Well, maybe I do have something more to post about the Harvey Weinstein matter. The same wishes-to-be-anonymous person who sent me this question just sent me this question…
In your most informative reply, you said you've known a lot of actresses who endured harassment like Weinstein is reported to have committed and that your friends did not want to report it. Could you elaborate on this? I've never been in a situation like that. I think I would report it no matter what the personal cost. I still don't understand why someone wouldn't.
Generally, it's because of some combination of two beliefs. One is that they don't expect it to do much good. The other is that they expect that what they will endure if they do report the incident will be as bad or worse than the incident. And I suppose also some people deal with traumatic situations by just trying to put them in the past and forget about them.
Here's a true tale not about a producer with the power of a Harvey Weinstein but about one who was producing low-budget B-grade movies. (Actually, "B-grade" is too high. His were more like "W" — non-union pics made on a soup kitchen budget with the kinds of sex 'n' violence that earn you an "R" rating.) I could call him all sorts of names but for now, I will just call him The Producer. His victim in this incident was a lady I dated briefly in the mid-eighties when I was around 34 and she was around 25.
She had been in a number of such movies and was called in to audition for a large role in one that was then called "Dark Forces." It seems to never actually have come out and certainly not under that name. She told me once that every film she'd done had a classy title when she'd been cast and maybe even all the time the film was in production. But when they were released, they all seemed to be retitled "Cheerleaders Taking Showers" or something like that. She wasn't wild about such parts and she occasionally managed to get something where she was covered by clothing and/or the production was covered by the Screen Actors Guild…but most of the jobs available to her were on things like what The Producer was producing.
She showed up at an office on Sunset Boulevard near San Vicente. In the casting session were The Producer and several staff members — about five people, two of them female. She read a few scenes with one of the men and took some direction from The Producer. No one seemed to be present who had the title of Director but that was not uncommon and The Producer said that they were still in talks with a couple of directors. If none of those worked out, he said, he might direct the film himself.
After she read some scenes and answered some questions, one of the women there told her that since the role involved nudity, she would have to disrobe for them. This was not unexpected — it was clear in the script she'd been sent — and she'd done such scenes in other films. She had no problem with that. She did have a problem with what happened next.
She was told she could go into the bathroom and strip down to her panties, then come out. The bathroom was around a little corner in the room they were in. She went into it, took off everything but her briefs and came out. She later told me that she thought the room's layout had been designed with what then happened in mind. Because she had to then come around the corner, the bathroom door would swing shut behind her — it closed automatically — before she stepped back into the main room. When she did step back into the main room, she found that everyone had left except The Producer. And — surprise, surprise — he had no pants on.
She ran back to the bathroom. The door had locked behind her with her clothing inside.
She struggled with the door. Behind her, she could hear The Producer saying things like, "Come on. Everyone does this. You've been around. You know how this works." She told me she said, "Not with me it doesn't."
The Producer was stalking about, nude from the waist down. She eluded him, ran out of the room, found an empty office nearby and locked herself in it. There was a phone so she quickly dialed the first phone number she could think of for someone who lived fairly close by and was likely to be home. That was mine. She blurted out where she was, what had happened and who was pursuing her. I said, "I'm going to call the police" but she said, "No, please don't. That would make things worse. Just come and get me." I figured that was her call to make so I grabbed up something she could wear, hopped in my car and was there in ten minutes.
I found her outside, fully-dressed and crying. One of the ladies who'd been in the casting session — the one who'd told her to go take her clothes off — had knocked on the door and told her her clothes were outside and she could take them and get out. She did, in a hurry. I took her someplace where we could talk and she calmed down and told me that while this was the worst such experience she'd had, it was not the first such experience she'd had.
She absolutely resisted the idea of going to the cops. She knew women who in similar situations had done that and it made things worse. "You get treated like a whore because you've done nudity. They'll say, 'You went to his office. You took your clothes off. Why the hell didn't you think that might happen?' If it's going to go to court, they'll investigate me and my sex life and twist it all to make me look like a whore, plus I'll have to see that bastard again and he'll have some bullshit story about how I offered to have sex with him. The best thing for me to do is just forget about it. I got past the last few times and I can get past this."
And she did…which does not mean it was not a shitty thing to do to another human being. (And I don't just mean what The Producer did. How about that lady who worked for him? How about everyone else in that room who cleared out on cue? How proud would you be if your job description included being an enabler of rape?)
Sadly, I've heard a lot of these stories from women I've known, sometimes involving predators with fame, fortune and sterling reputations. Most of the details were different but they all had this in common: Someone who had power thought they could use it to force someone to do something they didn't want to do, usually of a sexual nature. I do not understand how a putative human being could do that to someone.
Hell, I don't even understand how anyone could enjoy physical contact on that basis. To me, the best part of consensual sex is the consensual part. Out of sheer curiosity, I would love to hear Bill Cosby explain why sex is better when the woman is unconscious and has no say in what you do to her.
Getting back to the lady who had that ugly encounter with The Producer: We've stayed friends. She's no longer acting. She's happily married with a family. I called her last night to tell her I wanted to post this story — minus her name, of course — and she was not only fine with it, she encouraged me. "My daughter's taking up acting," she said. "The more Harvey Weinsteins who learn that they can't get away with this kind of crap, the better it will be for my daughter and everyone!"
