So Time’s Up now turns out to be as compromised, transactional and largely incapable of action; not unlike Hollywood. Who would’ve believed it possible that an organization launched on the Golden Globes red carpet by a group of high profile glitterati (often paid by designers to parade in their gowns)would prove to be just another piece of window-dressing over the back rooms of the empire?
How could the power of an awards show lapel pin would prove to be illusory?
Back in 2018, upon the launch of Time’s Up, The Ankler wrote:
Without a group willing and able to name names and point fingers, the institutional inertia to bury every problem will reassert itself in a matter of minutes.
These problems came about in part because people thought that if they supported the right causes, and put their names on the right invitations they were exempt from scrutiny. There were plenty of people wearing Time’s Up flair on that Sunday night red carpet who are still sitting on mountains of secrets. Time’s Up, the floor is yours. The power to prove that this is not just an empty moment is in your hands.
And we know how that went. In the three years since, Time’s Up has consistently shown up to take a dive on issue after issue. Repeatedly, when accusers of some Hollywood grandee saw their claims being swept under the rug – Les Moonves springs to mind – their would-be advocacy group was nowhere to be found, chiming in only when and if the die was cast and the predator was already boxing up their office. And then, oops, remember suddenly Oprah doesn’t want to offend Russell Simmons..
In the day-to-day trench battles of the non-famous confronting mistreatment in Hollywood workplaces, I’ve heard consistently that they are a non-entity – not sought out and very rarely involved.
But who could’ve known that standing up to the powers of Hollywood would mean that…you have to occasionally stand up to the powers of Hollywood. Which if you have a career in Hollywood, indeed does involve a certain degree of risk, or at least, discomfort.
So what to do if your core mission is repeatedly a source of discomfort? It seems like every month, Time’s Up has announced a new initiative or a new division. Is that building on the central goal of defending women in Hollywood, or stepping away from that?
And all that money they raised? Including the contribution from Mark Wahlberg that bought him a get out of jail free card from the group when things got hot. Of the $3.6 million raised last year, all of $312,000 went to legal aid – Time’s Up’s core mission. That is less than ten percent going to actually support victims.
Somehow the racial composition of the HFPA ( a group of among the lowest most powerless caste in Hollywood, journalists, foreign ones on top of that)t is the only major issue Time’s Up has been a presence on in recent memory. The racial composition of, say, the Discovery-Warner Bros leadership team, recently assembled over golf connections, or Bob Chapek’s merry crew of guys named Alan have never quite come under the same scrutiny.
And now the current Andrew Cuomo aiding-and-abetting debacle seems likely to seal the organization’s drift off into premature obsolescence. Remember all those bold-name actresses who got themselves on the front page of the New York Times when the organization was announced? Today, talking about Time’s Up feels about as popular as the pork sausage at a bar mitzvah.
But all that was easily foreseen. What’s interesting about the slow implosion of Time’s Up is how easily this uprising was co-opted to serve establishment interests, becoming not just window dressing, but a feature of the firmament.
In most particularly, the CAA of it all. If you didn’t live here, you might think that it was a little odd that an organization formed to raise the barricades against the Hollywood establishment and its insular, self-protective, abusive way of doing business, would proudly emerge from what is perhaps the most prominent company of the establishment. Might seem a bit of a contradiction or something? It might remind you of say, Andrew Cuomo being a champion against workplace sexual harassment.
You also might think, if you didn’t know better, that when that company was accused of complicity in the central scandal that gave birth to the uprising – to the point where a NYT story on the company was entitled “Weinstein’s Complicity Machine” – that an organization like Time’s Up would say – loudly and publicly – “Excuse me, just because we borrowed your conference room for a few meetings, please do not use our name in anything to do with your company.”
At least until they answered a few questions about things like, say, why did the agency continue to send clients for hotel room meetings with Harvey despite numerous reports about how those meetings could go?
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The Ankler Recommenderer: Always Crashing in the Same Car
LA native Matthew Specktor is one of LA and Hollywood’s most astute and interesting observers and chroniclers. His new book takes his LA odyssey to new heights, charting his own mid-life rearrangement in West Hollywood, alongside considerations of the journeys of some of the industry’s most tragically under-celebrated talents from history. Moving, enlightening and provocative. Read it now!
