Telling the Woman’s Side of the Story: “She Said”

 

The first time I heard of Harvey Weinstein was back in my Roger Corman days, when Harvey and brother Bob formed Miramax (named after their parents) to produce and distribute international art films. Roger had paved the way by showing that serious foreign-language films like Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers and Fellini’s Amarcord could make money in U.S.  markets. When Miramax came along and upped the ante, Roger went back to genre flicks. Miramax, meanwhile, distributed such offbeat hits as Pulp Fiction and The Crying Game, while also entering the production field. The company eventfully nabbed a Best Picture Oscar for 1998’s Shakespeare in Love, while being involved with many other classy projects.

 If Miramax sealed Harvey Weinstein’s reputation as a strong, hands-on producer, it took a while for the world to discover that Weinstein was hands-on in a more unfortunate sense. In 2020 his apparently insatiable demand for sexual favors from actresses and staffers earned him a 23-year prison term in New York, and a Los Angeles jury has just convicted him of heinous crimes. So it’s no secret today that Weinstein is capable of sexual harassment, even rape, But his behavior was still an industry secret back in 2017 when two female reporters on the New York Times, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, began investigating rumors of his mistreatment of women. Their groundbreaking articles showed the world Weinstein’s dark side, and encouraged scores of additional women to come forward. Eventually Kantor and Twohey turned their reporting into a 2019 book, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement. And now that book is a movie, with a strong cast led by Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan.is IHis in

 If you’ve ever had a yen to be an investigative journalist, you’ll find She Said both fascinating and daunting. The film makes clear that reporters spend most of their days (and nights) far from their laptops. Before they can tap out the stories that will change people’s lives, they devote days, weeks, even months to tracking down cold leads. They’re forever phoning potential informants who hang up on them, and traveling great distances to have doors slammed in their faces. Somehow, even in the face of rejection, they know what to say, and are able to remain sympathetic to victims who just can’t bring themselves to tell what they know. Which means this two-hour film seems very long indeed, as we watch Jodi and Megan doggedly try to overcome all obstacles that will keep them from uncovering the truth.

 After watching the two cajole members of Weinstein’s inner circle over cups of coffee and glasses of wine, we see them wearily trying to keep their home fires lit. In real life both women have husbands who are themselves involved in writing professions (one a columnist, one a literary agent). In the film, all we know is that these guys are remarkably sympathetic to their wives’ overtime work obligations, despite the fact that there are young children who need attention. (Kantor’s spouse takes it in stride when, on a day’s notice, she jets off first to California and then to London in the line of duty.)  It’s  a far cry from the traditional Hollywood movie in which the man leaves on an exciting but difficult mission, while his wife stays home, worrying about his safety and keeping the kids in line.

 When the breakthrough moments do come, and when there’s finally enough on-the-record material to print a Weinstein exposé, we do feel a real sense of accomplishment. Too bad it’s such a slog to get there. 

Happythankyoumoreplease: Lower Manhattan is for Lovers

 Do you like New York in June? Do you ponder what street compares with Mott Street in July, with its pushcarts gently gliding by?  If these lyrics by Burton Lane and Lorenz Hart (from, respectively, “How About You?” and “I’ll Take Manhattan”) strike a chord, it’s because they conjure up the romance of New York City, as described by some of our greatest American lyricists. They’re not talking about the New York of glitzy skyscrapers and the big-bucks wheeler-dealers of the Stock Exchange, but rather about a place that, despite its crowds and its sometimes seedy surroundings, is an island of low-key romance.

 The movies too have often used Manhattan as a backdrop for romantic escapades. It’s not just Woody Allen: since the very beginning filmmakers have focused on love (not just sex) in the city. Examples are almost too numerous to name, but think of everything from Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Crossing Delancey to Green Card to 2019’s Rebel Wilson romp, Isn’t it Romantic. In search of lighthearted entertainment, I happened upon a 2010 Sundance award-winner that’s easy to like, even though it falls back on the clichés of falling in love, New York-style. 

Happythankyoumoreplease is a deceptively ambitious undertaking of Josh Radnor (of TV’s How I Met Your Mother), who wrote, directed, and starred in this frothy romance in which six (mostly) 20-somethings, all of them residents of Lower Manhattan, seek and find love, sometimes in unexpected places. True to the genre, there’s even some requisite L.A. bashing (see Annie Hall), with one character on the brink of making a major career move to the land of the smoggy palm. To be fair, the character who most resists the possibility of life in L.A. is perhaps its most neurotic. As Zoe Kazan’s on-screen boyfriend points out, the New York cultural monuments she can’t bear to leave behind are places she never visits.

 Along with Kazan, the screen is filled with rising young performers, some of whom have gone on to do much bigger things. Malin Akerman plays a young woman suffering from alopecia who parlays a unique sense of style into a surprising but sweet romance with Tony Hale. (The sheer unexpectedness of this odd-couple relationship, which slowly unfolds throughout the film, makes it my favorite.). Meanwhile Radnor’s struggling novelist (is there any other kind?) character is head-over-heels for would-be chanteuse Kate Mara, who’s full of regrets that she tends to give her heart (and her body) too easily. And Kazan can’t quite commit to adult-style life with budding screenwriter Pablo Schreiber.

 All these characters are talented and arty, but most seem to live alone in cramped but cozy New York apartments without the encumbrance of an actual job. That’s one of the ways this film is something of a fairytale. Also exceedingly upbeat is the relationship between Radnor’s Sam and a small Black kid he accidentally meets on the subway. It’s meant as just a soupçon of reality: Rasheen is a victim of foster care, one who’s happy to opt out of the system and just hang with the good-hearted Sam instead of being returned to the woman who’s supposed to be caring for him. Rasheen’s a likable presence, but it ultimately seems clear that reality needs to intrude on his new living situation. And so it does, for a few seconds, when Sam gets picked up by the police. But this being the kind of movie it is, the problem is quickly solved and all’s well that ends well. Which is what you expect—and maybe deserve—in a summer New York romance.