worry, on 06 December 2017 - 04:12 AM, said:
"Chose to raise" is just, to me, another in-a-vacuum argument though. You can look at it as John Oliver having made a decision to bring it up, or fulfilling his responsibility to bring it up, and clearly I believe the latter. It would have been a farce not to mention it.
Wag the Dog could be argued as very tangetially related but is not on the nose. This wasn't a public forum on those incidents.
It is a 20th anniversary screening of the movie with a paid audience. The video is cell phone video. Robert De Niro, producer Jane Rosenthal, and director Barry Levinson are also sitting on stage doing a typical Q&A about the movie, and Oliver brings up the general topic, gets a general comment from Levinson, and then gets into that with Hoffman. I don't think any of them were expecting the topic.
And lets be clear, what Hoffman did was wrong. But this was not Harvey Weinstein. What he is alleged to have done, it is absolutely plausible that he never had the slightest clue this woman or other crew were the least bit uncomfortable with his behaviour. That does not make it right, but it makes it fairly rich to say that there was a moral imperative to make the whole evening about that. Something none of the panel came to talk about, and none of the audience came to hear about.
It was a choice.
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The notion that Hoffman was stuck with not being able to give "something he couldn't" strikes me as wrong for at least two reasons: 1) He already gave an apology, as lame as it was;
As you yourself said, it was a boilerplate non apology apology. An apology with conceding facts or agreeing with the victim's account.
And Oliver was putting him in spots where to satisfy the answers Oliver was demanding, he would have to cross that barrier.
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2) He spends a lot of time in this discussion trying to discredit his victim. There's much less "I don't remember" and much more "You weren't there" and "You do things, you say things" and "Do you believe this stuff that you're reading??...Why??" and "There is a point in her not bringing this up for 40 years."
He didn't say "you weren't there" to say nothing happened. He said it in the argument over "I'm not that guy". I mean, OIiver cut him off with a zinger so he never finished the thought, but Oliver had just basically said there was a period of time were Hoffman was creepy around women. So "you weren't there" isn't about the victim. It is about the context, which would include the reactions Hoffman got from other women and other crew and whether others engaged in similar talk/behaviour. None of which is an excuse. But all of which could make it plausible he had no idea he was making people uncomfortable and no basis to think his behaviour was out of the ordinary. That could be right or wrong, but it is not an attack on the victim.
The last two are more to discredit the victim, but they are cutting right back to why he couldn't give Oliver the answer in the first place.
First, let me say that I suspect the victim's account is not embellished, and near literally what happened. But I think her memory of it is much clearer than Hoffman's. And I think it is perfectly normal for a person, confronted with a transcript of their words nearly 40 years later, to know they said and did something but think "there's no way I said THAT". Etc. So his position would be he knows he was flirty on the set, he knows there was a lot of sex talk and he engaged in it, but he does not specifically recall the accusations but doesn't think they are right, or remembers them differently.
So if he thinks it is inaccurate, there's really not much for him to do but question the veracity of the account.
worry, on 06 December 2017 - 04:12 AM, said:
or incredulity at Dustin Hoffman's cowardly attempt to play the victim of a "gotcha" moment.
I mean, Hoffman was not expecting the subject, still tried to give an answer, got told he was creeping around women as a statement of fact, and then got his response to that cut off by an applause line. To suggest he is playing the victim or cowardly suggests it is an affectation to get out of the moment. But when you get blindsided by the topic and then your answers are cut off by zingers so you can't even get your thought out, you are probably legitimately gonna feel like the victim of a gotcha moment.
You may not sympathize because of what he did, or like his answer, and it is nothing like what the victim went threw.
This post has been edited by Nevyn: 06 December 2017 - 03:00 PM