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Well, yes, this probably is true

Going down with all these people and things is Hollywood itself. There’s simply no denying that the atmosphere in Hollywood is toxic for women. In an anonymously-written Guardian article, an actress details the mistreatment, objectification and vulnerability she experienced working in Los Angeles. She would meet with directors and producers, but when she rejected their sexual advances, she would never hear from them again.

“Harvey Weinstein’s alleged behaviour was not unique to him,” she wrote. “It is absolutely just the accepted way of things.” She went on to say that even though she told her manager, “no one thought it was a big deal.”
This is the harsh reality for women working in the movie industry. Men can get away with what they want if women’s careers are on the line. They know who has the advantage.

There’s a very small supply of truly gifted actors. There’s a very large supply of talented enough, pretty enough, actors. The supply of the first isn’t large enough to fill all the slots, the supply of the second vastly larger than. Those who control the bottleneck therefore take advantage.

Who wouldn’t? No, not in the sense of who wouldn’t take advantage but who wouldn’t think that some goodly proportion of them would?

And note that this applies to all actors of whatever gender and sexuality. The preponderance of it is going to be hetero men hitting on women simply because that’s how humans work, the vast majority are hetero and it does tend to be the men controlling those bottlenecks. But it’s by no means solely a male on female predation problem at all.

36 thoughts on “Well, yes, this probably is true”

  1. there’s always been jokes around about male actors having to blow a producer for a part.

    It’s even in Series 2 of the League of Gentlemen as a gag.

  2. As Michael Bay said, sarcastically, after sacking a stroppy actress, “There’s such a shortage of pretty girls who can act a bit. Especially in Hollywood.”

  3. And few try and work around this.

    It’s like when X factor singers complain about the pay for the annual tour. There’s 20000 people go to each audition or about 100k per year. If even 1% can sing well enough, that’s 1000 people who a) want the same job and b) would like to do it.

    The only real way around it is to do a more boring job, harder job or build things. You’re sucking Harvey Weinstein’s cock as a shortcut to success. You could write something, put it on YouTube with you starring in it. There are women who do. They’re poorer (at least in the short term) but they aren’t sucking cock to get there and probably will be around longer because they can write when the looks go.

  4. Of course, it’s hugely unlikely that an ambitious girl ever made the first move on a producer, because reasons.

  5. Solid Steve 2: Squirrels of The Patriots

    There’s simply no denying that the atmosphere in Hollywood is toxic for women.

    Quite. People have known Hollywood is a den of iniquity since the days of silent pictures, and there’s a reason actors were historically ranked alongside syphilitic whores in terms of social standing.

    Why do we think they spent so much of their cultural capital convincing people it was cool to fuck around?

    Women will always get the shitty end of that stick, but worse fates await the children. It’s been an open secret for decades that Hollywood types take a keen interest in kids. Polanski was just unlucky to get caught.

    Hopefully the Weinstein can of worms leads to some arrests.

  6. Yawnathon: turds behaving like turds, as we’ve always known they do. Still, it’s mild fun seeing people acting surprise and astonishment.

  7. I can understand Hilary Clinton’s anger.

    It’s not like her husband used his position to get an intern to give him a blowjob, is it.

  8. Okay, y’all, no more sex in Hollywood.

    ‘There’s simply no denying that the atmosphere in Hollywood is toxic for women.’

    Yet the women don’t leave.

    ‘Mainstream society has long excused men from sexual harassment and assault charges’

    Salon is stupid.

  9. I am sure this is but the first scandal. There must be predation on attractive young men and on child actors, we just haven’t heard about it yet.

  10. Solid Steve 2: Squirrels of The Patriots

    Rob – Yarp.

    Howevah, they’re not hysterical about what Weinstein did. All the top actors, actresses, producers, directors and financiers knew what he was like and worked with him for years anyway.

    The hysteria is because now you know what he’s like.

    Also, Polanski gets slightly more favourable treatment because he’s a sensitive artiste, whereas poor Harvey is a vulgar arriviste.

    Ljh – you just need to look at how utterly broken former child stars like Macaulay Culkin and the Coreys are (or were, since Mr Haim’s tragic premature death). A year ago, Elijah Wood made a comment about Hollywood having Savile-like secrets, but he quickly walked it back.

    Sounds like Hollywood needs an Eliot Ness figure to take names and bust skulls.

  11. I was told a story about a well-known and (publicly at least) decidedly heterosexual British actor who was whored around Hollywood to both male and female producers by his agent for a couple of years before he “earned” his break to the A-list. He was, according to the teller of the story, not remotely unhappy about this

  12. Bribery isn’t always about money and bribe-takers don’t always fulfil their part of the bargain so there’s nothing surprising here and I’m with dearieme on this.

  13. Flat cap army

    That reminds me, Hugh Grant’s debut was a B flick, wasn’t it? Lair of the White Worm, I think ? What a terrible film! I wonder how he made it up a league after that disaster

  14. Predation?

    Who’s the predator? The horny old executive who wants sex or the greedy young woman who wants money and a glamorous career?

    Can we talk about the kazillions of young women who choose a mate because he can provide? Are they predators? Or those mates, who choose the sexiest of those wanting him?

    “No, no, no” said he, “I’ll choose she with whom I will have sex by random draw, because ‘fairness'”, said no man ever.

    No doubt Hollywood had some cases of violent sexual assault, but most of these women are just having buyer’s remorse over a business deal. They are now convinced they overpaid, and that both sex and a blow job were too much. They now think that with their beauty and talent Weinstein should only have got a kiss and maybe a hand job.

  15. Bloke in North Dorset

    “ She went on to say that even though she told her manager, “no one thought it was a big deal.”“

    Some need to get a big clue bat and write on it in big letters GO TO THE FUCKING POLICE and beat them about head until it sinks in.

  16. Seems to me Hollywood is behind most of th bad shit in America.

    How many films do they make that dont involve psychopaths shootings vast amounts of people and being super cool with it?

    Slight exaggeration possibly , but how many hollywood films do not echo to the sound of gunshots?

    Any how many techies have made fortunes wih fps video games?

    We are told that neither violent films nor video games make people violent, and that is probably true in 99.99% of cases, but theres only one or two mass shootings per year and that is much less than 0.01% of people.

    So motes and beams you fucking luvvies.

    Start making proper morality tales.

  17. If there weren’t some women prepared to tolerate it (e.g Madonna who “lost her virginity as a career move”) Harvey Weinstein would just have had a sore face from the slaps.
    Certainly he is the most guilty party but any woman who went along for the ride owes an apology to later victims.

  18. Madonna who “lost her virginity as a career move”

    Well, you’ve got to lose it somewhen, and why not for advancement?

    *(when I was a teen, I was repeatedly propositioned by middle aged pointers. One of whom has a Wikipedia entry and shit. A well known academic associated with the beat poets. I said ‘no’ on all occasions. I am untraumatised by it, despite the fact it may well have been very handy, career wise since. Have I been exploited, or not? What should I have done?)

  19. Oh, and for pointers, read poofters. For some reason California-based Apple hasn’t added it to their autocorrect dictionary.

  20. Just Google Victor Salva or Jeffrey Jones, both of who have continued to get work despite their convictions

  21. BiI

    “Start making proper morality tales.”

    I’m sure they used to always make films from the ‘good guys’ perspective and the bad guy always lost. Even if the bad guys were central, they always got caught or didn’t succeed.

    When was it this changed? The 70s? Or am I just imagining it?

  22. Hugh Grant talks and acts like a fag. I can’t say I’m surprised.

    We should stop pretending these people are any better than they are. The Romans knew it. They’re just whores, who happen to get up in front of klieg lights and repeat someone else’s lines a few hundred times. Not worthy of respect.

  23. Everyone in power takes advantage of everyone without power. This isn’t anything to do with Hollywood, it’s just that we’ve heard of the people involved so it seems more personal. This is no different from the senior law partner giving it to the new girl before he’ll advance her position in the company, but who would care about a story when we don’t know any of these people? This is a nothing-burger, a look through the keyhole of a whorehouse and then pretending outrage at what we always knew was happening.

  24. So Much For Subtlety

    Mr Black – “Everyone in power takes advantage of everyone without power. This isn’t anything to do with Hollywood, it’s just that we’ve heard of the people involved so it seems more personal.”

    Several actresses have said that nothing like this exists in the UK. That it is a Hollywood thing.

    I would think that White Anglo-Saxon Protestant men were brought up to be gentlemen and so by and large did not do such things. Good families would not have let their own daughters go off and become nurses if Flashman was actually common in Victorian Britain.

    But it is much easier to do to women you see as being part of an alien and hateful ethnic group.

  25. SMFS, if they’ve said that, then they’re lying. As are all the people lining up to condemn Weinstein when they could probably name a dozen other such people off the top of their head but choose not to as they are not currently on the list of permitted targets. Human nature does not stop at borders.

  26. “Several actresses have said that nothing like this exists in the UK. That it is a Hollywood thing.”

    There’s not really much of an industry here. And a lot of it (like Heyday and Aardman) is not “star” films. No-one’s going to give a blowjob for a voice part as a piece of animated plasticine.

    But, what about Branagh and Thompson? Woman who is having sex with a man repeatedly gets parts in his movies, stops when she stops having sex with him. We all laugh at the indelible presence of Helena Bonham-Carter in Tim Burton films but how is that much different to the casting couch?

  27. “Several actresses have said that nothing like this exists in the UK. That it is a Hollywood thing.”

    Hands up everyone who believes them.

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