Harvey Weinstein Is Done And Hollywood Better Never Be The Same

It’s over for Harvey Weinstein. No matter what you hear come out of his godforsaken mouth. It’s over. It truly is.

Tuesday afternoon he leaked to his favorite mouthpiece, the NY Post’s Page Six, that he’d have a comeback. “He expects to continue working, and come back next year” the site reported. In his eyes the growing list of sexual assaults and rape allegations from women well known or not was a hiccup. Being fired by his own brother and his board was just another legal fight to battle out in court. It didn’t matter that the NYPD and Manhattan District Attorney’s office were basically squabbling over who screwed up evidence obtained to indict him for sexual assault in 2015 even if they both agreed he was guilty.  It didn’t matter that a growing list of famous collaborators such as Meryl Streep, Judi Dench, George Clooney and Nicole Kidman were publicly denouncing him for his actions. It didn’t matter that Democratic elected figures were quickly donating his previous campaign contributions to charity. It didn’t matter that a desperate letter he sent out to studio chiefs asking for support before his board fired him was leaked to the press. He clearly still believes he’ll return to a seat at the table. Somehow. And not that long from now.

He’s wrong.

When the former President of the United States, Barack Obama and the former First Lady, Michelle Obama, denounce you in a rare official statement you are done. You put their still teenage daughter in your sphere of predatory practices when she was an intern at TWC earlier this year. Their anger and disgust is the final nail in the coffin.

Unless Weinstein plans on collaborating with his ideological enemies on the right (Breitbart, Bannon, etc.) there’s nowhere else to turn. He might find a billionaire who believes in “locker room” talk enough to finance something, but he won’t get distribution. Not on television or streaming. And theatrical? No way.

Many people both in and outside of the industry will continue to wonder how Weinstein’s behavior could go unnoticed to so many for so many years. Jessica Chastain heard the stories. She was warned. She smartly kept her distance. But did she know he’d raped other women? No. That was a story that wasn’t common knowledge even among the industry’s creative class.

What’s always been known is that Harvey was an asshole. He paid his bills at the last possible moment. He pretended contracts didn’t exist. He was combative with anyone in his way. And that fighter part of his personality, the one that was supporting great films and filmmakers, drew employees who wanted to be part of that pedigree, even if most of Harvey’s truly impressive acquisitions or productions happened before the turn of the century. Many of those optimistic souls didn’t last long, however. Former employees of Miramax and The Weinstein Company would joke that if you made it past a year you deserved some sort of medal. These were all warning signs that shouldn’t have been ignored, frankly. They should have told the press and industry that this jaw-dropping behavior wasn’t the fire, but the smoke. The real fire would be worse.

Despite a 25-year career of “success” and numerous Academy Awards, the list of filmmakers willing to work with him again was pitifully small. There’s Quentin Tarantino (shockingly still quiet at the time of publication) and Robert Rodriquez (although pointedly collaborated more with Bob Weinstein’s Dimension Films than Harvey), but if you had your big break in a Weinstein Company release and were a filmmaker, producer or screenwriter you likely moved on. The threats, the still active “Harvey Scissorhands” in the editing room? The possibility of having your work lost to history in a Weinstein Company dump bin? There was just too much drama to go around.

And it didn’t help matters that The Weinstein Company always seemed to be on death’s door.  It was so bad that it seemed like every six months you’d hear another rumor that “Harvey had no money.” “How was he going to release his movies? “ “How was the company going to stay afloat?” “Who was gonna be a big enough sucker to invest in The Weinstein Company now?” But he was still around and up to his old business tricks.  This summer he shockingly got lucky with “Wind River” (a movie he tried to edit as well as get out of his original acquisition agreement). He had the gall to drop that he was in the editing room of “The Current War” — a movie that had already publicly premiered at Toronto a month before — when he tried to get ahead of the allegations last Wednesday because only Harvey would think people would be more interested in his Oscar chances than accusations of sexual assault (nope, they’re not).  Oh, you hadn’t heard he’d tipped the trades to both the first New York Times and New Yorker pieces that dropped Thursday and Tuesday morning respectively? He thought the news of his formidable legal team would scare the publications off.  Weinstein always seemed like a cockroach who got more artistic praise than he ever deserved.  Those who had an inkling of what was going on just looked the other way because they thought he was going to fade away. A lesson.

Personally, I could care less about the future of The Weinstein Company or its assets. The idea that it can live on even with a new name is simply too hard to believe, but good luck I guess. The unforgettable art it released will live on. The bad art will fade away.  There’s much more of the latter.

This scandal — with more revelations to come than you can imagine — is bigger than the Sony hack a little less than three years ago. And that was a digital terrorist attack from a foreign nation against an American corporation. This is actually bigger because it spreads to almost all corners of the industry. How is it possible that Disney corporate didn’t know about Weinstein’s settlements during the Eisner era? And how did so many mainstream news outlets somehow miss this story? How many were kinder to Harvey than they should have been because he fed them news tips? What other producers or industry executives have used their influence in such predatory ways and had their misdeeds swept under the rug?

Ponder.

Now that brave souls such as Ashley Judd, Rose McGowan, Asia Argento and more have spoken up the floodgates should continue to open up. Over so many years it’s clear these women’s stories were just the beginning and now the monster has no more weapons at his disposal.  Harvey has no more clout. He’s done. There may be inherent fears in speaking publicly, but they won’t come from him. Not anymore. And hopefully, there will be more brave women (and in Terry Crews’ case, men) who speak out about sexual impropriety that is as rampant in the entertainment industry as it is in the rest of the world.

As for Hollywood? Lots of awards season events are on deck. This scandal and where the industry goes next is all they’ll be talking about. And if there is the tiniest sliver of silver linings it’s the hope that more people are willing to speak up. Or maybe Hollywood, like the nation, just needs to realize this problem is a societal construct that simply needs to be torn down. Dare to dream, right?

Update: As of October 11th, Harvey Weinstein has had his BAFTA membership suspended. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences also made the following statement:

“The Academy finds the conduct described in the allegations against Harvey Weinstein to be repugnant, abhorrent, and antithetical to the high standards of the Academy and the creative community it represents. The Board of Governors will be holding a special meeting on Saturday, October 14, to discuss the allegations against Weinstein and any actions warranted by the Academy.”