December 11, 2002

“Let me translate brutality in the movie industry: honesty.  They say it’s brutal.  Yeah, it’s brutal to tell the truth in an industry where everyone lies.” -- Harvey Weinstein

“Don’t say ‘industry.’“ -- Charlie Kaufman                                                                               

The Ken Auletta story on Harvey Weinstein in this week’s New Yorker is a classic case of a “tough” story that is far from brutal.  Perhaps the most glaring gentility is the unremarked upon use of the phrase “we made” and “we produced” for films that were acquisitions - in which Miramax’s primary creative input was to design great marketing campaigns.

And that is probably the strongest overriding feeling that comes from reading the story.  Miramax was the greatest movie-marketing machine for underdog movies ever to hit this town.  Harvey and Bob really did change the face of the film business.  They were every bit as key to the growth of Sundance as Robert Redford or Geoff Gilmore.  And, when they started in production, they did make some remarkable movies, including Pulp Fiction, The English Patient and The Grifters. 

Things started to change after the 1997 Oscar win for The English Patient.  Suddenly, Miramax was on top of the heap image-wise.  And it wasn’t just about well-hyped pick-ups.  This was an important, award-winning production company.  Sure, the credit was being given to Saul Zaentz instead of Harvey.  But Anthony Minghella, who had been put through hell on his first film by a hands-on Weinstein, was telling everyone how great Harvey was this time.  (Never mind that Zaentz is still in the process of suing the company over profits from the film and Minghella is now in production on another Miramax film, Cold Mountain.)

In the year of Titanic, Miramax got nominated for the in-house production of Good Will Hunting - which became Miramax's calling card when Ben & Matt won for screenwriting. 

But something seemed to change in 1999, when Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture without really deserving the win.  The film was directed by John Madden (whose American career was really created by Miramax with the launch of Mrs. Brown).  Universal was in for half of Shakespeare … but no one noticed.  It was Miramax, Miramax, Miramax.  Worse, it cemented a relationship that has now become the dominant theme of every Oscar year since - Miramax vs. DreamWorks.

Something else happened later that year… Harvey missed Sundance with a mysterious “viral infection” that coincided with a changing indie marketplace, making it the first down year for business at Sundance after years of ups. 

Since then, everything has seemed a little forced in HarveyVille.  Miramax’s B-movie division, Dimension, became the dominant half of the company.  And Miramax’s productions seemed to be getting fatter and fatter.

Miramax was able to force Academy nominations for in-house director Lasse Hallstrom’s Cider House Rules and Chocolat.  But the annual drop in quality became too great with The Shipping News. The studio had to backdoor the Sundance pick-up, In The Bedroom, into a (well deserved) nomination. 

The one great hit for the Miramax side in these last few years was Bridget Jones’ Diary.  And the ugliness? 

40 Days And 40 Nights
All The Pretty Horses
Bounce
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
The Golden Bowl
Holy Smoke!
The Importance of Being Earnest
Kate & Leopold
Love’s Labours Lost
Music Of The Heart
Texas Rangers

And that’s a generously short list.  It doesn’t even include unreleasables like Daddy & Them.

Nonetheless, the taste for a better class of film didn’t subside.  And that meant better directors.  In this year’s crop, it's Minghella, Shekhar Kapur, Phillip Noyce, Julie Taymor and Martin Scorsese… the best line-up of established directors that Miramax has ever put together. 

Of the six films from these filmmakers, one is still in production (Cold Mountain) and one was more of a pick-up (Rabbit-Proof Fence).  Noyce’s second film, The Quiet American, was held in limbo by Harvey for a full year before a critical revolt overtook his ambivalence during the Toronto Film Festival.  Kapur’s The Four Feathers, released domestically by Paramount, was cut, chopped, re-shot and played with for months and months before it slammed into a brick wall at 100 miles an hour.  Taymor’s battles with Weinstein have become legend, since Taymor would seem to be able to match the big man body slam for body slam.  Nonetheless, while the agreed-on hybrid was received well in some corners, it has generally been dismissed as little more than an opportunity to get Salma Hayek to think that showing her breasts is an artistic statement.  (They are so magnificent that they now appear likely to nurse their way to an Oscar nomination.)

And then there's Gangs of New York…

Martin Scorsese’s homage to Sergio Leone would probably have won Best Picture last year, had Weinstein been willing to release the director's 3-hour cut of the film.  I’ve seen it.  It is extraordinary.  Like the greatest epics, this version of Gangs trusts the audience to take in everything and to work through the story.  By not responding to every fool obsessed with knowing every detail about what they are seeing, the film chooses the fluid lyricism of Scorsese, Schoonmaker and Robbie Robertson’s era-accurate music

But instead of moving forward with genius, we have spent an entire year being spun, waiting for “them” to cut 20 whole minutes out of the film. 

Why?

Here is my theory, for which I find support in the Auletta profile: Harvey (and other studio execs) treat in-house films, even from important filmmakers, the same way they treat pick-ups. 

If Miramax picks up a film like Cinema Paradiso and feels that this unknown film from an unknown filmmaker will be better received at a shorter length, the logic is hard to fight.  But if you choose to invest in a Scorsese movie, why try to change it into something else?  Scorsese is not a $100 million guy.  Never has been.  Unless he makes Dino with Hanks someday, he probably never will be.   Will the difference of 20 minutes, and the elimination of a few hyper-violent shots, be the thing that draws bigger-than-normal crowds?  Of course not. 

The same public argument took place two years ago with Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous.  DreamWorks’ Walter Parkes had chopped the film down to just over 2 hours from nearly 2 hours 30 minutes.  Why did he think that those 20 minutes which, it turns out, lifted the film from very good to truly great would increase the box office for the film?  Were more people suddenly going to be interested in a kid reporter in the 70s?  No.  And, unfortunately, the inferior cut probably kept some Crowe-friendly voters from going for Almost Famous.  I still contend that the longer version would have been a far superior Oscar contender. 

Or perhaps you go back to Blade Runner and the battle over what version would be released.  As you might recall, the voice-over sucked.  And not just because it was terrible voice-over, but because it  patronized the film’s audience.  And, because of the power of Ridley Scott’s work, the voice-over distracted audiences from focusing on the entire image.  Oh yeah…. And the voice-over sucked.

Comparisons to the “happy ending” version of Brazil would be going too far.  Most critics (and Liz Smith) have pointed out how dark the release version of Gangs of New York is… and I have no reason to disbelieve that. 

But why is Harvey Weinstein engaging in these battles with artists?  Why hire the best just to push them around? 

There seems to be an overall feeling that Weinstein uses test screenings to support what he already wants to do, which is a pleasant switch from execs that trust numbers as though numbers could direct films.  But it is still a manipulation.  There are only two films by significant directors in the last decade that come to mind as having potentially better box office had they been cut further  --  PT Anderson’s Magnolia and Martin Brest’s Meet Joe Black.  I’m sure there are many others that were improved, and others still that could have been improved, but the heart of a movie is rarely changed by a 10-20 minute trim.  Tight is better in most cases.  But this is an art form, not a form of science. 

Auletta attributes the following to Harvey: “Some things in a movie can’t be fixed – a bad performance, a mediocre screenplay – but it’s possible to do a lot with editing and music.”

Why?

Could it be that Weinstein thinks this way because most of his career experience has been fixing movies where there is nothing left to fix except for some editing and music?

I’m all for trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.  But if you buy, develop and produce a sow, I think you should be happy to have bacon instead of trying to start the Arnold Ziffel Handbag Collection.

READER OF THE DAY:  PASS THE WINO writes, in spoiler-free fashion:  “I'm a little hesitant to talk about "Adaptation" too much because it isn't really out there for most people to see.  It will be interesting to see how Sony expands the picture.  I hope they take their time so it doesn't get lost in the inevitable "Lord of the Rings" tsunami.  Word of mouth and very strong reviews are almost a necessity for this movie.

Having said that...

Adaptation has stuck in my mind more than any movie in recent memory. 

And like a Shakespeare drama where you know the two lovers die in "Romeo and Juliet" (or almost every Hollywood romantic comedy that tells us by the stars' billing who will end up together), there's something wonderfully screwy in the way "Adaptation" warns us in advance where it's going, but still seems amazing when it gets there.

Like "Seven" and "Moulin Rouge", it tells us -- it *warns* -- us where it's going.

In "Seven" there's a line "this isn't going to have a happy ending".  Hell, they even used the line in the trailer.  And yet people were still surprised that the lovely Ms Paltrow lost her head. Funny enough, the trailer for "Adaptation" also warns us of the movie's inevitable third act.

And putting aside the flashback structure of "Moulin Rouge", there's the line from the "Spectacular Spectacular" song that foreshadows, "And in the end will someone die?" 

(I kind of like "Moulin Rouge" as a comparison because as an audience we are observing the battle as a script is being written that will decide the fate of the movie itself.  You know, like that cool tattoo of a snake eating its own tail.)

And there's a tiny snippet of "The Player" as well - the whole bit of not wanting an ending with Bruce Willis rescuing Julia Roberts, but it's inevitable that it happens because that's what always happens in a Hollywood movie.

There is something wonderfully sad about "Adaptation" that seems to say to the audience, "You say you want something different, but you really don't.  Here's the Hollywood ending you say you don't want, but deep down you know that if you didn't get the drugs, the car chase and the calculated spiritual growth, you'd feel disappointed.  You say you want healthy food, but when I offer you a menu filled with delicacies, all you want is a hamburger and soda."

I'm looking forward to sampling from the "Adaptation" menu again.  Knowing the ending is now all the fun.”

E ME:  Anything you’d cut?