All images courtesy of Abramorama
E. Jean Carroll in a still from the new documentary Ask E. Jean
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Documentary Ask E. Jean Explores What It Takes to Beat Donald Trump
by Steve Desroches
As a columnist and television show host, E. Jean Carroll gave advice to thousands of women. And it would be thousands of women who ended up guiding Carroll to make one of the most consequential decisions of her life—to take on Donald Trump. For years, she told women to stand up to sexual harassment and to file charges against men who committed acts of violence, and to never, ever structure their lives around men. But she herself was struggling with her own trauma, having a secret that she’d been keeping largely private for years. When the #MeToo movement began to grow in size and scope, with tens of thousands of women sharing stories of sexual harassment and assault, Carroll felt emboldened to share her own experience, revealing that Donald Trump raped her at New York department store, Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s.
In the new documentary Ask E. Jean by filmmaker Ivy Meeropol, who will attend a special screening this Tuesday at Waters Edge Cinema, offers a complete portrait of a woman who has lived a fascinating and compelling life and who found her own deep-seated power to stand up for herself, and women in general, taking on one of, if not the most powerful men in the world…and winning. She sued him twice in civil court for defamation and battery, winning a total of $83 million in damages, of which the first judgement of $5 million was recently paid after the United States Supreme Court refused to overturn the judgement of the lower courts. Just like the 2020 Presidential Election, Trump lost. And the decisions that came from two separate trials mark the only time Trump has ever been brought to justice for the accusations of sexual abuse that have consistently made throughout his life. A court isn’t needed to determine whether or not he harasses women, as he does that in public and in real time, beyond just the Access Hollywood tape.
Meeropol captures an important, and at times even entertaining story, of a woman who ultimately lived up to her own bravada by telling the truth. While she did that in court, she initially had no interest in doing so on film. “She was not interested,” says Meeropol. “She said, ‘I would rather eat my shoe.’”
Meeropol was one of many documentarians and journalists who reached out to Carroll, a celebrated figure of journalism herself with a longtime advice column “Ask E. Jean,” as well as a popular 1990s television show of the same name. Carroll was a pioneer of gonzo journalism, being a close friend of Hunter S. Thompson, mastering a personality-based form of narrative writing. With bylines in Vanity Fair, New York magazine, Playboy, Esquire, Outside, and Elle (who fired her in 2020 shortly after she wrote about Trump, though they claim it was unrelated), she became particularly famous in New York City, and its noted in the film that when she and Trump met that day in Bergdorf Goodman, he stopped her as she was more famous than he was at the time. For someone who his whole life longed to be accepted into Manhattan society, but remained a joke with a bad comb-over, he was a bit starstruck by this giant of journalism and New York City society.
It may very well be Carroll’s eye for good journalism that landed Meeropol one of the most sought-after stories. Beginning her career in print journalism, Meeropol shifted to documentary filmmaking in 2004 with Heir to an Execution, an exploration of her family’s legacy as she is the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were sent to the electric chair during the height of McCarthyism and the hysteria of the second Red Scare. With long ties to the Outer Cape, Meeropol more recently made After the Bite, a documentary about how the region has adapted to the enormous population of great white sharks now in our waters, especially after the death of Arthur Medici who was bitten while surfing at Newcomb Hollow Beach in 2018. But it’s when Carroll saw Meeropol’s 2019 film Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn (who himself was involved in the execution of her grandparents and spent many summers in Provincetown) that she decided that indeed Meeropol was someone with whom she wanted to talk. And she shared everything with Meeropol, including previously unseen footage of her depositions conducted by Trump’s attorney Alina Habba, that she and her lawyer Roberta Kaplan secured for Meeropol.
“That footage may have gone unseen forever,” says Meeropol. “It’s amazing to watch her. She was ready. When Habba asks her if she’s ready to begin she says ‘Yes! Giddy up!’”
Meeropol keeps Ask E. Jean on a tightly focused narrative that this is a story about E. Jean Carroll and not Trump, MAGA, #MeToo, or the idea that her victories in court are ushering in a new day. After all, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas are still on the Supreme Court, cases against Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein waffle back and forth, and Bill Clinton seems to be made out of Teflon, though he appears in the Epstein files, and accusations of rape by Juanita Broaddrick still go largely ignored in a time when the slogan “Believe Women” seems to have an asterisk of exceptions for politically inconvenient cases. What Ask E. Jean does illustrate is a powerful “sisterhood” created by #MeToo, and Carroll’s bravery representing herself so honestly and fully, embracing her sexuality and refusing the brand of victimhood, being the woman she always encouraged her readers to be.
“She cared so much about being honest with her readers,” says Meeropol. “She cared so much about these women, she cared about her readers, that she decided to take action.”
Ask E. Jean screens at Waters Edge Cinema, Whaler’s Wharf, 237 Commercial St., on Tuesday, August 11 at 6 p.m. Tickets ($15/$13 seniors/students) are available at the box office and online at provincetownfilm.org. For more information call 508.487.3456.
