Missing the Point: Harvey is a symptom of Hollywood’s lack of business ethics
Hollywood’s toxic culture of fear and abuse of power extends well beyond Harvey Weinstein, and well beyond the avalanche of other cases that are sure to follow the Weinstein revelations. But this is far from the “turning point” that Hollywood is crying out for. The hard-charging focus on female voices and people of color, the #OscarsSoWhite backlash, class-action internship lawsuits — they’re all simply clues that point to something much larger at stake. Hollywood is, once again, missing the point. The casual disregard of business ethics and legal oversight is what’s really at issue here.
Twelve-hour days, six-day work weeks, and at least six daily hours of unaccounted for prep and post time are common practice in an average low-budget shooting week. The laughable practice of hiring workers (on set and in studios) expected to perform independently-functioning jobs, labeled as “unpaid interns,” comes as a standard expectation and industry in-joke. And of course, the broad expectation that professional advancement will require some kind of personal sweat equity (sexual or otherwise), is as integral to both the indie and the studio experience as “having a dream.”
Any of us who have worked even on the fringes of the international film industry know this to be true, yet we accept it as the way of the world. “Paying one’s dues.” But, as we now know, the price of our collective fear and silence is the safety of women, yes, but really the safety and dignity of all people with a power deficit in Hollywood — which is most of us. It’s easy to excuse it, in service of our dreams. We know that making it in the toughest industry in the world requires sacrifice. We know that only the tenacious and persistent survive. We know that Hollywood weeds out the weak. And we take it for granted that this abuse is insignificant in the face of our potential glory.
It’s the gluttony for wealth and success that allows all of us to be complicit in this system.
Assistants being manipulated, screamed at, forced to run middle-of-the-night favors for a demanding power player to avoid being demoted from second to third personal assistant; inhumanely competitive subservience between said assistants, both trying to knock the first assistant off her game with subtle jabs; crew members and office workers resorting to sleeping with the producer in order to move up the ladder, then being slut-shamed for advancing by sleeping with the boss; celebrities who thrive on making their assistants feel like shit; and the after-hours film festival parties that breed the type of fear and expectation that give the innumerable Harvey Weinsteins of the business space to prey.
I had heard tales such as these long before I started working in Hollywood. I thought I might avoid the epicenter of this unsavory business by working in the indie world, so I looked for internships on Craigslist. One day, I ended up in the remote, semi-darkened office of two tough-looking lesbian producers who asked me very little about my qualifications; instead, they just inquired, “What department would you like to work in?” I thought for a moment and answered, “Art department.”
A few days later, I met the production designer and prop master. I later learned that these were the only two paid positions in the department, and neither had much experience. The rest of “art department” was made up of me and two other interns. I soon learned that most of the departments were staffed this way. Together, we built and created the locations for a period drama set in Argentina and Cuba. At the time, I was proud of it; looking back, I recognize that a movie that can’t happen without the unpaid labor of an army of interns (who don’t receive backend points or deferred payment either) has a value that is questionable at best.
Like virtually everyone else I know, I have been asked to do free or below-minimum-wage projects, marketed to investors as money-makers at a bargain basement price, again and again. I once worked for producers who were so hungry to make a film, they flew an entire crew to an out-of-state location and started filming before they had completed the financing arrangement for two-thirds of the budget. While the producers continued to promise the crew that paychecks were coming tomorrow for a full three weeks of the shoot, they never materialized.
Although there is maybe less outward aggression associated with this type of undercutting and financial abuse, it doesn’t mean the small-time perpetrators are held to account any more than the big power players. This is happening at all levels of the industry, indie to studio. On union projects, I’ve frequently been asked to sign on as a lower position so that the production can pay me a rate that is lower than the minimum negotiated fee for my job. And, of course, in television writing rooms, writing partners are sometimes acquired as a two-for-the-price-of-one pair, which means they are both only getting paid as half a person.
In the talent management business, one of my best friends worked as an “intern” for a management company as part of a visa sponsorship program. The manager promised that the position would only be unpaid for a trial month or two, while the visa lasted one year. When my friend immediately began as the manager’s main assistant, doing script coverage and rolling calls, and soon graduated to managing his office, she asked to negotiate a salary. He refused. Because she couldn’t change internships and stay on the visa, she continued as an unpaid “intern,” trapped because of her dream of American immigration. For slightly more than a year, she watched unpaid labor cycle out of his intern factory while he went on “research trips” to Costa Rica, cashed checks from his celebrity clients, rented space on an expensive studio lot, and, let’s face it, probably took a lot of aspiring Hollywood starlets to private dinners and meetings in hotel rooms.
Undercutting labor because of a glut of it in the marketplace is not only unethical, it is the logical starting place of Hollywood’s abuse problem. It creates the misogynistic power dynamic that ripens easily into physical, verbal and sexual abuse. It justifies the predatory practices of the producers, managers, agencies and studios who engage in it, making themselves out to be the saviors and benefactors of youthful optimists. And these financial abusers are just as disgusting as predators who attack the bodies of those same optimistic starlets. And as long as these predators receive the tacit acceptance of others, vis-a-vis the “Oh, that’s just Harvey” response, Hollywood will continue to face shock waves of non-secret revelations. Sexual assault, economic abuse, fear-based complicity — each of the sins of Hollywood carries the weight of its own moral failure as clearly and presently as Harvey Weinstein.
