Austrian director Michael Haneke recently slammed the “Me Too” movement in an interview, calling it a “witch hunt.”
“This new puritanism colored by a hatred of men, arriving on the heels of the #MeToo movement, worries me,” the Oscar-nominated Haneke said.
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“As artists, we’re starting to be fearful since we’re faced with this crusade against any form of eroticism,” he later added, according to THR.
While the director does believe that anyone found guilty of abuse or rape should face consequences, he adds, “I find the hysteria and condemnations without any trial totally disgusting.”
Haneke placed blame on the media for “murdered lives and careers in the process” and then condemned the movement as “a witch hunt.”
Having been nominated for multiple Academy Awards, Haneke won for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 with his film Amour.
While Haneke’s comments will likely be met with more resistance than acceptance, there is one person who would potentially agree with him.
Liana Mendoza, Jeremy Piven’s girlfriend, also recently spoke out about the “Me Too” movement and how it is “ruining” her life.
TMZ cameras caught up to Mendoza, a comedian, and she sarcastically opened up about how the “Me Too” movement has made men afraid to hit on her.
She also joked about what she would do if a man ever exposed himself to her. She would start by saying, “Hey, I don’t like it,” and then running off.
In 2017, Mendoza’s boyfriend Jeremy Piven was accused of sexual assault by an actress who appeared on Entourage and the actor took a lie detector test to try and prove his innocence.
Piven vehemently denied the claims against him, and the results of the polygraph appear to reflect that he’s telling the truth, according to The Blast.
The goal of the test was “to determine if Mr. Piven had ever ‘grabbed’ or touched Ms. Arianne Bellamar, without consent or otherwise, on the buttocks and/or breast area, while on the set of Entourage and/or at the Playboy Mansion, approximately five years ago.”
Additionally, they were also trying to determine if Bellamar was ever even in Piven’s set-trailer, as she claimed she had been.
Piven was asked questions such as:
“Did you ever ‘grab’ and/or fondle Ms. Arieanne Bellamar’s breasts?”
“Did you ever ‘corner’ Ms. Bellamar in your trailer so that you could ‘grab’ her breasts and/or buttocks?”
“Did Ms. Bellamar ever enter your trailer on the set of Entourage?”
The testing documents reveal that he said “No” to each question and the results indicated that Piven showed “no reactions indicative of deception to any of the relevant questions.” Ultimately, Piven passed the lie detector test.
He also submitted to polygraph tests to determine if he lied about sexually harassing two other women that accused him, as well as a general test to determine if he has ever sexually harassed any woman.
In the case of those three tests, they all revealed the same results as the test about Bellamar. It should be noted, however, that lie detector tests do not hold up in a court of law.
