“Time’s Up” in the Nineties
Way before two members of the original Charmed TV series kicked up a storm in 2017, women in Hollywood were publicly complaining about sexually inappropriate behaviour albeit in magazine form. The Me Too movement took a long time to happen because the 1993 “Women in Hollywood” issue of Premiere didn’t have any shocking revelations from actresses. Also, one can’t afford to underestimate the influence of social media where revenge porn is a two-way street. In that June 1993 publication, a lot of women behind the camera were stepping forward to complain…
Director Martha Coolidge: “I had another project I was pitching, and I went to a studio president’s office, and the guy locked the door and grabbed me. I had to get myself out of there by lying. It was unbelievable.”
An agent named Suzanne talked about her time as an assistant: “[My boss would] call me in the morning and say I’m holding my big, veiny d!ck in my hands. He’d always make compliments about my breasts. He’d ask me to come in his office, and when I did, he was usually fondling himself. He’d say Hey, you c#nt, pick this up. Then he’d come back with this big thing of roses. After three months of it, I asked me to be transferred, without giving specifics. Since the company was run by men, he’d win and I wouldn’t.”
Lucinda Strub, 47 at the time, was working as a special effects artist. She had a novel way of dealing with sexual harassment: “I give it back. Guys have jumped on me from on top of a wall…but a quick jab in the solar plexus with your elbow and they never do it again. What are they going to do, complain that I beat them up?”
Suzanne’s follow-up comment makes me think that she was working for CAA i.e. Creative Artists Agency. They were the number one agency in the eighties. Anyway, Suzanne said: “My very dear friend worked for [a top executive] of the company, and she was sexually harassed daily by him. Daily. I was a trainee, and I had just gone through so much to be a trainee. And I so wanted to work at this company. And then he found out that I had asked to be transferred, and he started abusing me worse. And then it became a battle of wills. I felt like if I could be an agent there, that once I got away from him, I could really show what I was worth. Every assistant who had worked for him had ended up getting jobs elsewhere. And I wasn’t going to let him break me.”
The ambiguous Buffy Shutt: “Nowadays, they say This isn’t sexual harassment. Then they go on to say something inappropriate.”
A film development person named Lisa complained: “Hollywood is so sexist, it’s disgusting. Today, I come back from lunch, and four guys are in the conference room watching this video. They had to test women in these nude scenes for our project. They had to see what these women looked like naked. Of course, they didn’t test the men. So these four guys in our office from business affairs, accounting (departments that have nothing to do with the creative department) are watching this and making all these comments - Oh, do your breasts look like this?”
Helene Hahn had been an associate of Jeffrey Katzenberg for 16 years by 1993. She had been commuting to Utah since 1988, which makes it impressive that she became the COO for Jeffrey’s DreamWorks. Anyway, she talked about her experience with sexual harassment: “It was always verbal, and I did nothing. And it was not continuous. It was usually a onetime event.”
Producer Lauren Shuler-Donner: “I was working on The Tonight Show, and Sam Peckinpah was a guest. And I thought This is great, this is cool. So after the show I went up to him, and I said Mr. Peckinpah, I’m a fan. I really want to work in movies, and I want to work in the editing room. And I’ve done assistant editing… I went through all the stuff, he looked at me, he listened to me, and he said Do you wear a bra? And my mouth dropped. I had nothing to say.”
Casting director Wallis Nicita complained: “I have been sexually harassed, but not really by a director or a producer. I’ve had young actors in delusional grandeur about their virility come on to me thinking that would be a great ticket to getting a role. But that was sort of laughable.”
Back to Lisa: “We were meeting with a writer-director, this male executive and I. I was sitting on the floor, half on the couch. The executive was behind the desk with his feet up. I got a phone call that I had to take, so I had to break the meeting for a minute. I went to take it in the same room, but the phone was on the other side. I moved over on my knees, and took my call. After I hung up, one guy says Mike, notice she was facing you when she was on her knees. He was, like, Should I unzip my pants? It went on. What could I say? Should I just laugh along with it? Do I go on a major tirade so they’ll go What’s her problem, the dyk€? I just didn’t do anything and went on with the meeting.”
Paula Weinstein was the president of production over at United Artists but that didn’t spare her the indignity: “The sexism was appalling. It was tough. The men who happened to be in that studio were as regressive and unpleasant a group as you could collect. Not David Begelman, by the way. David isn’t the least bit sexist.”
Lauren Lloyd said: “I was actually harassed by a director when I was casting. It was weird because he would say Oh, come on over here and give me a big hug and a kiss. I thought That’s not the way it goes. He was so much older than I was.”
Dolores Robinson said: “When I left one of the agencies I worked for, [a former colleague] was just shocked that I had signed Martin Sheen. He said Either you’re 50 times smarter than I ever thought you were, or you’re the best lay in town. He couldn’t imagine that I could do it without sleeping with somebody.”
Laura Ziskin: “I’ve been sexually harassed, not just in the workplace but on the street or on a date.”
Producer Polly Platt: “I lost one job because of it. It was certainly an unwelcome advance, and I was very torn, and I’ve had it happen to me this year. It was a real strong pass by a very powerful actor. This guy is twenty years younger. They’d think I made it up. Not one person would stand up and defend me, because this guy is so valuable. I felt like I handled it fine on my own. I said This is ridiculous. They’re all married. I don’t think I’ve ever been harassed by a single man.”
Lisa’s closing statement refers to her time when she worked at a major agency: “If you don’t respond when they come on to you sexually, they’ll make your life miserable. If they want to have sex with you and you want nothing to do with it, you’ll walk by in the hallway and they’ll laugh with their little friends, like you’re the outcast in kindergarten - little things you can’t really pinpoint, you can’t call harassment. They won’t include you in certain things that other assistants are included in. You get ostracized.”
About the aforementioned Creative Artists Agency, Michael Ovitz wrote in the prologue of his 2018 autobiography: “The word was that a few of my male stars were treating younger women as sexual objects. When I learned about abuse in our office, I could and did address it. When one agent’s assistant told me he was chasing her around her desk, I called him in, ripped him a new one, and suspended him for a week. Then I transferred her to my office, where she worked very productively for ten years. He returned noticeably chastened, and as far as I know didn’t repeat his mistake. But with clients the dynamic was different; it was they who could fire me. Because my focus was frankly on our business rather than on social justice, I let the matter go. I deeply regret that. Now, in the post-Harvey Weinstein era, a reckoning has finally come led by women braver than I was. Part of the reason I let the rumours slide is that I had a powerful need to take care of my clients; I thought of them as a very large, very fractious family.”
Actresses finally got to have their say in the “Special 1996 Issue” of Premiere (albeit published in December 1995). Below are the three most shocking testimonies…
Stacey Dash: “Once I was on a big movie, and I got called to the director’s hotel room. Only he was in bed and I was, like, No! This is not happening to me! Holy s#!t! I’m not f#cking getting into bed with you. And I got fired.”
Jennifer Connelly: “I’ve had a few bad experiences with producers trying to take liberties - just verbal manipulation. You want to be in their film, and therefore they have this power, so they can ask things of you. I always just walked away from it. I don’t think it ever got so bad that I lost work, but I’ll never know.”
Martha Plimpton: “We are so busy talking about sexual harassment in corporate America, but in Hollywood it’s rampant. I have experienced sexual harassment from a woman. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that she was attracted to me. It was a power trip.”
The “Special 1998 Edition” of Premiere proved to be disappointing in terms of hard-hitting journalism, likewise with “Special Issue 1997” (as the magazine’s spine labels it as). The latter was published in December 1996, and it seems like no more actresses were willing to step forward when talking about abuse.
