Harvey Weinstein’s holding cell is so revolting his lawyer argued the ex-movie mogul is facing “almost medieval” conditions where he’s detained after court during his Los Angeles sexual assault trial.
Attorney Mark Werksman in his pleas to a judge Tuesday even suggested his disgraced client did not have a place to go to the bathroom – an assertion quickly shot down by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lisa B. Lench.
The complaints come on the second day of jury selection where Weinstein faces 11 counts of rape and sexual assault.
“It’s almost medieval, the conditions,” Werksman said. “He’s 70-years-old. I’m worried about him surviving this ordeal without a heart attack or stroke.”
The lawyer also said the cell was “unhygienic” and claimed he was left alone for three to four hours in his wheelchair in the “unsanitary, fetid” holding cell at the courthouse before he was brought back to jail.
Lench said she would discuss the conditions with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, but warned there was little she could do.
Harvey Weinstein’s defense team has mentioned his health several times during court appearances.Getty Images
“I’m not minimizing it, I’m just not sure there’s a lot to be done,” she said.
The complaints by Werksman were lodged before Weinstein and 71 possible jurors entered the courtroom.
When Weinstein, 70, rolled in and climbed into his seat at the defense table, Werksman repeated his concerns and suggested Weinstein lacked a toilet in the cell, a notion the judge quickly dismissed.
“He’s not deprived of a toilet, there is a toilet in the cell,” Lench said. “I’m not going to let the record reflect that he’s deprived of a toilet.”
Werksman then walked back the insinuation, but argued, “It is unhygienic, it is virtually unusable, it is medieval.”
Weinstein’s defense team has pointed out his poor health on many occasions during both his New York trial and the pre-trial hearings on the west coast.
He was convicted of rape and sexual assault in New York in February 2020 and was sentenced to 23 years in prison. But the state’s Court of Appeals agreed to hear Weinstein’s appeal on the guilty verdict.
The pale and frail man – a far cry from the towering figure he once was in the film industry – was hospitalized with chest pains and underwent a heart procedure after he was found guilty in 2020. He also contracted COVID-19 at one point in the first weeks of the pandemic in the US and suffers from diabetes, his lawyers have said.
Opening statements in the Los Angeles trial are expected to begin later this month – five years after bombshell reports of sexual misconduct ended his storied career at the height of the #MeToo movement.
The Oscar-winning ex-film producer faces four counts of rape and seven counts of sexual assault from five women in LA.
Five years after the bombshell reports that ended his career, the disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein will go on trial in Los Angeles on Monday over a series of alleged sexual assaults involving five different women.
It’s the second trial of the former Hollywood titan, who has been incarcerated since February 2020 when he was convicted of sexual assault and rape in proceedings in New York.
Authorities extradited Weinstein to California last year to face 11 additional sexual assault charges for alleged attacks that took place between 2004 to 2013, including forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual battery by restraint and sexual penetration by use of force.
While Weinstein is already likely to spend the rest of his life in prison, Jamie White, an attorney who has represented survivors of Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics doctor whose serial sexual abuse of girls and young women has shaken the gymnastics world, said it was important that there be accountability for all victims.
“These victims deserve accountability,” he said. “It’s the accountability we expect our public servants come forward with when there is a victim involved.”
Gloria Allred echoed his remarks. “There is no limit to the number of prosecutions that are appropriate sufficient evidence to justify a prosecution elsewhere of the same defendant,” said the lawyer, who represents three women testifying in the forthcoming trial, in an interview with Variety .
“It’s about seeking justice for them,” she said of the women who have been affected.
Weinstein’s trial in Los Angeles is taking place half a decade after the first reports of the extensive allegations against him sparked a movement, leading women around the world to come forward about the abuse they have faced at the hands of powerful men.
The #MeToo movement took off in 2017 after the New York Times and the New Yorker revealed Weinstein’s extensive history of sexual misconduct, with accounts from actors such as Ashley Judd, and how his powerful status in Hollywood allowed him to abuse women without consequence for decades.
A group of Silence Breakers who have spoken out against Weinstein gather for a press conference in 2020. Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images
There had long been whispers about the behavior of the movie mogul, whose company was behind films such as Pulp Fiction and Shakespeare in Love, but the stories shed a light on how Weinstein’s team of lawyers, private detectives and paid advisers helped silence accusers who ranged from actors to production assistants.
Within weeks of the first revelations, nearly 90 women had come forward accusing Weinstein of inappropriate behavior and sexual violence in incidents that date back to the 1970s.
Weinstein’s 2020 trial in New York on accusations of raping two women marked a landmark moment in the #MeToo movement that saw others testify about their experiences, including the Sopranos actor Annabella Sciorra, who said the producer raped her in the early 1990s.
The jury found Weinstein guilty of rape in the third degree and a criminal sex act in the first degree for forcing oral sex on Miriam Haley, a former Project Runway production assistant. A judge sentenced him to 23 years in prison.
Still, Weinstein, now 70, has long maintained his innocence. He recently sought to have his New York conviction overturned, but a five-judge panel upheld the ruling. The state’s highest court, however, has agreed to allow Weinstein to appeal the conviction.
Weinstein’s trial in Los Angeles comes at a critical juncture for the #MeToo movement. The case is one of several to play out across America this month, including trials against the actors Kevin Spacey and Danny Masterson and the director Paul Haggis.
It also follows the high-profile proceedings this year that saw a jury ordering actor Amber Heard to pay her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, $10m for defamation after she wrote about her experience speaking out against violence against women.
In the years since the Weinstein revelations, some people have argued that the movement has gone too far, White, the attorney, said. Weinstein should not benefit from that idea, he continued, adding that there had been crucial progress in the years since the movement began.
“We’re seeing laws all over this country change. There’s already been an extraordinary amount of progress. There’s a lot more to go,” said White. “We need to make sure these policies change and these temperaments and that we don’t go back to our old ways.”
Weinstein has denied the allegations against him. “All of the allegations against Mr Weinstein are either fabricated, or they result from consensual sexual relationships that his accusers now falsely characterize as sexual assaults,” Weinstein’s lawyer, Mark Werksman, said.
The attorney added that Weinstein is unwell, unable to walk, and has several infected teeth because he is unable to receive proper dental treatment at the Los Angeles county jail.
Jury selection for Weinstein’s Los Angeles trial begins on Monday. If convicted on those charges, he faces up to 140 years in prison.
Jessica Mann stunned a New York courtroom in 2020 when she described her encounters with Harvey Weinstein – and his “very bad” hygiene.
The co-founder of the Miramax entertainment company and The Weinstein Company film studio was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, having produced films such as “Pulp Fiction” and “The Crying Game.”
He also became the most prominent villain of the #MeToo movement after women began to go public in 2017 with accounts of his behavior. The 70-year-old is serving a 23-year sentence after his 2020 conviction in New York for raping an aspiring actress in a New York City hotel room in 2013 and sexually assaulting a production assistant at his apartment in 2006. The jury convicted Weinstein on the charge of third degree rape, based on Mann’s disturbing testimony.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images” data-src=”https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/eXGcin9OZjqVjRAPzlx_Dw–/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTcwNTtoPTM5Nw–/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/.1JJ1PShrwCKi7cD5R39Ng–~B/aD03MjA7dz0xMjgwO2FwcGlkPXl0YWNoeW9u/https://media.zenfs.com/en/fox_news_text_979/238b956bd4ddb5f1104950d80c97878b”/>Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images” src=”https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/eXGcin9OZjqVjRAPzlx_Dw–/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTcwNTtoPTM5Nw–/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/.1JJ1PShrwCKi7cD5R39Ng–~B/aD03MjA7dz0xMjgwO2FwcGlkPXl0YWNoeW9u/https://media.zenfs.com/en/fox_news_text_979/238b956bd4ddb5f1104950d80c97878b” class=”caas-img”/>
Harvey Weinstein is serving a 23-year sentence after his 2020 conviction in New York for raping an aspiring actress in a New York City hotel room in 2013 and sexually assaulting production assistant Mimi Haleyi at his apartment in 2006. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Recently, author Ken Auletta has written a new book titled “Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence,” which explores Weinstein’s early years before fame, his rise to power and eventual downfall. Auletta spoke to film stars, Miramax employees, old friends and family members, including brother Bob Weinstein. Auletta said he also exchanged several emails with Weinstein in prison and covered his trial.
HARVEY WEINSTEIN TO FACE INDECENT ASSAULT CHARGES IN LONDON
Attorneys for Weinstein did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment concerning the book.
In Auletta’s book, Weinstein’s alleged victims described how they found him repellent. Mann, in particular, gave graphic descriptions at a Manhattan courthouse where she claimed Weinstein smelled of “poop” and had blackheads scattered across his back with an “uncomfortable” texture. Mann claimed she witnessed his “deformed and intersex” genitalia when he raped and sexually assaulted her in early 2013. Mann also claimed he had extreme scarring, and she once found evidence that he was using a drug that would induce an erection.
Photo by JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images” data-src=”https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/y.hRiEEpgq1NKk6tkwA3aA–/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTcwNTtoPTM5Nw–/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/ftausMcXT3Tqyg1TSmSYJA–~B/aD03MjA7dz0xMjgwO2FwcGlkPXl0YWNoeW9u/https://media.zenfs.com/en/fox_news_text_979/b15d9cf6700f504aad53b593a7581bf0″/>Photo by JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images” src=”https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/y.hRiEEpgq1NKk6tkwA3aA–/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTcwNTtoPTM5Nw–/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/ftausMcXT3Tqyg1TSmSYJA–~B/aD03MjA7dz0xMjgwO2FwcGlkPXl0YWNoeW9u/https://media.zenfs.com/en/fox_news_text_979/b15d9cf6700f504aad53b593a7581bf0″ class=”caas-img”/>
Former Actress Jessica Mann arrives for the trial of Harvey Weinstein at the Manhattan Criminal Court, on January 31, 2020, in New York City. Photo by JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
“Harvey had some notion in his head that his body was attractive,” Auletta told Fox News Digital. “I remember the district attorney passed around pictures… and the jurors barely looked at them. They just showed them to the next person. They were that disgusted. They had no interest in looking at these pictures. I remember I kept looking at Harvey. He would just sit in his chair without expression. Sometimes he fell asleep.”
“[Based on the accounts], he really thought he was God’s gift, a Don Juan,” Auletta added.
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Auletta said he confronted Weinstein back in 2002 over rape allegations for his New Yorker profile. Auletta said that his first impression of Weinstein was that of “a beast.”
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Harvey Weinstein (L) and Bob Weinstein pose with the Motion Picture Showmanship Award backstage at the 52nd Annual ICG Publicists Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 20, 2015, in Beverly Hills, California. Photo by Mathew Imaging/WireImage
“I came within inches of nailing him on assaulting women, but I couldn’t get any of the women to talk to me,” Auletta explained. “And he denied it. He said, ‘These are all consensual affairs.’ But when the New York Times and the New Yorker exposed him in 2017, I was applauding. However, I still had a series of questions. What made Harvey become this monster? How did he get away with this for years? Who enabled him to do this? Didn’t people know he was abusing women? Why did they keep silent about it? … I wanted to explore what happened in Harvey’s home that helped him shape who he became.”
Auletta claimed that growing up, Weinstein’s domineering mother, Miriam, would scream and shame her son in front of his friends. Her criticism would often focus on his body. In the early ‘80s, Weinstein began to pack on the pounds.
“I’m not certain what impact it had on his relationship with women,” Auletta explained. “I found no evidence that in his early years he raped women. I think that occurred after he became powerful. But people would say he was very much a replica of his mother. His friends were hesitant to stop by his house because Miriam yelled constantly. She wanted to be constantly in control and micromanaged through yelling. That was a pattern that Harvey followed when he launched his production company… He was constantly abusing people verbally.”
HARVEY WEINSTEIN LOSES APPEAL OF RAPE CONVICTION IN NY CASE
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Harvey Weinstein and his mother Miriam Weinstein at the 41st Annual Obie Awards on May 20, 1996, in New York City. The matriarch passed away in 2016 at age 90. Photo by Catherine McGann/Getty Images
Still, Auletta said there’s “no question” that Hollywood, which has a dark history of the casting couch contributed to Weinstein’s behavior. As the story goes, some aspiring actresses from as far back as the beginnings of the studio system in the ‘20s and ‘30s were forced to trade in sexual favors for roles. Louis B. Mayer, who co-founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in 1924, reportedly threatened to ruin the careers of actresses if they did not comply. There are numerous accounts from Hollywood’s golden era that imply this behavior never ended.
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Harvey Weinstein and his then-wife, fashion designer Georgina Chapman in 2017. Chapman, 46, finalized her divorce in 2021. Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
“One of the things that’s unusual about Hollywood is that attractive young women work in such a close proximity to their bosses,” said Auletta. “It was common over the years in Hollywood for bosses, directors, casting people and studio heads to promise roles to women in exchange for sex. Sometimes not even explicitly. It was just implicit in the relationship. But there’s a difference between the casting couch and raping women. Harvey was violently raping women… As bad as Louis B. Mayer was, [violent rape] was not a common occurrence over the years in Hollywood.”
Auletta shared that Weinstein avoided being exposed for years because many were fearful of his retaliation.
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Harvey Weinstein of Miramax Films at his office in New York City, circa 1989. Photo by Barbara Alper/Getty Images
“They were afraid of challenging him and being called liars,” said Auletta. “They knew he would attack or castigate them. He had enormous power among the press… He was also willing to pay these women a sum of money to keep quiet. And as long as they signed a non-disclosure agreement, they couldn’t tell anyone… Ultimately, he had no compassion. He had no ability to understand what he was doing to women… Bob’s answer was ‘I knew he was a sex addict, I didn’t know he was raping women.’ And many people who worked with Harvey, in their defense, would say, ‘I knew he cheated on his wives. I didn’t know what happened in those hotel rooms.’ They said they didn’t know he was abusing women.”
HARVEY WEINSTEIN WAS IN LA AREA WHEN ACTRESS SAYS HE RAPED HER, DRIVER SAYS
Auletta said he exchanged “probably 25” emails with Weinstein while behind bars.
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From left: David Parfitt, Donna Gigliotti, Harvey Weinstein, Gwyneth Paltrow, Edward Zwick, Mark Norman after winning the Oscar for Best Film for ‘Shakespeare in Love’ in 1999. Photo by Evan Agosti
“I would send off these questions,” said Auletta. “Most of those answers were just factual. Some of them were just lies… A question that I really wanted to ask, that it didn’t get answered in the email was, ‘Harvey after you raped, let’s just say Jessica Mann, and you put your head on a pillow at night, how did you explain to yourself what you have just done?’ Didn’t answer that question. I suspect if he had answered that question, he would have said something along the lines of, ‘This was a consensual affair. She wanted something from me, a role in Hollywood, in the movie business. And I wanted something from her – sex. It was a fair trade.’”
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It is not clear if the UK plans to seek Harvey Weinstein’s extradition to stand trial in Britain. Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
Weinstein is jailed in California, where he was extradited last year, and is awaiting trial on charges he assaulted five women in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills from 2004 to 2013.
In June of this year, British prosecutors said they have authorized police to charge Weinstein with two counts of indecent assault against a woman in London in 1996. Police said the alleged offenses against the woman, now in her 50s, took place in July and August 1996. After revelations about Weinstein emerged in 2017, British police said they were investigating multiple allegations of sexual assault that reportedly took place between the 1980s and 2015.
SALMA HAYEK SAYS HARVEY WEINSTEIN BERATED HER WHILE PLAYING FRIDA KAHLO
Unlike many other countries, Britain does not have a statute of limitations for rape or sexual assault.
Auletta said he hopes his book will give readers a sense of who Weinstein is “as a full person, not a cardboard figure.”
“He was both a monster and a talent, both crazy and powerful,” said Auletta. “I also hope readers get a sense of how his behavior was tolerated and normalized. Because of that, there are a lot of victims out there… It was tough sometimes [to write this book]. He was an incredibly talented movie executive who made some great films, but I also wanted to punch this guy in the face… Harvey has a legacy that is diminished, but it’s not erased by this awful behavior.”
If you or someone you know is suffering from abuse, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
The painstaking work to expose Harvey Weinstein comes to the big screen in the first trailer for She Said, the film adaptation of the book by New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey.
The duo, who won a Pulitzer prize (along with The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow) for their 2017 investigation into the sexual predation by the formerly untouchable film producer, helped ignite the #MeToo movement and several subsequent investigations into abuses of power.
The film, from Unothordox director Maria Schrader and adapted for the screen by Ida and Colette writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, depicts the months-long investigation by Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Twohey (Carey Mulligan), who “together broke one of the most important stories in a generation”, according to the official synopsis by Universal Pictures. It tells “a story that helped propel the #MeToo movement, shattered decades of silence around the subject of sexual assault in Hollywood and altered American culture forever”.
Nearly two years after the series of stories in the Times and The New Yorker were published, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison on charges of sexual assault and third-degree rape. He is set to stand trial in Los Angeles for rape and sexual assault charges in October.
The trailer depicts Kantor’s first foray into the story, her partnership with Twohey, and the reporters’ efforts to break the culture of silence around Weinstein’s victims, many bound by NDAs not to speak of their experience.
Mulligan has been nominated for two Oscars, for An Education and Promising Young Woman. She will next be seen opposite Adam Sandler in Spaceman and Bradley Cooper in the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro.
She Said also stars Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher and Samantha Morton. It will premiere on 18 November before a predicted premiere at a fall film festival.
Sienna Miller said her former relationship with Jude Law saved her from potential sexual harassment at the hands of convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein.
The American-English actress, 40, told The Guardian on Saturday, ‘I was Jude’s girlfriend, and there was probably protection in that.’
The G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra actress noted how Law ‘was a big actor for Harvey,’ appearing in films the disgraced producer backed such as The Talented Mr. Ripley and Cold Mountain.
The latest: Sienna Miller, 40, said her former relationship with Jude Law saved her from potential harassment at the hands of convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, 70. She was snapped in London earlier this month
Miller, who was linked to Law on an on-and-off basis from 2003 thru 2011, starred in the Weinstein-backed drama Factory Girl in 2006, portraying socialite Edie Sedgwick.
‘I called Harvey “Pops” from day one, which I’m sure helped,’ Miller said, noting the non-sexual connotations of the nickname.
Miller, who plays Sophie Whitehouse in the new Netflix miniseries Anatomy of a Scandal, told the outlet that Weinstein had once been verbally abusive to her over her active social life when not on set.
‘I was rehearsing one day with Steve Buscemi and Harvey called and asked me to come to his office,’ Miller told the outlet. ‘I said, “I’m in rehearsal.” And he shouted, “Now!” and sent a car.
Weinstein (pictured in 2020) is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence in connection with his February 2020 convictions of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape
Miller said Weinstein had once been verbally abusive to her over her social life
‘He sat me down in his office and said, “You’re not f***ing going out any more, you’re not partying, rah rah rah.” I was having a lot of fun, but I managed to go to work on time. And he was standing over me while I was sitting in a chair, lip quivering, and then he slammed the door, and I burst into tears.’
The Golden Globe-nominated actress said that Weinstein then returned to the room and told her, ‘It’s because I’m f***ing proud of you,’ slamming the door a second time upon his exit.
Miller said she looked at the incident as a rite of passage, adding, ‘You weren’t really inaugurated until Weinstein made you cry.’
She continued: ‘I imagined this is what Hollywood producers were like. I genuinely felt he’d given me the biggest validation. I was so grateful. I wasn’t scared of him, actually.
Miller was linked to Jude Law on an on-and-off basis from 2003 thru 2011. The couple was snapped in May of 2010
‘And I was not aware that he was raping people. He asked for one meeting with me in a hotel, and I brought the other producers and it was innocuous. I’ve never been propositioned by anyone, for a job.’
Weinstein is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence in connection with his February 2020 convictions of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape.
The Oscar-winning producer’s downfall began in the fall of 2017 after allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and rape against him were detailed in articles from The New York Times and The New Yorker.
Weinstein was subsequently accused of sexual harassment and misconduct by more than 90 women, including actresses such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Rose McGowan, Mira Sorvino, Ashley Judd, Annabella Sciorra and Uma Thurman.
Look — you’ve watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, what, a thousand times?
New Line Cinema / courtesy Everett Collection
But you probably had no idea that one of the orc designs for the film was, apparently, inspired by disgraced film producer and alleged rapist Harvey Weinstein.
New Line / courtesy Everett Collection
At least, that’s what LOTR star Elijah Wood revealed on a recent episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast.
New Line Cinema / courtesy Everett Collection
Wood actually said that the subject also recently came up on The Friendship Onion podcast, which is hosted by fellow LOTR co-stars Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd.
Warner Bros / courtesy Everett Collection
“They were talking to Sean Astin about his first memory of getting to New Zealand for the first time,” he said. “He had seen these orc masks. And one of the orc masks — and I remember this vividly — was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein as a sort of a fuck you.”
New Line Cinema / Everett Collection
According to Deadline, there’s context here: Originally, the LOTR films were supposed to be made at Weinstein’s production company Miramax. But Harvey didn’t want director Peter Jackson to make three films — so Jackson made them at New Line instead, and the rest is history.
Courtesy Everett Collection
And history is precisely is why Wood felt so comfortable sharing the story with Shepard: “I think it’s okay to talk about this now. He’s fucking incarcerated.”
Warner Bros / courtesy Everett Collection
Listen to the entire episode here.
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One orc among many in the Lord of the Rings movies was designed to resemble Harvey Weinstein as a “sort of fuck you” to the notorious producer, Elijah Wood, who played the hobbit Frodo in the series, told a Hollywood podcast.
“It’s funny,” Wood told the actor Dax Shepard’s podcast, Armchair Expert. “This was recently spoken about because Dom [Monaghan] and Bill [Boyd, who played hobbits Merry and Pippin] … were talking to Sean Astin [Samwise] about his first memory of getting to New Zealand [where the series was filmed].
“He had seen these orc masks. And one of the orc masks – and I remember this vividly – was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein as a sort of a fuck you.
“I think that is OK to talk about now,” Wood said. “The guy is fucking incarcerated. Fuck him.”
In the first major case of the #MeToo era, in which woman have spoken out about abuse by powerful men, Weinstein was accused of sexual assault by numerous women. Convicted of rape in February 2020 and sentenced to 23 years in jail, he faces further charges in California, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Wood said the director Peter Jackson made the decision to model an orc on Weinstein after having difficulties with him on the way to making the Lord of the Rings films.
According to Wood, Jackson began developing the films at Miramax, which Weinstein co-founded with his brother. Jackson wanted to make at least two films to adapt the novels by JRR Tolkein, but Weinstein asked the director to adapt all three books in one movie.
Wood said Peter Jackson made the decision to model an orc on Weinstein after having difficulties with him on the way to making the Lord of the Rings films. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy
Weinstein also threatened to replace Jackson with Quentin Tarantino or John Madden, the director of Shakespeare in Love, Wood said.
When Jackson asked Weinstein for permission to find a different producer, Wood said, Weinstein agreed but gave him only one weekend to do so and mandated that any producer must work on all the films or none.
“The window of time was insane,” Wood said. “They shopped it around town. Peter made a pitch video that’s pretty impressive, taken to a variety of places. Most people were balking at the notion of doing more than one film. The popular opinion was, ‘No, you have to see how [the initial movie] does and then invest the rest of your money.’”
Wood said Weinstein agreed to produce at least two films but capped the budget at $75m, a move he hid from Jackson. Jackson’s team leaked the script as way to garner interest among other studios and the project was picked up by Bob Shaye, founder of New Line Cinema, who agreed to make three movies.
“I think the lore is that they were coming with two and it was Bob Shaye who said, ‘We have to do three,’ which is insane,” Wood said. “An incredible risk. Miramax thought there was no chance in hell.”
The trilogy made $2.92bn at the box office and is now considered one of the greatest movie series ever made.
The creative team behind the “Lord of the Rings” films disliked Harvey Weinstein so much that one of the film’s costumes was designed to be a dig at the Hollywood mogul, according to actor Elijah Wood.
Weinstein was one of the industry’s biggest powerbrokers before his rape conviction last year, and his Miramax production company had the initial rights to the “Lord of the Rings” films.
Wood, who played Frodo Baggins, told the “Armchair Expert” podcast that Weinstein had saddled filmmaker Peter Jackson some seemingly impossible conditions for getting the movies made with another studio, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Jackson pulled it off anyway, securing a deal with New Line Cinema for what would become an iconic big-screen franchise.
But he took at shot at Weinstein with one of the costumes for the orcs.
Wood said co-star Sean Astin, who played Samwise Gamgee, said in another podcast interview that he spotted the mask when he arrived on the set.
“He had seen these orc masks. And one of the orc masks — and I remember this vividly — was designed to look like Harvey Weinstein as a sort of a ‘fuck you,’” Wood said, according to THR, adding: “I think that is OK to talk about now, the guy is fucking incarcerated. Fuck him.”
Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison after his conviction. He is appealing the sentence but is also facing more charges.
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6:10 PM PT — Weinstein, through his assistant, tells TMZ … “It’s very clear to me that this is for more sales on Angie’s BOOK. THERE WAS NEVER an assault, and NEVER an attempt to assault.” HW adds, “It is brazenly untrue and clickbait publicity. You’re Angelina Jolie, every male and female in the world, I’m sure, shows interest in you. Is the whole world assaulting you?”
3:12 PM PT — Sources close to Brad tell TMZ … he never “teamed up” with Weinstein for “Inglourious Basterds” — he was simply part of a movie that Tarantino directed, which happened to get distributed by TWC.
Angelina Jolie says Brad Pitt‘s continuing to associate himself with Harvey Weinstein during their marriage led to some bad blood between the couple … adding it was painful.
The actress spilled the beans to The Guardian, saying “it hurt” when her then-hubby kept partnering with Weinstein and/or his production company — be it in distribution deals or any other capacity … ’cause Angie notes he knew how she felt about the disgraced movie mogul.
Angelina Jolie: ‘I just want my family to heal’ https://t.co/sxG7dqOhPF
— Guardian Weekend (@guardianweekend) September 4, 2021
@guardianweekend
AJ says her hatred of Weinstein first surfaced back when she first worked with him for the ’98 flick “Playing by Heart,” during which time she claims she “escaped” an alleged attempt of his to get her alone in a room … something she now characterizes as an assault itself.
She goes on to say that she warned others about Weinstein after that, and even told her first husband, Jonny Lee Miller, to spread the word to other guys as a warning. Angelina also says she turned down a role in “The Aviator” just to avoid having to work with the guy again.
And yet, she points out that Brad continued to rub shoulders with Weinstein in the 2000s — teaming up, indirectly, to put out “Inglourious Basterds” — which The Weinstein Company helped release. Not just that, but she claims Brad went against her wishes in approaching HW to help make his 2012 movie, “Killing Them Softly,” which TWC distributed as well.
She says of that time, “We fought about it. Of course it hurt,” while adding that she refused to plug the movie … saying she didn’t attend promotional events with Brad.
The interesting thing about this, of course, is that Brad is said to have confronted Harvey back when his then-girlfriend, Gwyneth Paltrow, was first working with the producer in the late ’90s … and allegedly got accosted by HW for sex — something Brad apparently nipped in the bud after hearing about it from her in a face-to-face with the man himself. In a CNN interview, he said that’s just how boys from the South dealt with things like that back then.
He didn’t shy away from the heroics of that moment — but it’s crazy to hear Angie say, years after that, he was presumably OK working with that same guy … even amid her objections.
The Guardian ran a long profile of actor, director, author, and activist Angelina Jolie this weekend, with both Jolie and writer Simon Hattenstone doing their apparent damnedest to try to make the piece as much as possible about Jolie’s passions, her new book about the UN-guaranteed rights of children, and her work promoting the struggles and heroism of activists and refugees in areas like Syria and Afghanistan. But—especially in light of Jolie’s long custody struggles with former husband Brad Pitt over their six children, and its connection to the topic of the rights of children—it was probably inevitable that some Angelina Jolie, Famous Hollywood Actress stuff would slip in, and, probably equally inevitably, it’s the kind of stuff that’s fairly difficult to look away from once it’s in the ether.
Specifically: Jolie talks about Harvey Weinstein, who she says assaulted her early in her career, circa her role in 1988’s Playing By Heart. “I worked with him when I was young,” Jolie says, “If you get yourself out of the room, you think he attempted but didn’t, right? The truth is that the attempt and the experience of the attempt is an assault. It was beyond a pass, it was something I had to escape.” Jolie says that she did her best to warn other young women away from working with Weinstein, and that she turned down a part in The Aviator due to his involvement. Her then-husband was less willing to take similar stances, though; Jolie notes in the profile that, “Of course it hurt” when Pitt chose to star in the Weinstein-produced Inglourious Basterds, and brought Weinstein onboard as a producer on a film in 2012. “We fought about it.”
Other Pitt material in the interview is more circumspect, at least in part because the legal issues surrounding the custody fight are still ongoing—and, in part, served as the inspiration for her writing about children’s rights. “I’m not the kind of person who makes decisions like the decisions I had to make lightly,” she notes, alluding to the divorce, and her allegations of abusive behavior against Pitt. “It took a lot for me to be in a position where I felt I had to separate from the father of my children.”
The end result is a messy, but striking, profile, one often forced to talk obliquely about Jolie’s personal connection to the book she’s striving to publicize and promote. (Titled Know Your Rights, and co-written by Geraldine Van Bueren QC and Amnesty International.) You can read the full piece here.
