All the worst Harvey Weinstein takes in one list that we'll probably have to update [UPDATED]
Harvey Weinstein did disgusting, reprehensible things and he should be punished for them. This is an easy thing to say, evidenced by the fact that many have said it already, from the various stars the disgraced mogul has worked with, to his former business partners, to former U.S. presidents, to even Weinstein’s friends, wife, and his own brother. Try saying it now, secure in the knowledge that you, too, are belatedly on the right side of history.
In fact, if you were never directly involved with Weinstein—or complicit in keeping his abuse of women an open Hollywood secret out of some craven concern for your own ambitions—then that’s really all anyone expects of you: base-level empathy for his victims, some revulsion that he was allowed to get away with it for so long, and gratitude for those who have now come forward. With its many on-the-record testimonies and taped evidence, condemnations from his own inner circle and even his very own written confessions, Harvey Weinstein is the rare, unambiguous case where it’s near impossible to have a bad opinion about it. Just say that women shouldn’t be sexually assaulted and take this gently sloping ramp to the moral high ground. Meryl Streep is up here!
Alternately, you could be one of the people on this list that—because we live in a Twitter-spun world that puts the lie to “no bad opinions” once per second—we’ll probably just have to keep updating.
Paul Schrader
In a since-deleted Facebook post, writer-director Paul Schrader wrote yesterday, “Of course, I knew Harvey Weinstein was a sexual gangster. So did most people who crossed his path. It was an odor that preceded him.” Not content to merely add his name to the list of filmmakers who kept his secrets for him or make Weinstein sound like a Rick James song, Schrader clarified that—while the rape stuff is certainly bad—what really grinds his gears was Weinstein’s lack of respect for the craft.
“That’s not what offended me most about the man,” Schrader wrote. “It was the fact that he purchased films by both Bernardo Bertolucci and Wong Kar-Wai and then recut them. TWC offered to purchase Bret Ellis and my The Canyons on the proviso that Harvey could recut it — Why would Bret and I, I screamed into the phone, undergo the sacrifice of self-financing a movie only to let an asshole like Harvey recut it?”
Anyway, Schrader’s “Yeah, but even worse, he almost ruined The Canyons!” take didn’t go over so well: “Go fuck yourself scumbag,” wrote actress Rose McGowan, who has become one of Weinstein’s most vociferous accusers, capturing the general sentiment.
After the backlash, Schrader tried walking it back in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, saying he had been “misinterpreted” and blaming the unfair, invasive nature of broadcasting your own unsolicited thoughts on social media (“The worst part of Facebook is you think you are part of a conversation, but in fact you got hijacked”). He also explained that “some people thought [I was saying] there were comparisons to be made” between Weinstein’s history of assaulting women and his reputation for recutting films without directors’ permission, just because Schrader had compared them in degrees of offensiveness. It was tone-deaf and navel-gazing, sure, but at least he actually condemned the stuff that is now safely being condemned by other people.
Lindsay Lohan
But what do the rest of The Canyons cast and crew think?, you were asking. And while we must wait to hear what adult film star/fellow accused rapist James Deen thinks, or find out how Bret Easton “Women Are Crazy And Not Good At Filmmaking” Ellis might possibly spin this, Lindsay Lohan stepped in with an Instagram post calling on others to “stand up”—and tell the women accusing Weinstein to sit down.