The stories of Harvey Weinstein as an abusive boss are really remarkable. Here,
in The Guardian, for example:
“Miramax was absolutely a cult, the cult of Harvey, and that’s how
he got away with his behaviour for so long,” said Webster. “It was crude
but very effective. People became brainwashed, some people had nervous
breakdowns. People would be hired and then destroyed for no apparent
reason, and then their careers and lives would be in tatters.”
He added: “Everything Harvey did was all about manipulation and
fear. He was a massive bully. He would flatter people, get the best out
of them and then dump on them really, really hard to destroy them. It
was this whole thing of breaking people down so you could build them up
in your own image.”
An ex marine developed nervous tics:
Other former Miramax employees described how their years working at
the company had left them with post-traumatic stress disorder. “I
remember friends would ask me what it was like to work at Miramax and I
would always tell them that it’s kind of like telling people you fell
down the stairs,” said Jesse Berdinka, a former US marine who worked at
Miramax for seven years and said the “mental weight” of the sometimes
“sadistic” experience would affect the rest of his life.
Berdinka, who worked his way from being a temp to being
vice-president of development and production at Miramax, said he began
drinking more than he should have in order to deal with the extreme
stress, and developed nervous tics. The story of his own rise in the
ranks was typical, he said, because when outsiders were brought into
senior jobs they often did not last long.
“You see stories of domestic abuse on the news and think, how can
people keep subjecting themselves to that? And then I would walk into
the office the next day,” Berdinka said. “For me at least it was the
drip, day after day, of never knowing if you are good enough or if you
are going to be at the top of the world or the bottom of the shit list.”
An anonymous woman:
A third former senior executive, speaking to the Guardian on the
condition of anonymity, said she believed she suffered from PTSD. She
described how Weinstein threw a glass frame in her direction, narrowly
missing her head. The frame contained a picture of Weinstein and Mick
Jagger.
“It wasn’t just sexual abuse. Everyone got abused. It didn’t really
matter how high up you were, you got the same treatment,” she said.
“If I were to sum up the physical and emotional response, I would say
I feel it is PTSD,” the executive said. She said some of the symptoms
re-emerged when the first stories of Weinstein’s abuse were aired on
television this month, making her physically ill.
“I’ve had years of recurring nightmares. Ten years of nightmares, while I was there and after,” she said.
The
Washington Post had some spectacular stories too:
And this past week, the Wall Street Journal described
a Weinstein Company executive conference gone bad: “In about 2011,
after an argument over how to allocate the studio’s resources between
their respective movies, Harvey Weinstein punched his brother in the
face in front of about a dozen other Weinstein Co. executives, knocking
him to the ground, said two people who were present. ‘I’ve been
assaulted!’ Bob yelled, according to those people. Bob, who was
bloodied, wanted to press charges, but was talked out of it, according
to a person familiar with the incident.”
And he's been physically assaulting people for decades:
Producer Alan Brewer recounted
to The Washington Post one episode from early in Weinstein’s career,
circa 1984. Weinstein became enraged when he couldn’t locate Brewer for a
few hours on the day before a premiere, and when Weinstein finally
found him, as The Post reported, Weinstein “lunged at him and began
punching him in the head, Brewer said; the skirmish tumbled into the
corridor and then the elevator. By the time Brewer reached the street,
intent on never associating with the Weinsteins again, he said, Harvey
was pleading for him to stay.”
A real nutter from way back...
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