Friday, October 06, 2017

A tale as old as time

Harvey Weinstein had a casting couch:
Two decades ago, Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein invited Ashley Judd to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what the young actress expected to be a business breakfast meeting. Instead, he had her sent up to his room, where he appeared in a bathrobe and asked if he could give her a massage or she could watch him shower, she said.

“How do I get out of the room as fast as possible without alienating Harvey Weinstein?” Judd said she remembers thinking.
Apparently Weinstein did this sort of thing quite a bit. Hardly anything new. Sex and power are often intertwined. And guys who have power assume they can use it to get what they want from women. The story is more interesting because Weinstein has been hugely successful and regularly sanctimonious:
The allegations piled up even as Weinstein helped define popular culture. He has collected six best-picture Oscars and turned out a number of touchstones, from the films “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Good Will Hunting” to the television show “Project Runway.” In public, he presents himself as a liberal lion, a champion of women and a winner of not just artistic but humanitarian awards.
So he's none of these things. Are we surprised?

6 comments:

3john2 said...

Reminds me of the "Lion of the Senate".

3john2 said...

As I shared elsewhere, the NYT reported that Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly paid out millions in their settlements, while Weinstein's payouts ranged from $80k to $150k. So, not only is Harvey a bastard, he's a CHEAP bastard.

Bike Bubba said...

Kinda makes sense. The point of a lot of Weinstein's political positions like being pro-choice really are more for the convenience of a philandering man than for the woman. Plus, a look at his wiki page reveals he not surprisingly opposed the extradition of rapist Roman Polanski, but also his cinematography can at times be characterized as "voyeuristic", to the point that he turns out as well to be the godfather of the NC-17 rating.

One might ask what Judd and others were expecting, really. It's not like he didn't have a pretty clear record, and the big shocker is that Disney bought them, IMO.

Gino said...

i agree with bubba. what did Judd et al expect? they knew the way things worked. what Judd did not explain though, is what she hjad to do to get out of there as fast as she could?

harvey and men like him got that way because women allowed it, this cannot be forgotten either.

Bike Bubba said...

It's getting better. A former Obama adviser and "feminist" lawyer are helping him, claiming that they're really helping him by reading him the riot act.

As if Weinstein's whole career didn't depend on him knowing where the boundaries were so he could flaunt them in film. Ayup. That's good thinking for ya.

Bike Bubba said...

...and apparently all of Hollywood knew that this "champion of women" was prone to treating them with a little bit less than respect. For well over a decade, but didn't speak up.

Maybe someday we'll even find somebody who knew President Obama, and how he actually spent his college years and time as a "community organizer." (dream on, I guess)