When New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey were working on the case that would bring down Harvey Weinstein on numerous counts of sexual harassment, they discovered a writing. It was a memo from celebrity attorney Lisa Bloom to Weinstein, a client, from December 2016. NEW TRIAL: Harvey Weinstein is in Los Angeles preparing for a new trial with his lawyer Mark Werksman. Photo: Etienne Laurent/Reuters. Photo: POOL / Reuters The memo contained several concrete proposals for how the powerful film mogul could escape accusations of sexual abuse. In the letter, Bloom described in detail how she was able to leak negative stories about those who had to accuse Weinstein. “We can get an article out that she is increasingly unstable,” Bloom writes about actress Rose McGowan, one of Weinstein’s victims. “So if someone Googles her, that’s what comes up, and then she’s discredited.” Less than a year later, Harvey Weinstein had fallen. A voluminous series of articles by Kantor and Twohey, published in The New York Times, had shown how he had molested women in the film industry for decades, then made sure the stories were buried, through threats and legal settlements containing strict non-disclosure agreements. The memo from Bloom was among the documents the paper unearthed, along with a wealth of stories from women who, with good reason, had been too afraid to come forward. The revelation of Weinstein was the snowball that became an avalanche, in that it inspired the global showdown against sexual harassment that would later become known as Metoo. In February 2020, Weinstein, the man the world usually saw in a tuxedo on the red carpet, was sentenced to 23 years in prison for rape and sexual assault. This week, just after the five-year anniversary of the Metoo wave, he has to go to court again, in Los Angeles, after being accused of assaulting five new women. In all, more than eighty women have now come forward and told stories of having been subjected to harassment and abuse by Weinstein. How could Weinstein go on like this for so long and why was he suddenly stopped? The answer to the first question is that he was a very influential man who was doing something that is very difficult to prove. Sexual harassment or inappropriate approaches usually take place between two people, and if someone were to think that something had happened that was wrong, that stepped over boundaries, it will be word for word. THE STAR MAKER: Harvey Weinstein was known for being able to create stars and Oscar winners out of the actors who got roles in his films. Here with Gwyneth Paltrow after “Shakespeare in Love” won the Oscar for best film in 1999, while Paltrow won the award for best actress. Photo: Dave Caulkin / AP In any case, this was how it was with Weinstein, who liked to invite unsuspecting young women to meetings in his hotel room, where he welcomed them in a dressing gown and eventually partly asked for, partly pressured them for sexual services. The producer behind Nineties hits such as “Pulp Fiction”, “Shakespeare in Love” and “The English Patient”, was known for being able to make Oscar winners out of the actors who worked for him, and directors out of talented assistants. And just as easily as he could open doors for those far younger and less influential than himself, he could slam them shut. Going to war against Harvey Weinstein was not something anyone did if they cared about their own reputation and their own career. But perhaps it also became a resting pillow, this fact that it was difficult to document what happened. Because it wasn’t impossible. When Kantor and Twohey tackled the case, they were initially met with a wall of silence. In 2019, they published a book, “She Said”, about the work on the Weinstein case. The book has now become a feature film, and will be released in Norwegian cinemas in November. In the book, Kantor and Twohey describe how they tried to reach Hollywood’s biggest stars without going through agents and PR apparatus. Some of the phone numbers they got hold of through their relatives, by looking up people with the same surname in the phone registers. Very few responded to the inquiries. Some answered the phone, but the famous voices were horrified, and decided they couldn’t possibly come forward unless many others did. Gradually, Twohey and Kantor gained the traction they needed by appealing to a kind of community spirit, that those who helped them in any way could make the world safer for young women. They had to persuade a former Weinstein assistant to come forward in the media at the same time as she was to undergo surgery for breast cancer. They had to tell tired and scared victims who would rather put the matter behind them, that they not only had to tell their stories again, they also had to find someone who could confirm that they had told them before, and not just to the media: Relatives, colleagues or psychologists. FIRST TO TALK OPENLY: The first actress to be interviewed openly about Weinstein’s abuse was Ashley Judd. AP Photo/Jae C. Hong Photo: Jae C. Hong / AP And they realized that the many settlements Weinstein had entered into were not necessarily an obstacle for them, but could be part of the solution. That there had been a settlement meant that there were documents, and when the case was finally published, that was the angle: That Weinstein had paid large sums of money to women year after year so that they would not tell what they knew about him. All this was absolutely necessary. Weinstein, with almost unlimited resources and no sinful boundaries of any kind, would have killed the newspaper in court if the case had not held water legally. “She Said” tells how Jodi Kantor burst into tears when actress Ashley Judd finally agreed to be cited in the case, under her full name, the first Hollywood star to speak openly about what she had experienced. Since then, Gwyneth Paltrow, Salma Hayek and Rosanna Arquette have come forward with similar stories. The story of Harvey Weinstein’s fall is a story that it is possible to achieve the seemingly impossible, if one is willing to work hard and systematically and without guaranteed success. Since then, the waves have bounced back and forth, and not everyone believes that Metoo has had as far-reaching consequences as it should. But Harvey Weinstein will never again stop on the red carpet and put on his broad, slightly crooked smile again, the one that belonged to a man convinced that he was invulnerable.
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The revelation of Weinstein was the snowball that became an avalanche – Statement
