MATT DAMON AND GEORGE CLOONEY: Goodness Us, We Never Heard a Blessed Thing About Weinstein’s Misbehavior. (Except for the Things We Did Hear About):
Two weeks ago, former New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman (now at The Wrap) wrote that Damon helped get her 2004 exposé on Weinstein scrubbed. Waxman got calls from Damon and Russell Crowe personally to tube a story that tied Fabrizio Lombardo, then heading Miramax’s Italian unit, to Weinstein’s sexual appetite and about a payoff to a woman who had accused Weinstein of non-consensual sexual behavior. Damon claimed he was just asked to talk about Lombardo’s work for Miramax, not anything to do with Weinstein.
However, he already knew about Weinstein’s sexual harassment of Paltrow by this time. She married Coldplay frontman Chris Martin in 2003, having ended the relationship with Affleck in 2000. If Waxman was writing about Weinstein in 2004, then Damon had an important piece of information — or at least knew enough to refrain from running interference on a sex scandal at Miramax.
As Ace writes, “while Washington is Hollywood for ugly people, Hollywood is also Hollywood for ugly people.”