January 4, 2020

"I want people to take responsibility and not just constantly point a finger at somebody else, saying, 'You’ve ruined my life.'... #MeToo is a witch-hunt."

"I really feel there were a lot of people, decent people, or mildly irritating people, who were getting hammered. That’s wrong. I don’t like mob mentality.... When you have power [like Harvey Weinstein], you don’t take responsibility for abusing others. You enjoy the power. That’s the way it works in reality.... [His victims] were ambitious adults.… There are many victims in Harvey’s life, and I feel sympathy for them, but then, Hollywood is full of very ambitious people who are adults and they make choices."

Said the director Terry Gilliam, quoted in "Terry Gilliam faces backlash after labeling #MeToo a 'witch-hunt'/Director told the Independent he was ‘tired, as a white male, of being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world’" (The Guardian).

Meanwhile, Harvey Weinstein himself answered some emailed questions from CNN:
"The past two years have been grueling and have presented me with a great opportunity for self-reflection," Weinstein wrote. "I realize now that I was consumed with my work, my company and my drive for success. This caused me to neglect my family, my relationships and to lash out at the people around me. I have been in rehab since October 2017, and have been involved in a 12-step program and meditation. I have learned to give up my need for control."...

Weinstein declined to answer if he felt empathy for his accusers. "While I do have many empathetic opinions regarding many people, I am following the advice of my lawyers on the eve of my trial to not offer any commentary on this," he responded....

"My meditation and focus on looking inward has helped me balance my emotions," Weinstein wrote. "The whole process has been overwhelming, but I am working every day to stay level."

93 comments:

Lucid-Ideas said...

https://www.zerohedge.com/health/former-sequoia-partner-wins-10-million-verdict-against-stripper-who-claimed-he-gave-her-std

What this has all been about from day one.

#himtoo

Big Mike said...

Gilliam is right, of course. I hope he will follow Rowling's lead and tell the mob demanding he retract what he said to bugger off.

Michael K said...

Lucid, good advice for Hunter Biden.

At the risk of sounding too simplistic and old fashioned, the moral of the story today seems to simply be: If you're rich, steer clear of starting long-term relationships with strippers.

rehajm said...

It wasn’t a witch hunt. It was a stage show to soften up the public to accept the rejection of Kavanaugh. Didn’t work, so now we have to fix up Harvey so he can help Hillary.

Not sure what Gilliam’s angle is. Maybe helping out countryman Ricky Gervais so his blue stuff doesn’t bomb at the Golden Globes. He should stick to whinging about Brexit.

daskol said...

Man, those Weinstein quotes. He’s learned nothing since his embarrassing attempt to deflect from his problems by promising to go after those evil gun-rights people. It’s quite pathetic because he’s clearly desperate to mount a comeback and that will not happen. It must be a lot nicer to be old and rich and self sufficient like Gilliam, who speaks his mind and damn the consequences. Loretta the BLT FTW.

rehajm said...

I mean, its not like feminists actually did anything with #MeToo. This thing was presented to them by _____ (?) and there were some tweets in agreement, but that was about it.

narciso said...

it happened before Kavanaugh, but as I've noted with my commentaries about 'catch and release' the standards for establishing sexual assault incidents is flexible,

Birkel said...

I'd bet his lawyers didn't give him the advice to split his infinitives.
/pedant

J. Farmer said...

I was just reading Terry Gilliam: ‘I’m tired of white men being blamed for everything wrong with the world’ on The Independent site before I popped back over here. I was puzzled at the line, "But his masterpiece is surely 1985’s Brazil," but then I recalled that that film was always much better received in the UK than in the US, where it's mostly just a cult film. I always thought the movie was a little too all-over-the-place, but it is a stunning film to look at, and it's clearly had a big influence on art design and cinematography. For my money, Gilliam's best movie was The Fisher King. Any director that could make Robin Williams palatable for over two hours is a talent.

rehajm said...

I thought of Brazil as well. I took a date to see it in the theater when it came out. We weren’t expecting much but we were kind of blown away. I rewatched last year and it has held up amazingly well. Thoroughly entertained...

Ken B said...

Some of Weinstein’s grope objects settled for cash. Rose McGowan took the cash and played along and did subsequent photo ops in revealing dresses with HW. Only when her looks and career faded did she make a fuss. She was not a victim, she was a collaborator, trading for cash and career.

narciso said...

well the adventures of baron munchausen, was tedious, brazil can be taken in small doses, time bandits was interesting,

mccullough said...

Weinstein had victims as well as ambitious opportunists.

But raping women and cornering other women to jerk off on them are crimes.

He’ll probably kill himself in prison. Like Epstein.



chickelit said...

#MeToo started out as a valiant and admirable effort to confront Weinstein but it devolved into just another cunning stunt to get Trump, as most recently demonstrated by Rose McGowan.

#QudEratDemonstrandum

/Latin spell check

Fernandinande said...

tired, as a white male, of being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world

#metoo. The process of that blaming by the government/MSM complex has been completely dishonest.

mccullough said...

Weinstein rapes Rose McGowan. Like most predators, he chooses his victims carefully. Mentally unstable women without strong males in their lives make good victims.

mccullough said...

Bill Cosby was also careful in choosing his victims.

J. Farmer said...

And back in 2011, when Rose McGowan was working on Rosewood Lane, directed by the convicted child rapist and pornographer Victor Salva, defended herself by saying that Salva's past sexual abuse was "not really my business." She later went on The View to promote her book and when pressed about the Salva comment, said she "accidentally worked with a pedophile." What a lying bitch.

Earnest Prole said...

I have learned to give up my need to control my employees' genitalia.

FullMoon said...

I will go out on a limb and imagine some of those abused by ol'Harve benefited financially. So, give him a break.

On the other hand, maybe some turned him down and got blackballed, so fuck him.

Big Mike said...

He’ll probably kill himself in prison. Like Epstein.

Except Epstein didn't kill himself.

FullMoon said...

Weinstein rapes Rose McGowan. Like most predators, he chooses his victims carefully. Mentally unstable women without strong males in their lives make good victims.

He pressure any unattractive women? Any not looking to get ahead in their carrers?


Rose ever trade favors with anyone else?

rhhardin said...

I'm amazed that people have accepted #MeToo as a moral truth at all. Moral cowards all over the place.

The movement belittles women more than anything.

Perhaps they're all hoping to be eaten last and to hell with what it says about women.

mccullough said...

McGowan says Weinstein raped her in the mid 90s. He paid her $100,000 in 1997.

Annabelle Sciorra says Weinstein rapes her in 1992.

They don’t accuse him of lack of consent through economic-career coercion.

Harvey is a scumbag. After he’s convicted, he’ll kill himself.

mccullough said...

How is Rape being turned into Pressure here?

Guy has been accused of rape, sexual assault (jerking off on a woman he cornered), economic pressure (blackball if they don’t blow or fuck him) and economic incentives (if you blow me I’ll help your career).

Let’s keep the categories separate.

Gilliam didn’t. But he’s a movie guy.

narciso said...

that's passed the statute of limitations, yes this loathsome harkonnen is probably guilty, will he be held accountable?

Carol said...

but it devolved into just another cunning stunt to get Trump,

That was my assumption all along. Boy did it backfire! LOL

rhhardin said...

The trouble is that women aren't psychologically stable. Anything to explain their own lack of happiness will be welcomed.

Instead of, say, learning how to get along with a man.

Ann Althouse said...

"For my money, Gilliam's best movie was The Fisher King. Any director that could make Robin Williams palatable for over two hours is a talent."

That's one of the movies on my list of movies that I saw in the theater at the time that I want to rewatch. Only one per year, so it means something to me.

Two-eyed Jack said...

I hope for a future where computers will be able to excise Robin Williams's many annoying performances in movies like "The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen," transfer them to outtakes at the end of "Mrs. Doubtfire," and reconstitute the worthy movies with bits of Michael Palin or Terry Jones.

rhhardin said...

I remember an office mate telling about a business trip he took with the local hottie. This was in the 70s when a man and a woman could take a trip together.

It was a turbulent flight and the woman felt sick. Didn't touch her airline meal.

Office mate saw his opportunity and took it. "You gonna eat that?"

DavidUW said...

reason #1millionty why I focus on non USA women.

Shouting Thomas said...

Decades after this BS goes away, actors and actresses will still be whores.

Musicians too.

Whores bitching about whoring is a bore. Learn to be a good whore, spoiled children.

rhhardin said...

Why does man kill? He kills for food. Frequently there must be beverage. - Woody Allen

Shouting Thomas said...

The world will not be a better place with the triumph of feminism and this phony attempt to turn whores in artistes.

The traditional method of whoring is far more interesting and produces far better work. There’s nothing to take its place, except maybe to turn the whoring over to virtual reality manufactured avatars.

Feminism is a block headed bore.

chickelit said...

Rose McGowan -- in today's apologia for "the tweet" -- blames her family for making her political. I am a lot of things: some bad, some good, but I never think to blame my parents for my faults.

Lucid-Ideas said...

@rhhardin

Go see "Belittle Women" at a theater near you.

The real moral of #metoo is anything less than 100% control of a situation with a woman should be bailed on. This has hurt women severely. Take the Pence approach. Complete caution and documentation. And most of all, do not provide women the assistance for anything that feminist Doctrine demands they should be able to do themselves. No more Captain Save-A-Ho.

Lucid-Ideas said...

Also. Never forget Crystal Mangum or Asia Argento. A lot of people have speculated that Anthony Bourdain killed himself after seeing pictures of her Snogging with her personal trainer in Paris.

But then again she's a witch with sex magic and wicca tats...

Bay Area Guy said...

"I have been in rehab since October 2017, and have been involved in a 12-step program and meditation."

It's good to know that rehab and meditation can help out if ever you get the irresistible urge to wack off in potted plants.

J. Farmer said...

A lot of people have speculated that Anthony Bourdain killed himself after seeing pictures of her Snogging with her personal trainer in Paris.

Bourdain also payed the hush money to Jimmy Bennett, whom Argento had sex with in 2013 when he was 17 and she 38.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Shorter Gilliam — “I was on board when #MeToo targeted OTHER men , but now they’ve gone too far!”

tcrosse said...

What's the difference between #metoo and Rose McGowan?

One's a cunning stunt.

J. Farmer said...

If one really wanted to crusade against Hollywood sex abuse, a good target would be the throngs of predatory, pederastic gay men who prey on young boys.

Shouting Thomas said...

Althouse, when are you going to tackle gay men and acting?

Talk about the most extravagant, wild whoring imaginable.

Pimping and whoring is what theater, movies and acting are about. That’s what makes it interesting.

My favorite movie is Unforgiven. Watch it a dozen times until you get the message. It’s all about whoring and pimping and the delusions of those who think they’re going to rescue the whores from the pimps.

Shouting Thomas said...

@J. Farmer

It’s difficult, in the milieu of gay men and acting, to tell who’s the predator and who’s the prey. Those roles keep shifting.

Howard said...

Has #metoo actually negatively impacted any of you people. It seems like only pubic figures are getting nailed. It just seems to be over inflated fake news to me.

whitney said...

Terry Gilliam just finished his Don Quixote movie that he's been working on for literally like 30 years. There's a great movie about him failing to make it decades ago called Lost in La Mancha I recommend it.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Weinstein rapes Rose McGowan. Like most predators, he chooses his victims carefully. Mentally unstable women without strong males in their lives make good victims.”

A lot of it is BS. The women knew, or should have known, what they were getting into.

My partner danced and modeled through college (her degree is in dance). Her mother was a choreographer in Las Vegas. So, at maybe 15, my partner was thinking about dancing on the Strip. Her mother, working in the industry, was able to get her an interview with a producer. After she danced for him, he told her that she danced well, but now he needed a bit of T&A. That was it for her idea of dancing in Vegas (her mother set the whole thing up, of course). And was part of why she referred to let her modeling agency move her to NYC. Both careers for women essentially required that they put out. The exceptions were the women whose families were already in the business (Carey Fischer, Drew Barrymore, Liza Minnelli, etc for acting). And, in reality, my partner probably could have danced in Las Vegas, with none of the producers in town wanting to face the consequences of raping her mother’s daughter.

Another part of growing up in Las Vegas was seeing that a lot of women flock to famous and/or powerful men. And a surprising number seem to compete to see who can sleep with the largest number of them. She did floral design at one of the biggest hotels and got propositioned by famous and/or powerful men on an almost daily basis. Their favorite pickup line was “do you know who I am?” Her inevitable response was “no, and I don’t want to”. The only two real gentlemen she remembers meeting during that time were Elvis and (yes) Bill Cosby. The rest just assumed that she would want to have sex with them, because most of the attractive young women they met there wanted just that. When Trump said that famous men, like him, could just grab women by the crotch, her response was that that was an understatement, and that it was the rich and famous guys who risked being grabbed by the crotch, and not the other way around.

A lot of women from time immemorial have traded sex for male resources. Which of course is why prostitution is considered the oldest profession for women. Few of these women were naive and stupid enough to make themselves available to powerful men like HW, without understanding the quid pro quo involved. Thanks to her mother, my partner learned this at 15. There was absolutely nothing that they had to discuss upstairs in the guy’s room that they couldn’t have discussed downstairs in the lobby or the bar.

So, yes, living with my partner’s cynicism, I don’t have a lot of sympathy with a lot of these #MeToo women.

Shouting Thomas said...

@Howard

No. In my personal and work life, nobody cares.

And they still want to see movies and hear music about and by whores and pimps.

Their jobs are plenty boring. Why would they go to movies or listen to music to be drenched in this dreary, boring shit?

This #meToo shit is a clerical job at the DMV.

Lucid-Ideas said...

@Howard

Howard,

If you don't think that the Rolling Stone rape article damaged A) men and B) sex relations in this country severely I take back everything nice I ever said about you, which is nothing.

American women are so bad I stopped dating them. I'd call that an effect.

FullMoon said...

Attractive woman answers ad for office assistant.

Boss Man looks over resume, says: "Looks good, job pays One hundred dollars an hour. But, in all honesty, your appearance is distracting, I would spend hours fantasizing about having sex with you. If we could get the sex out of the way, you have the job".

Hesitant, she thinks it over, weighs positives/negatives and agrees to have sex with him.

They have sex, he gives her a hundred dollar bill; "You're fired"

n.n said...

#MeToo is a witch hunt and warlock trial. However, superior exploitation and trans-social orientations (e.g. employees with benefits) harms both women and men.

dreams said...

Good for Terry Gilliam, it takes courage(apparently)to stand up to the liberal mob, the arrogant and ignorant liberal mob.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dreams said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dreams said...

"For my money, Gilliam's best movie was The Fisher King. Any director that could make Robin Williams palatable for over two hours is a talent."

I never liked Robin Williams.

readering said...

Here's where I come to read sexual predator fan mail.

mccullough said...

Bruce,

Bill Cosby drugged women so he could rape them.

Perhaps your girlfriend is just a bad judge of character.

mccullough said...

Gilliam is an old man. He’s not standing up to anything. His career has been over a long time.

J. Farmer said...

@Shouting Thomas:

@J. Farmer

It’s difficult, in the milieu of gay men and acting, to tell who’s the predator and who’s the prey. Those roles keep shifting.


That's what age of consent laws are for. But in Salva's case, I'd say we can all agree that videotaping yourself sucking off a 12-year-old counts as predatory behavior.

Shouting Thomas said...

Since the days of the ancient Greeks (and probably before) the role of theater has been, once the lights were turned down, to transport the audience into the underworld of dreams, primal ambitions and drives, and the mythical gods and goddesses.

#meToo is destined to fail because nobody wants to go to the theater or the movies to watch civil service workers deliver a PowerPoint on moral improvement.

J. Farmer said...

@dreams:

I never liked Robin Williams.

He could certainly be an annoying, histrionic motormouth. But when Williams was held in check, I thought he was a pretty talented guy. On the other hand, he had a penchant for making maudlin, cloying crap, too. I remember storming out of Patch Adams in the late 1990s while on a date.

readering said...

Pretty sure ancient Greek theater performed in daylight.

mccullough said...

Patch Adams was awful.

Robin Williams had a small role in Dead Again and he was good in it.

I agree he was talented. He would have been a great character actor if he stuck to smaller roles on the screen.

I liked his earlier stand up in parts. But he seemed like too much of a Cokehead at times.

Michael K said...

Robin Williams had a small role in Dead Again and he was good in it.

He was terrific but, like many comedians, he was good in a non-comedic part. He was also good in "Good Will Hunting" although I was not a fan of the movie.

Michael K said...

So, yes, living with my partner’s cynicism, I don’t have a lot of sympathy with a lot of these #MeToo women.

The only Cosby complainer I wonder at is the lesbian coach. The rest sounds like Hollywood for 50 years.

Bill Peschel said...

Rather like "Twelve Monkeys" too.

All in all, I admire Gilliam and the rest of the Pythons. If you check out "Monty Python: The Case Against," you'll see they've had to put up with a lot of stupid attempts to censor them.

Of course, now free speech is horrible, and even Cleese (and Ralph Stedman, of all people) has said they looked at what they helped to unleash in dismay. They wanted to poke fun at the Establishment, not destroy it, because we're living with the consequences.

J. Farmer said...

Robin Williams had a small role in Dead Again and he was good in it.

Thanks for the head's up. I haven't seen that movie in years, and I think it deserves a rewatching. I'm a sucker for neo-noir.

MAJMike said...

@ Bruce Hayden:

I'd say your partner is a keeper. Hope she makes an honest man of you.

J. Farmer said...

@Bill Peschel:

Rather like "Twelve Monkeys" too.

It took me a while to warm to that movie. When I first saw it, I remember thinking Brad Pitt's acting was way over-the-top, and I thought he was distracting every time he was on screen.

narciso said...

Ah yes twelve monkeys the series fleshed out the stories.

n.n said...

One's a cunning stunt.

Clever.

They have sex, he gives her a hundred dollar bill; "You're fired"

Brutal. Will a hundred dollars cover an "exoneration", treatment of "benefits", and long-term collateral damage?

Seeing Red said...

I thought they discovered the Great Barrier Reef was 25% larger than they thought?

Howard said...

Dead Calm was pretty good too

J. Farmer said...

@Howard:

Dead Calm was pretty good too

I liked that movie a lot, and I'm pretty sure it was the first time I ever saw Nicole Kidman. But it always bugged me the way the story had the husband, suspicious of the castaway from the start, left the character alone with his wife while he went to investigate.

FullMoon said...

I remember storming out of Patch Adams in the late 1990s while on a date.

Storming, eh?
Storming out requires refund demandation.

narciso said...

That was the producer who later wrote i pilgrim

William said...

In every place I ever worked, somebody was fooling around with somebody, but I never heard of a business where rape and coercive sex were as commonplace as they were in show business and broadcast journalism. Bernie Madoff has his detractors, but he didn't rape any of the women in the steno pool. So far as I know, the guys at Enron treated the female employees there respectfully.....I think poorly of Harvey Weinstein but have a much lower opinion of the industry in which he prospered.. Clearly he assaulted some women and blackballed others. Clearly some women were willing to play the game with him. How can a man get away with what he did for decades. He was abusing women with millions, influential connections, their own lawyers and publicists. There's something pervasively rotten not just about Harvey Weinstein but about the industry he worked in.....What's truly discouraging is that no one in Hollywood realizes how bad this makes them look. Not just Harvey, but all the people who participated in his projects and looked the other way. And still they prattle on with noble causes and deeply humble acceptance speeches.

Sebastian said...

"Hollywood is full of very ambitious people who are adults and they make choices"

Right, and now ambitious women choose to use regret as their next power move, abetted by progs who are happy to use "crowd mentality" when it suits them. Being a female adult in Hollywood and a few other precincts means not having to take responsibility for your previous choices.

Anyway, Weinstein made the mistake of betting on a loser. So did Brennan, Comey, McCabe et al., but at least they had an insurance policy. Weinstein just became dispensable prey.

Sebastian said...

"What's truly discouraging is that no one in Hollywood realizes how bad this makes them look."

The people who cheered anal child rapist Roman Polanski have no such scruples.

tommyesq said...

The only two real gentlemen she remembers meeting during that time were Elvis and (yes) Bill Cosby. The rest just assumed that she would want to have sex with them, because most of the attractive young women they met there wanted just that.

Cosby apparently assumed women did not want to have sex with him, hence the mickey in their drinks.

J. Farmer said...

@Full Moon:

Storming, eh?
Storming out requires refund demandation.


Nah, I'm not a "can I speak to your manager" kind of guy. It was a scene late in the film where a suicidal, guilt-ridden Patch Adams is reassured of life by the sight of a butterfly. I threw my hands up in the air and shouted, "Oh, please!" Turned to my date and said, "I'm outta here."

narciso said...

I almost walked out of strange days.

J. Farmer said...

I almost walked out of strange days.

I never saw it in theaters, but I loved Strange Days. It's a great piece of 90's cyberpunk, and I think Kathryn Bigelow is a major talent.

Temujin said...

Loved all of his movies except Fisher King and Fear & Loathing (which was a great book, horrible movie). But mainly I loved Gilliam from his Python days. He's right in this case.

narciso said...

I didnt mind the cyber punk elements mostly juliette lewiss freak show

J. Farmer said...

@Temujin:

Loved all of his movies except Fisher King and Fear & Loathing (which was a great book, horrible movie). But mainly I loved Gilliam from his Python days. He's right in this case.

Agree with you on Fear & Loathing. I hated the movie and Johnny Depp's portrayal, though I did like Benicio del Torro. There was an earlier attempt fictionalize Thompson's life in the 1980s Bill Murray movie Where the Buffalo Roam. It's also pretty bad, but I think is worth seeing for Murray's performance. There's also a Bruce Kirby cameo portraying a fictionalized Jann Wenner.

J. Farmer said...

*Bruno Kirby

wildswan said...

I think Weinstein carried a bad trend to its extreme and there were consequences beyond him personally falling into disrepute. Movies fell step by step with him and aren't very good anymore. The decline began when people like Weinstein were only letting women who would do anything for him, do anything in motion pictures. And everyone around had to allow abuse and rape. How could people in that mess make a picture about a decent person living a decent life and some sort of interesting situation? All you could imagine could only be reruns, remakes and what titillates the decadent. And now someone who's thrown away his talent after one movie, wants the women to shut up and get abused or raped quietly again so his friends can pretend to make real movies again. Why? It isn't about making good movies, they aren't making them any more. And if it's about power and ambitious people, why shouldn't women lie and ruin lives? If there's a right and wrong, that's wrong. If not, not.

Ray - SoCal said...

Reading from time to time Crazy Days and Nights has been eye opening on the corruption in Hollywood and the Entertainment Industry. From cheating on spouses, beards (secretly gay pretending to be straight), casting couch, Pedophilia, to extensive Drug Use. Even if 90% of it is exaggerations, it is not a healthy place.

A simple test I do for an actress, is put her name in and the word nude, and see what comes up. My gut feel is a LOT of actors and actresses got their position through the casting couch. And part of that is the requirement forF FFeNude Scenes, that usually add nothing to the story.

And this goes back to Farmer's comment on pedophiles, this seemed to be business as usual in the Entertainment Industry:

WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Mother of Sexually Abused Boy Bander Breaks Her Silence, Implicates Disney, CAA, Hollywood Records, LAPD, DA & Industry Elite in Pedophile Ring & Cover-up

What is frustrating, is how the common person is abused by the Me Too. My view is if it is a She said, he said situation, the he loses. And if it's proven the she lied, there is little to no cost. So as a guy, you need to be paranoid to make sure you are not in a dangerous situation. Such as having a 1 on 1 meeting with any female you are not related too. The Mike Pence Rule is what a Male needs to do to protect from false accusations.

FullMoon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
daskol said...

wildswan, Weinstein is a pig and likely a rapist, but he made and otherwise had a hand or a dollar in many quality movies, more so than anyone of his era.

TerriW said...

Speaking of Robin Williams, he was also particularly good in One Hour Photo. (It lasts just a few seconds, but the bathroom scene was extremely effective for creepy.) Also Nolan's Insomnia.