All his life, Bob Weinstein toiled in the shadow of his larger-than-life older sibling, Harvey Weinstein.
Coming across more like an introverted accountant than a Hollywood movie mogul, Bob has publicly insisted over the years that he never wanted the attention, and did not mind being the lesser-known brother even though he was a co-founder of Miramax and The Weinstein Co and shepherded smash hits like Scream and Scary Movie. He once joked that there was not “physically room” in the spotlight for both Weinsteins anyway.
Bob, 63, is now scrambling to save The Weinstein Co, which is in shambles amid allegations of sexual harassment and rape against Harvey going back decades. With his brother fired and creative partners fleeing, Bob first tried to prevent a sale, publicly insisting that “business is continuing as usual” and telling agents and filmmakers about ideas to rename the studio and bring women onto its board. In recent days, the plan shifted, with investment firm Colony Capital negotiating to buy some or all of the studio.
The Weinstein Co and Colony agreed on a limited window to make a deal. If no agreement is reached and no deal with another buyer materialises, bankruptcy and liquidation could loom. “He’s working very hard to hold the company together, stabilise the company, protect the employees, protect his shareholders,” David Boies, a lawyer who represents the studio, said of Weinstein.
Yet Colony sees no future for Bob at the company, should it emerge from this crisis, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations were private.
Last weekend, Bob told The Hollywood Reporter that his brother was “sick and depraved.” He also said that, until The New York Times, The New Yorker and others revealed sexual harassment and rape allegations against his brother, he thought his sibling’s “philandering” with women involved “all consensual situations.”
But Kathy DeClesis, Bob’s former assistant, said she confronted him about his brother’s behaviour over a quarter-century ago.
She was concerned about a young woman she supervised at Miramax, the film studio that the brothers started in the late 1970s. The woman had left the company after an encounter with Harvey — fleeing so quickly that she never claimed the extra shoes under her desk, another former employee recalled. DeClesis said she later handed Bob a letter from a lawyer representing the young woman, who eventually received a settlement.
“Your brother is a pig,” DeClesis remembers telling Bob around the same time. She said she quit shortly afterward.
Bob, who owns about 20 per cent of The Weinstein Co, declined requests for an interview. His lawyer, Bert Fields, said, “Bob has no recollection of that happening.”
People who have worked for Bob, a twice-divorced father of four and avid New York Jets fan, describe him as a number cruncher. He focused on projects with more commercial potential than his older brother, overseeing films like Spy Kids and Bad Santa through the company’s Dimension Films label. Though known to have a volcanic temper, he also fostered loyalty among a small group of staff members and has a reputation as a homebody.
Pantea Ghaderi, a spokeswoman for Dimension, said she and others at the company were “shocked and sickened” to read the accusations against Harvey.
“I have been lucky enough to get to know Bob closely for years now,” Ghaderi, who has reported to Bob for nearly a decade, said in an email. “He has always shown me the utmost respect as a boss, mentor and friend.”
But one woman, a television writer named Amanda Segel, came forward this week to claim that Bob harassed her.
Last summer, as Segel was working as an executive producer of The Mist, a Weinstein Co series, he asked her to dinner at Dan Tana’s in West Hollywood. Segal said he asked her to sit closer in the booth and dropped hints that he would like to date her. At the end of the night he said, “I’m a hugger,” and embraced her, Segel recalled in a phone interview. (Variety first reported her harassment allegation.)
More invitations followed. In a July 2016 email reviewed by The New York Times, Segel told the creator of The Mist, Christian Torpe, that she found Bob’s attention “super creepy.” Torpe responded, “That is not OK, in any way.” A few weeks later, Segel said she told colleagues that she was being sexually harassed and asked her lawyer to complain to The Weinstein Co. The contact stopped.
Fields said that Segel’s account was “riddled with false and misleading assertions.” He added, “There’s no way any fair-minded person could label this — even if you were to believe it — as sexual harassment.”
In emails between Bob and Segel that were shared by Fields, the two seem to have a friendly rapport. “Last night was delightful,” Segel wrote in one.
But there was also some awkwardness. In making one of his dinner invitations, Bob wrote, “If u can’t do that, then your fired!!! Oh I forgot, we are supposed to be friends. Ha!” (Fields said that Weinstein was joking and that Segel appeared to take it as a joke.)
Bob and his Dimension team are based on Hudson Street in lower Manhattan, a two-minute walk from the Greenwich Street offices occupied by Harvey.
In recent years, according to employees and public comments by Bob, they barely spoke to each other. When they were forced to interact, they sometimes resorted to yelling. “You need me more than I need you!” Harvey snarled at his brother at one meeting over the summer, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Within the past year, the brothers agreed to split up the company, according to two people with direct knowledge of the plan. Bob would take Dimension; Harvey would take the Oscars-focused Weinstein Co film unit. The agreement expired last month and was contingent on a sale of the television division, which never happened.
Now, with a sale to Colony perhaps imminent, The Weinstein Co may be facing a future without either brother.
But Fields, Bob’s lawyer, dismissed that notion. “Bob is going to be a key part of the new company when it’s reconstituted,” he said. “Bob expects to be the key guy.”
