When film and theatre producer Scott Rudin, 62 was outed this week for bad behaviour, it was quickly noted that his alleged transgressions were at least not sexual like those committed by Harvey Weinstein who is in jail for his. The accounts of Rudin’s serial outbursts which were revealed in the Hollywood Reporter this week at first make almost entertaining reading, if you are not one of the alleged victims.
People who worked for the producer, who has won 17 Tony awards for his stage shows and 151 Oscar nominations for his movies, among them No Country for Old Men and The Social Network, allege they were terrorised daily.
It is said Rudin’s spittle would land on the face of those he humiliated in front of colleagues and that an employee’s hand needed emergency treatment when Rudin slammed a computer monitor onto it for failing to reserve a seat on a fully booked flight. The litany includes allegations of threats and thrown objects but more considered abuses too such as the spiteful erasing of credits on imdb, the film website, in order to damage the careers of those who incurred Rudin’s displeasure.
Similar behaviour was identified by the playwright, screen writer and film director, David Mamet in his book Bambi vs Godzilla. In his essay Jews In Show Business, Mamet memorably muses on the bad behaviour of producers. At least much more memorably than he did in his play Bitter Wheat, the London world premiere of which starred John Malkovich in a fat suit as a Harvey Weinstein-like sexual predator.
