...matters Weinstein

Setting aside recent scandals for a second, the Weinstein brand has been problematic for me for years, based on the reputations of the Weinsteins for insisting on edits to films they distribute - the whole "Harvey Scissorhands" thing. It's always smacked of dumbing down, and there are various times when I've seen a movie branded TWC or Miramax and wondered what aspects of the film come from the Weinstein "touch," rather than the filmmakers'. I remember liking many elements of an Anthony Hopkins vehicle called The World's Fastest Indian, for instance, but also thinking, in the too-cute, too-energetic music and in some of the misplaced, sappy sentimentality that I could spot what the Weinsteins had done to it. They're not only heavy-handed in their edits but tend to have sweetly sticky fingers, fingers that leave an unpleasant aroma, perhaps of contempt for their audiences, on the films they touch. I liked August: Osage County but wonder if I would have liked it more had its original ending been preserved. Jonathan Rosenbaum has written - maybe in Movie Wars - a quite condemnatory piece about the ways in which Miramax altered foreign films for distribution in North America, as a precondition on distributing them. I haven't done the work to sit down and compare, where it is possible to do so, the Weinstein cut of a film with the director's cut - I believe there's a DVD release Shaolin Soccer that includes both the original and the Weinstein version, and there's writing online about a Kevin Smith film where the director's cut is apparently far superior - but I do recall that some films that I was really excited to see, and then really disappointed by - All the Pretty Horses, say - only exist now in chopped-up, shortened Weinstein versions, with no director's cut having ever been released. It hasn't mattered in the slightest to me how successful some Weinstein-branded-product has gone on to be (Quentin Tarantino, PT Anderson - both of whom I think are extremely overpraised). That something makes money (or wins Oscars, an institution I have never in my adult life cared about) is no argument for aesthetic worth. I just now ended up looking up two of my pet cases of films where truncated, shitty theatrical releases dimmed the lights on excellent director's cuts, to see if they were the Weinstein's fault: Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret and Bertrand Tavernier's In the Electric Mist. They weren't, but the fact that I reasonably assumed they might have been says something about how I feel about the Weinstein brand. I have never had very positive associations with any brand they've been associated with, and in the last few years, when the words "the Weinstein Company" flicker across the screen before a movie I'm watching, which they do fairly often - part of me winces.

All that said, it's disturbing to see the shitstorm swirling around Harvey Weinstein this last couple of weeks. Don't get me wrong - I fully believe he's a bully, I fully believe at the very least that he has aggressively propositioned women and tried to use his power and influence to get them into bed. It fits the profile of a powerful egomaniac/ megalomaniac who tries to get his own way and serve his own interests at all corners. If he is found guilty and ends up in jail for rape - great. I don't know the man, but it sounds like a powerful (white, male) asshole is getting his comeuppance, and I can understand why people who have been negatively affected by him (or angry, uppity women anywhere, including my Facebook feed) are cheering for his (figurative) decapitation.

But the sheer number of people coming forward with complaints, many of whose names I recognize, and the apparent time period that his offenses have gone on over, unpunished and largely unremarked-upon, the odd off-colour joke in the media aside, are horrifying. How can it be that this many women, women of some fame and presumable power, including Angelina Jolie, Rose McGowan, Mira Sorvino, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Beckinsale, Asia Argento, Heather Graham, Ashley Judd, Mia  Kirshner, Sarah Polley, as well as DOZENS of others whose names I don't recognize, have been cornered and aggressively propositioned by him - in the BEST case, because we gather it gets worse - with people accusing him as far back as the 1990's... and he's only being taken to task NOW?

It boggles the mind a bit. I'm a bit naive, maybe, but it doesn't seem like it should have been possible for the guy to get away with this for so long, no matter how many Oscars he's had associated with him. Maybe it would make sense as a story in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon books, detailing scandals of the 1920's and 1930's - but I thought we had evolved as a society a little bit beyond all this. The sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein are so numerous and serious that, neverminding rape investigations in New York, they have spawned their own Wikipedia page. Terrorists are killing hundreds in Somalia, and I'm more interested in seeing which of my female friends have posted "me, too" as a Facebook status... It's fascinating, troubling, revealing...

...and I gotta admit, as a man, the vehemence of what a Facebook friend of mine has described as "accusation culture" - I think more in response to the Harry Knowles and Alamo Drafthouse stories that broke in the weeks before this one - it is all kinda FRIGHTENING, as well. As someone who has had to tread his own path through a sexual wilderness, with some very weird and sometimes confusing encounters with women, and who is further inclined towards persecution fantasies, there is definitely some small part of me that worries if at some point some of this hostility will direct itself at me. It is obvious that at some point Weinstein's behaviour was accepted as NORMAL, and tolerated - since no one acted against it for what appears to have been decades. What if at some point in the future someone who I had a date with in the 1990's, which went weird in some way, decides she has a grievance with me, which leads to a similar sort of social media dogpile? "First they came for Jian Ghomeshi, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a weaselly CBC radio host who liked to hit women. Then they came for Bill Cosby, and I didn't speak up because I had never drugged a woman to rape her... then they came for Harry Knowles..."

...And some of the stories that have come out are confusing, make you wonder what your values are. Check out the transcript of a recent interview with Montreal actress named Erika Rosenbaum who has come out with her own story of Weinstein's approaches to her. Based on her own telling of events, Weinstein seemingly made it quite clear from the start with her that his helping her with her career would be connected to her coming across sexually. I am not sure if that right there constitutes an abuse of power. It MAY - but it may not, since there isn't a hint of anything coercive, and Rosenbaum was and is an adult. It seems like she was free to take it or leave it, as they say. I've had women offer me sex for money, and been perfectly comfortable saying no; so why can't a man offer a woman career advancement for sex, if she is also free to say no? (This is presuming you don't already work for him, which WOULD count as an abuse of power and harassment, obviously). My wife, discussing it with me this morning, pointed out that there is something frowned upon about prostitution, such that there is something demeaning and insulting about the offer, if you're not, in fact, a prostitute, and I can understand that; maybe as a man - and a man of zero power and influence, I might add, whom bestowing with sexual favours will never, ever lead ANYONE to career advancement, who is imagining all this from far on the outside - I am ill equipped to understand just HOW demeaning that sort of offer is, how it feels to be on the receiving end of it. I wouldn't blame anyone for being angry about it, to be sure...

...But to return to the Rosenbaum story... then, AFTER that first meeting, when everyone's intentions and desires seem pretty darn transparent, Rosenbaum continues to find herself alone with Harvey Weinstein in his hotel room. At some point, surely, she should realize what his invitations entail. On the third time, it sounds like he gets quite a bit more aggressive with her - though he doesn't rape her, exactly; what transpires seems more demeaning and ugly than criminal. I can see Rosenbaum feeling very dirty afterwards, and very angry... but you also get the sense that she might have kept silent for so long because in fact she had been a willing participant in MOST phases of what transpired with the man, and that maybe she felt GUILTY for having "allowed" things to go as far as she did?

I think towards the end of the interview you can see Rosenbaum sort of acknowledging her complicity, in fact, where she starts talking about how "crazy" it all sounds. Which, in fact, is brave of her, I think. Human beings, since we have agency, have complicity in a great deal that happens to us; there CAN be cases where you're a pure victim of someone else's evil - or just shitty luck - but more often than not, your own choices have some influence on how events transpire.  Maybe it's the shame and confusion that comes with such situations that is precisely what prevents people from coming forward. You figure it was your fault - because you "let" it happen; so you keep silent.  Far from saying that Rosenbaum's own, shall we say "innocence" here, discredits her complaint, I think she deserves praise for telling her story, even though it reveals her own side to it. She obviously WANTED some of what Harvey had to offer, enough to keep going along with his invitations; she just didn't want to have to have sex with the guy...

...and maybe it's just that - the guilt around complicity, around having wanted the career advancement that Harvey Weinstein offered - that has kept so many women (more-or-less) silent for so long? Maybe it was because he DID help some actresses with their careers that they haven't said anything? Maybe he's smart enough to have not let anyone fall into his grasp who - well, like they say, you gotta invite the vampire in...

One also wonders if there's also a contingent of women who rose to fame via Weinstein's casting couch who have thus far said nothing,  because they actually feel loyal to him, feel like he delivered on his end of the bargain...? There are so many names already out in public that you gotta ask - who has yet to come forward in this story? Who else is afraid their name is going to be dragged into the muck around sinking Harvey, if they don't come forward sooner rather than later? Are there people who DID engage with him sexually, whom he DID help with their careers, who don't want to come forward yet because they were in fact satisfied with how things went down - or who just feel ashamed to be associated with this sort of deep tawdriness? At what point will the scale tip so that they feel like supporting the women already on that Wikipedia page is more important than protecting their own reputation or sense of pride?

I also kind of wonder if we weren't living in such a divisive time - tempted to call it the age of President "Grab Them By the Pussy" - if Harvey Weinstein would still be getting a free pass...?

I don't know about any of this, but Harvey is going to go down in movie history as having one of the most spectacular falls from grace of the decade, as far as the movie industry is concerned; and I somehow suspect that the worst is yet to come.