My days with Weinstein, a rapist and monster
‘Everyone’s really worried they chose the wrong cases against Harvey.” That was a Hollywood producer friend expressing her doubts just a couple of weeks ago. No one was fooled by that stooped figure with his care-home shuffle. Weinstein had made comebacks before and there was a real fear that, with the help of costly lawyers, the beast would pull off the same trick again. When the judge announced the guilty verdicts for third-degree rape and a criminal sex act, you could practically feel the gale-force sigh of relief.
But, if the legal position was in doubt, the court of public opinion had already arrived at its verdict. He was a serial predator. Weinstein lunged at leading ladies, at staff members, at waitresses. Anyone was fair game.
I have a vivid memory of arriving on the set of I Don’t Know How She Does It, the film of my first novel which was being made in New York by The Weinstein Company (TWC). Harvey, a glowering hulk in a leather jacket, shambled over to greet us, but soon all his attention was fixed on my then PA, Catherine, a beautiful young brunette. “Who’s she?” he demanded loudly, causing the minions to jump like frogs. “Get her number.” I’m quite sure that, if a group of us hadn’t been there to chaperone her, Catherine would have been whisked to the ogre’s lair to “audition” for a part that had already been filled.
It feels fitting that Weinstein’s conviction comes in the week that Hilary Mantel published The Mirror & The Light, the final part of her extraordinary Wolf Hall trilogy.
Having spent some time around Weinstein and his entourage, the closest comparison I could come up with is the court of Henry VIII. Mantel’s hero, Thomas Cromwell, has a full-time job trying to anticipate the moods and desires of the king. It’s nerve-racking work: “Your whole life depends on the next beat of Henry’s heart, and your future on his smile or frown.”
Substitute Harvey for Henry and you get an idea of what the people around him were dealing with. “It was like tending to a giant, disgusting, belligerent baby,” said Zelda Perkins, who was Weinstein’s assistant.
Anyone who defied the king, or even slightly irked him, could have their head – or their movie career – cut off.
Meryl Streep was half-joking when she called him “God” in an acceptance speech, a vengeful Old Testament God, and people laughed. At some level, they knew, but they still laughed.
In the recent avalanche of sleaze and vilification what is now forgotten is that Weinstein’s judgment in cinema was as good as his judgment in life was appalling. The first time I met him, it was with genius directors Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack. They worked with Harvey because the brainy brute could turn a beautiful art house movie like The English Patient into an Oscars smash.
But he won’t be remembered for that. Today, he is rapist Harvey Weinstein, the voracious monster who begat the Metoo movement. Few will question that he got what he deserved.
Weinstein’s traumatic legacy was poignantly captured yesterday by a one-time aspiring actress, Tara Ley Wolf. “We don’t know who we would have been if we had back what he took from us,” she said.