Park City

Park City’s importance in the narrative comes from its association with the Sundance Film Festival, where the producer Harvey Weinstein had built influence in independent cinema. The city is both the setting for Rose McGowan’s account of an encounter with him in 1997 and a place where, two decades later, Weinstein joined a women’s march. These episodes bring together film-industry power, public image, and protest without making the setting itself an explanation for what happened.

Sundance and Weinstein’s Public Image

By 1997, Sundance was a prominent destination for independent film, and Weinstein had become a powerful figure there. He had acquired small films including Clerks and Reservoir Dogs, helping turn them into cultural touchstones. McGowan recalled arriving at the festival as a rising actress, with several new films screening and a television crew following her. One screening placed her near Weinstein; afterward, he asked to meet with her.

McGowan’s Account at the Lodge

McGowan told Jodi Kantor that she met Weinstein in his room at the Stein Eriksen Lodge Deer Valley in Park City. She recalled that their initial conversation concerned films and roles. She then said that, as she was leaving, Weinstein assaulted her. Within days, according to her account, he left a message at her home in Los Angeles proposing that she join a circle of actresses he described as his special friends. McGowan said she complained to her managers, hired a lawyer, and received a $100,000 settlement without an admission of wrongdoing. She said she donated the money to a rape crisis center.

A Later Scene of Protest

In January 2017, during the Sundance Film Festival, Weinstein joined the women’s march in Park City, among marchers wearing pink hats. His public profile included visible feminist credentials: he had donated to endow a professorship in Gloria Steinem’s name, and his company had distributed The Hunting Ground, a documentary about campus sexual assault. His presence at the march stands in sharp contrast to McGowan’s account of the earlier meeting in the same festival city. Park City thus recurs as a place where Weinstein’s public image and women’s challenges to his conduct occupy the same cultural landscape.