Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg

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Game Change Author Suspended From MSNBC Over Sexual Assault Allegations
by Ben Mathis-Lilley
October 26, 2017 11:44 AM

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Mark Halperin in Washington on May 3.
Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Showtime

MSNBC has suspended best-selling author and political pundit Mark Halperin after a CNN report in which five women accused him of sexual harassment and assault:

"We find the story and the allegations very troubling. Mark Halperin is leaving his role as a contributor until the questions around his past conduct are fully understood."

Oliver Darcy
@oliverdarcy
Replying to @oliverdarcy
NEW: Halperin leaving his role as NBC analyst, per network statement
4:17 AM - Oct 26, 2017

The allegations in CNN’s piece describe a repeated pattern of inappropriate and aggressive sexual behavior in workplace settings:

The stories of harassment shared with CNN range in nature from propositioning employees for sex to kissing and grabbing one’s breasts against her will. Three of the women who spoke to CNN described Halperin as, without consent, pressing an erection against their bodies while he was clothed. Halperin denies grabbing a woman’s breasts and pressing his genitals against the three women.

Emily Miller of One America News Network said on Twitter after CNN’s piece was published that she was not one of CNN’s sources but that Halperin also “attacked” her when she worked with him at ABC.

Earlier this week, longtime New Republic editor and writer Leon Wieseltier admitted to “offenses against some of my colleagues in the past” after the backers of a new magazine he was set to edit canceled the project after learning about sexual harassment allegations against him. News also broke that the United Talent Agency has dropped Bill O’Reilly as a client after a report that he’d paid a staggering $32 million to settle one of several known sexual harassment suits against him. New accusations also continue to emerge against Harvey Weinstein, the powerful movie producer who was fired from his own company earlier this month after a New York Times report detailed numerous allegations of sexual harassment and assault against him. Donald Trump remains president.

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Top NPR News Executive Mike Oreskes Resigns Amid Allegations Of Sexual Harassment
Heard on All Things Considered
November 1, 20174:53 PM ET

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NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with NPR CEO Jarl Mohn about how NPR has handled allegations of sexual harassment against NPR's Senior Vice President for News Michael Oreskes, who resigned Wednesday.

Transcript:

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

And we are reporting on news from inside the NPR newsroom today. Our top editor, NPR Senior Vice President of News Mike Oreskes, has resigned following accusations of sexual harassment. Three women have filed complaints, one a current NPR reporter, the other two alleging harassment from two decades ago when Oreskes was at The New York Times. [EDITOR'S NOTE on Nov. 8: Since this interview was broadcast, NPR CEO Jarl Mohn has revealed that another woman who works at NPR filed a complaint against Michael Oreskes in the fall of 2015, and that Oreskes was disciplined “for both incidents.” There is more about that revelation here .] Mike put out a statement this afternoon saying, quote, "I am deeply sorry to the people I hurt. My behavior was wrong and inexcusable, and I accept full responsibility," end quote. NPR CEO Jarl Mohn says he asked for Oreskes' resignation this morning, and Jarl joins me now in the studio. Hi there.

JARL MOHN: Hi, Mary Louise.

KELLY: When did you first learn of an allegation of sexual harassment in connection with Mike Oreskes?

MOHN: Well, the first situation was the one you just referred to, was the - I guess in the fall of '15.

KELLY: So just to be clear, nothing had come to your attention, no allegations at the point when you hired him in the spring of 2015.

MOHN: None, none.

KELLY: You knew nothing.

MOHN: None.

KELLY: There have been a lot of questions about the timeline of when NPR knew what. So what I'd love to do is start there and just tick through my understanding of events as they unfolded, and please jump in and stop me if there's something...

MOHN: Sure.

KELLY: ...That doesn't square with events as you understand them. So in 2015, NPR staffer Rebecca Hersher alleged that Oreskes made her deeply uncomfortable at a three-hour dinner and that he asked personal and invasive questions. She complained, and Oreskes was reprimanded that same year, 2015, correct?

MOHN: That's correct.

KELLY: A year later, October 2016, NPR learned about a woman complaining of harassment by Oreskes at The New York Times nearly two decades ago. This complaint involved physical contact. She says he kissed her. He forced his tongue into her mouth, correct?

MOHN: Well, that's what we heard. And that would have been, I think, in the fall of '16, yes.

KELLY: Fall of '16. And then last month, a second woman complained of Oreskes' behavior during his time at The New York Times, a similar complaint that he kissed her...

MOHN: Yes.

KELLY: ...Without being - having been invited to do so.

MOHN: Correct.

KELLY: If that is the sequence, if you knew of these multiple allegations, did it cross your mind that leaving Mike in his job might put other women, might put our colleagues at risk?

MOHN: Yes. Well, let's look at those three examples that you gave, Mary Louise. The first, which occurred in the fall of '15 - that was an internal situation that happened here. It was a terrible situation. I condemn his actions. They were unacceptable. They're deplorable. We investigated. We did it immediately. We involved our HR department. We involved our general counsel. We sat with Mike. We confronted him about that situation and put him on notice that this could not occur. My understanding is - and again, it was reported here. David Folkenflik reported yesterday that that employee felt that we satisfactorily addressed that issue. And there's a whole range - I mean, there's a whole range of what is unacceptable behavior. This was...

KELLY: But that issue you knew about...

MOHN: Yes.

KELLY: ...When a year later a second allegation came in.

MOHN: You're referring to The New York Times, yes.

KELLY: The New York Times - from his tenure at The New York Times.

MOHN: Again, the important distinction here is, first, that did not happen at NPR. It was not an NPR employee. It was at The New York Times, and it occurred 20 years ago. Had that happened at NPR, we would have had a very different reaction to it. It happened 20 years earlier. One of the things we wanted to do as a result of that is make sure that that did not happen here. And I will tell you up to this moment sitting here and talking with you, Mary Louise, I'm not aware of anything that he's done or that happened that bears any resemblance to those issues that occurred 20 years ago while he was at The New York Times.

KELLY: Our media correspondent David Folkenflik has talked to five more women since last night on top of the three cases that we've already discussed, five more women alleging inappropriate conduct by Oreskes over a period of years. Has any other claim reached your office?

MOHN: I would say as a result of the published reports within the past 24 hours, we have heard of one other that has surfaced. I would say when the second New York Times story from...

KELLY: The second woman...

MOHN: Yes.

KELLY: ...Who dealt with Oreskes in his time at The Times.

MOHN: We felt very strongly that we needed to - and there had been rumors circulating around the building here about his behavior - rumors and gossip. We can't act on that. We have to act on facts. I put out an email. I put out a memo, a statement asking for anyone that has experienced or witnessed any of this behavior to please come forward. We laid out a whole array of ways that they could contact us. There must have been seven or eight ways in. Over that two-week period of time, we got no complaints. No one stepped forward. Unfortunately, it took the published reports to have something surface.

KELLY: But when you say it took published reports for this to surface, we're a news organization.

MOHN: Yeah.

KELLY: There's a few hundred reporters out there. Why are we getting scooped by The Washington Post on this?

MOHN: Why are we - are you - you're talking about The New York Times story? When we, you know...

KELLY: I'm talking about The Washington Post story quoting two New York Times woman. And I'll add to that. I learned that Mike Oreskes had resigned when I checked my phone in the line in the NPR canteen today. And the way I learned about it was via an AP news alert - Associated Press. Why did they know and we didn't?

MOHN: Well, because that's not from us. We did not release it. We had a clear timeline of how we were going to release this information. While we were in our meeting planning how we were going to release that information, the AP got the story. I suspect Mike released his statement to the AP. It was not from us.

KELLY: You said you can't act on rumors and gossip. But were you concerned that these accusations were creating a toxic environment in the newsroom?

MOHN: Absolutely, of course. As bad as...

KELLY: Should that not prompt action then?

MOHN: Well, it did, ultimately. We informally were asking questions. Clearly we didn't do everything we could because it didn't result in the right answer. But to suggest we were not doing anything or we were not acting appropriately is not - or that we were doing nothing is false.

KELLY: Let me push you again then on what did push you to act and put Mike on leave as of last night and then ask for his resignation this morning. The Washington Post published his story. He was put on leave within a couple of hours. Was that because new information came to light, came to you?

MOHN: Yes, yes.

KELLY: But you can't elaborate on what that is.

MOHN: I cannot.

KELLY: A new case, a new allegation?

MOHN: New case.

KELLY: Internal?

MOHN: Yes.

KELLY: Current employee?

MOHN: Yes.

KELLY: May I ask the severity of the allegation?

MOHN: Again, I hate...

KELLY: I know, but you've talked about a range, and there's a big range and it matters.

MOHN: I understand, but I'm going to be lambasted for any specificity here. And again, I want to get to the confidentiality of the complaint. I would say on this - on the range of, you know, Harvey Weinstein being on one extreme and the other internal issue that - the complaint that you referred to earlier...

KELLY: Conversation that made a woman feel uncomfortable.

MOHN: Yes. I would say it was clearly in that range.

KELLY: In the uncomfortable conversation range.

MOHN: Yes, yes.

KELLY: Jarl Mohn, our boss, NPR's CEO, talking about the resignation today of our top editor, Mike Oreskes, following accusations of sexual harassment. Jarl, thank you.

MOHN: Thank you, Mary Louise.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at http://www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Louis C.K. on Sexual Misconduct Allegations: “These Stories Are True”
by Sam Adams
The-21st-Annual-Webby-Awards--Inside


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C.K. in May.
Bennett Raglin/Getty Images

In response to a New York Times article alleging that Louis C.K. exposed himself to and masturbated in front of several unwilling women, C.K. has issued a statement.

I want to address the stories told to the New York Times by five women named Abby, Rebecca, Dana, Julia who felt able to name themselves and one who did not.

These stories are true. At the time, I said to myself that what I did was okay because I never showed a woman my dick without asking first, which is also true. But what I learned later in life, too late, is that when you have power over another person, asking them to look at your dick isn’t a question. It’s a predicament for them. The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly.

I have been remorseful of my actions. And I’ve tried to learn from them. And run from them. Now I’m aware of the extent of the impact of my actions. I learned yesterday the extent to which I left these women feeling badly about themselves and cautious around other men who would never have put them in that position.

I also took advantage of the fact that I was widely admired in their community, which disabled them from sharing their story and brought hardship to them when they tried because people who look up to me didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t think that I was doing any of that because my position allowed me not to think about it.

There is nothing about this that I forgive myself for. And I have to reconcile it with who I am. Which is nothing compared to the task I left them with.

I wish I had reacted to their admiration of me by being a good example to them as a man and given them some guidance as a comedian, including because I admired their work.

The hardest regret to live with is what you’ve done to hurt someone else. And I can hardly wrap my head around the scope of hurt I brought on them. I’d be remiss to exclude the hurt that I brought on people who I work with and have worked with and who[se] professional and personal lives have been impacted by all of this, including projects currently in production: the cast and crew of Better Things, Baskets, One Mississippi and I Love You Daddy. I deeply regret that this has brought negative attention to my manager Dave Becky who only tried to mediate a situation that I caused. I’ve brought anguish and hardship to the people at FX who have given me so much[,] The Orchard who took a chance on my movie[,] and every other entity that has bet on me through the years.

I’ve brought pain to my family and friends, my children and their mother.

I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want. I will now step back and take a long time to listen.

Thank you for reading.

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Barbara Boxer recounts harassment on Capitol Hill: ‘The entire audience started laughing’
by Avery Anapol
11/15/17 03:35 PM EST

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Former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on Wednesday shared her experience with sexual harassment on Capitol Hill, saying it was a "shaming" and "belittling" incident.

Boxer said on MSNBC that when she was a member of the House in the 1980s, she was humiliated by inappropriate comments from her colleagues at a hearing after she presented a bill.

"One of my colleagues said after I spoke, 'I want to associate myself with the comments of the congresswoman from California,’ which is exactly the right thing to say," Boxer said.

"But then he went on and said, 'In fact, I want to associate with the congresswoman from California,' at which point the entire audience started laughing."

The committee chairman added, “I want to associate with her, too," Boxer recalled. She said that she "turned bright red."

Boxer joined a number of current and former lawmakers speaking out this week about their experiences with sexual harassment on Capitol Hill. Several lawmakers introduced a bill Wednesday that would overhaul congressional sexual harassment policies.

“This doesn’t compare to some of the dreadful stories we’re hearing,” Boxer said of her experience, comparing it to stories of physical attacks.

“But it was so humiliating and disempowering, and luckily I’m a strong person.”

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Bill Clinton is facing NEW accusations of sexual assault by four women while the former president was working with a billionaire playboy and flying on his private jet nicknamed Air F**k One, claims Clinton author
by Ed Klein
DailyMail.com
10:08 EST, 20 November 2017 | UPDATED: 13:25 EST, 20 November 2017

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Bill Clinton is facing accusations of sexual assault from four women, highly placed Democratic Party sources have told author Ed Klein
The women allege the former president assaulted them in the early 2000s, when Clinton was working with playboy billionaire investor Ron Burkle
The unidentified women were employed in low-level positions at the Burkle organization and in their late teens at the time of the alleged assaults
Clinton helped Burkle generate business and flew around the world on Burkle's private jet, which was nicknamed 'Air F**k One'
The 71-year-old politician has been haunted throughout his years in public office by allegations of sexual misconduct
Hillary Clinton allegedly offered to hire private detectives to find dirt on the new accusers, but Clinton's legal team advised against it, sources said

Edward Klein is the former editor in chief of the New York Times Magazine and the author of numerous bestsellers including his fourth book on the Clintons, Guilty as Sin, in 2016. His latest book is All Out War: The Plot to Destroy Trump was released on October 30, 2017.

Bill Clinton is facing explosive new charges of sexual assault from four women, according to highly placed Democratic Party sources and an official who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.

The current accusations against the 71-year-old former president — whose past is littered with charges of sexual misconduct — stem from the period after he left the White House in 2001, say the sources.

Attorneys representing the women, who are coordinating their efforts, have notified Clinton they are preparing to file four separate lawsuits against him.

As part of the ongoing negotiations, the attorneys for the women are asking for substantial payouts in return for their clients' silence.

A member of Clinton's legal team has confirmed the existence of the new allegations.


President Clinton, here with residents at the William Rivera Betancourt Vocational School which was turned into an emergency shelter in Canovanas, Puerto Rico, is facing accusations of sexual assault from four unidentified women, highly placed Democratic Party sources told author Ed Klein


The women alleged the former president assaulted them in the early 2000s, during the time Clinton was working with playboy billionaire investor Ron Burkle (pictured together in 2006)


The unidentified women were employed in low-level positions at the Burkle organization and in their late teens at the time of the alleged assaults. Clinton helped Burkle generate business and flew around the world on Burkle's private jet, which was nicknamed 'Air F**k One' (pictured)

Back in the late 1990s, Clinton paid $850,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee whose case led to Clinton's impeachment in the House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal by the Senate in 1999.

The negotiations in the new lawsuits are said to have reached a critical stage.

If they fail, according to sources in Clinton's inner circle, the four women are said to be ready to air their accusations of sexual assault at a press conference, making Clinton the latest — and most famous — figure in a long list of men from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey who have recently been accused of sexual assault.

The new allegations refer to incidents that took place more than 10 years ago, in the early 2000s, when Clinton was hired by Ron Burkle, the playboy billionaire investor, to work at his Yucaipa companies.

Clinton helped Burkle generate business and flew around the world with a flock of beautiful young women on Burkle's private jet, which was nicknamed 'Air F**k One.'

The four women, who have not yet revealed their identities, were employed in low-level positions at the Burkle organization when they were in their late teens and claim they were sexually assaulted by the former president.


The 71-year-old politician has been followed throughout his years in public office with allegations of sexual misconduct, reaching its peak with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Pictured: Clinton with White House intern Lewinsky in 1998



In the late 1990s, Clinton paid $850,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit by Paula Jones (left and right), a former Arkansas state employee whose case led to Clinton's impeachment in the House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal by the Senate in 1999



The new charges are likely to revive the debate over why Democrats defended Clinton and why liberals and feminists ignored credible charges of sexual assault against Clinton from Juanita Broaddrick (left) and Kathleen Willey (right)

There is no evidence that Burkle knew anything about these alleged assaults by Clinton.

Contacted for a comment on the women's allegations, a member of Clinton's legal team said: 'Obviously, I'm aware of [the allegations] but can't talk about them.'

The new charges are likely to revive the debate over why Democrats defended Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal and why liberals and feminists ignored credible charges of sexual assault against the 42nd president, not only from Paula Jones, but also from Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and others.

'Bill is distraught at the thought of having to testify and defend himself against sex charges again,' said a Democratic Party official who is familiar with the case.

'He hopes his legal team can somehow stop the women from filing charges and drag him through the mud.'

The source added that Hillary Clinton is furious with her husband for getting entangled in yet another sexual scandal.


Hillary Clinton allegedly offered to hire private detectives to find dirt on the new accusers, but Clinton's legal team advised against it, sources said


'Bill spends a great deal of his time in his penthouse apartment above the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock. Hillary occasionally goes to Little Rock, but she refuses to stay in the apartment because she knows that's his love nest,' a source said

She reportedly offered to hire private detectives to dig up dirt on the women, but Bill Clinton's attorneys persuaded her to not interfere.

'In the past Hillary had a team of detectives that managed to silence a number of women in Little Rock who had complaints about Bill's unwanted sexual advances,' said the source.


Klein's latest book, All Out War: The Plot to Destroy Trump, was released on October 30, 2017

'But now Hillary admits there's a different atmosphere in our culture about sexual harassment and it's not possible to intimidate women into silence about charges once they make up their mind to speak up.

'Hillary wants to remain in the public eye as a leader of the resistance to Donald Trump and play a major role in politics for years to come, including maybe even running for president again in 2020,' the source continued.

'She's afraid this latest scandal could destroy the Clinton legacy and torpedo her plans.

'The relationship between Bill and Hillary has been more of a business relationship for a number of years, except when it comes to their daughter and grandchildren.

'They haven't lived as man and wife for a number of years, mostly due to Bill's running around with other women.

'It became obvious years ago that even age wasn't going to make Bill settle down and stop chasing women. Hillary has simply ignored it and lived her separate life.

'Bill spends a great deal of his time in his penthouse apartment above the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock.

'Hillary occasionally goes to Little Rock, but she refuses to stay in the apartment because she knows that's his love nest.'

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Harvey Weinstein scandal: New claim alleges sex trafficking
by Erin Jensen
USA TODAY
11:00 a.m. ET Nov. 27, 2017 | Updated 7:46 p.m. ET Nov. 27, 2017

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The Harvey Weinstein scandal continues to unfold.

The Hollywood producer, who stands accused of sexual assault and harassment by dozens of women, also faces a growing number of lawsuits.

The latest updates:

A civil claim of sex trafficking filed in New York

British actress Kadian Noble filed a civil suit on Monday in New York alleging that Harvey Weinstein forced her into sexual acts while abroad in 2014. Even more damning: The suit, obtained by USA TODAY, claims The Weinstein Company violated federal sex trafficking law "by benefiting from, and knowingly facilitating" Weinstein's foreign business travels in which he would "recruit or entice female actors into forced or coerced sexual encounters on the promise of roles in films or entertainment projects."

Noble says she was summoned to the producer's hotel room at Cannes Film Festival in 2014 to talk about a role. He began massaging her shoulders and told her to "relax." According to the complaint, Weinstein called an unnamed Weinstein Company producer, who told the actress that she needed to be “a good girl and do whatever (Weinstein) wished,” and if she did, “they would work” with her further. Weinstein then began groping her, pulled her into a bathroom, and forced her to fondle him.

The suit says Bob Weinstein and The Weinstein Company "knowingly participated in Weinstein's" trips to foreign countries for such purposes.

“I filed under the Federal sex trafficking law because I believe the facts as alleged in the complaint fit squarely within the statute," Jeff Herman, Noble’s lawyer, told USA TODAY in a statement. "The benefit of filing under this Federal law is that it allows us to bring a claim in the United States for an assault that occurred overseas and it has a 10 year statute of limitations.”

Noble and her lawyer will hold a news conference in New York on Tuesday.

Weinstein repeated his denial that anything non-consensual occurred. “Mr. Weinstein denies allegations of non-consensual sex," his representative Holly K. Baird told USA TODAY in a statement. "Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.”

Weinstein resigns from Directors Guild

Facing disciplinary action from the Directors Guild of America, Weinstein has announced that he's resigning from the entertainment guild.

Weinstein confirmed his resignation on Monday and said he has "nothing but the utmost respect for the organization" in a statement sent to USA TODAY by his publicist Holly Baird.

The Directors Guild broke with its policy of not disclosing internal affairs by announcing it had filed disciplinary charges against Weinstein on Oct. 13.

"As directors and team members who solve problems for a living, we are committed to eradicating the scourge of sexual harassment on our industry," said president Thomas Schlamme. "Unless we recognize what has become so acceptable in our culture and how we possibly, even unconsciously, are participants, everything else will be meaningless."

Weinstein has two directorial credits in IMDb: The Gnomes' Great Adventure (1987) and Playing for Keeps (1986).

A civil claim has been lodged in the U.K.

The first civil claim against Weinstein for a series of sexual assaults has been filed in the U.K.

In the claim issued Nov. 23 and obtained by USA TODAY, Weinstein is named as a defendant, along with The Weinstein Company (UK) Limited and The Weinstein Company LLC.

Personal injury lawyer Jill Greenfield represents the accuser, who previously worked for Weinstein, and has filed applied for an anonymity order on behalf of her client who wishes to remain anonymous.

The accuser's claim "is for damages for personal injury, expenses, consequential loss including aggravated and exemplary damages and interest arising out of a series of sexual assaults inflicted" by Weinstein during her employment, according to the claim form. The companies are also listed as the accuser sees they are "vicariously liable."

"Both the assaults and the psychiatric damage cause to the Claimant were caused by the intentional assault by (Weinstein), the negligence and/or breach of the statutory duty and/or breach of contract of the (companies) and/or their Agents and/or their respective predecessors in title," the claim alleges.

Reps for Weinstein did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment, but has previously denied any allegations of non-consensual sex in statements through spokeswoman Holly Baird.

In a statement issued to USA TODAY Monday, Greenfield said she expects the claim to exceed £300,000, or roughly $400,000. She also says that the accuser has not filed a complaint with police about the alleged incidents that occurred after the year 2000 but believes she will do so.

Earlier this month, London’s Metropolitan Police Service, also known as Scotland Yard, confirmed its 12th report against Weinstein received through its Child Abuse and Sexual Offenses Command's Operation Kaguyak investigation.

Contributing: Andrea Mandell

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Dylan Farrow writes that Woody Allen abused her
by Jayme Deerwester
USA TODAY
8:24 p.m. ET Feb. 1, 2014 | Updated 8:47 a.m. ET Feb. 2, 2014

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Adopted daughter of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow pens an open letter claiming she was molested by the director.

Dylan Farrow, the adopted daughter of actress Mia Farrow and her then-partner, filmmaker Woody Allen, has written an open letter published by the New York Times website detailing a 1992 incident in which she says Allen molested her.

Though the case made headlines back in 1993 and her mother and brother Ronan have discussed the case before, this is the first time Dylan has spoken publicly on the subject.

Dylan, now 28, was adopted by Farrow and Allen in 1987 when she was 2. Five years later, she writes that Allen led her by the hand to a room in their house where "he told me to lie on my stomach and play with my brother's electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me."

She goes on to say that "he talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we'd go to Paris and I'd be a star in his movies."

What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie? Before you answer, you should know: when I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother’s electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me. He talked to me while he did it, whispering that I was a good girl, that this was our secret, promising that we’d go to Paris and I’d be a star in his movies. I remember staring at that toy train, focusing on it as it traveled in its circle around the attic. To this day, I find it difficult to look at toy trains.

For as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I didn’t like. I didn’t like how often he would take me away from my mom, siblings and friends to be alone with him. I didn’t like it when he would stick his thumb in my mouth. I didn’t like it when I had to get in bed with him under the sheets when he was in his underwear. I didn’t like it when he would place his head in my naked lap and breathe in and breathe out. I would hide under beds or lock myself in the bathroom to avoid these encounters, but he always found me. These things happened so often, so routinely, so skillfully hidden from a mother that would have protected me had she known, that I thought it was normal. I thought this was how fathers doted on their daughters. But what he did to me in the attic felt different. I couldn’t keep the secret anymore.

When I asked my mother if her dad did to her what Woody Allen did to me, I honestly did not know the answer. I also didn’t know the firestorm it would trigger. I didn’t know that my father would use his sexual relationship with my sister to cover up the abuse he inflicted on me. I didn’t know that he would accuse my mother of planting the abuse in my head and call her a liar for defending me. I didn’t know that I would be made to recount my story over and over again, to doctor after doctor, pushed to see if I’d admit I was lying as part of a legal battle I couldn’t possibly understand. At one point, my mother sat me down and told me that I wouldn’t be in trouble if I was lying – that I could take it all back. I couldn’t. It was all true. But sexual abuse claims against the powerful stall more easily. There were experts willing to attack my credibility. There were doctors willing to gaslight an abused child.

After a custody hearing denied my father visitation rights, my mother declined to pursue criminal charges, despite findings of probable cause by the State of Connecticut – due to, in the words of the prosecutor, the fragility of the “child victim.” Woody Allen was never convicted of any crime. That he got away with what he did to me haunted me as I grew up. I was stricken with guilt that I had allowed him to be near other little girls. I was terrified of being touched by men. I developed an eating disorder. I began cutting myself. That torment was made worse by Hollywood. All but a precious few (my heroes) turned a blind eye. Most found it easier to accept the ambiguity, to say, “who can say what happened,” to pretend that nothing was wrong. Actors praised him at awards shows. Networks put him on TV. Critics put him in magazines. Each time I saw my abuser’s face – on a poster, on a t-shirt, on television – I could only hide my panic until I found a place to be alone and fall apart.

Last week, Woody Allen was nominated for his latest Oscar. But this time, I refuse to fall apart. For so long, Woody Allen’s acceptance silenced me. It felt like a personal rebuke, like the awards and accolades were a way to tell me to shut up and go away. But the survivors of sexual abuse who have reached out to me – to support me and to share their fears of coming forward, of being called a liar, of being told their memories aren’t their memories – have given me a reason to not be silent, if only so others know that they don’t have to be silent either.

Today, I consider myself lucky. I am happily married. I have the support of my amazing brothers and sisters. I have a mother who found within herself a well of fortitude that saved us from the chaos a predator brought into our home.

But others are still scared, vulnerable, and struggling for the courage to tell the truth. The message that Hollywood sends matters for them.

What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett? Louis CK? Alec Baldwin? What if it had been you, Emma Stone? Or you, Scarlett Johansson? You knew me when I was a little girl, Diane Keaton. Have you forgotten me?

Woody Allen is a living testament to the way our society fails the survivors of sexual assault and abuse.

So imagine your seven-year-old daughter being led into an attic by Woody Allen. Imagine she spends a lifetime stricken with nausea at the mention of his name. Imagine a world that celebrates her tormenter.

Are you imagining that? Now, what’s your favorite Woody Allen movie?

-- An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow, by Dylan Farrow

The incident in the attic was not the first time Allen touched her, she said, though she does not give a time frame for how long the alleged abuse went on. She only goes as far as saying that, "for as long as I could remember, my father had been doing things to me that I did not like. ... These things happened so often, so routinely, so skillfully hidden from a mother that would have protected me had she known, that I thought it was normal. I thought this was how fathers doted on their daughters. But what he did to me in the attic felt different. I couldn't keep the secret anymore."

At that point, she told Farrow, who left Allen that same year after the news broke of his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, the 19-year-old daughter she had adopted with husband Andre Previn. (Allen and Soon-Yi married in 1997 and have two adopted daughters, Bechet and Menzie.)

A custody battle over their adopted children ensued and Allen's attorneys alleged that her mother encouraged her to make up the abuse allegations.

In September 1993, Connecticut state attorney Frank Maco declined to prosecute Allen, saying that while he had probable cause, he did not wish to inflict any further anguish on Dylan by making her testify. Farrow won custody of their adopted children and Allen was denied visitation rights.

"That he got away with what he did to me haunted me as I grew up," Dylan writes. "I was stricken with guilt that I had allowed him to be near other little girls. I was terrified of being touched by men. I developed an eating disorder. I began cutting myself. That torment was made worse by Hollywood. All but a precious few (my heroes) turned a blind eye. Most found it easier to accept the ambiguity, to say, 'who can say what happened,' to pretend that nothing was wrong. ... For so long, Woody Allen's acceptance silenced me. It felt like a personal rebuke, like the awards and accolades were a way to tell me to shut up and go away."

But this award season, Dylan says she felt differently. "This time, I refuse to fall apart. ... Today, I consider myself lucky. I am happily married. I have the support of my amazing brothers and sisters. I have a mother who found within herself a well of fortitude that saved us from the chaos a predator brought into our home."

Why is all of this coming back up now? The Farrow family's feelings toward Allen have been stirred up by the award season attention being paid to him, including the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award at January's Golden Globes and his Oscar nomination for best original screenplay for Blue Jasmine.

"Imagine your 7-year-old daughter being led into an attic by Woody Allen," she commands the reader. "Imagine she spends a lifetime stricken with nausea at the mention of his name. Imagine a world that celebrates her tormentor."

She drives her point home by calling out the stars of his films. "What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett? Louis C.K.? Alec Baldwin? What if it had been you, Emma Stone? Or you, Scarlett Johansson? You knew me when I was a little girl, Diane Keaton. Have you forgotten me?"

[admin]

'I will never forgive Polanski. I'm telling the truth and Roman knows it': Actress Charlotte Lewis claims she was abused by director when she was 16
by Katie Nicholl and Laura Collins
UPDATED: 04:52 EST, 27 January 2017

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Charlotte, as she is today, escaped Hollywood and now leads a 'normal life' bringing up her son in London

It has been a long time since Charlotte Lewis held a crowd enthralled in Hollywood.

But if she ever dreamed of a return to Los Angeles, where as a young actress she was hailed as a ‘golden child’ – talented, exquisitely beautiful and with a film career unfurling before her – it would never have been like this.

On Friday, Charlotte, now 42, called a Press conference in Los Angeles to claim that director Roman Polanski, the man who gave her her first break, had abused her, ‘in the worst possible way’ when she was just 16 years old.

Polanski is currently under house arrest in Gstaad in Switzerland under threat of extradition to America to face charges of an alleged rape of a 13-year-old in 1977.

His alleged victim, Samantha Geimer, has said she has no desire to see him stand trial as she simply wants to get on with the life she subsequently built.

But 27 years after their first meeting, Charlotte feels very differently. She wants him to ‘get what he deserves’, she says and has given a statement to prosecutors in Los Angeles.

Now, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, Charlotte explains why she has chosen to speak up now – against not just Polanski, but against Hollywood itself.

She says: ‘I know I should have gone to the relevant authorities at the time but I was scared and ashamed. I somehow thought it was my fault.

‘I’ve been so angry with some of the people in Hollywood who have spoken out in support of Polanski. Hollywood is giving the wrong message to paedophiles.

'He sexually abused me and manipulated me in the worst way. He has scarred me and the experience has definitely put a strain on my life.

‘I was recently engaged to a lovely man, but I would often clam up physically and I don’t think I’m very good in relationships. I will never forgive Polanski for what he has done to me.’

Charlotte had only just turned 16 when she first encountered Polanski. She had left school at 15 and by her own admission thought she was ‘pretty grown-up and street smart’ at the time. Looking back, she recognises that, though she may have been precocious and ambitious, she was anything but.

She had no acting experience but knew that she wanted her future to lie in film.

She modelled a bit while she searched for her big chance and, in 1983, she got it when a mutual acquaintance, 23-year-old model Eliza Karen, asked her to come with her to Paris to audition for a role in Polanski’s film Pirates.

Polanski had fled to the French capital five years earlier to escape the American courts over the Geimer case.

Charlotte recalls: ‘We had come over to Paris on the boat with not much money so that I could meet Roman. I was with Eliza, a friend of his. She was also a model and a couple of years older than me.


Vulnerable: Charlotte and Polanski launch the Pirates film at the 1986 Cannes film festival

‘She had put me up for a part in Roman’s new film. Apparently he wanted someone exotic-looking and because of my Hispanic look he wanted to see me. I didn’t know at the time, but I later found out that they had already found a French actress to play the role so I don’t know why he still wanted to see me.

‘We had checked into a hotel which was pretty central and very reasonable but when we told Roman where we were staying he said the hotel was not good enough and invited us to stay in his spare penthouse on the Avenue Montaigne, which seemed like a great offer.’

That night the girls went straight to Roman’s house for pre-dinner drinks. The first thing Polanski did on seeing Charlotte was to frame her face with his hands, as if shooting her through a camera. She felt uncomfortable, she now admits, but given the purpose of their meeting this in itself could hardly be described as odd.

She says: ‘The very first thing he asked me was, “How old are you?”I told him I was 16, but only just. This was in September and I had turned 16 that August.’

After dinner Polanski checked the girls out of the hotel room that he had dismissed as substandard and took them back to his apartment. While her friend retired to a neighbouring flat, Charlotte stayed chatting with the director on the sofa in his living room.


Fugitive: Roman Polanski, now 76, is facing extradition to America

‘We were drinking Moet and Chandon, I’ll never forget that, and I still can’t drink that champagne to this day. He told me he wanted me to stay the night with him and then he made a pass at me. He tried to kiss me and touch my breasts. I pulled away and told him that I had a boyfriend, which wasn’t true. It was an excuse, but he didn’t care.

‘He just said very coldly, “If you’re not a big enough girl to have sex with me, you’re not big enough to do the screen-test. I must sleep with every actress that I work with, that’s how I get to know them, how I mould them.”

‘I was shocked and got very upset and started to cry. I said I didn’t want to sleep with him, he was 50 and I found him disgusting.’

But as she recalls this today, Charlotte admits that she felt conflicted. ‘I saw this opportunity slipping away,’ she says softly.

‘My mother who had been working as a legal secretary had just been made redundant and although I was doing a lot of modelling I didn’t have a lot of money. I saw this film as my chance to make it. All these things were going through my head and I was getting more and more upset. I told him I didn’t want to sleep with him and I left.

‘I went to the other flat to see my friend and tell her what had happened.’

Charlotte says that, in her naivety and confusion, she became concerned that she was letting a professional opportunity of a lifetime pass her by, so returned to the director’s apartment.

‘Roman opened the door and led me to the bedroom,’ she recalls.

She has described exactly what she alleges happened next to the Los Angeles’ prosecutors, who are expected to investigate.

Charlotte says that the following morning, Polanski invited her and Eliza to join him for breakfast in his living room, and she accepted. She says now: ‘All I remember was wanting a bath. I needed to clean myself and I went to get fresh clothes.

‘After breakfast he wanted to show us the Mona Lisa so he took us to the Louvre and some other museums in the centre. We had lunch, then I went back with him to his apartment to collect my things as I was flying back to London that afternoon. I don’t know where Eliza was, I can’t remember.’

She claims that a further incident took place before she left for home.

Some might find it difficult to square her allegations of an ordeal that she claims was terrifying with her decision to return to Paris two weeks later for the Pirates screen test. But she did return and she got the part that would launch her career.

‘I never told my mother what had happened,’ she said. ‘I was just too ashamed. I needed to do this movie, the money was good – I was being paid £1,200 a month. My mother and I were living in housing association accommodation and this was a life-changing amount of money.’


Speaking out: Actress Charlotte Lewis, right, with her lawyer Gloria Allred at the Los Angeles press conference

Charlotte’s Irish mother raised her alone and the actress never knew the Iraqi-Chilean father to whom she owes her looks. Speaking in a promotional interview for the film in 1986, Polanski himself said of Charlotte: ‘She had what I needed for the film. Dark hair, dark eyes – and the look of innocence.’

Back then Charlotte spoke of the experience of filming as a ‘nightmare’.

‘Polanski tried to dominate me right from the start,’ she said. ‘He swore at me and shouted at me. There was such pressure on me that I became a nervous wreck.’

Today Charlotte recalls: ‘The mental abuse started as soon as I started filming. I always felt that as soon as I started the movie he wanted to fire me.

‘I developed a serious eating disorder. He would play mind games with me and tell me I was too fat and then too thin. I developed bulimia and lost so much weight I passed out five times during filming.

I had turned 17 and Roman had been told by the producer Tarak Ben Ammar and MGM to stay away from me. I was very alone. They wouldn’t allow me to have an agent. Roman continued to emotionally bully me and would joke to other people onset that I was frigid.


Scared: Charlotte says she is angry at the reaction of some people in Hollywood who support Polanski

‘I remember he made a bet once with a very famous American male actor that there was no way he could get me into bed because I was so cold and frigid. The producer flew my mother out to Tunisia [where Pirates was filmed] and I remember her hating Polanski. She said he had dead eyes.’

But though little has changed in how she remembers the miserable process of filming itself, her version of what happened between her and Polanski on a physical level has altered with the years.

In 1986 Charlotte claimed: ‘I found him very attractive, I’d love to have had a romantic relationship with him – and a physical one. You can’t help falling in love with him. But he didn’t want me that way.’

Though it is worth noting that at the time she was speaking she was still working for Polanski and, it could be argued, in thrall of him.

Today she says: ‘There was nothing about him I could have found physically attractive. He was short and stout and very strong.’

In another interview in 1999 Charlotte went on to claim that she did have a relationship with Polanski. But that it started after she had been cast in the film and when she was 17.

‘I wanted him probably more than he wanted me,’ she said then, claiming that they were lovers for six months in an affair that ended only when they began filming Pirates in Tunisia. She claimed afterwards that she’d been misquoted.

Ultimately this case must come down to one person’s word against another’s. Charlotte did not keep in touch with Eliza, the one person who could corroborate her account and, despite The Mail on Sunday’s strenuous attempts, we have been unable to trace her.

What is clear is that what Charlotte had hoped would be the start of a great Hollywood dream, instead set her on a path that led ultimately to addiction and despair.

Following her appearance in Pirates, Charlotte was hailed the new Nastassja Kinski – a former protege of Polanski who is said to have started an affair with him at the age of 15. Charlotte split her time between the UK – where she had a long-running role in Grange Hill – and Hollywood, where she starred opposite Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child in 1986.

She eventually moved to America and was swiftly linked with astring of eligible A-listers and hell-raisers, including Charlie Sheen and Mickey Rourke.

Professionally her star was on the rise but personally she was in serious trouble.‘Living in Los Angeles is like being at one long party,’ she later admitted. ‘It’s difficult to get away from it. I got to the stage where I was wondering, “What is the point of living here?” All I have is temptation.’

But she never lived up to her early film promise and in 1997, 14 years after she met Polanski, Charlotte returned to Britain and checked into the Priory to be treated for cocaine addiction. She had tried to give it up twice already, she said, but only ever in a ‘half-hearted’ way.

She tried to resurrect her career but whatever attraction Hollywood had held seemed to have gone.


Rising star: Charlotte starred alongside Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child in 1986

Eight years ago she quit acting for good and today she says: 'I am happy but it’s true to say I have never been able to have a normal relationship with a man. I have spoken to my vicar and my GP about this and I am now having counselling.’

Charlotte has many reasons for speaking out now but money is not one of them and she has not been paid for this interview.

Instead, she insists, her abiding desire is simply to tell the truth that she has concealed for so long.

Last summer she made two trips to Paris and tried to contact Polanski. She says: ‘I wanted to see him. I wanted him to apologise. But he was away making a movie.

‘I’d heard that Polanski’s daughter had turned 16 and if I could ask him one question it would be, “How would you feel if this was your daughter?”

‘I will never forgive Polanski,’ Charlotte says as tears threaten to fall. ‘I’ll never know if my life would have been different had this not happened. There needs to be some justice. I’m telling the truth and Roman knows I’m telling the truth.’

Mr Polanski declined to comment last night.

[admin]

Carol Drinkwater reveals sex attack by Hollywood director Elia Kazan
Rejecting the advances of a famous director cost the actor turned author the part of a lifetime. She explains why, 40 years on, she poured her shame and guilt into her latest novel, The Lost Girl
by Claire Armitstead
20 October 2017 07.11 EDT Last modified on Monday 23 October 2017 10.34 EDT

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Painful story … Carol Drinkwater in 2009. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images

When the stories about Harvey Weinstein’s abusive behaviour began to pour out of the Hollywood closet, they stirred up painful memories for actor turned novelist Carol Drinkwater – so painful it has taken her four decades to speak out about them.

In an emotional Facebook post last week she wrote about being “very badly damaged in my 20s by a director as famous as HW, more so. It took me years to get over it ... I lost a mighty role because I would not play along, would not sleep with the director in question.”

It was the first time Drinkwater had mentioned the assault in public, and she stopped short of naming her abuser – “even though he is dead, I still do not say his name”. But the clues are there in her latest novel, The Lost Girl, in which wannabe starlet Marguerite is raped by a famous director with a Greek-sounding surname.

The damage to Marguerite is devastating and permanent. Looking back in her old age, she remarks: “Today, if he behaved towards a budding young actress with such disrespect, she would bloody well take him to court.” But the Weinstein revelations have shown that Marguerite is wrong, believes Drinkwater: shame and secrecy are still rife in the film industry, and that is why she has finally decided the time has come to tell her full story.

She was not long out of drama school, with one minor film role to her name, as a nurse in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, when she was invited to take a screen test for a major Hollywood movie.


Elia Kazan. Photograph: Popperfoto

It was an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel The Last Tycoon, produced by Sam Spiegel, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. But most exciting of all was the prospect of working with one of her biggest heroes, the Greek-American director Elia Kazan. By then in his 60s, Kazan was a pioneer of method acting who had made stars of Marlon Brando and James Dean through classics such as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront and East of Eden.

Drinkwater, the convent-educated daughter of Anglo-Irish parents, was also method-trained, as a graduate of north London’s Drama Centre. So confident were Spiegel and Pinter that she was a shoo-in for the part of Kathleen, the troubled Englishwoman with whom studio chief Monroe Stahr becomes obsessed, that they involved her for months in the development of the character.

A snuff film, or snuff movie, is "a movie in a purported genre of movies in which a person is actually murdered or commits suicide".

-- Snuff Film, by Wikipedia

A sex abuse film, or sex abuse movie, is "a movie in a purported genre of movies in which a person is actually sexually abused".

-- Sex Abuse Film, by Wikipedia

A rape film, or rape movie, is "a movie in a purported genre of movies in which a person is actually raped".

-- Rape Film, by Wikipedia

Her first encounter with Kazan was in Spiegel’s apartment, after which she was asked to go for a more formal meeting at his production office the following week. “I went on a Monday and was put in a private room. We started to do a little bit of the script and in no time he pushed me up against the wall. He pinned me there with his hands on either side of me, and pressed himself up against me hard, kissing my neck. I was completely freaked and didn’t know what was going on. My first thought was, is this method directing? It’s not Birmingham Rep. I tried to wriggle away from him and he said, ‘If you don’t show me passion, you can’t play this role’. We spent the morning with him pushing and pulling at me. He said, ‘OK, come in tomorrow’ and this went on for a week. Because I didn’t realise what was going on, I turned up like a good girl.”

It wasn't just that this man had humiliated me, it was that the whole thing was some kind of a set-up

The screen test itself was scheduled for the following week. “When I arrived, the studio was completely empty – a huge big black space.” She was waiting in the dressing room when there was a knock on the door. “He came in, threw me back on the sofa and started pulling at my clothes, forcibly trying to have sex with me.” She managed to shake him off by insisting she needed to concentrate on her lines, but went into the screen test “completely shaken”, only for the abuse to start again with the camera rolling. He whispered obscenities in her ear, she says, pushing her about in a way that couldn’t be seen by anyone else, however hard she tried to get their attention.

“I froze. I was like a wooden spoon. The cameraman must have been wondering where the hell they had found this girl because I could not act any more. At some point they said cut, finish. The lights went out and nobody said a word to me.” In the evening, Kazan phoned her at her flat and invited her to join him at the Connaught hotel. “I said, ‘I haven’t got the part, have I?’”

The next day Spiegel rang to console her about the screen test, which he said was the worst he had ever seen, and assured her he was going to destroy the film for the good of her career. Weeks later, he took her out to dinner and asked what had gone wrong. “I mentioned what had happened and I suppose he’d seen it more than a million times.” Almost most hurtful of all was Spiegel’s revelation that, before the screen test, Kazan had told him: “’She hasn’t got the sang-froid for Hollywood. I’ll prove it to you.’ It wasn’t just that this man had humiliated and abused me, it was that the whole thing was some kind of a set-up of Kazan’s own making.”

Though her own experience stopped short of rape, it chimed in important ways with the Weinstein revelations. Part of the purpose of her Facebook post was to defend Matt Damon for his assertion that he had had no inkling of the producer’s behaviour. “I think it is perfectly possible to not be aware of what is going on,” she wrote. “These moments happen behind closed doors.”

The Lost Girl distances the episode by moving it to the south of France and shifting it back three decades to the 1940s. We first meet Marguerite in Paris in 2015, where she is spending a lonely retirement in a second-floor apartment with only her dog for company. The intervening years might have given her the stardom she so badly wanted, but they have not enabled her to overcome her fear of intimacy.


TV career … Carol Drinkwater in the much-loved All Creatures Great and Small, with Peter Davison. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Drinkwater, too, has gone on to have a successful career, though she never did get to Hollywood. A couple of years after her casting-couch misadventure, she landed the role of James Herriot’s wife in the long-running TV serial All Creatures Great and Small, since when she has had numerous film and TV roles.

Her second career as a writer has produced a stream of popular fiction and nonfiction, beginning in 1985 with a children’s novel, The Haunted School, which was made into a film and an award-winning TV mini-series, with Drinkwater herself playing a young 19th-century schoolteacher struggling to set up a school in the Australian outback.

She and her TV producer husband Michel Noll now live in France, dividing their time between Paris and an olive farm in Provence, where The Lost Girl is partly set. Telling Marguerite’s story, she says, is one of the hardest things she has ever done: “I would weep and weep when I was writing it.” The only other challenge that has proved anywhere near as painful was writing about miscarrying a baby and discovering she was unable to carry a child to term, in the second of a series of memoirs, The Olive Season, published in 2003.

She is wary about being seen as jumping on the Weinstein bandwagon, and is visibly distressed as she recounts the events of 40 years ago, saying it took years to get over the “shame, pain, guilt about my body causing such a reaction in a man, about being described as ‘voluptuous’ as though I was responsible for it and used it in some way I did not understand. I believed I had failed, let myself down, ruined my career.”


Flop … Ingrid Boulting with Robert De Niro in The Last Tycoon, 1976. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The former model Ingrid Boulting went on to land the part of Kathleen in The Last Tycoon opposite Robert De Niro, and the film was a flop. In his autobiography, published in the 1980s, Kazan recalled discussing it with Pinter nine years later. “I … told him that the problem with our film had been the love story – in other words, his script. He disagreed, absolutely; he said the film had only one flaw, Ingrid Boulting. That night, Sam agreed.”

For Drinkwater, the anecdote resurrected yet again the spectre of what happened and what might have been. Only now does she reluctantly feel ready to face her demons, “because it’s important that people realise this has been going on for a long time. This story goes very deep.”

[admin]

New York Times Film Critic Janet Maslin: James Toback Threatened to Kill Me
It was 1978 and the young critic had just reviewed James Toback’s directorial debut. Then came the phone calls: ‘I’m going to f**king kill you.’
by Kate Briquelet
11.01.17 9:00 PM ET

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The threatening calls came in the middle of the night at her apartment, and during the day at her office at The New York Times.

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” the male caller warned in his rants.

It was 1978, and Janet Maslin had just reviewed James Toback’s directorial debut, Fingers. She believed Toback was the man behind the death threats.

“He disguised his voice,” Maslin tells The Daily Beast. “It was a very menacing tone, and you know, I was scared. But at that point I had a listed phone number. He was the guy who made me unlisted.”

The renowned film critic believes Toback called her at least 10 times following her scathing summary of his film. The daytime dials were more comical, Maslin says, because she waved over fellow scribes to listen in.

Still, the threats prompted the Times to contact authorities. Maslin says it was the only time in her decades-long career that she filed a police report.

“The calls came in a badly disguised voice and said some version of, ‘I’m going to fucking kill you.’ I don’t remember them any better than that,” Maslin said. “They came to both the Times office in the daytime and my apartment in the middle of the night.”

Maslin had been at the paper for about a year. She asked her boss, Vincent Canby, to listen in on the calls so he could corroborate them. She believes Canby contacted the Times’ security, which referred them to police.

When officers took a report, Maslin learned that fellow critic John Simon received threats, too, after he panned Toback's film. Police played Simon’s answering machine messages to see if Maslin recognized the caller. “It was the same voice saying the same stuff,” she said. “That proves it wasn’t sexual. [He] was an equal opportunity threatener.”

Toback wasn’t charged in Maslin’s case. “I was frightened by late night calls but never doubted their source,” Maslin told The Daily Beast. “And in 1978 he wasn’t anyone I was afraid of. The whole thing was more than a little ridiculous.”

Toback called Maslin after her police report, and identifying himself using his normal voice, he invited her to the Harvard Club to clear the air.

Maslin says she was angry, curious, and wanted to show Toback she wasn’t afraid of him, so she accepted the invitation. “I was pretty mad, too,” she recalls. “My attitude was kind of, ‘OK, buster. Let’s have it out.’”

According to Maslin, Toback was pleasant over lunch, ordering oysters and Champagne. He claimed he would never make death threats. If he wanted to kill her, Toback allegedly said, he would have done so in the middle of the street.

oystersex
The part of the female genitalia that is comprised of the clit and the genital lips. When the lips have been parted, the lady's anatomy is quite like the appearance of an oyster.
Wow! Did you see the oyster on that chick in the movie? She had very large lips. And her oyster was very, very moist!
-- oystersex, by urban dictionary

His denials, Maslin says, were disingenuous, as he bragged that he’d be even more dangerous if the phone threats were true.

“This was really creepy, out-of-line behavior. There were filmmakers I know I made angry that nursed a grudge, but this kind of thing just didn’t happen,” she added. “Vincent and I were each there [at the Times] for decades and neither of us had to call the police, except in this case.”

Maslin came forward because her Toback story is different—and disturbing in its own way—from the accusations by droves of actresses who say the director sexually harassed them. The incident occurred much earlier in Toback’s career, and it stayed with Maslin for nearly 40 years.

She didn’t see Toback’s face again until the Los Angeles Times revealed that 38 women came forward to accuse him of sexual harassment. The number of accusers has since mushroomed to more than 300.

27 Oct
Mark Harris
@MarkHarrisNYC
Replying to @MarkHarrisNYC
For those interested in mathematical accuracy, this is what the Toback count looks like. pic.twitter.com/U63jqw3BAW

Janet Maslin
@JanetMaslin
1) Change of pace: he made anonymous death threats to me. By phone. Vincent Canby overheard him. Threats timed to review of "Fingers."
5:49 PM - Oct 27, 2017

27 Oct
Jason Zinoman
@zinoman
Replying to @JanetMaslin @MarkHarrisNYC
You both have thick critic’s skin, no doubt, but a little anonymous death threat goes a long way.

Janet Maslin
@JanetMaslin
Joking aside, Vincent and I were each at the NYT for decades. Toback was the only person who ever gave either of us occasion to notify NYPD.
6:07 PM - Oct 27, 2017

“I am surprised,” Maslin says of the allegations. “But he had the early seeds of some kind of a nuisance and stalker when I’d met with him. That’s why I told this story.”

Toback twice hung up on a Daily Beast reporter when reached for comment. “Oh, man. I’m not talking,” he said Wednesday.

Since the LA Times exposed the allegations against Toback, countless others are speaking out about their own encounters with the 72-year-old screenwriter.

Authorities in New York and Los Angeles are fielding calls about alleged incidents that stretch over three decades. On Tuesday, Beverly Hills police announced they opened investigations into Toback, as well as disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, over allegations of sexual assault.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Toback responded to the accusations with a profanity-laden rant. “The idea that I would offer a part to anyone for any other reason than that he or she was gonna be the best of anyone I could find is so disgusting to me,” Toback fumed. “And anyone who says it is a lying cocksucker or cunt or both. Can I be any clearer than that?”

Last week, one woman told The Daily Beast that Toback pinned her down in Central Park and stalked her in his vehicle as she ran away. Another said Toback humped her leg and ejaculated in his pants as they sat in Central Park.

Another accuser said Toback tried feeling her up as he ranted about his fantasy to commit a mass shooting, where he’d kill everyone on his “black list.” In the months afterward, Toback left slurred messages on her voicemail.

Some of the Toback stories circulating on social networks and in media interviews have taken a more sinister turn, with allegations of death threats.

Selma Blair told Vanity Fair that Toback threatened her during a meeting in a hotel room, where he pressed himself against her leg.

According to Blair, Toback warned her, “There is a girl who went against me. She was going to talk about something I did. I am going to tell you, and this is a promise, if she ever tells anybody, no matter how much time she thinks went by, I have people who will pull up in a car, kidnap her, and throw her in the Hudson River with cement blocks on her feet. You understand what I’m talking about, right?”

Robyn Hussa Farrell’s story is eerily similar. During her own hotel lunch with Toback in 1993, she alleges that the director bragged of murdering someone.

At the time, Farrell was an actress and cocktail waitress at Hotel Del Coronado, a beachfront luxury resort in San Diego, when Toback ordered a drink. Toback tossed his business card onto her tray and said, “Hey, I’m Jim.”

Farrell, who recounted her disturbing meeting with the director in an autobiographical play, remembers her sassy reply: “So what else is new?”

“I’m writing a screenplay, and I think you’d be a terrific lead,” Toback replied, before she walked away to deliver more drinks.

The next day, Toback sent a fax to the hotel—addressed to Farrell—with a copy of his driver’s license and an image of the back of a Bugsy VHS tape to prove his Hollywood credentials. He invited her to lunch.

Farrell called Toback for more information. “From the moment I spoke to him on the phone, I said, ‘I know these stories. I’m not interested in the casting couch scenario,’” Farrell told The Daily Beast. Toback allegedly replied, “That’s not what this is about. This is about the screenplay. You’re perfect for it.”

She agreed to join him at the Chateau Marmont. He wanted to meet in his penthouse, but she was adamant they stick to the restaurant. Her roommate would be waiting outside the hotel at 4 p.m., ready to call police if she didn’t emerge.

Shortly after Farrell sat down, Toback allegedly declared, “My wife and I have an open marriage.”

“If the bar for the conversation starts at, ‘My wife forces me to have sex with other people in front of her,’ … you’re no longer in what any of us would consider a realm of normalcy,” Farrell said. “I’m in this crazy universe, and I don’t even know what what the rules are because this guy is so weird.”

She realized their rendezvous wasn’t about a starring role. “I kept calling him out on it. I said, ‘Obviously your agenda and my agenda don’t line up,’” Farrell says. Toback eventually relented and said, “Fine. I’ll tell you about the screenplay.”

Talk of the script, she says, evolved into Toback’s wild claims that the mafia paid him to throw games when he played basketball at Harvard. This new screenplay would be based off his collegiate experience, he told her. Toback said he wanted her to play a mafioso’s daughter in what would become Harvard Man.

At one point, Farrell claims, Toback’s monologue included boasts of stabbing someone to death. “He was bragging about murdering somebody. That alarmed me, and I didn’t quite know if it was in the context of reality,” she says.

Farrell again asked to see the script. “Robyn, that’s not how I work,” Toback retorted. He allegedly explained that he wrote his characters after getting to know the actors themselves—after seeing them naked.

According to Farrell, he rattled off a list of celebrities he’d worked with, including Molly Ringwald and Robert Downey Jr., and claimed that they, too, followed his artistic process. He then convinced Farrell to come to his room to see examples of his work.

At Toback’s apartment, he handed her an article describing how he had sex with an actress on set in front of other performers. Then he gave her a Perrier water, and they sat down in the bedroom—the only room with a TV and VCR—to watch his documentary The Big Bang. She stealthily poured her water into a plant.

As they watched the film, Toback segued into the importance of seeing his actors naked. “He said The Big Bang was all about the orgasm of the cosmos creating the world,” Farrell recalls. “Then it led into him saying something like, ‘I can have an orgasm without touching you.’” She claims Toback instructed her to sit on the kitchen table, where he would demonstrate his dubious talent.

Toback then ordered her to rub his nipples and began humping her leg. “I was terrified,” she said. “You’re also just like, ‘I can’t believe it’s all happening.” Unsure of how to react, her defense mechanism was to be smart-alecky.

“Right after that happened and he was done with my knee… I was basically mocking him. I was like, ‘Really. That’s it?’” Farrell says.

That’s when Toback turned threatening, Farrell recalls. He allegedly warned her, “Do you know what it feels like when a knife enters the skin? Do you have any idea the layers of tissue you can feel the knife cutting through layer by layer?”

She remembers calmly telling him, “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to grab my purse, leave, and I’m gone.

“It was like I was walking away from a lion that was standing on its hind legs in a cage with me. By that point, I knew I was in a serious amount of danger,” Farrell said.

As she reached the door to leave, Toback allegedly barked, “You will never amount to anything if you don’t do this film,” and she ran outside to her roommate’s car.

After the incident, Toback allegedly called Farrell multiple times, sobbing and saying that he loved her. She changed her phone number—then looked into getting a restraining order. She says she may not have completed her petition to receive one, as the courts have no record of a civil order of protection.


“It’s something you want to bury and run away from the memory of it. It’s very terrifying,” says Farrell, who now runs Mental Fitness, a South Carolina nonprofit that helps students with mindfulness, body image, and other mental health concerns.

Meanwhile, Maslin says she was “spooked” by her brush with Toback but that she doesn’t consider herself a victim of harassment.

“I feel like I took care of it myself and I don’t feel like a victim, but I feel like this very strange guy came at me, very early in my career, and revealed a very spooky part of himself,” Maslin tells The Daily Beast.

And the way Toback has reimagined the story is revealing, ghoulish, and sexist, she says. Canby’s Sunday review of Fingers came after Maslin’s daily critique, which was what people would often get worked up about, Maslin says.

During a 2013 interview with Alec Baldwin at the 92nd Street Y, Toback recalls fighting Maslin’s boss, Vincent Canby, but doesn’t mention her at all.

Maslin describes Toback’s account as “a sick, twisted, self-serving version of this story,” because Toback apparently didn’t remember making death threats to “an insignificant woman in her twenties.” Instead, Toback recounted the incident as “an epic battle between himself and the great Vincent Canby, who also thought badly of Fingers and wrote an Arts and Leisure piece saying so.”

An audience member asked Toback about Spy magazine’s “hit job,” which detailed sexual harassment allegations against the director. “Did that register at all for you? Do you care what people write about you?” the man asked of the 1980s exposé.

In response, Toback talked of his grandfather’s advice for schoolyard enemies, saying not to let people bother him. Then he transitioned into Canby’s Fingers review, saying it was “the closest I came to really letting something get to me.”

Toback told Baldwin he wanted to “kill” Canby and sought advice from Norman Mailer, who allegedly said there would be no better revenge “than the ability to continue working” and having Canby watch his success from the sideline.

Then Toback boasted of “the cruelest thing I ever did in my life... the most sadistic thing.”

Years later, when Toback heard Canby was dying of cancer, he called him at Mt. Sinai Hospital to laugh and wish him a miserable death.

Toback claimed he told Canby, “Vince, I heard you’re suffering terribly and dying of cancer, and I just want you to know how thrilled I am, how excited I am and I hope you continue to suffer and die a miserable and slow death.” Then he hung up.

But Maslin says Canby wasn’t at Mt. Sinai, and that if Toback did call the hospital, he must have harassed a sick stranger.

“Maybe he called Vincent in the hospital. He knew Vincent was dying of cancer. He got that right. I wonder if he really did it,” Maslin said.

“He certainly didn’t do anything to threaten or approach Vincent when he wrote the Sunday piece saying Fingers was terrible. He didn’t have the nerve,” she added. “All he did was harass the young woman [at the Times].

“That really matters. It’s set up a pattern of his going after the people he thought were vulnerable.”