This casting couch stuff is an interesting phenomenon.

I don't for a second believe that Harvey Weinstein pinned down and raped women. Perhaps he's tried - sometimes gauchely - to create or size opportunities for sexual fun at work. Maybe there was a quid pro quo arrangement sometimes but hey, fair exchange is no robbery. Ashley Judd (and many others) was perfectly content to go along with whatever deal was put to her as long as the career results kept coming. Now that she's not so cute, she's suddenly whingeing about it. No one's fooled. She traded on her female status then and she's doing it again in a different way now. I'm sure it happens with male actors too, but you won't hear them complaining because they have to stay in the closet.

Actually, plenty of older women get work in films. Helen Mirren, Glenn Close, Maggie Smith, Judie Dench, Meryl Streep. They all have some acting chops rather than just being pretty faces/asses/pairs of tits.

In the music industry, my understanding is that casting couch also happens a lot. Most of the time it's actually females with sub-par skills sleeping their way to the top, or climbing the greasy pole as it were I hear that it's very prevalant in the musical theatre world among the gays, although this is the social circle for young actor/singers so maybe they'd do it anyway. The phenomenon can also manifest itself in different ways, like being expected to participate in drinking culture. I was only offered once, by a flouncy musical director. I just told him I preferred to get work on my merits or not at all, and that had no negative repercussions for me at all. Perhaps I won a bit of respect from him. More importantly, I don't think it was a genuine sleep-with-me-and-I'll-get-you-work offer. Rather, it was a pretext to hit on someone much younger and overcome any embarrassment or shyness therefrom. I suspect that lots of casting couch incidents were like this: it's not really casting couch, it's just a line to get over the awkwardness of propositioning someone for sex.

robbiex wrote:
In The Know wrote:
hedda wrote:
yet again a series of accusations that are probably almost impossible to prove.

You seem to have overlooked the fact the he has apologized !!!!

ITK didn't you know sexual assault doesn't exist according to many on this site, even when they admit it, apologise, and seek out treatment. Even Donald Trump said that he isn't surprised by the allegations.


Admitting to pawing someone is not an admission of rape.

In The Know (as always !) wrote:
Thats an awful lot of admissions for someone who didn't do anything !
He must surely have been up to something. Watched a couple of interviews with this woman yesterday ("Harvey Weinstein Victim Lauren Sivan: 'I Was So Shocked' | MSNBC" and "Harvey Weinstein: ‘I Had A Great Time,’ After Harassing Journalist Lauren Sivan | Megyn Kelly TODAY") and she seemed genuine to me. Not overegging things, hadn't sought a settlement, her finding it "pathetic" sounds authentic and her story is consistent over both interviews. But if he behaved like that, then phoned her the following day as if nothing untoward had happened, it puts a question mark over his interpretation of what is consensual and what isn't.

He was recorded in a police sting in 2015 apparently admitting to touching a woman's breast.
money.cnn.com/2017/10/10/media/harvey-we...-magazine/index.html

His wife has left him.
www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41578997

He may well attract exaggerated or false allegations from opportunists, but women such as Angelina Jolie or Gwyneth Paltrow surely could not be accused of seeking fame or money by making these claims, as they must have plenty of that already.

NYT: Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Others Say Weinstein Harassed Them

Yes and I'm sure those ladies felt uncomfortable at the time and now, years later, with society adapting, decide such behaviour (probably inflated by time and memory) should be declared as unacceptable and a backup for others. Quite right too; except the media (not yet the Judicial system in the USA) pushes it further as it's "a great story". Just add salt, pepper and spices.

Usual bandwagoners, media hype aside etc. perhaps this whole exercise is progress in that people will gain more strength to stand up against unwanted advances when they just need a job or whatever.

Secondly, it would even be more progress if men also learnt to resist advances of women who use sex as a means just to gain whatever they want, like a job and promotion. This is a two sided issue.

There are other positive things from all this hype that meeting locations, and others around are considered to prevent either a false allegation and/or temptation.

wife leaving, well that's between them!

Actor Romola Garai felt 'violated' after Harvey Weinstein encounter

“Like every other woman in the industry, I’ve had an ‘audition’ with Harvey Weinstein, where I’d actually already had the audition but you had to be personally approved by him,” said Garai. “So I had to go to his hotel room in the Savoy, and he answered the door in his bathrobe. I was only 18. I felt violated by it, it has stayed very clearly in my memory.”

Garai said the incident in London was indicative of Weinstein’s approach to women in the film industry, consistently putting young female actors, often desperate to get a break in the industry, into “humiliating situations” to prove “he had the power to do it”.

“The transaction was just that I was there,” said Garai, who once she was in the hotel room with Weinstein just sat on a chair and had a brief discussion about film. “The point was that he could get a young woman to do that, that I didn’t have a choice, that it was humiliating for me and that he had the power. It was an abuse of power.”

...

Garai told the Guardian she “couldn’t be less surprised” by the allegations against Weinstein and said the fact that the film industry was “very very very misogynistic” had meant Weinstein’s behaviour was accepted. “You can’t find an actress that doesn’t have that kind of story about Harvey,” she said.

It sounds as if he may have created a lot of enemies now ready to turn his power play into one of their own.

Jo wrote:
she was in the hotel room with Weinstein just sat on a chair and had a brief discussion about film.

Oh how terrible that must have been for her.

In The Know (as always !) wrote:
He is finished in the film business - no studio would touch him, he's toxic.

Any film he was involved with will have demonstrators outside the cinema !

Suspended from BAFTA now -
www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41586442

What hypocrites - BAFTA¡

Best Film and Director - for Roman Polanski.


For The Pianist in 2002...

Polanski - unlike Weinstein - was convicted of child rape.

Yet he is loved/awarded at so many movie festivals - from Cannes to Berlin.

Even Argentina. The movie industry really has double standards.


Maybe we all do....

It's nothing to do with the relative badness of the deeds.

Harvey Weinstein has crossed the wrong member of his own tribe, someone higher up in the ecosystem, and is now on the receiving end.

The company now considers changing its name - he is THAT toxic

In The Know wrote:
The company now considers changing its name - he is THAT toxic

... any suggestions ?

Pervert Pictures ?

Wanker Movies ?

meanwhile his CBE has been cancelled and the Oscars calls special meeting.

... oh, and his wife has switched sides too !

So can we assume ITK that your response to "Guilty unless proven innocent" is "Kick a man when he's down - when is there a better time?".

Yes ITK knows better than the US judicial system - from deep Derbyshire - just as he does about Brexit's consequences, the next Tory leader (not even at Westminister) and the Boeing/Airbus problems of some 30 years...
6

I'll say it again... It's nothing to do with what Harvey Weinstein has actually done, or been accused of doing. A few dozen alleged gropes is small beans compared to Roman Polanski's case, as Spee pointed out.

It's movie industry backstabbing.

Spee32HR wrote:
Yes ITK knows better than the US judicial system - from deep Derbyshire - just as he does about Brexit's consequences, the next Tory leader (not even at Westminister) and the Boeing/Airbus problems of some 30 years...
6



A cigar is in the post for you Spee.

Spee32HR wrote:
Finished like Roman Polanski?

Oscar winner - with numerous nominations, and other awards from so many countries!

We'll see...




Still making movies but they are mostly bore fests for me.

Klaus Kinski's own daughter came forward about Klaus. Yet Herzog and Kinski were magical together.

Never seen a Weinstein film that I actually liked.

Spee32HR wrote:
What hypocrites - BAFTA¡

Best Film and Director - for Roman Polanski.


For The Pianist in 2002...




Just stick to B movies like me and do you fancy a Gary Busey marathon ?

I did it once and I do it again even for charity.

He did things besides groping, according to the allegations, not including the rape allegations. The audio tape also shows his willingess to bully a woman into compliance and unwillingness to take no for an answer. It's also hard to believe that his apologies and decision to seek rehab were just because of a few gropes.

There may well be bandwaggoners and exaggerators in the mix but the fact that the stories seem to be different, though on a similar theme, rather than virtual carbon copies, as with the Cosby allegations, and the fact that women who are already rich and famous (Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie) are making them, or women who could have but did not seek a settlement (Lauren Sivan), suggests to me that at least some of them are likely to be true.