Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

Salma Hayek on Harvey Weinstein, in @nytopinion:
"No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage.
No to letting him give me oral sex.
No to my getting naked with another woman.
No, no, no ...
And with every refusal came Harvey’s Machiavellian rage." https://t.co/8KfW3y3Igz

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 13, 2017

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/news/luc-robitailles-wife-stacia-alleges-trump-made-aggressive-advances-elevator-150356866.html

that Salma Hayek piece is rough:

The range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, “I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.”

When he was finally convinced that I was not going to earn the movie the way he had expected, he told me he had offered my role and my script with my years of research to another actress.

In his eyes, I was not an artist. I wasn’t even a person. I was a thing: not a nobody, but a body.

Halfway through shooting, Harvey turned up on set and complained about Frida’s “unibrow.” He insisted that I eliminate the limp and berated my performance. Then he asked everyone in the room to step out except for me. He told me that the only thing I had going for me was my sex appeal and that there was none of that in this movie. So he told me he was going to shut down the film because no one would want to see me in that role.

It was soul crushing because, I confess, lost in the fog of a sort of Stockholm syndrome, I wanted him to see me as an artist: not only as a capable actress but also as somebody who could identify a compelling story and had the vision to tell it in an original way.

I was hoping he would acknowledge me as a producer, who on top of delivering his list of demands shepherded the script and obtained the permits to use the paintings. I had negotiated with the Mexican government, and with whomever I had to, to get locations that had never been given to anyone in the past — including Frida Kahlo’s houses and the murals of Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera, among others.

But all of this seemed to have no value. The only thing he noticed was that I was not sexy in the movie. He made me doubt if I was any good as an actress, but he never succeeded in making me think that the film was not worth making.

He offered me one option to continue. He would let me finish the film if I agreed to do a sex scene with another woman. And he demanded full-frontal nudity.

Salma <3

that story made me cry

Frida was such a heartfelt & beautiful movie, and the knowledge that she was dealing with that level of abuse from Weinstein, & fighting so hard to realize such a personal dream just breaks my fucking heart

(and that her friends helped her when she really needed it was v moving)

i've had bad vibes about Bill Simmons ever since he thought it was a good idea to publish a particularly disgusting attractiveness ranking of female tennis players, part of me is surprised nothing's ever come up with him but then again i could see him being a guy whose negative contributions in all this "only" extend to his part in demeaning women in sports in columns.

Drew Magary wrote a pretty good column about this sort of thing (in the beginning, before all the football picks)
https://deadspin.com/the-reckoning-always-comes-1819874125

The new Russell Simmons piece in the NYT is pretty horrible.

Also breaking:

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/tavis-smiley-pbs-1202639424/

that Salma Hayek story. sad.
and once again, another one of those "whatever happened to her career..." memories ruefully explained

I just saw this on twitter

https://mic.com/articles/186795/after-allegations-against-johnny-iuzzini-abc-pulls-the-great-american-baking-show-off-the-air

from a previous Iuzzini story
https://mic.com/articles/186721/four-more-women-accuse-celebrity-chef-johnny-iuzzini-of-sexual-harassment-and-abuse

In the spring of 2010, a female pastry chef and food stylist who’d briefly worked under Iuzzini at Jean-Georges the year prior reached out to Iuzzini over text message, she told Mic in a phone interview. She requested anonymity because she still works in the industry. The first season of the Top Chef spinoff show Top Chef: Just Desserts had just been announced, and since Iuzzini was a judge on the show, she wondered if the show had food styling work opportunities. She said that Iuzzini texted her back amenably, adding, “Why don’t we get together and talk about your career?” The woman said she repeatedly suggested a public meet-up over coffee during daytime hours, but Iuzzini countered that she come to his apartment for drinks at night. The woman received Iuzzini’s final text messages in the presence of a friend, who confirmed to Mic that he’d seen the texts and had been told about the full exchange at the time.

“I’m like, ‘Well, jeez — you’re living up to that bad boy reputation.’ I was trying to make light of it,” the woman said. “And then he very blatantly put it out there. He said, ‘This isn’t high school anymore, sweetie. I’m not helping you for free.’” When the woman questioned what Iuzzini meant by “for free,” she said he responded, “When you want to be a real woman, then give me a call.” She did not end up meeting with Iuzzini or working on Top Chef: Just Desserts

gross

We’ve finally reached the stage where men just start outing themselves as creeps. https://t.co/CFCRZNIGWa

— Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen) December 14, 2017

the cynic in me thinks it was less “i wonder when they will come for me” and more “no one talks about me anymore so i will talk about myself in a topical manner”

he sure is getting out in front of that story and calling into question the memories and motives of those he wronged...

eating big macs for a month and filming it is already pretty deep self-abasement so

Oh god, please don’t let Spurlock make a film about all this.

I think it is not a good idea to start down the “you know who wouldn’t surprise me at all if they turned out to be a gross creep?” path

I've been trying to discourage too much invocation of "witch hunt" in this context, but yeah groundless speculation doesn't help.

spurlock has a movie coming out soon so i assume he wanted to get in front of the allegations lest they come up from the woman/women and tank his deal. his non apology here is pretty weak.

Yeah like his language in the piece --

The first incident she remembered as a rape and he's literally remembering them rolling around giggling in bed.

The second incident he almost portrays as him giving in to blackmail.

The cheating stuff, well I'm sure the cat's already out of the bag there.

It's trying to be The First Good Apology but it's terrible.

The time is right for collective revenge fantasy screenplays for sexual misconduct to circulate. Mary Harron directing, of course.

spurlock: cookies denied

that spurlock statement is... not good

there will soon be a Groundhog's Day remake where the main character has to keep writing an abuse apology until he GETS IT RIGHT

I think in most circumstances there's really no substitute for "I fucked up, I apologized in private and am now doing so publicly. I'm sorry. I'm gonna fuck off indefinitely."

oh no not the guy that ate a bunch of shitty food and filmed it, we really are losing our heroes

eh his permanent association with a movie i really like, the one direction documentary, means this bums me out. it's extremely cool to be an asshole about it though

Giving me flashbacks to the old Daily Show "Ted Hitler" bit - http://www.cc.com/video-clips/rk9abw/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-bloggers

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/13/magazine/the-reckoning-women-and-power-in-the-workplace.html?_r=0

many essays to read

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/13/politics/congress-women-democrats-dress-kaptur/index.html

sounding like a 71 year old

more from espn

http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2017/12/14/women-who-worked-espn-say-its-problems-far-beyond-barstool-sports/L1v9HJIvtnHuBPiMru6yGM/story.html

Wonder if that Hong Kong investigation will go any further than Weinstein and Logan.

Dustin Hoffman.

http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/dustin-hoffman-2-1202641525/

picturing him smiling that insouciant smile and staring right into their faces while he's violating them is enough to make me throw my phone across the room

awful

i definitely believe that Hoffman's a piece of shit rapist
that said, I'm not sure what to take from the third account in that story, or if it should have been reported - it's kind of hard to buy hypnosis?

Well that does it. I'm never watching Ishtar again.

This article is great. Among other things, she articulates my inchoate worries about this moment we’re in, my resistance to the claims that we’re living through a revolution.

https://nplusonemag.com/issue-30/the-intellectual-situation/in-the-maze/

According to this profile, Lorin Stein was hired at FSG as an editorial assistant to Jonathan Galassi in 1998.
The same year, I was turned down for an assistant position at FSG (with a different editor) because I was "too old."
I'm a year younger than Stein. https://t.co/LCqaF1Gqk7

— Ruth Franklin (@ruth_franklin) December 15, 2017

Just seeing this after I awoke, I burst out crying. There it is, confirmation that Harvey Weinstein derailed my career, something I suspected but was unsure. Thank you Peter Jackson for being honest. I’m just heartsick https://t.co/ljK9NqICbm

— Mira Sorvino (@MiraSorvino) December 15, 2017

Was not expecting this:

http://amp.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article189931514.html

didn't expect Marcy Kaptur to go there; disappointing.

Hoffman story is goddamn horrific

Telling the truth can be bad news.

This article is great. Among other things, she articulates my inchoate worries about this moment we’re in, my resistance to the claims that we’re living through a revolution.

https://nplusonemag.com/issue-30/the-intellectual-situation/in-the-maze/

― horseshoe, Friday, 15 December 2017 11:50 (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was a different perspective thanks for posting

From my POV (caveat emptor what) the writer is reasonably dishonest in categorising the issues and her description of the concerns of the men she knows that she claims to be trying to synopsise fairly come across as an unsympathetic and partisan caricature. #notallstrawmen

i came here to say thank you for posting that horseshoe
i read it slowly because it was kind of hard to digest all at once

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/15/us/andrea-ramsey-harassment.html

A woman running to flip a Kansas congressional seat from red to blue next year is ending her campaign after allegations surfaced that she had sexually harassed, and then fired, a former subordinate.

Andrea Ramsey, 56, is a retired business executive who worked in the nonprofit sector before deciding to run for office as a Democrat in next year’s congressional midterm elections. She was one of a growing number of women inspired to seek office in the wake of President Trump’s election.

But this month, The Kansas City Star newspaper asked her about a 2005 lawsuit that accused her of sexually harassing a man at LabOne, where she was the executive vice president of human resources, and then firing him after he rejected her advances, a claim Ms. Ramsey denies. The suit was against the company, not Ms. Ramsey specifically, and it was settled in 2006.

“Twelve years ago, I eliminated an employee’s position,” Ms. Ramsey said in a letter posted to Facebook on Friday. “That man decided to bring a lawsuit against the company (not against me). He named me in the allegations, claiming I fired him because he refused to have sex with me. That is a lie.”

Well, I guess that settles that!

God God, SERIOUSLY? https://t.co/NDZFrLDXil

— Minnie Driver (@driverminnie) December 15, 2017

turned on the tv and LITTLE FOCKERS (w hoffman) was on usa. basic cable is going to keep the status quo alive

also minnie driver rules

matt damon really is an endless wellspring of bad takes huh

And, to his mind, not all such crimes are equal. “I do believe that there’s a spectrum of behavior,” he begins. “And we’re going to have to figure — you know, there’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right? Both of those behaviors need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated, right?”

idk, does anyone actually disagree with this?