ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY and AWARD NEWS FROM HOLLYWOOD, compiled by REBECCA KEEGAN
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
It's Wednesday, and I'm listening to the new season of You Must Remember This about Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, because I need a story where the men in Hollywood only play monsters.
Hello from Los Angeles, where we're learning more about the "shy" Weinstein brother, getting pumped for a third season of UnREAL, and counting on Jane Goodall to whisk us away from it all.
WHAT ABOUT BOB?
A former employee of Bob and Harvey Weinstein's recently told me that they believe the death of the Weinsteins' mother, Miriam, last November made permanent what had been a growing rift between the two siblings, as the last person who could broker a peace between the warring Weinstein brothers was gone. The Weinsteins' Cain-and-Abel dynamic is in full display now as the sexual assault and harassment allegations against Harvey continue to mount—and Bob seeks to distance himself and their company from Harvey's problems. But new allegations are emerging about Bob's behavior, too. On Tuesday, Amanda Segel, a show-runner on the Weinstein Co. drama The Mist, accused Bob of sexually harassing her during production on the Spike TV show in 2016. Speaking toVariety's Cynthia Littleton, Segel alleged that Weinstein asked her "highly intimate questions and made romantic overtures." When rebuffed, she said, Weinstein "became angry and screamed at Segel over a production issue that she says was out of her control." A spokesman for Bob Weinstein and the executive's attorney Bert Fields both denied the allegations to Variety.
A story in The Wall Street Journal by Alexandra Berzon and Ben Fritz suggests that lashing out, at least, was common behavior for the executive. "Bob Weinstein was genuinely abusive to people in my company," said Jeffrey Katzenberg, who ran Disney when it owned the brothers' former studio, Miramax. A former assistant of Bob's, Michael Neithardt, told the Journal that the younger Weinstein brother "was really socially awkward. The way he dealt with it was by just being a bully." The siblings have grown increasingly distant in recent years, going long stretches without speaking to each other. During a fight over how to allocate their company's resources in 2011, Harvey punched Bob in front of about a dozen Weinstein Co. executives. "I've been assaulted!" Bob yelled, according to two people who were present and spoke to the Journal. Bob wanted to press charges, but was talked out of it.
Weinsteins pose with their Motion Picture Showmanship Award in 2015.
By Matthew Imaging/WireImage.
SCOOP O'CLOCK
V.F.'s Yohana Desta writes:
Meanwhile: the Harvey Weinstein stories just keep coming, don't they? If you're not tuckered out yet, head over to HuffPost, which has two fascinating pieces on the Weinstein beat. In the first story, reporter Yashar Ali dives into the shady $600,000 deal the ousted producer reportedly made with Kenneth Cole for the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 2015, which eventually spiraled into a hush-hush investigation that led to a lawyer getting some damning tips about Weinstein's alleged sexual misconduct. The piece details Weinstein's messy, heavy-handed efforts to suppress an investigation, which ends up essentially backfiring.
The second story focuses on Weinstein's relationship with the media, specifically with Variety's former editor-in-chief Peter Bart. Reporters Jason Cherkis and Maxwell Strachantake a deeper look at the duo's friendship, examining how far Bart went to make sure Weinstein got favorable coverage in the magazine. He would reportedly soften or outright kill stories about Miramax, until it just became known around the office that Weinstein was fairly untouchable. Weinstein reciprocated the favor, buying up ad space in the trade and publishing three of Bart's books. In the piece, Bart gets a chance to defend himself, leaving you to decide just how far he might have gone to protect Weinstein from years of bad press.
ROY PRICE SHIPS OUT
V.F.'s Laura Bradley writes:
Looks like Harvey Weinstein isn't the only Hollywood executive to watch his star fall this autumn. In the wake of sexual harassment allegations, Roy Price has resigned from his post as Amazon's content head. Since The Man in the High Castle producer Isa Hackett went on the record last week with her allegation against Price—whom she says made sexual remarks to her, including at one point saying "You will love my dick,"—more stories about his questionable alleged conduct have emerged, particularly in a new piece by Kim Masters and Lesley Goldberg of The Hollywood Reporter. Among them: the description of a pet project of Price's, a series that would have followed a woman who is sold into sex slavery, drugged, beaten with a machete, and told she will be "fucked like a dead fish." It seems safe to guess that this proposed show will never see the light of day.
AS RIGHT AS JANE
V.F.'s Hillary Busis writes:
If the news of the day has you yearning to escape the horrific world of man, director Brett Morgen has just the ticket: the lush new documentary Jane, which is centered on gorgeous, never-before-seen footage of celebrated primatologist Jane Goodall doing her groundbreaking fieldwork among the chimpanzees of Tanzania. Yes, the movie does include some undercurrents about the challenges the young, inexperienced Goodall faced from a scientific community that would not initially take her seriously—"People said my fame was due to my legs," present-day Goodall recalls in the film—but mostly, it's an affirming film about a great woman and her vital findings: "I like to say it's a love story, but not in the traditional sense," Morgen tellsV.F. contributor Lisa Liebman. "Her work is the love of her life. There's not even a question."
ROUND THREE
V.F.'s Katey Rich writes:
After a rocky second season that tried to reshape its soapy melodrama around thorny issues like police violence and race, Lifetime's UnREAL finally returns for a third season on February 26. This time around, the series seems to be going back to what it does best: men, women, and the insane things they will do on television. A new trailer reveals that this will be a Bachelorette-style season for the fictional series Everlasting, with one woman (Caitlin FitzGerald) choosing from a sea of suitors. As Constance Zimmer's Quinn says in the trailer, having a woman in charge could change up the entire dynamic: "She's smart. We can't handle her the same way." Watching Quinn and Rachel (Shiri Appleby) try to do that anyway will, hopefully, bring the series back to the feminist-leaning guilty-pleasure roots that made it such a breakout success in the first place.
That's the news for this sunny Wednesday in L.A. What are you seeing out there? Send tips, comments, and a witch hat to Rebecca_Keegan@condenast.com. Follow me on Twitter @thatrebecca.
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