Hollywood’s #MeToo Crisis Won’t Subside Until the Industry Is Rebuilt

LOS ANGELES (CA)
Hollywood Reporter

November 30, 2018

By Maureen Ryan

During the past year, individuals have learned a lot, but institutions haven’t changed at all. So the guilds have to step up.
For the past year, those who work in the entertainment and media industries have been deluged with stories about harassment, toxicity, assault and rape on sets, in offices, in hotels rooms and just about everywhere else. These stories are hard to read. “Gut-churning” doesn’t quite cover it.

Unfortunately, that was the easy part. Changing Hollywood culture is going to be much, much harder.

I don’t say that lightly. I reported some of these stories over the past year, and hearing the fear in the voices of the men and women I talked to was harrowing. Listening to competent, hard-working professionals recount story after story of abuses of power that were covered up, denied or explained away altered my outlook on a fundamental level.

It convinced me that this work is just beginning. What the industry needs to do now is move beyond reading the latest exhaustive report about this or that individual and stop assuming that things will change if we take out a few bad apples.

Folks, the whole barrel of apples is rotten. It needs to be washed out and refilled from the bottom up.

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