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Sexual Assault and Harassment in Hollywood


John from Cincinnati

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Yesterday, Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow joined the list of Harvey Weinstein's public accusers. Accusations abound that this is a Cosby situation where lots of people knew what was up. A reporter who worked for the NYTimes 13 years ago alleges that Matt Damon and Russel Crowe both contacted her in an attempt to shut down a salacious story regarding Weinstein's conduct with women. Ben Affleck has caught some accusation shrapnel for his comments on the controversy. Terry Crews has come forward with a story regarding him being sexually assaulted by a Hollywood executive and details why he didn't come forward. 

Everybody's known Hollywood has had these kind of problems since forever. But with the names attached to the stories that have been coming out, this doesn't feel like it's going away anytime soon. 

Is there any way to reasonably discourage powerful people from abusing their status? Or is this just part of the price of our entertainment? 

 

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I don't get the blame game thing partly because people (doesn't matter the gender) continued to do films with Weinstein/Dimension/Miramax despite the behind the scenes drama. The "well, you knew!" thing doesn't fly if you knew as well. I get that people don't want to be out here alone on the whole issue, but the snowball effect is real whether the claims are legitimate or not. It's not the 60s or 70s anymore. So if you're an actor or actress with any credibility, people are going to take you at your word unless you've given people a reason to believe otherwise. It's just going to be a lot of fingerpointing , and that's sad especially since there is validity to a lot of this. Where was all this grandstanding at the award shows when you're giving your little 2 and 1/2 minute empowerment speeches and you thanked the distributors and the various academies/Hollywood Foreign Press? Because you would have to be a damn idiot to believe it's just Harvey Weinstein. 

 

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14 minutes ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

I don't get the blame game thing partly because people (doesn't matter the gender) continued to do films with Weinstein/Dimension/Miramax despite the behind the scenes drama. The "well, you knew!" thing doesn't fly if you knew as well. I get that people don't want to be out here alone on the whole issue, but the snowball effect is real whether the claims are legitimate or now. It's not the 60s or 70s anymore. So if you're an actor or actress with any credibility, people are going to take you at your word unless you've given people a reason to believe otherwise. It's just going to be a lot of fingerpointing , and that's sad especially since there is validity to a lot of this. Where was all this grandstanding at the award shows when you're giving your little 2 and 1/2 minute empowerment speeches and you thanked the distributors and the various academies/Hollywood Foreign Press? Because you would have to be a damn idiot to believe it's just Harvey Weinstein. 

I'll never understand how people get away with this type of thing for so long.  The names that are coming out aren't exactly unknowns, Paltrow and Jolie are two of the most powerful women in Hollywood, and they weren't immune.  Before I ever heard about him being a serial sexual predator, I had never heard anything good about that dude.  His production company doesn't pay people their royalties, he seems to be rude as fuck, and no one has anything good to say about him, yet still no one called this dude out for this behavior.  There are drug kingpins that couldn't get people to look the other way, and they kill people.  

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All this is is a macrocosm of a microcosm, one which I've lived through. The only answer -- PERIOD:

PUT THE BOOT IN. DON'T LET THEM RUN AWAY, STOMP THEM DOWN. 

It's the same thing as Nazis. All they understand is violence. Provide them with that, they will run to their holes. You have a responsibility, if you know, despite your bank account or what is on stake for you. 

This message is brought to you by 

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30 minutes ago, supremebve said:

I'll never understand how people get away with this type of thing for so long.  The names that are coming out aren't exactly unknowns, Paltrow and Jolie are two of the most powerful women in Hollywood, and they weren't immune.  Before I ever heard about him being a serial sexual predator, I had never heard anything good about that dude.  His production company doesn't pay people their royalties, he seems to be rude as fuck, and no one has anything good to say about him, yet still no one called this dude out for this behavior.  There are drug kingpins that couldn't get people to look the other way, and they kill people.  

It's an air of selfishness (or fakeness), and people don't know the destruction that causes until the stories come out. We're veering this weird line in Hollywood and the entertainment between survivor's remorse and straight up negligence. Fine, you don't want to get blackballed. That's completely understandable. However, this is going to continue AFTER your experience and you can certainly believe you were not the first. So when someone says, "This stops now!", my first thought is, " Well...um..were you going to say this BEFORE all the news spilled out." There are plenty of actresses who most likely didn't even get to a level of Rose McGowan let alone Paltrow and Angelina Jolie. If your whole tactic is "I'm going to wait until the skeleton comes completely out of the closet", miss me with the dry snitching and collateral damage. You could have put an end to a lot of people's suffering and had at least a little closure to your own horrific experience, but now you want to be bold when you had YEARS to do so. Forget the confidentiality agreements because if you got proof...you got proof. That's damning enough. Moreover, you could have put some of these fuckers behind bars. But nope...gotta get the lead in some bullshit film. Fuck all these other folks.

When you're traveling in the same circles in the entertainment industry, I don't get the whole "no one will believe me" routine. If your own friends won't back you as witnesses, you need new friends or new profession. If you're making hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and your voice isn't somewhat influential, you're in showbiz for the completely wrong reasons. 

I'm not buying these excuses anymore. Hey, maybe it's victim blaming on my part or whatever you want to call it. However, we're not dealing with the people that live next door to you or across the street. I don't know about you guys, but I am not working for a Harvey Weinstein OR working the people I call my friends who knowingly let this treatment go on, settled out when it happened to then, and then got on Twitter years later to espouse their views on the situation. Man, fuck that. You getting brownie points from strangers on social media isn't helping me deal with my issues.

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3 hours ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Is there any way to reasonably discourage powerful people from abusing their status? Or is this just part of the price of our entertainment? 

Possibly, but it doesn't happen. Look at our government for example. Trump had over a dozen accusers. Got elected President. Clarence Thomas was accused. Got a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

They don't get punished.

 

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3 hours ago, supremebve said:

The names that are coming out aren't exactly unknowns, Paltrow and Jolie are two of the most powerful women in Hollywood, and they weren't immune.

The Paltrow and Jolie incidents both seem to have happened before they were really big names.

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18 minutes ago, S.K.o.S. said:

The Paltrow and Jolie incidents both seem to have happened before they were really big names.

But they were on their way to being big names in addition to having parents who were well known and connected. A Dakota Johnson is different than your average actress who is just another person who went to Juilliard, RADA, or some other prestigious school and then became a commercial actress.

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12 minutes ago, S.K.o.S. said:

The Paltrow and Jolie incidents both seem to have happened before they were really big names.

I get it, but I'm sure they didn't forget.  I don't really have a vindictive bone in my body, but I'd do everything I possibly could to get back at someone who abused me if I got the power to do so.  That is the only way you stop this from happening to the next crop of actresses.  Who knows how many women who went through this, and it seems like everyone knew about it.  

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Guest Stefanie Without Stefanie

They won't stop if they feel like they won't get caught (or if there's no punishment when they do), and people who don't report sexual assault do so because they won't be believed (which is exacerbated when it's a powerful person who can crush your career with a swipe of their pen). Plain and simple.

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1 hour ago, S.K.o.S. said:

The Paltrow and Jolie incidents both seem to have happened before they were really big names.

In addition to being the child of Hollywood stars, Gwyneth Paltrow is the god-daughter to Steven Spielberg. I don't want to diminish what she endured with Weinstein. But she had connections that would have offered her tremendous protection if she had come forward. Jolie has similar tools at her disposal.

There have always been rumors about Weinstein and the casting couch. As @supremebvenoted, he's been known as a coarse and disgusting creature for decades. I understand the need for self-preservation. But far too many people with good connections were aware. At what point do several of them not come together, talk about what's happening, and decide to take down Weinstein as a group?

As harsh as it to say, it comes down to enabling such vile behavior. To know who how many actresses who had no support went through this when others had a chance to at least slow down this monster is a bitter pill to swallow.

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I don't get why it's hard to believe men in power could get away with sexual assault for a long time, especially against women. It happens so often that it's clearly not as easy as filing a report and moving on. The system is rigged against women here, especially back then.  I certainly don't think being the 1st domino to fall aka speak out is enviable either. 

Sometimes people do try to report these types of crimes against moguls. Voices can get muffled though.  Even in this case, it sounds more likely that the ball starting rolling on this because other powerful people were gunning to oust Harvey; less likely due to sincere concern over his actual actions. That says a lot to me.

Definitely think some people were obviously willfully ignorant here though .

 

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11 minutes ago, _MJ_ said:

I don't get why it's hard to believe men in power could get away with sexual assault for a long time, especially against women. It happens so often that it's clearly not as easy as filing a report and moving on. The system is rigged against women here, especially back then.  I certainly don't think being the 1st domino to fall aka speak out is enviable either. 

Sometimes people do try to report these types of crimes against moguls. Voices can get muffled though.  Even in this case, it sounds more likely that the ball starting rolling on this because other powerful people were gunning to oust Harvey; less likely due to sincere concern over his actual acts. That says a lot to me.

Definitely think some people were obviously willfully ignorant here.

 

Bingo. He is being moved out of his own company and this is going to be the driver of that. It's the same thing that happened with Donald Sterling. It's the same type of power struggle that's going on at Viacom/CBS Corp between the Redstones, Les Moonves, and everyone else. Sumner Redstone is like a billion years old and his relationship business is a part of a lawsuit w/ a huge media empire caught in the middle. Make no mistake, this ain't about the victims. This is a coup d'état for The Weinstein Company and an investment into their future. Harvey had to go.

But my question to you is how do the voices get muffled other than outright not saying anything?

 

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Man the way this happened it felt like a pandora's box for Hollywood was opened and it just keeps getting deeper and uglier.  It may be an exaggeration, but going by today it almost seems like the industry is about to go up in flames.

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17 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

So when someone says, "This stops now!", my first thought is, " Well...um..were you going to say this BEFORE all the news spilled out." There are plenty of actresses who most likely didn't even get to a level of Rose McGowan let alone Paltrow and Angelina Jolie. If your whole tactic is "I'm going to wait until the skeleton comes completely out of the closet", miss me with the dry snitching and collateral damage. You could have put an end to a lot of people's suffering and had at least a little closure to your own horrific experience, but now you want to be bold when you had YEARS to do so

This.  Paltrow and Jolie coming out now rings so shallow and so absolutely craven.  Both are powerful, have been for years.  Either could have brought this shitstorm down on him years ago with no recourse.  Now it just strikes me as a gross attempt to garner attention.  Now they get to be the public faces of this thing instead of McGowan, whose career was actually ruined.

 

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As has been mentioned, there is a suggestion that Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie got off "easy" because of their family connections. (Spielberg being Paltrow's Godfather and Jon Voight, obviously)

Like, he tried something, but then left them alone. A lot of others like McGowan didn't have that, so were treated much, much worse.

But then Asia Argento ...so, I dunno. He didn't think her dad was famous enough?

Again, though: Dario is not a man I would want to anger.

He's far too weird. And unpredictable. 

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24 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

This.  Paltrow and Jolie coming out now rings so shallow and so absolutely craven.  Both are powerful, have been for years.  Either could have brought this shitstorm down on him years ago with no recourse.  Now it just strikes me as a gross attempt to garner attention.  Now they get to be the public faces of this thing instead of McGowan, whose career was actually ruined.

 

This just feels like victim-blaming, though. Maybe they were, eh, embarrassed? Or worried about their partner's career? (Pitt, Thornton, etc) 

As for garnering-attention: I think both Jolie and Paltrow are well-known enough now that they don't have to resort to this for notoriety.  

I doubt Angelina Jolie woke up a few days ago and was, like, "You know, I'm not quite famous enough. I have to jump in on this story."  Come on.

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There's a comedian I follow on Twitter who posted a question to other women: "Who was your Harvey Weinstein?" The responses were insane. This was from people who had to endure creeps touching up on them or making suggestive comments at a Wendy's. There were dozens of examples provided. There are just a lot of gross guys out there who think behaving like this is cool. There are people where I work at now who still make rude comments. It's hard to say "Hey, man, can you stop?" if it's someone with more rank than me. It's doubly hard if you're a woman. It just is. 

This even seeps down to the struggling comic level. Every six months or so, there's a new story about someone in the world of comedy sexually assaulting or physically abusing a woman. It's pretty clockwork. And it's coming from the alternative comedy world, which is a lot more progressive than the more macho stand-up scene, at least on its face.

We had a big-to-do in the Philly comedy scene a few years ago where this guy was accused of pressuring naive women new to the scene (usually in their early-20s) to fool around with him. It was someone I actually hung out with a little bit over the years. I am a lot older than this person in question and I don't drink or party, so my hanging out with him was more like "getting take-out and playing Power Grid with my wife and three other people on a Tuesday night" or "talking for 10 minutes before a show we're on and giving him advice on how to handle himself professionally since he's being whiny."  He was more-or-less a twerp who no one took too seriously.

Then all this stuff came out about how he was using his "power" as an improv teacher/coach to manipulate women, and would threaten their ability to advance in the Philadelphia comedy ranks. Or he'd get them drunk at a social function and abuse it that way. I mean, in terms of power, we're talking about local improv comedy, which is the lowest level of power imaginable in the world. But it's still something that happened here and a lot of people were victimized. And none of us who were older and more mature knew at all, because people felt embarrassed. 

So if you multiply that with any level of stakes... it's just like... ugh. What the hell do women go through on the regular? I won't judge Angelina Jolie for not speaking up, because how you respond to these types of things is confusing and difficult, no matter if you're an A-List celebrity or a 19-year-old who just wants to perform some improv comedy. 

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I will applaud Harvey for his initial response as one of the grossest carny attempts to worm out of the hole he found himself in. "I know I've been accused of being a sexual predator, but there was just a mass killing in Las Vegas and Republicans are evil so look the other way because I've donated millions of dollars to certain politicians who will gladly look the other way from any horrible person as long as the check cashes!" 

I am also enjoying the Ben Affleck backlash. He is probably my least favorite actor of all-time. I very much hate his guts. What a total hypocritical scumbag. You want to talk about someone speaking out for PR purposes? That's Exhibit A.

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I remember I was at a happy hour with a group of women I didn't really know that well, and somehow the subject of sexual predators came up and every single woman had multiple stories to tell.  I was probably 28 or 29 and none of the women were 25 and they schooled me on all types of shit that day.  I'm not naive, I know things like this happen, but the stories they told opened my eyes to just how rampant this type of thing is.  I have a sister (but I'm also from a small town and have a group of well-known crazy uncles, cousins, and friends) and she luckily doesn't seem to have any of these stories so it never really came up.  

Rose McGowan's Twitter has been suspended...not David Duke, not Richard Spencer, not Donald Trump, but the woman calling out serial sexual predators.

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1 hour ago, supremebve said:

 

Rose McGowan's Twitter has been suspended...not David Duke, not Richard Spencer, not Donald Trump, but the woman calling out serial sexual predators.

Which just goes to show how screwed up the California Liberal Bubble World has become.

This also shows you why women like Jolie and Paltrow kept quiet for so long.

 

This is why I don't support either political party.  The rot and decay in both is so deep.  Weinstein gave millions to people in the Democratic Party including the Clintons.  Obama's daughter worked for him over the summer.  They kept quiet until it became apparent politically they had to cut ties.  

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29 minutes ago, evilwaldo said:

This is why I don't support either political party.  The rot and decay in both is so deep.  Weinstein gave millions to people in the Democratic Party including the Clintons.  Obama's daughter worked for him over the summer.  They kept quiet until it became apparent politically they had to cut ties.  

But Weinstien is fired. Disgraced. Fleeing to Europe.

Trump was elected POTUS. 

You tell me the difference. 

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