50 years ago, first as a Political Correspondent for the new york post, then a staff writer and weekly weekly columnist for the village voice, and a contributing editor at new York Magazine for a decade. And a half from the late 1970s to the early nineties. He wrote a weekly political column for the New York Daily News and he also, during that period, started writing for the new yorker. Then in 1992, he began doing the annals of communications profiles for the magazine. Over over the years, ken is profiled many of the leading figures of the information age, and hes reported on many important developments in the media business. Hes also authored a dozen previous books ranging in subjects from Network Television to the ad business, from microsoft to google. And five of those works reach that National Bestseller list in hollywood, ending a can chronicles. Harvey weinsteins volatile on and tragic career from his rise to becoming one of hollywoods biggest powerbrokers, the pioneering producer and distributor distributor of many great movies to his highly publicized fall after scores of women came forward with their stories of sexual abuse by weinstein. In a watershed trial, two years ago, weinstein was convicted of third degree rape and another sex felony in new york and sentenced to 23 years in prison. Hes awaiting trial on further charges in california. Ken profiles weinstein in the new yorker 20 years ago and and portrayed him then as as bullying, even violent at times towards employees and collaborators. But he was unable at that time to confirm the darker rumors of weinsteins behavior or as a as a sexual predator. That truth finally emerged in 2017. And stories by jodi kantor and megan twohey in the New York Times and by ronan farrow in in the new yorker. Now revisiting the weinstein saga, kenneth produced a comprehensive biography that adds more revealing detail and insightful context. Examines the raging impulses and unquenchable need to dominate the warped weinsteins actions. He explores the culture of silence that allowed such monstrous thinness to go unchecked for so long. And he looks at how much of weinsteins tale is also a larger story about hollywood and about power. So i think were in for a very informed and interesting discussion this evening. Please join me in welcoming ken auletta. Thank you. I thought i begin by picking up something, bradley said. I didnt know Harvey Weinstein very well in 2002, when i agreed to profile him for the new yorker and i spent probably four months doing that profile, and we spent many hours together, including about 12 hours of taped interview, some of which i use in the book. And at one point, i people i talked to all would say who worked for him or in hollywood . We know harvey cheats on his wife. But very few people said they knew he was a rapist. And so that was not out there the way we now assume it was. But i heard from a woman producer of an incident that took place at the Venice Film Festival in 1998 with two women, one named rowena chiu, the other Zelda Perkins. They were his london assistants and supposedly the story was that harvey attempted to rape rowena and that zelda led the fight to get him to prosecute him, to bring it to the police. No one had ever, in all the previous years had ever brought harvey to trial or to ever threaten him. And nor had he signed, which he did later on. Many nondisclosure agreements. What happened was they threatened him and he got nervous. He flew over to london with his Business Affairs person, steve hooton, who was who was an enabler, if you read the nondisclosure agreement. Its quite obvious that he was he knew what was going on. And in any case, harvey suppressed them from speaking out, got them to sign nondisclosure agreements. I went to the courts in london and the courts in new york, and i said, why cant i find any evidence of criminal trial evidence or file filings, lawsuit, etc. , about this case . And then i learned why. And the answer was that what harvey would do when someone brought a claim against him privately, usually he would say he was to have his lawyer meet them and say, heres x number of dollars in this case, it was almost 500,000 to 50 each. And in return and you have to sign this nondisclosure agreement, the nondisclosure agreement means you cant tell anyone, you cant tell your parents, you cant tell you your husband, you cant tell you a psychiatrist. And if you break the nondisclosure agreement, you got to give the money back. And im going to sue you. So its going to be more expensive. So i, i have an information, but i couldnt get either woman to speak to me and my source who i tell in the book was donna gigliotti, who was Academy Award winning producer. She refused to speak unless the women would speak and they wouldnt. But i said if i could figure out some way of showing that disney, the corporate parent of miramax or miramax, his company, paid for the nondisclosure agreement. Someones going to jail. Ive got my story. I dont need the woman to talk to me so i confront harvey in a small Conference Room and there ensued one of the most amazing experiences ive ever had as a journalist. I said, harvey, tell me about where we need you and Zelda Perkins. This is where you are now. I said, i want to know. Did you attempt to rape me . When did you actually at the time i was told he had actually raped her, which was inaccurate. If i published it, it would have been false. He didnt. He attempted to rape her. She escaped and he stood up. He got up from his small conference table about table the size he was on the in there close to where bradley would be. And i was here and he came over here and stood above me, and he clenched his fists and his lip trembled and he said, if you publish that, it will destroy the lives of my three teenage daughters. It will destroy my marriage. You cant do that. So at that point, i said, im not going to sit down and let this guy take a poke at me. Im going to stand up and and face him face to face. As soon as i did, this was the amazing thing. Harvey started to cry. And i dont mean i dont mean small tears rolling down his cheek. I mean, he was sobbing out of control, sobbing and which was extraordinary because he was really afraid that this was going to finally expose him. No one had ever exposed them before, but i couldnt expose him because i didnt have anyone on the record. And the new yorker is not the national enquirer. We cant publish rumors. And so next. But i kept in mind, harvey and and knew he was a predator. And in 2015, when the italian model this is the first time it was ever public, it was in the press that harvey abuse woman literally hed been doing for decades. It never got in the press until that she the police wired her she had a tape of harvey acknowledged saying he grabbed her breasts and but then the d. A. Thinking she was she might not be a credible witness because they were questions about about her decided not to file charges and she then got a Million Dollar nondisclosure agreement and changed her testimony, basically exonerating harvey. But she did something really clever. She kept the tape and she would give that tape to ronan farrow two years later. But before i get to ronan farrow and the times reporters, i said with, i believe this woman was accurate. I talked to a lawyer. I believe she was telling the truth. The first time. The italian model. But i saw in variety that ashley judd claim that some studio executive asked her for a massage. That was harveys m. O. He didnt he was not don juan. He would say, i got a kink at my neck. Could you give me a can you give me a rubdown . And the second person was angelina jolie. I heard in her first movie, which she did for miramax, that he had tried to assault her in. The third was a woman, an aspiring actress who wrote a column for the new york observer, who i did talk to. Jolie wouldnt talk. Ashley judd wouldnt talk. This woman who claimed that harvey described in great detail in her columns anonymous, that he didnt name him. She would not go on the record. So i didnt have the story switched. 2015. Two years later, ronan farrow calls me up. I didnt know ronan farrow and all i know about him was the woody allen stuff. And as a journalist, i had a question in my mind, is he a zealot or is he a journalist . Is he trying to square things up in some way . He called me up and he, after talking to me and i pumped him for information where he was on the harvey thing, i was confident that he really was careful, judicious was the word i would later use. But he said, can i have access to your papers at the New York Public Library . So i gave him access to them, which is my tapes and my notebooks, etc. And but anything off the record, he couldnt use the women i mentioned. He couldnt take that. He was off the record. He said he called me up. Can i interview you . I said, im finishing a book. Youll have to come out to brit champion, where i was writing at the time it comes out and we spent about 4 hours together and i said so what do you got . He said, i have three women on camera who who acknowledge that harvey attempted or did rape them. I have five women on camera but shielded their names, did not disclose who say the same thing and i have the audio tape of the italian model. I said, great, you broke the case. He said, i said, whats the next step . He says, i meet with the president of nbc news. No. Oppenheim on august 8th. Great. August 9th, i call ronan farrow. And i said, so howd you do . He says, can i call you on a secure line, which immediate. Im saying, what is that all about . And little what we later learned is that he was being tailed and his phone was being tapped. So he calls he calls me and he says, nbc has basically fired him. Theyre not running this story. They dont think he has the goods and but hes free to take it anywhere. He said who would want it . You know, he didnt ask us the question. Yes, it is a defeatist label. I said, give me a number. Let me call you back and i didnt tell them why i called david remnick, the editor of the new yorker, whos a friend and a lion. In the world of journalism. And i said, david, this kid finally has broken the case. Its unbelievable. And hes judicious, hes careful. He says, have him call me on monday morning. Ronan did, and ronan went off. I had nothing to do with this. Im at one initial meeting with him and remnick, but essentially it was all ronan. Nbc then claimed that ronan didnt have the goods. He only had the goods after he went to the new yorker, which is just baloney. He had the goods at that time. In any case, two sets of reporters do an amazing job. They got woman comfortable enough to talk. Im talking about jodi kantor and mike toohey at the times, who broke the story in early october and a week later, ronan farrow, who broke the story in the new yorker and what they did successful. Lee they realized that you got to get the woman not alone to talk, but talk with fellow victims. So they would feel comfortable. But the feet of getting women who were really assault and afraid to come out and and speak against Harvey Weinstein is an extraordinary feat. There are people who say, well, you had the cosby case and the ailes case and the culture was changing. Changing . Well, it did in some ways. But we should not minimize what these three reporters did. Its extraordinary. Anyway, i then say, how do i come to write a book . I say, what they did with ronan and meg and jody did was they were looking at harvey from the outside. I said, can i write a book . Going in the inside, looking out from harvey, being inside his head, his body and and what he went through and experience and his whole career. So i said one question i wanted to address was what made harvey the monster he became . And reporting. I found some interesting things. I found, for instance, that in flushing, queens, where he grew up, his mother, miriam, was a very volatile personality, not unlike harvey as an adult, yelling all the time, yelling so much that his friends who i interviewed, they played poker on the weekends at different homes. They would not play at marian weinsteins home because they were too uncomfortable. They said, she yells too much harvey or fat harvey. Dont do this, harvey, this. But so if you look at harveys throughout miramax and the Weinstein Company, he was basically his mother had normalized yelling and thats what he thats what he was doing in the office. So i also learned in probing his early years, harvey did not to my knowledge, and i talked to a fair number of people, did not abuse women. Girls in high school or junior high school, nor his first few years at the university of buffalo. He only started to abuse women when he had power. And he had power when he dropped out of the university of buffalo after his junior year, he started harvey and cookie presents a rock Promotion Company that was wildly successful. They got sinatra, they got the rolling stills, they got billy joe. They got all these top performers, the eagles, to come and perform in the Buffalo Stadium and other places. So he was really a powerful guy and he had a woman work for him by the name of hope to moore, who i interviewed, who now lives in san antonio. I think. And i have her picture in the book. I think hope was the first woman he raped. She was an assistant to him, but he raped many other women. And the more power he got, the more the raping and the abusive woman escalated throughout his life. So that was one thing i wanted to explore. What made harvey who he was. And i think one of the things that made him who he was is power. And i mean, his brother bob was in raping women. I mean, so you cant blame Miriam Weinstein for that. I mean, its just too simple. Theres no one single rose. But i also came to feel that harvey was a sociopath and and even that thats conjectural. The second thing i was interested in exploring is bradley said in the introduction, is, how did this guy get away with this for four decades . Without anyone blowing the whistle on. And it was it was hollywood. It was the people who worked for him. It was it was reporters who got the benefit of his tips and and come to my screening or got book contracts and talk books, which he started. And, you know, it was quite extraordinary. His use of power to keep the secret. And when people say to me, we knew he cheated on his wife, we didnt know he he raped women. Let me tell you a story. I interviewed a woman named hillary silver who was an agent who was going to move back to new york with a boyfriend, very attractive young woman. And she came up for a Job Interview at miramax in tribeca, and she gets on the elevator. And whos on the elevator with Harvey Weinstein . And harvey looks her up and down and says, what are you doing here . She said, i have an interview with Human Resources has come and see me when youre done. So hillary goes to Human Resources, has the interview and the Human Resources had walked back to harveys office. They walk in together. The first thing harvey says, he points his finger. He says, youre hired. He didnt consult with the Human Resources. I mean, he hired of course she was. She was. And so she had to go off on a trip to europe, vacation, and she was coming back in three or four weeks. And the night the day before, she used to start work for executives at miramax, reach out to her and say, wed love to take you for a drink. And she said, this is so. Why . What a great place this is. What a great culture people are welcoming me, etc. , etc. Well, they didnt welcome it with they said to her over drinks was hillary, you dont want to come to work here. Youre an attractive woman. He will assault you, i promise you. And she didnt go to work. She basically didnt take the job. So if that level of people at miramax knew, how many others knew or should have known that he was doing the agents who sent their actresses up to hotel suites and the and the young actors came back. In some case, they didnt come back. In some cases they were doing they were Career Advancement for them. But many came back wounded, hurt, abused by this monster. And they tell their agents, what do the agents do . Nothing. See a issued a statement at one point and after harvey was exposed in the fall of 2017, saying we should have done more, the top agency there. So i was interested in and in the culture of silence and try in the book to identify how that happened and who some of the culprits were. And i covered the trial every day. And one of the great things about covering the trial, you get a treasure trove of all these emails that are submitted as evidence that there are too many theres a blizzard of these emails. But if you go up to the office at the end of the day and read these emails, its many of them were so incriminate. Adding to the people who covered up for harvey, it was extraordinary. The third thing i was interested in, i mentioned briefly power how did harvey, who had amazing power at one point he was he published a magazine. He published talk books. He was making movies that a serious actor or director wanted to be. And unlike the studio with the sequel movies they were making it. So he was he was a magnet in hollywood. And when he when disney acquired him in. 1993, they gave him money to actually produce movies, not do not just distribute them. And he was producing more movies than any studio miramax was so it was really a power and at one point when he took a reporter for the observer down in a headlock outside and screamed, and we know he did this because the reporter had this tape recorder going, im the f and sheriff this f in town, and dont you forget it, harvey felt that he was his power. Powerful figure. So i was interested in exploring how we use power giving money to obama and the clintons and governor pataki, the republican governor of new york, and michael bloomberg, the republican. And then an independent mayor. So he was basically parceling out money to people as well as parceling out roles. The other thing that interested me was the relationship between the brothers and and harvey and bob started this business together. They were equal partners. Bob was in many ways was more successful than harvey. His scary movies, some of those horror movies he made, made more money than miramax movies. But they were partners and they worked together and they were very close. And if you worked for miramax, you knew you had it. The only Decision Makers were the two brothers. Yet by 2015, bob is complaining incessantly to harvey. Harvey is spending like a bandit. This is crazy. And when . When he was divorced from disney. Disney basically chased him out in 2005, saying hes too difficult to work with and he was. And he starts the Weinstein Company. He got 1,000,000,000 of seed investment money. He lost all of it. All of it. Harvey is a terrible businessman and his movies were not as successful as they were in in the nineties and the early two. Thousands. So bob would complain, harvey, stop spending money, stop picking up tabs for people, stop flying on private planes all the time, stop buying your wife his new wifes gowns. Markazi gowns for the shah or some middle east potentate who he wanted to get to invest money in. And then one day theyre in a meeting in 2015. And harvey sucker punch, his brother embraces nose and blood is flowing all over. And everyone said, oh my god, what is going on . This is really awful. And on june second, 2015, the several members of the board meet with harvey on the phone. And i have a tape of this which i transcribe and share the transcription and they offer in the book, harvey starts screaming at the Board Members, i want you to fire my brother. This. 2015. Harvey, we cant fire you, brother. You have to do it. Youre the ceo of this company. Were just Board Members. You should fire him. Hes losing all this money. He wasnt losing the money. Harvey was losing the money. Any case, i was able to get Bob Weinstein to cooperate with me and tell his story. And we probably did 20, 25 interviews. It was very hard to get him to talk, and it took a while, but eventually he did. And he was candid with me and one of the things you learn is that after harvey was exposed in october. Of 2017, he couldnt be fired unless the board voted him off. But the board was his board. They were rubber stamps, but he could be fired if a couple of anti harvey Board Members joined with bob who like harvey, had waited voting shares and bob used those way to voting shares to fire his brother. And then he met with his brother and he said, harvey, i think, you know, youre a sex addict, and i think you should go to this place and arizona and get help and and harvey went there, listened to his brother. He went there, but he didnt seek help. He didnt stay in the dormitory where the other patients went. This place were rush, Rush Limbaugh went and several other famous tiger woods went. There. And he spent all his time on a cell phone hanging out at a diner he didnt do. And, bob, from that point on, stopped talking to his brother and hasnt talked to him since from 2017 to today. So harvey, then into early 18 is in danger of getting indicted. He needs a criminal lawyer. And i want to end with this story because i think in capsule8 something fundamental about harvey, he meets with ben brafman, who arguably is the best criminal attorney in new york city. And they made it the lambs club. And brafman is sitting in a banquette looking and he sees this guy we never met walk in with his huge stomach, but he had on a beautiful ben said beautiful linen crisp linen shirt, worn out, not tucked in. And he comes over and sits down. He orders a cheeseburger and an extra large portion of french fries. And id like a big bowl of ketchup, please. Brafman orders a Little Caesar salad. And before brafman, caesar salad comes, harvey starts to chomping on and and the oil or grease from the hamburger cheeseburgers slipping down. But then he reaches he doesnt use a knife and fork. He reaches into ketchup bowl with a handful of french fries and goes like this and shovels it in his mouth repeatedly and suddenly there are bloodstains or what looked like blood stains on his white shirt. And then a french fry ketchup french fries falls down the front of his shirt. The open neck shirt. And brafman says, and harvey starts to reach in to grab it up. And brafman says, harvey, what are you doing . Stop that. Just end up at the metro, will fall out. But harvey couldnt stop because harvey has impulse control issues. If you gave him a pack of cigarettes, he would rip off the top because he didnt have the patience to open up the flipped up box. Diet cokes. He had them lined up. He ate just shoveling food in his mouth and talking while he chewed fast. And people were afraid to sit across from him because projectiles would come. But the harvey who abused women was the same harvey that ben brafman was sitting across in that restaurant. He couldnt control himself and he couldnt for his temper. He couldnt with his sex drive. He couldnt the way he ate. He had severe diabetes. And yet he always insisted that a bowl of peanut covered, chocolate covered m m peanut eminems be in his hotel suite or his office and he would just again with diabetes hes eating chocolate. So it was quite extraordinary. Anyway, thats the odyssey of of my experience with this guy. The interesting thing for me was to spend so much time reporting on the monster and yet being able hopefully being able to step back and describe the movies he made, the talent he had to make those movies without negating the fact that he was a monster. But that was it was hard because i really dont like the son of a. Anyway, thank you. Spend your book on ted turner. I read and i loved an article in the new yorker on mario cuomo was one of my favorites. It was great to great people. So before i talk about Harvey Weinstein now, i love mario cuomo. This was common knowledge. He was i mean, he was he would berate people in public. He was you know, they commented on his behavior at the oscars. How did it take so long to for people to finally say enough . I mean, he was abusive to his assistants. I just dont understand it. Well, you know, look at this town today. Look at republicans. They know that donald trump is lying about winning the election. He didnt win the election. You know, he lost by 7 million votes. And they know that. But theyre afraid to say anything. So fear is they dont want trump to come out against them. Theyll lose the primary. They fear. So fear of harvey is similar to the fear we see here. A second a second reason no one wants is conformity. No one wants to be a rat. They dont want to, you know, they want to conform, keep a low profile, not get on the bad side of people or think that people will think ill of you because youre a rat. And the third reason i think is lack of character. I mean, the people who should have blown the whistle on harvey have a character deficiency. In my judgment, those who knew who who knew before, i mean, obviously did his brother know his brother, who i confronted with that question said i knew my brother was a was a sexual i knew he he the phrase he used was a couldnt control his sex urge, but he actually used another phrase for it, ill think of in a minute, he said. But i didnt know he was raping woman and the brother actually, in the case of the two women i mentioned in the Venice Film Festival, the 500,000 i asked, i said, harvey, i need to see how you paid for it. Thinking then that i would get that if disney paid or miramax paid, i have my story and someone is going to jail and then harvey protested, i said, i need to see it tomorrow. And he slid across the table to cancel jackson. Bobs personal. And bob said to me, i said, you paid vernon scott. He said, yeah, because harvey said, hes being blackmailed by these women and do i know he knew . He says he didnt know. I dont know what else i can do, but ask the uncomfortable questions, which is what i did. Any other questions . Yes, sir. Im about the same age as Harvey Weinstein, 70. Im from buffalo. I was in college at the same time. He was in college in buffalo at a different school. But but the fact that this change into a monster or the start of the becoming a monster happened in my hometown interests me. Do you know why . Why there i was. It was it partly being away from his home . No, i think it was power. For the first time in his life, harvey had real power. And i mean the concert series. Yeah, they were. They were really a big Concert Promotion group. And harvey and cookie people know by their first name and and they were having all these acts and he put police to do security at night. And he was a big advertiser in the press for the concerts they were doing. So there was a concert, a community of people who were very much in his corner. But he he i think its power. I think the power went to his head and he thought he can get away with it. One of the things you find when you talk to when you cover people who have large egos, be it a politician or a public figure of some kind, or Harvey Weinstein or an actor. Theyre surrounded by young and very beautiful women who are very ambitious and and unlike, say, the Automobile Companies, you dont have in the Automobile Companies attractive, sexy women working side by side with the ceo or the people and in hollywood, you do. And i think one of the things that happened is that a woman would say, oh, mr. Weinstein, i love your movies. They are so good. How do you do it . And i think he can fuse a compliment with a come on. And i think i mean, i think people like bill clinton did the same. And i think its not uncommon to see that happening. This is already happening. When he was in college, well, he was at a college. He had dropped out after his junior year when he got power at harvey and cookie presents. He was doing that for ten years and they were really successful. I think then this happened like. I think hollywood directors are very, very creative people did it and i read the portion of your book that talked about the contest between shakespeare in love and saving private ryan. Harvey never directed the movie as far as i recall. He did one. He and his brother directed a movie with allen brewer. Their childhood friend, and and and it was a total flop. They wrote the script and they produced and it was not unlike based on harvey and cookies experience in buffalo in the music business, what was he was he jealous of spielbergs creativity and the fact that this guy, you know, literally made money hand over fist for a while . He harvey located miramax, new york, not hollywood. He had this attitude that it was us, him against them, and he was fighting the hollywood establishment. He was fighting the movie theaters. They didnt want his foreign films to keep his foreign films in the movies. So he he was basically imbued with a kind of paranoia, what he said about saving private ryan was he would say this publicly, though he denied to me and others that he ever said this, which was a lie. He said the first 17 minutes of saving private, private ryan was brilliant, but then the movie just dissolves into nothingness. And thats what thats what he was telling the press and the Academy Voters and denying he did that. And spielberg was so incensed, as i describe in the book, when harvey came over to congratulate him at the end of the Academy Awards that night, which was 89, based on the 88 movies, harvey spielberg just ran away and wouldnt talk to him. I always thought that one of the interesting points in like the Metoo Movement in hollywood was when spielbergs associate Kathleen Kennedy got involved in like, raising money for women to meet with lawyers and things like that. Did you have any sense that that could went on to this . She was an important figure in that effort. I have no sense of her relationship with harvey or or role at all. Okay okay. There have a lot of men asking questions. Were other women i noticed that too. But how do you know im a man . Thanks for your presentation. Given your contacts in communications with ronan farrow about a sexual predator, did the subject of woody allen come up . And do you have anything to say about woody allen. I did not talk to ronan about woody allen, where i did with, as i mentioned, i was i was skeptical of ronan initially because i was worried was he a zealot or a reporter . And i watched the hbo documentary and i thought it was pretty convincing that woody allen was was guilty i ran into alec baldwin im not name dropping, but it was a big outdoor thing in the hamptons last week. And i said that to him and he just interviewed woody allen on his podcast and he said, thats false. The this this would be the attorney general of connecticut who said he should have prosecuted, he said was actually having an affair with mia farrow. I have no idea. And i should i should not have said that, by the way, of of course, im spreading rumors that that may not be true. In any case, woody allen has some supporters. Im not one to. Thank you. You said that you really didnt like him. And what is that like to spend . I am not sure how many years you spent on this, but to get up basically most mornings and have to inhabit this person, especially because you wanted to talk about him from the inside. So it is different from you did have to kind of get inside his head. And what was that experience like . Did you one take a shower at the end of the day i mean, what what happened . Well, i did take a shower the end of the day, but im not sure that it was causal. But he i actually found it as i suggested, a really interesting discipline challenge for me. The and and made easier by the fact that so many of his movies it was so good and made easier because when you probe people about what was harveys talent, you learn he really had immense talent. One of the talents he had was that he understood that a key to a successful movie was a good screenplay. It wasnt the actor or director. You can have a good actor and a good director. Its lot of the screenplay. He said to me, its going to flop. So he understood that and is a voracious reader. Harvey really reads a lot. Second, he was a brilliant marketing guy. I mean, you look at what he did, for instance, in the crying game, you remember the crying game early before that movie ends. We learn that that the prisoner who was killed and the ira guy who meets her discovers that she is a he and it opens in england. And the audience knew that and the movie failed and harvey figured out a way to do a survey pay for a gallup poll that showed the public did not want to know the ending. And he called editors and he said, you cannot destroy your audiences experi ence by coming out and telling what the ending is. And they didnt. And and there was a huge success. So much of his success when it came out in 93 that disney decided that theyre going to acquire the Weinstein Company and they actually bet against ted turner to do that. And one. So he was a brilliant marketing guy. And also harvey. And you just knew this from talking to him. He really knew a lot about movie history and and he was not just the suit, which is how people talk actors and actresses who are good talk about people in the studio business. Harvey really knew stuff. And one of the stories i tell is when ben affleck and and matt damon did good will hunting the script for that. The mike medavoy turned it down because he said it was to violent and and it really wouldnt work and harvey read it and loved it but he met with affleck and damon and he said i dont understand something. He said, its a really good script, but on page, whatever, 170 or 150, whatever the matt damon character has sex with a man and it totally out of character where that come from. And they said to him, harvey, we put that in to see whether you read the read the script and he did. I can im particularly interested in the politicians who took money from Harvey Weinstein. And did you speak with them . And what was your take on whether how much they knew and which of those three, you know, attribute its whether its lack of character advancement or what have you that motivated them. Well, i know that hillary was warned by lena dunham, the director, that you cant be in business. This is the 2016 campaign when shes running for president , you have to reject Harvey Weinstein because hes a rapist and hillarys person who she told that to his press secretary, her press secretary. She claims she was never told. That is that true . I dont know. Pataki governor pataki was one of the people who called harvey and harvey the New York Times is investigating you. One of the first clues he had that he was being chased by the New York Times came from governor pataki, who had given several raise several hundred thousand dollars for. So did i dwell on talking to politicians . No. But i had access to amazing array of emails from pataki and and etc. That i, i didnt need to talk to them at that point. Now, i could have talked to them and maybe i should have talked to them and said, what you were told is why, why, why you do what you did. Why did you continue to keep in touch with them . And thats a fair criticism that i could have done more on that. Thank you. I have a question. Oh, the boss asks the question. No, we we we were talking before the event about your efforts to to interview weinstein. I mean, you had all these conversations for original profile, but but obviously you were interested and in trying to talk him for the book and my question is now, you know, youve written other books about other prominent people. Youve done so many profiles for the magazine about a number of prominent people. How important is it or not when youre doing these profiles where biographies to actually be able to talk to the person youre writing about . Oh, i think its the central. I mean, i once talked to i wont name the reporter, but a very esteemed reporter. I said, what are you doing next . And this reporter said, im doing a biography of a very prominent figure. And i said, is the figure cooperating with you . And he says, who the hell cares . Well, he should. A kid is a terrible book and, you know, your job is to get inside that person. I mean, for instance, one, ill give you one example of what i mean. One of the things i do all the time is i assume im going to do multiple interviews. Its not just one interview. And im not looking to play gotcha with the person. Im trying to understand the person. And i actually say to them, my task is to try and understand you. And so when i cover the microsoft trial, it was called microsoft 3. 0 and which they lost. The argument was that they were a monopoly and judge jackson was the judge in that case. And i sat in that courtroom every day, as i did in the case, and he agreed to let me interview him after the court was over. But before he issued or maybe after he issued as really no before he issues really. So i come to his office and we wound up doing 12 hours of interviews for hours, 4 hours and 4 hours. The first 4 hours i spent with judge jackson, my questions were all, tell me about your childhood. Tell me about your father. Your mother. Tell me about how you became a lawyer. Tell me how you went to work for the nixon reelection campaign. In 1972. And as judge jackson talked about his experience and his revulsion at richard nixon, who he said, i, i was one of the worst experience of my life. This man i revered and i went to work for. And my father had been in government. I really wanted to be in government and a public servant. But he lied and he lied to everyone who worked for him. And he lied to the country. And he was an awful man. And then i thought back to the trial. And in the trial, one of the things that david boies, who is the government attorney and did a brilliant job, he would there were 20 hours of taped interviews with bill gates and and he would often play them on the screen. And what you saw was nixon. You saw gates, you know, refusing answer questions, misleading, etc. And what i realize was judge jackson when he saw bill gates, when he was seeing richard nixon. So that early interview was so revealing of who he was. Look at harvey. I mean, i think learning about his mother is is incredibly revealing to him. And i asked his brother, i said, who was very candid about the mother. I said, bob, what do you see . Again, these are the early questions you ask about biography, which which become very important. I said, bob, what do you see of your father in harvey . And he said to me, i dont see my father. I see my mother. So its its i mean, i find that that when you ask when you have an intimate conversation with people about their life you develop an intimacy with them that is particularly if they dont think youre trying to play gotcha with them, that you really interested in the questions youre asking them. It becomes a solidifying thing and, and i remember when i interviewed, i spent lot of time doing a profile of rupert murdoch, another person who who actually doesnt talk to me anymore from in that profile. But we spent an enormous amounts of time and i know from the early conversation about his father he revered and the early days of oxford, where he was a radical leftist and had a lennon bust in his dorm room at oxford. Murdoch to me, i became someone really intimate with him. I mean, ken knows me. Ive shared with him that i havent shared with people who work for me and i think that happens. And and its one of the things that allows you to profile someone, hopefully with some insight. We also talked briefly about, if you could, interviewed weinstein. What would you have asked him . Well, i actually i worked i was scheduled at first. I tell the story in the book, but at first he was getting very nervous about im the only one doing a biography of him. And so he tells his pr guy, he said, ill talk to ken. This is from prison. If ken agrees to ask me any negative questions that come up in the book, claims made me in the book that i havent already answered. And i went back to his pr guy and i said, i will be happy to do that, but i want the freedom to ask him any questions that i want. No. And end of negotiations. They come back a week or so later and say, harvey will agree to do interviews if you dont tape it. I said, deal breaker. I have to tape it. Harvey will agree. Then a week later, harvey will agree to do it. If you if you dont, if you have if he has a translator writer to do the script, you know, i said, no, i have to do i cant rely on you do that at the end. He agreed after about two months in negotiation to my terms and then his lawyer called me the day before we were supposed to do the first of several phone interviews. He doesnt have Internet Access as a prisoner, and his lawyers had missed all that. I cant allow my client whos gone on trial in l. A. , but one of the among the questions that i wanted to ask harvey and and i did actually ask him, and we had an email finally an email exchange, maybe 25 emails. And one of them, i asked him the following question, which, of course, he didnt answer harvey, when you put your hand on a pillow at night after raping, just say, jessica, man, who was one of the key defendants in the new trial. How did you explain to yourself what you had just done now . He never answered that question. And i suspect if he had answered the question, he would have said something. He was always saying it was consent and she wanted something from me and i wanted something from her. It was a fair trade. Now you really got to be skewed. And i had to think thats a fair trade. But that was him. I mean, harvey tried to normalize aberrant behavior. He would come into a suite in london, lets say zelda described this, and she said, i gave to rowena when she was succeeding me. I gave her a list of ten, ten, dos and donts. And one of the dos and donts was when harvey comes in the suite after dinner and takes off all his clothes and parades around the suite naked, it is normal. He wont. You know, this is harvey and what he did with rowena, which is what he did with a lot of women. He would say, i got a kink in my neck. Can you give me a massage . Ill give you massage. And one of the warnings among the warnings that zelda had on a piece of paper, which i have, is dont ever give him a massage. Also a warning. Dont let him take it. Where two pairs of pants. So people know where to pair the pants. And dont let him take any of she let him take one off or just kind of nuts. But in any case, so Zelda Perkins and and people who work for him knew that he was a beast, that it wasnt just having affairs, it was about conquest. And conquest of men who he yelled at and put down and conquest of women sexually. Any more questions. I suppose this would take another evening, but how did you develop your wonderful interviewing skills . And if you were to advise somebody doing interviews like you have been doing, what would you say . Listen, be a good listener. You dont need to talk. Let the silence work for you. Ask question and dont jump in and interrupt them. Let them talk and and well build their confidence, too, that youre not some shark. You know, you dont go into initial interview like a dentist. Im here to drill your teeth. I mean, you wont have that persons attention. But listening is is i think, a key ingredient of and one of the reasons why one of the reasons that concerns me about the nature of journalism. You watch the Cable Networks and all these these pundits are expressing opinions and theyre not listening. Theyre certain whos going to win the election. Let me tell you whos going to win the election. Well, how do you know whos going to win the election . And so the humility to listen disappears. And thats that i think is death for good journalism. Thank you. Yeah. Hi. Hi. Many of us have read about the legendary hollywood moguls of the thirties, forties and fifties, and the casting couch. And how many of them allegedly did or i mean, there are enough people reporting it. I have to believe it occurred. Did really what weinstein did or did they not . Thats my question. How are they different or how is weinstein different from what . The weinstein is different. The casting couch, which harvey is his defense. It was casting couch and the casting couch was quite disgusting. The abuse of power. Louis b may or may well have certainly abused judy garland and and one of the things elia kazan writes a rather brilliant autobiography in which he says, one of the things that the stewart early studio heads believed, and i think were right is you dont cast a woman in a role unless you want to sleep with her. He didnt use the word sleep. And that was harveys view. And the difference between the old moguls of hollywood and harvey is rape was harveys m. O. , it was the m. O. Was not the m. O. Of many of these men. Im not saying some of them may not have rape, but were not aware of a rape in the same way they abuse women. And it was disgusting. But harvey, i mean, youre talking about physical assault that he was doing. He was holding down women. He was really, you know, annabella sciorra, you listen to her description of what he did with her at the trial. I mean, its unbelievable. I mean, that or rowena, what he did with rowena, that same thing. Its and i dont think the Louis B Mayers and the and the other moguls were first of all, they want as big as harvey to be able to do that. Well, part of the reason i ask the question is i just watched a rerun of the old movie how to succeed in business without really very good, which is a great movie, High School Musical and but there is a scene in there where one of the executives is chasing secretary around and they played for laughs. And at the time, im sure it was funny, but you look at it through a modern lens and its disgusting and the womans kind of laughing as she does it in such. And im certainly not excusing what weinstein did, not excusing what Louis B Mayer did. And theres a lot we dont know about what they did, but it seems like once dean did was maybe it was more, but it was a continuation of something that had been going on for decades in hollywood. But theres a difference. It was going on for decades, but i would argue theres a difference between chasing a woman around the couch, which is Sexual Harassment and rape. Rape is a criminal offense, which is why hes which is why hes in prison and and i, i just think he was so extreme in what he did in the movie, though. They didnt catch him. Yeah. You know, they didnt show it happened and they did. Thank you. Thank you. This was