Recently, on July 12th, author Ken Auletta published a new book, Hollywood Ending. This serious novel talks about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s story, from the years when he was still a big man in Hollywood to the years when he was awaiting trial on rape charges in California.
The year is 2000. Harvey Weinstein’s cultural capital is at its peak. He’s still running the distinguished studio he started with his brother Bob, Miramax. Miramax is now under Disney’s strict supervision. Weinstein has recently founded Talk magazine with editor Tina Brown, the most dexterous and brainy manipulator of New York’s high and low culture. He’s hobnobbing with politicians, co-chairing a grand fundraiser/birthday party for Senate candidate Hillary Clinton. And he doesn’t like some of the jokes Broadway star Nathan Lane has prepared for the occasion.
“‘I’ll ruin your career,’” Weinstein threatened, in Auletta’s retelling, as he “bellied” the elfin actor into a corner. “‘You can’t hurt me,’” Lane retorted. “‘I don’t have a film career.’” Onstage, Lane tauntingly said: “‘I’m going to do all the jokes Harvey Weinstein wanted me to cut,’” Mr. Auletta writes in his novel, according to the New York Times.
Weinstein was infamously convicted of third-degree rape and other sex felonies in New York. He was waiting for his trial on further charges in California. Mr. Auletta attended the trial every day, narrating the first-hand experience in four chapters. “Trials are not movies, shot under controlled conditions and subject to revision in the editing room,” he writes. “They are live productions, dependent on the chemistry of their participants, and not a little bit of luck.”
But books, which Weinstein was quite fond of, can be like movies. According to the New York Times, “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.”
Auletta is well-connected to everything and everyone – giving him opportunities to draw on other journalists’ work and on his own interviews with major players, including his many interesting hours spent with the beleaguered brother Bob. On the other hand, (Harvey) Weinstein emails incisive answers to Auletta’s questions and Weinstein’s representatives negotiate over possible interview conditions before ghosting the biographer. But that doesn’t matter, as Hollywood Ending also incorporates an extensive profile Auletta had written on Weinstein twenty years earlier. At the time, Auletta had heard of Weinstein’s sex crimes but was unable to get victims to speak with him for the profile; instead, the writer ended up focusing on Weinstein’s bullying and his vast appetites.
Weinstein’s reputation for sexual violations started early, when he was a concert promoter in Buffalo. As he got older, his influence – and the movie industry – waned just as he began searching for younger people to prey upon. His victims changed from a group of teens and twenty-somethings who spent their free time going to the movies to one that daily spent hours on social media.
Now in his sixties (2015), the producer lunged at Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, a 22-year-old Miss Italy finalist, causing her to call the police. This incident finally brought Weinstein to court.
After this shocking event, Auletta began to search for Miriam, the Weinstein brothers’ fiery-haired mother. Apparently, she also had a fiery temper, much fierier than her hair.
Bob, who somehow avoided growing up into a “beast,” as Harvey is repeatedly described here, allows for the possibility of his mother Miriam’s frustration at her life’s limitations. “‘She could have been Sheryl Sandberg or one of these C.E.O.s of a company. She had that kind of smarts,’” Bob Weinstein told Auletta. Instead, she proudly brought rugelach to her sons’ headquarters, and had an epitaph worthy of Dorothy Parker: “‘I don’t like the atmosphere or the crowd.’”
In view of Mr. Auletta’s journey to gather information for his new book and Harvey Weinstein’s drop from fame, readers can’t help but feel dispirited, like riding on that one creaky rollercoaster at that nearly- forgotten playland.
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/10/books/review-hollywood-ending-harvey-weinstein-ken-auletta.html
The year is 2000. Harvey Weinstein’s cultural capital is at its peak. He’s still running the distinguished studio he started with his brother Bob, Miramax. Miramax is now under Disney’s strict supervision. Weinstein has recently founded Talk magazine with editor Tina Brown, the most dexterous and brainy manipulator of New York’s high and low culture. He’s hobnobbing with politicians, co-chairing a grand fundraiser/birthday party for Senate candidate Hillary Clinton. And he doesn’t like some of the jokes Broadway star Nathan Lane has prepared for the occasion.
“‘I’ll ruin your career,’” Weinstein threatened, in Auletta’s retelling, as he “bellied” the elfin actor into a corner. “‘You can’t hurt me,’” Lane retorted. “‘I don’t have a film career.’” Onstage, Lane tauntingly said: “‘I’m going to do all the jokes Harvey Weinstein wanted me to cut,’” Mr. Auletta writes in his novel, according to the New York Times.
Weinstein was infamously convicted of third-degree rape and other sex felonies in New York. He was waiting for his trial on further charges in California. Mr. Auletta attended the trial every day, narrating the first-hand experience in four chapters. “Trials are not movies, shot under controlled conditions and subject to revision in the editing room,” he writes. “They are live productions, dependent on the chemistry of their participants, and not a little bit of luck.”
But books, which Weinstein was quite fond of, can be like movies. According to the New York Times, “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.”
Auletta is well-connected to everything and everyone – giving him opportunities to draw on other journalists’ work and on his own interviews with major players, including his many interesting hours spent with the beleaguered brother Bob. On the other hand, (Harvey) Weinstein emails incisive answers to Auletta’s questions and Weinstein’s representatives negotiate over possible interview conditions before ghosting the biographer. But that doesn’t matter, as Hollywood Ending also incorporates an extensive profile Auletta had written on Weinstein twenty years earlier. At the time, Auletta had heard of Weinstein’s sex crimes but was unable to get victims to speak with him for the profile; instead, the writer ended up focusing on Weinstein’s bullying and his vast appetites.
Weinstein’s reputation for sexual violations started early, when he was a concert promoter in Buffalo. As he got older, his influence – and the movie industry – waned just as he began searching for younger people to prey upon. His victims changed from a group of teens and twenty-somethings who spent their free time going to the movies to one that daily spent hours on social media.
Now in his sixties (2015), the producer lunged at Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, a 22-year-old Miss Italy finalist, causing her to call the police. This incident finally brought Weinstein to court.
After this shocking event, Auletta began to search for Miriam, the Weinstein brothers’ fiery-haired mother. Apparently, she also had a fiery temper, much fierier than her hair.
Bob, who somehow avoided growing up into a “beast,” as Harvey is repeatedly described here, allows for the possibility of his mother Miriam’s frustration at her life’s limitations. “‘She could have been Sheryl Sandberg or one of these C.E.O.s of a company. She had that kind of smarts,’” Bob Weinstein told Auletta. Instead, she proudly brought rugelach to her sons’ headquarters, and had an epitaph worthy of Dorothy Parker: “‘I don’t like the atmosphere or the crowd.’”
In view of Mr. Auletta’s journey to gather information for his new book and Harvey Weinstein’s drop from fame, readers can’t help but feel dispirited, like riding on that one creaky rollercoaster at that nearly- forgotten playland.
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/10/books/review-hollywood-ending-harvey-weinstein-ken-auletta.html
