As you might expect, there aren’t a whole lot of
laughs in “Hollywood Ending,” Ken Auletta’s cradle-to-jail
new biography of Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul who
was convicted of third-degree rape and another sex felony
in New York while awaiting trial on further charges in
California. When Auletta calls Weinstein’s relationship
with his brother Bob “Shakespeare-worthy,” he is placing
the story squarely in the tragedy column of the ledger.
Books, of which Weinstein is demonstrably fond —
his media mini-empire included a publishing imprint —
can be like movies. Auletta effectively, if maybe a little too
elegiacally, frames this one in the lengthy shadow of
“Citizen Kane.” Auletta is, of course, Jerry Thompson, the
reporter looking for his antihero’s Rosebud: the
mysterious missing object or influence that will explain
his personality. But he is also Citizen Ken, magnanimous
and avuncular when he encourages his boss at The New
Yorker, David Remnick, to publish the young journalist
Ronan Farrow’s investigation of Weinstein’s misdeeds. The
New York Times’s Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke
the story five days before Farrow’s piece was published.
The well-connected Auletta draws on work of the
journalist of those interviews with major players,
including fascinating hours that beleaguered brother.
Weinstein’s reputation for sexual trespass had
started early, when he was a concert promoter in Buffalo.
As he aged, his influence waned — the whole movie
industry waned as well — just as he was seeking younger
prey, from a cohort that “increasingly spent their free
time on social networks like Facebook,” Auletta reminds,
“rather than going to the movies.”
laughs in “Hollywood Ending,” Ken Auletta’s cradle-to-jail
new biography of Harvey Weinstein, the movie mogul who
was convicted of third-degree rape and another sex felony
in New York while awaiting trial on further charges in
California. When Auletta calls Weinstein’s relationship
with his brother Bob “Shakespeare-worthy,” he is placing
the story squarely in the tragedy column of the ledger.
Books, of which Weinstein is demonstrably fond —
his media mini-empire included a publishing imprint —
can be like movies. Auletta effectively, if maybe a little too
elegiacally, frames this one in the lengthy shadow of
“Citizen Kane.” Auletta is, of course, Jerry Thompson, the
reporter looking for his antihero’s Rosebud: the
mysterious missing object or influence that will explain
his personality. But he is also Citizen Ken, magnanimous
and avuncular when he encourages his boss at The New
Yorker, David Remnick, to publish the young journalist
Ronan Farrow’s investigation of Weinstein’s misdeeds. The
New York Times’s Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke
the story five days before Farrow’s piece was published.
The well-connected Auletta draws on work of the
journalist of those interviews with major players,
including fascinating hours that beleaguered brother.
Weinstein’s reputation for sexual trespass had
started early, when he was a concert promoter in Buffalo.
As he aged, his influence waned — the whole movie
industry waned as well — just as he was seeking younger
prey, from a cohort that “increasingly spent their free
time on social networks like Facebook,” Auletta reminds,
“rather than going to the movies.”
