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| Weinstein - villain of the piece |
I saw Harvey Weinstein at
Heathrow airport once whilst waiting to meet a group. He is the only living film producer I would
recognise – and I regard myself as a modest film buff – and the only producer
whose name might have encouraged me see a film.
Others were just names at the start of the credits, money raisers,
facilitators, maybe actors who had lent their name to a project and were being
rewarded for their support before the really important person, the director,
was acknowledged. He (usually) or she
(occasionally) was the creative force, the person whose skills might make you
cough up ten pounds.
Directors themselves know it
is not that simple. They need producers to
greenlight their projects and help realise their vision. The producer usually stays in the background
but almost invariably retains control over what is known as the final cut, what
people actually see on the screen. If
the director runs off on a path which is creative but not commercial, it is the
producer who reins them back in.
Occasionally these tensions explode and a director dissociates him
(again usually) self from the end product.
Later a ‘director’s cut’ is released which is more in tune their vision,
sometimes overlong and self-indulgent.
One of my favourite films Blade
Runner can be seen in several different versions and its director Ridley
Scott got himself a producer credit on the recent follow-up. He knows that the director’s cut concept is
often just another way to make money. It was probably a producer who thought up
the idea in the first place.
All this makes producers
powerful and sometimes tyrannical figures.
Weinstein, in my short moment of watching him, gave off the aura of
someone who was entitled to respect and used to wielding influence. This burly unshaven male, who did not need to
dress to impress, was accompanied by a young ‘assistant’, attractive and
obedient. It did not come as a major
shock when it was revealed that he did not take his marriage vows very
seriously and had for decades been systematically sexually harassing and
assaulting women who needed his help and approval.
In situations like this I
often feel perversely sympathetic towards the man (inevitably) who has being
doing the bad thing and disapproving of the women who have been done to. This is often just sympathy for the mighty figure
who has fallen into disgrace. Weinstein’s
wife has left him, his children probably despise him and the list of former
associates, clients and ‘friends’ who have disowned him is stretching around
the block. When Woody Allen, whose
career was rescued by Weinstein when he had sexual allegations of his own to
deal with, used the word ‘sad’ in describing what he felt about the fate of his
rescuer, he soon had to backtrack. There
is no mileage in anything other than joining the bandwagon at times like these.
Having said that, I would
have wanted to thrash and castrate Weinstein if he had done even one of things
he has been accused of to my daughter.
She is someone who can look after herself in most situations but this is
easier said than done when your career is at the mercy of a powerful man. Weinstein’s legal team seem to have become
past masters at silencing people who have tried to expose him and he was
ruthless in hindering and even sabotaging the careers of those who rejected him
and refused his advances – or stood up to him in any way. Some even decided that these advances were a
price worth paying for his help and are now taking revenge.
What struck me in reading
some of the lurid revelations was how unsatisfactory so many of these
encounters must have been. Most of us
have experienced bad sex at some stage in our lives. A combination of lust and loneliness, often
fuelled by that inhibition remover alcohol, have taken us to places which we
later regret going to and which we decide never to revisit, sometimes
unsuccessfully. Shakespeare, as usual,
described it best in sonnet 129, ‘The expense of spirit in a waste of shame’. This poem is surely enough to confirm that
the sonnets are based on personal experience and that the great poet was not a
faithful husband to Anne Hathaway. Like
many young men he had gone into marriage in a blaze of lust and found himself
trapped and left to look elsewhere when the passion curdled.
Will learned to live
together with his wife despite the loss of lust and decline of love because the
demands of both parenthood and respectability enforced it 400 years ago. Weinstein lives in an era when a marriage is
not expected to last beyond the willingness of both partners to remain in it,
which is often quite a short period in Hollywood. I am not certain that this freedom actually
makes us happier in the long run but, equally, I am certain that it is not one
which we are going to give up anytime soon.
While most people do not lead totally chaste lives, most of us
eventually realise that love is more important than sex in the end.
There was no love, however,
in the various sexual encounters this powerful man instigated and carried out
in various hotel rooms with the knowledge and connivance of people unable to
stand up to his appetites. While he
might lay off for a little while if a revelation threatened him he always returned to using his position
and power to exploit women with his unwanted and unwelcome advances. What seems most chilling about these episodes
was how he seemed to get turned on by the fear they generated in the
women. While they might not technically
qualify as rape in a court of law, they give us an insight into the mind of the
rapist, turned on by fear and power rather than tenderness and companionship.
So, another month, another
sexual scandal. I felt that Mark Sampson, who I wrote about last month, had
been harshly dealt with. He was a
successful coach with a taste for tasteless ‘jokes’ who had the genuine support
of many of his players but fell out with one of them. He may be able to rebuild his career, whereas
Weinstein’s reputation is surely too toxic for a comeback now. In fact, I would rather be almost anyone on
the planet than Harvey Weinstein right now. Still, this has to be said despite
his good work as a producer, it serves him right.
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Today - 31st October 2017 - is the 500th anniversary of Luther's famous proclamation which started the Reformation. No more sex scandals - I will write about this next month.
Edwin Lerner
