But it’s like walking a tightrope without a net. One false move can land the filmmakers back where they started, scrambling for money wherever they can find it, like the Coen brothers after the failure of The Hudsucker Proxy in 1994, when Warner’s unceremoniously dropped them. Whether Soderbergh and Clooney’s attempt to reinvent the 1970s model makes sense is questionable. The same economic pressures that have driven the studios into co- and co-co-productions with one another and almost any entity with a bank account may conceivably drive them to take more chances. But in the 1970s, they were nearly bankrupt and had no choice; now they do. Plus, in that decade, the studios’ primary market, the counterculture, was much more uniform than the market for movies today, which is demographically diverse.
Besides, there are good reasons indies have shunned the studios even as the studios have shunned them. Russell, who was most successful in pushing a personal, even subversive vision through the studio Cuisinart, decided, after Three Kings, to do smaller films. “Three Kings was my bottom,” he says. “It was so stressful and so unpleasant that I said, ‘I will never, ever do that big a movie again.’ I will only write things that are closer to my heart, that I can do on a smaller scale. Some filmmakers, like Soderbergh, decided, ‘I’m gonna make some commercial films, and then I’m gonna make some noncommercial films.’ I feel, ‘I don’t want to make that bargain anymore.’ ”
AS THE ALL-IMPORTANT year 2000 holiday season approached, Miramax’s hopes were riding on its triumvirate of stars, Affleck and Paltrow, who were featured in Bounce, Affleck in Reindeer Games, and Damon, who led the cast of All the Pretty Horses, directed by Billy Bob Thornton, also, of course, a Miramax creation.
All the Pretty Horses was an expensive, elaborate production with a tortured history that Miramax shared with Columbia. John Calley had acquired the Cormac McCarthy novel on which it was based way back when he was head of MGM/UA, and had hired Mike Nichols, an old friend, to direct it. Nichols decided that he would rather produce the picture, which then needed a director. When Calley left MGM/UA and became chairman of Sony Pictures in 1996, he took the project with him, and mentioned Thornton to Nichols. One day, on the set of Primary Colors, Nichols walked up to Thornton in the catering tent and dropped the script in his lap, saying, “You have to direct this movie!” Thornton, no great reader, didn’t know McCarthy’s novel. But he did love Westerns. His favorite movie was High Noon.
Thornton had a history of not suffering suits easily, and he was skeptical about doing a big, $50 million studio movie. He reputedly told Columbia, “Let’s all be very clear. Yuh know what kind of movies Ah make. If yuh want sweepin’ vistas, then hire somebody who does that. Don’t be hirin’ me for this if you’re gonna cut mah legs out.” Indeed, Columbia didn’t want to hire his director of photography, Barry Markowitz, who had shot Sling Blade and The Apostle, because they didn’t think he had the visual flair for it. They said, “We need Roger Deakins, we need John Seale, we need Tak Fujimoto.” Thornton replied, “Ah want mah whole crew, the guys who have slugged it out with me on these small movies, and not gotten paid.” Columbia gave in, and Thornton took the job. Miramax, which held options on his next three films dating from Sling Blade, was then in a position to demand an equity position from Columbia in exchange for Thornton’s services. Thornton hired his writing partner, Tom Epperson, to rewrite Ted Tally’s script, which was 150 pages long, thirty pages over the average. So was Epperson’s. “Billy didn’t ask me to shorten it. It seemed to not be an issue that it was a long script,” Epperson recalls. But, he adds, “that was the whole downfall of the movie.”
Thornton wanted Damon for the lead. Thornton assured him, “Ah’ve had this talk with Columbia, and Ah can make the movie the way Ah wanna make it.” At one point, he went to the studio and said, “Ah want to do this movie for $25 million, not $50 million, because Ah’m afraid that when you get into this $50 million thing that yuh not gonna want the movie Ah’m gonna give you, and yo’ gonna get scared.” Columbia replied, “No, no, no, no, this is our big epic movie.” Says Damon, “That makes you wonder who read the book over there, because anybody who thinks that All the Pretty Horses is epic, just because the title makes you think about vistas, is wrong. It was a dark, dark story. It’s not Braveheart. It’s not even Larry McMurtry. It’s the exact opposite.”
After struggling to get the length down to manageable proportions, Thornton came up with a three hour, forty minute cut, which he showed to Calley and Nichols. Says former Miramax marketing head Dennis Rice, who also saw the three-hour-plus opus, “It was the most self-indulgent director’s cut I’d ever seen. It was like torture to watch that movie.” Affleck, who also saw the cut, says, “I thought it was brilliant, a masterpiece, but I’m willing to concede that my taste may be different from everybody else’s, and maybe I’m wrong.” Calley is reputed to have been effusive as well. Then he disappeared, and turned the movie over to Columbia Pictures president Amy Pascal. Pascal and Thornton did not like each other. Thornton is said to have brought a coloring book to one meeting with her, and sat there with a crayon, filling it in while she was speaking. (Pascal declined to comment.)
Still, Columbia was so high on Pretty Horses that in late 1999, Thornton was offered The Shipping News, based on the Annie Proulx novel of the same name, to direct. Thornton was seeing Laura Dern at the time and insisted on casting her in the role of Wavey Prowse. Columbia wanted Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, or Julianne Moore, anybody but Dern, and turned her down. Fed up, Thornton, who had been fighting with Pascal over the length of Pretty Horses, dropped out of the project, whereupon Columbia, according to Weinstein, said, “We’re not going to be your partner” on the movie. Lasse Hallström wanted to direct it, so Miramax bought the picture for him for $3 million.
Thornton had final cut on Pretty Horses up to two hours. Over that, the studio had the right to take it away from him. Columbia test-screened the picture at the Sherman Oaks Galleria—the studios’ version of Miramax’s New Jersey malls—during the Christmas rush. Women carrying shopping bags wandered in midway through the movie, watched for a few minutes, and wandered out again in search of holiday sales. In other words, the screening was a disaster. Pascal was still pressuring Thornton to cut the picture down. Explains Damon, “You can understand them freaking out, you can understand them not wanting to release a three-hour movie that’s slow and thoughtful by today’s standards. When you write a check for $50 million, you want the money back. Amy reportedly yelled at Billy Bob, ‘I did not want to make a $50 million art film!’ ” The picture missed its Christmas 1999 release date.
Talking to Thornton about cutting his picture was like speaking to a deaf mute. Taking up the cudgels, Affleck argued, “If you reduce this thing, you’re gonna be neither fish nor fowl. The critics aren’t gonna respect the artistry, the genius of it, because you’ll have truncated the movie, and audiences are not gonna pile in, because there aren’t gonna be any Wookies or Hobbits.” Meanwhile, Harvey was telling everybody who would listen, “Amy Pascal is just bustin’ my ass on the movie, they just don’t know how to sell it, they don’t think we have an Oscar contender. It’s long, but it’s great. We can do something with it.” By August 2000, Pascal had reached the end of her rope with Thornton. Columbia was afraid that it was going to take a big hit. According to Damon, the studio said something like, “Harvey, you handle it, you have the relationship with Billy, you know how to talk to him, you know how to release just about anything, release this fucker, good luck!” Harvey, thrilled to have the opportunity to be a White Knight, jumped at it, and Miramax took over the domestic release, while Columbia retained foreign. Harvey told Thornton, “I know exactly what to do, we’re gonna get you all these Academy nominations,” while Miramax publicity claimed that Harvey was the only person Thornton would listen to. That, of course, was pure spin. Thornton never had any particular regard for Weinstein’s editing skills—he fought him bitterly on Sling Blade—and used to say derisively that Harvey thought himself another
Orson Welles. According to one source close to Thornton, he had nothing to do with the decision to bring in Miramax on domestic.
In fact, after Pretty Horses went to Miramax, nothing really changed. Thornton complained constantly, “Harvey’s making me cut the movie down.” Weinstein claimed that he had no choice; he was bound by the terms of Thornton’s contract with Columbia. Thornton and Damon never knew if this was true or not. Says Damon, “The cynical view is that because he didn’t have any of the responsibility, he could point a finger at somebody else and say my hands are tied. Says a source at Columbia, “Contractually, there was an agreement on length between the two companies. But had he showed us Lawrence of Arabia at three hours and Snow Dogs at two, I’m sure he could have made a good case.”
Weinstein forced Thornton to cut the film by one hour and twenty minutes, bringing it down to a (relatively) slim one hour and fifty-five minutes. Thornton said something like, “At least Ah’ll retain two hours of what’s mine,” but he was desperately unhappy with it. “We were all unhappy with it,” says Damon. “ ‘Unhappy’s’ not the word.” Thornton asked Epperson to look at this cut with an eye to writing a voice-over. “The cut I saw did not work at all,” says Epperson. “It was a CliffsNotes version of the script that I was familiar with, truncated and episodic.” Adds Damon, “It was like you bake a soufflé and somebody wants you to make it half the size, and you just chop the thing in half and try to mold it and make it look like that was how you made it to begin with. It can’t work.”
This was the version Weinstein released, after infuriating Thornton by replacing the score that he loved, composed by multi-Grammy winner Daniel Lanois, who had written the music for Sling Blade. Continues Damon, “In the end, there was a lot of animosity and anger directed at Harvey, because he ran the marketing of the movie, and he pulled the trigger on how it was released and what cut was released. He tried to make it look like a love story, so that teenagers would go see it. He made a trailer with me and Penélope Cruz swimming around in the water, skinny-dipping, with Bono singing, and Billy’s going, ‘Look, I love U2, but it’s just not appropriate.’ And on the poster, they put, ‘Some passions can never be tamed,’ which is exactly what the movie’s not about. There is no love story, it’s about unrequited love, it’s about life being bigger than these people and just crushing the passion out of them. At the end, it was R-rated, so teenagers couldn’t go anyway.”
Harvey failed to attend the L.A. premiere of All the Pretty Horses. A Miramax executive read a statement from the Miramax co-chairman, who claimed his plane, on its way from New York, had turned back as a result of inclement weather. Later that night, when queried, the executive said he had not been informed that Harvey had ever planned to attend.
All the Pretty Horses opened on December 25, 2000, and went down with a thud. The picture recouped about $10 million (excluding foreign and ancillary sales) on an expenditure that may have exceeded $100 million, including the P&A.
All the Pretty Horses devastated Thornton. “He doesn’t want to direct anymore,” says Damon. “He said, ‘It almost killed me.’ He lost all this weight, went into the hospital with a heart problem, he was so stressed he couldn’t sleep. He really took it personally and invested a lot of himself in the movie. He said, ‘Ah have kids and Ah have a life, and it’s not worth it to me to put that much of mah soul into something and have it ripped away. Ah can’t ever go through that again. Because it will kill me.’ ” He had always credited Harvey for launching his career as a director. Now he blamed Harvey for ending it as well. “Harvey has a great gift with filmmakers, but like most of our gifts, they can be our curses,” says a source familiar with his MO. “His need to be liked is gigantic, and it’s what enables him to get actors to do things nobody else can get them to do. He goes to the clubs with them, gets them out of whatever scrapes they’re in, and is the only person they can talk to, but then when he needs to be a businessman, he’s betrayed them, and when it goes bad, it’s personal and dramatic.”
Almost every single one of Miramax’s holiday movies flopped that year. Reindeer Games tanked, along with John Madden’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, on which Miramax was partnered with Universal. (Bridget Jones’s Diary was a hit, but Miramax had little to do with the development or the production.) Bounce was released just before Thanksgiving. It also failed to perform, grossing $37 million against a budget of $35 million.
When the dust settled, the only Miramax film left standing was, improbably enough, yet another Hallström chronicle, Chocolat. Like Corelli, Chocolat was an international confection that one reviewer referred to as “Euro pudding.” Indeed, there was the Gallic flavor and setting, the Anglo-American script, the English-spoken-here by all the characters (no need for subtitles nor declassé dubbing), the United Nations cast featuring the American Johnny Depp, the French Juliette Binoche, the Swedish Lena Olin, and the British Judi Dench. That was the period when Harvey tried to give every role to Paltrow. Thinking she had gotten the part, Binoche said at the time, “I flew to New York and spoke to Harvey Weinstein about [the role]. He said, ‘You have to ask me first.’ I was taken aback, but asked, with my tongue hanging out like a beggar, and he said, ‘Okay, the part’s yours.’ ” Then, according to Binoche, he turned around and offered the role to Paltrow, who turned it down. (Earlier that year, in March, Diane Keaton had complained that Miramax was strong-arming her into using Paltrow instead of Parker Posey in So Shoot Me, a film she was slated to direct. “We want actresses with way more edge,” she said, “but Miramax wants Gwyneth in every picture that comes to them.”) As Paltrow put it, with some understatement, “He looks out for me.”
Inoffensive in itself, Chocolat seemed like an ominous sign of things to come, a new wave of by-the-numbers Euro-American filmmaking, a picture whose every particular was dictated by the requirements of the international—albeit almost completely Americanized—market. In the vein of Like Water for Chocolate, it was right up Harvey’s alley, an ode to the liberating properties of sweets. The critics generally liked it, although they treated it with some condescension. Somewhat less than complimentary was Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times, who called it “an art house movie for people who don’t like art house movies. That’s hardly a compliment.” Even tarter was Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly, who wrote, “Factory sealed to preserve freshness, Chocolat is the season’s latest Euro synthetic confection, manufactured from a proprietary recipe based on focus group data about what consumers enjoy most in a Miramax movie. . . . [It was] directed by Lasse Hallström with the same marzipan glaze he applied to The Cider House Rules.” Schwarzbaum went so far as to make fun of Weinstein for wangling endorsements from heavyweights like Jesse Jackson and Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League in his efforts to win an Academy nomination for the film. She was quoted in USA Today calling Foxman a “flack” for allowing himself to be used in this way. “Apparently Harvey went crazy,” says Schwarzbaum. He reached her editor-in-chief, Jim Seymour, by phone in the middle of lunch at “21,” demanded a meeting. Seymour refused. Shortly thereafter, Schwarzbaum went to Sundance. No sooner had she arrived than she got a call at midnight from one of the Miramax soldiers saying, “Harvey is looking for you.”
“That’s nice.”
“He needs to meet with you.”
The next morning, at the appointed time, he rolled into the lobby of Eccles, a screening venue where they had agreed to meet. According to Schwarzbaum he said, “How dare you call Foxman a ‘flack,’ that’s crossing the line, this is a great man, I lost family in the Holocaust, how could you say this about Foxman.”
“You don’t want to go down that path of who lost more people in the Holocaust,” she replied.
“I can take this all the way to the top, I can make life difficult for you.”
She recalls, “He wanted me to attend a screening of Chocolat with him to see how much audiences loved the movie. This was when he was completely nuts. The next day, I received a gift from him, a
book of Truffaut essays, with a note, ‘There’s room in the world for all kinds of movies, from Truffaut to Chocolat.’ ”
As the year drew to a close, it became evident that had it not been for Scream 3 and Scary Movie, 2000 would have been disastrous. But thanks to Bob Weinstein’s Dimension, according to one source, Miramax turned a $120 million profit.
SUNDANCE 2001 marked the twentieth anniversary of the institute. It was a solid festival, with Memento, The Deep End, In the Bedroom, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch all making a splash. But what was most interesting was that the best films didn’t get picked up until much later, and then they only got perfunctory distribution. Indeed, buyers had grown so cautious that they insisted on testing films before they bought them. Fox Searchlight flirted with Lift, directed by that exotic flower, a black woman filmmaker, Khari Streeter, with DeMane Davis. Searchlight planned to test it in Pasadena, one of the least appropriate venues on the planet. It tested badly, and Searchlight passed. Rick Linklater’s groundbreaking animated feature, Waking Life, went begging until it was finally bought months later by Fox. Henry Bean’s The Believer, about a tortured Jewish skinhead, won the Grand Jury Prize, but was deemed anti-Semitic and too controversial by distributors. Six months later, it was still looking for distribution. (The Believer was finally bought by Showtime.) Likewise, the remarkable L.I.E. was shunned for its sympathetic treatment of your friendly neighborhood pederast. Despite an unsatisfactory ending, L.I.E. was in fact a dazzling debut film by Michael Cuesta, which featured an array of extraordinary performances, led by Brian Cox as the pederast. It was finally picked up some months afterward by Jeff Lipsky’s new company, Lot 47, which didn’t have enough money to give it the push it needed and deserved.
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