Ahhhh Hollywood. The town that pushes Mos Eisley into second place in the league table of wretched hives of scum and villainy. A town where the behavior never fails to disappoint. A town where people carry themselves in a way that would get them fired from most other white-collar jobs. If they did it in a few blue-collar jobs, a group of colleagues would take them out to the parking lot for a bit of sudden retraining.
However, this is Hollywood, so these people seem to somehow fail upwards and continue to be rewarded. At least it gives the rest of us something to point and laugh at.
It also leads to great insights, like the New York Times article with the headline We Can Bury Anyone.
If you remember, this was in reference to the allegations that publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel worked with It Ends With Us producers Jamey Heath and Steve Sarowitz to start something of a dirty tricks campaign against lead actress Blake Lively over all sorts of allegations flying around about working on the set of that movie.
The article alleged that Blake Lively allegedly endured months of sexual harassment on the set of It Ends With Us and supposedly faced retaliation in the form of a smear campaign because she voiced her concerns. The article led to WME dropping director and co-star Justin Baldoni as a client hours after publication. Previously there had been all sorts of strange occurrences around the premier and subsequent publicity events.
Now, in response, a $250 million lawsuit has been filed on New Year’s Eve by Baldoni and nine other plaintiffs against The New York Times, as reported by both Variety and Deadline.
They are suing the newspaper for libel and false light invasion of privacy over the article. According to a statement, the article:
“…cherry-picked and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead”.
The New York Times responded that the story was
“…meticulously and responsibly reported…”
The plaintiff’s lead attorney Bryan Freedman, claims that the article:
“…relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives.”
Meanwhile, Lively’s original case remains working its way through the system. This is a fascinating insight into the workings of both Hollywood minds, and the publicity machine that surrounds them.