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critic. he started in journalism nearly 50 years ago first as a political correspondent for the "new york post" and a staff writer andr weekly columnist for the village voice and a contributing editor at neww york magazine. for a decade and half from the late 1970s to the early '90s, he wrote a weekly political column for the "new york daily news" and also during that time started writing for the new yorker. then in 1992 he began doing the annals of communications, profiles for the magazine. over the years ken has profiled many of the leading figures of the information age and he's reported on many important developments in the media business. he's also authored a dozen previous books ranging in subjects from network television to the ad business, from microsoft to google.

five of those works reached the national bestsellers list. in "hollywood ending" he chronicles harvey weinstein's volatile and c tragic career frm his rise to becoming one of hollywood's biggest powerbrokers, the pioneering producer and distributor of many great moody's, to his highly publicized fall after scores of women came forward with their stories of sexual abuse. in a in a watershed trial two s ago weinstein was convicted of third-degree rape and another sex element in new york and sentenced to 23 years in prison. he is awaiting trial on further charges in california. ken profiled weinstein in the new yorker 20 years ago and portrayed and then as bullying, even violent at times towards employees and collaborators. but he was unable at the time to confirm the darker rumors of

weinstein's behavior as a sexual predator. that truth finally emerged n 2017 in stories like jodi kantor and make into we in the "new york times" and by ronan farrow in the new yorker. now revisiting weinstein soccer, ken produce ae competence of or country that adds more revealing detail and insightful context. he examines the raging impulses and unquenchable needin to dominate the work weinstein actions. he explores the culture of silence that allowed such monstrous miss to go unchecked for so long. and he looks at how much of weinstein's tail and also larger story about hollywood and about power. we are in for a very informative and interesting discussion this evening. please join me in welcoming ken auletta.

[applause] >> thank you. i i thought i would begin by picking up something bradley said. i didn't know harvey weinstein very well in 2002 when i agreed to profiled him for the new yorker. i spent probably four months doing that profile, and we spent many hours together including about 12 hours of taped interview, some of which i used in the book. at one point people i talked to all would say who work for them or in hollywood, we know hardy cheats on his wife. but very few people said they knew he wasas a rapist. that was not out there the way we now assume it was. but i heard from a woman producer of an incident that took place atfe the venice film festival in 1998 with two women.

they were his london assistance. suppose it, the story was that harvey attempted to rape rowena and that zelda led the fight to get him, to prosecute him, to bring him to the police. no one had ever and all the previous years have ever brought harvey to trial or to ever threaten him. h .. what happened was they threatened him and he got nervous. he flew over to london with his business affairs person, steve hooton, who was who was an enabler, if you read the non-disclosure agreement. it's quite obvious that he was he knew what was going >> to what was going on, and in any case, harvey suppressed them from speaking out and got them to sign nondisclosure

agreements. i went to the courts in on london and courts in new york, why can't i find any criminal filings or lawsuits, et cetera, about this case? and then i learned why, and the answer was what harvey would do, when someone brought a claim against him privately, usually, he would have his lawyer meet them and then say, here is x numbers of dollars, and in you have to sign in nondisclosure agreement. you can't tell anyone, can't tell your parents, can't tell your husband, can't tell the psychiatristment if you break it, you've got to give the money back and i'm going to sue and it's going to be more expensive. and i had that information and i couldn't get either woman to talk about me.

and the academy award winning producer, she refused to speak unless the women would speak and they wouldn't. but i said, if i could figure out some way that disney, the corporate parent of miramax, or miramax, his company, paid for the nondisclosure agreement and someone's going to jail and the wait a minute don't need to talk to me. i spoke to harvey, tell me about rowena and zelda burke. >> he says what do you want to know? >> i want to know did you attempt to rape rowena-- actually at the time i was told he had actually raped her. which was inaccurate. if i'd published it, it would have been false and he attempt today rape her and she escaped. he stood up, got from the small conference able.

he was close to where bradley would be and i was here and he came over and stood above me and he clenched his fists and his lips trembled, if you publish that it will destroy the lives of my three teenage daughters and my wife, and i'm not going to sit and let this guy take a poke at me. so i stood up and harvey started crying, and i don't mean small tears rolling down his cheeks, he was sobbing, out of control sobbing, which was extraordinary an and he was afraid and no one had exposed him before. i couldn't expose him because i didn't have any woman on the record and the new yorker is not the inquirer and we don't

publish rumors. so i kept in mind harvey and knew he was a predator and in 2015, when the italian model, this is the first time it was ever public, it was in the press, that harvey abused women literally. he had been doing it for four decades and never got in the press. the police wired her and they had a tape he acknowledged he grabbed her breast and the d.a. thinking she might not be a credible witness because there were questions about her, decided not to file charges and she got a million dollar nondis nondisclosure, and she changed her testimony and exonerated and she did keep the tape and gave it later to ronan ferrell.

i talked to a lawyer and believe she told the truth the first time, the italian model. and saw in variety ashley judd claimed that a studio executive asked for a massage. and he was not don juan, he would say i had a kink in my neck and would you give me a rub down. and angelina jolie, first movie she did for miramax that he tried to assault her. and the third woman, wrote a column, and she would talk. angelina jolie wouldn't talk and ashley judd wouldn't talk. and in the column that would not go on the record. switch to 2015, two years later, ronan ferrell calls me up, i didn't know ronan ferrell and all i knew about him is the

woody allen stuff. as a journalist i had a question in my mind is he valid or is he a journalist, is he trying to square things up in some way. he called me up and after talking to me and i pumped him for information, where he was on the harvey thing, he was careful, judicious is the word i would later use, but he said, can i have access to your papers at the new york public library, i gave him access, my tapes and notebooks and et cetera, but anything off the record he couldn't use because the women i mentioned he couldn't -- and donna, that was off the record. he called me up, can i interview you? i said i'm finishing a book you'll have to come out to bridge hampton where i was writing. he comes out and we spent about four hours together. what have you got? >> i have three women on camera who acknowledge that harvey

attempted or did rape them. i have five women on camera, but shielded, their names are not disclosed to say the same thing and i have the audiotape of the italian model. >> great, you broke the case. >> he said-- i said what's the next step? >> i meet with the president of nbc news noah oppenheim on august 8th. and i called him and said how did you do. and he said could i call you on a secure line? and later learned that he was tailed and phone is tapped. and nbc basically fired him don't think that he has the goods. and he was free to take it anywhere. who would want it? he didn't ask it, he said it as a statement. i said give me your number and

i'll call you. and i called david, a lion in the world of journalism and i said, david, this kid has finally broken the case. it's unbelievable and he's judicious and careful. and he did and ronan, i had one meeting with him, but essentially it was all ronan. nbc claimed that ronan didn't have the goods only the goods after he went to the new yorker, which is baloney. he had the goods at that time. and in any case, two sets of reporters do an amazing job. and i'm talking about jody and mack later and then a week later ronan ferrell broke the news in the new yorker. and successfully, you've got to get the women not alone to talk, but talk with fellow victims so they would feel

comfortable, but the feat of getting women who were really assaulted and afraid to come out and speak against harvey weinstein is an extraordinary feat. >> well you had the cause and the culture was changing. >> well, it did in some ways, but we should not minimize what the three reporters did, it's extraordinary. >> i say how do i come to write a book? i say what they did, what ronan and megan and jody did, was they were looking at harvey from the outside. i said can i write a book going on the inside, looking out from harvey, being inside his head, his body? and what he went through, and experienced and his whole career. so, i said, one question i wanted to address was what made harvey the monster he became? and in reporting, i found some

interesting things. i found, for instance, that in flushing queens where he grew up, his mother miriam was a very volatile personality nothing like harvey as an adult, yelling all the time. yelling so much that his friends, who i interviewed, they played poker on the weekends at different homes and they would not play at miriam weinstein's home, too uncomfortable, she yelled too much. harvey, you're fat, harvey this-- >> and if you look at harvey weinstein and miramax company, his mother normalized yelling and that's what he was doing in the officement and i also learned in probing his early years, harvey did not, to my knowledge, and i talked to a fair number of people, did not abuse women, girls in high

school or junior high school for the first three years at university of bull. he only started to abuse women when he had power and he had power when he dropped out of university of buffalo after his junior year. he started harvey and corky presents, a rock promotion company that was wildly successful, they got sinatra, billy joel, eagles to perform in buffalo stadium and other places so he was-- he had a woman work for him by the name of hope demoore who i interviewed who now lives in san antonio. i think, and i have her picture in the book, i think hope was the first woman he raped. she was an assistant to him. but he raped many other women and the more power he got, the more the raping and the abuse of women escalated throughout his life. so, that was one thing i wanted to explore, what made harvey who he was.

and i think one of the things that made him who he was was power and i mean, his brother bob wasn't raping women, i mean, so you can't blame miriam weinstein for that, it's just too simple. there's no single -- awe , but i came to feel that harvey was a sociopath and even that is conjectural. the second thing i was interested in exploring, bradley said in the introduction, is how did this guy get away with this for four decades without anyone blowing the whistle on it, it was hollywood, it was the people who worked for him. it was reporters who got the benefit of his tips and come to my screening or book contracts from talk books which he started. it was quite extraordinary his use of power to keep the secrets. and when people say to me, we

knew he cheated on his wife, we didn't know he raped women. let me tell you a story. i interviewed a woman hillary silver, who was an agent, who was going to move back to new york with her boyfriend. very attractive young woman, and she came up for a job interview at miramax in tribeca and she gets on the elevator, who is on the elevator with her harvey weinstein and harvey looks her up and down and says, what are you doing here? and she says i have an interview with human resources, he says come and see me when you're done. so hillary goes to human resources has the interview, and the human resources head, walks her back to harvey's office. they walk in together. the first thing harvey says, he points his finger, he says you're hired. he didn't consult with human resources, i mean, he hired her because she was a beauty. and so she had to go off on a trip to europe vacation, and she was coming back in three or

four weeks and the night-- the day before she's to start work, four executives at miramax reach out to her and say we'd love to take you for a drink and she said, what a great place this is, what a great culture, people are welcoming me, et cetera, et cetera. they didn't welcome her, they said over drinks, hillary you don't want to come to work here. you're an attractive woman, he will assault you, i promise you. and she didn't go to work and didn't take the job. and that level of people at miramax knew or should have known, agents who sent their actresses up to the hotel suite and in some case, they came back-- sometimes they didn't come back, there were career advancements. but many came back hurt, abused by this monster. what did the agents do? nothing.

caa issued a statement at one point, saying we should have done more, the top agency there. >> i was interested in the culture of science and try in the book to identify how that happened and who some of the culprits were. and i covered the trial every day, one of the great things about covering the trial, you get a treasure trove of all of the e-mails submitted as evidence that, there are too many, a blizzard of e-mails, but if you go up to the office at the end of the day and read these e-mails, it's-- many of them were so incriminating to the people who covered up for harvey, it was extraordinary. the third thing i was interested in and i mentioned briefly, power. how did harvey, who had amazing power at one point. he published a magazine, he published talk books. he was making a serious movie

or actor wanted to be in, unlike the serial movies they were making. he was a magnet and when disney acquired him in 1993 they gave him money to actually produce movies, not just distribute them and he was producing more movie than any studio, miramax was, so he was really a power. and at one point, when he took a reporter for the observer down in a headlock outside and screamed and we know he did this because the reporter had his tape reporter going, i'm the f-ing favor of an f-ing town, don't you forget it, i'm the sheriff. >> and he was exploring power, giving money to the obamas and clinton and governor pataki, the republican governor of new york and michael bloomberg, the republican and independent mayor.

so he was basically parcelling out money to-- as well as parcelling out roles. the other thing that interested me, was the relationship between the brothers. and harvey and bob started this business together, they were equal partners, bob in many ways was more successful than harvey. his scary movies and some of the horror movies made more money than miramax movies did. they were partners and worked together. and they were very close and if you worked for miramax, you knew you had -- the only decision makers were the two brothers. yet, by 2015, bob is complaining incessantly to harvey. harvey is spending like a bandit. this is crazy. and when he was divorced from disney, disney basically claysed him out in 2005 saying he's too difficult to work with and he was. and he started the weinstein company, he got a billion dollar of seed investment money

and he lost all of it. all of it. harvey's a terrible businessman and his movies were not as successful as they were in the '90s, early 2000's. so, bob would complain, harvey, stop spending money, stop picking up the tab for people, stop flying on private planes all the time. stop buying your wife, new wife marquesy gowns for some person he wants to invest money. in a meeting in 2015 and harvey sucker punching his brother and breaks his nose and blood is flowing all over. my god, this is really awful people said. on june 2nd, 2015, efrl several members of the board meet with harvey on the phone and i have a tape of this, which i

transcribe and share the transcription in the book, harvey started screaming at the board members, i want you to fire my brother. this is 2015. harvey, we can't fire your brother, you have to do it, you're the ceo of this company, we're just board members. >> you should fire him, he's losing all of this money. he wasn't losing money, harvey was losing the money. any case, i was able to get bob weinstein to cooperate with me and tell his story and we probably did, 20, 25 interviews. it's hard to get him to talk and took him a while, but eventually he did and he was candid with me. and one of the things you learned is that harvey was exposed in october of 2017, he couldn't be fired unless the board voted him off, but the board was his board, they were rubber stamped, but he could be fired if a couple of anti-harvey board members

joined, who like bob had weighted voting shares, and bob used those weighted voting shares to fire his brother and he met with his brother, harvey, i think you're a sex addict and i think you should go to this place in arizona and get help. and harvey went there, listened to his brother and he went there, but he didn't seek help. he didn't stay in the dormitory with the other patients went, this place where rush limbaugh went and several other-- tiger woods went there, and he spent all of his time on his cell phone, hanging out at a diner and bob from that point on stopped talking to his brother and hasn't talked to him since from 2017 to today. so harvey then enter early '18 is in danger of getting indicted. he needs a criminal lawyer and i want to end with this story

because i think it encapsulates something fundamental about harvey, he meets with ben brafman arguably the best criminal opportunity in new york city. and they're meeting at a club and sees a guy he never met walk in with his huge stomach, but he had on a beautiful linen, crisp linen shirt worn out, not tucked in and he comes in, sits down, he orders a cheeseburger and extra large portion of french fries and i'd like a big bowl of ketchup please and brafman orders a little caesar salad and before the salad comes, harvey starts chomping on, and the oil or grease from the hamburger or cheeseburger is slipping down and doesn't use a knife and

stork, he reaches into the ketchup bowl and shovels it into his mouth repeatedly and suddenly there are blood stains, what looks like blood stains on the white shirt and a ketchupy french fries falls down the front of the open neck shirt and he says harvey starts to reach in to get it out. harvey, stand up, it will fall out, but harvey couldn't stop because harvey has impulse control issues. if you gave him a pack of cigarette he would rip off the top because he doesn't have the patient to open up the flip top box. diet cokes he had it filled up and he talked while he chewed fast and people were afraid to sit across from him because projectiles would come out. and the harvey that abused women was the same harvey sitting across that restaurant

and he couldn't control himself. he couldn't with his temper, he couldn't with his sex drive and eating. and heed severe diabetes and insisted that he would eat chocolate and that's the odyssey of my experience with this guy. the interesting thing for me was to spend so much time reporting on the monster and yet, being able-- hopefully being able to step back and describe the movies he made, the talent he had to make those movies, without negating the fact that he was a monster. but that was-- it was hard because i really don't like the son of a-- thank you.

[applause]. >> your book on ted turner, i read and loved and your article in the new yorker on mario cuomo was great. two great people. so before i talk about harvey weinstein. >> i love mario cuomo. >> it's common knowledge he would berate people in public and commented on his behavior at the oscars, how long did it take for people to say it's enough. he was abusive to his assistants, i can't understand it. >> well, you know, look at this town today. look at republicans. they know that donald trump is lying about winning the election, he didn't win the election, he lost by seven million votes, they know that, but afraid to say anything, so, fear is -- they don't want trump to come out against them they'll lose the primary, they fear. so fear of harvey is similar to the fear we see here. a second reason, no one wants

-- is conformative. no one wants to be a rat. they want to conform, keep a low profile and not get on the bad side of people or people will think ill of you because you're a rat and the third reason, i think, is lack of character. the people who should have blown the whistle on harvey, have a character deficiency, in my judgment. those who knew. >> who knew before, i mean, obviously, did he brother know? >> his brother, who i confronted with that question, said i knew my brother was a sexual -- i knew he-- the phrase he used was a -- couldn't control his sex urge, but he actually used another phrase for it i'll think of it in a minute, but he said i didn't know he was raping women and the brother in the case of the two women from the venice

film festival, the $500,000, i said, harvey i need to see how you paid for it, thinking that if disney paid for miramax paid i have my story and someone's going to jail and harvey protested, i need to see it tomorrow and he slid across the table two canceled checks from bob's personal and he said you paid for nondisclosure, yeah, because harvey said he was being black mailed by the women. did he know, i don't know what else i can do ask the uncomfortable questions which i did. >> any other questions? >> yes, sir. >> i'm about the same age as harvey weinstein. >> 70. >> i'm from buffalo, i was in college the same time he was in college in buffalo at a different school. but the fact that this changing into a monster or the start of

it, becoming a monster happened in my hometown interests me, you know why? why there? was it partly being away from his home? >> no, i think it was power. for the first time in his life, harvey had real power and i mean-- >> the concert series and events? >> they were really a big concert promotion group and harvey and corky, people know it by the first name and they were asking all of these acts and he put police to do security at night, and he's a big advertiser in the press, for the concerts they were doing. so there was a concerted community of people who were very much in his corner. but he -- i think it's power. i think power went to his head and he thought he could get away with it. one of the things you find when you talk to-- when you cover people who have large egos, be it a politician or a public figure of some kind

or harvey weinstein or an actor, they're surrounded by young and very beautiful women who are very ambitious and unlike, say the automobile companies, you don't have-- in the automobile companies attractive, sexy women working side by side with the ceo or other people and in hollywood you do. and i think one of the things that happened is that a woman would say, oh, mr. weinstein, you love your movies, they are so good. how do you do it? and i think he confused a compliment with a come on. and i think, i mean, i think that people like bill clinton did the same and i think it's not uncommon to see that happening. >> this was happening when he was in college? >> well, he was out of college. he had dropped out after his junior year, when he got power at harvey and corky presents, he was doing that for 10 years

and they were really successful, i think then this happened v . >> i think hollywood directors are very, very creative people and i read the portion of your book that talked about the contest between shakespeare and love and "saving private ryan." harvey never directed a movie as far as i recall. >> he did one. he and his brother directed a movie with alan brewer, their childhood friend and it was a total flop. they wrote the script and they produced it, it was not unlike based on harvey and corky's experience in buffalo on the music business. >> was he jealous of spielberg's creativity and the fact that this guy, you know, really made money hand over fist for a while. >> harvey located miramax in

new york, not hollywood. he had this attitude that it was us, him, against them. and he was fighting the hollywood establishment. he was fighting the movie theaters that didn't want his foreign films to keep his foreign films in the movies. so he was basically imbued with the kind of paranoia. what he said about "saving private ryan," he would say this publicly and deny to me and others he ever said this, which was a lie. he said the first 17 minutes of "saving private ryan" was brilliant, but then the movie just dissolved into nothing. and that's what he was telling the press, and the academy voters. and denying he did that. and spielberg was so incensed, as i describe in the book, when harvey came over to congratulate him at the end of the academy awards that night, which was '89, based on the '88 movies, spielberg just ran away

and wouldn't talk to him. >> i always thought that one of the interesting points was the #metoo movement, spielberg's associated kathleen kennedy and raising this and i have no sense of her relationship with harvey or role at all. >> a lot of men asking questions, where are the women? >> i noticed that, too. >> (laughter) >> how do you know i'm a man? thanks for your presentation. given your contact and communications with ronan farrow, did the subject of woody allen come up and do you have anything to say about woody allen? >> i did not talk to ronan

about woody allen. as i mention, i was skeptical of ronan initially because i was worried was he a zealot or a reporter. and i watched the h.b.o. documentary and i thought it was pretty convincing that woody allen was guilty. i ran into alec baldwin, i'm not name dropping, but it was a big outdoor thing in the hamptons last week and i said that to him and he had just interviewed woody allen on his podcast and he said, that's false. the attorney general of connecticut, who said he should have prosecuted was actually having an affair with maya farrow and i should not have said that actually because i'm spreading rumors that may not have been true.

in any case woody allen has some supporters, i'm not one. >> thank you. you said that you really didn't like him and what is it like to spend-- i'm not sure how many years you spent on this, but to get up basically most mornings and have to inhabit this person, especially because you wanted to talk about him from the inside. so, it is different from reporting, you did kind of have to get inside his head. what was that experience like? did you want to take a shower at the end of the day or what happens? >> i did take a shower, but i'm not sure that it was causal. but i found it, as i suggested, a really interesting discipline challenge for me. and made easier by the fact that so many of his movies were so good. and made easier because when you probed people about what

was harvey's talent, you learn he really had immense talent. one of the talents he had was that he understood that a key to a successful movie was a good screen play. it wasn't the actor or the director, you can have a good actor and a good director, but a lousy screen play is going to flop. he understood that and he's a voracious reader. he reads a lot. he's a brilliant marketing guy. and the crying game, early before that movie ends we learn that the exprisoner who was killed and the ira guy who meets her, discovers that she is a he. it opens in england and the audience knew that and the movie failed. and harvey found a way, a gallup poll and the public didn't want to know the ending.

and he called the editors, you cannot destroy the audience's experience by coming out and telling what the ending is and they didn't. and there was a huge success. so much of a success, when it came out in '93, that did i understand any decided they are going to acquire the weinstein company and they mid against ted turner and won. he was a brilliant marketing guy and harvey, you knew in talking to him, he knew a lot about movie history and he was not just a suit, which is how people talk, actors and actually who are good who talk about people in the studio business. harvey knew stuff and one of the stories i tell is when ben affleck and matt damon did "good will hunting," the script for that, mike turned it down

because he said it was too violent and it really wouldn't work. and harvey read it and loved it, but he met with affleck and dahmen and said, i don't understand something, it's a good script, but page whatever, 170 or 150, whatever, the matt damon character has sex with a man and totally out of character. where did that come from? and they said to him, harvey, we put that in to see whether you read the script. [laughter] >> and he did. >> i'm particularly interested in the politicians who took money from harvey weinstein. did you speak with them? and what was your take on whether-- how much they knew and which of those three, you know, attributes, whether it's lack

of character advancement or what have you, that motivated them? >> i know that hillary was warned by lena dunham, the director, that you can't be in business -- this is a 2016 campaign when she's running for president, you have to reject harvey weinstein because he's a rapist. and hillary's person, who she told that to, her press secretary, she claims she was never told that. is that true? i don't know. pataki, governor pataki, was one of the people who called harvey and harvey, the new york times is investigating you. one of the first clues he had that he was being chased by the new york times came from governor pataki who he'd given -- raised several hundred thousand for. did i dwell on talking to politicians, no. but i had access to the amazing

array of e-mails from pataki and et cetera, that i didn't need to talk to them at that point. now, i could have talked to them and maybe i should have talked to them and said, why -- you were told this, why did you do what you it? why did you continue to keep in touch with him and that's a fair criticism i could have done more on that. >> thank you. >> i have a question. >> oh, the boss asks a question. >> so, we were talking before the event about your efforts to interview weinstein. i mean, you had all of these conversations for your original profile, but obviously, you're interested in talking to him for the book and my question is now, you know, you've written other books about other prominent people you've done so

many profiles for the magazine about a number of prominent people. how important is it or not when you're doing these profiles or biographies to actually be able to talk to a person you're writing about? >> oh, i think it's essential. i mean, i once talked to-- i won't name the reporter very esteemed reporter and what are you doing next? the reporter said i'm doing a biography of a very prominent figure and i said, is the figure cooperating with you? and he said who the hell cares? well, he should have cared, it's a terrible book. and you know, your job is to get inside that person. i mean, for instance, when i-- i'll give you one example of what i mean. one of the things i do all the time, i assume i'm going to do multiple interviews, not just one interview and i'm not looking to play gotcha with the person and try to understand the person and i say to them,

my task is to try and understand you, when i covered the microsoft trial, it was called microsoft 3.0 which they lost, the argument was that they were a monopoly. and judge jackson was the judge in that case. and i sat in that courtroom every day, as i did in the harvey case, and he agreed to let me interview him after the court was over, but before he issued-- or maybe after he issued his ruling. no, before he issued his ruling. i came to his office and we ended up 12 hours of interviews, four hours, four hours, four hours, the first four hours i spent with judge jackson, tell me about your childhood, your mother, your father, how you became a lawyer. tell me how you went to work for the nixon reelection campaign in 1972.

and as judge jackson talked about his experience and his revulsion at richard nixon, who he said, it was one of the worse experiences of my life, this man i revered and i went to work for and my father had been in government and i really wanted to be in government and a public servant, but he lied, he lied to everyone he worked for and everyone in the country and he was an awful man. and then i thought back to the trial. in the trial one of the things that david boise, the government attorney and did a brilliant job, there were 20 hours of taped interviews with bill gates. and i would often play them on the screen and what you saw was nixon. you saw gates, you know, refusing to answer questions, misleading, et cetera, and what i realized was, judge jackson, when he saw bill gates, he was seeing richard nixon, so that early interview was so

revealing of who he was, look at harvey, i mean, i think learning about his mother is incredibly revealing to him and-- i asked his brother, who was very candid about the mother, i said, bob, what do you see-- again, these are the early questions you ask about biography, which become very important, i said, bob, what do you see of your father in harvey? and he said to me, i don't see my father, i see my mother. so, it's, i mean, i find when you ask -- when you have an intimate conversation with people about their life, you develop an intimacy with them that is particularly, if they don't think you're trying to play gotcha with them, if you're interested in the questions that you're asking them, it becomes a solidifying thing, and i mean, i remember when i interviewed -- i spent a lot of time doing a profile for rupert

murdoch and another person who doesn't talk to me anymore from the profile, but we spent enormous amounts of time and i know from the early conversation about his father who he revered and the early days of oxford where he was a radical leftist and had a lenin bust in his dorm room at oxford, murdoch, to me, i became someone really intimate with him, i mean, ken knows me, i've shared secrets with him i haven't shared with people who work with me and i think that happens. and it's one of the things that allows you to profile someone hopefully with some insight. >> and talk briefly, if you could have interviewed weinstein, what would you have asked him? would you share that? >> well, actually i had worked -- i was scheduled at first, i tell the story in the book, but at first, he was getting very

nervous about i'm the only one doing a biography of him and so he tells his pr guy, he said, i'll talk to ken, this is from prison, if ken agrees to ask me any negative questions that come up in the book, claims made against me in the book, that i haven't already answered, and i went back to his pr guy and said i will be happy to do that, but i want the freedom to ask any questions that i want. no, end of negotiations. they come back a week or so later and say, harvey will agree to do interviews if you don't tape it. i said deal breaker, i have to tape it. harvey will agree, a week later, harvey will agree to do it if you don't-- if you have -- if he has a translator to do the script, you know, i said no, i can't rely on you to do that. at the end, he agreed after

about two months of negotiation to my terms and then his lawyer called me the day before we were supposed to do the first of several phone interviews, he doesn't have internet access as a prisoner, and his lawyer said mr. auletta, i can't allow my client who's going on trial in l.a., but one of the questions amongst those i wanted to ask harvey and i actually asked him-- we had finally an e-mail exchange, maybe 25 e-mails and one i asked the following question which of course he didn't answer. harvey, when you put your head on the pillow at night after raping, say, jessica mann one of the key defendants in the new york trial, how did you explain to yourself what you had just done? now he never answered that question and i suspect if he had answered the question, he would have said something he was always saying, it was consensual. and she wanted something from me, and i wanted something from

her. it was a fair trade. now you've really got to be stewed in the head to think that's a fair trade, but that was him. i mean, harvey tried to normalize aberrant behavior. he would come into his suite in london, zelda described it and she said i gave-- to rowena when she was succeeding me i gave her a list of 10 do's and don'ts. when harvey comes in the suite after dinner and takes off his clothes and parades around the suite naked, it is normal. he won't -- you know, this is harvey. and what he did with rowena, which is he did with a lot of women, he would say i've got a kink in my neck, can you give me a massage and i'll give awe massage. and one of the warnings zelda gave on a piece of paper which i have, don't ever give him a massage and also a warning, don't -- wear two pairs of

pants. and people knew, wear two pairs of pants and don't let him take them off. she let him take off one which is nuts. and zelda perkins and people who worked with him knew he was a beast, there it wasn't just having affairs, it was about conquest. and conquest of men who he yelled at and put down and conquest of women sexually. any more questions? >> we take another evening, but how did you develop your wonderful interviewing skills and if you were to advise somebody doing interviews like you have been doing, what would you say? >> listen. be a good listener. you don't need to talk. let the silence work for you. ask a question and don't jump in and interrupt them. let them talk and it will build

their confidence, too, that you're not some shark, you know. you don't go into an initial interview like a dentist, i'm here to drill your teeth. you know, you won't have that person's attention, but listening is, i think, a key ingredient of journalists and one of the reasons why-- one of the reasons that concerns me about the nature of journalism, you watch the cable networks and all of these pundits are expressing opinions, and they're not listening, who's going to win the election. >> let me tell you who is going to win the election. how do you know who is going to win the election. the humility to listen disappears and that, i think, is death to good journalism. >> hi. >> hi, many of us have read about the legendary hollywood mogul and the casting couch and how many of them allegedly did

or i mean, there are enough people reporting it, i have to believe it occurred, did really what weinstein did, or did they not? that's my question, how are they different, how was weinstein different. >> weinstein is different. the casting couch which harvey is his defense, it was casting couch and the casting couch was quite disgusting, the abuse of power. louie b mayer may have certainly abused judy garland and one of the things that-- there's a brilliant autobiography he says, one of the things that the early studio heads believed, and i think they were right, is you don't cast a woman in a role unless you want to sleep with her. he didn't use the word sleep, and that was harvey's view, and the difference between the old moguls of hollywood and harvey is rape was harvey's m-o.

it was the m-o. it was not the m-o of some of these men, i am a-- i'm not saying that they didn't rape, they abused woman and they were disgusting, harvey, physical assault, he was holding down women and he was really ann abel, you listen what he did with her at the trial and disgusting at the trial and what he did with rowena, same thing. and i don't think that the louie b mayers and the other moguls first of all, they weren't as big as harvey to be able to do that. >> one reason i ask the question i watched a rerun of the old movie "how to succeed in business without trying", a great movie, a high school musical. and there was a scene where one of the executives is chasing a secretary around and they played for laughs.

and at the time i'm sure it was funny, but look at it through a modern lens and it's disgusting, and the woman is laughing as such. i'm not excusing what weinstein did or what louie b mayer did, a lot what we don't know what they did. with weinstein, maybe it was more, but continuation of something that had been going on for decades in hollywood. >> but there's a difference. >>-- was going on for decades. and there's a difference, chasing a woman around the couch, which is harassment and rape, rape is a criminal offense. >> of course. >> which is why he's in prison. and i just think he was so extreme in what he did. >> in the movie though they didn't catch her, they didn't show what happened if he did, thank you. >> thank you. this was fun.

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