Another celebrity gets outed as a rapist and abuser. The Atlantic has posted a long expose, revealing all the rottenness that is Bryan Singer.
Almost from the moment his star began to rise, Singer, who is now 53, has been trailed by allegations of sexual misconduct. These allegations were so well known that 4,000 students, faculty members, and alumni at the University of Southern California had signed a petition asking the school to take Singer’s name off one of its programs, the Bryan Singer Division of Cinema and Media Studies—which the school did immediately after Sanchez-Guzman filed his suit. As one prominent actor told us, “After the Harvey Weinstein news came out, everyone thought Bryan Singer would be next.”
Everyone with power in Hollywood has known this for 20 years. Yet still he kept getting work.
The portrait of Singer that emerges is of a troubled man who surrounded himself with vulnerable teenage boys, many of them estranged from their families. Their accounts suggest that Singer didn’t act alone; he was aided by friends and associates who brought him young men. And he was abetted, in a less direct way, by an industry in which a record of producing hits confers immense power: Many of the sources we interviewed insisted, out of fear of damaging their own career, that we withhold their name, even as they expressed dismay at the behavior they’d witnessed.
Oh, I am so dismayed. May I bring you another teenage boy, Mr Singer, sir? How about a multi-million dollar movie contract?
It seems we have a system in which the worst people in the world can thrive, and nothing holds them in check. Maybe, in addition to the actual culprits themselves, some of these anonymous cowards and chickenshit enablers need to be dragged into the light, too.
Just when I think it’s time to move beyond using the Death Penalty, some GOPers and associated greedheads convince me otherwise.
Producer and Director of The Usual Suspects. Apophenia? Ironically named?
I fear we live in the worst country in the world.
And a shitty movie on its own merits he mostly (or somewhat) directed was just nominated for Best Picture. (Bohemian Rhapsody)
I’m on my phone so I can’t look it up but I recall an accusation a few years ago of him sleeping with under age boy. I could be wrong on that though.
I think we should stop putting people on pedestals and endlessly telling them that they’re awesome. Too many of them let it go to their heads and turn out awful.
In unrelated but thematically similar news, Alex Salmond, former leader of the Scottish National Party and First Minister of Scotland, has been arrested and charged, and is due to appear in court later today. The charges have not yet been made public, but it’s thought they concern allegations of sexual harrassment against him (if nothing worse).
KG: it may be worth knowing that Craig Murray thinks that Alex Salmond has been set up by the UK state. I view this as a strong possibility, although I can’t claim any inside knowledge on the case. Craig knows a thing or two about this because the UK government famously fabricated a number of claims of a sexual nature against Craig.
See https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/01/the-uk-government-manufacture-of-false-sexual-allegations/ and various other of his reports.
There’s some unusual details about this Bryan Singer thing. He actually managed to post on Instagram rebutting an article about this in Esquire before the article actually got published – and then it didn’t get published in Esquire, but got published in the Atlantic instead. The writers of the article are now claiming that, despite it going through a quite rigorous fact-checking and vetting process, which cleared it for publication, it was killed for unknown reasons by executives from Hearst, who own Esquire, and the Atlantic then published it after subjecting it to their own fact-checking and vetting process. To me, this suggests that maybe someone fairly high up in Hearst is somewhat friendly with Singer, told him that this was in progress, and then pulled some strings to try to bury it.
Further to #7, Salmond has been charged with multiple sexual offences, the most serious being two counts of attempted rape. His successor as SNP leader and First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is quoted as saying “many people will be shocked”. Rightly or wrongly, this suggests to me that she isn’t. He was long her mentor, but the two have fallen out recently over the handling of much less serious allegations against him from employees of the Scottish Government.
mistershelden@8,
I’ve become very sceptical of Craig Murray, although he certainly did right in denouncing torture in Uzbekistan. His website carries a lot of eyebrow-raising claims. It’s not clear why the UK state would attempt to frame Salmond now, rather than 5 years ago (I don’t find the general claim that they would manufacture claims of sexual offences implausible in itself): he is no longer active in front-line politics, and has discredited himself in many eyes (including mine, I should say) by working for RT.