New York Times Pieces on Two Major National Sexual Assault Stories

There's another piece in the Havey Weinstein saga of sexual harassment and assault over many decades--Uma Thurman's much-anticipated story.  Her comments at the end are especially interesting.  So is her story about Quentin Tarantino forcing her to drive in a car crash in Kill Bill.  It might seem that she was relatively unscathed by Weinstein (and Tarantino), given her very successful career. This column makes clear that this is not the case.

The NY Times has also investigated the FBI inquiry into Dr. Larry Nasser's assaults under cover of medical treatment of teenaged and pre-teen female athletes. Notice the way the key "clue" appears here--not to mention the apparent problems with how the FBI handled the cases.   There are lots of overlaps with the course discussion of Cause 2 of noir culture that we started on Thursday.

Hollywood Fall Guy

Late last week the Hollywood wiretap case involving Anthony Pellicano came to an end with guilty verdicts for wiretapping, racketeering, and other charges. The good New York Times piece points out that all the potential big fish got away. Maybe this is a script with "third-act problems," but more likely it's a good version of an even more familiar noir script. Possible top targets were never indicted, including Michael S. Ovtiz, the entertainment lawyer Bert Fields, Brad Grey, current studio chief at Paramount, as well as Pellicano customers Chris Rock, Courtney Love, Alec Gores (billionaire acquisitions specialist, Freddy De Mann, Madonna's former manager, Adam D. Sender, a hedge fund manager. In the noir script, folks like this have enough clout to pressure top law enforcement folks to show quick, definitive evidence against them or lay off. In the noir framework, it's not a huge shock that the government failed "to deal any crushing blows to people in power." One legal academic is quoted as saying “If the government has no plans to go higher than Pellicano, this is a depressingly pedestrian effort that shows a lack of ambition." But with all that money getting deposed and put in the witness box, all the ambition in the world doesn't amount to much.

Hollywood High School

The New York Times has good coverage of the endless Pellicano wiretap-and-intimidation trial, with former Hollywood and Disney president Michael super agent Ovitz testifying yesterday morning, and the threatened reporter Anita Busch testifying in the afternoon. Timeless dialog includes this:

You believe (Ovitz) was the client who hired Mr. Pellicano to put the fish on your car?” asked attorney Chad Hummel, who represents one of the defendants, former Los Angeles police Sgt. Mark Arneson.

“Yes,” Busch said.

Ovitz, on the other hand, insisted "“Absolutely no, I never instructed him (Pellicano) to do anything illegally."

Of course it's not exactly illegal to leave a fish on somebody's car. What law does that break?

Ovitz calls Hollywood "the campus" and not in the sense of a college campus, because that is too adult. Hollywood, he says, is in fact like high school.

His testimony seems to prove it. Back in 2002, he flipped over rumors that were making him look bad and became dependent on Pellicano's mysterious powers to make it stop. Pellicano the private eye supposedly gave "very good advice," Ovitz said. "Frankly, when a lot of people abandoned the ship, he didn't. He was always an open ear."

Pellicano seems to have become the sad and frightened Ovitz's priest, therapist, friend, and confessor. It's probably not a coincidence that Ovitz paid him $25,000 per case, and an additional $75,000 over the course of that year.

Hollywood Pellicano Case Overview

Here's a link to a good backgrounder on the Pellicano wiretapping case that has been roiling Hollywood for several years. It focuses on the reporter, Anita Busch, who first turned up the story during an investigation of organized crime activity in Hollywood. She seems to have gotten a little too close to that invisible point where moguls and mobsters converge: she was wiretapped and threatened and, when she told her sources they may have been overheard on her phone, he career was effectively ended. Part of the case finally went to trial last year, and it continues.