Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. The Harvey Weinstein scandal was
Speaker 1: first brought to light in October of two thousand seventeen
Speaker 1: by Megan Twey and Jodi Canter in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: Just one week later, Ronan Faraoh's expose on Weinstein was
Speaker 1: published in The New Yorker. And just when you thought
Speaker 1: you may be suffering from Harvey Weinstein fatigue, my guest today,
Speaker 1: Ken o Letta is out with the new book that
Speaker 1: is very much worth reading. Oletta explores how Harvey got
Speaker 1: away with it for so long. He names those who
Speaker 1: either looked the other way or enabled Weinstein to commit
Speaker 1: his various sexual crimes. Ken Oletta has had a remarkable
Speaker 1: career as a journalist, a New Yorker contributor, and the
Speaker 1: author of thirteen books. His latest is Hollywood Ending Harvey Weinstein,
Speaker 1: The Culture of Silence. Kenno Letta is known as a
Speaker 1: profiler of industry titans, Silicon Valley heavyweights, and media moguls.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know why he felt this book was
Speaker 1: an important addition to such a heavily reported story. Well,
Speaker 1: there were still mysteries to me about Harvey, and as
Speaker 1: brilliant a work as Jodi Cantor and make to Erna
Speaker 1: Farrow performed, they exposed him and broke the damn of silence,
Speaker 1: which was great. But the mysteries included what made Harvey
Speaker 1: Weinstein the monster he was, What explains the culture of
Speaker 1: silence that enabled him to abuse women for more than
Speaker 1: four decades, What was the nature of his power and
Speaker 1: his abusive power that made people so frightened, and what
Speaker 1: was the nature of the relationship and how it changed
Speaker 1: between e and his younger brother Bob, who were inseparable
Speaker 1: and business partners, and then Bob Weinstein fired his brother Harvey.
Speaker 1: So I was interested. I was interested in the biography.
Speaker 1: That to me is because I read Cantor into his book.
Speaker 1: They were on the show. That's what's so clear in
Speaker 1: your book, which was the enabling How did all these people,
Speaker 1: dozens and scores of people who knew I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: with Harvey it's a combination. And these are glib phrases.
Speaker 1: I'm so uncomfortable employing any of these phrases because they're
Speaker 1: tossed around so regularly now. But with Harvey, it's the
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity and the sexual predation. There are men who
Speaker 1: possess a toxic masculinity who do not victimize women that way.
Speaker 1: They're just bluster and screaming. Ruden. There was never an
Speaker 1: allegation that rude and sexually harassed anybody that I know of.
Speaker 1: But like Harvey, he was throwing things at people and
Speaker 1: screaming at people and so forth. And the thing that
Speaker 1: I was really taken with your book was this idea
Speaker 1: of how Harvey is the is really the last of
Speaker 1: a breed of men who could scream their way and
Speaker 1: pound tables and behave the way they did in order
Speaker 1: to achieve their results, and bully people. That this level
Speaker 1: of bullying that was like unseen Harvey. Women who were
Speaker 1: abused by him, raped by him, said that they went
Speaker 1: the room with him alone. They were terrified that he
Speaker 1: would lose his temper because when he lost his temper,
Speaker 1: he was out of control. Harvey has an impulse control problem,
Speaker 1: and he had it in eating. I mean, he has
Speaker 1: severe diabetes, and yet he shovels chocolate into his mouth
Speaker 1: all the time. I mean, he spent money which he
Speaker 1: shouldn't have spent, and the company was losing money in
Speaker 1: the end, but in part because of his extravagant spending
Speaker 1: and his abusive women, and if people just verbally was
Speaker 1: just he couldn't control his impulses, and so people were
Speaker 1: terrified of that. But they were terrified he had real power.
Speaker 1: He had power with the press. He was perceived as
Speaker 1: a as a figure who can get stories on his
Speaker 1: behalf and the press and against you. They knew he
Speaker 1: would soothe them if they challenged him in any way,
Speaker 1: and would go at them very aggressively. If you just
Speaker 1: look at who was who attended Harvey's second wedding to
Speaker 1: Georgina Chapman, Rupert Murdoch, his two daughters were flower girls,
Speaker 1: Lauren Michael's executive produce Senate Live, the head of NBC,
Speaker 1: then Jeff Sucker, the head of the parent company of NBC,
Speaker 1: Bryan Roberts. I mean, just look at that powerhouse of
Speaker 1: people who were in his relationship, and you had to
Speaker 1: be afraid. Well, the thing that also is interesting to
Speaker 1: me is all of these things, or some of these
Speaker 1: things I should say, that you delve into in the book. Now,
Speaker 1: I'll do my best to encapsulate all things Harvey that
Speaker 1: happened to me in one week at can I go
Speaker 1: to cam This is in two thousand and twelve. Uh,
Speaker 1: We're there and I'm going to host the MPHAR auction.
Speaker 1: He was on the board twenty he ran the whole show.
Speaker 1: Twenty different designers have contributed clothing to what they call
Speaker 1: the Black on Black Ensemble. I'm gonna be the m C.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go do an interview for the film at
Speaker 1: the party of Lenn blevot Nick at the Duke Up
Speaker 1: And then we get a phone called tell me us
Speaker 1: that Blevotnick is canceled and he was requested by Harvey
Speaker 1: to cancel to keep us away from the party. We
Speaker 1: were gonna go there with one camera and interview everybody
Speaker 1: at the party about Ken. Harvey kills it. I'm sitting
Speaker 1: at a table at a cocktail party, no but a brunch,
Speaker 1: and someone informs me that Blevotnick is canceled. And I
Speaker 1: say that fucking Harvey, he's the biggest asshole in all
Speaker 1: and this whole fucking town. And a writer from the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal is right there and he writes it
Speaker 1: in the paper the next day. Now, Harvey says, you
Speaker 1: either apologize to me publicly that you said that, or
Speaker 1: you're not invited to the m for event. You can't
Speaker 1: be the host of the thing, Like I really care,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to apologize.
Speaker 1: And then they said, then you can't be the m C.
Speaker 1: Now one of the producers of our film, Larry Herbert,
Speaker 1: bought a table. Larry buys a table, and they say,
Speaker 1: you can't come to the event. Ago are you in
Speaker 1: the habit of telling people that bought two d and
Speaker 1: fifty dollar tables to your event that they can't bring
Speaker 1: their guests. I'm coming as his guest. So I came.
Speaker 1: And then at the behest of my wife, who's far
Speaker 1: more dag Hammer Show than I'll ever be in my life,
Speaker 1: she says, go and apologize to Harvey. I woke up
Speaker 1: to Harvey's table because he had said, you know, how
Speaker 1: would you like it if your daughter's read things that
Speaker 1: someone said about you? You know what that's like. So
Speaker 1: I woke up to Harvey's table and I said, I
Speaker 1: want to say I'm sorry, and he literally lunges for
Speaker 1: his phone, calls up a contact of The New York
Speaker 1: Post and says, I want you to say that into
Speaker 1: the phone. He thrusts the phone at me so that
Speaker 1: the person on the other end of the phone from
Speaker 1: the New York Post can hear me make the apology
Speaker 1: to Harvey, so that they could print it in the paper.
Speaker 1: He gave book contracts. Two people who worked at the
Speaker 1: New York Post gave a screenwriter screenplay contractor Richard Johnson
Speaker 1: when he edited page six. What Harvey among his reasons
Speaker 1: for his power in the press. He had talk books
Speaker 1: and talk magazine, and of course he gave out screenplays.
Speaker 1: So Richard Johnson, who was the editor of Page six,
Speaker 1: he had given a screenwriting um contract too, And several
Speaker 1: editors at of Page six had gotten book contracts over
Speaker 1: the years with Harvey, as did Meeker and Joe you know,
Speaker 1: Tim Russett, who produced the best seller By the Way,
Speaker 1: and some other and other journalists. So that again, that
Speaker 1: was all a pattern of Harvey's power. Everything was transactional.
Speaker 1: Everything was trans including his sex. I mean, I the
Speaker 1: question I asked him. We had an email exchange when
Speaker 1: he was in prison, and I could ask him any questions,
Speaker 1: and he asked about twenty five of them. But the
Speaker 1: question he didn't one of the questions he did not
Speaker 1: answer is one I was desperate task Harvey. When you
Speaker 1: put your head on a pillow at night after raping
Speaker 1: let's say Jessica Man, who was a woman who testified
Speaker 1: against them, how did you explain to yourself what you
Speaker 1: had just done. He never answered that question, but I
Speaker 1: think if he had, he would say it was transactional.
Speaker 1: She it to something from me, a career in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and I wanted something from her. So everything with him
Speaker 1: is transactional. But I do go back that I look
Speaker 1: at people and I think about alternatives. I think about
Speaker 1: what might have been. And in your book you paint
Speaker 1: this wonderful picture of their ascension and Buffalo and the
Speaker 1: concert business and Harvey screaming at a room full of
Speaker 1: people to watch the French film. He shows these other films.
Speaker 1: But and you realize that beyond his sexual issues, beyond
Speaker 1: his criminality, is that Harvey was also a monster to
Speaker 1: work with in terms of him wanting to control the
Speaker 1: content of the film. But that doesn't take away the
Speaker 1: fact he loved movies and what is good at it?
Speaker 1: He loved movies and he could have been a great
Speaker 1: Because the world we live in now, every single man
Speaker 1: and woman who runs the production to sides of a
Speaker 1: movie studio or television network today are all from marketing
Speaker 1: or fine if they don't know a thing about making movies.
Speaker 1: They don't know. There's not one person today in art
Speaker 1: of a movie studio or a television number who knows
Speaker 1: anything about putting together a TV show creatively or lived
Speaker 1: zero DNA creatively zero. Every one of them topped a bottom.
Speaker 1: So in the old days, going back to Zanik, going
Speaker 1: back to Mike Metavoy, Reuden, I think was a creative
Speaker 1: beast and Harvey. I mean, you look at Harvey, go
Speaker 1: what a tragedy, because he really did love films. You
Speaker 1: look at the films he produced so distributed, starting with
Speaker 1: his first hit, you know, Sex Lives and Video Tape
Speaker 1: and then going to the Crying Game, which was the
Speaker 1: reason it was his success was the reason that Disney
Speaker 1: decided they had to acquire Merrimax, which they did. In
Speaker 1: my left foot, Shakespeare loved the English patient. I mean
Speaker 1: the list goes one Academy Awards. So Harvey was the
Speaker 1: real thing. He wasn't a suit. But even the people
Speaker 1: who he abused, like Onyneth Paltrow or her then boyfriend
Speaker 1: Brad Pitt who threatened to kill Harvey. If you haven't
Speaker 1: touched her again, continue to do movies with him? Why?
Speaker 1: Because he was producing the of movies they wanted to
Speaker 1: be in and no one else was. Another thing you
Speaker 1: get into in great detail is Bob. Now. I've met
Speaker 1: Bob on a number of occasions where I used to
Speaker 1: run into him periodically in a certain part of town.
Speaker 1: I would just bump into him for some reason, And
Speaker 1: in my bogus psychoanalytic way, I look at him and think,
Speaker 1: oh God, you just woke around all day with the
Speaker 1: burden of being Harvey Weinstein's brother. I mean, you're his partner,
Speaker 1: and I want to ask you about that in terms
Speaker 1: of that bond, meaning all brothers have a bond, presumably
Speaker 1: very few don't, but almost none have a bond as
Speaker 1: thick as that bond. I mean, in the end, you know,
Speaker 1: Harvey goes down and Bob is part of that. Why
Speaker 1: do you think Bob waited so long before he took
Speaker 1: that opportunity. Bob had this contradictory feelings about his brother.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, he loved him and was they
Speaker 1: shared a room in Queen's growing up. They went up
Speaker 1: to Buffalo. In the same time, they became co equal
Speaker 1: partners in Merrimax and then the Weinstein Company. Uh, they dominated. No,
Speaker 1: we can get between the two brothers. And yet Bob
Speaker 1: over the years, Harvey would treat him as Bobby the
Speaker 1: young kid, as Harvey's friends often often did, and Bob
Speaker 1: took it, and some days he felt, I got to
Speaker 1: divorce my brother. Some days he said, my brother really
Speaker 1: loves me. I think he was somewhat insecure about his
Speaker 1: relationship with Harvey, who was a more dominant person. Bob
Speaker 1: then had an alcohol problem and went to a and
Speaker 1: became a very introspective person who believed in therapy, and
Speaker 1: he became a better person because of that. Harvey. He
Speaker 1: would constantly say, Harvey, you're a sex attic. You should
Speaker 1: get some help. He said he didn't know Harvey was
Speaker 1: raping woman. He knew he was cheating on his wife,
Speaker 1: by the way, which is what all of Harvey's assistance
Speaker 1: and people who worked there said, we knew he was
Speaker 1: cheating on his wife, but we didn't know he was
Speaker 1: raping woman. Well, some as my book shows, did know
Speaker 1: he was. But nevertheless, Bob went through this thing. Should
Speaker 1: I divorce my spouse or should I not? Or maybe
Speaker 1: he really still loves me and will work out okay
Speaker 1: in the end, in two thousand fifteen, Bob was constantly
Speaker 1: berating his brother for overspending and for losing focus on
Speaker 1: the movie business, getting too fashion, getting into TV, buying
Speaker 1: companies he shouldn't be buying, like Alson and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: And Harvey got so enraged that he sucker punched his
Speaker 1: brother and broke his nose in two thousand fifteen, but
Speaker 1: Bob still made peace with him, And then in the end,
Speaker 1: when Harvey was exposed by Jodi Canton make twoey in
Speaker 1: October of two thousand seventy and by Ronan you know
Speaker 1: a week later in The New Yorker, Bob provided the
Speaker 1: critical vote to fire his brother. And yet, interestingly, what
Speaker 1: happened is that because his name, as you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: was Weinstein, he also was punished as Harvey was. Harvey
Speaker 1: went on trial, but Bob couldn't get a job, couldn't
Speaker 1: get an agent, couldn't get a lawyer in Hollywood because
Speaker 1: his name was the thing about your book. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this was your intention, but what I took from
Speaker 1: this was that Bob stayed loyal to Harvey until Harvey's
Speaker 1: behavior actually was going to sink the company and rob
Speaker 1: Bob of his share of what was once a very
Speaker 1: healthy business. Meaning, you punched me in the face, that's
Speaker 1: one thing. You rape women, that's another thing. All the
Speaker 1: things you do that are wrong another thing. But now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna lose my shares of stock in the company
Speaker 1: because if you were be here. I mean, I wonder
Speaker 1: if there was a bit of that with Bob. There
Speaker 1: has to have been a bit of that. But I
Speaker 1: don't think that's all of it. No, no no, I want
Speaker 1: to say it's all of it. But I wonder if
Speaker 1: with Bobo, all of a sudden he was wanted. I mean,
Speaker 1: the truth is what Harvey's behavior and the aftermath of
Speaker 1: that sunk Bob as well. As the company company declared bankruptcy, Bob,
Speaker 1: it was over for Bob. And yet Bob was a
Speaker 1: more successful financially producer with his Dimension Films then Harvey Bob.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, people said Bob made the money, not Harvey.
Speaker 1: Do you think it was possible for Harvey to get
Speaker 1: a fair trial? That's a good question. You know, I
Speaker 1: sat in it was I attend the trial every day,
Speaker 1: and I sat in the jury selection process, and these
Speaker 1: jurors would come in and fill the room about a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty or so at a time, and the
Speaker 1: judge asked, how many of you think raise your hand
Speaker 1: if you think you could not be fair to Mr Weinstein.
Speaker 1: One third of the hands went up, So people knew
Speaker 1: about Harvey the ogre going in, and that vegs your question,
Speaker 1: which is is it possible that he couldn't find fair
Speaker 1: montagers who didn't have an opinion before they sat in judge.
Speaker 1: Eventually the twelve jurors selected said they could sit in
Speaker 1: fair judgment, but there were questions about that and Harvey's appeal.
Speaker 1: They questioned during number eleven, who was a woman who
Speaker 1: had written a novel that was coming out in the
Speaker 1: summer of twenty twenty, a couple of months after the trial,
Speaker 1: but it was already done about an older man who
Speaker 1: was a sexual prayer, And they said, if you have
Speaker 1: such strong opinions about that, how can you judge fairly
Speaker 1: this Harvey Weinstein and the defense made that argument, and
Speaker 1: the judge overruled him and kept him in. That was
Speaker 1: part of their appeal. So there were questions about Harvey
Speaker 1: had a very strong appeal, I thought in reading it,
Speaker 1: and I wonder whether the Pellet Division would overturn the
Speaker 1: New York City Criminal Court. But in the end, the
Speaker 1: five justices are all women, by the way, who asked
Speaker 1: more tough questions of the prosecutor in the appeal than
Speaker 1: they did of Harvey's defense, unanimously voted that it was
Speaker 1: a fair trial and that Harvey deserved to go to
Speaker 1: prison and deserve to be sentenced for twenty three years.
Speaker 1: Now one area, you go on trial and you say
Speaker 1: to people, these women had sex with him, claimed they
Speaker 1: were raped, and then associated with him and even socialized
Speaker 1: with him after the four of the sixth that what
Speaker 1: research did you do? Who were you able to speak
Speaker 1: with anybody about that concept of the victims continuing the
Speaker 1: relationship with their A lot report and write a fair
Speaker 1: amount about that. The biggest obstacle the prosecution had to
Speaker 1: prosecute Harvey successfully was how do you explain why these
Speaker 1: women who claimed to have been abused by him were
Speaker 1: so ambitious that they continue to keep in touch with
Speaker 1: them and in two cases actually continue to have sex
Speaker 1: with them. And so the prosecution. What the prosecution did
Speaker 1: was on the witness stand. They called Dr Barbera Zev
Speaker 1: of Temple University, an expert on rape. She testified into
Speaker 1: Bill Cosby trial, and she testified in this trial on
Speaker 1: behalf of the prosecution. And she cited one fact that
Speaker 1: just punched the jury and punched me as well in
Speaker 1: the nose. She said, forty of women in America who
Speaker 1: are raped continue to have a relationship, either friendly or
Speaker 1: sexually with a person of them. And that was very compelling.
Speaker 1: And then the women understand the six women who testified,
Speaker 1: they all talked about the different reasons why they kept quiet.
Speaker 1: I was afraid he would attack me in the press
Speaker 1: or sue me. He I signed a nondisclosure agreement. I
Speaker 1: was in denial that it ever happened. I blame myself
Speaker 1: for it happening. They gave various reasons. Ultimately the prosecution
Speaker 1: was able to take their biggest weakness and turn it
Speaker 1: into a strength. And Harvey, who thought his defense, thought
Speaker 1: they really had a good case. And is it's a
Speaker 1: compelling argument. How could these women explain why they were
Speaker 1: continuing to happen. At the very least, it's confusing for
Speaker 1: a lay audience. But then it goes to your point
Speaker 1: about where the trial took place. Harvey's lawyers argued that
Speaker 1: with the court, you should move the trial to another
Speaker 1: jurisdiction like Albany or upstate New York and out of
Speaker 1: New York right. And actually one of his lawyers said
Speaker 1: whispered to me, he said, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: dangers with that as you get more anti semitism in
Speaker 1: more rural areas, and maybe Harvey would have been even
Speaker 1: more vulnerable there. But in any case, that was an
Speaker 1: argument they made. They certainly argued that after he was
Speaker 1: indicted in Los Angeles, during the trial in New York,
Speaker 1: you should take a break for a few a few
Speaker 1: weeks because the press was writing about Harvey being indicted
Speaker 1: and it was going to corrupt the juror's mind. You
Speaker 1: look at someone like Harvey, and whatever your concept of justices,
Speaker 1: here's a man who's in a situation now where he
Speaker 1: can't do anything that he wants to do. He's in
Speaker 1: that reality where you don't do anything that you want
Speaker 1: to do. To balance out the fact that he was
Speaker 1: a man who for decades did everything he wanted to do,
Speaker 1: regardless of cost impact. He wanted to shove the eminem's
Speaker 1: in his mouth in spite of his diabetes. He did it.
Speaker 1: He wanted to have sex with the woman. He threw
Speaker 1: her on the ground and he raped her. He wanted
Speaker 1: to get out of a business deal. He and the
Speaker 1: I mean all of the things, the level frus and
Speaker 1: the knobs and the dials and the switches of the
Speaker 1: control freak. There's probably never been a control freak alive
Speaker 1: in human history to equal Harvey weinste in terms of
Speaker 1: what he did to everyone in his environment. And now
Speaker 1: he's sitting in a place where I mean, I'm assuming
Speaker 1: he's medicated to a fairly well. He's in a wheelchair,
Speaker 1: he has theenosis in a hospital ward of a prison
Speaker 1: now in l A. Because he goes on trial on
Speaker 1: October of this year. But he was in recovering that No,
Speaker 1: I'm done. I don't want to another you said that, Oh, Ken,
Speaker 1: please run a different bunk. I have no interest in
Speaker 1: Harvey's past tense, But in any case, he's sitting there.
Speaker 1: He has severe diabetes, he has a stent in his heart,
Speaker 1: he has high cholesterol, he's blind in one eye. I mean,
Speaker 1: and he eats baked beans. So I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: people ask me, do I feel sorry for Harvey? The
Speaker 1: answer is no, I don't feel sorry for him, but
Speaker 1: I feel as a human being, I wonder how the
Speaker 1: pain he must be going through the problem with Harvey
Speaker 1: I mean, and this is the problem I talked about
Speaker 1: in the book in terms of me too. We group
Speaker 1: everyone who is accused of any kind of sexual offense
Speaker 1: with Harvey. But grouping everyone with Harvey is quite unbelievable,
Speaker 1: and yet we do that. And so if you're Matt
Speaker 1: Lower or Mike Oreski's or you know whoever, you group
Speaker 1: with him. And the truth is, very few people are
Speaker 1: as guilty as he was of doing the awful things
Speaker 1: he did. Larry Nassa, the gymnast doctor, was, but very
Speaker 1: few others are. Cosby. Cosby was when the person is
Speaker 1: talking to you, when they're interviewing you, that person's alarm,
Speaker 1: that person's intellectual vanity, or their ability to conceal that
Speaker 1: because they're probably as smart, if not smarter than many
Speaker 1: people they're talking to because of their career. Do you
Speaker 1: think being this very polished man makes your job easier?
Speaker 1: You don't give off that energy field of aggression and
Speaker 1: Zella Tree, there's a there's an aura to you that's
Speaker 1: very relaxed and very composed. You're a very handsome guy.
Speaker 1: I think personality matters, particularly when you Personality and appearance
Speaker 1: matters when you're trying to get someone to talk to you.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that matters is being a good listener.
Speaker 1: If you go into an interview like a dentist, I
Speaker 1: want to drill your teeth, then no one's going to
Speaker 1: talk to you. They don't want to go through pain.
Speaker 1: So I begin my interviews on the several assumptions I
Speaker 1: assume if I'm profiling someone, it's going to be many
Speaker 1: interviews that when I happen this person, not just one.
Speaker 1: So that first interview, I'm not drilling teeth. I'm actually
Speaker 1: asking questions about your childhood, where you go up, tell
Speaker 1: me about your parents, tell me about your dreams as
Speaker 1: a kid. Now you Someone might think that's manipulative, but
Speaker 1: in fact becomes incredibly valuable to me to understand that person,
Speaker 1: and therefore they relax some more. People will talk if
Speaker 1: you convey to them that you're not playing at you,
Speaker 1: that you're not on edge, and you're looking for some angles,
Speaker 1: some headline tomorrow, and people will be more company. But
Speaker 1: when you have Donald Trump out there saying, and increasingly
Speaker 1: Republicans saying, I'm not going to talk to these people
Speaker 1: because this is fake news. Our misbehavior has contributed to
Speaker 1: allowing Donald Trump and some Republicans to make that argument
Speaker 1: about fake news and we can't trust reporters. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I saw. I think when you think about journalism and
Speaker 1: what the big worries are, it's the fact that there's
Speaker 1: no more universal facts. People don't trust the journalists, but
Speaker 1: they don't trust facts. And if you get if you
Speaker 1: watch Fox News, yeah, if Fox News you get one
Speaker 1: set of facts. In New York Times you got another,
Speaker 1: and you can't bridge the gap between the two. I'll
Speaker 1: now go on from this interview on to admit that
Speaker 1: I stole everything from you, because that's what I do.
Speaker 1: The people I work with, my producer, we call it.
Speaker 1: We call the first question the Billiard break. How do
Speaker 1: I line up all the shots on the table from
Speaker 1: the one question that we're gonna start with, which is
Speaker 1: gonna open you up precisely. And the thing is, if
Speaker 1: you think that I'm lunging for it, if you think
Speaker 1: I'm trying to take it from you, I've got to
Speaker 1: relax and wait for you to give it to me, right.
Speaker 1: And what I always say on here when I when
Speaker 1: I interviewed, I did a profile with Murdoch in ninety four,
Speaker 1: and Murdoch had reason to suspect me. When he took
Speaker 1: over New York magazine. I quit rather than work them,
Speaker 1: and I've been critical of his journalism, and yet he
Speaker 1: agreed to cooperate with me and opened himself more than
Speaker 1: he ever had with any reporter over four months for
Speaker 1: The New Yorker. And one of the things I said
Speaker 1: in that first interview, which is something I say to
Speaker 1: everyone i'm going to profile, my job is to understand you,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna ope myself so I can understand you.
Speaker 1: And I really believe that I'm not there to prosecute
Speaker 1: with Murdock. I'm here to understand him. And the end,
Speaker 1: when I understand him, I shouldn't tell me when I
Speaker 1: understood him. In the end, he hated the profile. It
Speaker 1: was called a pirate and he should live because his
Speaker 1: invidious influence on journalism. I mean, he's really been a
Speaker 1: harmful influence son journalists, and I reported that. But I
Speaker 1: think as a businessman and what he does how bold
Speaker 1: he is. He's a fascinating character, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: capture that side of him as well. Which profile for you,
Speaker 1: because you've written these long pieces, which profile give me
Speaker 1: an example of one that was really tough like you.
Speaker 1: Eventually you had to employ all your artist try to
Speaker 1: get this person to talk to you. Well, actually, the
Speaker 1: worst human being I've ever met or profile was Roy Cone.
Speaker 1: And it was actually a cover story of Esquire magazine
Speaker 1: in and Roy Cohne refused to cooperate with me. And
Speaker 1: so what I did, It's like a prosecutor doing plea bargaining.
Speaker 1: I would say, Okay. I called Stanley Freeman, who was
Speaker 1: a low partner, was a Bronx County democratically who later
Speaker 1: went to jail by the way for corruption. I called
Speaker 1: Stanley Freeman, who I knew and I covered before. I said, Stanley,
Speaker 1: I can't believe Roy Cone, your partner wants me just
Speaker 1: to talk to his adversaries and enemies, because that's what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen if he shuts down his friends and him
Speaker 1: and within five minutes where he can't call me on
Speaker 1: the phone and then cooperated. But to spend time with
Speaker 1: this disgusting man who, by the way, he will go.
Speaker 1: The first interview we did at the twenty one Club.
Speaker 1: At lunch, we had a table and I ordered a
Speaker 1: twenty one burger and French fries. He orders nothing. He's
Speaker 1: sitting next to me in a banquette and with his
Speaker 1: little hands he would reach into my plate and take
Speaker 1: French fries off my plate and just just eat off
Speaker 1: my plate. Basically a total stranger, and sit there looking
Speaker 1: around the room and see's best Myers, and he's these
Speaker 1: other people he represented. He said, let me tell you
Speaker 1: about them. And he would literally betray his former clients too,
Speaker 1: in order to entice me as a journalist. When I
Speaker 1: was in Oh, he was disgusting. What do you think
Speaker 1: made him tick? He had an ideology, uh, you know
Speaker 1: in the end, which was, you know, McCarthy, the reds
Speaker 1: are taking over the country. We got to stop that.
Speaker 1: But he also had a lot of Democratic friends. His
Speaker 1: father was a Democratic judge in the Bronx, and he
Speaker 1: had Democratic friends, childhood friends, et cetera, who he continued support.
Speaker 1: So he was loyal to them, which is a bit
Speaker 1: of a complication with but I think it was also power.
Speaker 1: He loved the fact he goes to Donald Trump, who
Speaker 1: I also interviewed at that point. He said, Roy Kona
Speaker 1: is my mentor, and he sees Donald Trump at a
Speaker 1: social club and Donald Trump says, oh, Mr, can I
Speaker 1: ask you a question. He said, you know, we have
Speaker 1: this case. We were accused by the federal government of
Speaker 1: discriminating and housing at Trump properties in our apartment houses.
Speaker 1: What do we do about that? And he says, let
Speaker 1: me look at it. He says, this is all they have,
Speaker 1: the federal government. He said, I'll represent you and we'll
Speaker 1: win the case. Don't worry about it. Well, he lost
Speaker 1: the case, but he did something that was very Trumpian.
Speaker 1: He announced, even though they lost the case, that we
Speaker 1: won the case. Even though they will find over an
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars. He announced that they won because they
Speaker 1: were not demanded to plead guilty. They didn't have to
Speaker 1: plead guilty. So if we didn't play guilty, we won
Speaker 1: the case. Well, they actually lost the case. But and
Speaker 1: Trump forever went on that route, never apologizing, never meeting defeat.
Speaker 1: Author Ken Oletta, if you'd like to know more about
Speaker 1: the reporters who broke the Harvey Weinstein story, listened to
Speaker 1: my conversation with Jodie Cant and Megan Tooey from The
Speaker 1: New York Times. We interviewed him several times. I think
Speaker 1: that we were able to see in person sort of
Speaker 1: the spectrum of his behavior that he would swing from
Speaker 1: kind of charm and compliments and kind of ingratiating himself
Speaker 1: and like, well, the New York Times, it's the best
Speaker 1: paper in the world. And in terms of how he
Speaker 1: was able to pray on women, I think that that
Speaker 1: is a separate question from how he was able to
Speaker 1: sort of keep people in his orbit and maintain his power.
Speaker 1: That really is one of the most important questions is
Speaker 1: that there were actually people who got glimpses of his
Speaker 1: alleged misconduct over the years, and what do they do
Speaker 1: about it? How can we explain the fact that there
Speaker 1: were so many individuals and institutions, including his own companies,
Speaker 1: that became complicit in his abuse. Here the rest of
Speaker 1: my conversation with Jodie Canter and Megan Twoey in our
Speaker 1: archives at Here's the Thing dot org. After the break
Speaker 1: Ken Oletta discusses Ronan Pharaoh's early findings on Weinstein and
Speaker 1: his theories on y NBC Killed Pharaoh's story I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. Ken Oletta's
Speaker 1: most recent book digs into how Harvey Weinstein manipulated countless
Speaker 1: people to conceal his shocking levels of abuse. I was
Speaker 1: curious why Weinstein's wife at the time, Georgina Chapman, didn't
Speaker 1: speak out against Harvey. Well, you know, she wouldn't talk
Speaker 1: to me. No wheldive children his first wife, and I
Speaker 1: found out that they each signed, as did Harvey, non
Speaker 1: disclosure agreements, so they would Harvey was not allowed to
Speaker 1: talk about them. They're not allowed to talk about him
Speaker 1: without sacrificing significant financial support. But I talked to their
Speaker 1: friends for the book, and their friends say that each
Speaker 1: of them did not know he was cheating on them,
Speaker 1: and each of them actually loved him. I mean, most
Speaker 1: people who know Harvey find both claims to be absurd,
Speaker 1: but nevertheless, you know they did, That's what they said.
Speaker 1: So I just was thinking, in the hell, hath no
Speaker 1: fury department? But apparently Nda is trumped that. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: Eve children his first wife, doesn't talk to him. The
Speaker 1: air three daughters who were adopted don't talk to him now,
Speaker 1: and his brother doesn't talked to him, and Georgian and
Speaker 1: Chapman politely will talk to him, but obviously not now
Speaker 1: in prison. But there are two kids, obviously can't visit him.
Speaker 1: He was a good apparently a good father, I found
Speaker 1: out in the reporting I did. But you know, Harvey
Speaker 1: is alone in person, without friends, without a family. Um,
Speaker 1: you touch upon Ronan Pharaoh and his MSNBC period. Why
Speaker 1: do you think NBC is courting and massaging and treating
Speaker 1: Ronan Pharaoh like he's a piece of Kobe beef over there,
Speaker 1: and then they cut his stroke and they won't air
Speaker 1: his story. Well, obviously they had some desire to protect
Speaker 1: Harvey and Ronan. Actually I was when Ronan interviewed me
Speaker 1: about Harvey. I was worried that he was a zealot
Speaker 1: because of the Woody Allen thing. And yet when he
Speaker 1: interviewed me, I was impressed that he was acting like
Speaker 1: a journalist. He was asking good questions. He was judicious,
Speaker 1: was the word I later used to recommend him to
Speaker 1: David Remnick. And I said, so he comes out here
Speaker 1: to he said, I need to interview more about Harvey.
Speaker 1: I'd given him my tape recordings and stuff for my
Speaker 1: two thousand two profile in New Yorker. I said, you
Speaker 1: have to come out here to bridge him because I'm
Speaker 1: finishing a book. He comes out. I said, so what
Speaker 1: do you got? It's like a three or four hour interview.
Speaker 1: And he says, I have three women on camera claiming
Speaker 1: that Harvey abused them by name. I've got five women
Speaker 1: on camera but shielded their identity, shield saying Harvey abuse him.
Speaker 1: And I've got the audio tape of the Italian model
Speaker 1: who Harvey admitted he grabbed her breasts as a police
Speaker 1: audio tape. I said, oh my god, you've broken the case.
Speaker 1: I said, what's the next step? He said, I meet
Speaker 1: with Noah Open I am the president of NBC News
Speaker 1: on August eighth, summer of two thousand seventeen. So on
Speaker 1: August eighteen, that cale rowning because I said, I was
Speaker 1: really excited that finally someone's gonna nab this pick. And
Speaker 1: he says, they killed it and they said you can
Speaker 1: take it anywhere. But who would want it? He said, uh,
Speaker 1: And it wasn't a question. He believed that it was over.
Speaker 1: I said, a can I call you back? I called Remnick,
Speaker 1: the editor of the New Yorker, and I said, David,
Speaker 1: I think this kid Running Farrell, who I thought was judicious,
Speaker 1: has broken the case, finally, the case I couldn't break
Speaker 1: in two thousand two, and I tried to and he said,
Speaker 1: haven't call me Monday. So it begs the question, which
Speaker 1: I later reported for the book, why did NBC kill
Speaker 1: the Running Faroll story? So I'm doing Morning Joe one
Speaker 1: morning and someone comes up to me from NBC. Would
Speaker 1: you meet with this high muck a muck at NBC
Speaker 1: News and but off the record where you can't quote
Speaker 1: the person. I said sure, so I've never used the
Speaker 1: person's name. So we got to lunch and this person
Speaker 1: tells me Ronna didn't have the goods. He only had
Speaker 1: the goods exposing Harvey after he came to The New Yorker.
Speaker 1: And so the press at the time played it like
Speaker 1: he said, she says story, NBC says this, Running says
Speaker 1: the opposite. They negate each other. But there was a
Speaker 1: third party you could go to, which is the New Yorker.
Speaker 1: So I went to the person who edited him at
Speaker 1: the New Yorker, Deadre, and I called Deirdre and I said,
Speaker 1: dear Drew, tell me, what did Ronan bring to The
Speaker 1: New Yorker when he came in August of two thousand
Speaker 1: seventeen for piece that wouldn't appear until October. She said
Speaker 1: he brought three women by name, were five women unnamed,
Speaker 1: but nevertheless, and the audio tape. So he had everything.
Speaker 1: And so I then speculated in the book, well, what
Speaker 1: could explain NBC's acquiescence. And there are five theories, and
Speaker 1: I don't know which is true, or if all of
Speaker 1: them are true, but nevertheless, One is that no Oppenheim
Speaker 1: as a screenwriter, and he was carrying favor with the
Speaker 1: studio head, Harvey Weinstein. Two is that Steve Burke, the
Speaker 1: CEO of NBC, head of Universal, it does business with
Speaker 1: Harvey's company all the time. Studios always co produced and
Speaker 1: co finance movies. Third explanation is that Andy Lack, the
Speaker 1: chairman of NBC News was he and his wife were
Speaker 1: social friends of Harvey Weinstein. For the reason, Brian Roberts,
Speaker 1: the head of Comcast, the parent company of NBC, was
Speaker 1: a social friend, I mean an intimate friend of Harvey's
Speaker 1: math Martha's Vinyon mafia. Harvey called him one of his
Speaker 1: mafia friends from Martha's Vinyond and the fifth reason, which
Speaker 1: seems more far fetched than other, is that Harvey knew
Speaker 1: had information about Matt Lower abusing women at NBC and
Speaker 1: made a trade. I won't say anything about malar if
Speaker 1: you don't run the story about about me. Are any
Speaker 1: of them too? I don't know, but those are you
Speaker 1: any explanations that have any plausibility? What's the story that
Speaker 1: you wrote in your many, many profiles of people that
Speaker 1: you were surprised that you learned something about the person.
Speaker 1: You went in with some sense of them, and when
Speaker 1: you when you were done, they changed your mind about it.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you one of my favorite stories is mcclandish
Speaker 1: Phillips was a New York Times reporter who Gay Talise,
Speaker 1: the Great Gay Talisa did the show Tale said the
Speaker 1: best writer on the New York Times was mcclandish Phillips.
Speaker 1: Mcclandish phillips is reporting his story and he gets the
Speaker 1: story that the head of the American Nazi Party is
Speaker 1: a Jew. So he interviews this guy to dinner and
Speaker 1: Queen's the guy's film queens, and he sits across from him.
Speaker 1: He said, you're Jewish. And the guy is handling a knife,
Speaker 1: you know, knife and four and he's handling, and mcclandish,
Speaker 1: who's about six ft six, then thanks, the guy's going
Speaker 1: to stab him. The guy doesn't stab me. Said, if
Speaker 1: you run that story, Mr Phillips, I will kill myself.
Speaker 1: So mcclandish Phillips goes back to a rosenthal on Artho Gelb,
Speaker 1: the editors senior rieditors at the New York Times, and
Speaker 1: he says, here's the story. And they said, this is
Speaker 1: a page one story. This is a great story. He said,
Speaker 1: if you run it, I'm afraid he's going to kill
Speaker 1: himself and should we really be doing this? They run
Speaker 1: the story on page one the New York Times. The
Speaker 1: head of the American Hazy Party kills himself. Mcclandish phillips
Speaker 1: resigns from The New York Times, says journal him is
Speaker 1: too ruthless of business for me. I don't would do it.
Speaker 1: He said he was an evangelical Christian. Phillips was. He goes,
Speaker 1: and I hear that he's outside of Columbia University walking
Speaker 1: handing out Christ's literature as an evangelical leader. So I said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what a great story. I actually track
Speaker 1: him down and wind up profiling him for The New Yorker,
Speaker 1: and he was one of the great men I've ever
Speaker 1: met in my life. You grew up in Coney Island.
Speaker 1: How many kids in your family? Older brother, younger sister.
Speaker 1: And when we lived in a row house on West
Speaker 1: seventeenth Street, father was he had a little sporting good
Speaker 1: store and still all Avenue. He'd been a long showman
Speaker 1: before that. My mother is Jewish and my mother had
Speaker 1: two sisters who married Italian and all lived on West
Speaker 1: seventeenth Street. And the thought when the Catholic Church, you
Speaker 1: go to Catholic Church and some priests would say that
Speaker 1: Jews killed Christ. My father stopped going to church. And
Speaker 1: because when Jews you couldn't stereotype. You knew Jewish people
Speaker 1: and new Italian people, and it overcame all the stereotypes.
Speaker 1: Now you where do you go to high school? A
Speaker 1: ram Lincoln High School? Okay, where'd you go to college?
Speaker 1: State University? As you only goes to the baseball coach
Speaker 1: got me in that's what you did? You play baseball there?
Speaker 1: Base and graduate school? No I did. I then became
Speaker 1: a more serious dudeent. I was a school up in
Speaker 1: high school and I went to Maxwell School at Syracuse University,
Speaker 1: got a mask, I was in a PhD pro I
Speaker 1: got a master's pardon. That's both my parents and both
Speaker 1: sets of my grandparents went to s So Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: by the way. So you go to Maxwell for journalism,
Speaker 1: for political science, science, and what was the plan? The
Speaker 1: plan was, I thought, you know, maybe I'd be a
Speaker 1: diplomat or working government, but not not politics. And the
Speaker 1: dean of the school I was writing for the school newspaper.
Speaker 1: I was the editor of the off campus literary magazine,
Speaker 1: Investigated Magazine, really, and I said, I'm bored. I don't
Speaker 1: want to get a PhD. I don't want to say
Speaker 1: you do that. He introduced me to a guy named
Speaker 1: Howard Samuels the upstate in Dust was the guy who
Speaker 1: invented baggies in the plastic clothesline as an engineer at
Speaker 1: M I T. And so I drove over to Cannon, Daego,
Speaker 1: where his business court his business was, and I go
Speaker 1: to work for him as a speechwriter, code holder, travel companion,
Speaker 1: and then later became his campaign manager in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1: He was the first Democrat to endorse John lindsay independent
Speaker 1: race for re election in nineteen sixty nine, and Lindsay
Speaker 1: then turns him and asked, would you run. We're starting
Speaker 1: the first off track betting company in the country. He
Speaker 1: was called Howie the Horse, and he ran. I was
Speaker 1: the executive director. So I was how long did you
Speaker 1: do that? We did three years and I quit to
Speaker 1: plan his campaign for governor. And when he started as
Speaker 1: government he was twenty points ahead in the poll. Everyone
Speaker 1: thought he's gonna win. He lost. I was campaignment by
Speaker 1: twenty points. To you. Well, what happened was he was
Speaker 1: actually one of the most hilarious experience in my life.
Speaker 1: His wife was two year is old in born in France,
Speaker 1: and her father, Camille Shawtan was his name. He was
Speaker 1: the attorney general of the Vichy government, the pro Nazi
Speaker 1: government in France, and carries people. David Garth was the
Speaker 1: empressari on. It put out that she was defending she
Speaker 1: was the daughter of a Nazi collaborator. She was, but
Speaker 1: she was two years old, you know. But she insisted,
Speaker 1: the wife of the candidate that the campaign should also
Speaker 1: be not just about my husband, but about restoring my
Speaker 1: father's good name. I said, no, no, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: Jewish Howard Jewish, You'll get killed. Well, six of the
Speaker 1: Jewish voters in New York State at Cornia polls voted
Speaker 1: for an Irish Catholics. It's mclandis Philips all over again
Speaker 1: with people not wanting to know and he she dragged
Speaker 1: him down. Well the first press conference where Phil Tracy
Speaker 1: was the person who wrote the story investigative story in
Speaker 1: the Village Voice. And he's sitting there, Howard's announcing for governor.
Speaker 1: Tracy raised his hand asked the question, tell me about
Speaker 1: your father in law and being in you know, anti
Speaker 1: semi and part of governor Samuel's this is he's announcing
Speaker 1: for governor. He launches this defense of his father who
Speaker 1: he didn't know right and I'm sitting there and saying,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's over. And of course it was over.
Speaker 1: My author Ken Oletta, if you're enjoying this conversation, be
Speaker 1: sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Ken Oletta tells us how things
Speaker 1: at the New Yorker magazine have changed over time. I'm
Speaker 1: Al Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing from My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Ken Oletta's latest book details one of the
Speaker 1: highest profile cases of the me Too era, Harvey Weinstein.
Speaker 1: I was curious about another towering figure who left public
Speaker 1: life in disgrace, New York's former governor Andrew Cuomo. First
Speaker 1: of all, I mean he had to resign, even though
Speaker 1: he shouldn't have. The votes were not there. He was
Speaker 1: going to get impeached if he didn't resign. He was
Speaker 1: accused of two things, as was Charlie Rose. He was
Speaker 1: accused of misbehavior in the office, creating a culture of fear,
Speaker 1: yelling at people, the kind of things that Scott Ruden
Speaker 1: and Harvey did. He was accused of that. And the
Speaker 1: other he was accused of sexual abuse. So the question
Speaker 1: is do you believe the first that he was he
Speaker 1: was not a friendly place, was hostile? Yes? Is that
Speaker 1: an impeachable defense that you should quit office for? No?
Speaker 1: I mean no, did he abuseman? Well, if the women
Speaker 1: have claimed that, I haven't heard a counterclaim that says
Speaker 1: they are lying. Now, you have had a long career
Speaker 1: in these essays in the time. I mean, I am
Speaker 1: in the New Yorker. I'm a New Yorker junkie. That way,
Speaker 1: give me a good long story about so and so,
Speaker 1: and I literally thumbed through and go it's thirty pages long.
Speaker 1: This is great, And I just love The New Yorker
Speaker 1: for those profiles. But um, how would things change in
Speaker 1: your business? Well, when I I still, I was hired
Speaker 1: by William Shaun who was the editor, the second editor
Speaker 1: in ninety seven. And after I quit New York magazine
Speaker 1: and you quit New York Why I quit. Chris Murdock
Speaker 1: did a hostel takeover and the editor when you were there,
Speaker 1: Felker was the editor New York and Murdoch was going
Speaker 1: against Felker, and about forty of us went on strike,
Speaker 1: and when he succeeded, roughly forty of us quit. So
Speaker 1: I went to started writing for The New Yorker, then
Speaker 1: the New Yorker. Then, for instance, my first piece was
Speaker 1: two parts. I did a piece called the Underclass on poverty,
Speaker 1: which was three parts. You don't have two and three
Speaker 1: part pieces anymore. That's certainly a change. And the assumption
Speaker 1: is the reader doesn't have that kind of a patience
Speaker 1: to do that. But the New Yorkers editor since David Remnick.
Speaker 1: He's a brilliant editor and very much in the traditions
Speaker 1: of great traditions of the New Yorkers. So you can
Speaker 1: still find a twenty thousand word piece. And I just
Speaker 1: read a piece on on mega yachts, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I said, look how long this is, But it was
Speaker 1: totally engrossing to me after covering someone as unsettling as
Speaker 1: Harvey in his life. Who's your next book going to
Speaker 1: be about? You know? I view what I do as
Speaker 1: visiting other planets, get to know the natives and novelty
Speaker 1: something different, and so I would see it as visiting
Speaker 1: another planet, whatever that next planet might be. But it's
Speaker 1: going it's only going to come about after I've really
Speaker 1: this not only perched Harvey, but also I thought long
Speaker 1: and hard about who do I want to marry this subject?
Speaker 1: So tell me more about the Book of the Underclass.
Speaker 1: It began as a three ports series in The New Yorker,
Speaker 1: and its aim was to focus on the hardcore poor
Speaker 1: who were responsible for the disproportionate amount of our crime,
Speaker 1: disproportioned amount of our welfare dependency, disproportionate amount of drugs,
Speaker 1: et cetera. This is in the period of the early
Speaker 1: eighties and late seventies, and so I set out to
Speaker 1: find out who these people were, who were the hardcore
Speaker 1: poor who did not escape poor and often entered lives
Speaker 1: of crime. So I went to spending time with a
Speaker 1: group of these people, and it was a book called
Speaker 1: The Underclass Hollywood Ending Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence. Again,
Speaker 1: kenn of Letter, this is a great book because when
Speaker 1: you say the culture of silence, I mean how this
Speaker 1: guy was able to get away with this for so long?
Speaker 1: But your book explains vividly how he was able to
Speaker 1: be evade justice with all the bargaining and horse trading
Speaker 1: he did, almost almost brilliantly, like you can't believe how
Speaker 1: agile this guy was in terms of his politically speaking,
Speaker 1: how did he get away with it for so long?
Speaker 1: So I encourage people to read this book. My thanks
Speaker 1: to Kenna Letta. Here's the Thing is produced by Kathleen Russo,
Speaker 1: Zach McNeice and Maureen Hoban. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Speaker 1: Our social media manager is Daniel Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing is brought to you by my Heart Radio.