Matt Damon and George Clooney: Goodness Us, We Never Heard a Blessed Thing About Weinstein's Misbehavior (Except for the Things We Did Hear About)

They're out promoting a film Damon stars in and Clooney directed. Both men's careers were boosted by Harvey Weinstein. Both are saying they didn't know anything about his reputation of rape and assault and creeping, admitting only to knowing of vague "womanizing."

The trouble with that claim is, as John Sexton notes, Damon is also admitting to knowing more than that -- but he gets very, very vague about it.

"I knew the story about Gwyneth from Ben because he was with her after Brad [Pitt], so I knew that story," Damon said Monday on ABC News. "I never talked to Gwyneth about it, Ben told me. But I knew that they had come to whatever, you know, agreement or understanding that they had come to, she had handled it. She was, you know, the first lady of Miramax. And he treated her incredibly respectfully."

Rose McGowan "came to an understanding" with Weinstein, and "handied it." That doesn't mean the complained of behavior didn't happen. And not even Matt Damon's too stupid to think it means that.

John Sexton points out something very important: Even if Matt Damon believed that Gwenyth Paltrow had just "handled it" with Weinstein, why did he undertake to help spike a story about Harvey Weinstein's sexual misbehavior with another woman knowing that -- whether "handled" or not -- it was mostly likely true?

Two weeks ago, former New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman (now at The Wrap) wrote that Damon helped get her 2004 exposé on Weinstein scrubbed. Waxman got calls from Damon and Russell Crowe personally to tube a story that tied Fabrizio Lombardo, then heading Miramax’s Italian unit, to Weinstein’s sexual appetite and about a payoff to a woman who had accused Weinstein of non-consensual sexual behavior. Damon claimed he was just asked to talk about Lombardo’s work for Miramax, not anything to do with Weinstein.

However, he already knew about Weinstein’s sexual harassment of Paltrow by this time. She married Coldplay frontman Chris Martin in 2003, having ended the relationship with Affleck in 2000. If Waxman was writing about Weinstein in 2004, then Damon had an important piece of information -- or at least knew enough to refrain from running interference on a sex scandal at Miramax.

I can't steal everything from Sexton so read about James Toback, now accused by 38 women of First Degree Creepstering, including Weinstein-like rubbing and ejaculating on nonconsenting women, and James Gunn's attempts to warn everyone he knew about him.

It's another filthy-grubby story proving again that while Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, Hollywood is also Hollywood for ugly people.

Sexton links a particularly distressing account from an actress named Sari Kamin. Read that, if you can stomach it.

It gets worse as it goes on. Let me know at which point you tapped out.

posted by Ace at 07:38 PM

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