WILL ACADEMY AXE WEINSTEIN?
Oscars to discuss producer’s fate following sexual assault allegations
NINETY years ago, Louis B. Mayer created an elite club that would become the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Membership, granted for life, quickly turned into the ultimate indicator of status — moviedom’s equivalent of the mob’s “made man”.
Off-screen malfeasance mattered not. Perhaps contributing to the film industry’s willingness to tolerate sexual harassment, bullying, drug abuse and worse, the academy has long insisted that professional achievement is what counts.
Bill Cosby is still a member. So is Roman Polanski. Mel Gibson was never kicked out, even after his 2006 anti-Semitic tirade was followed by a 2011 no-contest plea to battering a former girlfriend.
But the academy stands at a precipice. Harvey Weinstein could change everything.
Yesterday morning, the academy’s 54-member board met at the group’s mirrored-glass offices here to discuss what to do about Weinstein in the wake of investigations by the New York Times and the New Yorker that revealed sexual harassment and rape allegations against him going back decades.
Options include doing nothing (possible), revoking his membership (as the British Academy of Film and Television Arts did on Wednesday) and even nullifying the best-picture Oscar Weinstein won in 1999 for producing Shakespeare in Love (unlikely).
The emergency academy meeting comes as people are fleeing the New York-based studio Weinstein helped found. A fourth member of The Weinstein Co.’s all-male board, Richard Koenigsberg, resigned on Thursday as talk of bankruptcy swirled. The creative forces behind the musical In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara A. Hudes, publicly called on The Weinstein Co. to relinquish its movie adaptation rights. Apple ended plans for a Weinstein-produced series about Elvis Presley.
On Friday, Amazon decided not to move forward with a Weinsteinproduced mafia series from David O. Russell that had previously received a two-season commitment and was estimated to cost US$160 million (RM676 million).
“We support Amazon’s decision as in light of recent news and out of respect for all those affected we have decided together that it is best to not move forward with this show,” Russell said in a statement with two stars of the series, Robert De Niro and Julianne Moore.
Weinstein, who was fired by his company last Sunday, has responded to allegations of sexual misconduct with a mix of contrition and combativeness. He is contesting his firing and has emphatically denied all allegations of rape. His spokesman, Sallie Hofmeister, has said he is in therapy and “is hoping that if he makes enough progress, he will be given a second chance”.
Only one person is known to have been permanently pushed out of the academy. Carmine Caridi, a character actor, had his membership revoked in 2004 for violating an academy rule involving Oscar voting. He got caught lending DVD screeners of contending films; copies ended up online. In the 1990s, a couple of people were suspended temporarily for selling their allotted tickets to the Oscar ceremony.
Even so, many people in Hollywood think the academy has only one option when it comes to Weinstein: kick him out.