Published On: Sat, Dec 23rd, 2017

Sexual Assault Allegations Against Max Landis Surface on Twitter

As Netflix’s Bright, written by Max Landis and directed by David Ayer, is being released with a massive marketing campaign, a number of people have come forward with allegations about Landis. Now, it’s true that these are allegations on Twitter, many of them second-hand, and I haven’t seen any stories yet from a publication with fact-checkers and vetting. So you’re certainly allowed to take those factors into consideration as you appraise the allegations. But there are a bunch of these, TMSers, and they all suggest a long-standing pattern of abusive behavior that’s an “open secret.”

Anna Akana, an actress who starred in Landis’s YouTube video, Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling, posted her accusation in response to a Netflix tweet promoting Bright.

Zoe Quinn also tweeted her own thread about Landis, writing that it “has been an open secret for so long” and that “more friends have accrued ‘Max Landis stories’”

Lindsey Romain also tweeted about “Lax Mandis,” a name for Max Landis commonly used on Twitter to avoid drawing his often-toxic attention, and said “it isn’t hard to find evidence of his predatory behavior if you go looking.”

Others seemed to be participating in the discussion, but did not use specific names, instead referring to a “famous director’s son” and the writer of “that big Netflix movie.” For example, Allie Goertz posted a follow-up to her November tweet about a “famous director’s son.” Neither of those tweets includes a specific name, so we can’t know for sure who it’s about. However, Akana responded to Goertz’s tweet by saying that she believed her. Goertz responded by thanking her and hoping that the stories of “other women I know who came forward” would soon be published.

Jake Weisman, one of the writers behind Comedy Central’s Corporate, also described the writer of “that big Netflix movie” as “one of the worst people alive,” but without reference to a specific crime or name. Writer Mike Drucker and actress-writer Siobhan Thompson then responded.

As I mentioned above, these are allegations on Twitter, not fact-checked news stories. And Landis has previously given some horrifically problematic interviews, which may have been the behavior to which many people were alluding. Either way, it’s deeply troubling stuff.

(Via Twitter and Nerd Stash; image: Gage Skidmore on Flickr)

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