The Press Box - 'Jam Session' — We’re Talking About Harvey Weinstein (Ep. 363)

Episode Date: October 11, 2017

The Ringer’s Juliet Litman and Amanda Dobbins are joined by Sean Fennessey to unpack the avalanche of bleak news about Harvey Weinstein (2:30) and examine Hollywood’s attitude toward misogyny (10:25). Then, they call staff writer Kate Knibbs, who discusses Lisa Bloom’s brief legal representation of Harvey Weinstein (23:25). Link: Kate Knibbs’ piece on Lisa Bloom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Jam Session. Another week in which we have to talk about Harvey Weinstein. I'm Julia Lippman. I'm Amanda Dobbins. This is going to be a special. We're talking about Harvey. Yeah. It's just been a very bleak story since the beginning and seemingly only getting bleaker.

It's been a hard week. Yeah. So we last recorded last week on Thursday after the initial New York Times article came out. Since then, there has been another New York Times article in which Gwyneth Paltrow, Angeline and Jolie, and many other women. offered more accounts alleging Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment and assault. Yeah, and assault. And then there was the New Yorker article by Ronan Farrow that had several testimonials,

just really harrowing ones of other women accusing him of sexual assault and harassment. And then there's also been a flood of actors and actresses and other Hollywood people commenting, both support for the alleged victims, decrying Harvey Weinstein. and then the occasional, extremely tone-deaf, extremely dumb support messages from people like Lindsay Lohan. But we'll ignore them going forward. Yeah, it's safe to say that this has taken over Hollywood. Yeah, 100%. It's also, like, just taking over the news.

Like, it led the New York Times for well over 24 hours. And it's not like it's been like a quiet period in the world. It's a hot topic. Yeah. We should say also, so the first article was written by Jody Cantor and Megan Tui in the second article that features is Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie. And I'm going to read the other actresses' names because they went on the record. Please do.

Tony Ann Roberts, Catherine Kendall, Judith Goddresh, and Donning. And Rosanna Arquette was both in this New York Times article and the New York article. That article was written by Jody Cantor and Rachel Abrams, who have just done a tremendous about of reporting on something that it seems like it was very hard to report because it took almost 30 years for these rumors to come to light. Yeah. I mean, and then the other thing that's just crazy that then the people pointed out is that Seth McFarland made a joke about it on the Oscars in 2013. Tina Faye wrote a bit about it into 30 Rock. Those are like, that's like really high profile. That's right out in the open. So that kind of comes to the open secret nature of this, which keeps being repeated over and over again, which is it's been an open secret like everyone has known, which has made makes the whole thing more complicated. And some of the statements a little bit harder to swallow. Yeah, and so I think to talk about that idea of the open secret that is Harvey Weinstein and his behavior and just kind of how Hollywood has handled or it would seem not handled this.

In the past many years, we have Sean Fennacy, editor-in-chief of The Ringer. Host of The Big Picture. Yes, general movie nerd to speak to us. Wow, what an introduction. I'm so honored to be called a nerd. Movie nerd. Yeah, same thing. You know a lot.

So, Sean, tell us about Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein. Tell us about the legend of Harvey. It's difficult to valorize it now, though I think if you would have asked a general film nerd, as you said, even a couple of years ago, even a couple of weeks ago, yeah. You would have heard a story about an incredible rise from basically a tenement situation growing up in Flushing Queens, the son of a diamond cutter who rose through the ranks of concert promotion to become a titan of movie industry. I mean, he really is arguably the most significant figure in independent film in the last 35 years.

He built Miramax from nothing with his brother, Bob Weinstein. He has been at the forefront of the Academy Awards for 25, almost 30 years now. He discovered Steven Soderberg, Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, a laundry list of some of the more notable names in American cinema. It's notable that he does not discover

very many female filmmakers. But Harvey is a, he's a titan. I mean, he's a person who's had books devoted to him. He has now started two companies that have been broadly successful in Hollywood, which is sounds, we accept as conventional wisdom, but is an astonishing thing. I mean, the rise of Miramax

and then the purchase of Miramax by Disney in the 90s is, that's world historic Hollywood mythology that he built. So he's a huge, huge figure who looms large in the industry. Why did he get forced out of Merrimax? Well, he ultimately decided to leave to start the Weinstein company. That's the way it was positioned. I think the company was purchased for $85 million by Disney in 95.

And then he negotiated to stay as the leader of the company, but found that the inner workings of corporate America is more complicated and more difficult. And, you know, the thing to say about him aside from his achievements is that that he has always been a very divisive, controversial figure. I mean, it's well known that he has been domineering and aggressive, borderline, torturous of filmmakers and the press for many years. There's plenty of things on the record. I would recommend everybody go back and take a look at Peter Biscan's Down in Dirty Pictures, which is a 2004 book that essentially chronicles the rise of independent cinema in the minds of people over the last 20 years.

But for all intents and purposes is a Harvey Weinstein book that spends hundreds of pages exploring some of the things that he did, you know, chronicled in detail is the Rebecca Traster incident, which she recently wrote about in New York Magazine. I didn't know that was in that book. You know, it was covered at the time in the newspapers and then it went away for a little while. And then it gets a full three-page treatment in this book. Which is just to say that she was at a party and she wrote in New York Magazine that he called her the C-word and that her. and that her fellow journalist and her boyfriend at the time confronted Harvey, and then, like, I believe she wrote that Harvey threw with her boyfriend and journalist down the stairs. And put him in a headlock.

Put him in a headlock. Yes. And also as a result of this incident while he was in a headlock or because of Harvey's physical involvement, I believe the reporter is Andrew Goldman. That's right. Then his recorder somehow hit another woman at the party. And my understanding is at the time, the story as it was portrayed in the press, was about that recorder hitting a woman and the injury?

So that's actually a notable thing. It depends on what press you were reading. If you read The New York Times account of that story, it's a very straightforward rendition from both sides of what had happened. If you read The New York Post, for example, which Harvey is alleged to have had great relationships with, it's a little bit more favorable towards Harvey. And there are other incidences, obviously, surrounding this recent controversy that underscore some of those allegiances as well.

You know, Richard Johnson, who ran page six for many years, is quoted at length in Biscan's book talking about the relationship that he had with Harvey and the fact that Harvey essentially optioned a story for him and made him a participant in a project at Miramax and that that project never went forward but that that ultimately complicated his relationship. And Weinstein is alleged to have had a series of relationships like this with journalists over the years in an effort to kind of, I don't know about muzzle necessarily, but to sort of undermine some of the integrity of journalists in the way that they could report on him. And people have long thought that that was largely because, you know, he's not a lot.

He would take films by respected filmmakers, hack them to death. He came to be known as Harvey Cisorhands. And then whenever the filmmaker wanted to cry out against the editing of their films, the press was largely aligning with Harvey because of his power. In this light, it's interesting to imagine what else might have been muzzled. Yeah, it's a pattern or has a similar form to the stories that you hear from, especially in the New York article, which was so bleak. and so many of the women talk about the relationship that they had with Harvey Weinstein after the alleged incident or assault.

And kind of both the guilt and the shame that they felt and also the powerlessness. And the fact that because, you know, it's very, they're in these very bleak stories, they are aware of the fact that by continuing to associate with him, they would be undermined or they were aware that that potential was available. And it definitely seems to be a system that was in place for him. He makes it complicated so that you can't extricate yourself without any like culpability, which is ridiculous to say in the case of sexual assault. Yeah. But it could be seen that way. And obviously it sounds like that is kind of more of the case with journalists based on those anecdotes.

I think it's like incredibly telling that TMZ, not the leading purveyor information on the story, but has written that Harvey thinks his brother Bob is the one who smuggled personnel in out of the Weinstein company to the New York Times to help with the story. Has there been conversations about that? Or has there been rumors of them like having infighting or like not getting along before? For many years. I mean, essentially the setting of Miramax is a boutique company that sought foreign films and independent filmmakers in an effort to boost them up and draw attention. But, you know, the real story of Miramax is that there's a division inside of Miramax called Dimension Films, which Bob ran, which largely made genre movies,

horror movies, exploitation movies of a kind, and that those movies were really successful. I mean, that's the company that made Scream. That's the company that rebooted a lot of famous horror movie properties. And Bob was a really good Hollywood businessman, and he made a lot of money for Miramax. And Harvey was, for lack of a better word, a more charismatic figure,

a person who drew attention in a way that Bob couldn't, who was a little bit more reserved, a little bit less press-friendly. And so there had always been speculated, in the press that Bob resented Harvey or that he was frustrated by Harvey, you know, there's not a lot necessarily on the record about that. Sure. But it's reasonable to draw some conclusions around this. I don't know specifically what Bob's involvement was in revealing some of the truth around these allegations.

He did make a statement today in which he identified that his brother is not well and that he needs treatment, which is a pretty frank thing to say, I think, in the light of the allegations. TMZ also reported that on Tuesday night Harvey Weinstein flew to Europe for some kind of rehab. But I haven't read that anywhere else other than TMZ. They have been trustworthy in the past. Yeah, absolutely. So can you talk a little bit about, as Juliet mentioned earlier, this has been both an open secret. And at times like a running joke in Hollywood, it shows up in Oscar monologues. There is kind of this habit that when you give an Oscar speech, you know, you thank Harvey Weinstein for whatever.

like jokey, terrible things that he did in order to secure you this Oscar. It's actually a punchline. And that has been the narrative in Hollywood for many, many years and always seem to suggest something beneath the surface. I read something recently that Harvey is the second most thanked person at the Oscars in the last 50 years after Steven Spielberg. Yeah, that's in the Ronan Farrow piece. Okay.

I thought that was an interesting tidbit. It didn't start this way. It started as a serious thing. I mean, it started when the Shakespeare and Love campaign began in earnest, for months saving Private Ryan had been the odds on favor to win that Oscar and the words waged

a war were used about the way that Harvey campaigned for his movie and ultimately drove that movie to best picture, drove Gwyneth Paltrow to Best Actress. Judy Dentz, winning for nine, like what was it like 90 seconds

of screen time? He checked performance as the queen. He essentially taught Hollywood how to have a sort of gloves off campaign and it's a joke now but it wasn't then. I mean, it was just a new version of undermining people

of selling people out in the press. You know, you read a lot of stories now about this sort of swift boating of particular Oscar campaigns. Harvey, in many ways, is the architect of a lot of that strategy. And so what has now become a joke, and this is slightly different

than the Seth MacFarlane joke, which is about power and attraction. This is much more about strategy and what it takes to win in Hollywood. And he found ways to win for a long time. I think like anything, if somebody sticks around long enough and the thing, the myth becomes legend, it can become a joke too.

So now it's kind of upsetting to think back on the five or six years of Harvey Sizerhands jokes from the podium, but they exist. What do you think happens next for the Weinstein company? Newsbreak. Jay-Z is apparently interested in buying his 23% stake with another ownership group. I literally can't understand that story. I don't, I'm not sure what the value of the company is right now. Maybe it's just the buy low proposition for him, but the truth is that is the Weinstein company is. not had a very good past few years, and some of that may be oriented around concern about

some of the stuff becoming public. And some of it may just be that a long career was winding down and that he had lost a little bit of the magic. It's been about three years since he's had a genuine hit. It's been about three years since he's been a real, real player. The King's Speech is his last best picture win. Do you think that there's any coincidence in that the fact that these stories were able to come public now comes at a moment when someone is kind of less powerful? in Hollywood? It has occurred to me. It would be the first time. Veracca Tracer said that explicitly in her article, which is about how he is like literally more frail, it's less physically imposing, and so it's sort of easier to take him down when he's already

on the decline, I guess. I will say though, this is very dark, but Hollywood is a is born of comebacks. It is a comeback town and always has been. And, you know, there are many, many artists who have endured intense controversy and have bounced back. There's been a lot of talk about Woody Allen and Roland Polanski in recent weeks. Mel Gibson is extremely notable to me. I mention this on Twitter. I hate when people say I mention this on Twitter, but I did mention on Twitter that he's going to be

in a Will Ferrell comedy next month. That's just a remarkable thing if you would have gone back 10 years in time to the position that he was in when he was first arrested for public intoxication driving drunk. And calling the police officer sugar tits. Among other things and blaspheming an entire religion. You know, Hollywood has proven time and again that it forgives awful behavior.

And there is a second level to this, which is what kind of legal ramifications will there be? And I suspect we'll see a lot more people coming forward to tell their story. Even Cara Delavine came forward today. This is going to keep happening. So at some point, something may stick more aggressively on the legal front. And then that complicates the story too. But how can you count somebody out when Hollywood has let people back in so many times? Do you think this will affect the reception of the Woody Allen movie?

Because it's like, there's all, first of all, Ronan Farrow wrote one of these articles. So I assume he won't be quiet when there's a new Woody Allen movie coming out. He never is. It was easier to look the other way on Woody Allen and like the allegations against him when the general conversation is moving away from those as well. But now it's like right in front and center. And that's like rumored to be an Oscar movie too, right? It didn't take long for people to point out that when Kate Winslet made her statement about Harvey Weinstein that she is the star of the next Woody Allen movie. There were a lot of side-by-sides position there.

You know, on the other hand, Woody somehow, by hook or by crook, has managed to elude or evade this broadly for 10-plus years. And obviously, a few years ago, it came back up again in a very profound way when Dylan Farrow wrote about it and Nick Christoph reported on it. But that case is different from this case,

and we should probably clarify that. Woody Allen doesn't isn't a power broker, you know, he's a filmmaker. And he, as long as there are people that are willing to finance his films, he's going to continue to make them. Harvey Weinstein is in a different position. Harvey Weinstein is a captain of industry. And in order to make things work, you need to be in position to do that. And he was ejected from that spot. There is the sense of everybody knew, but the number of times that an assistant or an agent or someone sent an actress to a meeting with Harvey Weinstein, maybe not with full knowledge.

but there was a system in place. Mm-hmm. And what happens to all of the people surrounding Harvey Weinstein, all of the people who, the agents, the assistants, all the people who did a movie but didn't really know, but kind of knew. I think it will be a talking point up and down for everybody. I think there'll be a lot of line deletion on resumes going forward. There'll be a lot of people trying to dissociate where possible. On the other hand, there are some people for whom it is impossible to deny. You know, Bill Simmons and I interviewed Jason Blum last week, and Bill asked,

Jason about it. And, you know, Jason got his start truly under Weinstein at Miramax. And he had to say, I worked there for five years and I'm happy women are coming forward. I was not privy to what was happening here. You always hear rumors, but I didn't know. And there will be a series of sort of not confessions, but just sort of clarifications. And the thing that is complicated that I don't know if you guys have discussed is the stars and how this affects stars in particular is really complex because they're assistants and agents, but those people are not public figures and they'll probably be able to elude

clarifying what role they played or did not play in certain things because it's unprovable. If you're a movie star or a director, you had a close personal relationship with Harvey because that's the kind of executive that he was. He was somebody who really prized that. He drew people close to him and he sought photo ops. The picture of him with Gwyneth Paltrow

after winning the Oscar that the New York Times ran in the article when that came out yesterday is just such uncomfortable dissonance between the words that she has given the times and the stance that she has taken. And we'll get into this a little bit more later, but it's truly impactful for Gwyneth Paltrow to do that, to do what she did.

Like, it just opens the door for other people. And it's like, it's like physically painful to then, like, look at the photo of her as like a really, a young actress who's just had this incredible turn in her career. And it's like going to be marred, the narrative of her career. whether you like her or you not or don't, like, think Goop is great or don't, like, will now be marred by this.

And that's like, that's another thing that's just so frustrating and unfair to watch. He has now, not only had he been secretly, you know, like undermining all these women's careers, but like now publicly and for the rest of history, everyone who speaks out, it will be part of like their story in Hollywood. Yes. And there's also kind of along with all of the rumors about Harvey Weinstein being a unpleasant person, there have always been kind of the casting couch rumors. that have surrounded his films. And for all of the women who are very brave and have talked about their experiences, there are a lot of actresses who I don't think we should name who are caught up in these rumors

and are now in the difficult position of, I mean, they've always been in a difficult position because people have always been speculating about them, but are now caught up in this, what was her involvement, how did she get this role? There's just anyone who has ever worked with him is now caught up

In grossness. Yeah, there'll be whispers around it forever. It's the crashing chandelier at the jam session ballroom. Like, it's gossip writ large and it complicates everything. It's a thing that is usually like a fun aspect of celebrity culture. And obviously, like it's been interesting to watch someone like Laney Gossip kind of move through the world over the course of the last week because she has been privy to or thought to be privy to a lot of information that is difficult to prove but is delivered in a specific way. And a lot of actresses have suffered under the. concept of benefits of certain scenarios. And when someone like Winneth Poutreau comes forward,

obviously that's like a brave and commendable thing to do. You know, I don't think that's going to be the first sentence in her obituary or anything like that. She's had a huge and incredibly successful career in life. The Times even pointed out that she has a luxury of being an entrepreneur now. That's true. She's not fighting for an Oscar role. That's true. There is just a general dissonance of this whole thing where, you know, Amanda and I, we've talked about it. The concept of complicity here is hard to define. The concept of why people make the choices that they make about their own career is hard to define. The assumptions that we usually make in celebrity culture, I feel like we can't make in this story because there's now a lot of data.

There's now a lot of honest testimony that complicates things that is otherwise usually communicated about in a really vague and sort of like fizzy way. Yeah. And there's nothing fizzy about this. Yeah. I mean, like on one of our other podcasts that we watch. Like one segment is like casting what ifs and I even just feel like if we were to do that with like a movie like Harvey Weinstein was involved in like would we you know before it would have been kind of like a rumor laden should we go there and now it's like I don't know it's like it's like it's not an elephant in the room it's like now how you it's like we will be how you talk about some of these movies like for me I fucking love goodwill hunting and just really just seeing how Matt Damon and Ben Affle like have responded to this and been a pretty bad. 48 hours for Ben Affleck.

Like, it just really changes the fun of rewatching that movie. It's tough. Goodwell Hunting is 20 this year. It's a great movie. It's going to be. That anniversary is not what it was going to be. I feel conflicted about it. I mean, my entree into my obsession with the movie business, not movies, but the movie

business, is that time where Sundance really met the Oscars and that collision. And a lot of that is driven by Harvey's movies. I mean, Quentin Tarantino is a formative figure for me. You're really quiet about it. this issue thus far. And that whole era is undermined. Yeah. All those movies that you love now feels, if not wrong, at least deeply complicated by everything we're starting to learn. Yeah, mired in controversy for sure. I don't mean to be hopeless, but there was a, just before we started this, there was a Manola Dargis column in the New York

Times. And Manola is always great. She drew comparisons to the studio era of Hollywood and people like Louis B. Mayor and all of the men who were in charge. And we talk about the ways that they cast roles and ran the studios now. Again, almost in a fizzy way. It's like we've come back to... We have distance. Yes, from a situation that was probably not very different, maybe different in approach, but no, probably not. Maybe not different from the Harvey Weinstein at all. So I worry that in, you know, again, in 30 years. Yeah. I think that it can, we've written about this on our site. We talked a little about last week and we'll get more into it with Kate Nip in a couple of minutes. But like I think that the moment being inexorable from Trump being the president also just I am hopeful that this will change the way that this is viewed and it won't be like a blip on the radar because issues of men having power over women and like using like they're, you know, using sex also as like a power tool. It has just been in the discourse now. literally for a year. And obviously longer than that, but it's been like on front page news for a longer time. And I think to a lot of women, it just feels like we said last week, like more urgent. So I'm hopeful. And it turns people like Lisa Bloom into pseudo-celebrity and her mother Gloria All right because like they are taking up that cause. It's probably a good time to get

a kid on the phone because she wrote about Lisa Bloom for the website today. Leading our site today, we had a feature that had a feature that had a little. has been long in the works, but then turned out to be well-timed because our writer Kate Nams has been profiling Lisa Bloom, who was originally on Harvey Weinstein's legal team. Although, I don't even know she's actually his lawyer. We can get into that with Kate. We have Kay in the line to talk about it. Hi, Kate. Hey, thanks for having me. Of course. This feels very formal. Let's talk about your article. So why did you first want to start writing about Lisa Bloom? Because this really predates the event of the last week. Yeah. So in the spring

time, I started seeing her name pop up in connection with a lot of celebrity cases that involved Lisa Bloom representing and advocating for high-profile women. She was Black China's lawyer when that whole situation with Rob Kardashian posting revenge porn of China on Instagram went down. And when I started researching her, I found out that she was Gloria Al-Rat's daughter and Gloria Al-Rad is a really high-profile civil rights attorney, and no one had really written about Lisa as much as they had Gloria. So I thought I would try to talk to her.

So I met up with her for the first time this summer, and, you know, I was really impressed by the work that she did. We ended up talking a lot about a few cases she's bringing against Uber. I didn't really have time to work that into the piece, but, yeah, I admired her. a lot and I thought she'd be interesting to write about. Kate, can you just give us the basic biography of who she is and kind of the work that she was doing before last week? If you had written this profile two weeks ago.

It would have been a lot different. So Lisa has been working as a sort of public interest attorney for like 30 years, which means she's done women's rights cases, family law, defending women. women, civil rights cases. She's involved in, in, like, you know, cases in which people have been discriminated against because of race as well as gender. And, you know, she's, she represented people who, uh, brought sexual harassment complaints against Bill O'Reilly.

And, uh, she really advocated publicly for taking Bill O'Reilly down. She also represented Janice Dickinson in a suit against Bill Cosby. So she's been, you know, she's also represented women who have claimed that Donald Trump has sexually harassed them. So she's really been involved in all these high-profile cases where she has been advocating for women against powerful male alleged sexual harassers. Everyone should go read this piece, and you do a very nice job talking about kind of the strategies. that she uses. But I was wondering if you could kind of summarize for people, kind of, how does Lisa Bloom go about this work? She, well, she used to also be a legal analyst on TV. She had her own show, like, sort of looking at high-profile cases of the days. She's really media savvy. And she does pretty flamboyant press conferences,

some to great success, some to less success. Like, she represented Kathy Griffin this summer. when Kathy Griffin got into trouble for posting a photo that showed a fake head of Donald Trump. And so they did this, you know, press conference and called all these reporters. And Lisa had Kathy Griffin out there, you know, claiming she was bullied, like really going on the defensive. So, yeah, she's known for attracting a lot of attention to her cases. So I think that leads us pretty squarely into the next one. Could you explain briefly what happened last week with Lisa Bloom? So she really disappointed a lot of people, including me, when she agreed, or it came out that she had agreed to advise and legally represent Harvey Weinstein against, because he had been sort of called out by the New York Times and later the New Yorker for horrific election.

claims of harassment and sometimes the New Yorker claims included sexual assault, which Lisa Bloom is now saying that she didn't know that Weinstein had committed sexual assault. I don't know. Yeah, the first story from the New York Times came out last Thursday. And I believe Lisa Bloom was, was she quoted in the story or did she give a statement simultaneously to the New York Times saying that Weinstein maintained that many of the allegations were false? that they were working in therapy together.

So she was aligned with him from the very beginning. Yeah. She was hired as basically part of his crisis team. Yes. So, Kate, what happened next? People got mad at her, rightly so, because she had, you know, built this brand on defending women against powerful sexual harassers.

And now she was out there defending Weinstein in a way that felt pretty disingenuous and really at odds with this, you know, career she'd built for herself. Her mother ended up coming out publicly saying that she would not have done what her daughter did. They got in like a really awkward, horrible mother daughter feud

in the media and then Bloom abruptly quit on Saturday. So she was only like the public facing Weinstein advisor for a very short period of time but it, you know, Dill brought a lot of criticism down on her I think justly so.

I think she made a big mistake. in representing ways. Seems like she thinks so as well, since she has stepped away from it now. Yeah, like, she wouldn't directly say that when I talk to her, and I can't, like, put words in her mouth. Sure. It seems as though, I mean, I would not be surprised,

especially because she's so media savvy if she'll come out soon with, you know, something more substantial about why she left and, you know, regret she has. And I do think some of it will be sincere, but also what she's going to need to do to rehabilitate herself, especially because we didn't talk about it. But one of the reasons she was criticized so heavily is because a book that she wrote was optioned by the Weinstein Company and is being made into a mini-series. So it really looked like she had been defending him because she got that book deal.

That was the optics of the situation. Kate, you, we all three spoke about this as it was happening because you were working on this piece. And I don't think anyone anywhere really understood her decision at all. Even, you know, there was a lot of criticism about the connection to the documentary and you can't overlook that. But I am curious, you spoke to her yesterday and you've thought a lot about this. Do you understand this decision at all? Like, did you walk away from your conversation with her with any sense? sense of how this happened? I do think that the documentary probably played a role in the decision. I think that she probably made a calculation about what her reputation could withstand. I do kind of believe her that she didn't know about the more serious allegations, because I think that if she had known how many stories would come out and how horrible and monstrous wincy would look, I don't know if she would have taken the case.

I think maybe she thought that it was, I mean, I don't want to say just sexual harassment because sexual harassment is horrible, but I think that she thought it was less horrible than it has turned out to be if that makes sense. But yeah, I'm still confused. Kate, she also, she went on a Twitter rant Monday night, which I think we can characterize as defensive. And then echoed some of the comments to you when you spoke on Tuesday that were a bit about a different way to approach these sorts of cases.

And I wonder if you had any thoughts about her opinions there. I really wanted her to get more specific with what she meant, and she wasn't really willing to do so when I talked to her. I wanted to know whether she thought, you know, someone should have been doing that for Bill O'Reilly and all the other sexual harassers who she had rallied so hard against. I mean, I guess I get where she's coming from that, you know, people who do bad things should apologize and have a team that helps them apologize and realize that they've done something wrong. But it still doesn't, it still doesn't really add up for me.

I don't know. I'm still so confused and disappointed by her decision, and I'm hoping it wasn't all about the money, but I think it was definitely partly about the money. And I just don't think that she was making a very good use of her skills and helping Weinstein apologize versus like she could have done a good job advocating for his victim. Right. It seems like until last week there was an entire industry, like a wide structure around protecting him and like being a part of his economy, for lack of a better word. and in some ways if she has a creative project that she's working on with him, it's kind of easy, even if it's not just about the money, but just sort of about like the auspices under which she is connected to him, it's not that hard to understand why she would like buy into kind of an existing narrative, basically. Yeah, I think she really wanted it to be less bad than it was. Like there might have been some self-deception.

Yeah. Kate, do you have a sense of what is next for Lisa Bloom? She seemed convinced that this wasn't going to hurt her career in the long run, but I honestly think that unless she comes out, unless she severely rehabilitates her image now, she's pretty screwed professionally. I don't know the status of the documentary. I know that Jay-Z was involved as well, and now there's a rumor on TMZ that he might be like buying out Harvey's steak in the Weinstein Company. Maybe it will still go forward. I would guess that she told me that she was supposed to, like, appear in episodes of this documentary, and I have a feeling her screen time's going to be reduced.

I don't know. She just seemed, perhaps she was just trying to put on a brave front, but, like, she seemed very optimistic that it wouldn't have that many lasting repercussions, and I think it will, unless she does some serious soul-searching and then makes up for, you know, the lack of trust that people have in her now. Seems like she's got a lot of work to do. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't really want her to represent me anymore.

And before this, I was, no, before this, I really, really admired her. I don't think she's a horrible person, but the loss of trust is real. Yeah. Especially in a profession that is so founded on trust. Yeah. Yeah. It's a tough one. It's still a real mystery.

I'm glad that you spoke to her. Thank you for speaking to us. Yeah, absolutely. And definitely check out Kate's profile. I think just to even further understand sort of like the emotional weight she carried for a lot of women before this whole wine scene thing happened. And honestly, to hear her speak about it, Lisa Bloom spoke to Kate this week about the decision. And it is interesting to hear her try to make sense of it. Thanks, Kate.

No problem. One thing that this whole scandal has made me realize, and I think we've seen it with all the prominent Democrats who taken money from him and the various, even, even, even some pretty like unfounded critics of the women who've come out sort of they now, there's now this arsenal of like, well, you kept working with him or like, well, you knew that can be used against people for a really long time. And sort of like there's not only the web, there's not only the like the repercussions of like emotionally and legally and like that's like strictly related to the abuse. But there's also just like the professional Hollywood ramifications of like who knew what when and like who can. point to what pictures of Harvey Weinstein next to ex-celebrity. And it's just sort of like is going to

be ongoing in terms of the conversation about Hollywood and how movies are made. Yeah, it's an excellent point. And I think it's already happening. Yeah. With Lisa Bloom even. We're just like, we'll have to reframe how we think about her. Yeah. And it's Wednesday. And people are already kind of pointing to people who have worked around Harvey Weinstein. And Ben Affleck has already been on Twitter apologizing for a video that has aired on national television in 2003 and has been publicly available since then, but has resurfaced of him grope being a reporter on TRL, and he's already apologizing. Totally.

So the ripple effects and the scrutiny will continue. I think you made a really interesting point about the system of people that were kind of around. And the details that I kept coming back to, particularly in the New Yorker. profile by Ronan Farrow and the New York Times piece by Jody Cantor and Megan Tuey that interviewed Gwyneth Paltrow. It was a quote from Kenneth Paltrow describing her incident with Harvey Weinstein and she says, you don't even question it. I was young. The facts comes. It's from CAA. The appointment's on there. You don't even think twice. And there are a number of details in the New Yorker piece about the various assistants who helped set up the meetings

and kind of the professional structure around these incidents. And it really is a whole, it was a whole industry, it seems like. Like literally thousands of people seemed to have to touch this because the rumors were so widespread and so many people were aware of his reputation, but continued to set up meetings for young actresses and the Caradelveen statement that came out recently about her assistant, like not having the car ready for her. so she had to, like, go to his room. I mean, there's so many things that are just sort of, like, the assumptions that are baked into that, like, if you can't get into the car,

then the only other option is to go to that guy's room is weird. Like, it's kind of like, actually, those aren't the only two options if you're waiting for your ride. But in this system, it is. You know what I mean? Like, there's not, like, it's sort of, like, hiding in a public part of the hotel is not an option. And there's just, there are, like,

constructors in place to facilitate the power structures of Hollywood. Absolutely. It's institutionalized. This is the only word. And I think the fact that so many women have come forward and said, I just thought that this was how it went. Yeah. This is where you're supposed to do. This is how you get a movie with her. This is how you get a meeting with Harvey Weinstein. And this is how your career starts because he was so powerful. I keep coming back to the 22-year-olds who just rightfully say, I didn't, I didn't know any better. This is what everyone said. And the number of people implied in everyone is astonishing and heartbreaking.

And that's when I get a little bit hopeless. Yeah. It's really hard. It's just like all roads lead back to someone having an inordinate or an inordinate amount of power. And also the entertainment and Hollywood value. And, you know, there's obviously a value on art, which is one of the reasons Harvey Weinstein is so successful to begin with. but the superficial level of like what goes into quote unquote art is like, you know, it's shallow. And like that is kind of like perpetuates the system.

The currency is so codified and sort of like the access to power and being at a certain restaurant or a certain party and knowing Harvey and getting to be in these movies and getting on then, of course, all the money that comes with all of that is just so toxic. Absolutely. And it's, you know, you can cut the head off the monster. Sure. as it seems that we have today. I don't, it's not clear whether anyone will be able to press charges, but even for Hollywood, I would be surprised if he works again. And I also don't want to diminish the importance of the receiving closure and justice for the many women.

Sure. Who were allegedly assaulted and raped and harassed by Harvey Weinstein. It does still seem like this is the, this is the worst part. Yeah. Of a really horrifying, much larger problem. And how do you change the problem wholesale? I don't know. I don't know what the answer.

And does getting rid of Harvey Weinstein fix it? No, it doesn't. Yeah. It clearly just does not. I think the other thing that has just been really, I found the New Yorker article particularly bleak. I found Angeline Jolie and Gwine and Gwyneth Paltrow in some ways more emotional because, like, women who are that famous, willing to be on the record is a big deal. And it sort of felt like a turning point. Like it sort of was just like the floodgates opened.

But the New Yorker, the New Yorker testimonies were so bleak and so specific in the ways that these women were damaged in terms of like doubting their whole career. And just basically the initial, even if they were able to hold him back in some ways or to reject him, he just completely undermined their career. Like from the moment they started, it was completely undermined. And they would have to question their value and their worth and how they got to where they were because of that. And that was just like to me one of the most upsetting parts of it and seemed like one of the most emotionally damaging ramifications. And like that's just like I don't know how you reconcile that. Like it's just so horrible. Absolutely. Even it just takes away their whole war with professional and also emotional. Yeah. Kind of the emotional ramifications of dealing with this. Are you to blame? You know, the Cara Delavine statement is they're all heartbreaking. In the Cara Delavine statement, she talks about how she felt she had done something wrong. Right. And she's. And she's, was worried about protecting his family and she didn't want to go for it. And it's just,

what are you supposed to do when confronted with someone with so much power who has control over how you feel as a person and also any future job success you have? Yeah. And there are quite literally thousands. I think we could say thousands of people enabling it. Yeah, I think so too. Clearly we haven't heard every story. Not that we deserve to. But like this, we, you know, of all the testimonials, there's certainly many more. And then there's assistants and managers and agents and just so many people involved in the system of Hollywood. I think one of the reasons this is such a big scandal is not only because of how many famous people are involved, but also just because of the magnitude of it of like how many years, like we said, how many people and just this is a clear pattern and behavior based on all these stories. Absolutely.

And also the sense of open secret is a word that's kind of been thrown around a lot. everyone had a little bit of an idea, but not enough to put it all together. And it took almost 30 years for Jody Cantor and Megan Tui and Ronan Farrow to put it all together with the help of now, I think, dozens of extremely brave women who were willing to talk about it publicly. And just the number of people who had a sense, but not enough of a sense to do something or just didn't want to deal with it, which is reprehensible. but I think everyone in the world can relate to that sense of, hmm, I know something is not right here, but I don't know what to do. And so I'm just going to keep doing, I'm just going to forget about it. I think everyone has probably done that in their life. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, what I hope comes out of this is that I would like to know what to do next time. Yeah. I also think that there needs to be more women in the position that Harvey Weinstein has. And there shouldn't be, one of the most important movie studios with Zero Women on the board. Absolutely. Like, for the same reason, it's important that Winnet Paltrow is the one who goes on the record. Like,

they're also, like, that's also why it's important, the Reese Wetherspoon is making her, is, is spearheading her own projects. Absolutely. Because like, it's both the sort of the figurehead statement of it. Like, this is a famous person, like, look, they can do it. But also, it just changes the terms by which everyone approaches it. And we talked last week about how much we hated when men were like, I have a mother and I have a sister and I have a daughter. And I have a daughter and like we can't tolerate this. Well, literally everyone has a mother. So congratulations. And the point is it's about human decency. And it's just about like putting women on equal footing with men. And like at the heart of this, it's just like such a power imbalance. And like that

has to be rectified. And it has to be rectified in Hollywood and it has to be rectified in Washington, D.C. And it has to be rectified in really every room where there are a lot of men and very few women. Yeah. And a lot of money involved. Like that's like the other thing just like comes back to all of this is like there's so much money involved. And Harvey Weinstein seems. so rich with so much influence that, like, at the highest levels, there has to be women. Completely agree. I think that's a good note for us to end it on. Hire a woman or 10 today.

Thanks to Kate and thanks to Sean for coming on. And we will keep talking about this as I'm sure it'll keep unfolding.