Will all of Hollywood now run and hide? – Mick Raven

Ashley Collman and Chris Spargo
www.dailymail.co.uk
11 October 2017

• The Wrap founder Sharon Waxman says Matt Damon and Russell Crowe called her in 2004 to stop a negative story about Harvey Weinstein 
• At the time, Waxman was working for the New York Times and had been given the green light to investigate claims about the exec’s inappropriate behavior 
• She says she found proof that Weinstein sexually harassed at least one woman, who then got a payout 
• Multiple sources told her that a man hired by Weinstein’s former Miramax company had been put on the payroll to procure women for him 
• Waxman says Damon and Crowe called her to vouch for that man, Fabrizio Lombardo, and eventually the story was killed 
• Weinstein victim Rose McGowan responded to this by tweeting: ‘Hey @Mattdamon what’s it like to be a spineless profiteer who stays silent?’

Matt Damon may soon be forced to comment on the decades of sexual harassment Harvey Weinstein inflicted upon his staff and a number of Hollywood actresses after one of those stars took aim at the Oscar-winning writer and star of ‘Good Will Hunting.’

One day after Sharon Waxman revealed in a post on The Wrap that she had been working on an expose about Weinstein until Damon and actor Russell Crowe called her directly to try and bury the piece, Rose McGowan lashed out at the actor.

‘Hey @Mattdamon what’s it like to be a spineless profiteer who stays silent?’ wrote McGowan Monday afternoon, hours after calling on the entire board at Weinstein Company to step down for being complicit in covering up the executive’s actions.

McGowan also acknowledged a few of Damon’s similarly tongue-tied pals, tweeting: ‘Ben Affleck Casey Affleck, how’s your morning boys?’

 

Waxman said in her piece that Damon and Crowe called her after she managed to get multiple sources stating on the record that an Italian man being paid $400,000 by the company knew little about film and was better known for the ‘evenings he organized with Russian escorts.’

The story was ultimately killed despite Waxman’s findings at the time.

Reps for both Crowe and Damon did not respond to requests for comment.

At the center of the story was a man who worked as the head of Miramax Italy, but who had no film experience.

Miramax, which was founded by Weinstein and his brother Bob in 1979, was still being run by the brothers at that team even though in 1993 they had sold to Disney.

Multiple sources told Waxman that Fabrizio Lombardo, who headed up Miramax Italy, was actually put on the payroll to help procure women for Weinstein, and that was the reason for his $400,000 in the one-year span between 2003 and 2004 when he worked for the company.

Waxman also tracked down a woman in London who said she had been paid off after an unwanted sexual encounter with Weinstein.

She revealed however that while the reporting was going well, she began to hit a different road block once Weinstein learned that the Times was working on a negative story.

That is when the executive got to work trying to kill the story, using Damon and Crowe to help him by vouching for Lombardo.

The two men both appeared in Miramax films produced by Weinstein around that time – Damon in ‘The Brothers Grimm’ (2005) and Crowe in ‘Master and Commander’ (2003).

Damon and his lifelong pals Ben and Casey Affleck all owe their careers to Weinstein in many ways thanks to his championing of ‘Good Will Hunting.’

 The Wrap founder Sharon Waxman (pictued on October 3) says Damon and Crowe called her in 2004 to stop a negative story about Weinstein

Waxman wrote the she was ultimately told that Weinstein made a visit to the Times newsroom, where he visited with people ‘above my head’ to ‘make his displeasure known’.

Miramax was a big advertiser in the paper at the time as well, and used that to help get the story killed according to Waxman.

In the end, her editors decided against publishing the accusations.

‘The story was stripped of any reference to sexual favors or coercion and buried on the inside of the Culture section, an obscure story about Miramax firing an Italian executive. Who cared?’ Waxman recalled.

The story centered on Fabrizio Lombardo, who was head of Miramax Italy for less than a year between 2003 and 2004. Multiple sources told Waxman that Lombardo was put on the payroll to procure women for Weinstein (the two pictured above in 2007)

  

Damon and Crowe called Waxman to vouch for Lombado. Damon, it can be argued, owes his career to Weinstein who financed 1997’s Good Will Hunting, which he starred in and wrote (left). At the time of the 2004 article, Crowe was filming Master and Commander for Miramax (right)