Elwes decided to replay the strategy that had worked so well for Sling Blade. He arranged a screening for the buyers at the Uptown, the biggest theater in Toronto. Everybody was going to be there—the Miramax troops, Lindsay Law from Searchlight, Tom Bernard and Michael Barker from Sony, Ruth Vitale from Fine Line, even Malin from Live, everyone, that is, except Harvey. Harvey was on Martha’s Vineyard, but he had tracked Elwes down, saying, “I want to see it.”
“Of course you’ll see it.”
“I want to see it when everybody else sees it.”
“How’re we gonna do that? I’ve told everyone that it’s a flat playing field.”
“Send me a print.”
“I don’t want to do that.” Then Elwes thought, Oh, fuck it, I’ll get them to make another tape, and I’ll have somebody bring it to his house at the exact moment it starts in Toronto, so he doesn’t have an unfair advantage.
The screening was set to start at 9:00 P.M. The night before, Todd Harris, Duvall’s agent, had called Elwes at his hotel room to remind him, in case he had forgotten, “If you don’t sell the movie, he’s leaving!” Elwes went to the bathroom and threw up.
The buyers crowded into the Uptown. But when people realized that the Fat Man was absent, they smelled a rat. Ray, in the lobby getting some popcorn, asked Elwes the obvious question, “Where’s Harvey?”
“He’s not here.”
“So I guess we don’t have to worry about Miramax.”
“Oh, you have to worry about Miramax, all right, because all these other people are empowered to buy.”
“Cassian, not one of these people that are here, Amy Israel, Jason Blum, no one can buy a movie without Harvey seeing it. So I have to assume that Harvey has seen the film already.” Elwes refused to bite. But, says Ray, “That was the final fuckin’ red flag.” The screening was mysteriously delayed, apparently enabling Harvey, once again, to get the jump on everyone else. As Elwes was waiting around, Blum handed him a phone, saying, “Someone wants to talk to you.” Without preamble, the voice Elwes knew all too well, growled, “It ain’t Sling Blade.”
“How much do you want to pay for it?”
“Pause it. You always get to the fuckin’ money.”
“Cuz I’m a fuckin’ agent, whaddya want?”
“All right, here’s the deal: I’ll pay him back what he’s got in it, and I’ll get my gross corridor. That’s the fuckin’ deal!”
“He’s not just gonna break even on it, he’s spent his whole fucking life trying to make this movie.”
“Well that’s the fuckin’ deal, and you have five minutes to go find him and tell him.”
“The movie hasn’t even started yet!”
“I don’t give a fuck!”
“I’m gonna go inside and get the movie started, and talk to Duvall, and I’ll come back and call you back.”
“Right, five minutes, call me back.” No matter how many times Elwes had dealt with Weinstein, it was always like root canal, and he could feel his shirt begin to cling to his skin.
Greenstein, Schmidt, and Ray were sitting together, on the left side, with Greenstein on the aisle. Elwes, worried that the picture was so long no one was going to stick it out to the end, got up a few minutes into it, and made his way through the darkened theater to the right side, where all the other buyers were clustered. Upping the figure by $1 million, he said, in a loud whisper, “Miramax just offered $6 million for the film, does anyone want to beat that?” He was met by a chorus of angry whispers, saying, “We haven’t even seen the film yet, you motherfucker.”
“I’m sorry, man, what can I tell you, they’re trying to preempt the movie.” Jonathan Weisgel, who had helped snatch Shine for Fine Line the year before, said, “Well, we don’t have to watch the rest of the fuckin’ movie then, right?”
“You can stay here for the pleasure of it, enjoy it.”
“Fuck you!”
“I didn’t say I’m taking it, I’m just telling you guys they made the offer.” Then he walked back to where the October group was sitting, and whispered to Greenstein, “Harvey’s offered $6 million. If you want to stay in the game, you’ve got to make a bid now.” Elwes knew he’d said the right thing, because Greenstein jumped out of his seat like he’d been stung by a wasp, whispering hoarsely to the others, “C’mon, we gotta go,” and crab-stepped up the aisle and into the lobby, herding Elwes and his lawyer, Craig Emmanuel, ahead of him. They all got into one cab, because they feared Elwes, left to go separately, would pull a fast one, and headed for October’s makeshift office in the downtown Sheraton. Greenstein’s theory of negotiation—really Harvey’s—was, get in the room, shut the door, don’t open it until you have the movie. Ray was uncomfortable. He felt he was being stampeded, wanted to watch more of the picture. Since Harvey wasn’t there, he was wondering how he could have bid at all, much less $6 million. There was always a chance that Elwes had made it up, that there was no other bid. Still, they started hondling in the cab, Greenstein leading the charge. He topped what he thought was Harvey’s offer, bidding the price up to $7.5 million for a movie of which they’d seen only ten or twenty minutes. This was way out of Ray’s comfort zone, and again he asked, “Where the fuck is Harvey? How do I even know—how is Harvey seeing this movie?”
“He’s on the Vineyard, I sent him a tape. He’s watching now, same as everyone else.”
“That’s a total crock of fucking shit! Harvey waited until the screening was gonna start at the Uptown before inserting the tape in his VCR in Martha’s Vineyard? You expect me to fucking believe that?”
“Yes! Harvey’s a man of his word. He wouldn’t see this before you.”
Ray snorted derisively. This was so preposterous that he became convinced Elwes had manufactured the whole thing for their benefit. He thought, We’re bidding against ourselves. There’s just too much risk here. We’re just being wound up big-time by a very skillful Cassian Elwes. But Greenstein had a high opinion of his own street smarts. His attitude was, No one can play me, I’m bulletproof, baby. Ray kept his mouth shut.
The October office was on the second floor, no more than a bare conference room with a round table on which sat a plastic carafe of water and some glasses. Emmanuel was putting the deal points down on paper when Elwes went, “Oh, shit, I forgot to call Weinstein back.”
“What?”
“I told him I’d call him back in five minutes. It’s an hour later now, he must be going crazy!” Greenstein fixed him with a look and said, “You can call him back after we close.”
“No, I’m gonna call him right now. And tell him we’re closing.”
“Fuck you! No you’re not, you’re gonna call him after we close!” Elwes was holding the cell phone in his hand, and Greenstein made a lunge for it. They began to wrestle. Elwes cried, “Scott, c’mon now, man, we’re fucking adults here. I’m gonna take my phone, and put it right down on top of the table here, you guys can all see it, let’s all sit down.” Accounts of what happened next diverge, although all the players agree that Elwes lost control of the negotiation. According to Schmidt, Elwes’s phone rang. Everyone froze. A look passed among the three October executives that said, Harvey! One of them warned, “Cassian, if you walk out of this room with that phone, we withdraw our offer!” Elwes looked like he was going to cry, said, “I can’t not answer this phone, it’s my job to answer the phone,” and he left. According to him, he put the phone down in the middle of the table, everyone calmed down, and suddenly he grabbed it and ran out of the room, speed-dialing Harvey as he went while the October guys chased him down the corridor as he was shouting, “Hello, hello?” Harvey picked up, asked, “What the fuck is going on?”
“I’m with the guys from October!”
“What! What the fuck are you doing?”
“Well, actually, I’m making a deal with them.”
“You motherfucking—you closed!”
“I didn’t fucking close.”
Meanwhile, the October troika chased him do
wn the hall, yelling, “He fucking closed! He fucking closed!” Elwes was getting to the end of the corridor, checking all the doors as he ran, trying to find one that was open. He barged through one, where there were two elderly ladies, and locked himself in the bathroom. The October guys followed him in, pounded on the door, shouting, “He closed! He closed!” while Harvey was screaming in his ear, “You fucking closed! You fucking closed!” when Elwes’s battery died. Elwes said, “That’s it, I’m not talking to any of you guys anymore.” Elwes slipped out of the room and started down the corridor in the opposite direction. The October guys chased him again, out onto the fire escape. It was pouring rain. A man three stories down who apparently worked for the hotel yelled, “You can’t be out on the fire escape.”
“I’m talking to Harvey Weinstein!”
“Oh, okay!” Elwes ran down to the next floor, found an empty room, slammed the door, and changed the battery. Suddenly, the phone started to ring. Elwes, figuring it was Harvey, said, “Yeah, what the fuck do you want?”
“Oh, Cassian, it’s Mike Simpson.” Mike Simpson was his boss at William Morris. Elwes said, as casually as he could, “Hey, Mike, what’s happening?”
“I just got the strangest phone call.”
“What was that?”
“I got this call from Scott Greenstein, he said you were making a deal and you ran away.”
“It’s true.”
“Well, they’re really pissed off.”
“They’re right to be, I just didn’t know what to do, I panicked. Weinstein’s offering way more.” He wasn’t, but Elwes thought he would.
Meanwhile, the October guys locked Elwes’s jacket and his PalmPilot in their office, knowing that when he finished talking to Harvey he’d have to call them to get them back. They left the Sheraton and went to the bar of the Four Seasons, for some serious drinking. Elwes called Harvey back, who instantly yelled, “I’ll beat it, whatever the fuckin’ number is, I’ll fuckin’ beat it.” Elwes spit out $10 million, the magic Sling Blade number.
“Okay, you got a fuckin’ deal.”
Then Elwes called Schmidt over at the Four Seasons, said, “I have an offer from Harvey that I have to accept.”
“Cassian, I don’t even know why you’re calling us, because we’re not in this. We told you, you walk out of that room, we withdraw, so right now you have one offer and one offer only. And by the way, good luck closing.” Schmidt knew very well, as he puts it, “Ten million from Harvey is not $10 million from anyone else. The Miramax negotiating technique is to chase everybody else out of the arena, either through bullying tactics or preemptively high bids, and then when the competition has walked away, ratchet down until sometimes there’s no deal at all.”
Indeed, what Harvey giveth, Harvey could taketh away. A few minutes passed, and Harvey, who must have realized that he had scared off October, or maybe suspected Elwes was playing him, or perhaps because he was repaying him for Sling Blade, called back, said, “I’ve changed my mind, I’m not buying the movie.” (According to Weinstein, he never went up to $10 at all. “I was out after $5,” he says.) Elwes could taste the bile rising in the back of his throat. He was thinking, Ohmigod, I have no deal whatsoever, nothing. I’m going to lose my client. This is the worst night of my life. He was sick, drenched in sweat. He had to get to a midnight screening of another movie he was repping, Orgazmo, by two young filmmakers, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. He started calling the October guys, but they had turned their phones off, and he couldn’t get through. He went to the Orgazmo screening, which went well, then started driving around town in the rain, looking for them in the hotel bars. He repeatedly called their rooms, no dice. Finally, at 4:00 A.M. he found them at the Four Seasons. Ray noticed that he was wringing wet, thought, He’s wetter on the inside than he is on the outside. He said “You got a lotta fuckin’ nerve walking over to us right now.”
“Listen, Weinstein’s trying to fuck me.”
“Oh, big surprise.”
“Here’s the situation. We can sit down right now, and we can make the deal we talked about, and I’ll close it right now, I won’t call him, I won’t call anyone, we’ll sign the contract right here. And you guys’ll have the movie, you can read about it in the trades tomorrow.” Ray was skeptical. What Elwes was telling him just confirmed his suspicion that they had been bidding against themselves all along. Then Simpson called, told Ray, “This thing has cratered, we’re nowhere, we need your help to put this back together. What will it take for you to do it?” The October guys went off and conferred among themselves, came back ten minutes later, said, “Okay, we’ll make the deal. But it’s gonna cost you $2.5 million.” At 5:30 in the morning, they put the deal back together. October penalized the Morris Agency by dropping down to $5 million from their high of $7.5 million, but $5 million made Duvall whole. (They told the trades $6 million to help Duvall save face.) That same day, Elwes sold Greenstein and Schmidt Orgazmo over Ray’s objections. Greenstein wanted a relationship with Parker and Stone.
Although The Apostle chase was among the looniest in the annals of acquisitions, everybody involved seemed to get what they wanted. Harvey taught Elwes a lesson. “I think he was really toying with Cassian,” says Bowles. “Harvey takes affront at any perceived slight. Even people he really likes, if he thinks you’re getting too big for your britches, he’ll cut you down, make sure you’re in your place.” Moreover, Weinstein avoided the onus of another overpriced purchase. And his willingness to let the film go was yet another sign that Miramax’s center of gravity had shifted away from acquisitions. By satisfying Duvall, Elwes avoided what would have been a personally embarrassing failure and worse, a defection from his agency. Greenstein came away the big winner, albeit at the cost of further angering Ray, who now blamed him for “cowboying” two films—The Apostle and Orgazmo. In the old days, recalls October executive Susan Glatzer, Ray used to say, “Amir Malin is Satan. That was before he’d met Scott Greenstein.”
Ten
Crossover Dreams
1997–1998
• How Miramax took Shakespeare to the bank but got sued by its own employees, while Spike Lee dissed Quentin Tarantino over Jackie Brown, and Bingham Ray et al. lost Happiness.
“He offered me a movie, said, ‘I’ll make you rich, I’ll make you rich.’ I was broke. I gave all my money away, but I said, ‘Harvey, it’s not about the fucking money. This movie is a fucking piece of shit. I’m not going to do it.’ He was screaming at me on the phone, ‘Fuck you!’ and he hung up on me.”
—MATT DAMON
Good Will Hunting was scheduled to open just before Christmas 1997, and go wide in January and February. Miramax pretty much left director Gus Van Sant alone, and he, along with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, had a good experience there. According to Damon, speaking in September 1997, just a few months before Good Will Hunting was to be released, “There was never a hiccup. It was like a joyride. As much as Harvey’ll fuck you in the cutting room—and I’m sure there will come a time when he will—he didn’t do it with us.”
Harvey had seen Van Sant’s cut, and simply said, “Great, let’s test it.” Affleck was in L.A. doing Armageddon. Producer Chris Moore called him, said, “It tested 94.”
“What does that mean?”
“That’s good, the movie’s a hit.”
“The movie’s a hit? The movie’s not out yet.”
“No, no, that kind of score doesn’t happen, it’s the highest they’ve ever had, it’s really good.”
Based on the stratospheric test scores, Miramax moved Good Will Hunting up to December 7, going wide in the wake of Titanic. The boys went up to Weinstein’s house in Westport, Connecticut, to screen James Cameron’s movie, see what they were up against. According to Affleck, Harvey said, “We got nuthin’ to worry about. There’s just this one scene with the boat sinking. We’ll be fine.”
As usual, the marketing department ran Damon and Affleck ragged. Recalls Damon, “Harvey’s mentality was do absolutely eve
rything to get your name and your face out there. Someone would call and say, ‘We want to put you on the cover of this magazine.’ I thought, Well, I don’t want to do that anymore. Harvey would sit us down and say, ‘Don’t you want people to go see your movie? Aren’t you proud of it? Didn’t you just work on this for six fucking years? What’s your problem? Do it, do all of it.’ We’d go, ‘Okay, Okay!’ ”
Impending success did nothing to change Affleck’s and Damon’s feelings about producer Lawrence Bender. According to Affleck, Bender told him and Damon, “Me and Quentin, we do a thing we call ‘pushing power.’ We push power.”
“What the fuck is Lawrence talking about? Pushing power?” Matt or Ben asked Ben or Matt.
“In the press, we go out and say good things about each other in the press,” Bender told them.
“Well, bro’, that’s you and Quentin, you probably don’t try to fire Quentin! You’d better be careful Quentin doesn’t fire you!”
In L.A., their film premiered in Westwood, at the Bruin. “The marquee had Good Will Hunting on it, and Ben’s and my names up there, literally in lights, and searchlights on a trailer,” Damon remembers. “We were hugging each other, really, really excited. The whole experience was overwhelming, very unhealthy. The first thing that happens is that somebody puts a camera in your face and asks you how you feel, and it’s impossible to say, ‘I’ll tell you when you get that fucking camera out of my face so I can go and sit with my family for a little while.’ I didn’t realize that it was going to be over in a flash, that no matter who you are, if you don’t have a movie in the theater that’s making money, people will just think you’re someone they went to high school with. I remember deciding that I was gonna not act in movies anymore, maybe just plays, because this was not a life.”
Down and Dirty Pictures Page 46
