Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
I was considering reading a murder mystery and found this book a couple pages down on the Amazon best-selling list. I was surprised I hadn’t heard of it given the media I consume. Speaking of which, I was a bit hesitant to read this book because news these days are already too much to handle, and I wasn’t sure I needed to further immerse myself in this fiasco. That said, I appreciate journalist books since they typically write well and are knowledgeable about their topics. This one got very repetitive but it’s a story that needs to be told.
1) Ronan Farrow is the son of Woody Allen, who married his wife’s adopted daughter.
Frank Sinatra is also potentially involved. What is happening?
2) American Media Inc., which owns the National Enquirer, has deep ties with Weinstein and – yes – Trump.
I’d only first heard about the National Enquirer with the recent Bezos story. How is everyone and everything connected?
3) Seth Freedman was a spy who claimed to be a Guardian journalist and tried to get information about Rose McGowan’s book.
Farrow incorporated some mystery elements into the book by leaving clues about spies. Most were quite obvious. He’s no Agatha Christie, but the suspense was appreciated.
4) Ambra Gutierrez secretly recorded Weinstein and got evidence of him admitting.
This is the clip that I’d heard on the Daily. It’s weird to piece things together.
5) Weinstein said to Andy Lack, “It was the nineties, Andy. We all did that.”
Sometimes I wonder what we consider normal now that will be frowned upon in the future. Meat-eating seems like a (USDA-)prime candidate.
6) Ken Auletta had tried to expose Weinsteins many years earlier but didn’t have enough evidence.
Repeated ad nauseam was the fact that everyone had known this was going on but said nothing about it.
7) Asia Argento, who accused Weinstein, is accused of sexual assault herself.
In another everyone-knows-everyone moment, I realized I recognized the name because she dated Anthony Bourdain.
8) Weinstein hired Black Cube to spy on his accusers, including planting someone close to Rose McGowan.
It’s just like the movies.
9) NBC did not want to publish the Weinstein story, so Farrow ultimately took his story to the New Yorker.
The best part of this book was the internal affairs at NBC. I’ve always marveled at how much power institutions wield. Institutions are just run by people. Why do some people get a bigger say than other people?
10) Matt Lauer, of the Today show, was accused on sexual assault.
It was shocking to read about what happened at the Sochi Olympics.
In many ways, this book made me lose faith in humanity, or at least in every famous person. The silver lining is that things have – at least partially – come to the surface. Or perhaps this is merely what Ronan Farrow wants his book to convey. Reading nonfiction like this makes me wonder why my world is so boring. Maybe boring is best.