Its Friday, and this weekend Im packing for my annual road trip to the Telluride Film Festival, which is the film-journalist version of back-to-school shopping.
Hello from Los Angeles, where were unpacking the Asia Argento story, filling out our last-minute Emmy ballots, and saying goodbye to the summer-movie season.
#METOO 2.0
Hollywood loves the simplicity of villains and heroes, good guys and bad guys—and the #MeToo movement has provided an ample supply of both archetypes since the publication of news stories about Harvey Weinstein last fall unleashed decades of dammed-up secrets about bad behavior by men across town. What followed was 10 months of women, after years of shouting into a void, finally finding their voices heard about issues of sexual harassment, assault, and systemic inequality in the entertainment industry and beyond. Times Up formed. Hollywood women asserted their power in agency meetings, on awards shows, and at film festivals. Womens demands to be listened to and believed were loud, and they were absolute.
The news this week that a key Weinstein accuser faces a sexual assault allegation of her own signals a new phase in the movement, an era in which #MeToo must inevitably make room for more nuance among accusers and accused, and for a deeper understanding of power than one based solely on gender. Actor and musician Jimmy Bennett says he was sexually abused by Asia Argento in 2013, nine years after he played Argentos son in The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, a movie she also directed. This week, Bennett released a statement expressing that he hadnt come forward sooner because he was “ashamed and afraid to be part of the public narrative,” and felt there was still a stigma surrounding male victims, as V.F.s Yohana Desta reports. Argento has denied the allegation, and said her partner at the time, the late Anthony Bourdain, paid a $380,000 settlement to Bennett on her behalf solely to help Bennett financially and keep the claim quiet.
The facts of Argento and Bennetts encounter are murky, but what is clear—as the Weinstein trial nears a start date, a CBS investigation into Les Moonves continues, and workplaces across Hollywood settle into month 11 of the #MeToo era—is that power and privilege are the weapons that led us here, and the people who wield them can take many forms. And while villains and heroes may be useful archetypes on screen, the real people working in Hollywood every day remain far more complicated.
DANGER ZONE
Discomfort is independent filmmaker Josephine Deckers comfort zone. The director of this summers Madelines Madeline, a heady movie about the creative process, appropriation, and the whims and weirdness of theater people, has been at work on her next project, Shirley, an upcoming film about horror author Shirley Jackson, with Elisabeth Moss in the title role. “I keep reminding myself that the reason Im here is that theyre asking me to do what Ive been doing, which is go really fucking deep,” Decker told V.F.s K. Austin Collins. “Dont settle. Dont make the movie for them— them meaning some idea of audience, or an idea of what an investor wants. Whenever I get intimidated or Im like, What did they do in hiring me?, I try to remember that the space Im trying to open in films is space thats so safe, it can be dangerous.”
BACK TO SCHOOL
Hoop Dreams director Steve Jamess new docuseries, America to Me, premieres on Starz this Sunday. The 10-part series, which first started building buzz at Sundance in January, is about racial inequality at a high school in the filmmakers Oak Park hometown in Chicago. America to Me takes a different tack than many of the high-drama documentaries that have been part of a boom in the form. “Were not going into a besieged public high school where theres gang violence and danger and all of those kinds of hooks, right?” James told V.F.s Katey Rich. “Were going into a very safe community, very diverse, well-funded school, liberals. And [were] eventually asking you to devote 10 hours to watching those kind of stories.”
SO LONG, SUMMER-MOVIE SEASON
Summer-movie season is winding down, and V.F. critic Richard Lawson was . . . dimly charmed by the offerings. Here, Lawson runs down the season highlights, including a movie he calls a “perfectly palatable couple of hours of air-conditioning that gently advanced the narrative of that whole galaxy-sized opera while serving up enough goofy sight gags to dull the brain.” Vive le cinéma!
ALL OVER BUT THE VOTIN
Emmy voting ends at 10 P.M. P.T. on Monday, and TV Academy members are spending their last precious days with their screeners, their ballots, and their consciences. May I suggest as supplemental reading Joy Presss interview with double nominee Jeff Daniels, who scored a pair of nods for diametrically opposed roles as an F.B.I. agent in Hulus The Looming Tower and an outlaw in Netflixs Godless? What do the two figures have in common? “They dont understand themselves,” Daniels said.
EARBUDS TIME
The summer-movie debate—loved em? Hated em?—continues on this weeks episode of V.F.s podcast Little Gold Men.
Thats the news for this week on the Hollywood and awards beat. Tell me what youre seeing out there. Send tips, comments, and bolo ties to [email protected]. Follow me on Twitter @thatrebecca. If you would like to subscribe to the newsletter, head on over here.
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Rebecca KeeganRebecca Keegan is a Hollywood Correspondent for Vanity Fair.
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