When
the Harvey Weinstein scandal reached a fever pitch last month, Ben
Affleck’s handlers found themselves with a problem.
It
wasn’t just that Weinstein had helped launch Ben Affleck’s career
in the 1990s with “Good Will Hunting” and “Shakespeare in
Love,” or that the movie star had his own history of troubled
relationships with women, including an on-camera groping of an MTV
host.
The
scandal was also coming just as Affleck prepared to hit the circuit
for his role as Batman in one of the biggest movies of the year —
November’s “Justice League” — which aims to make $1 billion
globally.
So
Affleck and his team at the high-powered public relations agency
Sunshine Sachs came up with a damage-control strategy, according to a
person familiar with the matter, speaking on the condition of
anonymity to describe the plan.
They
posted a message on Facebook saying Affleck was “saddened,”
“angry” and “sick” over the revelations and that as a father
he shared people’s grave concerns.
But
when the actress Rose McGowan accused Affleck of knowing about
Weinstein’s behavior and lying to cover it up, and then others
accused him of groping women at the 2014 Golden Globes, the star went
the other way.
He
stayed silent, reasoning he could only lose by engaging popular
anti-harassment activists.
His
team’s next major action, according to the person, was to provide
information to the celebrity news site ETonline.com about a rather
different subject — Affleck’s adoption of an adorable husky.
But
that piece caused its own social-media snickering. Sunshine Sachs
declined to provide a comment for this article.
Affleck’s
inability to adopt an effective strategy showed how Hollywood’s
reputation-management machine is struggling with the best way to
protect celebrities’ image in a new era of sexual-harassment
awareness.
For
years, a behind-the-scenes network of personal publicists, assisted
by agents and managers, sought to divert interest from the misdeeds
of the Hollywood elite.
But
the newly hot climate has thrown the image industry into crisis,
according to nearly a dozen publicists who spoke anonymously because
of the background nature of their work — pitting their traditional
instinct to suppress negative attention against the growing demands
for candor.
The
challenge is particularly pressing as celebrities begin to get in
front of journalists to hype their work for upcoming holiday movies
and the Oscar campaigns that run until the March show.
“It’s
a no-win situation,” said a veteran publicist who represents
several high-profile film personalities, speaking on the condition of
anonymity to avoid drawing attention to clients. “Nobody knows what
to react to or what to respond with.”
What
path they choose could determine whether the film-promotion circuit
finally begins to tackle hard truths — or an age-old system remains
in place.
“For
far too long sexual trauma hasn’t been talked about in Hollywood,”
said Angela Rose, founder of PAVE, a Washington-based advocacy group
that does outreach to the entertainment industry. “We need these
questions to shatter the silence.”
