*One hero of “She Said” is Ashley Judd.
When Harvey Weinstein tried to assault Judd, Judd used her wits. She joked. She made light (well, artfully *seemed* to make light) of the situation. As a final kiss-off, she said, “Win me an Oscar in a Miramax film, Harvey, and then I’ll give you a blow job.”
Judd left Hollywood to attend graduate school at Harvard; she became a Harvard professor. When basically no one in Hollywood was willing to speak against Weinstein--not Paltrow, not Jolie, not Hayek--Judd was willing to speak on the record.
*One amazing aspect of this book: People return to acting even after they have been treated so terribly. Both Paltrow and Judd have dipped their toes back into the acting waters, in recent years. The creative drive is strong.
*”She Said” closely resembles “Spotlight,” in the sense that there is the crime, and then there is the large web of presumably healthy people willing to aid in the cover-up of the crime. Power is just that immovable. An unforgettable figure in “She Said”--a character who could have popped up in a Russian novel--is the tortured Bob Weinstein. Bob knew what his brother was doing. Bob ties himself in knots to evade responsibility. So fascinating, and weirdly moving. (The NYT called the book “stressful”--and, obviously, the story is *that* as well.)
*When I was a teacher, I had a gay male colleague (in a position of greater power) who would share his sex stories with me, unsolicited, and who once playfully pulled me toward the science lab, while whispering, “Let’s fuck.”
This was done with a sense of jokey childishness; we’re just having fun here! The attention felt exciting. It also made me just a bit queasy.
The authors of “She Said” acknowledge that there is such a vast gray area in this discussion--that there is indeed a difference between Aziz Ansari and Harvey Weinstein. (Careful, though, if you want to talk about a spectrum of behavior! Matt Damon was criticized for that.) It seems to me that another title for “She Said” could have been borrowed from a different recent book: “Human Relations and Other Difficulties.”
*The gray area grows and grows. Bob Woodward recently interviewed the authors of “She Said.” The interview didn’t go well. People in the audience felt Woodward was interrupting too much, and calling too much attention to Weinstein (and not to Judd, or to Blasey Ford, or to Paltrow). Was Woodward simply employing the tough, rigorous tactics he would use with Trump, or Dubyah, or anyone else? Or were there strange gender dynamics at play here? Human Relations....and Other Difficulties....
When Harvey Weinstein tried to assault Judd, Judd used her wits. She joked. She made light (well, artfully *seemed* to make light) of the situation. As a final kiss-off, she said, “Win me an Oscar in a Miramax film, Harvey, and then I’ll give you a blow job.”
Judd left Hollywood to attend graduate school at Harvard; she became a Harvard professor. When basically no one in Hollywood was willing to speak against Weinstein--not Paltrow, not Jolie, not Hayek--Judd was willing to speak on the record.
*One amazing aspect of this book: People return to acting even after they have been treated so terribly. Both Paltrow and Judd have dipped their toes back into the acting waters, in recent years. The creative drive is strong.
*”She Said” closely resembles “Spotlight,” in the sense that there is the crime, and then there is the large web of presumably healthy people willing to aid in the cover-up of the crime. Power is just that immovable. An unforgettable figure in “She Said”--a character who could have popped up in a Russian novel--is the tortured Bob Weinstein. Bob knew what his brother was doing. Bob ties himself in knots to evade responsibility. So fascinating, and weirdly moving. (The NYT called the book “stressful”--and, obviously, the story is *that* as well.)
*When I was a teacher, I had a gay male colleague (in a position of greater power) who would share his sex stories with me, unsolicited, and who once playfully pulled me toward the science lab, while whispering, “Let’s fuck.”
This was done with a sense of jokey childishness; we’re just having fun here! The attention felt exciting. It also made me just a bit queasy.
The authors of “She Said” acknowledge that there is such a vast gray area in this discussion--that there is indeed a difference between Aziz Ansari and Harvey Weinstein. (Careful, though, if you want to talk about a spectrum of behavior! Matt Damon was criticized for that.) It seems to me that another title for “She Said” could have been borrowed from a different recent book: “Human Relations and Other Difficulties.”
*The gray area grows and grows. Bob Woodward recently interviewed the authors of “She Said.” The interview didn’t go well. People in the audience felt Woodward was interrupting too much, and calling too much attention to Weinstein (and not to Judd, or to Blasey Ford, or to Paltrow). Was Woodward simply employing the tough, rigorous tactics he would use with Trump, or Dubyah, or anyone else? Or were there strange gender dynamics at play here? Human Relations....and Other Difficulties....
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