Harvey Weinstein Ran TWC Like a Cheap, Outer Borough Insurance Company
Why are young women conditioned to believe we have to give away swathes of ourselves to insecure male bullies, and in the process gamble away our dreams?
All of a sudden, in these harsh moments, we come face to face with the "power," the person who can unlock the door to our wildest longings and it's okay to give him a massage in his private hotel room? No big deal, right? A slippery slope, a gilded path to soul relinquishment. After his pleasure, the fatal gambit, he will make the phone call for us that will unlock our entire future...? Hush, hush now about that unspoken fine print. It's all part of the deal, baby.
When you are in a room with an intimidating man and you are a young woman, I can imagine your head must be spinning and wondering what the rules are. The question is, WHY is HE the one making the rules? And why aren't young women educated in the art of making their own deal? Why did the gap blow open between young women defending their values AND getting what they want? How have we not moved forward on this since the Mad Men era of the 1950's?
I worked for Harvey Weinstein and it's everything you can imagine, sans any of the presumed glamour. Curse words fly at and around you constantly, threats and bullying are the prized management modus operandi. The turnover is ridiculous and the office environment is as toxic as they come. The strategy for many employees is to throw a blow-out party at the six-month mark to numb themselves for the following six. Once that year lands on their resume, they leave skid marks a la Wile E. Coyote all the way out of Tribeca. I'm sure a special form of cancer is going to come out of 99 Hudson Street specific to the type of stress born there.
The odd thing is, no one makes any money working for Harvey Weinstein. He pays peanuts and pennies to some of the hardest workers in the United States. The whole outfit is run like a cheap insurance agency in outer Queens.
I always believed the artist held the power and I think that is what the general public is lead to believe, too. Little did I know the producer always holds the power in Hollywood. One look at his next shiny female star wobbling out in Dior like a baby doe with a new lease on life...it was clear Harvey viewed her as his very own Eliza Doolittle.
I will make you a star, but you won't get there without me. Do you understand that? So, follow my rules or go back to Smalltown, U.S.A. There are a million more where you came from. Today, she would probably throw a beer in his face, but back then, the stars in her eyes were shining so brightly she couldn't hear her own soul screaming.
We have come nowhere in terms of female equality in Hollywood. It is a revolving door of the next new thing, a verifiable Botoxed box office where female stars have to fight to make the same as their male counterparts. The phone rings incessantly with pressure from studio heads to hit the bottom line and the bottom line is all that matters. That, and Harvey's ego stroking.
Pert young interns were hired simply to ride on private jets and rub Harvey to sleep. Assistants were smacked in the back of their heads in private cars while they frantically typed away on their multiple BlackBerrys.
When I was in Europe on a Weinstein project, a high-powered investor came up to me at an after party and said: "I can always tell who works for Harvey. Put your phone down. See all those little lights? Harvey's zombies never look up from them. What is so important that you can't work the room?" Sure enough, scanning the glittering crowd, each time I saw two little lights, there was a harried Weinstein employee looking down at two or three BlackBerrys, desperate and ready in case he needed anything.
If you think women are climbing ladders in Hollywood, you are wrong. Women don’t get ladders. Women have to scale the wall naked with blood streaming out of their manicured nail beds after giving wildly inappropriate personal favors and waiting for the big dog to pick up the goddamn phone to make good so they can move on with their lives.
But, a woman never forgets. And hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
