‘She Said’ reminds the people of the power of the press
Photo Courtesy of IMDB
Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey did what most journalists only aspire to do – prove that the pen is mightier than the sword. Their article exposing entertainment industry giant Harvey Weinstein’s abuse and sexual misconduct in 2017 made ripples; their exposé was credited as the launching pad for the #MeToo movement, earning Kantor and Twohey a Pulitzer Prize and giving the world “She Said” in book and movie form to chronicle how they worked their way up from hearing a tip on Weinstein to clicking publish.
The opening scene perfectly mirrored the lead of the original article: a young woman looking to succeed in the entertainment business, only to have found its dark underbelly as seen by her running away from a building, mascara messy and clothes barely thrown on, eyes filled with horror.
The writing duo faced a multitude of curveballs, both in their professional and personal spheres.
The movie opened with a heavily pregnant Twohey, portrayed by Carey Mulligan, interviewing a source and convincing them to go on the record for her investigation into then-President Donald Trump’s sexual misconduct. Later in the film, after the birth of her daughter, she shows signs of postpartum depression, confides in Kantor (Zoe Kazan) about it and asks for advice.
On the flip side, Kantor repeatedly runs into walls while attempting to get confirmed information, truly capturing the essence of the real struggle that journalists worldwide face. Struggling to get sources to go on the record, dealing with threatening phone calls from strangers and Weinstein’s far-reaching social connections attempting to keep him from consequences did not make this story easy to tell.
While the two women were working toward the same goal, their characters could not have been more starkly contrasted. Kantor is the one who went to interview as many potential victims as possible, traveling all the way to the West Coast and the United Kingdom in hopes of at least one person going on the record to inspire all the others.
Twohey, on the other hand, showed that fierce, New Yorker-esque “I-owe-you-nothing” attitude. In a scene where she, Kantor and their editor went out to a bar for lunch, some guy hit on them relentlessly, and after telling him to leave twice, Twohey hit the table and yelled, “Fuck you, get the fuck out of here!” When she apologized to her colleagues, Kantor grinned and told her not to.
No doubt that other aspiring journalists watched this movie and felt a sense of pride at the end of the film. The suspense was palpable when one of Kantor’s sources returned her call and said that she was willing to go on the record about her traumatic experiences. After letting this story nearly consume her and Twohey, and fact-checking and verifying every little detail, everyone told them that having someone’s name to attach to their article was the final piece of the puzzle. Twohey’s inspirational line to skeptical sources is one of the best in the movie: “I can’t change what happened to you in the past, but together we may be able to use your experience to help protect other people.”
At the end of the day, after their article went live in the New York Times, over 80 other women came forward to talk about Weinstein’s misconduct. All of that hard work culminated in a 23-year prison sentence for the disgraced producer, effective Feb. 2020.
“She Said” served as a powerful reminder of the power of journalism: the ability to uncover dirty secrets for the betterment of society.
