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For Binky
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE: THE GRAY CONCRETE CARPET
1. YOUNG WEINSTEIN (1952–1969)
2. BECOMING HARVEY (1969–1978)
3. THE BOTTOM-FEEDERS (1979–1988)
4. THE BARNUM AND BAILEY OF THE MOVIE BUSINESS (1989–1993)
5. THE CULTURE OF SILENCE (1993–1997)
6. THE MOGUL (1997–1998)
7. THE ART OF THE NDA (1998)
8. “I’M THE FUCKING SHERIFF OF THIS FUCKING LAWLESS PIECE-OF-SHIT
TOWN” (1999–2002)
9. TWO DIVORCES (2002–2005)
10. “WE CAN TALK ANYBODY INTO ANYTHING” (2005–2010)
11. BLOOD, BROTHERS (2011–2015)
12. “I’M THE CHAIRMAN OF THIS COMPANY!” (2015)
13. NO MORE “BOBBY” WEINSTEIN (2015–2016)
14. THE DAM OF SILENCE COLLAPSES (2016–2017)
15. THE VICTIM (2017)
16. THE SOUND IS TURNED OFF (2018–2019)
17. THE LONG MARCH TO TRIAL (2019)
18. COURTROOM 1530 (JANUARY 6–30, 2020)
19. JESSICA MANN (JANUARY 31–FEBRUARY 4, 2020)
20. THE DEFENSE SPEAKS, AND CLOSING ARGUMENTS (FEBRUARY 6–14,
2020)
21. THE VERDICT (FEBRUARY 18–24, 2020)
22. THE CONVICT (FEBRUARY 24, 2020, TO 2021)
23. ROSEBUD?
Photographs
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Notes
Image Credits
Index
PROLOGUE
The Gray Concrete Carpet
O
nce, he exuded power. Films he produced and distributed garnered
81 Academy Awards and 341 Oscar nominations. Only Steven
Spielberg was thanked more often from the awards stage. He
boasted of his friendships with Presidents Clinton and Obama, and of the
famous actresses he claimed to have bedded. Inside the office, he terrified
the four assistants who serviced his needs, and he bellowed at most of his
executives. Outside the office, he flashed a dazzling, capped-toothed smile
while strolling hundreds of red carpets, trailed by clicking cameras, often
accompanied by his second wife, fashion designer Georgina Chapman, who
dressed some of the stars lit by the paparazzi flashes. He was that rare
Hollywood figure known instantly by his first name: Harvey.
The gray concrete sidewalk Harvey Weinstein crossed daily in the winter
of 2020 was not a red carpet, but a gauntlet. Waiting for him to arrive at the
criminal court building at 100 Centre Street were armed police officers and
metal police barricades corralling a throng of reporters who did not adhere
to the respectful protocols of a Hollywood opening. Because of his recent
back surgery, when his black Cadillac Escalade braked in front of the New
York State Supreme Court building, Harvey had to be helped out of the back
seat by two burly men. He slowly shuffled in black orthopedic shoes toward
the building’s entrance a hundred or so feet away on a four-wheel walker,
trailed by his team of lawyers and public relations advisers. Harvey did not
pause and rarely looked up to respond to shouted questions or to smile for
the cameras. Once inside the building, he dutifully emptied his pockets and
passed through a metal detector. An elevator whisked Harvey and his
entourage to the fifteenth floor, where he passed a second gauntlet of
cameras and reporters before entering courtroom 1530 for his criminal trial
for predatory rape and sexual assault.
Harvey’s world—the world in which he was in charge—was upended
forever over a few days in early October 2017, when The New York Times
and The New Yorker publicly proclaimed that he was a sexual beast, and the
Weinstein Company fired him. Seven months later, Harvey was indicted by
a grand jury convened by the Manhattan district attorney. Now as he entered
the courtroom, he faced a criminal trial that threatened to place him behind
bars for the rest of his life. For eight weeks, beginning on January 6, 2020,
Harvey walked this concrete carpet Monday through Friday.
He now dressed more like a midwestern businessman out of a Sinclair
Lewis novel than a Hollywood power broker—drab, boxy suits; white shirts
with crumpled collars; and dull, slightly askew ties. He looked miserable.
He had lost at least seventy-five pounds, his pallor was gray, and his scruffy
stubble beard failed to camouflage the crevices and lines of his swollen face.
In court, Harvey would settle into a low-backed leather chair, flanked by
his five lawyers at a table facing Judge James M. Burke on his elevated
platform. His prosecutors, assistant district attorney and Special Counsel to
the D.A. Joan Illuzzi and her deputy, Meghan Hast, deputy chief of the
Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit, were seated at a table to his right, close
to the twelve-member jury box. Every day, about one hundred twenty-five
journalists and spectators crammed into the courtroom; more reporters and
spectators often waited outside to enter or for a chance to verbally assail
Harvey and his lawyers.
Assistant district attorney Illuzzi would say more than once that
Harvey’s walker was “a prop” to elicit sympathy, a view widely shared by
his detractors and not a few members of the press. In truth, Harvey
Weinstein was not well. After a car accident in 2019, he had been dragging
his right foot for a solid year, and his back was operated on days before the
trial began to ease pain and correct spinal stenosis and drop foot. The
operation was not successful. He also suffered from high blood pressure,
elevated cholesterol, chronic diabetes, a weak heart, and he was receiving
what his lawyer described as “shots in his eyes” to treat macular
degeneration. In all, Harvey had prescriptions for twenty different
medications.
Harvey had been indicted on five counts of assault and rape of three
women: Miriam Haley (formerly Haleyi), a production assistant at the
Weinstein Company; aspiring actress Jessica Mann; and established actress
Annabella Sciorra. Woven throughout the prosecution case was the assertion
that Weinstein abused his power as head of Miramax, and later the
Weinstein Company, to entrap aspiring actresses, models, and women on his
staff. After he coerced sexual access, sometimes brutally, they kept silent,
shamed or fearful he would sabotage their careers. They wanted to be in the
movie business, and he was not only their biggest but often their only
connection.
