When We Hear About Bad Stuff Happening In Hollywood, Why Are We So Surprised?
1Elijah Wood just gave an interview to the Sunday Times, in which he dropped a major bombshell about the fact that there is a pedophilia problem in Hollywood.
No, the accusation was not the bombshell, it was that anyone should have been surprised that it exists.
Let’s get this straight right off the top: Hollywood is a predatory industry, and always has been. The cliché of the Casting Couch has been around pretty much as long as the industry itself, but until fairly recently, it’s been treated with a wink and a smile, like it’s no big deal and is to be expected as a necessary evil.
This is ridiculous, of course, but that doesn’t stop it from happening, because those with power will always find a way to exploit those without, especially when they see an opportunity to hold in front of them something for which they are so desperate. Want something? No problem. Just come over here and take care of my needs, debase and prostitute yourself, and perhaps, possibly, conceivably, I might grant you this wish. Maybe.
Those who somehow continued to think this was a problem solely for ingenues had a similarly stunned reaction a couple years ago, when bogus sex abuse charges were leveled against director Bryan Singer. The helmer was falsely accused of exploiting young men for sex, including a specific sexual assault against a man, Michael Egan, who was later found to have made it all up and is now serving a two year sentence at a federal prison in North Carolina.
Singer was completely innocent, but just because this particularly high-profile case turned out to be bogus doesn’t mean this sort of thing doesn’t exist elsewhere. Egan’s false claims had the unfortunate consequence of lowering the volume on an issue that needed to be heard.
You want to know why people “didn’t know” that there are pedophiles in the business, actively working and taking advantage of kids? Because they chose not to think about it. Because this business in which we all work is filled with those who prey on the weak, the desperate, the vulnerable and the innocent. What kind of person checks off all four of those boxes? Kid actors and their showbiz parents, that’s who, but it somehow takes a former child actor who escaped such horrors to point it out to people.
Forget the U.S. Armed Forces. This is the original Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
It’s fascinating to me why this conversation with Wood raised so many alarm bells. Where has this anger been for so many years? Why has no one done anything to better police the problem? Are we, as an industry, no better than the Catholic Church? Are we going to see a Spotlight-like movie about Hollywood before too long?
Boy, would that be ironic.
To think that these horrors don’t happen every day, that the worst of the worst haven’t found ingenious ways to take advantage of others who are ripe for the plucking, is nothing but willful ignorance. And look, I’m as much to blame here as anyone, because I hadn’t ever really given it any thought before, either. Honestly, it was not something that was on my radar.
But it certainly is now.
So, okay. Now we know. Now what? Are we going to see anything done about it? First, let me ask, has much been done about the other, aforementioned versions of the Casting Couch? Maybe a little, but you’re kidding yourself if you think the sleazy underbelly doesn’t thrive just as much as it ever did.
The thing is, taking advantage of the desperate is never not a growth industry. There are a lot of bad people out there, and they make it their business to find ways to hurt others for their own enjoyment. What place provides more opportunities for such abominable behavior than Hollywood? Where people will do whatever it takes to achieve fame and fortune? Where stage parents live vicariously through their talented children, hoping they can turn their progeny into lucrative meal tickets?
I am not so cynical as to believe that parents would intentionally put their children in harm’s way, no matter how desperate they might be. That said, actually knowing and either turning a blind eye or “choosing not to know” are different shades of the same ink, and are common enough to allow the practice to continue, reasonably unabated.
Now that Wood has exposed this ongoing catastrophe (while also clarifying that he has no personal knowledge of it), and people are actively talking about it in a way they previously wouldn’t, my hope is that the industry will do something. Put together a task force. Create a proper entity for oversight and a commission devoted to the protection of those who, for one reason or another, cannot protect themselves.
We live in a world that seems to shrink in tolerance every day. One of this country’s two major parties has nominated for the nation’s highest office a man who capitalizes on people’s bigotry and xenophobia. Free speech is increasingly limited to shared opinions. Discussion and reasoned discourse have been replaced by shouting and name calling, because God forbid anyone ever works together or exchanges ideas.
And yet, we allow this to continue.
But we don’t have to. We can bring an end to this. We can save untold potential victims from ruined lives. All we have to do is give a damn.