well Sugar Kane, you obvs haven't really read the thread very closely. Skipped over most of it, it sounds like from your line of questioning. I am not going to keep going over questions that have been posed and already answered, but you didn't bother to read. So this is the last time I will try to explain why I understand things a little differently from you.
JD has been an alcoholic & drug abuser from a young age. However, at the time AH & he met, he was sober, although admittedly smoking a lot of weed. AH was at that time drinking 3 bottles of wine a day, as well as copious amounts of psychotropic drugs & anti-psychotic drugs for her mental health issues. After a time he also started drinking again, although he made several attempts to get sober, he was only successful for a short time.
Both of them are from dysfunctional families who used violence and coercive control, to keep them in line. His abuse stemmed from his mother, her abuse stemmed from her father. Both of which were alcoholics & drug users.
Sometimes when people come from that type of background, they gravitate to others with similar issues. That's what they know, and what they feel comfortable with. Fucked up eh? But that's life it seems.
She was at the beginning of her career & he was at the zenith of his. He was a powerful man in an industry she was just breaking into. JD gave her the role in 'The Rum Diaries'. He gave her a step up the career ladder and they were both enamoured with each other for a while. Personally, I think someone who marries someone else half their age, must have serious self-esteem issues. He was taken in by a pretty face & she was taken in by his charm, money & pretty face! She pretended to be a huge fan of his, but later admitted that she'd never seen any of his films. She did by her own admission, do a lot of research on him & spent many an hour talking to him about his interests, in an attempt to 'win' him over. It worked too. Clearly his ego must be v. large & in need of super stroking, which AH provided, at first.
From early on, Ah was filming him in drunken/drugged stupor's. He didn't have the wherewithal or presumably, inclination to film her in her drunken/drugged rages. AH said she did this to show him what a 'monster' he was when he was in a drunken/drugged coma. He agreed with her that this did make him look like a 'monster'. That is what they both referred to whenever he was so drunk, he was almost unconscious, which as time went on, became more & more frequent. All this time though, AH was doing far more alcohol (3 bottles per night, her assistant who replenished all the bottles said). As well as copious amounts of psychotropic and anti-psychotic drugs. I wonder why she is taking anti-psychotic medication. Just a guess, but maybe she's a psycho!
The phone recording you mention in their kitchen, where JD is slamming cupboards, I do think is a form of abuse, but abusing a cupboard is not the same as abusing a person physically. However, the film was dropped when he realised she was secretly recording him again. The film goes on showing AH picking it up again and giggling while following him out of the room. She was not scared or frightened of him, she was taunting him, because she knew that morning JD had just found out he had been swindled out of $650 million by his so called tax advisors. It's not in my nature to start slamming a cupboard doors, or to smash inanimate objects, but I understand that day, why he felt the need to.
Anyway, I'm done answering questions that have already been answered or you could find the answer to yourselves, if only you could be arsed. I think I'll go and listen to some 'crackpot, obsessive, misogynistic' YouTubers.
Keep it in the forefront of your mind, that being a drunken/drugged slob, does NOT automatically make you a wife beater. And if you can't do that, there's not much hope for drunken/drugged slobs in this world!
Maybe I'll come back when JD's appeal is heard or the VA trial begins.