Review: ‘She Said’ chronicles the scoop that fed a movement

Those old Hollywood newspaper flicks are great, but today’s journalists don’t run around newsrooms yelling “Get me rewrite!” Nor do they sprint across the room shouting “Stop the presses!” over the click-clack of teletype machines and manual typewriters. To wit: Just try not succumbing to goosebumps in “She Said,” the story of the New York Times’ initial Harvey Weinstein scoop, when the editor’s cursor finally hits “Publish.” Or not gasping aloud, which I heard myself doing. And it’s because of women like them — some famous actresses, but mostly young women trying to work in an industry they loved — that Weinstein sits in a Los Angeles courtroom this week, already serving a 23-year sentence in New York, and now facing seven more counts.. Women like Laura Madden, for example. Some 20 years later, the older Madden goes on record in the Times coverage, telling the journalists that Weinstein that day “took my voice away … just as I was about to start finding it.” “She Said,” starring Carey Mulligan as a quietly intense, driven Twohey and Zoe Kazan as a perkier, more exuberant Kantor, is largely faithful to the 2019 book, released two years after the story broke. The words of lawyer Lisa Bloom, whose Twitter bio describes her as fighting for victims of harassment and abuse, are revealed in a memo to Weinstein that Twohey obtained, asking to be retained by his team, telling him how to recast himself as the “hero” of the story, and suggesting how to discredit accusers like actress Rose McGowan.