It might be the first of a series of confessions from associates of the disgraced producer Scott Rudin. Following the publication of stories in The Hollywood Reporter and Vulture detailing decades of office bullying, Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, screenwriter, and Star Trek: Picard showrunner, has published a 1,400 word mea culpa on Medium called “Apology of a Rudin Apologist.” It sheds light on what an “open secret” in Hollywood looks like.
Chabon says he collaborated with Rudin for 20 years, and while he never saw any of the “smashed hands” or people getting “pushed out of cars” as detailed in THR‘s report, he “knew enough.” He describes the EGOT-winner’s treatment of his staff as “a careful, even surgical contempt, like a torturer trained to cause injuries that leave no visible marks.” With a novelist’s eye he describes Rudin hurling a pencil at an assistant’s head “eraser end first.”
His essay includes mentions of Kevin Graham-Caso, a former Rudin assistant who later committed suicide. Graham-Caso’s twin brother David Graham-Caso has suggested that PTSD from working in Rudin’s office is partially responsible for his death. Chabon calls Graham-Caso “a sweetheart,” and regrets being unable to apologize to him directly. “Looking back through the emails he sent,” Chabon writes, “arranging my travel and phone meetings with his volatile and unpredictable boss, remembering his voice on the phone, I can see and hear him walking on eggshells, taking the absurdly deferential, almost Victorian tone Scott insisted his assistants take with ‘the talent.'”
Chabon further apologizes for not breaking with the producer until 2015 when he began “to demean and shit-talk my wife,” writer Ayelet Waldman.
Rudin produced the 2000 Curtis Hanson film Wonder Boys, based on Chabon’s second novel. The pair, however, have worked on many unrealized projects. Their relationship began in 1994 when Chabon pitched an original screenplay called The Gentleman Host, a romantic comedy set on a cruise ship. Rudin held the rights to Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book epic The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay before publication, and the two developed the screenplay for over a year. They also developed his novel The Yiddish Policeman’s Union for an adaptation by Joel and Ethan Coen that ultimately did not happen. Rudin also acquired the rights to Chabon’s 2012 novel Telegraph Avenue.
Chabon’s apology is one of only a few statements from A-list Rudin associates, joining Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, who are both scheduled to appear in The Music Man, a Rudin-produced powerhouse meant to recharge Broadway at the end of the pandemic. However the link to Chabon’s Medium post on Twitter had gracious replies from Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaurs writer Jason Carter Eaton (who “was there from 1994-1997“) and Love, Simon producer, Chris McEwen (a “former Rudinite“). Chabon tweeted responses to them both, and to others who shared personal connections.
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