On July 8, 1998, Brown stunned the media world by “ankling” The New Yorker in favor of a new venture, a magazine to be published by Miramax. Talk, as it was to be known, created yet another rift between Weinstein and Eisner. The Disney chairman had his own relationship with Brown, and he was after her to do something for him. “The Tina Brown hiring was a big problem,” says Joe Roth. “Michael thought he was a friend of Tina’s and Tina kept trying to get Harvey to allow her to let Michael know that this conversation was going on—which was totally outside the business plan, and had to be approved. Harvey called Michael at ten o’clock the night before it was announced. Michael hit the roof. He thought having a movie company and a magazine, especially an expensive magazine, was a conflict, and he was against it. It was very different from the business that these guys had contracted for.” Roth adds, “Harvey was worried that if he told him earlier, Michael would scuttle it somehow, so he took a chance, and probably sold Tina on the idea that he didn’t have to ask permission.” Eisner could have vetoed the deal, and initially he told Harvey, “I’m not gonna let you do it.” In the end, Eisner was reluctant to humiliate Weinstein. Still, the two men virtually stopped speaking. (Miramax denies this.)
After losing the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a site for the Talk launch party when Mayor Giuliani discovered that Hillary Clinton, his likely rival in the race to become New York’s new senator, would grace the cover of the inaugural issue, Brown secured Liberty Island instead. On August 2, 1999, the $200,000-plus, star-studded party was held at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, bedecked for the occasion with festive Japanese lanterns. If Harvey wanted to buy his way into the charmed circle of New York’s celebrity intellectuals, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Everybody who was anybody was there, 1,400 strong, from Salman Rushdie, just emerging from his fatwa-induced internal exile, to Madonna to Henry Kissinger. As the first round of fireworks blossomed over New York harbor in a spectacular display of fiery brilliance, George Plimpton exclaimed, “This one’s for Harvey and Bob Weinstein!”
FROM THE START, Barry Diller was not happy when USA Films picked up Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic. He didn’t think there was a prayer it would make its budget back, much less go into profit. A $50 million art film, about drugs, to boot, at Christmas, with the director behind the camera. Sequences in Spanish, with subtitles. And with so many actors you needed a scorecard to keep track of them. With the story so convoluted, so full of double crosses and double double crosses it was almost incomprehensible. Of course, Diller didn’t like anything on the USA slate. He didn’t like The Muse, he didn’t like USA’s untitled Coen brothers project, known only as “the barber movie.” He expressed himself to USA chairman Scott Greenstein in words something like, “Coen brothers movies do not make money. The biggest one, Fargo, made $35 million, and that had Fran Mc-Dormand on her way to an Oscar. She was pregnant. She was delightful. Billy Bob Thornton is neither pregnant nor delightful. Who’s gonna pay to see him made up to look like Humphrey Bogart strapped into an electric chair, who dies at the end for a crime he didn’t commit—in a black and white movie? You are crazy to make this.” But that was Diller’s way. Everything was shit, and it was the executive’s job to convince him otherwise.
Greenstein generally tried to anticipate Diller’s every whim. But somehow he had a feeling about Traffic. Soderbergh’s career was on the rebound. Of course, it couldn’t have gotten any worse for a director who was no longer a wunderkind, but was pushing forty and badly in need of a hit. Schizopolis had played Cannes in May 1997. The response, while not positive, was at least unanimous. Says the director, it was “four hundred people scratching their heads simultaneously. A lot of people walked out as soon as they realized there were no actors in it who were recognizable.” The film opened around the country in the fall of that year at more or less the same time as his other new film, Gray’s Anatomy, and promptly disappeared. Schizopolis “probably crossed the line from personal into private filmmaking,” said the director. “My idea with Schizopolis was to make one of these every two years, and live off it. Whatever ideas I had about it being commercial enough to return its investment and allow me to make another film like it were total fantasy. If it had made $2 million, I’d still be making them.”
Soderbergh’s taste, at least at that time, was not commercial, and he had been following the classic indie model, like Jim Jarmusch, like John Sayles, like the Coens, like Tarantino even, making films for himself and assuming that somehow they would find an audience. Tarantino’s did, but for Soderbergh, Schizopolis provided a rude awakening. As Ethan Hawke puts it, “Quentin doesn’t play any ball. A lot of the rest of us are not so gifted that every little pee we take is gold.” Soderbergh had to take a hard look at his options. Schizopolis taught him that he needed to play ball, at least a little. “I knew I had to pull my head out of my ass, and start thinking about the economic realities of making films,” he says. “I needed to make a decision about whether or not I was content working on the margins. Looking back on the first four films, it’s sort of staggering how naive I was in thinking that people would want to see these. I just was in a bubble, like, I’m just going to make these things and I’ll make ’em the way I want, and if people don’t go, that’s just tough.” He opted for the one-for-me, one-for-them route. He’d been doing films for himself; now he started looking for a movie for them.
Casey Silver, over at Universal, had always had a soft spot for the director, who recalls, “Casey pulled me out of a fuckin’ hat! I’d made two movies for him that hadn’t made a nickel.” Silver offered him Out of Sight, like Jackie Brown based on an Elmore Leonard thriller. He said, “This is an open assignment, go get it. You should do this.” Soderbergh’s initial inclination was to duck. He said, “It’s perfect for me—I can’t do it.” Suppose he failed. The worst of all worlds was to do one for them and blow it—like, “I can’t even sell out.” Silver replied, “Don’t be an idiot.” Soderbergh thought about it some more: This is a wake-up call. My apprenticeship is over, and if I’m going to become something other than an art house director, it’s time to step up. It’s easier to stay where I am, but I need to get off my butt. He called Silver back, said, “You’re right, you’re right. I want to do it.”
Soderbergh remembers, “Out of Sight was the most pressure I’ve ever experienced. All self-imposed. It was a conscious attempt on my part to enter a side of the business that was off-limits to me, because I had marginalized myself. I got up every morning with knots in my stomach. I had to block that out every day on the set and basically make decisions as though I was making Schizopolis. Because I knew if I failed, I was completely fucked.”
Out of Sight, with a fine script by Scott Frank, was Soderbergh’s second foray into Tarantino territory, and featured several actors Tarantino had used, including George Clooney and Ving Rhames, as well as cameos by Sam Jackson, and Michael Keaton, reprising the same character he played in Jackie Brown. Soderbergh believed his films had become too cold and cerebral; he was trying to become more like Tarantino, hot and cerebral, and with Out of Sight he succeeded, pulling off the best Tarantino clone to date, so good it doesn’t feel like one. It’s a wild and crazy film, chock-full of terrific performances Soderbergh got out of his cast, which included Jennifer Lopez. The supporting actors—especially Don Cheadle—are dazzling. Like Tarantino, the director experimented with temporal disruption—he even used tinted stock—all within the skin of a commercial movie. He started building a repertory company that included Cheadle, Luis Guzmán, and most important Clooney. Out of Sight also did Jackie Brown business, grossing about $37 million, but in a stark reminder of the differences between a studio film, even one directed by Soderbergh, and a Miramax film, it cost twice as much (about $40 million), so it was considered a failure. Still, Universal recognized that Soderbergh had delivered, and this led to Erin Brockovich.
Meanwhile, in September 1999, Soderbergh had run into Greenstein and USA president Russell Schwartz at the airport com
ing back from the Toronto Film Festival, where his new film, The Limey, had been screened. Soderbergh had done three films with Schwartz when the executive was at Miramax and then Gramercy—Kafka, King of the Hill, and The Underneath. The USA duo had both heard about Traffic, intended as a remake of a six-hour British miniseries on the drug wars, and said, “We don’t think anybody else is going to make it. But we will.” They were climbing out on a long limb. The Limey, which would lose money for Artisan, had not opened yet, and all they knew about Soderbergh’s other new movie, Erin Brockovich, was that it was a big, $50 million Julia Roberts vehicle due out the following March. Traffic was set up at Fox, and there wasn’t even a script. Soderbergh replied, “That’s great to hear, I’ll let you know what happens with Fox.” It is questionable whether Greenstein had ever seen any of Soderbergh’s films. Likewise, if Soderbergh knew Greenstein had October’s blood on his hands, he didn’t much care. “To be honest, since none of it touched me, it just didn’t stick,” he says. “In this business, the only thing you can count on is that people will act expediently in their own interest, so I try to set up circumstances in which my needs and their needs are close enough so that there’s not going to be a problem.”
Traffic would turn out to be a coup for USA’s shaky new film division. With a lot to prove, Greenstein badly needed directors of Soderbergh’s caliber. Neither Greenstein nor Schwartz inspired much confidence in the troops. USA was so chaotic that, according to another executive, “There was no list of who the deals were with, nor were any executives assigned to oversee the deals. It was easier to call, say, Michael Douglas’s Further Films and ask, ‘Do we have a deal with you?’ than to query someone at USA.” Greenstein’s response to every project he was brought was always the same: “Can we put Harrison Ford and/or Leonardo DiCaprio in it?” Observes yet another USA player, “Everything Scott ever did was a parody of Harvey Weinstein. There would be a problem getting a response from an actor, so Scott would go over the head of the agent and call the head of the agency, thinking, This is what Harvey would do. Trouble is, Scott’s not Harvey. He can’t bully anybody. Harvey can back you against the wall at a party, and threaten you, and make it stick. Scott does it, and it pisses people off.”
One studio executive describes Diller and Greenstein’s dynamic as a “weird, love/hate relationship.” Diller demurs. “There was never any love/hate. There was never any love”—he pauses—and “there was never any hate. It didn’t have a big range. That went from great to terrible. Sometimes people are able to communicate with each other and have actual conversations. Unless you can have an actual conversation, it’s hard. We weren’t—because of background and temperament—able to have such conversations. So it was not an easy process, but out of it came some pretty good movies.”
Diller understood that if USA were actually going to produce movies, he needed to hire a head of production, a new Bingham Ray, someone with good talent relationships, someone who could talk the talk. In mid-October 1999, he offered the job to Donna Gigliotti, who had left Miramax after Shakespeare. Gigliotti had worked with Greenstein while she was there, and was not tripping over herself to sign up. She recalls, “People said to me, ‘You are insane. Do not do this!’ ” She met with Diller at his West 57th Street office, asked, “How does this work? What’s the structure?”
“Scott runs the company, you report to Scott.”
“Well, I guesss that’s the end of this meeting.” She stood up.
Puzzled, Diller asked, “What are you talking about?”
“He doesn’t know anything about what I do, why would I report to him?” Whereupon, she walked out. But Diller persisted. As one source puts it, “They threw everything at her but Fort Knox.” Harvey advised her, “Say this number. If you get it, throw yourself on the sword.” Finally, Diller gave her a “happiness” clause. He said, “Reporting, forget about it. If you’re not happy in a year’s time, I’ll make you happy.” She took the job.
According to Michael Jackson, formerly of Britain’s Channel Four, whom Diller installed over Greenstein as CEO of USA Enertainment, the relationship between the two men took a dramatic turn for the worse after USA blew approximately $20 million on a Michael Douglas picture, One Night at McCool’s, by going too wide too quickly. Says Diller, “By small-company standards that’s a lot of money.”
Gigliotti saw how Diller treated Greenstein, stepped on him like a doormat, she says. Even though he had the exalted title of chairman, Green-stein couldn’t sharpen a pencil without his boss’s permission. Says a former USA executive, “Every deal had to be approved by Diller, and executives were instructed never to reveal that fact of life at USA.” Recalls Gigliotti, “Scott was terrified of Diller. In front of him, he babbled and talked double talk. Diller finally said to him, ‘You are not addressing the United Nations, speak English!’ ” She adds, “Scott would say anything to keep anyone happy, and then couldn’t. He was promising people things that he couldn’t deliver, constantly undercutting everybody, making snap decisions that were stupid, overpaying for this, whatever. He doesn’t know about movies, doesn’t care about movies, could have been a carpet salesman.”
Gigliotti thought Greenstein was afraid of her, with some reason. She in fact became his Bingham Ray. She screamed at him in front of his staff, humiliated him. As a result of years of abuse at the hands of the Weinsteins he had grown skin like a rhino, but Gigliotti gave it the old college try. In one instance that became legendary around the office, she picked up the phone and overheard him negotiating with Barry Mendel, a producer with a project at Jodie Foster’s company called Flora Plum, which had been set up at USA with a $25 million budget before Gigliotti arrived. She recalls, “Scott was terrified of making the movie, even though he had bought the script and agreed to do it. He had called Barry without my knowing it, and he was hocking Barry about lowering the budget. I screamed, ‘Scott, take it back, that is a moronic thing to say!’ ”
Traffic, which Bill Mechanic at Fox eventually gave back to Soderbergh after it foundered there, went into production in March 2000, starring Michael Douglas, Benicio Del Toro, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. As it was getting underway, it became clear that Erin Brockovich, which was just opening, was going to be a huge hit. Greenstein treated Soderbergh like a delicate porcelain figurine. USA Films was so hands-off that there wasn’t even an executive assigned to the movie. Essentially, Soderbergh could do whatever he wanted, which is just the way he liked it. “Soderbergh’s a smart guy, he knows a lot about film,” says Gigliotti. “If he thinks that you are desperate or weak, you don’t want to take him on. He has disdain for you.”
When Soderbergh screened his director’s cut for USA, the reactions ranged from lukewarm to despairing. At two hours and fifty minutes, it was too long by forty minutes at the bare minimum, and was impossible to follow. There was pressure from the company to cut the film. At one point, appearing to make a sincere effort to comply, Soderbergh sliced deep into Douglas’s character, even excised the climax of his big scene where he resigns from his post as drug czar. The director had lunch with Douglas before the screening, but neglected to prepare him for the extent of the cuts. When Douglas saw the film, he was extremely upset, threatened—or rather, suggested—that he might not be able to support the picture. Soderbergh restored the footage. Some USA executives speculated that Soderbergh had kept Douglas in the dark anticipating his reaction, then exploited it to silence USA.
Soderbergh denies this, saying, “No. I don’t work that way. I don’t need to be that devious. I was trying some radical shit, ’cause I was being told by everyone that the shorter the movie the better, and I wanted to see what it would look like if I stripped the movie down to its plot, and eliminated all the character stuff. Michael said, ‘Look, it’s your movie, but I just think you’ve gutted the character. In this version of the film, he’s as much a cipher as he was in the first draft of the script that I read.’ He was right. It’s really true that you can make the movie seem longer by makin
g it shorter because people don’t know why they’re watching certain things. You’ve removed motivation and reflection.”
Finally, USA just gave up. The thinking was, This is one of those movies where you get the general gist of who the good guys and the bad guys are, and you just go with it. If you tried to fix it, it just wasn’t going to work. You would have needed subtitles underneath people’s heads to say, “General Salazar, bad guy.” That was the end of the trimming.
BACK AT THE MIRAMAX RANCH, all was not well. Shakespeare in Love, Life Is Beautiful, and The Faculty provided a steady stream of profits, but outside of She’s All That, there was no new Shakespeare in 1999, not even a Life Is Beautiful, although the Disney division brought out a dubbed version in hopes of squeezing the last cent out of its Holocaust fairytale. Release after release crashed and burned. Holy Smoke, Human Traffic, My Life So Far, B. Monkey, The Lovers on the Bridge, Outside Providence, A Walk on the Moon, eXistenZ, The Castle, Mansfield Park.
Even Dimension lost its footing. Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999) cost $13 million and only grossed $9 million.
Six years after being purchased by Disney, Miramax was still chaotic. The company was dramatically larger, but it had grown like a weed in an untended garden, wild and promiscuous. Since so many of the staff had never worked anywhere else, they were innocent of rudimentary management skills. Bob and Harvey prided themselves on being tightfisted, but according to one source, there were literally millions of dollars that were being wasted in direct marketing costs alone. Inefficiency was rife. Harvey’s office wouldn’t release his schedule, so that staffers never knew when they would be summoned to a meeting. An executive would get a call from one of Harvey’s assistants, saying, “Harvey wants you over right now.”
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