The Paper's reporter Cheng Xiaojun
A few days ago, Alexander Payne, a famous Hollywood literary and art film director who has directed films such as "About Schmidt", "A Glass of Wine Life", "Descendants", "Nebraska" and other films, was accused by actress Rose McGowan of real name, saying that she had committed improper sexual acts against her own will more than twenty years ago, causing an uproar from all walks of life.
"Alexander Payne. You first sat me down and started playing a soft movie that you shot under the pseudonym Showtime Channel. I still remember your apartment in silver lake. You're very good. When you were done, you left me alone on the main road. I was fifteen years old. On August 17, local time, Rose McGowan suddenly posted on her personal social media account, revealing that Alexander Payne had sexually assaulted herself. Previously, she became a banner figure in the anti-sexual assault movement because she was the first to stand up against Hollywood film tycoon Harvey Weinstein.
Hours later, in a second post, Rose McGowan claimed that what she wanted was "just an acknowledgment and apology" and that "I don't want to ruin people."
Screenshot of Rose McGowan's post
Interested parties found transcripts of an interview she gave to a journalist, Ronan Farrow, when she was campaigning for the publication of her autobiography, Brave. Ronan Farrow, the son of movie star Mia Farrow, won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Journalism for a series of reports exposing Hollywood movie mogul Weinstein's sexual assault scandal.
McGowan had told Farrow at the time that a very famous Hollywood director had violated her when she was fifteen: After we met, he took me home and showed me a soft movie he made for showtime — of course, he made that movie under a pseudonym — and he had sex with me. I was then left on the main road outside the Tropical Café in the Silver Lake District. ”
McGowan told Ronan Farrow that, on the one hand, because of his young age at the time, and on the other hand, it may also be because of the customs of the times, and he realized many years later that what the man had done to himself was actually enough to define rape. "I confess that I was attracted to him at the time. So for a long time, I treated it as a sexual experience in my youth, until the story you wrote for The New Yorker about the Weinstein scandal came out. ”
On August 18, McGowan was interviewed by the American "Variety" magazine, further clarifying the reason why he chose to come out at this time. "It was just that I suddenly had this thought and thought it was time." She recalls, "I feel very sad to think of myself when I was 15 years old. He asked me to audition and took me home. After that incident, I interrupted my own acting job and didn't get back into the business until six years later. But it wasn't until the Harvey Weinstein scandal came to light that I began to think again about what I had done with Payne, and finally woke up to what it was all about. In fact, what he did was to seduce minors. The film he showed me was also my first exposure to. ”
Alexander Payne is a well-known Hollywood literary film director, born in February 1961 in Omaha, Nebraska, who has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director three times and the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay twice. In 2003, at the age of 42, he married Wu Shanzhuo, a Korean-American movie star who had starred in "A Glass of Wine Life", and parted ways three years later. He then married a Greek philologist and had a daughter. If McGowan is true, Payne was 27 at the time of this incident and should still be studying for a master's degree at the UCLA Film School. At this time, he had only made a short film, and it was still eight years before the release of his directorial debut "Citizen Ruth".
On the other hand, Rose McGowan debuted as an hourly model in Italy when she was less than ten years old due to her family environment. She then moved back to the United States with her parents and completed the legal guardianship dissolution process at the age of 15, becoming independent early, the year she now accuses Payne of having inappropriate sexual relations with him. After entering the film and television circle, she has starred in works such as "Playing the End of the Century", "Screaming", "Execution Room" and the American drama "The Curse of the Holy Virgin". In 2017, McGowan was selected by Time magazine as time magazine's person of the year in recognition of her daring to be a "whistleblower" and expose Weinstein's feats of sex scandal.
As of press time, Director Payne has remained silent and has not made any explanation of the allegation. Although McGowan said he had no intention of ruining people, even if Payne had a relationship with her out of mutual pleasure, according to California law, McGovern, who was 15 at the time, was not yet at the age of 18 legal age. Not to mention, now that McGowan's allegations have risen to the level of rape in the legal sense and the crime of seducing minors, it will not come as a surprise even if the local Public Prosecutor's Office of Los Angeles announces that it will intervene in the investigation, which will inevitably have a drastic impact on Alexander Payne's film career and personal reputation.
As planned, Payne is currently working on a new film called "Landscapers," which is shot by HBO and starring Oscar winner and British actress Olivia Coleman.
Editor-in-charge: Cheng Yu
Proofreader: Luan Meng