His latest book, Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein, the Culture of Silence, is available July 12th from Penguin Press. Ken Auletta, journalist and New Yorker critic, writes about the Hollywood power broker, and his fall after the #MeToo movement exposed him as a serial victim of sexual abuse. Weinstein was convicted and sentenced.
Check out the excerpt below and make sure to watch Lesley Stahl’s interview on CBS Sunday Morning, July 10, at 10:15 a.m.
Gray Concrete Carpet
He exuded power once. He was nominated for 341 Oscar nominations and 81 Academy Awards for films he produced and distributed. From the awards stage, Steven Spielberg received more than any other person. He spoke of his friendships and marriages to Presidents Clinton and Obama. He was a terror to his four office assistants and bellowed at his executives. He flashed a stunning, cap-toothed smile outside the office while walking hundreds of red carpets. His second wife Georgina Chapman was often with him. She dressed many of the celebrities photographed by the paparazzi. Harvey was a rare Hollywood star who was instantly known by his first name.
In the winter 2020, Harvey Weinstein walked daily on a gray concrete sidewalk. It was not a red carpet. As he waited to be seen at the 100 Centre Street criminal court building, armed police officers and metal police bars were there to corral the throngs of reporters who didn’t respect Hollywood’s protocol. Harvey was unable to drive his Cadillac Escalade because of recent back surgery. Two men had to help him out of his back seat. His team of lawyers and public relation advisers accompanied him as he walked slowly in his black ortho shoes towards the building’s entrance, about 100 feet away. Harvey didn’t pause, and he rarely glanced up to answer questions or smile for the cameras. After entering the building, Harvey dutifully empty his pockets and went through a metal detector. Harvey and his companions were taken to the fifteenth level by an elevator. He then had to pass a second screening of reporters and cameras before being allowed into courtroom 1530, for his criminal trial in predatory rape.
Harvey’s world, the world in which was he in charge of, was upended forever by The New York Times and The New Yorker declaring that Harvey was a sexual beast. The Weinstein Company fired Harvey. Harvey was arrested by a grand jury convened by Manhattan’s district attorney seven months later. Harvey was now facing a criminal trial, which threatened to put him behind bars for his entire life. Harvey walked the concrete floor Monday through Friday for eight weeks beginning January 6, 2020.
He looked more like a Sinclair Lewis author’s midwestern businessman than a Hollywood power broker. His attire consisted of dull, uninteresting ties, white shirts with crumpled collars, and drab suits. He looked miserable. He was at least 75% lighter than before, his skin was grey and his scruffy stubble mustache failed to conceal the lines and crevices of his swelling.
Harvey would sit in a low-back leather chair while in court. He was flanked at the table by five of his lawyers, who were facing Judge James M. Burke from his elevated platform. Harvey was flanked by his five lawyers, including the assistant district attorney and Special counsel to the D.A. Joan Illuzzi, her deputy and Meghan Hast (deputy chief of the Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit), sat at a table near the twelve-member jury box, to his right. Each day, around one hundred twenty-five journalists and observers crowded into the courtroom. More reporters and spectators sometimes waited outside to get in or to verbally attack Harvey and his lawyers.
Harvey’s walker, as the assistant district attorney Illuzzi claimed more than once to be a “prop” to get sympathy. This view was widely shared by others
His detractors and not many members of the media. Harvey Weinstein was actually not well. Harvey Weinstein was hurt after a car accident in 2019. He had been dragging his right leg for over a year. His back was also treated days before the trial to relieve pain, correct spinal stenosis, and correct drop foot. It was unsuccessful. His lawyer said that he was being given shots to treat macular damage. Harvey was prescribed twenty medications.
Harvey was indicted for five counts of assaulting and raping three women: Miriam Haley, formerly Haleyi, a production assistant at Weinstein Company; Jessica Mann, an aspiring actress; and Annabella Sciorra, an established actress. The prosecution case included the claim that Weinstein used his position as head of Miramax and then the Weinstein Company to trap aspiring actresses, models and women on his team. They remained silent, ashamed or afraid that he would ruin their careers, after he forced them to have sexual access, sometimes with brutality. They wanted to work in the film industry, and he was often their closest friend.
Harvey’s team believed that their defense was formidable. His lawyers insist that the women had sex with Harvey’s team. The jury was bombarded with evidence that Harvey’s lawyers, Haley and Mann, whose testimony was disputed, maintained contact with Harvey. They sent him emails asking for favors and jobs, and then engaged in voluntary sex. Sciorra didn’t maintain contact with Harvey, but she was criticized by the defense for not being able to identify the year (1993 or 1994) in which the rape took place, suggesting that she had lied. After Harvey abused them, two of the three female witnesses who were to testify sought favors from Harvey. The defense claimed Harvey was robbed from the presumption that he is innocent due to the negative publicity about Harvey in the two years following the news broke. It was difficult to find jurors with an impartial opinion on Harvey Weinstein. Only a third of the six jurors were able to identify Harvey Weinstein.
One hundred potential jurors were screened by Judge Burke in courtroom before trial. They were then excused because they couldn’t be “impartial.”
All agreed that this was a landmark trial. In sex-crime cases law enforcement will not prosecute if there are no forensic evidence or contemporaneous reports from the police. This case was more difficult because the victim’s emails showed that they had communicated with their abuser via email and in some cases, had consensual sexual relations with him after being abused. District Attorney Cyrus Vance pursued this case to increase the chances of prosecuting sex crimes. The trial was seen by many as a reckoning and a call for justice for victims of sexual assault, including the #MeToo movement, Roger Ailes (Bill Cosby), Roger Moonves, Les Moonves. Bill O’Reilly, Bill O’Reilly. Matt Lauer, Russell Simmons. Kevin Spacey. USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. R. Kelly.
After a trial lasting twenty-two days over two-months and followed by twenty-six hour jury deliberation over five-days, the jury foreman declared Weinstein guilty of two out of five charges.
The courtroom was packed, but then suddenly it flooded with two dozen armed officers. Four of them stood right behind Harvey at his defense table. As Judge Burke announced that Harvey was being remanded to Rikers Island Prison, the officers pressed closer to him. Harvey was taken out of the room by two officers from the court and lifted with his arms. The judge then set March 11 as sentencing.
Judge Burke said that Weinstein would be sentenced to 23 years imprisonment on that day. Harvey’s head fell to the chest. Harvey did not let out his famed temper. He replied, feebly, as if he couldn’t believe that this was happening to his, “But, I’m innocent.” Three times he repeated this to his lawyers.
It was a difficult, long road to get here. Harvey Weinstein is an innocent man. This or any other context, it’s a word that few would use to describe him. Harvey Weinstein increased the gap between good movies and good behavior in Hollywood. This book examines the extreme nature of this divide in the motion-picture industry. It is important to ask how and why he was allowed, decade after decade, to sexually abuse women by Hollywood’s silence or closed eyes. It is necessary to examine the architecture of collusion that he created at his companies, both unwittingly and intentionally, in order to understand this culture.
Harvey’s talent was overwhelming, but Harvey’s volcanic personality terrorized those who worked with him. Staff would often go to bars to get a drink after a hard day at work to contemplate the cause of Harvey’s terrifying rage. Amanda Lundberg, who began her career at Miramax in 1989 and rose to the position of worldwide head of public relations over ten years, said, “We used say about his home, ‘They must have done some number on those children.’ Harvey’s behaviour shocked a former close friend who confided that Harvey was “like someone who’s been raised in wolves.”
However, upbringing can only explain so many things. Harvey’s life is a confirmation of George Eliot’s famous quote, “Character determines destiny.” Harvey Weinstein’s life is like Donald Trump and Richard Nixon drowning in the currents and malice that overpowered their judgment. Harvey Weinstein was unable tame his demons and will shape his legacy. His predatory sexual compulsions that he indulged in and managed to conceal for many decades. His extravagant spending on movies and expense accounts that nearly bankrupted his companies. Four, his Shakespeare-worthy, unhinged relationship with his younger brother Bob Weinstein. This relationship spanned from an impregnable partnership, screaming matches, stone estrangements and, at the very least, bloody blows.
Harvey Weinstein was found guilty for crimes motivated by his rage impulses and unquenchable desire to rule. The question that his staff asked Harvey Weinstein lingers. It is rooted in one the great films Harvey loved, and which he hoped to emulate. Orson Welles described Charles Foster Kane as a man who was enraged at the idea that only he exists, and refuses to acknowledge the existence of others with whom one can compromise.
Harvey Weinstein’s Rosebud is a loss or a lack that leads to the explanation of what happened. Can there be an explanation for his life? Harvey’s Flushing, Queens home is where you start your search.
From “Hollywood Ending”, by Ken Auletta. Published by Penguin Press, an imprint by Penguin Publishing Group and a division Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright (c), 2022 by Ken Aletta
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