It's been just a few days since Corey Feldman launched his Truth Campaign: a crowdsourcing initiative in which he hopes to raise $10 million to make a film about sexual abuse in Hollywood and his life. Having raised less than $200,000 so far, the child star sat down with Today's Matt Lauer to discuss the campaign and his alleged abuse.
Feldman described the film as "a very true story" and said he plans to give a firsthand perspective about "everybody that affected my life." Lauer argued The Goonies star had gone "down this road before"—promising to release the names of his alleged predators in his 2013 memoir Coreyography and then failing to do so. Feldman argued his hands were tied at the time.
"This is why I'm doing this," he said on Today. "Because when I wrote my book, the publishers prevented me from writing the names down. They made me change the names."
As for the film's budget, Feldman said he needed to raise the $10 million to not only create and market the film but to also hire security and legal teams to keep him safe. When Lauer asked Feldman why he didn't take his allegations to the police, the Stand By Me star said he shared the accusations with the Santa Barbara police department in 1993.
"They're on record. They have all of this information. But they were scanning Michael Jackson. All they cared about was trying to find something on Michael Jackson," Feldman said, adding that Jackson, his friend, was innocent.
"That was what the interview was about with the police in 1993," he continued. "I told them [Jackson] is not that guy. They said, ‘Maybe you just don't understand your friend.' And I said, ‘No I know the difference between pedophiles and somebody who is not a pedophile because I've been molested.'"
The Lost Boys actor also claimed to have received death threats from people not wanting him to leak his information. When Lauer asked Feldman why he didn't take these threats to the authorities, Feldman said he did but that he couldn't now due a "statute of limitations" that was "conveniently enough" set in place in California, claiming he would be "getting sued" if he tried.
"Henceforth, I need a team of lawyers and I need a team of security to be around me at all times to keep me safe so I can get this message done," he said. "I'm not playing around. It's serous stuff and I vow I will release every single name that I have any knowledge of, period. And nobody is going to stop me this time as long as people support this."
The interview comes after a series of sexual harassment allegations. Earlier this month, The New York Times published an exposé detailing decades of sexual harassment allegations against movie producer Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein's attorney Charles J. Harder told E! News the article was "saturated with false and defamatory statements." In addition, Rachel McAdams and Selma Blair accused director James Toback of sexual harassment in articles by the Los Angeles Times and Vanity Fair. Toback denied the claims made in the Los Angeles Times articles and didn't issue an additional comment for the Vanity Fair piece. Also, in an interview with BuzzFeed News, actor Anthony Rapp accused Kevin Spacey of making a sexual advance at him when he was a teen. Spacey has since apologized for the alleged incident but said he didn't remember the encounter.
During the Today interview, Feldman said "there's a lot of darkness in Hollywood right now" and that there has been for "quite some time."
"It's going to continue unraveling. This is just the beginning," he said. "It's just the tip of the iceberg. So everything you're seeing is building up to what I believe is going to be a dam breaking opening."
Watch the video to see Feldman's interview with Lauer.
(E! and NBC News are part of NBCUniversal).