, it makes it next to impossible.”

Subkoff said she hopes the growing list of women coming forward with their stories will set a precedent for how women are treated in all places of work. “I have a 17 month old daughter, and I hope she never has a story like this to share.”

Though she has never shared her story before, Subkoff said she opened up about her experience to demonstrate how “powerful men abusing their power can affect not only a few careers, but all of ours,” adding, “I had it affect and ruin my career as an actress. And then almost twenty years later it almost affected my first feature film I wrote directed and produced getting distribution. That refusing to comply with one powerful man’s sexual advances could not only ruin my first career as an actress, but almost twenty years later also had the power to affect my first and only feature film to get distribution is so important to show how the abuse of power by the patriarchy is affecting all female artists everywhere.”

if there are people out there who had the guts to say "I've heard all the stories about this guy and you know what I don't want his money" we've probably never heard their names. That doesn't necessarily mean Kevin Smith knew but come on some of these motherfuckers definitely did.

Tarantino & Rodriguez obviously did. Probably Gosling. people like Kevin Smith, I'm not sure... I mean when something is such a widespread open secret, how much purchase do you really have if you only know vague rumors & you're three or four steps removed from the people involved?

considering how many projects Weinstein worked on, you can see a pattern w/a lot of his accusers where they never worked with him again. i have no doubt it was an open secret, but i also think a lot of these guys--when they're saying "i didn't know"--are really saying "i didn't believe the accusers or the rumors i heard." or possibly, "i didn't care until i couldn't afford not to care anymore."

That last story is horrifying particularly due to the fact he effectively stalked Subkoff years after she rebuffed him, to go out of his way to damage her reputation! I mean that goes beyond being butthurt and into the realm of fucked up controlling psychopath.

Well, his Mallrats star knew.

#HarveyWeinstein #ClaireForlani #MyStory pic.twitter.com/gEVDkbP5ec

— Claire Forlani (@ClaireAForlani) October 12, 2017

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/12/media/amazon-studios-roy-price-harvey-weinstein/index.html

Head of Amazon Studios put on leave for telling Philip K Dick's daughter (producer of Man in the HIgh Castle) "you'd love my dick" and yelling "Anal sex!" in her ear.

<3 claire forlani

all this truth is so hard to take on board but so important to be heard, seen

I suspect we're going to hear so many more stories coming out over the next several days, weeks, months, etc. He used his position to be a predator stalking an entire generation of young actresses. And even from my limited scope here, you'd hear stories. When Rose McGowan would drop hints over the past couple years, it didn't take much guessing to know who it was. Everyone knew, but the people who could do something felt powerless or they turned a blind eye or they assisted.

And i think unfortunately producers like him, having to work with people like him, it's considered to be some perverse rite of passage, like "oh there are a lot of assholes in Hollywood ha ha!". the ones i'd always hear about was Scott Rudin, and from the old-school Jon Peters. But those stories were always out there, no coverups. They were just legendarily abusive to their underlings, but you'd never hear about actual crimes.

What's different here was the deep rot that had to set in everywhere for so many people to ignore it, or not investigate further. So I have to give massive respect for life to Rose McGowan, I'm complete in my admiration for her. And also for those others behind the scenes who--though they might have felt like they couldn't go to the authorities or the press with proof--nonetheless warned people away from him. And respect to those who had to deal with the PTSD from having him attack them. and i mean i'll never judge anyone for not coming forward, i do not doubt for a second that a lot of people found themselves in a position where they knew their careers could be ruined by this guy, and they felt stuck. it's horrific.

xps I like Clerks and Dogma well enough, but Smith strikes me as probably an enabler. Unless someone's got a strong case that his best pal Jason Mewes was unlikely to have been a constant harasser.

Hollywood is steeped in disease to varying "open secret" degrees. The whole "casting couch" thing is practically a punchline, which is pretty sick; talk about an open secret. HW seems to be several steps beyond the norm, whatever that may be, but the fact that literally everyone knows what the proverbial casting couch is shows how deep and far back this stuff goes, no doubt in and at every level of every industry but especially where this boys club mentality appears to be encouraged and dismissed (see: Fox News, the President, everywhere, etc.).

From Quentin Tarantino: pic.twitter.com/jv0VQNrI91

— Amber Tamblyn (@ambertamblyn) October 13, 2017

God, seeing these names I haven't seen in forever (Tara Subkoff! Claire Forlani!) and realizing the probable reasons why I haven't seen their names in forever is just the most awful shit. It's not enough that he physically violated these women, he also had to actively snuff out their careers.

fuck Batman, what a piece of shit enabler

I ran through about 5 names in my mind before I realized you were talking about Affleck

Claire Forlani was in a pretty recent Lifetime movie about a sadistic (exercise) trainer/life coach who preyed on exercise-obsessed Forlani until her spirit was broken. Not bad for a Lifetime movie. Not great.

xp: ditto.

I've been very skeptical about all these Hollywood people claiming ignorance about Weinstein. I think it's possible they weren't aware of the rape and sexual assault details, but they surely knew that he wasn't a good person, it was common knowledge. I even think this extends to Hillary Clinton and other politicians that took money from him and treated him like a friend. It's dumb that there's been this whole side conversation about Clinton, she doesn't deserve to be dragged through the mud, nor should this conversation even be about her. But I can't help but feel ambivalent about her and other democrats taking his money. Again, it's completely possible they had no idea about the rape allegations, but they must have known they were dealing with a bad character.

My impressions about Weinstein come primarily from reading Down and Dirty Pictures by Peter Biskind about 10 years ago. I don't remember much about that book. The main thing I do remember about it is that it clearly paints Weinstein as a monster, a horrible person who you should avoid working with at all costs. I don't think the book touches on anything to do with sex, but it is very clear that he is no good.

Interestingly, Biskind was interviewed by Slate regarding these new allegations:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2017/10/peter_biskind_on_the_harvey_weinstein_abuse_allegations.html

He comes off as weirdly defensive about the whole thing because he didn't include any details of sexual abuse. He's very vague about whether he knew anything or not. I guess I can understand that he wants to cover his own ass, but I don't see how anyone could read his book and end up with anything but a highly negative view about Weinstein.

I take it there's been no comment from Trump.

He said he knows Weinstein and he's not surprised.

lol @ tarantino "The guilt of men on the face of the earth must be determined by Justice and ultimately by the possible existence of God."

*farts*

that was fake tho right?

ok nm i guess it is a fake account lol

sorry

Is it a joke account or some person trying to pretend they are him?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/prosecutor-threw-away-slam-dunk-cases-against-weinstein-and-trump-kids?source=facebook&via=mobile

(author is a law professor, specialist in prosecutorial misconduct, and former manhattan prosecutor, so he knows what he is talking about)

Yeah I think the only real comment from him so far is that one I linked. (That said, it's a lame comment.)

.@KellyannePolls: "Any woman who remained silent as the next generation suffered... they have no right [to say] they speak for women." pic.twitter.com/68txoCg03b

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 13, 2017

Vile.

I really like this piece: https://jezebel.com/dont-make-a-scene-1819360859

If the phrase serves to quickly end a woman’s expression of emotion, then it also serves to define that behavior as performatively unnatural. Almost any allegation can be thus dismissed as yet another crazy, irrational woman making yet another unnecessary scene. Rose McGowan, one of the few of Weinstein’s victims to speak publicly about her abuse, was called “batshit insane,” and her habit of speaking openly about the casual sexism in Hollywood, treated as a questionable spectacle from an unwell woman. McGowan did not act like a victim should. She was angry and messy rather than polite and meek about her allegations. We prefer victims to be “brave,” to articulate their abuse without the messy feelings of anger or regret inflecting the narrative. Anger is for the men who have been accused who, even after mounting evidence of their abusive behavior, still only have to say “these charges are not true,” to provide evidence of their rationality. A victim’s anger is a messy spectacle—a big scene—but the anger of the accused is an objective response to so-called false allegations. McGowan made a scene even as other victims, through threats and media manipulation, were rendered silent, prevented from making a scene.

on a side note, Tippi Hedren has a cool signature

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tippi_Hedren#/media/File:Tippi_Hedren_signature.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Tippi_Hedren_signature.jpg

i believe that phrase comes from the french "faire la comedie" which sometimes means "make a scene" but still often literally means "pretend; make something up"

xpost: omg!!

Dug up this Oliver Stone profile this morning. Shows how "out in the open" all of this was in that era.

@briankoppelman Reminded of Stephen Schiff's '94 @NewYorker profile of Oliver Stone: https://t.co/j7IVSTqZxh pic.twitter.com/k1EaGwcLLq

— Eric Ziegenhagen (@ericzieg) October 13, 2017

simple but on point
https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/22490228_10115235361170974_6594269169792364899_n.jpg?oh=f0dff620c30af0e45fcbd43cbf87f11b&oe=5A3CF304

patricia arquette appears to be going in on oliver stone right now

Didn't Stone grope Salma Hayek in public a few years ago?

Colin Firth saying "I knew and I'm ashamed I didn't do anything" is at least honest. So far the split seems to be, roughly, something like this:

Woman who has encountered Weinstein makes a statement: "everyone knew about this".
Man who has encountered Weinstein makes a statement: "I didn't know about this".

The latter looking more and more dubious as this continues.

Yeah, I would be much more sympathetic to someone who just said -- "Yeah, I knew. We all knew. I didn't come forward because I was afraid to rock the boat and I wasn't sure it would do any good, and I was afraid to get sued for defamation and ruin my career."

Other than Hitchcock are there many deceased people who people started telling stories about? Obviously they have families and people interested in protecting their legacies but I'd imagine it's easier for older actors or their families to accuse people who are gone?

H'wood is a very gossipy town and stuff tends to circulate while people are alive, going back as far to the days of Fatty Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin. I'm sure people in H'Wood knew about Htich and Hedren, the crew on the Birds knew it for ex.

While Chaplin seemed to serially seduce his often younger leading ladies (as Gary Cooper did later), he was the Most Famous Man in the World for a long stretch, so while there was certainly a power dynamic at work I haven't read about any assaults per se.

Ronald Reagan of course

Regarding who knew and when, a lot of the men who didn't know didn't know because those who knew deemed it unsafe to tell them.

re: Oliver Stone... he also was lecherous and aggressive with the director of CITIZENFOUR, who scooped Stone's Snowden movie by a couple years. Tried to convince her to delay releasing her film so his could come out first... prick

ugh, never knew about any of that

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/08/oliver-stone-snowden-biopic

Speaking of the Snowden documentary, Stone clashed heavily with its director, Laura Poitras. She recalled that when they met for the first time in 2014, Stone asked her to delay the release of her film, because his "would be the real movie."

“To have another filmmaker ask me to delay the release of my film was—well, it was somewhat insulting," she said.

At another point, during dinner, he also “reached over and had his hands around my neck,” she remembered, “sort of in a joking way.”

“I think he was a little bit drunk,” she said. “But it was not a particularly pleasant evening.”

I've been very skeptical about all these Hollywood people claiming ignorance about Weinstein. I think it's possible they weren't aware of the rape and sexual assault details, but they surely knew that he wasn't a good person, it was common knowledge. I even think this extends to Hillary Clinton and other politicians that took money from him and treated him like a friend. It's dumb that there's been this whole side conversation about Clinton, she doesn't deserve to be dragged through the mud, nor should this conversation even be about her. But I can't help but feel ambivalent about her and other democrats taking his money. Again, it's completely possible they had no idea about the rape allegations, but they must have known they were dealing with a bad character.

How am I, an average consumer of movies with an ordinary life and job, supposed to feel when I read self-indulgent shit like, "gee, I didn't know?" Shows you how out of touch some of these celebrities are. I mean, I've worked in offices where there is a serial harasser or general creep, and EVERYONE KNOWS. And it's difficult enough to get these guys in trouble when you're in a much lower income bracket. Why are they tweeting at us peons? No, we don't understand. I guess they're just trying to save face, but fuck them. Hope this fucks up ALL of their careers.

there's layers though

I mean not to be captain obvious, I'm more just thinking this through out loud myself but...

there's the sad enraging truth that Hollywood is, and has always historically been, by and large a very self-involved, self-protecting "commmunity" -- or "town of strangers who happen work together", depending on how high the stakes are

and even workplaces in general can be that way too.

if someone has a reputation like Weinstein's not only sexually but the whole magilla of being intimidating and prone to violent outbursts and also holding a lot of power, all of that is likely received in terms of how it affects one's self and one's career. especially in Hollywood. if you are part of the circle that "knows", it may just mean that you conduct yourself in a way that means you don't have to deal with him or you limit your dealings, give him a wide berth so to speak. for dudes this may mean you still shake hands and go out to dinner because you know that *you're* not in danger. that's reductive but still, I think it happens more than we're willing to admit.

And you've seen from the stories the woman have told, being one who 'knows' and shares that knowledge with others can have consequences. the fear that word gets back to Weinstein that the warning came from you is enough to make a lot of people stay mum no matter what, because they don't want to risk their jobs/careers/whatever.

It's like the common stories you hear in workplaces: longtime employees might know amongst themselves who to stay away from at parties or who gets handsy when left alone but no-one's necessarily making a point of telling the new employees. Depending on the environment and the offender in question, it may just be pure luck that the new employee happens to befriend someone is willing to share that knowledge with you. if you don't socialize or you're not thought of as being the offender's 'type', you may be left to learn on your own.

there's so much coded langugage and behaviour around these types of people and so much weird shared understanding of how socially or professionally those people are dealt with that a hundred people could KNOW and still never actually help anyone, especially if that person generally conducts themselves in an intimidating manner; or alternatively if the offender is the 'great guy' who is great to everyone, same thing applies.

again, this is all stuff we all know, but I think it's important for the 'why don't they just' angle to be seen in light of what really goes on

I was reminded this week of Jared Harris's anecdote from his AV Club interview a few years back about working with Oliver Stone.

Natural Born Killers (1994)—“London Boy”

JH: That was wild. I went in to audition for a different part, and clearly, before I got in, the casting director had told Oliver Stone my name, and who I was, and that I was Richard Harris’ son. Oliver was clearly pissed off that he was seeing an English actor to audition for an American role, because I get in there, and Oliver calls me Richard the entire time, and when we start to do the scene, the casting director doesn’t even wait for me to get halfway through my lines before he gives me the cue for the next line. He’s just basically rushing me out of there. I can see that he’s cowering a bit, and that he’s being chewed out, so I’m assuming that’s what happened. It was a fucking disaster. I get out of there thinking that was a fucking waste of time. “What the fuck? He didn’t even get my fucking name right!”

So I’m going home, and a phone call comes through to my agent, and they want me to come back and read for a different part that is an English part. So I go back in there a couple of days later— this time he’s got my name right—and I’m halfway through that, and Oliver Stone cuts me off and went, “Yeah, yeah, you’re a natural. You’ve got this part. It’s yours. Do you want to… do you have a girlfriend?” I say, “Yeah.” “Is she an actress?” Now, she was just thinking about getting into the business, so I immediately go “Yeah, of course she is.” She has that one line at the end of the scene. So he goes, “Bring her along and she can say that line.” I go “Great.” So I go home, and I’m all proud and everything. I’m like “I got you a part in an Oliver Stone movie,” right? So I’m a hero for a couple of days.

We get to the set, and the girl is absolutely gorgeous, and they dress her up in this long wig with this tank top where the pits are out and these tiny hot pants and these long boots, and she looks basically like a tart on any boulevard late at night on a Friday, you know, hustling. Which is kind of strange. But Oliver’s tongue falls out of his mouth like the cartoon wolf as soon as he sees her, and he comes up to her, he goes, “Oh my God, oh my God, you are so beautiful.” He goes “You are so beautiful. Don’t you know that all the men here are in love with you?” I’m looking at him, and it’s kind of embarrassing. I’m standing next to her while he’s doing this, and I say, “Are you speaking for yourself there, Oliver?” And he looks at me like I’m an ant. “What the fuck is this peon doing talking to me? Why is he opening his mouth?” He kind of withers me with his stare, and he turns back to her, and he goes “So, tell me, have you got a boyfriend?” And she takes a little bit too long to answer. There’s this long pause, and she sort of sticks up her hand, points her thumb, and jerks it in my direction.

And he goes “Him?” And she goes “Yeah.” “With him? This guy?” She goes “Yeah.” He goes “Jared?” She goes “Yes.” He says “But… with… where did you meet… I mean, Jared?” And I look at Oliver Stone, and I went “Yes. You knew that. You asked me to bring her.” I said, “On your way, Stone. Turn around and on your way.” And he gets a bit shocked, and he turns around and starts to walk away, but then he remembers that he’s the director. He stops, and he looks back at me, and he goes, “That was a typically English thing to say.” And I look at him, and I go, “I’m sorry, what would the American thing have been? You can have her if I can have a bigger part?” From that point on, he fucked with us all day long. He was furious. That was my Oliver Stone experience.