User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
“I think that it doesn’t matter if you’re a well-known actress, it doesn’t matter if you’re twenty or if you’re forty, it doesn’t matter if you report or if you don’t, because we are not believed. We are more than not believed—we are berated and criticized and blamed.”
Wow, I thought I’d already gotten as pissed off as possible about the Harvey Weinstein case and subsequent NBC scandal before reading Catch and Kill, but apparently not.
This is an unputdownable book about some astounding and incredibly brave investigative journalism. People are going around saying Catch and Kill reads like a thriller-- and it does --but that is partly because this story is so jaw-droppingly outrageous that it feels, surely, like it must be a dramatic work of fiction. Spies, double agents, secret foreign agencies working to bury stories... well, I guess there's a reason we say "You can't make this shit up!"
Catch and Kill is predominantly Ronan Farrow's journey to uncovering and making the public aware of Harvey Weinstein's decades of predatory sexual assault and harassment against the women he worked with. He follows this with a look at how Weinstein wasn't an isolated case, but one of many offenders in an industry where men were abusing their power and using it to silence their victims with NDAs and payoffs.
“The man is not a saint. Trust me, there is no love lost between us. But he isn’t guilty of anything worse than what a million other men in this business do.”
I feel like I've read a lot about the case, but this book really highlights the depth of Weinstein's hold on the film industry. It is genuinely frightening. As if it isn't difficult enough to report sexual assault, this went way beyond that. Women
did report it. They reported it, and then were bullied and coerced into signing NDAs. Many careers were ruined. Because this didn’t merely require the reporting of sexual assault, but the takedown of a terrifyingly powerful oligarch and a network of secret intelligence.
It really is quite an outrageous story. The amount of people who were working as double agents and attempting to cover-up Weinstein’s crimes is sickening. This guy seemed to be friend’s with everyone, or at least know something about them that kept them in check. And there was just this assumption that Weinstein was too powerful to touch. Everyone around him looked the other way and let him get away with what he was doing.
“I know that everybody—I mean everybody—in Hollywood knows that it’s happening,” de Caunes told me. “He’s not even really hiding. I mean, the way he does it, so many people are involved and see what’s happening. But everyone’s too scared to say anything.”
The work Ronan Farrow did here-- and the work done by Kantor and Twohey, whose She Said I will also be reading --cannot be overstated. He was personally threatened and spied on and warned against this investigation, but he continued to pursue it. Though this book is not really about him, I did appreciate the few personal insights he gave us into his own life and the way this story consumed him. He seemed to genuinely care about the women he spoke with and respect their boundaries.
I also liked how Farrow made his sources on everything clear, always saying when something supporting his case was just hearsay or opinion. Lack of this was an issue for me with Wolff's Fire and Fury-- I felt like he made a lot of claims and it was unclear how he could have possibly known that. Farrow's approach shows a lot more journalistic integrity, in my opinion.
Amazing journalism aside, Catch and Kill looks poised to be a crowd favourite, even for those who don't usually read non-fiction. It does feel like a traditional detective game of cat and mouse, one in which the pursuer at times becomes the pursued and doesn’t know who he can trust. It is so fast-paced and impossible to look away from that every couple of chapters I would have to shake my head and remind myself it really happened. And that we got the bastard.
Contains some graphic descriptions of rape.
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Rating: really liked it
You think you already know this story, but you don’t. This is essential reading.
Rating: really liked it
From the moment you read the ominous prologue,
Catch and Kill has already held you in the thrall of its dark, unnerving, and at times, emotionally-taxing world. It’s an apt beginning for what follows: a taut plot full of manipulation, blackmail, corruption, and cover-ups—crisscrossing, ugly threads that ran for days through my thoughts.
Catch and Kill is a fast-paced, hackles-raising story that focuses its beam on victims of assault and the silence they are often coerced into, squeezing them like a tight collar. It also ambitiously targets a frighteningly wide cover-up culture, enshrined in legal practices and sets of agreements and payoffs, meticulously designed to bind women into submission.
Farrow’s investigation began in early 2017. The
MeToo movement was smoldering, catching fire in some places, doused with water in others. A series of crypted tweets by actress Rose McGowan—alluding to rape accusations by Harvey Weinstein—will eventually ignite a powder keg that will lead to many skeletons tumbling out of the closet. Farrow finds himself in a crystalline, devastating landscape that he has to navigate in bare feet, pushing through an untold litany of horrors. “It’s an impossible story,” Janice Min, the former Hollywood Reporter editor, tells him, “it’s the white whale of journalism.” But Farrow, who had once rigorously discouraged his sister against reclaiming her accusations against their father, Woody Allen, is nothing but determined, and throughout his investigation he comes to understand even more keenly the cruciality of the truth, no matter how corrosive it may be. The necessary overthrow of everything that had felt codified but broken for so long.
Catch and Fire is a spine-chilling illustration of what angry men in power can do when denied something they felt they are owed, and the extreme tools they have at their disposal when they are bent on smothering the truth. These stories are unfortunately so common that they are no longer shocking in any meaningful sense. “It’s a despicable open secret,” says journalist Jennifer Senior. But reading this book, I couldn’t fathom the scope of it, I couldn’t understand so profoundly my brain skittered, skipped, backed up. Actress Nestor’s words echoed through my mind throughout, like the tolling of a bell: “Is this the way the world works? That men get away with this?”
There were many forces, throughout Farrow’s investigation, that wanted these stories to evaporate like spilled water at high noon. It was like a great chain of obstruction: Weinstein at the top and just behind is NBC, who, despite irrefutable evidence, will attempt to swat away the story as though it was of no more consequence than a broken streetlight. This eventually prompts Farrow to take his story to the New Yorker’s doors, feeling the kind of defeat that is tantamount to a loss of greater faith.
“What did it say about the gulf between the powerful and the powerless that wealthy individuals could intimidate, surveil, and conceal on such a vast scale?”
Catch and Kill is quite the remarkable achievement, and I’m still marveling at how it manages to be many books at once: an investigative report, a gripping literary thriller, a blood-curdling spy novel, and a razor-sharp look at the unglamorous underbelly of Hollywood, which is a closed house, curtains drawn and windows sealed against the sound. But, for me, what makes this book really sing is not some shotgun marriage of genres—it’s the author’s voice, as earnest and relentless as his pursuit for the truth. Farrow presses down hard on the words, committing himself to the telling of the story as doggedly as he pries into all the cracks of this scandal. Readers play investigative journalist right alongside Farrow, as he follows every new lead with the focused air of a hound following an animal trail, and that imbues the book with a keen urgency that’s simply magnetic.
Journalists like Farrow offer up their ability to speak to better serve the voices of others, but this is a tale born out of years’ worth of held breath finally expelled, of strong, resonant voices feeding one another. Women, sick of holding themselves in careful, painful suspension, standing defiant and undefeated, like the flag of a rebel army.
“In the end, the courage of women can’t be stamped out. And stories—the big ones, the true ones—can be caught but never killed.”
Rating: really liked it
This was so good, between this and
Bad Blood I feel like I'm really getting into books about investigative reporting. Like a lot of times it feels pretty overwhelming trying to keep up with the news and read reporting regularly but this really allows for a more accessible way to know find out about those same stories. I also really enjoy getting more detail and break down about the process of covering these stories, and I think that was especially important here because of the implications of NBC trying to sit on the story and its broader tie back into the constant concealing of these stories. Also Ronan Farrow is just really likable and I really enjoyed the transparency about his own experiences with his sister and they way he had initially asked her to stop speaking about it and how it eventually played into his own reporting on the issue. Totally enjoyed this and would recommend it to anyone. Also if anyone has recommendations for other investigative reporting books, I would love to get them.
Rating: really liked it
“I’m sick of all the predatory scum like Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, and Mark Halperin! They deserve to rot in hell, and I hope they do, but I’d rather not read any thing more about them!"
I understand. Believe me, I understand. But I think you should make an exception for one book, and that’s
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators. And why exactly is this book an exception? In two words: Ronan Farrow. And for three good reasons.
Reason # 1. As a person, Farrow is uniquely suited to understand the effects of sexual predation on families of both predators and victims, and what it is like to live a life clouded by innuendo. Ronan’s putative father, film director Woody Allen, has been accused of molesting his sister Dylan—it is clear Ronan still feels guilt for not being constant in her defense—and he has been followed all his life by the rumor that he is the biological son of Frank Sinatra. (Farrow only alludes to this rumor in passing, and declines to offer an opinion, but I must admit that to my eyes he looks a great deal like “Ol’ Blue Eyes” himself.)
Reason # 2. As a journalist, Farrow found himself in a unique position when he tried to tell the Harvey Weinstein story, for he began at exactly the right time in exactly the wrong place. In the climate ushered in by the Cosby criminal trial and primed by Access Hollywood’s Trump tape, Weinstein’s many accusers—intimidated and frightened by the producer’s power and viciousness—are finally on the verge of disclosing their stories. Farrow discovers who they are, and gradually persuades them to tell their stories in a groundbreaking piece of investigative TV journalism. But his piece never gets on the air. Why not? Farrow works for NBC, a network too intimidated by Weinstein—and too worried about their very own predator Matt Lauer—to let Farrow go ahead with his scoop. Farrow parts ways with the network, eventually presenting his exclusive material in a magazine piece in
The New Yorker on the 10th of October. But not before
The New York Times gets the scoop, breaking the Weinstein scandal of October 5th.
Because of this,
Catch and Kill is a story about much more than the Weinstein scandal. It is the story of how a major network, in a score of ways, puts obstacles in the path of a journalist who wishes to tell a controversial story: a tepid show of “support” here, a canceled meeting there, an unscheduled conference with network lawyers, a sudden interest in all those wonderful stories that the journalist could be telling instead. The result is a damning portrait of good journalism quashed by spineless NBC executives and their calculating Comcast overlords. Nobody with any degree of power comes off smelling like a rose.
(Oh, I forgot about the spies. I should mention the spies. Weinstein hires a private Israeli firm with operatives that used to work for Mossad. And then there is the most disgusting spy of all: lawyer Lisa Bloom, daughter of Gloria Allred, heroic defender of abused women—and secret spy for Harvey Weinstein.)
Then there is Reason # 3. Ronan Farrow is a fine writer. He can tell a complicated story in crisp, often self-deprecatory fashion, and he can also summon up some first class rhetoric when he has to.
I’ll let you find the first class rhetoric for yourself, and instead end with an example of an efficiently told anecdote. Ronan calls his partner—and later fiancee—Jonathan to tell him
The New York Times has scooped him on the story:
The Times is running,” I said.
“Okay, he said, a little impatiently, “You knew they might.”
“It’s good it’s breaking,” I said. “it’s just—All these months. This whole year. And now I have no job.” I was losing it, actually starting to cry. “i swung too wide. I gambled too much. And maybe I won’t even have a story at the end of it. And I’m letting down all these women—“
“Calm down!” Jonathan shouted, snapping me out of it. “All that’s happening right now is you haven’t slept or eaten in two weeks.”
A horn sounded outside.
“Are you in a cab?” he asked.
“Uh-huh,” I sniffled.
"Oh my God. We are going to talk about this, but first you are going to tip that driver really well.’
Rating: really liked it
do i spend $30 to preorder this vote now
Update— 11/11/19
So glad I did. Stellar, stellar, stellar.
Rating: really liked it
4.5 starsWhen film producer Harvey Weinstein leans into his walker and hobbles into the courthouse - where he's being tried for predatory sexual assault - it's hard to picture the former Hollywood mogul chasing terrified young women around hotel rooms and raping them.
Disgraced Harvey Weinstein entering the courthouse (2020)Yet the burly producer has a well-known reputation for victimizing women - getting them alone and forcing himself on them.
Harvey Weinstein when he was a Hollywood mogulWeinstein's behavior went on for decades, and even though many of the women told colleagues, friends, and relatives, they were ultimately silenced by intimidation, bullying, threats, pay-offs.....whatever it took.
In 'Catch and Kill', Ronan Farrow exposes the powerful cabal that protected Weinstein, which includes the NBC television network, American Media Incorporated (which publishes the National Enquirer), and a cadre of investigators, detectives, and lawyers hired by the producer.
Ronan FarrowFarrow, the son of actress Mia Farrow and filmmaker Woody Allen (from whom he's estranged), graduated from Yale Law School and worked for the State Department before he became an investigative correspondent for NBC News. Reporters had been chasing the Weinstein story for years, but it was difficult to get victims to tell their stories 'on the record', in part because they'd been coerced into signing non-disclosure agreements for six or seven figures. Moreover, any hint of going public resulted in dire warnings and massive smear campaigns.
Stlll, Farrow was anxious to expose the mogul, in part because his adopted sister Dylan had accused their father, Woody Allen, of sexually abusing her when she was a child.....and Farrow wasn't supportive at the time.
Dylan Farrow and Woody AllenWorking with NBC News producer Rich McHugh, Farrow got the go-ahead to pursue a sexual harassment story about Weinstein from Noah Oppenheim, the president of NBC News.
NBC News producer Rich McHugh
NBC News president Noah OppenheimPreparing the story was a challenge, however, because one victim after another was reluctant to speak, saying "It's just not a topic I want to talk about."
Farrow was determined to get (at least) some of Weinstein's accusers on the record, and his first success was actress Rose McGowan - who tweeted about being assaulted, but didn't name names.
Rose McGowanWhen Farrow contacted McGowan, she acknowledged, "The war against women is real", and ultimately agreed to speak the reporter. McGowan said that Harvey Weinstein, who was her boss at the time, assaulted her during the Sundance Film Festival in 1997.
According to McGowan, the mogul arranged a meeting that moved from a hotel restaurant to a hotel suite. Describing the incident, McGowan said, "All of a sudden you have no clothes on. I started to cry. And I didn't know what was happening. And I'm very small. This person is very big. So do that math." McGowan wanted to press charges, but was convinced to keep mum for $100,000.
Farrow's next big breakthrough was model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez. who reported Weinstein to the NYPD in 2015.
Ambra Battilana GutierrezIn March of 2015 Gutierrez attended a reception at Radio City Music Hall for a show Weinstein produced. Weinstein complimented Gutierrez, and - through her modeling agency - arranged a meeting in his office.
Gutierrez recalls that, "Weinstein began staring at her breasts, asking if they were real. He then lunged at her, groping her breasts and attempting to put a hand up her skirt while she protested." Gutierrez and her agent reported Weinstein to the police, who said, "Again?" NYPD detectives then arranged a sting operation and - during Gutierrez's next meeting with the mogul - they got Weinstein's "full dramatic confession caught on tape."
New York District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance declined to press charges, however, and suspicions were high that the DA's office was bought off, coerced, or in cahoots with Weinstein. (The Governor later ordered an investigaton of Vance's actions.)
New York District Attorney Cyrus R. VanceNevertheless, the Gutierrez tape - and Gutierrez's non-disclosure agreement - both of which Farrow obtained, were important proof for his story.
Another coup for Farrow's report was tech guru Emily Nestor.
Emily NestorIn December 2014, Nestor was a temporary assistant at the Weinstein Company in Los Angeles. Pressured for a meeting by Weinstein, Nestor agreed to an early morning coffee. During the encounter, Weinstein boasted about his sexual liaisons with other women and said "You know, we could have a lot of fun. I could put you in my London office, and you could work there and you could be my girlfriend." Nestor declined and Weinstein insisted that women always succumbed to him, and "that he'd never had to do anything like Bill Cosby." Nestor identified Weinstein's behavior as "textbook sexual harassment" and noted that she refused his advances at least a dozen times. "NO did not mean NO to him", she said.
Farrow continued to accumulate proof of Weinstein's predations, which involved scores of women, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Mira Sorvino, Annabella Sciorra, Asia Argento, Ally Canosa, and Rosanna Arquette.
Gwyneth Paltrow
Mira Sorvino
Annabella Sciorra
Asia Argento
Ally Canosa
Rosanna ArquetteFarrow and McHugh put their story together, and brought their script - and the Gutierrez tape - to NBC News.....which was suddenly skittish about airing the piece. Noah Oppenheim - who originally green-lit the story; Phil Griffin - president of MSNBC; and Andy Lack - chairman of NBC News and MSNBC seemed suddenly allergic to exposing Weinstein. [Oddly enough (or maybe not), all three men have histories of publicly disrespecting and/or hounding women.]
Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC
Andy Lack, chairman of NBC News and MSNBCTo justify their hesitation, the NBC bigshots made noises about Weinstein's actions not being a crime; or Farrow not really having a story; or the story not being ready yet; or the story not being newsworthy; etc. Eventually, Farrow was told to 'go with God' and take the story to another outlet. Before long, there was 'no money in the budget' for Farrow, and NBC News let him go.
Farrow concluded that the network had succumbed to Weinstein's threats, some of which probably involved outing NBC megastar Matt Lauer, who - it later came out - also harassed and assaulted women. In fact NBC fired 'Today Show' host Lauer in 2017, after he was accused of anal rape by a woman named Brooke Nevils.
Matt Lauer
Brooke NevilsIn any case, the New Yorker Magazine thought Farrow DID have a story, and - after his writeup was published - Farrow shared the Pulitzer Prize for public service with Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who wrote a Weinstein story for The New York Times.
While Farrow was preparing his exposé, Weinstein moved heaven and earth to try and scupper it. He yelled and threatened and wheedled.....and launched a massive suppression campaign. Weinstein's friend Dylan Howard, editor of the National Enquirer, published dirt about Weinstein's accusers and/or tried to buy their stories and suppress them (a practice called 'catch and kill').
Dylan Howard, editor of The National EnquirerWeinstein also hired Black Cube, an Israeli investigative firm that employed former Mossad agents, to undermine Farrow.
Farrow later learned that Black Cube operatives had surveilled him; followed him; dug up information about him; attempted to track his phone; solicited help from his estranged father Woody Allen; and so on.
Moreover, Weinstein's informants - pretending they wanted to help reporters and victims - ingratiated themselves with Farrow and Weinstein's accusers. The infiltrators collected information about Farrow's upcoming story and passed it on to the embattled mogul, so he could take countermeasures.
The worst offender (IMO) is attorney Lisa Bloom, the so-called 'advocate for women.' Bloom befriended Farrow, obtained information about the Weinstein story, and handed it to the evildoer. This betrayal of Bloom's fellow females is unforgivable.
Lisa BloomNoah Oppenheim, who also deserves rebuke, wants to disavow his role in the NBC debacle. After all was said and done - and NBC was publicly embarrassed by it's spinelessness regarding Weinstein - Oppenheim told Farrow, "Even if you think that NBC was either cowardly or acted inappropriately or whatever, which you're entitled to feel, I hope that you would realize the way this has become personalized and hung on ME is not fair or accurate. Even if you believe that there is a villain in this, that villain is not ME." Oppenheim then proceeded to explain how it was everyone's fault BUT his, and finally acknowledged, "I'm just making a plea. If the opportunity ever does present itself to you to say that maybe I'M not the villain in all this, I would be grateful." (So good luck with that. 🤨)
Farrow covers a lot more territory in the book, including:
- Weinstein's fundraising for the Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.
Harvey Weinstein and Hillary Clinton- Additional Hollywood/media/political bigwigs accused of harassing women - including President Donald Trump; NBC newsman Tom Brokaw; NBC political analyst Mark Halperin; and NBC senior vice president Matt Zimmerman.
President Donald Trump
NBC newsman Tom Brokaw
NBC political analyst Mark Halperin
NBC senior vice president Matt Zimmerman- An in depth discussion of Black Cube, and it's legal AND illegal activities.
- Farrow's relationship with his boyfriend (now fiancé), speechwriter and podcaster Jon Lovett.
Jon Lovett (left) with Ronan Farrow- Women being blacklisted and denied jobs for defying Weinstein; Meryl Streep averring that she didn't know about the mogul's bad reputation; whistleblowers and informants who helped Farrow; and more.
The book is well-written and - though it's non-fiction - has all the elements of a good novel, including descriptions of the characters and their clothes; observations about the weather and ambiance of New York and California; meetings in a variety of interesting restaurants; people sneaking around to avoid surveillance; celebrity gossip; sad betrayals; etc. On a light note, if you ever need a gift for Ronan Farrow, get him an umbrella. It is ALWAYS raining on this guy. 🙂
This is an excellent book. Highly recommended.
Rating: really liked it
ronan farrow, truly doing the lords work.
such critical and riveting investigative journalism about a topic and people that i absolutely detest. im so glad he continued to pursue the story, even when large news networks tried to silence it.
harvey weinstein, the multiple other predators mentioned, and those who assisted in enabling and concealing their crimes deserve to be exposed and put away to never see the light of day again.
i said what i said. 💅🏻
↠ 4.5 stars
Rating: really liked it
4.25 STARSFinally finished this one, and I must say I'm incredibly glad I chose the audio. Hearing the audio clips of H.W. incriminating himself is both eery and satisfying. There's not much more that I can add to a review that hasn't already been said, but this was indeed an important read/listen, and I'm grateful to live in a time where some of the monsters in this world are being held to the fire.
Rating: really liked it
❧ audiobook reviewRonan Farrow is honestly one of my favourite journalists of all time. I followed the original breaking articles that came out before this book which he published in
The New Yorker, and when this one was published I instantly got the audiobook (which he reads!). I still haven't made it the whole way through (cos busy, ugh), but I am truly inspired and in awe of his work and how staunchly he's been about adding his voice and his rep to holding abusers accountable.
August 2019Ronan Farrow has a new book, you say?
Excuse me while I search under the sofa for spare change because I must have it.
Rating: really liked it
Farrow wrote the ultimate
‘can’t-stop-reading’, book!!!
I haven’t read a book faster!!
I read “She Said”, by Jodi Kantor and Meg Twohey about a month ago .....
I’ve followed the Harvey Weinstein scandal....
So I wasn’t expecting to learn as much as we learn in “Catch and Kill”.
Ronan Farrow is the Babe Ruth hero of investigative journalism!! He nailed the truth.
“Catch and Kill”, is THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY -BEHIND THE STORY!!!
Shocking...creepy...infuriating ....
with truth’ brilliantly exposed!
Reads like a suspense spy novel.
Full-exposure...
powerful ...
and
explosive!!!!
Rating: really liked it
(Throwback Review) Catch and kill is a clandestine method used by the media to prevent an individual, revealing information which might be damaging to someone.
Me Too movement This book is not something a young lightweight with a famous name (Ronan's parents are Mia Farrow (Hollywood actress) and Woody Allen (Hollywood director)), looking for something to do because his contract lasted more than his unsuccessful TV show as Rich McHugh (a former NBC News producer) said. This book is something about the events that led to a movement which is considered as one of the most important ones in the 21st century.
Ronan Farrow's role in the Me Too movement Mr Farrow had to pass through extremely arduous paths while writing this book. He put his entire career and even his life at jeopardy for it. It is due to his efforts, and the amazing will power of the victims that the arcane secret in the Tinseltown was revealed to the public.
The breach of Medical ethics by American Media, Inc (AMI) These are the words of a senior AMI staff from this book
"We are always at the edge of what's legally permissible. It's very exciting." Illicitly abstaining medical records was one standard manoeuver. At major hospitals, 'the Enquirer' cultivated moles. One such mole, who had spirited the records of Britney Spears, Farah Fawcett, and others out of UCLA Medical Center ultimately pleaded guilty to a felony charge. AMI routinely engaged in what employee after employee called "blackmail"- withholding the publication of damaging information in exchange for times or exclusives. And the employees whispered about an even darker side of AMI's operations, including a network of subcontractors who were sometimes paid through creative channels to avoid scrutiny, and who sometimes relied on tactics that were hands-on and intrusive.
Over the years, the company had reached deals to shelve reporting around Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Tiger Woods, Mark Wahlberg, and too many others to count. ".Jerry George, the former AMI senior editor, told, "We had stories, and we bought them knowing full well they were never going to run." Trauma that survivors had to face The level of trauma that the survivors had to go through is ineffable. For those with high-profile perpetrators, there's an added quality of inescapability. This we can clearly understand from Rose McGown's words about the experience with Harvey Weinstein.
"I would open the newspaper, and there's Gwyneth Paltrow giving him an award. he was omnipresent."
And then there were the red carpets and press junkets where she'd have to pose with him smiling. "I just left my body again", she said. "I pasted the smile on my face." The first time she saw him again after the alleged assault, she threw up in a trash can. Harvey Weinstein and the Oscars The Academy Awards or the Oscars is one of the most important ceremonies in the movie industry. Winning an Oscar is not only a great honour but also gives immense financial benefit to the winners and even the nominees.
“Harvey Weinstein was inescapable in any Oscar conversations. He had essentially invented the modern Oscar campaign. Weinstein ran his campaigns like guerrilla wars. A Miramax publicist once ghostwrote an op-ed praising the company's movie "Gangs of New York" and passed it off as the work of Robert Wise, the director of "The Sound of Music", who was at the time eighty-eight. Weinstein orchestrated an elaborate smear campaign against the rival film "A Beautiful Mind", planting press times claiming the protagonist, mathematician John Nash, was gay) and, when that didn't work, that he was anti-Semitic). When "Pulp Fiction" lost the Best Picture Oscar to Forrest Gump, he'd publicly threatened to arrive on director Robert Zemeckis's lawn and "get medieval"”. How influencial predators escape Lisa Bloom, the lawyer representing accusers of Bill O'Reilly and Bill Cosby, said,
"Rich and powerful people get a pass. I see this every day in my own practice. I represent many victims of a wealthy and successful predator. The first thing they do is go on the attack against the victim, try to dredge up anything from her life that they can find to embarrass her. Women are smeared, or they are threatened that they will be smeared." Inside the complicated mind of Harvey Weinstein "He creates the situation in which your silence will benefit you more than speaking out will",
Alexandra Canosa (Marco Polo producer) told about Harvey Weinstein. Emily Nestor worked as a temporary front desk assistant at the Weinstein Company in LA. Let's see what Weinstein told her.
"You know, we could have a lot of fun. I could put you in my London office, and you could work there, and you could be my girlfriend." He asked to hold her hand; she said no. She recalled Weinstein remarking, "Oh, the girls always say no. you know, 'No, no', And then they have a beer or two and then they're throwing themselves at me." In a tone that Nestor described as "very weirdly proud," Weinstein added, "that he'd never had to do anything like Bill Cosby." She assumed that he meant he'd never drugged a woman. "Textbook sexual harassment" was how Nestor described Weinstein's behaviour. She recalled refusing his advances at least a dozen time. "'No' did not mean 'no' to him," she said. Based on all the revelations by the victims of Weinstein, we can see that he had followed the same pattern with everyone.
1) He always called a meeting with an actress or any other woman who wanted to progress in their career.
2) He then brought them to his office or Hotel by a female assistant.
3) Then the assistant was made to leave.
4) Then he shifted the meeting to a hotel room saying some excuses.
5) For those who resisted got flowers as appeasement and also the threat of career damage if the flowers didn't work. Was Weinstein a hypersexual psychopathic predator who had immense power and money which created an illusion to himself that he can do anything to anyone without being caught?
The importance of social media and books in this era If there were no social media and books (especially independent publishing), I am afraid whether the #metoo movement would have taken place due to catch and kill measures taken by the powerful. Even when the NBC denied publishing Farrow's documentary, all the media giants helped Weinstein in hiding the news, its the social media and Farrow's effort, which helped in revealing all this arcane information to us. Let's hope that the phrase catch and kill will become obsolete due to the roles played by social media in the future.
Why men are almost always the predators and women are always the victims For understanding more about the above statement, we will have to dwell deep into the complicated psyche of both men and women. It is scientifically proven that due to the Anatomical, Physiological and Psychological differences male sexuality is more vigorous than female. So there is more chance of it to go wrong.
We can understand more in-depth about it from what David J. Ley wrote in his book The Myth of Sex Addiction. According to him,
"Men are more sexually aggressive, which can be welcome or frightening. Men think about sex more than women and want to have sex more than women. Men would be more likely than women to have sex with a stranger or with a group. Men are more likely to get a boost of self-esteem from a casual sexual encounter than women. Men are taught from a young age that they must be sexually competent and sexually powerful with exaggerated and impossible ideals. Compared to women, men are far more insecure and anxious about their sexual performance. But there’s more to male sexual vulnerability than performance anxiety. The popular caricature of male sexuality as either foolish or malign misses the enormous role that sex plays in men’s emotional lives. Often lacking the kind of physically expressive emotional support that women have with friends, men turn to sex to feed a craving for intimacy and tenderness that is “often starved near to death.” Men use sex to “let down boundaries and drop our armour enough to be emotionally vulnerable.” The above paragraph shows us why men are more vulnerable to become predators. But that doesn't excuse for the extreme violent sexual violations that people like Weinstein did on innocent women. Society should understand more about the vulnerabilities of men and should train them to overcome it right from childhood. If you take the life history of almost all the predators, we can see that they had a tough childhood. The best way to wipe out all these sexual predators from this world in the future is to train our children to know about their vulnerabilities and teach them how to overcome them and how to respect women. If still anyone violates it even after all these measures bring them in front of the law and punish them so that no one will even think about violating a woman in the future.
Why should we read this book? I can incontrovertibly say that this book is one of the best two books I came across coming under the category of investigative journalism. The second book is Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, written by John Carreyrou. Even though this book is dealing with a topic that everyone especially the younger generation should be aware of I won't recommend this book to those who are less than 18 years as it is dealing with extremely disturbing revelations by the victims. According to Ronan Farrow,
"These women came forward with incredibly brave allegations. They tore their guts out, talking about this and re-traumatised themselves because they believed they could protect other women going forward." 
This is a book that every grown-up should read not only for acknowledging the efforts taken by both Farrow and all the victims but also to make sure that predators like Harvey Weinstein will never happen again in the future.
Rating: really liked it
There are two ways to view the #MeToo movement. (Well, two views I’ll even recognize.)
In the simpler, less brain-destroying analysis, #MeToo revealed the grossness of many separate men. It was an effective means of empowering victims to speak about unrelated experiences and to hold unrelated men accountable.
In the more complex and horrific view, these men are all related. They formed a network of power and manipulation that kept women and victims quiet, and they were able to do what they wanted because they were willing to help each other do so.
If you read this book, it’s impossible to look at the movement from the first perspective any longer.
Ronan Farrow was trying to write the story of a rich and powerful rapist who used that power to silence his victims, and the sexual harassers Farrow worked for did their part to silence Farrow, too.
Reading about Farrow’s tirelessness in telling this horrible and winding story is incredible, and for that reason alone I recommend this book.
Some parts dragged more than others. The first article, the one that broke the story, is published around the halfway point, and the second half swerved into tangents and progressed in fits and starts.
Overall, reading this could feel like reading a screenplay - or more generously, watching a movie. It’s already set up that way. There are moments of comic relief, especially through the amusing and tested significant other trope; there’s a spy aspect; the plot is constructed in a series of significant moments that come back later on.
Oddly, this book feels it would do better as a movie.
I guess that does make a sort of sense. This is a Hollywood story, after all.
Bottom line: Thank god for Ronan Farrow, but more importantly - thank god for the bravery of women.
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this is so brilliantly written it makes me want to scream.
overall there's a lot of repressed screaming going on
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can't wait to try to speed read this 450-page book about the darkest stuff imaginable and ruin my own life
Rating: really liked it
Move over,
Bad Blood —I've got a new favorite nonfiction read for 2019. The important story
Catch and Kill tells—of Harvey Weinstein's horrifying behavior and its decades-long cover-up—is disturbing in the extreme. Fortunately, it's also compellingly written by Ronan Farrow, who even manages to scrounge up a few moments of humor from his own experiences of being threatened and spied on in the course of his work. Exhaustively detailed and impressively current,
Catch and Kill is one of those books everyone should read. Odds are it'll be on every single year-end best-of list come December; might as well get on it now.
Rating: really liked it
It's absolutely insane this book seems like it is the plot of a spy movie or something but yet this is real life. This stuff actually happened. And what is infuriating is what horrible things are going on right now that we haven't even heard about yet? I applaud the bravery of the people who were willing to come forward and speak out as well as the journalists including Ronan Farrow who kept on digging for the truth. And my heart goes out to the victims who remain silent, because this book clearly demonstrates the lengths powerful people will go to in order to protect themselves and it is completely understandable why some victims do not feel like they are able to come forward.
Rather than write a big synopsis about what is covered in the book I will just keep it simple. The key people or organizations that are featured the most in this book are Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Donald Trump, NBC, Blackcube, and Ronan Farrow. Yes, Ronan has some interesting experiences he shares on what it was like to cover this story against so much opposition. I don't think this is a case of a person inserting himself into the narrative for no good reason. I believe it was necessary for him to share what was going on in his life as it was certainly relevant.
This book made my blood boil but it was definitely worth reading .
