Oscars 2018: The dirty truth about Harvey Weinstein’s fate
THE Me Too movement has grown more and more powerful - but the man whose sick behaviour started it has somehow managed to fly under the radar.
AS HOLLYWOOD hosts its biggest annual show — the Oscars — this weekend, the man who was once Tinseltown’s biggest puppeteer will be holed up in Arizona in exile.
For years the disgraced movie mogul has prowled the red carpet and the afterparties at the big industry award ceremonies.
There he is, pictured with his glamorous (now estranged) second wife Georgina Chapman at the Golden Globes.
There he is again, copping a kiss on the cheek from Oprah at a movie awards.
Again, at an industry after-party, arm draped around music star Lordes, with Taylor Swift, Este Haim and Jaime King thrown in for good measure.
At a premiere, snapped with Hollywood heavyhitters Kate Beckinsale, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese, and Cate Blanchett.
Mugging for the cameras with Meryl Streep. Front row at Fashion Week next to Anna Wintour.
Not anymore.
After an avalanche of accusations of sexual harassment and misconduct, Harvey Weinstein is jobless. His old company is bankrupt. He’s facing multiple lawsuits and criminal investigations in Los Angeles, New York and London.
Weinstein can’t make or break careers any more. The actors he made stars of don’t want a bar of him.
He’s no longer a linchpin in Oscar campaigns, lobbying hard, pulling strings to bring down, or build up, movies.
This year, Harvey’s staying hidden away at home, and that’s just how Tinseltown wants it.
But there’s a dirty truth too - as exiles go, his is remarkably comfortable.
“I WANT TO SEE HIM IN JAIL”
No wise Academy Award recipient is going to laud Weinstein in an acceptance speech.
His reign over Hollywood, and the Oscars, is over.
Some argued that it was already on the wane. The New Yorker put it best, saying recent years’ Oscars results showed “the man who for nearly three decades used bullying and intimidation to get everything he wanted was visibly faltering”.
But last October, “faltering” morphed into absolute car crash.
As the allegations of sexual misconduct built to a sea of more than 80 women alleging he sexually harassed or assaulted them, Weinstein was sacked from the company he co-founded with his brother, expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science, and headed to an Arizona clinic for rehab, denying it all the way.
At this year’s Academy Awards, his spectre may still loom over the event, but not in a way he ever wanted it to.
It will be there in every black outfit worn. In every #MeToo and #timesup hashtag recognising the movement his abhorrent acts prompted.
Just ask Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence, who recently told American 60 Minutes: “He was never inappropriate with me, but what he did was criminal and deplorable and when it came out and I heard about it I wanted to kill him.
“The way that he destroyed so many women’s lives. I want to see him in jail.”
Or Best Actress nominee Meryl, in line for her fourth Oscar this weekend for her performance in The Post.
The Hollywood exemplar has worked with Weinstein many times, but slapped his lawyers down cold last week when they used her name to try to get a class-action lawsuit against him dismissed.
She said their action was “pathetic and exploitative” after they cited her saying she was never harassed by the producer in an attempt to shut the case down.
They forgot to mention she’d also praised “heroes” who came forward with allegations about his “inexcusable” behaviour which she labelled an “abuse of power”.
“The criminal actions he is accused of conducting on the bodies of these women are his responsibility, and if there is any justice left in the system he will pay for them — regardless of how many good movies, made by many good people, Harvey was lucky enough to have acquired or financed,” she thundered.
WHERE’S HARVEY?
While many would love to picture Weinstein broke, sad and with the butt hanging out of his jeans, his “exile” appears none too shabby. He’s out of the spotlight, but isn’t exactly roughing it.
He spends much of his time in Phoenix, Arizona, The Los Angeles Times reports.
Paradise Valley is Harvey’s bolthole, where apparently, he wants for nothing.
But it’s a gilt cage.
It’s full of gated communities and high-end accommodation and resorts designed to keep a prying public and paparazzi at bay.
The once-celebrated movie man has apparently sought sex addiction treatment at a rehab centre an hour outside Phoenix.
But The Meadows, with its dedicated sex addiction centre called Gentle Path, comes with a price the of tens of thousands of dollars to deliver not just treatment, but the anonymity its celebrity clients demand.
Weinstein is also believed to have spent time at the luxury gated apartment complex the Optima Sonoran Village, which offers an indoor lap pool, 24-hour gym, spas and hypnotherapy.
Closer to Paradise Valley, Weinstein was spotted in January dining at trendy eatery Chestnut Fine Foods & Provisions.
It’s the same restaurant at which he played cat and mouse last November, when he was spotted eating there wearing a blond wig. He abruptly left his male dining partner, carrying the wig under his arm, after seeing someone take a picture.
It seems he is man in need of a disguise — in January he was at the Paradise Valley restaurant Elements, where he was slapped in the face by a stranger.
CASHING OUT
Weinstein is loaded, but the bills are big.
When you’ve been booted from your job and your former company has filed for bankruptcy, you’re paying an army of lawyers and shelling out for high-end hideaways, top-notch restaurant meals and rehab sessions, it all tends to add up.
In addition to the swath of lawyers Weinstein has to defend him from the myriad allegations of sexual assault and misconduct he continues to deny, he’s also in legal tussles with his current and former wives as well as his former company — which fired him last October.
He was also paying a PR firm for “crisis management” which is reportedly costing tens of thousands of dollars a month.
This week, lawyers for Weinstein Co, the film and TV studio he founded with his brother Bob in 2005, filed a motion to dismiss a potential federal class action lawsuit brought in November by six women, saying that Harvey Weinstein alone was responsible for his actions.
Weinstein’s legal bills are likely to exceed half a million dollars a month and could easily top $1 million, according to D. Jason Lyon, litigation counsel at Hahn & Hahn in Pasadena.
“If these go to trial, then you’re talking numbers significantly above that,” Lyon told the LA Times.
“Litigation gets expensive fast.”
It’s not all about cash going out. It’s understood Weinstein and Chapman have just sold a property in the Hamptons for $12.8 million.
Earlier this month, he dispensed of two properties in Westport, Connecticut — an area ranked 22nd among America’s richest places — for a combined $20.5 million. He has also listed one of his LA properties for rent — a two-bedroom cottage for $9630 a month.
YOU’RE NOT WELCOME HERE
Tinseltown went into a tizz in January when it was rumoured Weinstein had been spotted back in Los Angeles ahead of the Golden Globes.
His reps quickly said the rumour was false, but not before actor Ellen Barkin tweeted: “Is serial rapist Harvey Weinstein in Los Angeles? ... Why? Why? WHY?” followed by “I forgot to say ‘alleged’ … because I know better”.
When Weinstein Co filed for bankruptcy this week, she tweeted: “another way in which the Weinstein co reflects the Weinstein pig, both are bankrupt #burninhellharvey”
I forgot to say “allegedâ€...because i know better.
— Ellen Barkin (@EllenBarkin) January 4, 2018
Not one Weinstein Co movie is among the nominees for this year’s awards.
Anything connected with the disgraced mogul has been axed, shunted or quietly moved on.
Last November, traditionally the peak time of big movie releases for Oscars consideration, two of the company’s big hopes — Mary Magdalene and The Current War — were pulled from the schedule
Mary Magdalene will now by distributed worldwide by Universal Picture and will be released next month in Australia by Transmission.
The Current War had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2017 but has no release date.
Harvey isn’t coming back.
Nobody’s taking his calls. Nobody wants anything to do with him.
He’s got his cash. His disgrace. And his freedom.
But in Weinstein’s world, that may be no substitute for power and golden statuettes.
You couldn’t script this stuff.
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