In an interview with the New York Times, veteran media journalist Ken Auletta discussed the vanity, criminality, and rank body odor of disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein.
In 2020, Weinstein was convicted of first-degree criminal sexual assault and third-degree rape after a long history of emotionally and sexually abusing women, and is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence. He’s the subject of Auletta’s Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence, which comes out next week.
A Kirkus reviewer calls the book “an authoritative, sordid biography.”
In the Times interview with Maureen Dowd, Auletta describes how he spent more than 20 years reporting on Weinstein; he says he heard plenty of details about Weinstein’s sexual-abuse history but was unable to confirm enough details to publish them. Instead, a 2002 profile of Weinstein he wrote for the New Yorker focused on his infamous temper. Other reporters eventually had to “crack the case,” he told the Times, though he shared tapes and notebooks from his Weinstein research with the New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow, one of the journalists who exposed Weinstein’s history of sexual abuse.
Though Auletta didn’t get the major scoops on Weinstein, the new book includes plenty of detail about Weinstein’s life. He exchanged 50 emails with Weinstein from prison and conducted 30 interviews with Bob Weinstein, Harvey’s brother and partner in Miramax, the independent production company that enjoyed critical and commercial success in the ’80s and ’90s. Auletta also spoke with Weinstein’s victims, who recalled his narcissism and body odor. (Like “poop,” one said, according to the Times.)
Auletta tells the Times that Weinstein ranks second, in his mind, when it comes to repulsiveness. Lawyer and Donald Trump mentor Roy Cohn, he says, “was the worst human being I’ve ever met. No one even close. Harvey’s angelic compared to Cohn.”
Hollywood Ending is slated for publication by Penguin Press on July 12.
Mark Athitakis is a journalist in Phoenix who writes about books for Kirkus, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere.
