【My Sex Doll Bodyguard (2020)】

Amazon Studios is My Sex Doll Bodyguard (2020)no hero for pushing out its chief, Roy Price, after he was accused of sexually harassing a producer. It's still a villain in this tale, clearly seeking goodwill for doing the right thing, when it only punished Price after being scalded by the spotlight of public ire.

Yes, Amazon Studios quickly put Price on a leave of absence, which eventually led to his resignation Thursday, after The Man in the High Castleproducer Isa Hackett went on record with The Hollywood Reporterabout the time he told her "you will love my dick" in a cab and later that night shouted "anal sex" in her ear at a San Diego Comic-Con party.

Here's the problem -- that incident happened on July 10, 2015. The leave of absence occurred hours after Hackett's allegation was published on Oct. 12, 2017. And five days later, Price resigned.

SEE ALSO: Amazon Studios boss Roy Price placed on leave after sexual harassment allegations

Amazon knew about the allegation two years ago and waited until it was out in the open before taking serious action. (Emails to Amazon with requests for comment were unreturned.)

Hackett reported the incident immediately. Amazon hired a private investigator. And then ... nothing. She said she never heard about the investigation's findings. Price went on at the helm. Nothing to see here.

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What makes this tale even grimmer though, is that it wasn't just the Price headlines that pushed Amazon's hand. It took outrage over another influential man and serial power abuser to turn up the heat: Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

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The same reporter who covered Hackett's allegation for The Hollywood Reporterthis month had written another story two months prior for The Informationreferencing the incident. Hackett wasn't talking on the record about what Price said then, but the reporter did have confirmation that there had been an investigation. Even getting that published was a struggle as writer Kim Masters shopped the story around to multiple outlets who all shied away as Price lawyered up (with Weinstein's former attorney, Lisa Bloom, and Hulk Hogan's, Charles Harder). The Gawker effect was real.

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After that report was finally published, Price was still in charge. All the while, Amazon Studios was buying up big movies like Manchester by the Seaand TheBig Sick to shake its failure to compete on the small screen with award-winning Netflix, HBO, and Hulu (thanks mostly to having passed on The Handmaid's Tale). Employees criticized Price over mismanagement and low morale, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Then the Weinstein floodgates opened. The New York Times broke that he'd been paying off women who accused him of sexual harassment for decades. It felt like a new revelation surfaced almost hourly after that. Dozens of women were coming forward, some accusing the Oscar-whisperer of rape in the New Yorker(he denies allegations of nonconsensual sex).

The bravery of Weinstein's victims convinced Hackett, the daughter of author Philip K. Dick, whose book inspired the show Man in the High Castle, to speak on the record with Masters about Price's actions. When she did, Amazon finally took the first step that led to his resignation.

On Oct. 8, 2017, Weinstein was fired as co-chairman of his own company's board. The accusations against him were shocking and seemingly nonstop, but by all accounts it was all an open secret in Hollywood. Everyone knew, as screenwriter Scott Rosenberg (High Fidelity, Beautiful Girls) so eloquently wrote on Facebook, but no one did anything about it because Weinstein could make or break you. That was true of Price to a lesser extent, but he still held the pursestrings at Amazon, was the son of a former Columbia and Universal Pictures boss, and was flying high. Price has yet to respond to requests for comment, according to news reports.

Open secrets are O.K., so long as they're whispered at Hollywood parties, not shouted about on Twitter.

Twice in the same month it took the caustic bleach of bombshell news reports for Hollywood abusers to face punishment. Think of how many more perpetrators are still in positions of power, even as everyone around them knows their sins. The message? Open secrets are O.K., so long as they're whispered at Hollywood parties, not shouted about on Twitter or on the front pages of reputable newspapers.

That won't change until companies start punishing abusers when the harassment occurs, not when it's been revealed in the press months, years, or decades later.

As Hackett said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, "An important conversation has begun about the need to create a culture in our industry which values respect and decency and rejects the abusive power and dehumanizing treatment of others. This is a real opportunity to find a better way forward and ultimately toward a balanced representation of women and minorities in leadership positions."

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Topics Amazon Celebrities