There are also concerns that it will be primarily women who are expected to spend the next few months talking about sexual misconduct while men are given a pass by reporters. “If white male creators get to talk about their craft and women are expected to discuss sexual harassment, that is not acceptable,” said Dee Rees, the director and co-writer of the screenplay for “Mudbound,” a drama about racism in rural Mississippi that some see as a best picture contender.
At the same time, some studio operatives — in carefully cloaked conversations — are trying to capitalize on accusations in pursuit of awards. After the actor Anthony Rapp told Buzzfeed News that Mr. Spacey made unwanted sexual advances toward him in 1986, when Mr. Rapp was 14, and other men came forward with similar stories, there was an effort to undercut an Oscar front-runner, “Call Me By Your Name,” by connecting its depiction of a romantic relationship between a man in his 20s and one who is 17 to pedophilia. (The whisper campaign does not appear to be working: “Call Me By Your Name” won the top prize at the Gotham Awards on Monday.)
Of course, this is not the first time that sexual scandal has intersected with Hollywood’s awards season.
In 2003 Roman Polanski could not accept his Oscar for directing “The Pianist” because he fled the United States for France in 1978 after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl. (Other women have since accused Mr. Polanski of sexually assaulting them when they were teenagers.) Last year, Nate Parker’s heralded slave-revolt film, “The Birth of a Nation,” collapsed as an Oscar prospect following fresh scrutiny on an old case in which Mr. Parker was accused and later acquitted of raping a fellow college student.
But the topic of sexual misconduct has now become so prevalent that some of Hollywood’s image-tending experts and awards consultants have been holding conference calls in hopes of coming to a consensus — an elusive one, so far — about how to run the media gantlet ahead.
Many longtime publicists are privately recommending avoidance. As one publicist who represents A-list stars said, the awards events are about selling tickets and winning votes, not discussing sexual harassment. She spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid drawing unwanted attention to her clients.
If put on the spot in a red carpet interview, the publicist continued, stars should give a quick answer about the behavior being abhorrent before swiftly pivoting back to their film.
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Other strategists said that awards hopefuls should adhere to one of Hollywood’s oldest saws: remember your audience. Oscars are voted on by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an organization with a membership that is 72 percent male and 87 percent white. In other words, calling out Hollywood as a cesspool of white male privilege may ensure that someone else’s name is written on the card inside that Oscar envelope.
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For another group of publicists and Oscar advisers, that kind of thinking is immoral. And trying to separate the awards process from the #MeToo movement could also result in disastrous optics. You won’t publicly demand better treatment for women, but you will openly campaign for a little gold man? Better, they say, to seize the opportunity to push for change.
“Personally, for me, not talking about it does not feel like an option,” said Will Poulter, who played a racist police officer in “Detroit,” which will return to theaters on Friday as part of an awards push.
Mr. Poulter added: “I’ve never walked into a casting session and worried about my safety, which is something that I’ve really had to think about lately — my privilege as a man. But I have multiple actress friends who have told me that they have been objectified in really inappropriate ways. The more we talk about that, the better the chance it ends.”
Marc Malkin, who has been a red carpet reporter for outlets like E! for more than a decade, predicted that publicists would be less successful at controlling celebrity journalists than they have been in the past. Last year, for instance, gatekeepers for Casey Affleck were able to persuade some reporters not to focus on two sexual harassment suits filed against him in 2010. (He denied any wrongdoing and settled with the women for undisclosed sums.) Mr. Affleck ultimately won the Academy Award for best actor for his performance in “Manchester by the Sea.”
“Publicists always pressure us to keep our questions about the work,” Mr. Malkin said. “I don’t think that tactic will be successful this time around when it comes to sexual harassment. These are work questions.”
The difficulty in striking a balance between serious and celebratory has already been on display.
The Hollywood Film Awards, held in early November, avoided the subject; the ceremony’s host, James Corden, instead offered banter about the silliness of the night. (Mr. Corden was perhaps gun-shy after being criticized for making jokes about Mr. Weinstein at a charity event a few weeks earlier.) Presenters at the Governors Awards in late November, including Jessica Chastain and Angelina Jolie, similarly steered clear of discussion about sexual harassment. The silence from the stage generated headlines, in part because it was a departure from previous years, when stars used the platform to rail against Hollywood’s lack of racial diversity.
The Gotham Awards tried to have it both ways. The host, John Cameron Mitchell, allowed that it was a “strange time” in Hollywood, but seemed to get tangled in an effort to keep his commentary vague. “We #resist because we’re panicking, and we want to do the right thing so hard,” he said. Most of the acceptance speeches stuck to standard tropes.
That left Joana Vicente, executive director of the organization behind the Gothams, to address sexual harassment during a brief onstage appearance.
“This has been a tough year for our industry and for the world,” she said. “We would like to take a moment to recognize and to honor those women and those men who have stepped forward.”
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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/movies/oscars-sexual-harassment-harvey-weinstein.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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