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New Yorker: Harvey Weinstein's Accusers Tell Their Stories

Emma Thompson interview was incredible.

"He is not a sex addict, he's a predator."

I heard that, and it's dead-on.

The "he's sick" is the last line of defense. A sex addict can get sex without raping people (especially if they are incredibly wealthy). This is something else entirely.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Courtesy of Amber Tamblyn, Tarantino, who has worked with Weinstein on every single one of his feature films since 1992, has released a statement:

DL_jI81VAAAxduP.jpg
Pffft like hell. I don't believe this for a second.

I think it's unfair to just assume everyone knew because lots of people did.
True, but Tarantino worked closely with Weinstein for years and years. It's credulity-stretching to think he had no idea and is "shocked" by these allegations.
 
I kind of agree too. I'm sure there are plenty of people who knew, or knew enough, and are just trying to save their own asses in the PR shitstorm now. But the idea that anyone associated with Harvey Weinstein had detailed accounts of him raping, assaulting, and harassing women over the years seems absurd to me.

What I think most, if not everyone, in Hollywood "knew" were rumors. But hearing rumors is not the same thing as actually knowing.

Yeah, the only reason I believe the idea that they might be lying about not knowing (specifically referring to Rodriguez and Tarantino) is the fact that they dated women who have come out as victims (Sorvino and McGowan), which makes it more likely that they were told directly. For all the stories we're hearing now, there would have also been some women (I'd imagine the amount would pale in comparison to those who didn't, though) who were willing to go along with his perversions for the sake of their careers, and those women formed the basis of "what Hollywood knew", because they didn't ever bother to ask about the what he might have done to/with the other women that have been around him.

In other words, Hollywood as a whole knew he liked young actresses, but stuck their heads in the sand when it came to how he was propositioning them, and the only people that specifically knew about the assaunt/harassment/rape are the people he violated and the people they confided in. Hollywood is (and has been for decades, to be honest) claiming plausible deniability.

Edit: Except the agents. The agents would have known because they would have had multiple independent actress reports of what happened, but they continued to send women to him anyway, because the money was more important than the safety of their low-end talent.
 

kmfdmpig

Member
Tarantino's comment of "needing a few more days to process... memory" seems to be laying the groundwork for him to pull something like the following:
I didn't put the pieces together at the time, but now in hindsight I realize I should have recognized the warning signs.
I don't believe him, but I suspect that is what he will do.
 
Is it safe to assume that if anyone says the women are complicit in the sexual assaults / rapes done by Harvey they are a straight up piece of shit? I've seen so many say the women are complicit for staying silent all these years and in some cases accepting settlements "allowing others to get assaulted". It's fucking disgusting to me that anyone could say and think this.

I saw some say Rose McGowan has blood on her hands for taking a settlement and not speaking sooner. How fucked up do you have to be to think that?

Please tell me this is fucked and I'm not crazy.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Is it safe to assume that if anyone says the women are complicit in the sexual assaults / rapes done by Harvey they are a straight up piece of shit? I've seen so many say the women are complicit for staying silent all these years and in some cases accepting settlements "allowing others to get assaulted". It's fucking disgusting to me that anyone could say and think this.

I saw some say Rose McGowan has blood on her hands for taking a settlement and not speaking sooner. How fucked up do you have to be to think that?

Please tell me this is fucked and I'm not crazy.
This is indeed fucked, and you are not crazy at all.
 
Did anyone watch that documentary about Harvey?

I stayed away from it, since I have ever since learning about the dude from Kevin Smith's Q&A, felt that the dude is a creepy monster, and should not be glorified.

Seems I wasn't wrong.
 

Cybit

FGC Waterboy
I think it's unfair to just assume everyone knew because lots of people did.

I mean, I will keep repeating my point that Obama sent his teenage daughter to intern for him, and I am pretty sure that Obama would not do that if he knew (and I'm pretty sure he'd make sure he was sending his daughter into a safe environment). Considering Obama might be the most powerful man on the planet at the time, I'd say there's probably a lot of people who had heard Weinstein was skeevy and creepy but not a serial predator.
 

doby

Member
BBC News article with former PA

Before she started [the job], she was given a warning: "Harvey will answer the door in a towel. He will ask you for a massage. You say no, you ignore him and you make sure you walk away so you're not too close."

This was in 1988. So his predatory behaviour has been well known for decades, and yet all these Hollywood folk seem so shocked. Any statement from a non victim is just an exercise in PR and damage limitation.
 

Maximilian E.

AKA MS-Evangelist
Slightly OT but he Oscars will be interesting to watch. Do we know who the host will be? It has the potential to be quite “oh oh” tense..
 
Slightly OT but he Oscars will be interesting to watch. Do we know who the host will be? It has the potential to be quite ”oh oh" tense..

Just looked it up, and Kimmel is next year's host.

I think it'll be like Oscars So White a couple years ago, where they're going to have to talk about it because it's just too big not to.

Edit: Not to mention that you'll have a decent chance of no women being in the writing or directing categories anyway, which would give you a decent starting point to talk about women and power in Hollywood in general.
 
Sue Perkins and Armando Iannucci pretty muched summed the situation up on The Last Leg tonight.

Sounds like Iannucci wasn't a fan anyway: "Well...who thought that notorious Hollywood shit Harvey Weinstein had a dark side?"

EDIT: Also, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Tarantino knew about it. He's a very odd individual himself.
 
Just looked it up, and Kimmel is next year's host.

I think it'll be like Oscars So White a couple years ago, where they're going to have to talk about it because it's just too big not to.

Edit: Not to mention that you'll have a decent chance of no women being in the writing or directing categories anyway, which would give you a decent starting point to talk about women and power in Hollywood in general.

I can totally see some token moves like putting Best Actress after Best Actor or some shit like that, but for the most part I think they will try and ostracize Weinstein and make him seem like an outlier.
 
BBC News article with former PA

This was in 1988. So his predatory behaviour has been well known for decades, and yet all these Hollywood folk seem so shocked. Any statement from a non victim is just an exercise in PR and damage limitation.
I'm pretty sure there was a character in Barton Fink, from 1991, modelled directly after Harvey Weinstein. I can't remember who because I haven't seen the film in years.
 

Barren Mind

Member
It's disturbing seeing how rampant this is in the industry. And I don't get it. Why harass these women? Is it simply about the power? But then you already have the power. There shouldn't be a need to harrass and coerce people. Doesn't make any sense.
 
It's disturbing seeing how rampant this is in the industry. And I don't get it. Why harass these women? Is it simply about the power? But then you already have the power. There shouldn't be a need to harrass and coerce people. Doesn't make any sense.

It's about the trophies. One of the things you notice in multiple accounts is that when talking to one woman, he'll start rattling off the other women he's slept with whose careers he advanced. He considered them conquests as opposed to actual people, which is part of the reason he was willing to go as far as he was.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
Is it simply about the power?

Yes.

But then you already have the power. There shouldn't be a need to harrass and coerce people. Doesn't make any sense.
It's really hard for a person who has never held that kind of power and influence to grasp how potentially corrupting of an influence it can be on a person, especially if that person is an asshole to begin with.

You kinda have to be there to really know what it's like.

Edit: Here's a quick thought experiment. Think of all the hot celebrity threads on gaf where someone says "would bang" or something to that extent. It's easy to say because no one is realistically going to have any chance of that. Now, imagine that you are one of the dozens of people on Earth who could actually coerce those hot celebrities to bang them. Your worldview could change pretty quickly.
 

Mr. Tibbs

Member
Harvey Weinstein has been expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. I'm not sure that's anything more than symbolic, but this signals a welcome change.

DMIBQucUMAAXqY7.jpg


Historically the Academy has chosen to reward the artistry of its members such as Roman Polanski, who pled guilty to statutory rape and escaped serving more jail time into exile in Europe, but nonetheless won a directing Oscar for ”The Pianist."

But the Academy came under pressure from its membership and others to do something about the alleged sexual harasser, abuser and rapist, who was fired from The Weinstein Co. he founded, denounced by his own brother, and landed on the cover of Time. More than 30 women have accused him of mishandling them in some way, according to incendiary reports in The New York Times, The New Yorker and other outlets.

More women than ever before (38 percent) are on the Academy board of governors, including Kimberly Peirce, Whoopi Goldberg and Kathleen Kennedy.
 
Hollow gesture.

To be fair, there's not really much else they can do at the moment. In theory, they could enact some sort of "morals clause" and tie it to being eligible to be nominated for Academy Awards, but then you start getting into the whole "separating the art from the artist" thing.
 

D4Danger

Unconfirmed Member
I guess only time will tell how hollow it is because they've been forced to do it. They'll probably give him a life time achievement oscar.
 

jelly

Member
To be fair, there's not really much else they can do at the moment. In theory, they could enact some sort of "morals clause" and tie it to being eligible to be nominated for Academy Awards, but then you start getting into the whole "separating the art from the artist" thing.

They could and it's also very hypocritical of them considering Polanski. It matters now because....

Isn't separating art from the artist just an excuse. Who came up with that.
 

Acorn

Member
Considering how manipulative he is, my first guess is that this is an effort to build sympathy.

None will come from me.
I dunno. Even a piece of shit would be hit pretty hard if he went from top of the world to being a leper in less than a week.
 

Maebe

Member
They could and it's also very hypocritical of them considering Polanski. It matters now because....

Isn't separating art from the artist just an excuse. Who came up with that.

I'm not saying it's a good excuse, but that it's a can of worms I don't ever see the Academy wanting to get into (deciding what does and doesn't violate said morals clause, determining who gets to decide on what is considered a violation [and the Academy wouldn't have any investigative powers, so they'd be relying on organizations like the police to do the investigating to make said decision], determining whether to apply it retroactively to past crimes [Does Polanski get to stay in the Academy? Does Casey Affleck? Does Mark Wahlberg?], and just the general idea of the things you do outside of movie making having a determination on whether you're allowed to be a part of the organization or not). It would be nice, but I don't see it happening in my lifetime even ignoring the fact that there's too many shady people in and around Hollywood to let it happen.

While I am glad to see him crash and burn they seem to be using him as a human shield to deflect concerns about all the other serial abusers. I wish all of hollywood's evil would just flushed out, the culture it's built is sick.

You can flush out whomever you want, other bad people will just take their place. Things can't get better on a permanent basis until you address the fundamental imbalance of power that allows all of this to happen.
 

M.Bluth

Member
Courtesy of Amber Tamblyn, Tarantino, who has worked with Weinstein on every single one of his feature films since 1992, has released a statement:

DL_jI81VAAAxduP.jpg

As much as anyone might hope Tarantino doesn't turn out to be a complicit piece of shit, it's pretty difficult to buy that he, being so close to Harvey, didn't know.

The only reason I personally am able to entertain the thought that he might have an ounce of sincerity is that his statement was delivered by Amber Tamblyn who is still willing to describe him as a friend. Otherwise I'd have no doubts whatsoever.
 
It's a start I guess. They should also take away any best picture Oscars that he himself won, but they didnt do it for Polanski so I doubt it.
 

tr4nce 26

Banned
That was a long read, but a necessary one.

This man is absolutely disgusting. You have to be extremely messed up in the head to force someone to give you a blowjob, and then immediately afterwards you act like nothing happened. This guy needs more then a trip to a Whickenburg rehab, he needs to be thrown in prison in order to protect society.
 
It's a start I guess. They should also take away any best picture Oscars that he himself won, but they didnt do it for Polanski so I doubt it.

The only time he won Best Picture for Shakespeare in Love it wasn't by just him, but a group of 5 people. He's actually never been nominated just by himself (as a studio head, he would usually be a producer, but not the sole producer). So do you just take his name off the list of winners, even though everything else would clearly say he's a producer of a movie that won Best Picture? Do you try to retroactively say it didn't win Best Picture and strip it from everyone?
 

Mr. Tibbs

Member
Is he implying he didn't know? Hard to believe.

Stunned? Harvey's behavior was brazen and rampant. This wasn't a one off thing. The guy did this to dozens (maybe hundreds) of women. There's no way this is a shocker to anyone who worked with him.

That background and lettering

P1gcT5.gif


But yeah no way Tarantino didn't know.


lol, load of shit.

tbh unless these people have anything helpful/productive to say then they shouldn't release anything at all.

"I'm shocked" aint working since its pretty apparent practically everyone knew to some extent

Pffft like hell. I don't believe this for a second.


True, but Tarantino worked closely with Weinstein for years and years. It's credulity-stretching to think he had no idea and is "shocked" by these allegations.

Late seeing this. But my gut reaction is, it's days later, why need a few more days? And he knew the guy for years and years, publicly and privately. It can't be that stunning to him.

idontbelieveyou.gif
A minor update, once again via Amber Tamblyn:

FrPh0ik.png

BaZGAi8.png
 
Edit: Never mind.



Terrible. I really didn't want QT to end up being a monster.

There's a legit chance that this is more about what he saw and didn't act on or consider weird than anything he actually did. I would think if she had info on some serious shit he actually did personally she would disown him instead of basically acting as his mouthpiece. Like, the "Come to Jesus" moment being about actresses he hired that he or someone else in the production may have had meet with Weinstein first (remember, every one of QT's movies has been either through Mirimax or TWC).

Remember Clooney's response of "we knew he liked young actresses, but we didn't know he was doing all this", and how that response felt like he kinda absolved himself of any major responsibility in this even though he's made movies for Harvey? Basically, her getting QT to admit he was complicit in all this, whether he knew all the details or not.
 

Linkura

Member
Sarah Polley brings the heat!

The Men You Meet Making Movies

Her description of Weinstein:

<3 her.

Courtney Love told actresses to stay away from Weinstein back in 2005:
http://www.tmz.com/2017/10/14/courtney-love-harvey-weinstein-2005-warns-actresses-sexual-harassment/

We found this video -- circa 2005 -- from the red carpet event for the Pamela Anderson Comedy Central Roast.

Courtney Love is asked by Natasha Leggero if she has advice for young women trying to make it in Hollywood. She hesitates -- fearing what she says could land her in court -- but then goes for it, warning women to decline an invite from Weinstein at a swanky Bev Hills hotel.

Courtney has responded to our story, saying ... "Although I wasn't one of his victims, I was eternally banned by CAA for speaking out against Harvey Weinstein."
 
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