Abigail Disney Offers A New Tool For Navigating Me Too Hollywood

By Kristy Puchko | Film | June 28, 2018 |

By Kristy Puchko | Film | June 28, 2018 |

Abigail Disney is a film producer, the grand-niece of Walt Disney, and an activist dedicated to making sure the Me Too movement brings major change to Hollywood. She wants to see more diverse voices making movies, and have alleged abusers pulled out of the shadows. As such, she’s helped create the one-two punch for progressivism in Hollywood with Level Forward and Rotten Apples.

THR reports Level Forward is Disney’s new production company, launched in January with her partner Adrienne Becker. Level Forward’s goal is to increase diversity behind the camera by producing projects by women and people of color. Among their first projects will be Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick’s doc about the Me Too movement, which could be ready in time for the Sundance Film Festival next January. Disney hopes such productions will help cut down on the boys club vibe that’s helped foster abuse and sexual misconduct in Hollywood.

Or as Disney told THR:

“We are committed to making business sense out of turning this stupid equation upside down, and taking raping and pillaging out of business plans once and for all.”

The other prong of Disney’s activism efforts is the funding of Rotten Apples, a website that allows users to see if a TV show or movie has any ties to an alleged abuser. Its concept is pretty straightforward, enter a title and Rotten Apples will name names, providing a link to the incident(s) in question.

For Shakespeare in Love, Rotten Apples offers a USA Today link about Ben Affleck’s apologizing for groping MTV host Hilarie Burton. For Harvey Weinstein, Rotten Apples chose the Ronan Farrow article for The New Yorker that sparked the notorious Hollywood producer’s downfall. For Bob Weinstein, it’s a USA Today story about his alleged sexual harassment of TV producer Amanda Segel.

Under Arrested Development, the Jeffrey Tambor link leads to an article about the investigation into the alleged misconduct on the set of Transparent, from before he was let go over them. Regrettably, it’s a link for Deadline, the industry site that allowed Michael Douglas to use them as a platform to call his accuser a liar before she even came forward. At present, no mention is made of Tambor’s admitted abusive behavior toward Jessica Walter on the set of Arrested Development.

Having launched last December, Rotten Apples is in its beta phase right now. Perhaps that’s why the allegation against Douglas isn’t included under his next movie, Ant-Man and the Wasp.

Fortunately, the corrections submission form is very easy to use.

Don’t worry. You can still love Black Panther guilt free.