THB #798: Gossip Never Knows

This was originally part of a regular Oscar “what’s up?” piece. But as I wrote about it, it not only got long, it felt really unfair to make such a big part of a general Oscar piece. So I am separating it out and letting it have its own space.

So…

It doesn’t take much to trigger the media when Oscar is upping the value of click bait. Tatiana Siegel, who has segued from PenskeVille to MurdochVille did her classic shit-stirring routine on Marty Supreme. Zzzzzz…

It is a retread of Siegel’s attempt to muckrake in 2023 in one of the Penske trades that no one really gave a shit about. It was centered on a then-35-year-old pig man named Sebastian Bear-McClard, whose greatest accomplishment in life seems to be sex with (and eventually marriage to) the constantly semi-nude Emily Ratajkowski, was a producer with The Safdie Bros on the Rob Pattinson-starring movie, Good Time.

Bear-McClard brought the 17-year-old - the age of legal consent in New York, though also still legally a minor - into the film to do a nude scene. And when she got to the set, naked, she didn’t get to romp on camera with Naked Rob, as she was hoping, but a non-actor criminal named Michael Stathis who called himself “Buddy,” who pulled down his pants and at some point whispered, “Can I stick it in?”

She said, “no.” He did not stick it in.

But Sebastian Bear-McClard would “stick it in” this young woman in real life soon after and for, Siegel reported, 2 years.

Later, a different 18-year-old went back to Bear-McClard and Ratajkowski’s marital apartment, where he “stuck it in,” allegedly without a condom… we assume she preferred he use one. Siegel’s reporting suggest that the sex continued, but not long enough to keep her from making anonymous accusations against this idiot, Bear-McClard, for a while, as he used the production of Uncut Gems to score more sex with. more young women.

The complaints about Bear-McClard’s specific and general lascivious behaviors piled up and he was fired by The Safdies. It took Ratajkowski a bit longer to figure it out and she eventually filed for divorce, finalizing it last summer (2025) after a couple years of wrangling.

CUT TO: A few weeks ago. Marty Supreme and Josh Safdie have been Oscar nominated. The Murdochs are releasing a new daily tabloid shitpile on Los Angeles and Tatiana is there, ready to recycle a story no one really cared about with a new angle that would get media attention in the Oscar cycle.

Tatiana’s new take was this event, which she had originally tabloided up in 2023 was the unspoken reason why Josh and brother Benny had made films separately in the last year.

The rewrite of the original story had some new twists. Siegel, who in the Variety piece somehow avoided the detail that the 17-year-old had been hired not only to be naked but to simulate sex on camera, now acknowledged it. But she suggests - illogically - that the 30-year-old non-actor/recently-released-convict, Michael Stathis aka Buddy Duress, pulled down his pants like it was some kind of surprise… in the nude scene with simulated sex. Was he meant to be clothed while the young woman was naked through the entire scene?

Tatiana repeats that this non-actor whispered, “Can I stick it in?” and did not try to further.

But Siegel has bigger fish to fry…

“Any director who had seen that should have yelled ‘Cut!’ and stopped the scene, but Josh let it continue,” says an on-set source who noted that Josh, and not Benny, was the de facto commander on set.

Three sources say Josh, who is now vying for this year’s best director Oscar, became aware of the girl’s age on the day of production, shortly after the scene shot, as the traumatized girl spiraled. Josh declined comment.

So an unnamed source aggressively makes a judgement about what “should” have happened. What is it based on? Is there an assumption that Josh heard the whisper? Has this person ever worked with a male actor in a sex scene a movie?

Because I have… not a great actor, but the star of the movie and a solid Hollywood B-lister, who kept trying to, literally, get his fingers into the panties of his veteran actress co-star in a sex scene that I had been rehired on the film to “fix” and which was written as a seduction in which we didn’t know which character could be trusted.

The scene was rewritten on set because of what he thought was sexy and because he didn’t want to take off his close… which made the sequence look like a date rape. She was a pro trying to get through a scene with an asshole actor. As the writer, I was not in control at that point. I just watched and pulled the producer away to quit the film for the second time.

This wasn’t The Postman Always Rings Twice. It was not written or suggested that he have any contact with her genitals, outside or inside her costume. She wasn’t really meant to lose her skirt in the first part of the sequence… but off they went. She had her panties on the entire time, both in reality and as suggested on camera. But this asshole, who whined about his marriage and the wife who dominated him every time he had a chance, told many people on the set that he was really wanting to get his fingers inside and ultimately get more.

This same pathetic fool also played dailies - that he shouldn’t have had - of nudity in the film that he played for people in his trailer. And I was told by another director he worked with on another movie that he regularly asked that the masturbate together in the trailer before big scenes. Sick fuck.

No one story is every story. But don’t think for a second that male stars doing sex scenes are not regularly trying to (or succeeding in) find(ing) their way to “stick it in,” though mostly off set. I have heard the stories over and over and over again from people on different layers of the film food chain.

This does not make every man or every actor a pig. This kind of behavior is not viable on most studio-level sets, where the stakes are different and more people are paying attention. And this does not mean that there are not actresses who are game or more than game. It certainly doesn’t excuse the behaviors of Bear-McClard or, it seems, this guy Michael Stathis, who for the record, has since died of an overdose, presumably having nothing to do with these events.

But the thing is, Tatiana’s target may have been finding a #MeToo story in 2023. This time, she was hunting Safdies.

The Safdies removed the scene sometime before the A24 film made its splashy world premiere at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Sources close to them insist that the scene was excised “for creative reasons.” But the repercussions of that incident didn’t surface until 2022, when their former producing partner, Sebastian “Sebo” Bear-McClard, became locked in a bitter divorce with actress Emily Ratajkowski, threatening to expose the “Good Time” dirty laundry.

Uh… what?

Siegel has ZERO basis for claiming that the sequence was cut for any reason other than creative reasons. But she smarmies it up. She acknowledges that there was no issue at all about what happened on set until 5 years later. But… oooooooooo…

And again, without condoning the behavior… a young woman who was of age on that set in 2016 chose to sign on to do a nude scene with simulated sex and the idiot who was in the scene with her asked an inappropriate - but not all that unusual aside from being without any smoothness - question while they were both naked. If he could be heard by the audio guy and the footage and gross proposal was sent to the New York DA that very day, there was nothing remotely legally actionable happening.

Did Benny object more vociferously than Josh? Maybe. We only have the word of a few anonymous people willing to gossip about how the sausage was made on this film (avoid the pun) and their personal opinions about how Benny felt or feels.

The last project the Safdie Bros had planned as a paired directing show was, Siegel reports, was percolating at Netflix in 2023… at least 6 years after this incident on the set of Good Time.

Then, in March 2023, I reported for Variety on the behind-the-scenes drama of Ratajkowski’s split from Bear-McClard, which included some of the details from the “Good Time” incident including the girl’s age. It was the final straw for Benny, who swiftly ended his creative partnership with his brother, insiders say.

OHHHHH!!!! Now I get it. Tatiana Siegel broke up the Safdie Bros. She is so powerful! She is so special!

It was the final straw!

Regardless, both will continue to work with Hollywood’s A-list. But some of Josh’s longtime associates are asking, At what cost?

Oh, please!!! Whoever is feeding her this while also claiming to be in Josh’s inner circle is certainly a back-stabbing, shit-talking asshole… even if they are right. But being a back-stabbing, shit-talking asshole is not a good indicator that they should be trusted about anything.

… in 2017, they allegedly raised eyebrows when they kept a child actor on a rooftop past 1 a.m. and long after the allowable eight hours. One on-set source says he was horrified by Josh’s lack of regard for the child, who cried and asked to go home because he was tired.

Honestly… are you f-ing kidding me?

I’m not calling it good behavior, but Siegel doesn’t even establish that this was a union shoot. And if it wasn’t - which seems likely - I feel bad for the kid, but I bet he/she is happy he/she did it 8 years ago.

Apparently awards voters were more inclined to reward his risky style.

Seriously… screw off with that crap. They like the movie. No one is “rewarding his risky style.”

And for the record, I am not the biggest fan of The Smashing Machine, but Benny was trying something else that was very risky. He made a movie with The Rock playing a large man who was emotionally staggered and a bit dumb. He made a movie with a love story that ended going into the 3rd act. Big swings in this movie. It didn’t hit. But it was no less risky than Josh’s film. And like Josh’s film, no other director would have done what he did with that material… for better or worse, depending on the moment.

Josh and Benny have a unique voice together and unique voices separately. They spent nearly a decade working to become directors of note before Daddy Longlegs established them via Cannes and Sundance and distribution from IFC. They also made some documentaries.

And then, they hit bigger with Heaven Knows What… which by the way, was co-written by its female lead, Arielle Holmes (also known for Andrea Arnold’s great American Honey) and co-starred Michael Stathis, who Siegel makes sound like some unknown criminal who wandered out of Riker’s Island onto the Good Time set.

I have said before, I believe that Marty Supreme is really about Josh and the rough and relentless early days of becoming a professional movie director. Blinders on and moving forward. The film’s story takes Marty through all the up and downs of reaching the success he is obsessed with over a short period of time. And when he gets there… he is no longer free to do whatever comes to him. His success is not completely what he dreamed of, but he is on to the next dream.

I don’t know what is going on between Josh and Benny. I like them both. I respect both of their talents. They are both, in spite of having a very high profile, really at the beginning of their journeys.

Some not-great things happened on some of their sets on the way up. This is not rare. The Safdies were labeled “mumblecore” in the early days and the mumblecore universe was, mostly happily, pretty well-laden with shared romances. But the line between real life and fiction… the line between working relationships and real relationships… often got very, very blurry. My point is not to minimize, but to recognize the nature of youth and obsession.

Let’s not even get started with the decades-long reputation of Abel Ferrara, a co-star in Marty Supreme… and who the hell knows what is true or not?

If it bothers you a lot, don’t see their movies… don’t vote for them… whatever. But know the facts and don’t just get behind the most extreme log line from an attack piece whose primary intention is to get intention for a new gossip rag from Murdoch.

I trust Josh Safdie to be a straight-player a lot more than I trust Tatiana Siegel to put the facts ahead of the juice. It doesn’t mean I think he is flawless or a religiously pure soul.

I wouldn’t want my child or family member on a movie set at 17 getting naked for a sex scene. I can’t say that there is an age that would make that comfortable to me. Hell, I am deeply thankful to Team Industry for keeping Kiernan Shipka from exposing any intimate body parts in her ménage à trois scene this season because I met her when she was 12 and seeing her as a naked adult would freak me out.

But I truly HATE oversimplification, forcing smoke into an imaginary fire… especially when there is a little smoke. I don’t want to rationalize the smoke. It’s not okay. But we have all lived through a lot of “not okay.”

And I am absolutely not okay with a writer taking a couple anonymous sources, years later, claiming to know what came between brothers… if ANYTHING came between the brothers. We don’t know. They haven’t said.

Years ago, for Heaven Knows What, I sat with the guys and when I posted, YouTube didn’t allow me enough characters, so I shortened “Benny” to “Ben.” The phone rang within the hour. “It’s Benny!” (Turns out, I never changed it. Yipes!) These guys are very self-aware. Very connected to how they are seen. For years, they have been their best marketing opportunities as they have built their career(s).

If the BAD line is closer for you than for me, so be it. I won’t fight you. You should feel as you feel. But I have seem the tweets and Tik Toks about how “Buddy” tried to rape the 17-year-old on set. But that is not what the story says. Be careful when you judge. Read carefully. Have an opinion. As long as you actually know what you can.

Until tomorrow…