Harvey Weinstein is going on trial in Los Angeles, where he was once an Oscars behemoth, five years after women’s tales about him sparked the #MeToo movement’s explosion.
Already serving a 23-year term for a conviction of rape and sexual assault in New York, the 70-year-old former movie mogul faces further charges, including three that allegedly occurred during a key Oscar week in Los Angeles. Monday begins jury selection for an eight-week trial.
Four allegations of rape and seven counts of sexual assault have been filed against Weinstein on behalf of five women, who will appear in court as Jane Does to relate their story. He entered a not-guilty plea. The majority of the alleged sexual assaults occurred in hotel rooms in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, according to authorities.
Four additional women will be permitted to testify about sexual assaults committed by Weinstein that did not result in prosecution, but which prosecutors think would convince jurors he had a predilection for such crimes.
On October 4, 2022, Harvey Weinstein will appear in court at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles, California. Weinstein was extradited from New York to Los Angeles on charges of sexual assault. Getty Images
In February 2020, a jury in Manhattan found Harvey Weinstein guilty of third-degree rape for sexually abusing an actress in a New York City hotel room in 2013, as well as one count of criminal sex act for forcing oral sex on a former production assistant in 2006.
A New York judge approved Weinstein’s request to appeal his conviction in August.
In June, British authorities additionally accused Weinstein of sexually abusing a woman in 1996.
Beginning in the 1990s, Weinstein, through the firm he co-founded with his brother, Miramax, was a pioneer in launching expansive and aggressive marketing to promote Academy Award nominations. He helped propel “Shakespeare in Love” and “The Artist” to best picture wins and became one of the most thanked persons in the history of Oscar acceptance speeches.
Miramax and its successor, The Weinstein Company, were headquartered in New York, Weinstein’s place of residence and place of business, but this did not reduce his prominence in Hollywood.
“He was a creature of both New York and Los Angeles,” said Kim Masters, senior editor at The Hollywood Reporter and a veteran observer of the film industry. “When he was at the height of his career, he threw a Golden Globes celebration that was always well beyond capacity. He was the Hollywood king in New York and Los Angeles.”
Four of the eleven alleged crimes occurred during Oscars week in 2013, when Jennifer Lawrence won an Oscar for the Weinstein Co.’s “Silver Linings Playbook” and Quentin Tarantino won for scripting the company’s “Django Unchained.”
They occurred under the premise of business meetings at luxury hotels in Beverly Hills and L.A., which Weinstein used as his California headquarters and where he was frequently spotted during awards season and throughout the year. He was treated as a celebrity. At a pre-trial hearing, the chauffeur who drove Weinstein about Los Angeles said that he was permitted to withdraw up to $1,000 in cash in the mogul’s name from the hotel where he was staying.
By the time articles in The New York Times and The New Yorker in October 2017 led to his demise, Weinstein’s ability to ostensibly will films to win awards had waned, and his company was in financial peril.
Masters remarked, “His stature shifted; he was no longer Oscar’s king, and this rendered him vulnerable.”
The Los Angeles trial is expected to be considerably less of a spectacle than the New York procedures, and not just because it is a retrial and Weinstein is already serving a lengthy sentence.
The courthouse in downtown Los Angeles that is conducting the trial has little foot traffic and no spectacular entrance. Weinstein will not be visible to any media throng or demonstrators outside as he was in Manhattan, as he will be escorted into the courthouse from a tiny passage where no cameras are permitted to record him.
Each day, only twelve reporters, including two sketch artists, will be let into the small courtroom, as opposed to dozens in New York.
Weinstein will also be defended by attorneys Alan Jackson and Mark Werks in Los Angeles. They are concerned that the films may play a role in the trial.
On November 18, the film “She Said” will be published, which fictionalizes the work of two New York Times reporters and their bombshell exposes on Weinstein.
The judge rejected Weinstein’s attorneys’ contention that the film’s publicity would prejudice a possible jury against him and deny their motion to delay the proceedings.
At a pre-trial hearing, Werksman remarked, “This situation is exceptional.” “Mr. Weinstein’s reputation and his position at the center of the #MeToo movement are genuine, and we’re doing everything we can to avoid a trial in which he will receive a whirlwind of negative press,” said the attorney.
Weinstein’s trial is one of several with #MeToo ties that have begun or are about to begin as the fifth anniversary of the movement’s defining moment approaches, including the rape trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson just across the hall from Weinstein’s and the New York sexual assault civil trial of Kevin Spacey.