Monday, December 18, 2017

Meryl Streep Responds to Rose McGowan's Criticism: 'I Wasn't Deliberately Silent'


As I wrote over the weekend, I think Rose McGowan is barking up the wrong tree lashing out at other women in Hollywood for their "part" in Harvey Weinstein's crimes. (Apparently she's since deleted her vicious tweet calling out Meryl Streep by name.)

Streep didn't appreciate the attack either, reiterating today that she wasn't deliberately silent -- "I didn't know. I don't tacitly approve of rape. I didn't know."

The statement, first reported by HuffPost, reads:
It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the 90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others. 
I wasn’t deliberately silent. I didn’t know. I don’t tacitly approve of rape. I didn’t know. I don’t like young women being assaulted. I didn’t know this was happening. I don’t know where Harvey lives, nor has he ever been to my home.

I have never in my life been invited to his hotel room.

I have been to his office once, for a meeting with Wes Craven for “Music of the Heart” in 1998.

HW distributed movies I made with other people.

HW was not a filmmaker; he was often a producer, primarily a marketer of films made by other people- some of them great, some not great. But not every actor, actress, and director who made films that HW distributed knew he abused women, or that he raped Rose in the 90s, other women before and others after, until they told us. We did not know that women’s silence was purchased by him and his enablers.

HW needed us not to know this, because our association with him bought him credibility, an ability to lure young, aspiring women into circumstances where they would be hurt.

He needed me much more than I needed him and he made sure I didn’t know. Apparently he hired ex Mossad operators to protect this information from becoming public. Rose and the scores of other victims of these powerful, moneyed, ruthless men face an adversary for whom Winning, at any and all costs, is the only acceptable outcome. That’s why a legal defense fund for victims is currently being assembled to which hundreds of good hearted people in our business will contribute, to bring down the bastards, and help victims fight this scourge within.

Rose assumed and broadcast something untrue about me, and I wanted to let her know the truth. Through friends who know her, I got my home phone number to her the minute I read the headlines. I sat by that phone all day yesterday and this morning, hoping to express both my deep respect for her and others’ bravery in exposing the monsters among us, and my sympathy for the untold, ongoing pain she suffers. No one can bring back what entitled bosses like Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, and HW took from the women who endured attacks on their bodies and their ability to make a living.. And I hoped that she would give me a hearing. She did not, but I hope she reads this.

I am truly sorry she sees me as an adversary, because we are both, together with all the women in our business, standing in defiance of the same implacable foe: a status quo that wants so badly to return to the bad old days, the old ways where women were used, abused and refused entry into the decision-making, top levels of the industry. That’s where the cover-ups convene. Those rooms must be disinfected, and integrated, before anything even begins to change.
Some of my Facebook (and real) friends called Meryl a liar (about not knowing) over the weekend. Curious if they're still prepared to do so now.

3 comments:

jaragon said...

Streep shows she has more class

Hot guys said...

Interesting. Lots of "not knowing" in the PR release...

Anyways, it'll also be interesting to see Rose McGowan's reaction. Twitter, I'm assuming.

Oh, looks like she kinda did already!

Mike in Asheville said...

Not sure how Streep or anyone else is supposed to know something as dreadful as a rape accusation when the victim(s) herself(themselves) entered into (a) nondisclosure agreement(s) requiring her(them) NOT to tell anyone. Hearsay and rumor are quite inconsequential without victim allegations; Rose cannot ask of others that which she herself would not and did not do.

And, she herself is the example that demonstrates that is so -- once Rose spoke loud and clear, there was not only a wave of allegations but also a wave of support and a wave of new cultural thinking. For that Rose is a hero and her efforts are going to change American sexual culture.

Nonetheless, blame shifting to those you yourself did not inform? I am saddened learning of Rose McGowan's ordeal; I have enjoyed so many MiraMax/Weinstein films and this will sour any rewatching/new viewing -- there will now always be an odorous air of disgust. And Kevin Spacey films, etc.

But I will not point fingers at those who, like McGowan, kept silent until they did not; those like Brad Pitt who held true to a loved one's trust; or those like Streep/Cher/Damon/RoseMarie and many others who show there is an ocean of difference between Harvey Weinstein/Donald Trump and Al Franken.