Weinstein forces each man to examine his conscience
Look at almost any “evil” you choose — violence, rape, pornography, perversion, serial killing, mass murder — the list goes on and on, and it’s always the same perpetrator: a male.
No one in contemporary times embodies this malevolence more than Harvey Weinstein, the now suitably disgraced Mr. Piggy of show business. Alas, he is not alone.
I suspect that for all his life, he has had major personality problems, ones he managed for some time to disguise. But with the drug that is power, rinsed in a highball glass of fame, success and money, his “problems” completely overtook his life and destroyed who knows how many other lives, all female.
Weinstein’s company was the U.S. distributor of the Quebec children’s film The Dog Who Stopped the War. I know, I know, but who could make that up?
He loved the movie, known as La guerre des tuques in its original French version. So he came to Montreal in 1984 to meet producer Rock Demers and told him he wanted The Dog Who Stopped The War to be one of his first releases under the Miramax banner.
Later, when the film was sold to the U.S. video market in what was a package deal — all the films in the package received an equal share of the money — Demers felt cheated because he suggested his film should have received more. Demers would spend many thousands of dollars over the years suing Weinstein, but never succeeded in seeing another cent.
I met Weinstein at the 1985 Montreal World Film Festival. He was looking for films to acquire, and I was working with the Australian Film Commission to promote their films at the festival. He is a little younger than I am. Ironically, he has changed very little over the years, going from a remarkably unattractive young man to an equally unattractive older man.
I invited him to a party the commission was hosting, and he showed up. He didn’t know anybody but me — we had met that day or the day before — and I introduced him to a few people, including a young TV reporter.
Weinstein spent the entire evening following her from room to room, while she rolled her eyes and kept moving.
A 30-something New York businessman at a party eyeing young women is hardly grounds for a police call. Frankly, I didn’t give it much thought.
Over the next 35 years or so in the business of show, I would come to meet a lot of Harvey types, men who appear to spend all their time watching for women, as though they were prey. They are unable to have anything like a real conversation in a public place because their eyes are always scanning the room. They sometimes nudge you to follow their gaze or make a comment. You want to believe it’s all a game, but you soon come to realize this game has high stakes and there are no winners at the after-party.
“Me too” is the phrase women who have had experiences with the likes of Weinstein are proclaiming, and good for them. There are so very many.
Men might do something similar. Me too? Have I ever used my power to abuse, hassle, assault, intimidate, threaten a woman?
I know I have never held a casting session in my hotel room dressed in a robe and desperately seeking a massage, but unconsciously, inadvertently? Is it the way males are constructed, or is it simply abhorrent behaviour we have been allowed to get away with for far too long?
But being the perpetrator is not what this is really about, I have come to realize. It’s about that night in 1985 and so many others since when I watched and chose not to see, when I didn’t say anything or do anything, explicitly an observer, implicitly an accomplice, a part of the hunt, doing nothing to stop it.
Me too? Yes, me too. We all have to accept our share of responsibility.
It’s about us.