Movie Academy Ousts Harvey Weinstein; Wildfires Force More Evacuations in California
NATALIE ALLEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hollywood elites have their say about Harvey Weinstein. He's been expelled from the powerful group that presents the Academy Awards.</s>CYRIL VANIER, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Plus, the rising death toll and more evacuations. Is there any relief in sight for the thousands dealing with the wildfires in northern California?</s>ALLEN: And in the battle for Raqqa, U.S.-led coalition forces say they are eroding the ISIS stronghold in Syria.</s>VANIER: Thanks for joining us, everyone. Pleasure to have you with us. I'm Cyril Vanier.</s>ALLEN: And I'm Natalie Allen. It's 5:00 a.m. here on the U.S. East Coast. And as we'd like to say, it's primetime somewhere in the world. From CNN Word Headquarters, NEWSROOM starts right now.</s>VANIER: Harvey Weinstein's fall from grace continues. The movie mogul has now been kicked out of the film industry's most elite group. That's the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, best known for hosting the Oscars. The Academy says the allegations against Weinstein caused him to lose the respect of his colleagues.</s>ALLEN: Weinstein has already been fired from his namesake company amid dozens of allegations of sexual misconduct for decades. He was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood and now, increasingly a pariah. Our Brian Stelter takes a look at the Motion Picture Academy's decision and what it means to the industry as a whole.</s>BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Harvey Weinstein scandal has been profoundly embarrassing, not just for the Weinstein Company, but also for Hollywood writ large. So, on Saturday, we saw the representatives of the Hollywood elite make a bold statement, expelling Harvey Weinstein. Now, the Academy is made up of thousands of Hollywood workers, both stars, but also behind the scenes workers, producers, et cetera, et cetera. And the board of governors, a group of 54 representatives of all of those different parts of the industry, met on Saturday to make this decision. The board includes huge household names like Steven Spielberg, Whoopi Goldberg, but also a lot of behind the scenes people, representing makeup artists, casting directors, producers, executives, et cetera. The Academy's rules require a two-third vote of the board in order to expel Harvey Weinstein, something that's never done in association with a scandal like this before. And according to the Academy, there was well in excess of the two-thirds needed to make the decision. Here is a portion of what the Academy said in a statement. It explained the decision by saying that this was meant to send a message that the era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over. That was striking to me because it essentially acknowledges there are very embarrassing episodes in Hollywood's past. The sexually predatory behavior that's alleged by Harvey Weinstein has also been something known in the history of Hollywood, this is something that dates back to the dawn of the movie age. But you can feel that the culture is changing in the United States, that sexual harassment and assault, that these kinds of allegations are being taken more seriously and the women who come forward to make them are being respected, being supported, in a way that wasn't even true 10 years ago. So, the Academy trying to be on the right side of history at this point, and after this decision, hours later, we still haven't heard a word from Harvey Weinstein. Brian Stelter, CNN, New York.</s>VANIER: Let's get an insider's perspective on this. With us now is Sandro Monetti. He's a journalist and a committee chair of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He's based in Los Angeles. Is there any hypocrisy in today's decision, based just -- I ask the question based on the argument we've heard a lot over the last few days, that this was -- his behavior was an open secret in Hollywood, within the industry, and there must have been people not just within his company, but throughout the industry, that must have known about his behavior?</s>SANDRO MONETTI, BAFTA LOS ANGELES COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Yes, of course. It was an open secret, but what other decision could they take? Imagine if they decided not to suspend Harvey Weinstein. I'm sure they would have been mass resignations from memberships, condemnation from women's rights groups, and they decided that the time was right. Yes, Hollywood has put up with this long enough. And the Academy, they sit in judgment of professional excellence. They never sat before in judgment of professional behavior. But someone has got to take a stand. And it might as well be them who does it, because the casting coach has been around since the days of silent movies. It's time to throw it in the garbage and hopefully, this decision is the first step towards that long overdue step.</s>VANIER: It's interesting. I want to seize on something you just said. You said they never sat in judgment of behavior outside of the actual field -- professional field of cinema. But they have been faced with scandals before, if you think of Mel Gibson, think perhaps most famously, most notoriously of Roman Polanski in the '70s, who fled the U.S. to avoid legal consequences of a sex case involving a 13-year-old. Is this a sign of changing times?</s>MONETTI: Well, yes, Bill Cosby is also a member of the Academy. But until this decision, the only person ever publicly expelled by the Academy was actor Carmine Caridi in 2004 for the offense of piracy of his "for your consideration" screener DVDs. So, it's not only been about breaking --</s>VANIER: Not the same league.</s>MONETTI: Not the same league. Before, it's about breaking the rules of the Academy. And it's actually very difficult when you look at the bylaws to get expelled from the Academy. You need over two-thirds of the board of governors to make that decision. There's 54 members of the board of governors. They met on the seventh floor of the Academy office in Beverly Hills. And my understanding is far more than two- thirds were in favor of kicking out Harvey Weinstein. And so, yes, finally, they have decided to take a moral stand rather than just a professional one and draw a line in the sand and I think all of this -- that knew this was an open secret are saying about time. Harvey wants a second chance. No, they told him, go away, and don't come back.</s>VANIER: Sandro, thank you for coming on the show.</s>MONETTI: Thank you.</s>ALLEN: Kim Masters is editor at large for "The Hollywood Reporter". She says even with the academy's groundbreaking decision to kick Weinstein out, it will take more work than that to change things in Hollywood.</s>KIM MASTERS, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: I think we're in a moment now where things will change to a degree for a while. I'm not sure we're looking at permanent change. The problem we have is that Hollywood power is still concentrated very much in the hands of white men. And the statistics barely budge. There are very few women who get great roles from the studios in front of the camera, few behind the camera, few in the executive suites. I think there is one studio now, FOX, that's headed by a woman and even she has a male boss. So, women are underrepresented. The power is completely out of balance. I -- we just saw the head of Amazon studios suspended late last week because a woman came forward and talked about some harassment, but if somebody is truly on their game, this has always been true in Hollywood, it's very hard to take them down. Harvey had been a bit off his game in recent years, his company had struggled a bit. He hadn't quite had the same golden touch. He was vulnerable and I don't think that's an accident that this happened now.</s>ALLEN: Weinstein for his part has denied through his representative that any nonconsensual sex took place, but he is in rehab.</s>VANIER: Let's talk about the wildfires now raging through Northern California. California's governor is calling those blazes, one of the worst tragedies his state has ever faced. Thirty-nine people have died since the flames erupted last week near California's famed wine country. And on Saturday, several thousand more people had to leave their homes because of a new inferno.</s>ALLEN: Well, firefighters continue to work around the clock and the weather might finally be shifting in their favor. CNN's Miguel Marquez has more about what they have been up against.</s>MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: After a very long hard week of trying to get ahold of this fire, this may be the last of it. The winds have really come down and three fires here in Sonoma have come together. And you can see fire crews from the air and the ground are working this thing very hard. They have been doing it for the last eight or 10 hours, just pouring bucket after bucket of water on these fires. This is up over Ledson Winery on Highway 12 in Sonoma, just right down in the middle of the valley. And this is the sort of stuff they have been doing all day, moving into the hot spots, like you have here, and then dumping those 300 gallon buckets of water on the fire, trying to keep it from spreading anymore. If the wind cooperates, which they think it may from now forward, they believe they can get a hold of these fires. And there goes that helicopter dumping that 300 gallons of water. If you look further south, you see can there's yet another fire down there, that's close to the town of Sonoma. This is what firefighters are dealing with, these very big plumes, these very big fires, dotted throughout this absolutely gorgeous area of California. But now, the weather seems to be cooperating. The winds have come down. It is still warm, but it's not hot, that humidity is also very, very low. But there is rain in the forecast. Miguel Marquez, CNN, Sonoma County, California.</s>VANIER: And first responders have been working nonstop for almost a week and they're just exhausted by now. When they need to rest, they can nap in tents right here at the Sonoma County fair grounds. The volunteers are also giving them free massages and chiropractic treatments.</s>ALLEN: Yes, people have been pitching in to help neighbor and help firefighters and just a disaster.</s>DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well-deserved.</s>ALLEN: Absolutely, Derek. And as you were saying, even though they're going to get rain, it's not going to be that soon.</s>DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: We have to be patient. We have to wait until Thursday to Friday to see any real rainfall across northern and central California. But we'll take what we can get, right? Hey, listen, there's still 16 million residents that are under a red flag warning. Remember, that's the National Weather Service's distinction for a high fire danger. But we're starting to shed those away as Sunday morning progresses here locally. Across northern and central portions, Sierra Nevada mountain range, the coastal range, just outside of San Francisco, that expires at 8:00 a.m. this morning. Let's go south, near Los Angeles. This is Ventura, Santa Monica, and the greater L.A. region. This coastal area does have a red flag warning that's going to persist through the course of the day on Sunday. That's because winds continue to remain offshore, and that down sloping component to the wind dries out the air and also allows for temperatures to skyrocket as well. That's why we have our critical fire danger for the day today. But notice across northern and central California, that has been removed. Thank goodness, right? What's at play here? Well, we got the high pressure that's in control of the weather. So, that's allowing for a calming of the winds across California, at least in the northern and central parts. But also the relative humidity started to nudge back up, ever so slightly. The chance of rain, however, not until Thursday and Friday as I mentioned before. But this is also what we like to see. Check that out -- no real wind concerns going forward, there simply aren't any weather systems in the vicinity. Let's switch gears, talk about the tropics because this is our other big story in the CNN Weather Center. Hurricane Ophelia. The latest 5:00 a.m. advisory from the National Hurricane Center has notched this down, just a few kilometers per hour, weakening it somewhat to a category 2, but still a powerful storm system. It's finalizing this transition to extra tropical or post-tropical cyclone. But that's some of the minutia details that meteorologists use, some of the wording we use to say it is moving over colder waters, losing its characteristics of a tropical storm. And but it's still going to pack quite a punch as it reaches Ireland, as well as the United Kingdom. Let's time this out. We can't forget about the Iberian Peninsula. Over the next hours, the coast of Portugal, extreme northwestern sections of Spain, you will have tropical storm force winds as we head into the overnight period and early Monday morning. That's where we look towards the southern coastal areas of Ireland, southwestern Wales and into England for tropical storm force winds. But then that picks up. Conditions deteriorate and hurricane force sustained winds expected across the coastal areas of Ireland, look at Scotland, as well as basically all of the United Kingdom before the system exits by Tuesday morning. And this is such a fast-moving storm system that flooding isn't really a major concern, the rainfall will really be confined to the offshore areas, maybe 75 millimeters across coastal areas of Ireland, but that's about it. The threats here though, disruptions in travel, some structural damage, and power outages as well, as downed power lines certainly a possibility.</s>ALLEN: Something to watch. All right. Derek, thank you.</s>VAN DAM: All right.</s>ALLEN: Coming up here, ISIS may be close to losing its de facto capital. We'll have the latest on the fight for Raqqah in a live report ahead.</s>VANIER: Plus, U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico struggling three weeks after Hurricane Maria. CNN discovered some residents are even turning to a hazardous waste site for water.