It wasn't the laptop that got me.
When the Hollywood Reporter published the worst kept secret in Hollywood in this article--
--The part that everyone zeroed in on was the physical assault.
I get that.
An assault is a crime, and crimes seem to be actionable items, or at least, they feel like they should be actionable items.
While I didn't expect Scott Rudin to go down in a day (even Weinstein took time), I was surprised to see that some people were glad to go to bat for Rudin, using the "but he's so talented" argument that's become the go-to for excusing poor behavior from men who (brace yourself) are often either lucky or positioned by privilege (or both), but rarely all that talented.
There's a lot of damage you can do with this excuse, not the least of which is conflating talent with that kind of behavior. The subtle implication seems to be that the spark of creation is born out of tormenting and demeaning people. That the abuser simply wouldn't be who they are or able to do what they've done unless they were allowed to get away with murder.
As the logical people in some of these arguments were fighting the good fight, they kept going back to the laptop, because even the most defiant Rudin defender had a hard time justifying that kind of violence.
But I found that to be troublesome as well.
It shouldn't take referencing smashing someone's hand with a laptop to win an argument about how to treat people. I was as horrified at that story as everyone else, but as I saw the reactions to the article play out, I was worried that the rest of Rudin's actions were being dismissed as "not as bad."
And, to be clear, they're really bad.
The part that made my jaw drop happens towards the end of the article, and you get the sense that it's only in there as a bit of celebrity gossip to lighten the mood.
In one exchange with fellow EGOT Whoopi Goldberg, he lambasted her because she wanted to play a part in To Kill a Mockingbird instead of another Rudin-produced project, the film adaptation of Aleshea Harris' acclaimed play Is God Is. He called her an idiot, said she'd never work again in anything important and wished her luck on The View.
He called...Whoopi Goldberg...an idiot.
Now, he also made racist comments about President Obama and called Angelina Jolie an entitled brat, but this was the part where my jaw dropped.
Whoopi Goldberg can certainly be polarizing, but she is, indisputably, an icon.
She, like Rudin, is an EGOT winner, and she has been in the industry since long before Rudin. She also has a daily platform where she can say whatever the hell she wants (and frequently does), and this piece of garbage still felt totally comfortable calling her an idiot because she wouldn't do what he wanted.
(It's worth pointing out that I had zero interest in seeing the Sorkin-ized version of To Kill a Mockingbird, but with Goldberg in it, I might have reconsidered, so I'm not so sure Rudin is the flawless wunderkind people claim he is.)
Imagine feeling so invincible that sending that email to Whoopi Goldberg seems perfectly rational.
That kind of disrespect and belittling attitude should be enough to have you facing consequence culture. It shouldn't take breaking your assistant's hand.
If you take a deep dive down any Rudin rabbit hole, you'll find a sunken chest of horror stories. While the careers Weinstein derailed only seem to be a subsection of his crimes, with Rudin, they're often the main event.
One that sticks out in my mind is his attack on Bruce Norris years ago for dropping out of an adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections--an adaptation that probably wasn't a very good idea and never ended up happening anyway. Rudin openly went to war against Norris and Norris, who had just experienced great success with Clybourne Park on Broadway, never had another show on the Great White Way again. It could be coincidental, but I'm guessing once Rudin declares you persona non grata, you're not going to have an easier go of things.
What fascinates me about Rudin in particular, and whatever the aftermath of this will be, is that whereas it was immensely complicated detaching Harvey Weinstein from all his projects, doing the same with Rudin might just prove impossible.
Part of me wonders if the allure in being a producer is that while every actor, director, and writer is ultimately replaceable, undoing the damage done by a producer is like asking someone to rewrite Annie Hall so we can all feel better about watching it.
Oftentimes, the producer is the production.
That's not to aid in saying that Rudin is talented. Figuring out that Bette Midler would make a great Dolly Levi is a no-brainer. Talking her into doing seven shows a week might be trickier, but ultimately, that requires tenacity, not talent. I don't mean to dismiss the work of all producers, because it is a skill, but it's not one handed down by the gods. There's nothing special about Scott Rudin, and if you believe differently, it's probably because Rudin wanted you to and, up to now, he's been the one in charge of telling the story.
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