1
[ distant voices chatter ]
ERIKA ROSENBAUM: I went with no plan,
no agent, very little money.
I went on a hope and a dream, um,
from smalltown Quebec,
to, um, to Hollywood.
When you're a young actor,
you hear stories all the time
about people just sort of
putting it all on the line
and taking the big chance
and going out to Hollywood
and, and then it happening.
KEN AULETTA: Oh my God, how many people
know the story of Lana Turner
working in a drugstore,
or Ava Gardner coming up from the South,
you know, being spotted
and suddenly they're stars?
If you're Harvey and you're a fat kid
from Queens,
suddenly with power,
I don't have to imagine looking up
at Lana Turner and Ava Gardner.
Maybe I could... have sex with them.
RONAN FARROW: He was able to use
his power to exploit women's dreams,
and that's a powerful thing.
ROSENBAUM:
When this powerhouse came into my life,
I believed that I was seeing
the star maker.
I thought, maybe this is it,
maybe this is my moment,
maybe this is my "in."
You hear that this happens, right?
So I thought it was happening for me.
[ cars whooshing ]
[ whooshing continuing ]
[ radio stations changing ]
NEWSMAN [ over radio ]:
The Hollywood powerhouse
behind some of
the world's most famous films,
now Harvey Weinstein is apologizing.
NEWSWOMAN:
It comes as The New York Times
details numerous accusations
going back three decades.
NEWSWOMAN 2: The report details
allegations of sexual harassment
by a number of women, including employees
and some very highprofile actresses.
NEWSWOMAN 3:
Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie,
uh, the list of accusers
continues to grow.
NEWSWOMAN:
This just in and it's quite disturbing,
another bombshell
in the Harvey Weinstein story.
NEWSMAN: Three more women are now
accusing Harvey Weinstein of raping them.
NEWSWOMAN: ...who are among nearly 80
who have accused Weinstein of misconduct.
[ indistinct police radio chatter ]
[ helicopter whirring overhead ]
NEWSWOMAN: Well, as you can see
behind me, Harvey Weinstein
won't be able to escape the spotlight
when he turns himself in
not far from his Tribeca office
where he ran his media empire.
NEWSMAN:
These accusations span over his career.
How did he get away with it for so long?
MAN:
Right here, right here. Good, good, good.
NEWSMAN: What took you so long
to surrender, Harvey?
[ reporters shouting questions ]
NEWSMAN 2: Mr. Weinstein,
this must be very humiliating for you.
NEWSWOMAN: It was not the type of
paparazzi Harvey Weinstein is used to.
Weinstein has repeatedly
denied the charges against him.
MAN:
Down in front!
[ crowd shouting indistinctly ]
Mr. Weinstein intends to enter
a plea of not guilty.
We intend to move very quickly
to dismiss, uh, these charges.
We believe that they are
constitutionally flawed.
We believe that they are not
factually supported by the evidence,
and we believe that,
at the end of the process,
Mr. Weinstein will be exonerated.
NEWSMAN: Does he maintain that
these relationships were consensual?
Mr. Weinstein has always maintained
that any sexual activity
he engaged in was consensual.
Thank you very much.
[ reporters shouting questions ]
HOPE D'AMORE:
He really thinks he's telling the truth
when he says he hasn't had
unconsensual sex.
If he gets what he wanted...
no matter what it is,
it doesn't take matter what it takes
to get there, it doesn't matter.
"If I get what I want, it was consensual."
I think he believed that.
D'AMORE: I was a student
at the University of Buffalo.
I was studying psychology and philosophy.
Someone I knew from college called me
and said, "Fleetwood Mac
is going to be here,"
you know, about the... this concert,
and, uh, "How would you
like to work backstage?"
[ bell clanging ]
Buffalo was a huge stop on concert tours.
Harvey was the biggest promoter in town,
so, you had an album, uh,
you were going to deal with Harvey.
MICKEY OSTERREICHER: I first met him
at the University of Buffalo.
I was working as a photo editor
of the school newspaper.
And then as I started
to shoot pictures for them,
I realized that they were really doing
very well and going places.
[ distant audience applauding ]
DEBORAH SLATER: Harvey was the talent,
Corky was the business.
Harvey wanted to be known by everybody,
to have the control and the fame.
It was just that persona
of "never take no for an answer."
And that was absolutely his way,
it was "never take no for an answer."
[ rhythmic applause ]
[ crowd cheering ]
D'AMORE: The first time I met Harvey
was at the concert backstage.
Everyone was very busy
doing different things on phones.
I remember him looking at me.
Um, I smiled at him, I'm sure.
Right from the beginning,
he was a very charming guy.
You know, he would look at you
when he spoke to you with great sincerity.
Not someone I I would ever
have found attractive physically,
but very attractive in the sense
that he was a charming person.
[ distant audience applauding ]
He said, "What do you like doing?"
I said, "I love the movies."
And he said, "Well, you know,
my brother Bob and I
"are getting in that business
and we're just starting,
but if you come to work here,
it might be interesting for you."
He told me about Miramax. Uh...
He told me that they were going
to form a company.
He was naming it for his parents,
Miriam and Max Weinstein,
and that was what he wanted to do,
not concert promotion.
His interest was genuine,
and his knowledge was genuine.
I love it when I meet people
who just love what they do.
And to get paid to do something
you're interested in?
SLATER: Harvey always had aspirations
of moving along.
You knew that his aspirations
for success for the films
that he really dreamed of making
weren't going to keep him in Buffalo.
[ distant sirens wailing ]
[ horns honk ]
D'AMORE:
He was going to go to New York
to talk to someone about a film
they were trying to distribute.
He said, "Why don't you come?"
I said, "Sure." I mean, I jumped at it.
We stayed at a hotel by Central Park.
I was standing in the lobby.
It was, you know, kind of, "You wait
with the bags, I'll go and check us in."
He said, "Well, there was a mistake.
There's only one room."
And I just, you know,
gave him a look and I said,
"Well, then you're going
to have to sleep on the chair."
It didn't seem so
I mean, that seemed like
a real move, um, on his part,
but, you know, the worst I might
have thought he would do
would, would be to claim that
he slept with me when he hadn't.
I could live with that.
Um...
I put on a Tshirt and some shorts
or something to sleep in,
and I went to bed.
Suddenly, Harvey gets into bed naked,
next to me.
And I said, you know, something,
you know, just, "Harvey..."
and I just pushed him away.
You know he...
he tries to cajole at first.
"Do you really want to make me an enemy,
for five minutes of your time?"
I mean...
He just, um...
He just pushed and pushed and...
And then he just, you know, he's huge.
I weigh about a hundred pounds,
probably weighed about 110 then.
Maybe...
I don't know how to explain it.
I just, I just...
thought, if I just shut up...
it will be over in a few minutes.
I didn't want anything from him.
I didn't hit him.
I didn't try to scratch his eyes out.
[ voice breaking ]:
But I said no, and I pushed him away...
more than once.
And then I just stopped.
[ sobs softly ]
I was so frightened.
I went back to Buffalo.
I didn't tell anybody.
I knew, he used to say
he owned the cops in Buffalo,
because they worked concerts,
they worked security
when they were off duty.
You know, he had influence.
He had a lot of money.
Um, he did a lot of advertising
in newspapers.
Nobody would have believed
anything I said.
I wasn't going to go to anybody
and complain about that.
[ sobs softly ]
I mean, it's the,
it's the collateral damage
that, you know,
what it does to relationships,
with friends, people you love.
And they don't know why.
That's...
I, you know, it...
It just, he
It steals something.
HARVEY WEINSTEIN:
I never liked the music industry.
I never liked promoting concerts
or any of that.
But I always talked about film
from the beginning.
Throughout the course of my career,
and the early beginnings of it,
people would always say
to abandon your dream.
[ siren wailing ]
Not to do it, it's not going to happen,
it's impossible.
You have to believe in yourself.
You have to be somewhat tenacious,
and you really have to have a conviction.
JACK LECHNER:
I remember meeting him and thinking,
this person can't exist.
He's just such a caricature
of a Hollywood mogul
that hasn't been around for decades.
I remember as a kid reading about moguls
like Harry Cohn and Louis B. Mayer
and thinking it would have been so amazing
to work for one of those people.
And then, as it happens, I found myself
working for one of those people.
JOHN SCHMIDT: I went over to Miramax
for the job interview
to be the chief financial officer.
I spent 30 minutes with Bob.
And then all of a sudden the door
swings open and Harvey walks in,
and he goes, "Who's this?"
And Bob goes, "This is Schmidt.
We're interviewing for the CFO job."
And he looks at me
and he goes, "You're hired."
I liked the fact that,
both with Bob and Harvey,
you could literally just walk
into their office with an idea.
And if either of them thought
it was a good idea,
you would find yourself doing it.
"Go figure it out, make it happen."
That was exciting.
[ indistinct chatter ]
BOB WEINSTEIN: To get a film either
financed here or acquired at Miramax,
it's really a case of me and my brother
being the final decision maker.
We've picked up so many films
and, you know, financed so many pictures
based on his approval,
my approval, and that was it.
There was no three weeks,
"Hold on, we've got to go
up through the corporate board meeting."
That's what we like.
HARVEY: At Miramax, we're not under
that corporate pressure to say,
"Jesus, we've got to go up each year,"
so we can do what we think is good,
and if our profits are lower next year
than they were the year before, so what?
So what, as long as we did good work?
LECHNER: His sense of marketing
and promotion was just phenomenal.
He was able to do things
that no one else was able to do
because he was working
with extraordinary people
on extraordinary projects.
He was brilliant.
MARK GILL:
The movies were extraordinary,
the opportunities to make them
were extraordinary,
and for a time there, Miramax
was one of the very few doing it.
And changing the way one thought
about independent cinema
and the stories it could tell
and how many people they could reach.
And that was an extraordinary thing
to be a part of.
We were the shit then.
Excuse my French. [ chuckles ]
I mean, we were.
And it was great.
One evening...
it must have been
one of Harvey's assistants said,
"On your way into work in the morning,
come to the screening room."
[ tone beeping ]
Lights go down, it's Cinema Paradiso.
The end of the film when the little boy
becomes the old man
and he's sitting in the theater, watching
these old blackandwhite films...
that really moved all of us.
Lights go up, there wasn't a dry eye.
Harvey came down one aisle,
Bob came down another,
and they both looked at us
and said, "What do you think?"
"What do you mean
what do we think, look at our faces.
You have to have this movie."
And they acquired it.
Huge turning point,
because it came around the same time
as Sex, Lies, and Videotape,
My Left Foot, Cinema Paradiso.
Those were the three that really
changed everything for us.
SCHMIDT: In a way, all three films
demonstrate the brashness,
the confidence, the risktaking, um,
many of the things that,
that distinguishes Miramax
and distinguished Harvey and Bob
at the beginning.
[ cars whooshing ]
HARVEY: I could do what the studios do
all day long in my sleep,
and my staff could too.
The Miramax charter was always
to make something new and different,
almost like Star Trek , to boldly go
where no one had gone before.
I'm gonna tell you the secret of Miramax.
It's not marketing,
not corporate politics,
it's the written word.
NEWSWOMAN:
It seems an odd coupling.
Disney the makers of Aladdin,
Huck Finn, and Beauty and the Beast
has bought Miramax.
There's no question that Miramax
has been on an extraordinary roll.
It's having, you know, the autonomy
to make our kind of movies
and to have their kind of resources.
LECHNER: The success
caused Disney to buy Miramax.
Disney was just about invisible.
The amount of freedom that Harvey
and Bob had was unparalleled.
And the theory about that was,
"They know how to do something
we don't know how to do,
we should just let them do it."
In some ways that was the best time
for Harvey and Bob creatively
because they could gamble
with someone else's money,
and gambling was what they were good at.
Harvey at his best was charming,
funny and amazing at what he did.
Harvey at his worst was a monster
that you wouldn't want to cross.
You had an overlord who lived
by the most vicious methods possible
in order to instill fear.
I mean, we've all had tough bosses,
right, in the business from time to time,
but over time, this became
something worse than that.
In a lot of ways,
he was tougher on the guys.
I've ducked from a couple of ashtrays
being thrown at me,
one of them that probably weighed
five pounds, made out of marble.
If you were, uh, in his way,
uh, it didn't matter,
he was, you know,
an equal opportunity abuser.
Miramax broke a ton of people.
Harvey broke a ton of people.
It's just how it was.
You either dealt with it or you left.
Miramax was built on its energy
and its, you know,
its, um...
you know, its breaking of the rules.
And, you know, that's okay
when you're doing it
in a professional
and respectful manner
you're breaking the rules in an industry
or, you know, disrupting an industry
but it's not okay when it's, you know,
when it's, uh, harassment,
and harassment was, uh,
was all over the place.
DECLESIS: We sort of knew
that Harvey was cheating on his wife,
but I think we thought
that that was all that was going on,
until a little time went past.
A young woman,
who was a friend of mine,
who I had introduced to the company,
very smart, very capable,
uh, against quite a bit of competition,
she landed a job.
One day this particular assistant
just stopped coming to work.
And I didn't know why.
So I went and talked to the people
that I shared her with,
the other department.
And they kind of gave me
this very whispered story
of what sort of kind of
might have happened.
She had been delivering
a script to Harvey
at his, uh, his apartment, I guess,
in New York,
and there was, um, you know,
there was a very, um, um, you know,
a very bad, uh, incident.
DECLESIS: One of the many things I did
for Bob on a daily basis
was open his mail,
and it was not unusual for us
to get letters from law firms.
We got letters from law firms
all the time.
This particular letter
was not one of those letters.
This was a letter stating that
"We intend to file suit against Harvey
for sexual assault."
And I sat there and read it,
the whole thing,
over and over, three or four times,
until I really...
I got good and angry.
You have a choice to make, I guess.
I had a choice to make.
You either swallow it, ignore it.
I'm not that person, I can't do that.
So I walked in and I gave him mail,
other mail that he had
to have dealt with,
it was mail that he had to deal with.
And at the end, I handed him the envelope
from the attorney's office and said,
"And this came too."
SCHMIDT: The young woman signed
a nondisclosure agreement.
There was a cash settlement.
It had all happened quickly,
in a matter of two or three days.
DECLESIS:
I left very shortly thereafter.
As I walked out of Bob's office,
I pointed my finger at him and I said,
"I quit, and your brother is
a fucking pig."
You know, as I look back, I, you know,
I can't quite reconcile, you know, myself
to just not up and quitting
when my friend was abused by him.
You know, um, sexually abused.
Um, so I live with that, for sure.
ZELDA PERKINS: This is me
at my first Cannes Film Festival,
looking slightly bemused.
Harvey and I on a yacht.
Me in the office looking about 12.
That's quite shortly before I left.
When Harvey came to the UK,
you'd be with him at the Savoy,
where he conducted all his business.
As an assistant, you had to go
and get him up in the morning,
which meant there'd usually be
a tussle at the bedside.
Um, you know, he showered.
He expected you to go...
be around when he was naked.
He very quickly tried to normalize
the situation
and just told me I had to get with it
and not be such a prissy,
and that he didn't have time to worry
about my delicate feelings.
And, you know, at 23 and your first job,
you believe what they tell you.
So I was like, okay, well, I'm now
in the big league and, yeah, of course.
He's... He's really important,
he doesn't have time to sort of, you know,
do things like wear trousers
when he's tired.
The first time that he asked
for a massage, I was very robust,
and, and I was always pretty cheeky
and rude back to him,
which would make him laugh.
And so I didn't feel frightened,
but it was exhausting.
It was mentally exhausting because
you were always slightly fighting,
you were always nearly
It felt like you were always
just keeping your head above water.
But it was a very exciting environment
to be in.
When you were with Harvey,
you were going out to dinner
with Sean Connery
and Leonardo DiCaprio
and flying around in private jets.
He created an energy around him
that made it feel like you were
in the center of the universe.
I had recently employed an assistant
to help me with Harvey.
When I was interviewing people,
I very clearly said to people,
"He will behave inappropriately.
If you deal with him robustly
you'll be fine,"
because that was my experience.
That evening, my colleague
did the night shift.
It was her first time with him alone,
and he assaulted her
and attempted to rape her.
Which she told me, uh, the next day.
And I think probably was
one of the most shattering bits of news
I had ever had.
Um, so I immediately went
and confronted Harvey.
He told me nothing,
and he then swore on his wife,
who was Eve at the time,
and his children's life,
which to me, I'm afraid,
was an absolute admission of guilt
because I had heard him only do that
as a sort of proper
"get out of jail" card,
that was his really
"I'm in trouble," um, lie.
I was pretty panicked because
I didn't really know what to do.
We had no physical evidence.
By the time we were all back in England,
she just still didn't want
to go to the police,
which I completely understand
and had to respect.
So the day that I resigned,
I was bombarded
with telephone calls from him
and, um, a lot of execs
from the New York office.
Um, and...
I think I had a total of about
17 or 18 messages that night,
that went pretty much through the night.
I genuinely felt that I might be in danger
and I felt that I may need evidence
in court.
Um, anyway, I'll just let you hear.
[ recorder beeps ]
AULETTA: I write about the media
and communications for The New Yorker.
So I try and tell a story
through an individual.
Uh, in this case,
it was a Hollywood story.
We decided to profile Harvey Weinstein.
I was interested in power, he had power.
I was interested in abusive power,
and I'd heard tales of his abusive power.
I'm just talking about bullying of people,
and obviously I'd heard about
and witnessed, by watching his movies,
some real talent.
[ Harvey mouthing "Thank you" ]
[ indistinct shouting in distance ]
AULETTA: I spent an enormous amount
of oneonone time with him,
as well as time watching him
just being a fly on the wall.
In the course of reporting,
I came across an incident
where a female employee of Miramax,
he attempted to rape her.
And, um, it was violent.
She was frightened.
She talked to Zelda Perkins,
who was an assistant to Harvey,
and Harvey agreed to pay
just under $250,000
if they would sign
a nondisclosure agreement.
PERKINS:
At this point, I was trying to work out
how to make this okay.
And the only way
I could make it okay in my mind
was, okay, well, we will ask
for an enormous amount of money
that is indicative of the crime.
This payment is going to show
how guilty he is.
"Dear Zelda, I am writing to set out
the agreement
relating to the termination of
your employment with Miramax Film Corp."
What they wanted was pretty simple.
They wanted us to never speak
about anything to do
with Miramax or Harvey or Bob,
um, obviously the incident,
anything, ever again.
But it became pretty sinister
when we weren't allowed
to discuss this with a therapist.
If we spoke to a therapist,
the therapist had to sign
a confidentiality agreement.
If the therapist then broke
that confidentiality agreement,
we would be held responsible,
we would be considered
in breach of our contract.
It also very clearly stipulates
that if there is a civil
or criminal case brought,
that we have to provide
reasonable assistance to help Miramax.
You know, we had guns
pointing at us from every direction.
[ church bell ringing in distance ]
Ken Auletta found me in Guatemala.
And I remember he called me
on my mobile and I was terrified
and couldn't speak to him.
I genuinely thought I'd end up in jail
if I broke my agreement.
AULETTA: I believed he had done
this terrible thing,
and yet I didn't have anyone
on the record saying it.
I was hearing stories which essentially
you could dismiss as rumor,
because you didn't have names attached.
You need to be able to prove things,
and so we had to publish the piece
without including Zelda's story.
It was very frustrating for me
because I knew he was a predator.
I knew he was pathological,
and I wanted to stop him
because I knew he would do it again.
ROSENBAUM: I had been connected
with this lovely model,
and she sort of took me under her wing.
She had invited me, uh,
to come along to this party,
where, um, I sat down to dinner
next to Harvey Weinstein,
and I did not know
who he was at the time.
[ indistinct chatter ]
[ silverware clinking ]
He was very at ease,
casually chatting about, uh,
family and life in a small town,
and he talked passionately
about our industry.
He talked about it like some,
like a film nerd,
like somebody who just loved storytelling
and who was so proud to be able to do it.
By the end of it, he was quite sure
that I was going to do very well,
he could help me out.
[ indistinct chatter ]
I really believed
that I was seeing this genius
who could just spot a Gwyneth Paltrow.
We were both leaving
and he beckoned me over and said, uh,
you know, "I'm not done talking to you.
We gotta talk about what comes next."
And, uh, he said, "Can you give me
a lift back to my hotel?"
He asked if I would continue
talking upstairs.
Uh, he had an office suite.
And although it was late, I thought,
well, I either say "no thanks" and go home
or I take the meeting.
So, although I knew there was a risk,
I also knew that you take risks
when you're young and hopeful
and trying to make it
in a seemingly impossible industry.
You say yes.
He no longer seemed to want
to talk about work,
and he slid, uh, his arm around my waist,
as though we were old friends.
And he said, "We're cool right?
We're friends, right?"
And he took his shirt off
and suggested I do the same.
I told him that I had
a boyfriend at home and...
and, and he said, you know,
"I'm married, it's not a big deal.
Everybody does this."
And he, you know, he rattled off the names
of a few young actresses
that had been in recent films of his,
as though we were all just friends
and this was just part of Hollywood.
And it seemed so unlikely
that all of these women
would have crossed that line
to get the jobs that they had.
I didn't want to believe that.
And so we had a weird... [ sighs ]
sort of negotiation
about what I was willing to do,
and I wanted to just get out.
But I was afraid to upset him.
And so he laid down on the bed,
and I stood on either side of him...
and bent down and, and feigned interest
in the art of massage.
Then I told him I had to go.
I had... people waiting for me
or something.
I made some excuse,
and he walked me to the door
and acted as though, um...
I'd passed some sort of test,
and... and he would see
what comes up for me.
[ sighs ]
I was revved up on adrenaline.
I felt like I had just escaped
a narrow encounter.
I should have kept away from him
at that point.
But I also still
really believed in my future.
And I had turned him down once.
He knew I was not going to sleep with him.
And I had every reason to hope
that he was just going to help me.
I wanted desperately to believe that.
KEVIN SPACEY:
Juliette Binoche in The English Patient.
MEL GIBSON:
Anthony Minghella for The English Patient.
AL PACINO:
And the Oscar goes...
to The English Patient.
ANN CURRY: Box office prognosis
is very good for The English Patient.
The film was the runaway winner
at the Academy Awards,
picking up nine Oscars.
Roberto!
NEWSMAN: Those Weinstein brothers
have done it again,
with more wins
at the 71st Academy Awards.
LECHNER:
Harvey was laserfocused on the Oscars.
He understood the value
of the Oscars, monetarily,
to every movie that got an award.
Harvey was the first person to marshal
a whole team of Oscar specialists.
GILL: Five movies a year nominated
for best picture out of 600.
We had one every year for ten years
in a row, not an accident.
Harvey Weinstein, Bob Weinstein,
God bless 'em.
Harvey Weinstein, who believed
in us and made this movie...
GILL: And so Harvey ended up
being thanked more than God.
Thank you, Harvey Weinstein.
Especially Harvey.
SCHMIDT: The throwing of parties,
giving gifts to Academy members,
the private screenings with the filmmaker
or the actor and the actress,
a lavish dinner to follow.
That was really created by Harvey.
GILL:
Some people would call it gluttony.
You'd see it
in Harvey's physique, obviously,
but you'd see it also
in just everything he did.
There was always wanting more.
More press, more sales, more good reviews,
more movies, more movie stars,
more parties,
just more, more, more, more, more.
I would like to thank Harvey Weinstein.
First of all, it's exhausting,
and second of all, it tells you something
about a hole that is trying to be filled,
right, which is it's never good enough.
Shakespeare in Love.
[ crowd applauding ]
SCHMIDT:
I think it's very much about power.
I think that the sort of arc
of Harvey's career
is all about the accumulation
of influence and power.
He thought of himself
as the sheriff in town.
I mean, he literally called himself that.
GILL: The anger and the impulsiveness
and the abuse of power
are inseparable from the genius.
That's the tragedy.
HARVEY: I wanna thank Mark Gill
and Marcy Granata,
who are the, one in two,
most dynamite marketing team.
And nobody inspires me more
than my brother Bob,
who is my partner
and best friend every day.
GILL: If you think about the way
the Weinsteins work,
it was very much the mafia axiom
of "dote on the family
and kill everybody else."
The most ironic part of all this is that
the nastiest fights of all
were between Harvey and Bob.
LECHNER: The first rule of Miramax is,
never get between the brothers.
Because they were fiercely loyal
to each other,
at the same time that they were
threatening to kill each other.
Harvey was volcanic.
We all knew what Harvey was thinking
because he would tell you.
With Bob, you often never knew
what he was thinking.
DECLESIS:
Bob was more of a simmering soul.
[ laughs ]
His was more under his breath.
Like... [ softly ]:
"Don't ask me that question."
LECHNER: Bob is much more shy,
sometimes socially awkward.
At the same time, Bob was more
of a real person than Harvey.
You know, Bob has actual friends.
Bob can just go to a ball game
and have fun.
Um, Harvey doesn't really have that
kind of relationship with anybody.
You know, Harvey is always working.
He's always, at the very least, working
at the job of being Harvey Weinstein.
[ train rattling ]
HARVEY: I was born in Brooklyn
and then I moved to Queens.
We went to the rentcontrolled
apartment complex called Electchester.
And, um, we had a really good childhood
and a really good time.
DAVE CHANNON:
This is Harvey,
with the bow tie and the protuberant ears.
He looks happy, everybody looks happy.
I guess we didn't have
the Cuban missile crisis
until a few years later.
He wasn't very sociable.
He was a sort of an outsider and he was
never in any of the school plays,
or get into sports or anything.
He just didn't stand out at all.
It really wasn't until sometime
in the beginning of college
when he got a reputation as obnoxious.
The main thing he did
that really got on people's nerves
was he would go around
acting like the Godfather.
AULETTA: He was insecure about his looks,
about his physical appearance.
He thought he was ugly,
he thought he was unattractive.
Harvey was a guy who,
with a chip on his shoulder, who,
who felt he was fighting
the establishment always.
HARVEY:
To me, I'm still the underdog.
I felt that way when I was young.
And sometimes I still feel that way.
That's why I like making movies
about underdogs.
AJ BENZA: He cut a big figure,
he made things happen.
He scared people,
in the same way a gangster would.
He wasn't phony, he said what he said.
He meant what he meant, like Popeye.
GILL: He was trying to prove
that he was king of the world,
that he wanted to show everybody.
And, you know, for a while there,
he, at least for,
in the independent film world,
he was the king of the world.
[ band playing "Wheel of Fortune" ]
KAY STARR:
The wheel
Of fortune
Goes spinning around...
REBECCA TRAISTER:
At that period in New York City,
there were parties every night.
There were parties for perfume launches,
there were parties for books,
there were movie premieres,
there were TV premieres everywhere.
The cast of Sex and the City
would show up.
There were red carpets everywhere,
it was a very sort of high party time.
KAY STARR:
Oh, wheel of fortune...
BENZA: The people who run that city,
I saw them almost every night.
It was not uncommon to see Donald Trump
and Harvey Weinstein
on the same night, at the same event.
Back then, Miramax
was a vibrant company
with a lot of great projects,
a lot of cool celebrities.
Everybody wanted to be around it.
[ gasps ]
[ screaming ]
ROSANNA ARQUETTE:
That needletotheheart scene
in Pulp Fiction: genius.
You could say this about Harvey Weinstein,
he had really good taste.
He made good films.
That was fuckin' trippy.
[ giggles ]
[ Mia gasps ]
VINCENT:
[ sighing ] Oh, man.
He really understood... good material.
TRAISTER: What Harvey was doing
in the 1990s in New York City is,
he was recreating some of the romance
of the studio era.
It offered the fairy tale that's
very connected in the American mythology
of how you become a star,
how you become an artist.
[ fans shouting, cheering ]
Many people who have gone
to work in the movie industry
are drawn there by this kind of fantasy.
And Harvey was, like, the path to that.
CAITLIN DULANY: Miramax was sort of "it"
and Harvey was the guy
that was kind of making things happen.
The opportunities for actors to do
great roles, big or small, were there.
What could be more exciting
as a young actor?
It was an exciting time, yeah.
Hi. Paz. Nice to meet you.
BENZA: I always imagined,
like plenty of people in this industry,
that actresses slept with Harvey
because it was good for their career,
not because they wanted
to jump in bed with him
because they were in love with him.
I just assumed many actresses did that.
I don't know, uh, it's just not odd to me.
There's no question that Harvey
exuded a certain power.
Any powerful man in any city,
yeah, women were just part of the thing.
They come along with the power,
they're attracted to the power.
It's like putting a light on your porch,
you're gonna get a lot of moths.
NANNETTE KLATT:
I was born with a hereditary eye disease.
I don't see anything up, down
or to the sides,
and it comes with total night blindness.
So I've worked really hard
not to ever look blind or act blind.
I had gotten an audition,
was going in to read for a part.
He handed me the script and he said,
"Do you think you can read
those four pages for me?"
And I said,
"Yes, yes, I would be happy to."
LOUISE GODBOLD:
Here was I, meeting one of
the most powerful men in Hollywood.
I felt very flattered,
understanding that this was a privilege.
I was intimidated by him and his power.
I mean, he's a repulsive man, physically,
but I saw all these other actresses
hanging around him,
so I felt like it was something you did.
He asked me if I wanted a ride home,
and I said okay.
DULANY:
Harvey invited me out to dinner.
It was a wonderful night.
Leonardo DiCaprio was at our table.
He was lovely.
The afterparty would continue
at the hotel where Harvey was staying.
And then I was...
It was just me in the car and that's
when I started to feel a little weird,
like why... wouldn't I be carpooling
with somebody?
ARQUETTE: I was going to have dinner
with him at the Beverly Hills Hotel
and I arrived, front desk,
"I'm here to see Harvey Weinstein,
and, um, tell him I'll be
in the restaurant."
"No, Mr. Weinstein said would you go
upstairs, he'll meet you upstairs."
He said, "Can... I want
Can we have a drink upstairs at yours?"
And I was too afraid to say no.
We went up to my place
and things got
very uncomfortable, very fast.
I was so happy because this,
all I could think of is, yes,
this is the launching of my career.
I am going to be working
for a huge major studio,
a huge person in the industry,
thank you, God.
So obviously this is the part
that's very hard to talk about,
that I haven't talked about
that much before.
So I'll try, um...
I felt, um, maybe like
in shock a little bit.
Um... and then I was in a situation
that I couldn't get out of.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute,"
and he stood up.
He said, "One One minute, one minute.
I need one more thing from you."
He said, "I want to see your breasts,"
and I said, "I'm sorry, I don't do that."
"Oh, I have a stiff neck.
Um, would you give me
a shoulder massage?"
"I can't move my neck,"
and I said, "Oh, God, that's terrible.
"I should get you a masseuse.
I have a great masseuse
and I'm gonna call them."
He disappears into the bedroom.
He goes, "No, no, no, no, Rosanna."
And he took my hand,
andand like he grabbed my hand,
and he had an erection, and I went "fuck."
Um... backed up
and... and he goes, "Rosanna,
you're making a very big mistake."
"It's your breasts.
Do you know who I am?"
And I said, "Yeah."
And he said, "Do you know who I am?"
I did the worst massage ever,
and I could see that my massage
had actually had more effect
than I would have expected.
That was when my
survival instincts kicked in
and I got the heck out of there.
He said, "You know, I can make
your career or I can break your career.
I can make it where you will never work
in this business again."
And he said, "So show me your breasts."
And I said, "No, I don't do that."
And then he says, "The building's locked.
"You can't get out that way.
You can't get out at all
unless you go down there."
And he pointed past him
at the end of the hall,
which was a door, a stairwell door.
I don't know if anybody
is going to answer the door.
I don't know if he's
gonna come in looking for me.
He knows that I have
total night blindness.
So he knew when I went down
that stair,
it was totally black, totally, totally,
totally black.
DE LA HUERTA:
He... He pulled my dress up,
and I was just terrified.
I didn't kick and scream.
DULANY: The freeze thing kicks in,
like you just want it to be over,
and you don't want to be...
You're You're worried
you're gonna get hurt, you know?
When you read about rape,
you read, "Okay, well,
the girl says screams 'No!'
and she kicks and screams and..."
But that's not exactly right.
The way in which he overpowered me
left me no way out.
Um, so...
So Harvey performed oral sex on me,
um... forcibly...
um...
or... without my consent,
um, and I didn't really know what to do,
and I was terrified
that he was going to rape me.
I was really scared of being penetrated,
of being... being raped,
of having him on top of me,
so I just froze.
I definitely went somewhere else.
DE LA HUERTA: It's almost like
I was hovering over my body,
and this thing was happening to me.
This is happening
and then it's going to be over,
and then it's...
I'm, I'll never, never think of
It's just, I'll cut it out of me somehow.
KLATT: And there was like
a little Hispanic maintenance man,
and first thing he asked me,
"Are you coming from the fourth floor?"
Just, you know, he
then he masturbated and...
finished.
I knew I was going to be in trouble
because I didn't participate, I knew it.
And then when I tried to tell people,
they said, "You better keep
your mouth shut."
I didn't go to the police
because I was terrified
he would destroy me,
and he would say it was consensual,
and he would say that I was a whore
and I was lying.
DULANY:
What I remember is leaving,
and at the bottom of the staircase
were people that worked for him
waiting to go in to see him.
I don't know, I don't know
what they thought.
I don't know what they knew.
LAUREN O'CONNOR: I travelled
with Harvey quite frequently.
And there was this one time
where I made a mistake.
He said, "You're smart enough to be me
and if you don't want to be me,
"you're wasting your time.
"Why don't you just go marry
some fat rich Jewish fuck
'cause maybe all you're good for
is making babies."
You're an employee,
you're not in a position
to question your boss's intentions.
You know, I would have been fired.
When Harvey was meeting with
these women, he would send us all away,
and we would get summoned back
long after these women were gone.
My take on these relationships was
some sort of agreement had happened.
O'CONNOR: There's this knocking
on my hotel room door.
There's this woman standing there
and she's shaking and she's crying.
And, you know, so I invite her in
and I ask her what's wrong,
and it took her a while to start talking,
and she tells me, you know,
that he had coerced her
into giving him a massage,
and he didn't listen to her say no.
You have to do something.
So I filed a complaint that would later
be referred to as "the memo."
And I hoped that by putting this,
putting...
the experiences I and others had
in writing,
the person reading the memo
wouldn't be able to look away,
that they couldn't unsee or unknow.
ABBY EX: I started in publicity, so I saw
a lot about how the machine works
in terms of burying scandals.
The people higher up, closer to Harvey,
in a business capacity,
were the ones who dealt with
the outside lawyers and, um, settlements.
DECLESIS:
Being complicit doesn't necessarily mean
you have to take part in it.
By keeping quiet,
I believe you're also complicit.
Why would you do that?
Money.
Money power.
It's much easier to just go with the flow.
You know, keep everything the way it is.
Don't rock the boat because
everybody's getting a piece of it.
AULETTA: When you think about
the complicity of the Hollywood community,
agents were guilty of that,
as were some studio heads,
as were some producers,
as were some directors and actors
and actresses and staffers.
[ sighs ]
I feel so conflicted
about my experience with Harvey.
My life is better for having worked
with Harvey Weinstein.
Those of us who were on the Harvey train
got a lot out of it.
We were taken to all kinds
of amazing places
and allowed to do all kinds
of amazing things,
and now we all feel this survivor guilt
for having experienced positive things
and now realizing all the negative things
that other people were experiencing
at the same time.
I never experienced Harvey being
inappropriate with an actress,
but I certainly heard rumors
that there were actresses who were
sleeping with Harvey to get better roles.
There was always
a kind of list of people
who'd just gotten big roles
who got gossiped about.
The way the gossip was communicated was,
"She slept with Harvey to get that part."
It was never communicated as,
"Oh yeah, you heard he slept with her."
It was always the woman as the person
who had done the action.
"She blew Harvey, she fucked Harvey,
she slept with Harvey to get that part."
ROSENBAUM:
So a few years went by.
I had, I thought, made my peace
with what had happened
and with how I'd handled myself.
And I called every six months,
or a year, just to say,
"Hello, this is Erika Rosenbaum.
"I just wanted to let you know
I got a part,
"um, and it went really well.
Um, you asked me to keep
in touch, so here I am."
At one point, he was going to be
at the Toronto International
Film Festival,
and he suggested
that I take the time to stop in.
I had been dealing
with a very lovely assistant of his
who eventually asked that I meet them,
uh, in his room before dinner,
because he had to go to a dinner
or a screening or something,
and, uh, and I would have to be
squeezed in.
That seemed reasonable to me,
despite what had happened.
Um, I guess because I had made clear
that I was not that kind of actress,
whatever that means.
The young assistant opened the door.
She looked a little flustered.
Um, and she left,
and she closed the door behind her.
He came out of the bathroom
and he wasn't wearing any pants.
He was wearing a shirt
that just covered his hips.
And I was very...
put off, as you can imagine.
Uh, and also just nervous
because he was clearly distraught
about something
that had nothing to do
with my presence there.
Um, so right away I said,
"It's a bad time.
"I can see you're on your way out.
Let's do this another day."
And I backed towards the door,
and he got quite annoyed
and said, "You're here.
Taketake the five minutes and...
and let's talk for a second."
And he was like, he said, "Come with me,"
and he asked me to follow him
to the bathroom,
and I said, "No, no, no, I mean, please,
this is not a good time, I'll come back."
Um...
And he insisted that I stay.
And so, although my heart
was pounding and...
I felt like I was
in a dangerous place, I stayed.
Because I thought leaving would be worse.
I followed him into the washroom.
The toilet seat had been broken,
like it had been smashed.
It was a... a solid toilet seat
that had been broken into three pieces,
and there was blood on the seat.
He asked me to face the mirror and said,
"I just want to look at you."
And he put his hand on the back of my neck
and sort of held me in place,
staring at my own face in the mirror,
and he started to touch himself
under his shirt behind me.
And I remember that...
like it's a scene from a bad movie.
Because it's hard to believe
that that was me.
But I remember looking
at myself in the mirror
and seeing him over my right shoulder
and I remember staring at him
and thinking,
if I can just stand still
that maybe it would all go away
or maybe I would disappear or something.
I guess I was just too shocked to move.
And I noticed that he had blood
on his hand.
And I found a way
to say that I had to go,
and I don't think he finished.
[ noisy chatter ]
REPORTER:
Give us the five seconds!
TRAISTER : I was a reporter
at a weekly newspaper in New York
called the New York Observer.
I was interested in the cultural changes
happening within Manhattan,
and Miramax was at the very center
of those cultural changes.
HUGO:
You've been everything to me, O.
To me, you're not my friend, man,
you're my brother.
And when a brother is wronged, so am I.
TRAISTER: Harvey's company,
Miramax's brother company Dimension,
had made a movie that was
an update on Othello.
It was called O,
and it had a terrific cast of stars
that were very popular at the moment,
including Mekhi Phifer and Josh Hartnett.
I've spent the last few days going over
every possible detail, every angle.
It had everything about it that should
have been released to a great fanfare,
but the company was holding it
and they were holding it
during the presidential campaign
of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman.
They were running this campaign
that had this weird reactionary streak
of disapproving of violence in the media.
O was a very violent high school drama.
HUGO:
He soars above us.
TRAISTER: The makers of the movie
believed that it was being held back
because Harvey was so involved
in the GoreLieberman campaign.
He was hoping that the amount
of money that he was giving
was going to result
in some kind of political payoff.
I needed to get a comment from Harvey.
So my editor sent me to a party
he was hosting
to accompany a repor a fellow reporter
who was working
as a gossip columnist that night.
He also happened to be somebody
I was dating at the time.
[ distant siren wailing ]
[ muffled party music playing ]
ALEXANDER GOLDMAN:
Harvey was throwing a party
for a former MTV VJ
named Karen Duffy, who went by "Duff."
And I remember walking in
behind Harvey and his entourage
and then going and saying,
"Rebecca, you go do your thing."
[ lively chatter ]
TRAISTER: I walked right up to Harvey
with my tape recorder out and said,
"I have a question about the movie O ."
And he said to me,
"Oh, that's my brother's movie,
I don't have anything to do with that,"
and then he walked away.
And I thought to myself,
"Well, that's a nothing comment,
and I don't believe it,"
but I got the comment,
which is what I knew I needed to do
in order to be able to publish my story.
I was sort of putting
my tape recorder away.
I'd done the one job
I had there that night,
at which point suddenly
Harvey came back to me,
and he said, "You can't use that."
I said, "What do you mean?"
And he said, "That was off the record."
He started to grab for my tape recorder.
I just pressed "record"
and held it up to his face,
and that enraged him more.
And then the temperature
in the room turns,
and all of a sudden
I see something go off in Harvey,
and I see like, you know,
initially some maybe gesticulating,
and then I hear him yelling
at the top of his lungs,
"Who let this fucking cunt
into this party?"
And then he was sort of
half screaming at me
and half screaming at the rest
of the room,
"Get this cunt out of here,
this cunt shouldn't be here!
This What is this bitch doing here?
Who let this bitch in?"
This man is screaming
at the top of his lungs
at a 23yearold woman who's asking
a very reasonable question
about his movie,
and he's calling her a "cunt."
The thing that scared me was that
it felt like anything was possible.
Like there was no norm and no rule
that was gonna say
this is gonna end okay.
And my colleague and boyfriend,
Andrew, came over
and said, "Harvey, Harvey,
I'm here to talk to you.
"I'm, I She came with me.
"I'm the reporter who's assigned
to talk about this party.
I want to hear about Karen Duffy."
And I kind of went... [ pants ]
I... remember I got our bags,
put my bags, put the bags
over the shoulder [ laughs ],
and I looked at Andrew and I was like,
"Wrap it up, we're gonna go, time to go."
And then I stopped,
and I was like, this is absurd.
I said, "Harvey, we have treated you well.
"You have no right to call
somebody like that that name
in front of these people.
You can't do that."
[ whispering ]: No, I don't need
an apology, we need to leave.
[ normal voice ] And what happened
was, as soon as Andrew said,
"You owe her an apology," he went
it's like the switch flipped back.
He said...
[ tape player clicks on ]
[ Harvey speaking ]
[ tape player clicks off ]
And it's at that moment he looks down
and I think he sees
that my recorder is going,
and he realizes that I've just got
like the money quote of all time.
TRAISTER:
He started screaming.
He pushes him down the couple of steps
and Andrew falls backwards.
And everybody I think is aghast,
looking like, what the hell is
The host of the party is like wrestling
with some junior reporter
over a tape recorder,
and we go back and forth,
and he's intent that he's gonna
get this thing,
and I'm like, I'm not going
to let him get this tape recorder
'cause it has the best quote ever.
He grabs Andrew and pulls him
through the party,
out the glass door,
onto Sixth Avenue in Manhattan,
and puts him in a headlock
and starts pounding the top of his head.
A crowd has gathered around us
and it's like, you know,
this schoolyard fight or something,
and I just remember how surreal it was.
I was thinking to myself,
can this possibly be re
Does Harvey Weinstein
really have me in a headlock?
The flashes are going off, and there
are a million pictures being taken.
How can this not be the cover
of, you know, the New York Post,
the New York Daily News?
I mean, it was like the money sh
It's the shot that any tabloid editor
would be dreaming of.
Think about it,
who wouldn't put that on the cover?
[ door squeaking ]
TRAISTER: I never saw a photograph
from that night.
I've never to this day.
I haven't seen a photograph,
and I know there were hundreds taken.
This is like... magic.
This is like, you know, Tinseltown magic.
My editor in chief,
a man I deeply respected,
said, "Do not offer comment
on this, Rebecca.
Harvey's never going anywhere," he said.
"Harvey's Russia, don't write about it."
The lesson I learned was...
as great as a line as,
"I'm glad I'm the fucking sheriff
of this shit ass fucking town" is,
it doesn't work unless
you really are the sheriff,
and he was at that point.
He... He could do anything.
And no and no cars, no nothing.
Otherwise, never any of my shit ever.
Okay? Or I'll fucking be
all over your asses. Get outta here. Go.
PHOTOGRAPHER:
All right, have a good night, man.
If I see one car, me and Bob De Niro
will take care of it but good.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Have a good night, man.
You'll never work in this town.
You'll never sell
a fucking photograph anywhere.
PHOTOGRAPHER:
All right, man.
NEWSWOMAN: Mickey Mouse
divorcing a longtime partner.
Disney parting ways
with Miramax cofounders
Bob and Harvey Weinstein.
While the Weinsteins are walking away
with $140 million
and the Dimension Films label,
they'll have to give up Miramax.
KIM MASTERS: They lost that name,
which meant something to them:
"Miramax," Miriam and Max.
It was a huge loss.
They lost that library of films
that they had created.
That's their legacy.
When you sell, you know,
you lose your power.
They're not the first ones to sell
in Hollywood and live to regret.
HARVEY: So this begins the path
to our new exciting venture
without mom and dad's name.
We still own the name "Dimension"
and, and if anybody can come up
with a better name
than the Weinstein Company,
we're all ears.
[ chuckles ]
Nothing's better than
the Weinstein brothers,
so the name is great.
I mean, that company,
they were much diminished
and they were trying
to sort of commit more to television.
They were in trouble
and everybody knew it.
SCHMIDT: After they left Disney,
they went through something like
1.2 billion dollars that was bank money
and bonds and investments
from investment banks in New York,
and, uh, that writing was on the wall.
FARROW: I was working on a story
about the dark side of Hollywood.
It was gonna be an anthology
of different issues,
from race to sexual harassment.
In the course of my reporting,
I began to find the stories came back
over and over again to one guy.
Harvey Weinstein was known to be a bully,
but very quickly when you scratched
the surface of those bullying charges,
you started to hear stories
about sexual misconduct as well.
And I realized,
wow, this is a huge, huge story.
So it's my incredible honor
to present this award,
uh, to Planned Parenthood's
Champion of the Century,
my friend, my heroine,
Hillary Rodham Clinton.
[ loud cheering ]
TRAISTER:
I was writing about Hillary Clinton
after the 2016 presidential loss
in the spring of 2017.
And...
I saw Harvey for the first time in years.
I almost couldn't believe,
this guy who had been so familiar to me.
And I thought, your power is waning.
Like, your power is on the downswing,
but you're still... working it.
You're still wielding it,
whatever power you have, you're here.
What are you doing here?
But then I was looking at him
with all these powerful women,
feminist women.
You're putting your money
toward protecting yourself,
positioning yourself as a feminist,
positioning yourself
as an ally to powerful women.
This is all part of what your deal is
and how you've managed
to suppress all this.
I just stopped thinking that my story
or the evidence from it was ever going
to be important to anybody
because nobody was ever gonna
win against this guy.
FARROW: When I first started,
women thought it would never emerge,
let alone emerge and have an impact.
One of the striking reoccurring themes
in my conversations with sources
in this story
was just how terrified they were
of things that sounded like movie plots.
Spies following them,
infiltrating their ways
into people's lives.
And, as I myself started
getting strange and threatening calls,
this was the absolute truth.
SOURCE: I think for years Harvey Weinstein
had heard that certain actresses
and certain people in the industry
might go on record
and try and accuse him of anything
from sexual assault
to harassment and bullying,
and it was a kind of fire fighting
exercise in, on a low level,
go after one person
and get them to sign an NDA.
[ wind whistling ]
But in 2016, he'd obviously got wind
of something much bigger.
There was now a coalition
of people coming together,
willing to go en masse on record.
That's why he enlisted
a whole army of people,
whether journalists, whether lawyers
or intelligence firms,
'cause he knew this was the big one.
FARROW:
Harvey was indeed using
an array of highpowered
private investigation firms,
most exotically, uh, a firm predominantly
run by former members of the Massad,
called Black Cube.
[ papers rustling ]
SOURCE: This is the original contract
between Black Cube
and Harvey Weinstein's law firm.
And "The primary objective of the project
is to identify the entities
"behind the negative campaign
against the Client
and support the Client's efforts
to put a stop to it."
This is the list of targets
drawn up by Harvey Weinstein
of people he suspects might be cooperating
with the negative stories about him,
and this is a profile drawn up
by Black Cube,
uh, profiling Rosanna Arquette.
"The Client suspects that Rosanna
is involved in the campaign
"being waged against him
by disseminating fictitious allegations
about him to media sources."
FARROW: This was
an extraordinarily expensive operation.
You're talking about lawyer after lawyer
at the highestpaid echelon
of the legal profession,
and they're hiring, in turn,
the priciest private investigation firms
in the world.
The Black Cube contracts alone
ate up hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Harvey Weinstein was placing
all of his resources
into stopping these women
and the reporters looking at the story.
Harvey and his private investigators
and lawyers expended a lot of energy
digging up photos of him looking friendly
with women after alleged assaults.
This is a particularly nasty tactic
to try to discredit women,
when the fact is, it is a very typical
feature of sexual assault
that women are photographed
in a friendly context
with their alleged attacker afterwards.
Very often people bury their trauma
and they keep working
and they keep on walking
those red carpets.
[ reporters shouting questions to Paz ]
DE LA HUERTA:
You put on a happy face,
but inside you're dying.
It made me feel like I had to reclaim
my sexuality all over again.
So I wanted to do photo shoots
where I could feel beautiful
and take it back,
take back what I believe he stole from me.
Some of the other women
might look at me and think,
"Something's wrong with her."
Like, "Harvey could use
that against her," or something.
I wanted to feel desirable again.
People knowing that this pig
had violated me,
that this monster had been inside me.
[ distant siren chirping ]
FARROW: I was being told,
"You still need more women,
these women are crazy,
you need more credible women,"
over and over and over again,
no matter how many women were saying
this had happened to them.
REPORTER: Harvey Weinstein.
[ Harvey speaking indistinctly ]
FARROW:
I had to move out of my home.
I was being followed.
I had many of the same agents
that went after these women
coming after me.
Harvey Weinstein was inundating
my representatives with legal threats.
I wondered whether I would be able
to get it over the finish line
or whether I would let down
all of those women who had done
this incredibly brave thing
trying to expose this.
So, it was a tremendous
breakthrough moment
to hear Harvey Weinstein
on that NYPD recording.
[ tape player clicks on ]
[ Harvey and Ambra Gutierrez speaking ]
[ tape player clicks off ]
FARROW:
Once I had that recording in hand,
it was clear to me that I couldn't stop.
There was a smoking gun here.
So I went to Ken Auletta,
a wonderful writer at The New Yorker.
AULETTA:
Ronan Farrow, who I did not know,
called me up in the spring of 2017,
and he said, "I've read
your 2002 profile on Harvey.
Let me tell you what I'm doing."
He said to me
that he had eight witnesses,
people who were willing
to go on the record.
That's great.
I mean, I could not do that.
And he had the police tape from Ambra.
HARVEY [ on tape ]: Please come in.
I'm a very I'm a famous guy.
GUTIERREZ: I'm feeling
very uncomfortable right now.
HARVEY: Please come in now.
HARVEY: And in one minute.
And if you wanna leave when the guy
comes with my jacket
GUTIERREZ:
Why yesterday you touch my breast?
HARVEY: Oh, please, I'm sorry,
just come on in, I'm used to that.
FARROW: I think the moment
the New Yorker team heard that audio
and understood the number
of testimonials that we had about this,
they said, "Okay, let's go to the mat.
Let's get as much as we can together
as fast as we can."
AULETTA:
I would call Ronan or email him,
I'd say, "What are you doing?
WhWhy isn't this story out?"
And he said, "Well, we're still working
on the story,"
and then I hear that
The New York Times is doing a story.
MEGAN TWOHEY: We had been working
around the clock for days and weeks
and had barely slept.
You know, when you are so thick deep
in a, an investigation
and you're right about
to finally publish the story,
you can really lose sight
of what you've got
and what the reaction is gonna be to it.
JODI KANTOR:
Our biggest fear over the summer
was not of Harvey Weinstein
or of the paid spies he used on us
or about the efforts at intimidation.
It was the fear of failure
and the fear that we were going
to fail to get the story,
and we were going to have to live
with this knowledge
off the record for the rest of our lives.
People were really scared to talk.
Instead there was this kind
of miasma of rumors.
There were public jokes in pop culture.
Congratulations.
You five ladies no longer have to pretend
to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.
[ laughter ]
Oh please, I'm not afraid
of anyone in show business.
I turned down intercourse
with Harvey Weinstein
on no less than three occasions
out of five.
REPORTER: Do you have any advice
for a young girl moving to Hollywood?
O'CONNOR: I am a 28yearold woman
trying to make a living and a career.
Harvey Weinstein is
a 64yearold worldfamous man
and this is his company.
The balance of power is me: zero,
Harvey Weinstein: 10.
When I wrote my memo,
it was because I didn't feel
as if I had a choice.
You know, when the memo was leaked
and subsequently published
in The New York Times,
what I couldn't imagine
or have conceived of
was the impact it had.
ROSENBAUM:
I read it...
I think with my jaw on the floor.
They were outlining
the experiences of these women
as though they were writing about me.
And I couldn't believe that they were
telling the story.
The fact that these women had the guts
to tell the story after all this time,
and for sure they weren't
the first to try,
and the machine had squashed the story.
I can't tell you what it means to me
to see it coming into the light.
[ radio stations changing ]
NEWSMAN:
Producer Harvey Weinstein
is facing multiple
sexual harassment accusations
that span 30 years
according to The New York Times.
The Times reporting
that the Miramax cofounder
has reached eight settlements
with various accusers.
NEWSWOMAN:
In a statement, Weinstein says
he came of age when rules
about behavior were different.
He says he knows he's caused a lot
of pain and sincerely apologizes.
D'AMORE:
I don't think he'll ever get it.
I don't think people like that change.
They say that about child molesters,
they say it about rapists.
They don't change,
he just got better at it.
He just got bolder
and because he was more powerful
was able to get away with it
with more women and in...
in more obvious ways.
MAN: Hold on, hold on.
What are you doing here?
REPORTER: I'm media.
NEWSMAN: One of the most powerful men
in Hollywood has been fired,
effective immediately, by the board
of the studio he cofounded.
I'm hanging in there.
I'm trying my best.
REPORTER: Thank you, man.
NEWSMAN:
Weinstein's wife announced last night
she was leaving him
in the light of the allegations.
REPORTER: We're glad to see
you're doing okay.
Guys, I'm not doing okay.
REPORTER: You're not?
But I'm trying. I gotta get help, guys.
You know what, we all make mistakes.
Second chance I hope, okay?
REPORTER: No problem.
HARVEY: Thanks, guys.
You know what, I've always
been loyal to you guys.
Not like those fucking pricks
that treat you like shit.
I've been the good guy.
REPORTER: Have a good one.
HARVEY: Thank you.
REPORTER: Hope you feel better.
HARVEY:
Thank you.
REPORTER: Get some help, man.
HARVEY: Thank you.
PROSECUTOR: We're happy with
where the investigation is right now.
We have an actual case here.
NEWSWOMAN:
The former movie mogul
surrendering to police in New York City
amid a throng of reporters and cameras.
TWOHEY:
There were so many things
that had helped protect him for so long,
and today in the court room
it really felt
like those layers of protection fell away.
KANTOR:
These are not individual experiences,
they're collective experiences.
There's a pattern here and starting today,
he answers to the same system of justice
as the rest of us.
ROSENBAUM: I watched Wonder Woman
on the flight over here...
to try to feel heroic [ laughs ]
even when I didn't.
Chris Pine has this great quote
and he says, um...
If you see something wrong
happening in the world,
you can either do nothing
or you can do something...
and I already tried nothing.
And I went, "Oh yeah, that's perfect."
[ chanting ]
NEWSWOMAN: In the midst of a scandal,
two powerful words
are flooding social media.
Women across the country
are identifying themselves
as victims of sexual harassment
in the wake of Hollywood mogul
Harvey Weinstein's downfall.
The Harvey Weinstein story
has helped people understand
that there's a really powerful argument
for speaking up.
SCHMIDT:
I don't think anyone could have foreseen
that this would spawn
a worldwide movement.
It's a different world.
It's a better world.
EX: What's relatable is how
power structures like this exist
so other people watching can relate
into their lives,
because if we could do it in Hollywood,
you know, people can do it anywhere.
It's the David and Goliath story.
The little guy can take down the big guy,
that is totally possible.
ARQUETTE:
This is a revolution,
so go fuck yourselves.
You know, how dare you.
And we are not going to be silenced.
we will not be silenced.
There's no question, no question
that Harvey's behavior was monstrous
and that he, of course,
should be facing legal repercussion.
But there is a way,
when you pick out the most grotesque
and then you fire them,
maybe you send them to jail,
maybe you banish them from their industry,
and then there's the sense that,
"Okay, we've taken care of the problem."
Just, you know, locking up an individual
isn't going to solve the problem,
and the most sinister aspect
of all of this
is that the system enabled it,
you know, um, and still enables it.
There are going to be hundreds
of these cases
happening around the country
in lots of different industries.
And these women are
going to be attacked.
Undermined, discredited.
That's absolutely going to happen.
FARROW: It's easy to forget just
how recently it seemed impossible
to talk about Harvey Weinstein.
There is a Harvey Weinstein
in every industry,
and there are people
who are still vastly powerful
and around whom people
are still terrified to tell the truth.
So after this interview, I'll go back
to struggling with brave sources
to see if they're willing
to take that risk
of putting their name on tough stories.
That challenge still goes on every day
for people facing abuse
all over the world.
DE LA HUERTA:
It's not over.
It continues.