A Hollywood creep gets exposed
by digby
So that last creepy pig from Mad Men’s final episodes who made Joan quit McCann after his disgusting sexual demands is actually like that in real life:
While I looked over my questions for the actor, my co-workers helped me with what I consider the hardest part of the interview: making small talk. Little did I know, it was Johansson who would make things more uncomfortable than I ever could’ve imagined.
“Why are you so tan?” Johansson asked one of my colleagues.
“I was outside playing tennis all weekend,” she answered.
“I play tennis,” he said. “I’m not very good though.”
“I could probably beat you,” she replied.
“This is what we refer to as flirting where I am from,” he responded blithely. “I’ll find your weak spot.”
“I don’t have any,” she responded.
“My serve is pretty strong,” he said. “I’ll serve the ball right down your throat.”
My head snapped up. I was so alarmed, I’d nearly missed his next words, which involved him telling my co-worker that he wanted to take her into his cave (apparently a reference to Canada, where he’s from), where he’d put her on her back.
What did he just say? I mumbled to another colleague, who was standing beside me. None of Johansson’s comments up until that point had been recorded, as the camera hadn’t began rolling. I felt uncomfortable but was focusing on getting the shoot done. Without hesitation, I sat down next to Johansson with my laptop, explaining to him the process of creating reaction GIFs — at which point he slung his arm around my back.
Then, in the middle of the shoot — for which we asked Johansson to act out reactions to so-called dicks in the workplace — the actor made another comment, one we did capture on camera. “I’m not shy,” he said to my colleagues and me under the hot fluorescent lights inside the studio. I laughed at his improvisation, which admittedly was pretty funny. Then he said, a little too casually, “I’m sweating like a rapist,” wiping his forehead and the sides of his face, seemingly not paying attention to the camera that was recording those very words.
It took me a second to register what I’d just heard. Still, none of us in the room objected or expressed our discomfort. Instead, I forced myself to laugh before proceeding. After all, it was just the culmination of about three comments from Johansson that would’ve been inappropriate in an ad agency in the early 1970s, like the one his misogynistic character works at on Mad Men. But this is hardly 1970. It’s 2015, and we work at BuzzFeed — far from the time or place where I would’ve expected his remarks.
I’m sorry that’s still happening in Hollywood. It certainly happened all the time when I was working there. I once worked with the top legal counsel for a major film distributor who was the most sexually obnoxious man I’ve ever known. He would call each woman into his office on Monday mornings, close the door and tell us all about his sexual conquests of the week-end before. And they were often somewhat violent and would make you queasy just to hear about them. He finally got reprimanded when he went too far and talked about one of the male executive’s wife in such terms.
Sexual harassment is always wrong. But when it comes couched in terms of sexual violence it’s got an edgy intimidation component that’s frightening. And it’s meant to be. The reporter beats herself up a little bit for failing to confront it immediately, but it’s perfectly understandable. We’re trained to be respectful of authority on the job and in this case, to treat your interview subjects politely. You don’t register immediately what’s happening and then often you just want to get the interaction over with and get out of there. The whole thing makes your skin crawl.
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