Dallas-based movie company Cinestate, which has carved out a national foothold in the bruising world of indie film in less than five years, is reeling in the wake of a story published on the website, The Daily Beast. The headline reads: How a Right-Wing Movie Studio Enabled the ‘Harvey Weinstein’ of Indie Film.
The studio is Cinestate and the “Harvey Weinstein of indie film” is, according to The Daily Beast, 39-year-old Adam Donaghey. Donaghey was arrested on April 27 after being accused of sexually assaulting a minor, who was, police say, 16 at the time.
Donaghey, a Dallas filmmaker, has denied the allegations, telling The Daily Beast via email that he welcomes his day in court. Nelson Knight, Donaghey’s Dallas attorney, said he and his client would not agree to an interview. He was released on bond the day after his arrest.
In a relatively short time, Donaghey has piled up an impressive list of credits. He has 42 as a producer alone listed on the movie industry website, IMDb.com, one for the noted indie film A Ghost Story, directed by fellow North Texan David Lowery. It starred Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara and was shot locally.
Launched in the fall of 2016, Cinestate has made nine movies and acquired three more. Its most noteworthy releases are Dragged Across Concrete, starring Mel Gibson — whose reputation has suffered its own scars — and The Standoff at Sparrow Creek, which is now on Hulu. It’s owned by Dallas Sonnier, 40, who returned to the Park Cities after years in Hollywood.
Sonnier says that Donaghey worked on “at least five” Cinestate projects, his last job being that of a line producer on the 2021 crime thriller Till Death, whose stars include Evangeline Lilly, an alumna of the hit TV show Lost. The Cinestate executive listed as producer on Till Death is Amanda Presmyk, Sonnier’s producing partner who’s also cited prominently in The Daily Beast article.
We reached out to multiple sources in the local and national film communities for interviews, and most declined. (The Daily Beast reports having conducted more than 30 interviews, few of which were on the record.) One exception for us was John Wildman, a Dallas filmmaker and film publicity consultant who’s involved with both the Women Texas Film Festival and the EarthX Film Festival. Wildman says the controversy has already taken a toll on the local community while at the same time unmasking its flaws.
“The heartbreaking thing to me about this,” Wildman says, “is that we read about terrible practices on film sets — abuse to crew members, women in particular, and we wonder to ourselves, ‘Why do they continue to work with these people over and over again?’ So much of this was an open secret. So, why would these people continue to work for these film companies about which they heard things — indirectly, or they heard it intimated — that people were bad, that they were treating people badly and in return they were paying people so little while treating them badly?”
The answer, Wildman says, “is because the film industry in Texas has been decimated so badly by the removal and reduction of film incentives. So, therefore, people are that desperate to work.”
The repercussions are still being felt. Since June 6, when The Daily Beast piece was posted, the horror magazine Fangoria and the website BirthMoviesDeath.com, which Sonnier owns, have announced that they hope to find new ownership.
Even such a noted Texas legend as drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs — who took to Twitter on June 9 to announce his resignation from Fangoria — has weighed in, lamenting what he calls “the decline of a TX-based film company.”
The person at the center of the storm, Donaghey, faces major allegations — the April 27 sexual assault charge and claims of other misconduct as well. According to The Daily Beast, “audio of [Donaghey] sexually harassing a crew member has been making the rounds for years.” Cristen Leah Haynes says she recorded Donaghey on her cellphone during a car ride the two shared on July 25, 2014.
“They were nearing the end of production on the indie film Occupy Texas when Donaghey, the line producer, requested that Haynes, who was serving in the art department, ride with him to another location,” reports The Daily Beast. “Since she was just 21 years old and new to the industry, Haynes obliged.”
“And the whole way there, he’s coming on to me, and it was very blunt. Show me your underwear — not even a question in the beginning, just a statement, like he thought it was OK to say,” Haynes told The Daily Beast. “I said, ‘I hope you’re joking, but no, that’s OK, thanks.’ But he kept going, so that’s when I pulled my phone out and decided that I should document what was happening in case I got fired after that, or in case he started doing something physically.”
The Daily Beast further notes that, “In the audio, which Haynes provided to [the website], you can hear Donaghey repeatedly harass her, first requesting to see her underwear,” and then asking if he can touch her sexually.
The news site also reports on allegations of inappropriate behavior by Donaghey at the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff, which he helped lead the effort to reopen before parting ways with the team behind the venue in 2017. And in The Daily Beast story, the list of accused goes beyond Donaghey. Citing anonymous sources, the site reports that veteran actor and former professional football star Fred Williamson — among other allegations — groped a woman on the set of the Cinestate movie VFW.
Williamson, 82, who could not be reached for comment, gave The Daily Beast a one-sentence denial: “I’m sorry she feels that anything happened that was inappropriate, but it certainly didn’t come from me.”
“That specific allegation — the groping allegation — never made it to me,” Sonnier says. “All I heard is a second incident, totally separate, that a hair and makeup lady quit the movie because she was uncomfortable around him.” With that separate incident, Sonnier says, “There was never any touching, any groping.”
In an hour-long interview, Sonnier responded to the mounting allegations by saying, “I am an open book. I am not running away from this at all.” There are, he contends, “aspects of the story that are not being told correctly.”
He’s most upset with the timeline cited in The Daily Beast article, noting that “none of the Adam Donaghey allegations happened anywhere near our sets. They happened before I even moved to Dallas.”
He notes that Donaghey was “a line producer on several of our movies. He was never an employee of the company. He was always an independent contractor and a member of the crew. But we did work with him on a lot of movies.”
The sexual assault allegation, Sonnier says, stems from an incident that happened quite some time ago. “Keep in mind, I didn’t move to Dallas until 2015. So, he’s accused of sexual assault on a movie set that had nothing to do with Cinestate,” Sonnier says.
As for the cellphone audio recorded by Haynes, that happened during the making of Occupy Texas, “which is also,” Sonnier says, “not a Cinestate movie. It was produced at least a year before I moved to Dallas.”
So, he adds, “By the time I got to Dallas, all of these major accusations of Adam had already occurred. So, when I met him and worked with him, I was completely unaware of anything nefarious. I hadn’t heard any of the rumors, and I certainly did not know about” allegations of sexual assault. Donaghey was arrested in April, soon after the alleged sexual assault victim posted accusations on Facebook. The Dallas Morning News generally does not name accusers in cases of sex crimes.
Sonnier says that, within an hour of the Facebook post going public, he called Donaghey, “and I confronted him and ultimately accepted his resignation” from any pending projects. “We removed his credits and his name from all of our movies,” Sonnier says.
Sonnier said he did not hear the recording made by Haynes until The Daily Beast provided a link. He calls it explosive and deeply troubling.
Based on the revelations at @Cinestate and their failure to come clean about everything and make it right, I guess I have to resign from both @FANGORIA and @REBELLER. Sad on several levels, including the end of Fango's miracle comeback and the decline of a TX-based film company.
— Joe Bob Briggs (@therealjoebob) June 9, 2020
Haynes, 26, says Sonnier was at least aware of the recording’s volatile content based on an email she received dated May 27, in which he wrote: “I just want to say I’m sorry. My heart was always in the right place with trying to broker an apology from Adam to you.”
That, she says, indicates to her that Sonnier was “hardly” in the dark when it came to Donaghey’s plummeting reputation, “which is why I call him ‘negligent’ in The Daily Beast article.”
Sonnier’s response? It was he, he says, who “forced” Donaghey to issue two apologies to Haynes. And, Sonnier adds, “Cristen worked with him on four movies after that.” But, Haynes says, only two were Cinestate films, and, she adds, “I was not offered an apology before working on either of those.”
Haynes says she at least feels protected by her dad, a Marine Corps veteran, who read The Daily Beast article and sent his daughter a text simply to say, “I am so proud of you.” That, his daughter says, “was all the support I needed.”
Despite taking issue with The Daily Beast article, Sonnier says he’s “deeply embarrassed.” He has assembled, he says, a team of female crew members, producers and attorneys “who will work independently of me to create a new set of standards for our movie sets.”
“I take full responsibility," he says. “So, I am taking real action to make it right, moving forward. I want our sets to be the safest sets. I want our company to be the best place to work moving forward. I will expect nothing less.”
For her part, Haynes told The Daily Beast she still worries about receiving backlash after speaking out: “I’ve actually had a producer tell a close co-worker of mine that they will not hire me because I am linked to this ‘scandal,’ which was shocking and alienating for me.”
“I think by being transparent and giving away my identity, I would hope would encourage other women to do the same,” she said.
