The day before I was to meetHarvey Weinstein, a blizzard dumped a foot of snow on New York, grinding the city to a halt. It seemed like an omen. Waking in my hotel the next morning, I half hoped that Rikers would be closed as well. Then my phone buzzed with a terse email from a prison administrator: “We’re on!” it said.
So, I called an Uber and nervously set off with a cameraman and a trunk full of recording equipment for the short voyage to Rikers, the notorious island facility in Queens where Weinstein has been incarcerated for much of the past six years.Related StoriesNewsHarvey Weinstein Set for April 14 Retrial on Rape ChargeNewsHarvey Weinstein Replaces Legal Team as New York Retrial Looms
Getting into Rikers is only slightly easier than breaking out of it. The Uber dropped us off at a parking lot outside the facility, where we waited in the frigid cold for a prison official to pick us up. Then, after an obstacle course of barbed-wire gates and metal detectors, we arrived at the crumbling cinder-block structure that Weinstein has called home for the better part of two years.
Over the past few years, the 73-year-old has been hospitalized for a laundry list of maladies: diabetes, a heart operation, cancer. Spinal stenosis keeps him in a wheelchair most of the time. Because of his infirmities, he is housed in a medical unit of the jail, away from the general population. Safety concerns keep him confined to his cell for 23 hours a day.
For me, this visit also was something of a reunion. I first encountered him in 1999, when I worked as editorial director ofTalkmagazine, the ill-fated monthly that Weinstein launched with the legendary editor Tina Brown. Our first meeting was not auspicious. I arrived at work to find an ashen-faced Tina slumped on a chaise in her office as Harvey, phoning in from a yacht trip to Capri, screamed profanities at her from a speakerphone.
That was the Harvey that many people remember — crude, profane and vindictive. But there was a different side to Harvey as well. He could be charming, funny and generous, an odd duality that some of his victims testified to in court. He was a keen judge of talent and stories, and fiercely loyal to his favorites. Our biggest fight, ironically, was over Gwyneth Paltrow, who went to be one of his most prominent critics. Once, after she appeared onTalk‘s cover, Harvey fumed that the story was too hard on her. “Don’t fuck with my fucking friends,” he bellowed, and angrily hurled the magazine at me.
But my most indelible memory of him came a few years later, during a trip we took to ground zero just days after 9/11, accompanied by Tina and Harvey’s then-PR chief, Matt Hiltzik. It was both a mission to deliver food to first responders and, for Harvey, a morbid flex. Downtown was shut off to everyone but emergency personnel. But Harvey had somehow secured a placard to get our car through the police roadblocks and checkpoints to the still-smoldering site. Balancing a giant soup tureen and a sack of sandwiches, we made our way through the rubble in stunned silence, punctured suddenly by Harvey’s baritone growl.
“Matt! Get me a bagel,” he yelled.
We all looked at him with amazement. “Harvey, the bagels are for the firemen,” Hiltzik finally replied.
“Don’t forget the cream cheese,” Harvey snapped.
Source: Drudge Report
