Spiegel Stuff: Critics to Disney: Time to Grow Up

Vanity Fair

ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY and AWARD NEWS FROM HOLLYWOOD, compiled by REBECCA KEEGAN

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

It's Tuesday, and I'm listening to Frances McDormand swear as a means of self-care.

Hello from Los Angeles, where we're watching Disney change its tune, shuddering at Harvey Weinstein's bullying tactics, and following Sandy Powell wherever she goes.

IT'S A SMALL COMPANY AFTER ALL

Among reporters who cover Disney, there's a phrase: "Getting Zenia-ed." It means getting frozen out by Walt Disney Company chief communications officer Zenia Mucha. Until mid-day Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times was getting Zenia-ed: Disney had barred the newspaper from access to the company's movies over an investigative series Daniel Miller wrote about Disney's financial relationship with the city of Anaheim. The paper revealed the blackout November 3 to explain why its Thor: Ragnarok review would be late, and why its latest movie sneaks section would be free of Disney films. As V.F.'s Yohana Desta writes, the response from the entertainment press was swift: New York Times critic A.O. Scott, Washington Post critic Alyssa Rosenberg, NPR correspondent Neda Ulaby, and the entertainment Web site The A.V. Club were among those who said they also would not attend advance screenings or publish advance reviews until the L.A. Times could, too. On Tuesday morning, four key film critics' organizations announced that they had voted to disqualify Disney's films from year-end awards consideration until the blackout is over, and The Wire show-runner David Simon tweeted, "If journos being selectively barred, then I'll play, too. This award season, all Disney screeners dumped. No votes from me for their stuff." Most boldly, Ava DuVernay, a former publicist who is directing the Disney film A Wrinkle in Time, due next March, expressed solidarity with the press in a tweet Monday night. "Saluting the film journalists standing up for one another. Standing with you," DuVernay wrote.

Amid the roar, Disney backed down: according to The New York Times's Sydney Ember and Brooks Barnes, the media company reversed its ban on Tuesday. As a P.R. strategy, Disney's blackout clearly backfired. Miller's Disney-Anaheim investigation became the most read L.A. Times business story of the day on November 3, several weeks after it was originally published—and whatever the company's problems with the original pieces, Disney did not demand a correction. The stakes for Disney's films were modest; the studio's tent-pole pictures typically don't depend on critics to find an audience. Perhaps the person this campaign hurt the most was Disney chief Bob Iger, who is said to harbor political ambitions. In an era when the president openly bullies the press corps, and another Hollywood mogul allegedly hired spies to dig up dirt on reporters, a media-company chief locking his hometown newspaper out of movie screenings over coverage he doesn't like just looked Mickey Mouse.

bob iger — Iger speaks at the press briefing for the Academy Museum of Motion Picture on September 27th.

By Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images.

ANOTHER ALLEGATION

V.F.'s Laura Bradley writes:

Gossip Girl star Ed Westwick has been accused of rape by actress Kristina Cohen, who says that the actor assaulted her at his home. According to an account published on Facebook Monday, Cohen says that she and a man she was seeing at the time—identified only as a "producer" and friend of Westwick's—came to Westwick's house for a visit, but that things turned uncomfortable when the actor allegedly said, "we should all fuck." Later, as she took a nap in the guest room, Cohen alleges that she awoke to Westwick on top of her. In her statement, Cohen wrote, "I hope my coming forward will help others to know that they are not alone, that they are not to blame, and it is not their fault. Just as the other women and men coming forward have helped me to realize the same. I hope that my stories and the stories of others help to reset and realign the toxic environments and power imbalances that have created these monsters." Westwick responded to the allegation with an unequivocal denial: "I do not know this woman," he wrote in a statement on Twitter. "I have never forced myself in any manner, on any woman. I certainly have never committed rape."

WEINSTEIN'S DARK WEB

V.F.'s Yohana Desta writes:

The New Yorker has published a harrowing new piece about Harvey Weinstein. This time, it's not about the women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, but rather about the extreme methods the disgraced producer allegedly employed in order to keep them silent. According to Ronan Farrow, who penned the piece, Weinstein hired multiple intelligence firms to dig up information on his accusers and reach out to journalists while they were reporting about him, Farrow included. Reportedly, there were even agents who used fake identities in order to get close to stars like Rose McGowan, one of Weinstein's most vocal critics. Other firms were given tasks like creating dossiers that highlighted damning information about some of Weinstein's accusers, said Farrow; for example, the one that was allegedly put together for McGowan included sections titled "Lies/Exaggerations/Contradictions," "Hypocrisy," and "Past Lovers." And all that's truly just the tip of the iceberg in this crushing piece, which includes even more purported details about Weinstein's grim, aggressive methodology—none of which was enough to stop the flood of allegations from rushing forward, altering the course of his life for good.

THE POWER OF POWELL

V.F.'s Katey Rich writes:

After 12 Oscar nominations and 3 wins, for work on some of the most visually lavish films of the last few decades, costumer designer Sandy Powell is as big a force on the films she's made as the directors and producers themselves. So why, at this point in her career, would she take on something as new and gigantic as being an executive producer? "I don't just look at films in terms of costumes. I tend to be interested in the other production aspects and wanting to control those," she told V.F.'s Julie Miller in a conversation about her work on Todd Haynes's Wonderstruck, for which she also made the exquisite costumes. Powell may not be putting down the needle and thread for a new career entirely, but she told Miller the leap into something new was worth it, "I think it is actually quite good to do things that terrify you though, isn't it?"

HURRICANE FRANCES

V.F.'s Hillary Busis writes:

Nobody shouts "Hey, fuckhead!" quite like Frances McDormand. For proof, look no further than this searing exclusive clip from the Oscar winner's latest, the furious dark comedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri—which stars McDormand as small-town gift-shop clerk Mildred Hayes, who becomes a profane avenging angel after her teenage daughter, Angela, is brutally raped and murdered. But Mildred isn't after her daughter's attackers, exactly—she's focusing her ire on the good-for-nothing policemen of Ebbing, who have failed to find any leads in the case even after seven months. Watch the clip, and you'll instantly understand why McDormand's already a best-actress front-runner. Three Billboards is in select theaters November 10.

That's the news for this cloudy Monday in L.A. What are you seeing out there? Send tips, comments, and Mickey Mouse ears to ‪Rebecca_Keegan@condenast.com. Follow me on Twitter @thatrebecca.