THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 165 FEBRUARY 28, 2018
Long before Harvey Weinstein
was a movie mogul, he was an
‘artsy-fartsy’ student, a savvy
concert promoter and, it turns
out, a budding abuser and
sexual predator. TH R tracks
down dozens of former friends
and associates to examine the
formative years of Hollywood’s
most infamous figure
By Scott Johnson
and Stephen GallowayPaula Wachowiak sits in her 2009 Honda Fit as
it cruises past rows of abandoned factories and
a wasteland of disintegrating homes, rem-
nants of a metropolis that once billed itself as
the “city of light.” Decades ago, Buffalo was
an industrial hub of New York, a gateway for
commerce and a magnet for nearly 600,000
residents; but on a blustery February day, much
of the city seems more like a manifestation of
urban blight.
None of that troubles Wachowiak, 62, as she
guides a reporter through town. The flame-
haired grandmother is no longer the slip of a
girl who once studied communications at the
University of Buffalo, but she retains sharp
memories of the days when she had visions of
becoming a filmmaker, until her experience
on a real-life film turned sour. It was the sum-
mer of 1980, and the then-24-year-old was
a divorced single mother when she landed an
internship on a low-budget horror flick, The
Burning, a slasher story about a summer-camp
caretaker who seeks revenge for his grotesque
disfigurement, featuring Jason Alexander and
Holly Hunter in their first screen roles. The
film’s producer was almost as inexperienced
as they were: Harvey Weinstein.
“I only knew of him as a music promoter,”
says Wachowiak.At 28, Weinstein had begun to make a name
for himself as a swashbuckling concert orga-
nizer who’d put Buffalo on the map by bringing
in acts like Jethro Tull and the Rolling Stones.
The Burning was his first foray into film pro-
ducing, and so he spent a lot of time on set.
Wachowiak, based in the production offices,
didn’t see him much; in fact, she saw more of
his brother, Bob, 25, the quiet one whom
nobody really noticed, who “seemed trustwor-
thy, like somebody you’d talk to.”
One day, a production accountant asked her
to take a folder of checks to Harvey’s room in a
modest hotel. Wachowiak went upstairs and
knocked on his door. When it opened, she says,
she found him naked, except for a small towel
draped around his waist. Half-hidden as he was
by the door, she didn’t quite realize what was
going on until she was inside the room and the
door had closed behind her.
“My first response was, ‘Oh my God!’ ”
she recalls. “Then I thought, ‘This is fine. I’m
just going to look at his face, get the checks
signed and get out of here. These are sophis-
ticated people, they do this all the time.’ ”
Weinstein dropped the towel, and
Wachowiak struggled to keep her eyes on his
face as he strolled around, until he sat down
and laid the folder on his lap. “What’s this for?”
he asked, pointing either to a check or his pri-
vate parts. Then he chuck led, as if enjoying her
embarrassment. Saying he had “a kink in his
neck,” he asked for a massage.
“I don’t think that’s in my job description,”
she replied. (“Mr. Weinstein has a different
recollection of these events and categorically
denies ever engaging in any nonconsensual
sexual conduct with Ms. Wachowiak,” says his
spokesperson.)
Wachowiak says Weinstein didn’t insist, as
he would be accused of doing later, aggressively
and violently, with other women. Still, the
incident shook the intern, and when she left the
room and stepped into the hallway, she burst
into tears.
“I fell apart,” she says. “I was shaking.”I
t’s been 38 years since then, and Weinstein,
now 65, has gone from being one of the
most influential men in entertainment to
the industry’s most reviled. In the five months
since allegations about his behavior exploded
in The New York Times and The New Yorker, doz-
ens of women — including actresses Ashley
Judd, Lupita Nyong’o, Rose McGowan, Salma
Hayek and Uma Thurman — have accused him
of everything from harassment to rape.
Forced out of The Weinstein Co., he has
gone into hiding, abandoned by family and
friends, as prosecutors in multiple citiesP
Harvey Weinstein’s 1969
senior photo from John Bowne
High School in Flushing,
Queens. “[He] was awkward
with women because he
was really hideous,” says a
high school friend.