What's the Catch

The criminal behavior of Harvey Weinstein was said to have been something of an open secret in Hollywood, ultimately dragged fully into the light by the courage of his victims and the reporting of Ronan Farrow. Weinstein is now in prison, while Farrow has published a book on the story, Catch and Kill.

I'm not quite sure what I expected to get out of reading this book, and yet it still somehow managed to be different than I expected. I suppose I was expecting a more detailed accounting of Weinstein's crimes, as told by the women he victimized. And this is part of the book... but only part, and I suppose not as big a part as I thought it might be. As I read, I felt myself wondering if perhaps the stories of Rose McGowan, Rosanna Arquette, Asia Argento, and so many more (too many more) were being subsumed too much in the story of a dogged reporter working to break a big new story.

In retrospect, the title Catch and Kill was really the not-subtle clue as to the nature of this story. This book is the story of the system that empowers harassment and assault by men like Weinstein. "Catch and Kill" is the policy of "catching" reports before they go public and "killing" those stories. If you read this book for that exposé, you'll get what you're expecting. Read it for the victim's stories, as I think I probably was? Well, Ronan Farrow focused mainly on that in his original New Yorker reporting and its follow-ups. This book seems to assume the reader already has some degree of familiarity there.

Similarly, the book assumes you already know a fair amount about Farrow's own personal life and family history. And so it's in the latter half of the book, when covering material he doesn't assume you have great knowledge of, that his writing is most compelling. Weinstein was just one rapist protected by power, and exposing him quickly led to the exposure of others. In particular, the book covers Matt Lauer in detail, and how a similar "Catch and Kill" culture at NBC nearly shut down Farrow's attempt to report the Weinstein story. His writing here on Lauer is especially visceral, the assaults truly horrific and upsetting. And perhaps because Farrow has said less about this subject before (as opposed to Weinstein), he gives more space to the stories of the victims that I was expecting all along.

It may just be that the very long form like this is not Ronan Farrow's forte; television and magazine journalism is the core of his career, and rely on a very different set of skills. There are aspects of Catch and Kill I found engaging, but I found the whole a bit disjointed, and too cursory in spots. I'd call it a C+ overall.