As Broadway reopens, its major producer has been banished perhaps for the good, perhaps permanently.
But also, perhaps, not.
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People are really worried about me, one longtime Rudin collaborator told me rather breezily this summer.
Are you going to be okay?
Youre so closely linked to Scott.
Pardon my French: Go fuck yourself, he said.
Scott didnt produceRentorA Chorus LineorHamilton.The world would survive without him.
Now, if you know where to look, Rudins absence is conspicuous.
Hes a nonentity in rights auctions for hot new novels.
For the first time in forever, stages long monopolized by Rudin are booked with shows from other impresarios.
And yet some of these arguments sound incomplete.
In hindsight, step back from active participation is endlessly interpretable.
He retains a financial stake in some of his Broadway productions.
A phantom Rudin looms in countless ways.
How are they going to make their numbers?
I dont see it.
I dont see another Scott out there.
A lot of people in Hollywood, and some on Broadway, think his return is inevitable.
Im not sure why this should be different.
People need to be able to get better and do better and get back to their lives.
Theres no religion that doesnt have forgiveness.
Someonehad to be Scott Rudins first assistant.
An administrative employees son recalls, My mother was setting up phones, and Scott came in multiple times.
She was like, Theres no one here; Im unimportant.
Hed say, Take my resume.
He got a job there.
Casting would both reward and encourage a lack of mercy.
Late one August day, hearing Rudin at the door, Joseph rushed to turn off the television.
Rudin beelined over and felt the back of it.
You were watching TV, he said.
Joseph noted that it was after five; the workday was over.
I would say youve been watching for three hours, Rudin said.
Thats when I knew he had a temper, Joseph says.
Joseph saw more evidence of it two years later when he joined Rudin on a visit to his parents.
His father said, Its a piece of garbage, Joseph recalls.
Scott said, Thats how you talk to your son?!
You could have bullshitted and said you liked it!
Get the fuck out of my room!
Rudin says the incident never happened.
Once, he threw a glass of tomato juice at Rudin, hitting the wall behind him.
Scott said, Youre crazy.
Youre out of your mind.
You couldnt have had a better piece of man power at the time, Gordon says.
Not getting extra calories and comfort food doesnt help.
Working for Diller doesnt help.
Proving yourself doesnt help.
1 love was always the theater, no secret about that, Gordon says.
That was his ultimate goal.
Rudins unstoppable rise seemed to escalate his rages.
I want you to jump out a window and kill yourself!
I want to murder you!
Its like having a debate with a wolf or a bear.
Inevitably, people who worked with Rudin wondered how he had gotten that way.
He wasnt sure where his father currently worked.
Rudin didnt seem to see what the problem was.
He said it himself, recalls Robert Fox, who would later co-produce several films and plays with Rudin.
When people come to work for me, they know what to expect.
I honestly dont think he thought it was a terrible thing.
It was part of his modus operandi.
I have never physically assaulted or threatened to physically assault anyone, he wrote.
Anger and frustration is being conflated with violence.
I have made no secret and have admitted that I have a temper and yelled at assistants.
I include myself in this perhaps more strongly even than I would the rest of the team.
Rudins appeal tocreative people was complex.
At the same time, his personal behavior wasnt even an open secret, as one ex-assistant says.
But as far as investors and studio chiefs were concerned, Rudin was an extraordinary performer.
The collateral damage was compartmentalized as the cost of doing business.
He started dating John Barlow, a theatrical publicist he would eventually marry.
He occasionally paid as much as $100,000 a year and expected them to work crazy hours.
Perhaps for this reason, his nonstop conflict with workers seemed to take on greater intensity.
I will personally take a car from Queens back to the office and pull your head off your shoulders.
Fuck you where you breathe.
But most simply suffered.
By instinct or design, Rudin was an almost clinical practitioner of intermittent reinforcement.
(Rudin disputes this account.)
Rudin liked to have an audience for his cruelties, and his aggression was hardly confined to underlings.
He would write demeaning emails to colleagues at other companies and bcc dozens of others.
He muted her to say, I need a pen, tape, and paper.
In 2005,The Wall Street Journalpublishedan article about his behavior headlined BOSS-ZILLA!
Scottproducedthat article, an assistant says.
He was proud of it.
(Rudin denies this.)
Creative elites seemed not to care about this behavior.
Top novelists found Rudin stimulating.
On working with him, Michael Chabon says, I began to learn how to write a screenplay.
He has very good instincts about storytelling.
Thats a couple days: Lets go line by line.
Thats not something most people can do with an Aaron Sorkin, but Rudin could.
I think his core competency is competency, says a writer who collaborated with Rudin.
Hes genuinely excited by talent, the collaborator says.
He likes writers, which a lot of people dont.
The problem is, if Scott likes you or is interested in you, he wants to own you.
Rudin says by email, Im possessive of everything I think is good.
Rudin was considered smoother, smarter, and more knowledgeable than Weinstein, who was an instinctual animal.
As someone who has dealt with both men puts it, Scott reads books.
I dont think Harvey owns one.
Rudin sent a six-foot box of cigarettes to Weinstein, who had quit smoking.
And then, after all this, Scott didnt come to the Academy Awards, the Paramount executive recalls.
He couldnt bear to sit in the audience and lose.
Rudins glee at humiliating others, it appeared, was married to a phobia of being humiliated.
AfterThe Hours,anyone in the publishing world with a challenging book would give it to Rudin.
Paramount let Rudins deal expire in 2005.
The degree of difficulty on the producing side is so high.
Those movies just wouldnt have been able to be made without someone like him.
These are things people dont understand.
There things went as they always did with Rudin: well, and then not well.
He discovered HBO was a different sort of corporate beast from the Hollywood studios.
(Rudin says he asked to be let out of it.)
For his part, Rudin remained either oblivious or indifferent to his own motivations.
I was once a fairly angry person, he toldThe Hollywood Reporteraround that time.
I dont think I am now.
It was always higher up the brain stem than The Roundabouts going to doBye Bye Birdiewith John Stamos.
That was obviously for the proles, says a former theater critic.
Rudin was for the next tier up the Upper East Side theatergoer who wants to feel smart.
He was smart about how to burnish something.
He closely oversaw the design of print ads and shock-and-awed Broadway with their number, size, and placement.
The people running that industry are mainly dilettantes at this point.
For a time, Rudins dual roles in Hollywood and on Broadway amplified his power.
Thats not slimy or smarmy; thats great producing.
Its why these people are loyal to him, until something goes wrong.
As it often did.
He lorded over the Theater Districts precious real estate.
TheTimeswas the focus of much of his attention.
Its really about his ego.
But unlike in Hollywood, on Broadway he was too powerful simply to never work with again.
Everyone says Im done, then he lures you back, says one such codependent figure.
He wouldnt invite co-producers to take part in ad meetings.
He was known for especially stringent non-disparagement language in his investor agreements.
Capitalized at just $16 million, in its first 18 months it grossed $128 million.
Some investors considered auditing Rudins books.
He shuttered his Times Square offices on March 12, 2020, and closed them altogether that July.
In August, he took over a conference room in Dillers IAC Building.
Maybe it was the decline of Rudins Hollywood relevance.
He told the WashingtonPostthat he was taking steps I should have taken years ago to address this behavior.
The articles prompted a reckoning throughout Rudins orbit.
I was like, Isnt this guy bored? )
Others felt Rudins work ought to be considered tainted.
Theyre the wokest of the woke.
The studio that brought youMinariandMoonlighthas five movies in production with a fucking monster?
You hired someone whos a well-documented psychopath?
Stars faced the same questions.
Part of Scotts genius is he was hiding in plain sight, an award-winning movie producer says.
No one can clutch their pearls.
Hugh Jackman cant say, I had no idea.
Once the initial heat faded, though, Broadways response felt tepid and tentative.
Rudin was allowed to leave on his own terms, resigning from the Broadway League instead of being ejected.
The only two Rudin collaborators to emphatically call him out have been Tavi Gevinson and Michael Chabon.
He remains somewhere between unemployable and impossible to write off.
To get a movie funded, you need stars, and stars wilt under the glare of adverse Twitter.
What seems certain is that Rudin will need to convince people hes truly sorry and has changed.
But I dont think he will.
Theres a sadness with him and Harvey.
Theyre both brilliant men, but people who act in this way are walking around with unresolved trauma.
Or maybe Rudin will take his own advice.
The smartest thing you might know is when its over.
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