Harvey Weinstein: Hollywood's fallen ogre in court

He appeared as the shadow of himself. Almost a ghost. The pale complexion, the bald head, his emaciated body arched above a walker, Harvey Weinstein appeared in New York court on December 11, almost unrecognizable. Was the 1.83 meter ogre who, despite his diabetes, stuffed his 135 kilos of mountains with tuna sandwiches and bowls of M & Ms, now a man on the ground? The American press wondered, a few weeks before his trial.

Four days later, the most hated man in America appeared again in the newspapers for a surreal interview from a hospital room, dressed in jeans and an oversized T-shirt. The New York Post article stated that Weinstein had just undergone a back operation following a car accident: in mid-August, the Colossus' Jeep had violently struck a tree in order to "avoid a deer". Monday, January 6, when he appears in court in New York for rape and sexual assault dating back to 2006 and 2013, Harvey Weinstein should therefore walk without assistance.

A producer soon ruined

But in what psychological state will come the one who reigned over independent cinema, the one who produced Tarantino, Scorsese, Soderbergh and Michael Moore, won 81 Oscars and was the architect of the overseas successes of "The English Patient", "The Artist "And" Untouchables "? In early November, a few days after he was conspired at a stand-up party he attended in New York, his relatives described a man "combative", although "frightened" by the risk of life imprisonment, the penalty he incurs.

Become a pariah in Hollywood, the producer was dismissed from his company The Weinstein Company two days after the first revelations of the New York Times and the New Yorker, October 8, 2017. His only professional activity since comes down to a role of "paralegal »Exercised in the summer of 2018 ... for his own defense. In August 2018, Weinstein even had to give up a consultancy mission in Spain and Italy for the adaptation to the theater of the film "Cinema Paradiso", which he had distributed in the United States: wearing an electronic and private bracelet passport since May 2018, he has not been allowed to leave the United States ... So his new lawyer may claim that if he wins his trial, Harvey Weinstein will come back "even stronger", we can hardly see the career of this 67-year-old man experiencing a "happy end".

Professionally wiped out, Weinstein also saw his fortune, estimated at the end of 2017 at some 150 million dollars (134 million euros), widely threatened. To pay his legal fees, the man accused of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape by more than 80 women has already robbed villas for a total of $ 26 million. He still owns property in New York and a house in Hollywood, but justice could order him to pay colossal damages to his victims. And his planned divorce from stylist Georgina Chapman will still deprive him of a few tens of millions of dollars.

An isolated man

Humiliated, hated, on the verge of being ruined, "the maker of stars", once very courted, is also an isolated man. As of October 10, 2017, his wife, 24 years younger, took off. "My heart is broken when I think of all the women who have suffered terribly from these unforgivable acts," declared the British woman, married in second marriage.

Released by his wife, the fallen magnate was also released by Robert, his brother and partner. “No one has inspired me as much as my brother Bob. He's my best friend forever, ”swore Harvey, brandishing the Oscar for best film for“ Shakespeare in love ”in 1999… Twenty years earlier, the two brothers from Queens had founded their production company, dubbed Miramax in tribute to their parents, Miriam and Max. These diamond merchant sons then sold a business that had flourished in 1993 to Disney thanks to Soderbergh's “Sex, lies and video”, “Attache-moi! By Almodóvar or "Reservoir Dogs" by Tarantino.

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VIDEO. Harvey Weinstein: years of Hollywood understatement

Of his family, Harvey Weinstein hardly ever frequents more than his three daughters (aged 17 to 24), born of a first marriage, and the two children (6 and 9 years old) he had with Chapman. After having undergone a sexual rehab in the luxurious clinic of Arizona which had already welcomed Tiger Woods and Kevin Spacey, he occupied his villa in Connecticut for a time. Before moving in a few months ago, in the small town of Bedford, near New York, where he rents a house near the farm acquired by Georgina.

A lawyer who does not lack balance

On which shoulders can Weinstein rest today? The answer will not fail to arouse irony: on those of a 43-year-old brunette in stilettos, pencil skirt and skillfully brushed locks. Nicknamed, not without a touch of machismo, the "courtroom bulldog", Donna Rotunno took up in June, with her colleague Damon Cheronis, the challenge of pleading for the one who, despite himself, started the wave #Metoo.

Rotunno succeeded a duo of lawyers themselves hired in January 2019 after the resignation of Benjamin Brafman, the lawyer for DSK during the Sofitel case. She will face three alleged victims of Weinstein - most of the others, many of whom speak out against prescribed facts, who have given up on going to court or preferred to attempt a civil settlement. His task will not be easy, especially since a new charge of sexual assault on a minor hangs over Harvey Weinstein and that other procedures are underway in Los Angeles and London.

But this warrior does not lack balance. "The facts and the evidence are favorable to us," said Donna Rotunno in mid-December in Madame Figaro. Before continuing: “I am not here to say that Mr. Weinstein did not sin. I'm here to say that there is a difference between a sin and a crime. "

The base is probably what Rotunno best shares with his illustrious protégé. On December 15, Harvey Weinstein, who declared in October 2017 "It's me, the good guy", boasted flatly in the "New York Post" of having been a "pioneer" in the promotion of women to Hollywood. “I have made more films directed by women and on women than any producer. And I'm talking about thirty years ago. I'm not talking about now, when it's fashionable. "

"A very aggressive defense"

Described by those who rubbed shoulders with him as a man who was sometimes funny or even charming, but incredibly brutal as soon as he was resisted, Harvey Weinstein has shown a formidable survival instinct since the scandal that bears his name. When he learned that the media was interested in him, in 2017, he put constant pressure on the press owners. For hundreds of thousands of dollars, he is even suspected of having hired an Israeli intelligence agency to investigate journalists.

Author of articles in the New Yorker, Ronan Farrow described this system worthy of a spy film in a work entitled "Silencing them" (Ed. Calmann-Levy, 441 p., 21.90 euros). Asked about the upcoming trial, the journalist told us in mid-November: "Weinstein has lost power, but he still has enough to have launched a very aggressive defense." Ronan Farrow then assured that the former tycoon had again hired private investigators, this time to "dirty" his accusers and the police who worked on her case.

Chubby and acne-like kid who has become a powerful man who called himself "the sheriff", Harvey Weinstein is not yet ready to give up his arms. "I want this city to recognize who I have been, rather than what I have become," he announced in the New York Post on December 15. The untouchable has been seriously affected, but has not yet sunk.