Harvey Weinstein: 'Beautiful Girls' Scribe Scott Rosenberg

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French Actress Florence Darel Says Harvey Weinstein Propositioned Her While His Wife Was Next Door
by Peter Mikelbank @PMIKELBANK
October 12, 2017 AT 11:51AM EDT

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Another actress has come forward accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment. French star Florence Darel says the movie mogul relentlessly pursued her in the mid ’90s and then propositioned her in a hotel room while his wife at the time, Eve Chilton, was in the room next door.

“I was in shock. I was in shock,” Darel, 49, tells PEOPLE about the alleged incident. “I was astonished. When you have someone so physically disgusting in front of you, continuing and continuing as though this was all perfectly normal… What happened to me may not be illegal but it was inappropriate. Very inappropriate.”

The actress’ career was on the rise when she says she met Weinstein. At the time of the alleged encounter, Darel was 26, fresh off a César nomination for Most Promising Actress for her performance alongside Gerard Depardieu in Uranus.

Weinstein, meanwhile, had just bought a small film she starred in: 1993’s Fausto. At the time, the producer was married to Chilton, his spouse from 1987–2004.


Florence Darel and Harvey Weinstein
PASCAL LE SEGRETAIN/GETTY; ALEXANDER KOERNER/GETTY

As Darel claimed to Le Parisien Thursday, after meeting Weinstein at the film’s New York City launch in 1994, he began pursuing her — calling her repeatedly and asking to meet him. Suspecting his intentions, Darel said she pretended to be dating her costar to get him to back off.

That didn’t stop Weinstein though, Darel alleged. In 1995, she said she received a call from the producer at her parents house in France. He asked her to meet him at his suite at The Ritz in Paris, she claimed. Darel told Le Parisien that her agent pressured her into going, telling her, “You can’t afford not to go.”

Their encounter started off formal, said Darel, with Weinstein urging the actress to collaborate on a film.

Things quickly took a turn though, according to Darel. After yelling there was no jacuzzi in his room, Darel claimed Weinstein began to make moves on her — seemingly unbothered by the fact that his wife was next door.

“He started to tell me that he found me very attractive and wanted to have relations with me,” Darel told Le Parisien. “I told him I was very in love with my companion. He replied that didn’t bother him at all and offered to have me be his mistress a few days a year. That way we could continue to work together. Basically, it was ‘If you want to continue in America, you have to go through me.’ ”

Darel said she quickly left, telling Weinstein, “I’m sorry, I have to leave.”

Reflecting back on the incident, Darel tells PEOPLE she opened up to a few people around her about what had allegedly happened — including her agent and boyfriend — but mostly stayed quiet.

“What could I do? Could I go to the police and say, ‘This disgusting man made me an indecent proposal in his hotel room at The Ritz?’ They would have laughed at me. Even when you are raped it is difficult to prove and society in many cases, puts the burden of proof on women,” she says.

While Darel says Weinstein never made additional advances on her, she notes the alleged incident never left her mind.

“I couldn’t forget this story,” she tells PEOPLE. “Every time I saw Harvey Weinstein at the Cannes Film Festival, it came back to me. I couldn’t avoid this and I would see him and he would treat me as though it hadn’t happened. As though he had moved on and put me aside.”


Florence Darel
BERTRAND RINDOFF PETROFF/GETTY

“What makes me angry is that this is only coming out now,” she adds. “Why? Why if everyone knew it, is it only coming out now?,” Darel said. “People can’t be silent. It is difficult for victims to talk, but they have to speak out or this will not stop.”

“This is not about me really. It’s more a general problem across society,” the actress says. “It is about powerful men who assume that their power can attain them anything. This is a product of many centuries, where men thought that for a woman to get what she wants, she must pay. It’s a societal problem which has to be changed.

“I’m not the point. This is behavior which men have to stop in themselves and not just in the movie business.”


Léa Seydoux
DOMINIQUE CHARRIAU/WIREIMAGE

Darel joins a chorus of women who have detailed similar accounts about the movie executive including Cara Delevingne, Ashley Judd, Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow, and fellow French actress Léa Seydoux (of Inglourious Basterds fame), who wrote a piece in The Guardian Wednesday detailing an alleged hotel room encounter with Weinstein.

In a bombshell New York Times report last week, eight women spoke out against Weinstein, accusing him of inappropriate behavior. The paper also reported that Weinstein reached private settlements with eight women, including actress Rose McGowan.

Following the initial report, Weinstein said in a statement that he was working with therapists and planned to “deal with this issue head-on.” He has since been fired from his powerhouse studio, The Weinstein Company, and his wife, Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman, has announced she’s leaving him.

“My heart breaks for all the women who have suffered tremendous pain because of these unforgivable actions. I have chosen to leave my husband. Caring for my young children is my first priority and I ask the media for privacy at this time,” Chapman said in a statement to PEOPLE.


Harvey Weinstein and Georgina Chapman
GISELA SCHOBER/GETTY

On Tuesday, Paltrow and Jolie added their own accounts of alleged mistreatment. Paltrow told the NYT that Weinstein sexually harassed her in a hotel room when she was 22. The encounter allegedly ended with Weinstein placing his hands on her and suggesting a massage.

Jolie also told the outlet that she had a “bad experience” with Weinstein in a hotel room during the release of Playing by Heart in the late ’90s.

Also on Tuesday, the The New Yorker revealed — among 13 different women’s accounts of alleged sexual harassment, assault or rape — that the mogul allegedly forcibly performed oral sex on Italian actress Asia Argento two decades ago. Actresses Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette also claimed that after rejecting Weinstein’s unwanted advances, they were removed from or kept from being hired for projects.

In response to the lengthy allegations made against Weinstein in the New Yorker piece, a spokesperson for Weinstein said, “Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein.”

Weinstein spoke to cameras on Wednesday while leaving his daughter’s Los Angeles house, saying he was “not doing okay” and hoping for a “second chance” after amid the allegations.

A source confirmed to PEOPLE that the 65-year-old had flown out of Los Angeles to enter a residential treatment facility.

With reporting by Dave Quinn

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Capitol Hill’s sexual harassment policy ‘toothless,’ ‘a joke’: 'Congress has been a breeding ground for a hostile work environment for far too long,' says one lawmaker aiming to overhaul its procedures.
by Rachel Bade and Elana Schor
10/27/2017 12:07 AM EDT

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“There’s no accountability whatsoever,” Rep. Jackie Speier said Thursday.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Two female lawmakers and several congressional staffers are calling for an overhaul of Capitol Hill’s policies on sexual harassment, citing a culture of tolerance in a workplace long known as a boys’ club.

The sexual harassment scandals involving major Hollywood and media figures are focusing new attention on Congress’ procedures, which critics say are woefully inadequate for deterring bad behavior in an institution filled with powerful men and young aides trying to advance their careers. Each congressional office operates as its own small, tightly controlled fiefdom with its own rules and procedures, which makes it that much harder to come forward.

Lawmakers and congressional aides are not required to undergo sexual harassment training — a shortcoming even the office that handles complaints says should be changed. And victims must submit to as long as three months of mandated “counseling" and “mediation,” as well as what one lawyer involved in such cases called a "cooling off period," before filing a complaint against an alleged perpetrator.

That's assuming they're even aware of how to lodge a grievance.

One former staffer who said she was sexually harassed by a colleague years ago told POLITICO she didn’t know where to turn at the time. She’d never heard of the Office of Compliance, or OOC, the entity that exists to handle harassment complaints and enforce workplace protection laws for the legislative branch. When she called a congressional committee that deals with administrative issues to inquire about filing a complaint, she said, she was turned away without any guidance.

“I didn’t even know it existed as a resource,” the ex-staffer said of the compliance office. “You don’t have an HR Department on the Hill. There’s no one place that you go. Nobody on the Hill has any idea how you report and deal with sexual harassment.”

Some officials are trying to change that. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) next week will introduce legislation calling for an overhaul of the compliance office, which she said is “constructed to protect the institution — and to impede the victim from getting justice.” On Friday, she will release a video recounting her experience years ago as a congressional staffer, when the office's chief of staff "held my face, kissed me and stuck his tongue in my mouth," she said.

“Many of us in Congress know what it’s like, because Congress has been a breeding ground for a hostile work environment for far too long,” Speier continued. “It’s time to throw back the curtain on the repulsive behavior that has thrived in the dark without consequences.”

In an interview Thursday, Speier called the OOC “toothless” and “a joke.” She said “it encumbers the victim in ways that are indefensible.”

“There’s no accountability whatsoever,” she said. “It’s rigged in favor of the institution and the members, and we can’t tolerate that.”

The call to overhaul the OOC comes as 40 percent of female congressional staffers say there’s a sexual harassment problem on Capitol Hill, according to a July survey conducted by Roll Call. The survey found that one in six female aides said they’d personally been sexually harassed in their offices, and only 10 percent were aware of structures that existed to report misconduct.

OOC Deputy Executive Director Paula Sumberg defended her office. "Any current staffer who has not heard of the Office of Compliance has somehow missed our emailed Annual Notification of Rights, our quarterly eNewsletters, and information about us on” the House intranet, Sumberg said in an email.

But even the OOC appears to acknowledge flaws in the system. In recent years, it has recommended that Congress make sexual harassment training mandatory. And the OOC recently urged Congress to raise its profile, noting that some training seminars for staffers don't mention the office as a resource for workplace disputes.

Multiple staffers, including some who’ve worked on Capitol Hill for years, said there is a dearth of information about the OOC. So it's not readily apparent where to turn when a colleague’s — or even a boss’ — actions become inappropriate.

That was the case for former staffers in former Rep. Tim Murphy’s office. Aides who called POLITICO to detail a hostile work environment — slammed doors, cursing, timed bathroom breaks and verbal abuse — said they were either unaware of the OOC or told it was pointless to complain. Others feared retaliation.

Even some lawmakers aren’t apparently aware of, or at least inclined to rely on, the OOC.

In 2014, a group of female staffers accused Kenny West, the chief of staff to Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), of making inappropriate comments toward them. But Meadows turned to his friend, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), for help. Meadows asked Gowdy’s chief of staff, a woman, to interview his aides to determine whether West had acted inappropriately, according to an Office of Congressional Ethics report.

Gowdy’s staffer recommended Meadows fire the staffer, though Meadows kept him on payroll for months after that, the report said.

A similar situation played out in the office of Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) in 2010, after he was accused of making unwanted advances toward a junior male staffer. A more senior aide in the office brought the matter to Rep. Steny Hoyer’s office, which instructed the aide to report the matter to the Ethics Committee.

A House Administration Committee spokesman said Thursday that harassment on the Hill is "a serious issue" and that the panel is "currently evaluating what additional resources might be made available" to further help lawmakers and aides. She also argued that the Office of House Employment Counsel provides training, including sexual harassment awareness training, as does the Office of the House Chief Administrative Officer.

President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, painted a harsh picture of the reality facing women on Capitol Hill after a video emerged last year of Trump bragging about his sexual advances on women.

"I would talk to some of the members of Congress there when I was younger and prettier, them rubbing against girls, sticking their tongues down women's throats who were uninvited, didn't like it," Conway told MSNBC in October 2016.

The comment was meant to defend Trump from lawmakers aghast by the “Access Hollywood” video. Conway's spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on which members she was talking about.

Speier and Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.) are looking to pre-empt such situations with legislation that would mandate sexual harassment training for every congressional office. Executive branch employees must undergo such training, but it is optional for congressional workers.

Speier has introduced her bill every year since 2014, to no avail. One year, she came close to getting it passed when House appropriators agreed to tuck her bill into an appropriations measure — only to see it stripped from a Senate spending package.

Lawrence, who used to investigate harassment issues for the federal government, said she always checked whether training had been provided. "This is a first step, and I know this is one that can make a difference," she said.

When Speier introduces her bill again this year, the legislation will go beyond sexual harassment training and seek to overhaul the lengthy process Hill victims must go through before filing a complaint.

As it stands now, after an incident but before filing a complaint, victims are required to go through 30 days of “counseling” with an OOC employee. Following that process, they have 15 days to decide whether they want to pursue the next step: 30 days of mandated “mediation.”

After mediation, victims must wait another 30 days to file a complaint. The OOC allows anyone filing a complaint to ask to shorten the counseling period and doesn’t require them to be in the same room as the accused during mediation, but Speier put little stock in those measures.

“Can you imagine a victim who’s been sexually harassed who attempts to file a complaint and then is told they’ve got to go through three months of biting their tongue and continuing to work in that kind of environment?” she asked. “You’ve just been sexually harassed and you’re told you have to be ‘counseled’ for 30 days. Are you kidding me?”

Les Alderman, an attorney who has represented multiple congressional employees in harassment and discrimination cases, said that OOC officials “do their best to do exactly what the law says they should.” But he warned that the law that created the office “has major downfalls.”

For one, Alderman said, the 30-day counseling period a harassment victim must undergo before pursuing a complaint is confidential.

Alexis Ronickher, an employment rights lawyer at Katz, Marshall & Banks who’s worked with sexual harassment victims in congressional offices, said that means victims can be sanctioned and their cases jeopardized if they say publicly that they’re filing a complaint against a lawmaker or fellow staffer.

“It’s the strap of silence in my opinion that helps foster a broken system. The fact that you can’t tell anyone that you filed a request for counseling or that you’re in mediation, that everything that goes on there has to be confidential,” she said. “It creates an environment in which people don’t talk about what’s happening and women who are being sexually harassed can’t come together and say, ‘I’m coming forward; you should come forward.’”

Ronickher said it's not the Office of Compliance's fault as much as the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act, which governs how the office operates and the rules governing complaints.

The GOP-controlled Congress created the OOC in 1995 amid the scandal involving then-Sen. Bob Packwood's rampant sexual harassment. Ten women told The Washington Post about the Oregon Republican’s lewd behavior. The furor grew as Senate Republicans — including then-Ethics Committee chairman and now-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — resisted holding hearings.

Former Nevada Sen. Richard Bryan, then the ethics panel's top Democrat, recalled a “drumbeat of complaints” that eventually forced committee Republicans to join his call to act against Packwood.

“This wasn’t just one woman … there was a pattern,” Bryan said in an interview.

OOC fielded 49 requests for counseling during fiscal 2016, according to its most recent annual report, including six in the House and two in the Senate. Of those requests, 15 dealt with harassment or a hostile work environment.

Despite the waiting periods, Sumberg said the OOC’s process for dispute resolution is faster than that of other federal agencies. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which polices harassment cases for those agencies, can take as long as 180 days to act on a discrimination charge, according to its website.

“We probably have the fastest administrative process for bringing a sexual harassment complaint in the entire federal government,” Sumberg said by email.

Alderman, the attorney who works with harassment and discrimination victims, noted another key difference between the OOC’s process and the EEOC’s work in other federal agencies. After an accuser has successfully navigated the system and won a complaint, the EEOC requires the posting of information about the perpetrators of discriminatory behavior, so that “hopefully public notice and shame occurs.”

No such publicizing of a perpetrator’s past record is required in Congress. It’s a system, Alderman said, that “helps repeat offenders keep on repeating.”

POLITICO is taking a deeper look at Capitol Hill's sexual harassment policy. To share your stories confidentially with a reporter, please contact [email protected] or [email protected]. You can also anonymous share information with our reporting team using these tools.

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We could have made Weinstein powerless
by Jessica Barth
Updated 9:54 PM ET, Fri October 20, 2017

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Editor's Note: Jessica Barth is an actress, writer and producer. Follow her on Twitter @_jessicabarth_ and on Instagram @iamjessicabarth.The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) It has taken me a few days to process the sudden explosion of allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and assault made against Harvey Weinstein. Each woman who steps forward leaves me with a mixture of emotions. On the one hand, I feel an overwhelming sense of relief and pride when I see women joining together to share their stories. On the other, I experience a sense of horror over the staggering number of accusers. Women stripped of their power, silenced and shamed.

I was one of them and recounted my own experience publicly last week.


Jessica Barth

In my own experiences with sexual harassment and assault, I have been made to feel as if I had to compromise my own convictions for the advancement of my career. I was made to believe that my talent and experience should take a back seat to my physical appearance. I was manipulated into believing I had "asked for it." And I was made to feel that if I spoke out or fought back, the repercussions would make me regret it.

So, what now? Now, women -- and men -- must get to work finding solutions. With women standing together en masse, and the media shining a spotlight on just how rampant behavior like that alleged of Harvey Weinstein has become within the entertainment industry, we have gained unprecedented power. Together, we have toppled a Hollywood titan.

The days of turning a blind eye must end. An air of confusion seems to have settled over Hollywood. A common question from people who were long aware of the accusations leveled at Harvey Weinstein has been, "What were we supposed to do?" The answer was simple. If everyone who knew about Weinstein's allegedly predatory behavior had refused to work with him, he would have been rendered powerless, incapable of inflicting pain for 30 years.

I've heard people dismiss allegations against Weinstein because they believe the victims are confusing sexual harassment with compliments. This type of ignorance is common and dangerous, and can only be cured through proper education and awareness. We must get better at educating both men and women about what constitutes sexual harassment and assault. This type of education should be provided in schools, corporations, and every institution in between.

We must implement zero-tolerance policies for sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. According to TMZ, Weinstein's company reached an employment contract with him that said if he got sued for sexual harassment or misconduct, all he had to do was pay a fine and he could keep his job. Bob Weinstein has refused to comment on what the company knew about his brother's settlements with women when that contract was negotiated and renewed in 2015.

When harassers and abusers have positions of power, is it any wonder that victims are afraid to come forward when they seemingly have nothing to gain and everything to lose?

For me, a recognition of the financial and emotional drains that would result from my coming forward and taking legal recourse gave me significant pause. The fact that I felt completely alone in my shame made keeping quiet seem like the only option. And worries about negative effects on my career didn't necessarily make me want to shout it out from the rooftops.

My career did take a sudden and unexpected slowdown after I spurned the advances of Harvey Weinstein and others, but to me, the question for victims isn't what sort of damage coming forward may cause to your career. It's what your silence may do to your soul.

These past few days have given me the sense of empowerment I have craved for years. My goal now is to make sure that no other woman goes through what far too many of us have endured already. My heart simultaneously swells and breaks with each #metoo post that I read.

I am working on setting up a foundation that will provide funding for legal fees for victims of sexual harassment and assault. I want to help alleviate the financial pressures that some women face in taking their harasser or assaulter to court. I hope that in the future, organizations and politicians who benefited from Harvey Weinstein's donations might want to contribute to this cause.

Sexual predators exploit the hopes and dreams of their victims. When I allow myself to sit with that, it hurts my heart. I have cried myself to sleep wondering if the dream that had grown in my heart since I was a child was worth breaking it.

And this is where my desire to fight on lies. It lies with every little girl accepting a hairbrush as her Academy Award in the bathroom mirror, and the hope that she may never know the horror of these monsters. The hope that she will be free to pursue her dream without worrying whether she is in danger of being raped during a "business meeting."

These are the little girls that I am fighting for; the ones who are out there right now, the ones who are still living in our hearts and mostly, for the ones I am raising at home. And, I will tell you this: It makes me want to start a revolution that doesn't end until the mightiest of these monsters fall.

It begins now.

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Paz De La Huerta: Harvey Weinstein Raped Me Twice: NYPD Opens Investigation
by tmz
11/2/2017 6:04 PM PDT

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Harvey Weinstein forced himself on "Boardwalk Empire" star Paz de la Huerta twice in her home ... according to the actress, whose allegation has launched a new NYPD investigation.

Paz told CBS News the first alleged rape happened in October 2010 ... when Weinstein offered to give her a ride to her NYC apartment following a party they both attended. She claims he insisted on having drinks at her place, and when they did ... "He pushed me on the bed ... and it happened all very suddenly."

She claims the second assault happened a couple of months later when he showed up in her lobby. Somehow they ended up inside her apartment again, and Paz alleges he raped her again. She also says she was drinking and in no condition to consent to sex.

Weinstein has previously denied the non-consensual sex allegations from dozens of women. We've reached out to his camp regarding Paz's accusations.

The D.A.'s Office says a sex crimes prosecutor is on the case, along with NYPD.

Paz de la Huerta was born and raised in New York City, to a Spanish-born father and a Minneapolis, Minnesota-born mother. She has been acting since the age of four, having trained at the SoHo Children's Acting Studio. Aside from acting, Paz is a skilled artist, designer, and writer who enjoys listening to punk rock music. She resides in Tribeca, New York, with her mother and sister.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: [email protected]

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Harvey Weinstein Finally Gonna Burn In Giant London Effigy
by tmz
11/1/2017 2:22 PM PDT

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Final Cut - Scene #4

A 36-foot-tall effigy of Harvey Weinstein will go up in smoke, flames ... and then down in ashes as part of a British tradition.

The Edenbridge Bonfire Society unveiled the giant figure Wednesday in preparation for Saturday's annual Bonfire Night celebration in London. It's an yearly tradition for Brits in memory of Guy Fawkes' 1605 failed plot to blow up the Parliament.

So, why fry Harvey? The simple answer is the Society always chooses a well-known figure in pop culture who they believe deserves a good torching. Weinstein's facing a mountain of sexual assault allegations in Britain alone, sooo ...

Got a match?

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New Accuser Says Harvey Weinstein Hugged Her in His Underwear and Said He Loved Her
by Taryn Nobil @tarynnobil
Variety
October 11, 2017

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Sarah Ann Masse
CREDIT: PHOTO BY JULIA K. SHERMAN PHOTOGRAPHY

Another woman, Sarah Ann Masse, has come forward to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct. Masse, an actress, comedian, and writer, shared her story with Variety amidst the aftermath of a New Yorker article on Tuesday that alleged that Weinstein had sexually assaulted multiple women, following the New York Times exposé that detailed “dozens” of alleged occurrences of sexual harassment by the former mogul.

Masse’s experience with Weinstein occurred in 2008, she told Variety. At the time, she worked as a nanny to support herself as she pursued an acting career in New York City. She said that her agency notified her of a job to babysit Weinstein’s three children (from his first marriage to his former assistant Eve Chilton) when he had them for the week (by this time, he had divorced Chilton and gotten remarried to soon-to-be-ex-wife Georgina Chapman).

“I first had a few pre-interviews with his assistants, who were nice young women,” Masse said. “It was on my resume that I was an actor. I was open about that from the beginning. But I also told them that I don’t use my nanny work as an opportunity to try to advance my acting career. I keep them separate.”

After about a month of pre-interviews, Masse said she was informed that Weinstein wanted to meet her. “They arranged for me to go to his house in Connecticut, so I drove out there.” When she arrived, she said, “Harvey Weinstein opened the door in his boxer shorts and an undershirt. My first thought was, ‘Oh, this is weird. Maybe he forgot this interview is happening. Maybe he thought I was the mailman. I’m sure he’ll be embarrassed and excuse himself and get changed.’ But he didn’t.”

She said that Weinstein had her sit down in his living room and conducted the rest of the interview in his underwear. As a young actress, meeting Weinstein already intimidated Masse, she explained, but his behavior made her feel particularly strange. “I tried to tell myself it was just an odd quirk, that it was fine, and to keep going with the interview.”

As Weinstein continued to ask Masse standard interview questions, she said that two of his children ran into the room, curious to see who was visiting. “No one else was home, except for the kids,” she said. “He screamed at them to get out of the room and told them to not come back into the room until I had left, which I thought was really weird because I’ve interviewed for a lot of nanny jobs and [the parents] were always eager for me to meet the children and see how I interacted with them. He had this big burst of anger. I knew he had a reputation for being tough and intimidating, but I still thought it was odd.”

Masse said that eventually, Weinstein asked, “So, I know you’re an actor. How do you think that works with being a nanny? Do you think it’s a conflict?” She responded no, explaining that while she wants to be honest about pursuing acting down the line, she would never conduct herself during a nanny job in any way to try to advance my career. “Then he said, ‘Okay,’ smiled at me, and said, ‘You would never flirt with my friends or anyone to get ahead?’ And I said absolutely not, I would never feel comfortable with that.”

After asking a few more basic questions, the interview ended. When she got up to go, expecting a handshake, Masse said Weinstein instead grabbed her and “gave me this really tight, close hug that lasted for quite a long period of time. He was still in his underwear. Then he told me he loved me. I left right after that.” Masse said she left feeling uncomfortable, but since it was her first time meeting someone so powerful in the industry, she didn’t know how executives in the entertainment business typically conducted themselves. “I thought, ‘Gosh, maybe this is just how they treat everyone… Maybe it’s just that Hollywood schmooze thing.’ But I just didn’t feel right about it.”

A couple days later, Weinstein’s assistant got back to Masse, who remembers hearing, “Harvey’s not going to hire you because you’re an actor.” She responded, “‘Oh, that’s fine, I just think that’s weird because I was honest with you guys from the beginning that I was an actor.’ And [Weinstein’s assistant] was like, ‘Yeah, I know, but he just changed his mind.'” From then on, Masse said, “It felt like I dodged a bullet.”

Weinstein’s camp has not yet responded to Variety‘s request for comment.

Masse said she felt empowered to share her story after other women came forward with their encounters with him. She added that an incident on Tuesday, when she was physically assaulted by a man in Europe, gave her the final push to contact Variety and add her story to the narrative.

A few months before the Harvey Weinstein incident, Masse said she was raped by an actor. “I haven’t publicly outed him for the same reason. We work in the same industry and I see time and time again when women speak out and nobody believes them. Then they start dragging your name to the mud and trying to destroy your character and reputation. It’s a fine line to walk of wanting to be honest and wanting to warn other women about the predators that are out there, but not having to go through the trauma of reliving your experiences and having people call you a liar.”

[admin]

Brett Ratner Rape Allegation Detailed by Ex-Endeavor Employee
by Gene Maddaus @GeneMaddaus Gene Maddaus
November 2, 2017

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A former employee of the Endeavor Talent Agency detailed a rape accusation against producer Brett Ratner in a Facebook post obtained by Variety. The allegation is the subject of a libel suit Ratner leveled against the woman, Melanie Kohler, on Wednesday.

Ratner was accused Wednesday of sexual harassment by six other women in a report in the Los Angeles Times.

According to the suit, which quotes short excerpts from the Oct. 20 post, she alleged that Ratner “preyed” on her when she was drunk at a club. The lawsuit calls the rape allegation “deliberately false and malicious.” The post was quickly deleted following a threat of litigation from Ratner’s lawyer.

In the post, Kohler says Ratner took her back to the home of producer Robert Evans and forced himself on her, even after she repeatedly said “no.” Ratner was living at Evans’ home at the time, according to his attorney, Marty Singer.

She wrote that Ratner is not a “public monster” and may treat the “somebodies” of the world with respect. But she said she was writing so that “he can be accountable for the way he’s treated the nobodies of the world or at least the way he treated me.” As alleged in the lawsuit, she wrote that Ratner “was a predator and a rapist on at least one night in Hollywood about 12 years ago.”

According to Kohler, she never told anyone what happened, not even her closest friends at the time of the incident. She said she decided to speak out in the wake of the Weinstein revelations in hopes of changing the culture of America and of Hollywood.

“I’m embarrassed, humiliated, ashamed, and wish I could go back to forgetting it ever happened,” she wrote. “But if I do that, if we all do that, then it keeps happening. We have to come forward. I can’t be an advocate for women speaking out if I don’t speak out, too. … Brett Ratner raped me. I’m saying his name, I’m saying it publicly. Now at least I can look at myself in the mirror and not feel like part of me is a coward or a hypocrite. I’m standing up and saying this happened to me and it was not ok. Come what may, it is the right thing to do.”

Singer, Ratner’s attorney, told Variety on Tuesday that he intended to sue Kohler.

“He did not rape this girl,” Singer said. “It’s completely fabricated. … The story doesn’t make any sense.”

The suit, filed in Hawaii federal court, came on the same day the L.A. Times reported that six other women accused Ratner of various forms of sexual misconduct. Natasha Henstridge alleged that Ratner cornered her in his home in the early 1990s and forced her to perform oral sex. Actress Olivia Munn said Ratner masturbated in front of her on a film set.

On Tuesday, Singer told Variety Kohler had detailed a different version of events than the one related in the Facebook post.

Kohler lives in Hawaii, where she and her husband operate a scuba school. She has recently retained attorney Roberta Kaplan, who argued the landmark gay rights case United States v. Windsor at the Supreme Court. She has also hired SKDKnickerbocker to handle communications.

Singer said shortly after the post went up, he contacted her and advised her that it defamed Ratner.

“I didn’t threaten her,” he said. “I said she can be sued if she didn’t take it down.”

Kohler quickly took down the post, though screenshots of it have circulated around Hollywood since then. She later posted an explanation: “Today was explained to me in five words: Lawyer up or shut up.”

The lawsuit alleges that Kohler’s post caused Ratner to suffer “emotional distress, worry, anger, and anxiety,” and had damaged his personal and professional reputation.

On Wednesday, following the L.A. Times report, Warner Bros. severed ties with Ratner, who is CEO of RatPac Entertainment.

[admin]

‘Genius’ Producer Accuses Dustin Hoffman of Sexually Harassing Her in 1991
by Daniel Holloway @gdanielholloway
November 1, 2017

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Wendy Riss Gatsiounis was a struggling playwright working a temp job in New York City in 1991 when she got what she hoped would be her big break. Her play “A Darker Purpose” had been given a staged reading at the Public Theater, and she had scheduled a meeting with Dustin Hoffman and “Tootsie” screenwriter Murray Schisgal to discuss adapting it into a feature film for Hoffman to star in. “It was a huge thing,” she told Variety.

But, Riss Gatsiounis said, the two meetings that took place at the Rockefeller Center office of Hoffman’s Punch Productions led to confusion and self-doubt after Hoffman allegedly propositioned her and attempted to persuade her to leave the office and accompany him to a store in a nearby hotel. Riss Gatsiounis was in her 20s; Hoffman was 53.

A spokesperson for Hoffman declined to comment. Schisgal told Variety in a statement: “Dustin Hoffman and I took many meetings with writers and playwrights over many years. I have no recollection of this meeting or of any of the behavior or actions described.”

According to Riss Gatsiounis, the first meeting began with Schisgal asking whether she had a boyfriend or husband. Hoffman cut Schisgal off. “Dustin Hoffman was playfully like, ‘Murray, shut up. Don’t you know you can’t talk to women that way anymore? Times are changing,'” Riss Gatsiounis said.

The tenor of the meeting became more professional. Hoffman and Schisgal asked if Riss Gatsiounis would be willing to rework her pitch for a movie version of “A Darker Purpose” with Hoffman in mind. The play — and Riss Gatsiounis’ original movie pitch — featured a protagonist in his 20s. Riss Gatsiounis agreed and spent the next three weeks on the rewrite.

She then had a second meeting with Hoffman and Schisgal to give them the revised pitch. But she never got to discuss the new idea with them.

“I go in, and this time it’s, like, Dustin Hoffman’s really different,” Riss Gatsiounis said. “He says, ‘Before you start, let me ask you one question, Wendy — have you ever been intimate with a man over 40?'” Flustered, Riss Gatsiounis attempted to laugh off the comment. But Hoffman persisted.

“I’ll never forget — he moves back, he opens his arms, and he says, ‘It would be a whole new body to explore,'” she said. “I’m trying to go back to my pitch, and I’m trying to talk about my play. Then Dustin Hoffman gets up and he says he has to do some clothing shopping at a nearby hotel, and did I want to come along? He’s like, ‘Come on, come to this nearby hotel.'”

Riss Gatsiounis added that Schisgal, who was also present, encouraged her to go with Hoffman.

“I’m just completely flustered,” Riss Gatsiounis said. “I don’t know what to make of this whole thing. And Murray’s like, ‘You can go! It’s okay, go! Go!'”

But Riss Gatsiounis repeatedly declined to go with Hoffman.

“And Dustin Hoffman finally leaves, because I’m saying I don’t want to go to the hotel,” Riss Gatsiounis said. “And then Murray Schisgal says, ‘Look, we’re not really interested in your play, because it’s too film noir-ish.’ And that was it.”

Punch Productions at the time carried a staff of 10-12 people in an office at 75 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. The late ’80s and early ’90s were a prolific time in Hoffman’s career, in which he appeared in several large studio films including “Rain Man,” “Billy Bathgate,” and “Hook.” In addition, Punch — where Schisgal served as a creative executive — developed several projects in which Hoffman starred, including “Tootsie,” “Death of a Salesman,” “American Buffalo,” and “Moonlight Mile.”

Riss Gatsiounis said that she left the meeting and, “close to tears,” called her agent Mary Meagher from a payphone and recounted the meeting to her. “She said that she didn’t want me to think that it was something I had done,” Riss Gatsiounis said. “She had heard rumors about him for years.”

Meagher died in 2006. Variety spoke with two other writers that Riss Gatsiounis was friends with at the time, both of whom said that Riss Gatsiounis described the second meeting with Hoffman and Schisgal to them shortly after it happened and verified her account of it.

“The whole thing was just a source of torment for me,” Riss Gatsiounis said. “I was just this writer and he had been my hero, and it stayed with me for a long time.” She recalled the self-doubt that she experienced in the “months and months and months” that followed, as she wondered whether she had blown an opportunity to advance her career by rebuffing Hoffman: “It was one voice in my head saying, ‘I was such an idiot. I should have just gone.’ And the other voice in my head saying, ‘Well, clearly he just wasn’t interested [in the play]. Why don’t you just realize he just wasn’t interested?'”

“A Darker Purpose” was staged later that year by the New York theater company Naked Angels in a production starring Fisher Stevens. Riss Gatsiounis went on to write the film adaptation, titled “The Winner,” which was directed by Alex Cox and starred Vincent D’Onofrio. She has since found success as a TV writer, working on A&E’s “The Killing” and the CW’s “Reign.” She is currently a co-executive producer on Season 2 of National Geographic’s “Genius,” which tells the life story of Pablo Picasso.

Riss Gatsiounis said that she chose to speak now about her experience with Hoffman and Schisgal in light of the recent allegations to surface against disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein and others in the entertainment industry, including Hoffman, and to support other alleged victims who have spoken out.

On Wednesday, Anna Graham Hunter, a production assistant on “Death of a Salesman” in 1985, claimed in a guest column in the Hollywood Reporter that Hoffman harassed and assaulted her on set when she was 17 years old.

Hoffman has become the most recent industry heavyweight to be accused of sexual harassment after the New York Times and the New Yorker published exhaustive stories last month detailing decades of abusive behavior by Weinstein — who was subsequently fired from the production company he co-founded, the Weinstein Company.

Since then, Amazon Studios has parted ways with former president Roy Price following a harassment claim against him by a producer on “The Man in the High Castle”; directors James Toback and Brett Ratner have been accused of harassment or misconduct by multiple women; and on Tuesday, Netflix shut down production of “House of Cards” Season 6 after actor Anthony Rapp accused star Kevin Spacey of sexually assaulting him when the “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Rent” star was 14 years old.

[admin]

Dustin Hoffman accused of sexual harassment against 17-year-old: Writer Anna Graham Hunter alleges the actor groped her and engaged in sexually inappropriate conversations on the set of 1985 TV movie Death of a Salesman
by Benjamin Lee
November 1, 2017

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Dustin Hoffman has been accused of sexual harassment against a 17-year-old intern in 1985.

Writer Anna Graham Hunter alleges that the actor, now 80, groped her on the set of TV movie Death of a Salesman and spoke inappropriately about sex with her.

“He asked me to give him a foot massage my first day on set; I did,” Hunter wrote in the Hollywood Reporter. “He was openly flirtatious, he grabbed my ass, he talked about sex to me and in front of me. One morning I went to his dressing room to take his breakfast order; he looked at me and grinned, taking his time. Then he said, ‘I’ll have a hard-boiled egg … and a soft-boiled clitoris.’ His entourage burst out laughing. I left, speechless. Then I went to the bathroom and cried.”

Hunter detailed Hoffman’s alleged treatment of her over her five weeks on set in a diary that she mailed to her sister at the time. “Today, when I was walking Dustin to his limo, he felt my ass four times,” she wrote. “I hit him each time, hard, and told him he was a dirty old man.”

She claims that on set, she was told to put up with his behavior by a supervisor who told her to “sacrifice” some of her values for the sake of the production.

“At 49, I understand what Dustin Hoffman did as it fits into the larger pattern of what women experience in Hollywood and everywhere,” she wrote, looking back. “He was a predator, I was a child, and this was sexual harassment. As to how it fits into my own pattern, I imagine I’ll be figuring that out for years to come.”

Hoffman has responded to the article with an apology: “I have the utmost respect for women and feel terrible that anything I might have done could have put her in an uncomfortable situation. I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am.”

The Tootsie star’s reputation has often been troubling. On the set of Kramer vs Kramer, he slapped Meryl Streep to improve her performance in a dramatic scene while also taunting her about the death of her boyfriend. “I was getting divorced, I’d been partying with drugs and it depleted me in every way,” Hoffman said of his behavior at the time.

The story comes after a deluge of similar stories of sexual harassment within Hollywood against producer Harvey Weinstein, film-maker James Toback and actor Kevin Spacey. Today has also seen six women accuse director Brett Ratner of sexual harassment, including actors Natasha Henstridge and Olivia Munn.

[admin]

Actress Tara Subkoff Says Harvey Weinstein Sexually Harassed Her
by Rebecca Rubin @rebeccaarubin
Variety
October 12, 2017

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Actress Tara Subkoff has opened up about her experience with Harvey Weinstein, alleging the producer sexually harassed her in the 1990s when she was up for a part in one of his movies.

“That night I was offered the role, and I went out to a premiere after party that Harvey Weinstein was also at,” she told Variety. “He motioned for me to come over to him, and then grabbed me to sit me on his lap. I was so surprised and shocked I couldn’t stop laughing because it was so awkward. But then I could feel that he had an erection. I got quiet, but got off his lap quickly. He then asked me to come outside with him and other things I don’t want to share, but it was implied that if I did not comply with doing what he asked me to do that I would not get the role that I had already been informally offered. I laughed in his face as I was in shock and so uncomfortable. I left the party right after that.”

Subkoff made her film debut in 1994’s thriller “When the Bough Breaks,” and appeared in the 1997 Jack Nicholson comedy “As Good as It Gets,” the 1997 “All Over Me,” and the 1998 Whit Stillman film “The Last Days of Disco.” Subkoff said after denying Weinstein’s advances that night, she was stripped of the informally offered part and blacklisted from acting in Hollywood.

“My reputation was ruined by false gossip, and I was called ‘too difficult to work with,'” she said. “It became impossible for me to get work as an actress after this, so I then had to start a new career path and started Imitation of Christ, a fashion and art label.

In 2015, Subkoff stepped back into entertainment and made her directorial debut with the feature film “#Horror.”

“The Weinstein company executives snuck into a cast and crew screening of my film and told me they loved it,” she recalled. “Then they took it to Harvey, who then refused to watch it but then bad-mouthed it to everyone all over Cannes.”

Still, the movie was picked up for distribution by IFC Midnight. “[IFC was] so supportive of me and the movie, even though Harvey tried to ruin any potential success it could have had,” she said. “It is challenging enough to get work in Hollywood as a female, let alone being a female filmmaker producer/director. And when people attempt to ruin your reputation on top of that, it makes it next to impossible.”

Subkoff said she hopes the growing list of women coming forward with their stories will set a precedent for how women are treated in all places of work. “I have a 17 month old daughter, and I hope she never has a story like this to share.”

Though she has never shared her story before, Subkoff said she opened up about her experience to demonstrate how “powerful men abusing their power can affect not only a few careers, but all of ours,” adding, “I had it affect and ruin my career as an actress. And then almost twenty years later it almost affected my first feature film I wrote directed and produced getting distribution. That refusing to comply with one powerful man’s sexual advances could not only ruin my first career as an actress, but almost twenty years later also had the power to affect my first and only feature film to get distribution is so important to show how the abuse of power by the patriarchy is affecting all female artists everywhere.”