Park City, Utah, is a recurring setting in the account of Harvey Weinstein: during the Sundance Film Festival, a hotel-room episode involving Rose McGowan led to a settlement, and years later the city framed a confrontation over an investigation into Weinstein’s conduct. In both episodes, Park City is tied to the mechanisms of silence and the possibility of disclosure.

Sundance and the 1997 Settlement

The book places McGowan in Park City in 1997 and identifies a settlement. The reported agreement followed an episode in a hotel room during the Sundance Film Festival, after which Weinstein paid her $100,000. It specified that the payment was not an admission of wrongdoing, but was intended to avoid litigation and buy peace.

The agreement’s one-page form mattered as much as its payment: it contained no confidentiality clause. When McGowan later shared a copy with reporters, she could do so without facing potential legal or financial consequences. Though she declined to comment for their story, the document allowed the reporters to describe the payment and its stated purpose. Park City thus appears not only as the setting for the episode, but as part of the history behind a record that could eventually be made public.

Ajamie’s Encounter During the 2017 Festival

In January 2017, during Sundance, lawyer Tom Ajamie was staying with Lisa Bloom and friends at a condo he had rented in Park City. Ajamie had been hired by amfAR’s board to investigate a $600,000 financial transaction. He told Megan Twohey that Weinstein had obstructed his review, while David Boies had used nondisclosure agreements to muzzle board members; Ajamie’s inquiries had also brought him reports of sexual-harassment and abuse allegations.

After a party hosted by Weinstein and Jay-Z, Bloom returned saying Weinstein wanted to meet Ajamie. She brought Ajamie, reluctantly, to Weinstein’s suite at the Main and SKY hotel for breakfast. Weinstein first lashed out at him for investigating his past, then pleaded for a deal: Ajamie would sign a Boies-drafted nondisclosure agreement and keep what he had learned secret. Weinstein proposed friendship and future business, but Ajamie rejected an exchange of a deal for silence. He left convinced that the amfAR transaction was the least of what Weinstein had to hide.

A Setting for Disclosure and Pressure

Bloom had earlier told Ajamie she had never heard complaints about Weinstein’s treatment of women and asked him to keep her informed. At the hotel meeting she presented herself as neutral and mostly stayed quiet; afterward, as they left, she advised him to reconsider his position toward Weinstein. The change between her earlier response and this advice sharpened the uncertainty surrounding her role in the encounter.

Across the 1997 settlement and the 2017 breakfast, Park City gathers different forms of pressure around the same subject: money intended to avert litigation, a proposed agreement to restrict what an investigator could reveal, and records that reporters could use. The episodes are distinct, but together they make the city a recurring point in the book’s account of how Weinstein’s conduct was challenged—and how attempts to contain what others knew could themselves become part of the story.