Harvey Weinstein is phenomenally fucked. Former allies are running to the press in order to escape the growing sinkhole that is the Weinstein name. His own brother Bob–who’s been rumored to have fed the story to the New York Times in the first place (and vehemently denies)–has essentially disowned him in a brutal interview published this morning on the Hollywood Reporter.
Bob claims that his brother physically and verbally abused him, though he’s “not looking for one bit of sympathy from anyone.”
“I have a brother that’s indefensible and crazy,” he tells THR, and adds, “I want him to get the justice that he deserves.”
He goes on to beg fellow executives not to throw out the baby (himself) with the bathwater:
I know they’re saying “Shut this company down.” Well, they didn’t shut Fox News down, they didn’t shut NBC down. My brother is the one that should pay with everything. And I mean literally — whether it’s criminal or otherwise — I will be supportive of all of that. But I don’t think the people that are the employees of this company or the company itself should pay.
A source told Page Six early in the scandal that “Bob’s trying to take over and push Harvey out.” (Jezebel has reached out to the Weinstein Company about that allegation and has not heard back). If so, the plan has so far totally backfired since a third of the board has resigned, and today Amazon announced that it would be cancelling a Weinstein-produced show featuring Robert De Niro, Julianne Moore, and Michael Shannon; De Niro, Moore, and director David O. Russell released a joint statement saying they support the move. The two-season project was budgeted at $160 million, reports the Verge.
Bob says they’re working on a new name for the company.
Next is Lisa Bloom, who, after spending a week on the defensive against the haters on Twitter, is on a sorry-not-sorry tour explaining why she briefly agreed to represent Weinstein. The decision is a black mark for Bloom, who is known, like her mother Gloria Allred, for representing high-profile women who’d been sexually violated, like Janice Dickinson against Bill Cosby, an alleged Bill O’Reilly victim, and Black Chyna and Mischa Barton in revenge porn cases.
Coincidentally(?) Bloom was in the middle of a deal with Weinstein to turn her book on Trayvon Martin into a mini-series. In her initial statement two days before resigning, she’d described him as “refreshingly candid” and referred to him as “an old dinosaur learning new ways.” She then pivoted to say that she was not aware of the allegations of assault and rape when she took him on as a client and is now spinning this as what she considered an opportunity to work on the problem from inside.
In an interview with Buzzfeed News published on Saturday morning, she said she’d made a “colossal mistake.”
“I thought that would be a positive thing, but clearly it did not go over at all.”
No, it did not go over. Her mother is now representing one of Weinstein’s accusers.
Then there’s former Miramax executive Fabrizio Lombardo, who denied in an interview with the Guardian accusations of setting up Harvey Weinstein’s now infamous and widely-reported predatory meetings. Asia Argento has said that in 1997, Lombardo told her that he was taking her to a party, where instead, she alleges she was raped by Harvey Weinstein in his suite. Model Zoë Brock has insinuated that Lombardo was possibly part of Weinstein’s “pack of hyenas” who similarly enabled Weinstein to set up a one-on-one for a naked massage.
“Lombardo rejected the notion that any single man can enable another man’s sexual abuse of a woman by bringing the woman to an abuser’s hotel room,” writes the Guardian. Lombardo likens delivering women to the role of chauffeur or hotelier who watches the lady go to the room, but that’s not relevant, anyway, because “I did not hunt for him,” he said. “It is not my style … it is not my relationship with Weinstein.”
And on Thursday, longtime buddy Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former Disney Studios chairman, published an email he sent to Weinstein in response to a plea for help. Here’s an excerpt:
You have done terrible things to a number of women over a period of years. I cannot in any way say this is OK with me… It’s not at all, and I am sickened by it, angry with you and incredibly disappointed in you.
There appear to be two Harvey Weinsteins… one that I have known well, appreciated and admired and another that I have not known at all.
Apparently nobody knew Harvey Weinstein.
Capping off the worst week ever for Harvey Weinstein, CNN reports that the Motion Picture Academy is in the middle of a meeting right now, on Saturday, to consider kicking him out.
UPDATE 3:42 PM: The Writer’s Guild has issued a statement in support of Weinstein’s accusers:
The recent accusations of sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein have opened up important discussions in our community and among our Guild members about sexual harassment. The WGAW stands in solidarity with the women who have spoken out about the abuses they’ve suffered. We are well aware of the fact that writers can face these situations, too. We have to find solutions.
UPDATE 4:30 PM: Harvey Weinstein has been kicked out of the Academy. Their statement:
“The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Board of Governors has voted well in excess of the required two-thirds majority to immediately expel him from the academy. We do so not simply to separate ourselves from someone who does not merit the respect of his colleagues but also to send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over.”