I admit that I had often heard about Bill Cosby’s sexual allegations long before Hannibal Buress resurrected them. I have no idea why it didn’t catch on and get rolling before, but it certainly did then.
Harvey Weinstein? It was well known enough to be the butt of many dark-humor jokes over the years, but it just sat there. I’d heard the jokes, but had no idea what the reality was.
What else is sitting there now?
I figure the closest we have is the rampant pedophilia in Hollywood. I believe a documentary was made about it a few years ago, but it seems that nothing is being done about it. It may not be entirely true, but it is the closest thing to an open secret I can think of.
There was a documentary a couple years ago called An Open Secret about a pedophile ring in Hollywood. It was hyped as something that would name names and expose the A-list agents, directors and producers who passed around pre-teen child stars at parties. It didn’t do anything of the sort; they only implicated one A-list director, and his “victim” turned out to be over 18 at the time. A lot of the now-adult accusers of these men took big settlement money which they can no longer afford to give back, but there is a very big shoe waiting to drop on this.
this is one I’m wondering about. there’ve been a couple of fairly big names (Corey Feldman*, Elijah Wood) who have made statements about things like that going on, and within a day they were suspiciously walking back their comments.
Yeah, saw the Open Secret documentary and it was an apt title. Hollywood’s way of operating has been an open secret ever since the first studios went up among the orange groves in the early 20th century. Hollywood sold sex, small wonder that it lived by it too. And the Weinstein incident won’t change things, powerful men (and women) will always use their power to get what they want, they’ll simply be a lot more careful in the light of recent events. Shit like this won’t stop in the movie business until we have robots replacing the actors. Now that would be good on so many other levels too, replacing these preening peacocks would be an amazing idea anyway.
A rumour that’s entirely in the head of the Gawker staff - the person they initially cited has outright denied it was him. I’m not saying it’s not possible he’s a masturbating creeper (the worst kind of Minecraft mob!), but the “allegation” as it currently stands is entirely created and driven by the Kinja sites at this point, all in response to one blind item years ago.
It doesn’t help that half his act is about masturbation. One reason to doubt the stories is that Roseanne Barr is spreading them. She claims to not have first hand knowledge but had heard stories. She always jumps onto any fad that comes out. She’s a walking Jerry Springer show. Memory regressions therapy, multiple personalities, whatever is out there, she has it.
Gerard Alessandrini’s parody song “Who’s Gay in Hollywood” mentions Madonna, Jodie Foster (since out), Tom Cruise (would never cruise West Hollywood), Cher, Zannick, and (no, no one here is queer, just go ask) Richard Gere.
Elijah Wood backed off his comments. Feldman didn’t. He basically said he believed Feldman but he had no first hand knowledge. I believed him. Wood has good parents who didn’t just hand him over to agents and producers. I started a thread a while ago about child actors who didn’t turn into train wrecks. There are a lot of them. It’s confirmation bias to think it screws up all kids. One common thread is the well adjusted adults had good parents who took care of them when they were acting. Not parent’s who wanted to live vicariously through their kids.
I have heard Brian Singer rumor and also that Oliver Stone engages in Weinstein like behavior in that he will call a talent agency to have actresses sent to his room to talk about scripts and then try to sleep with them.
