Where was Harvey’s acquisitions team when these films—which the old Miramax would have scooped up—went begging? Buying Todd Field’s In the Bedroom, for $1.5 million. Recalls John Penotti, whose company, GreeneStreet Films, cashflowed the film, along with Good Machine. “It was really hard to get people up for a Sissy Spacek movie, let alone the concept, but the minute the screening ended, Mark Gill and Agnes Mentre from Miramax said, ‘This is an extraordinary movie, we want it.’ ” Harvey demurred. “Talk about a movie ripe for cutting, you guys gotta be crazy. This guy’s never gonna let us do anything with this.”
“He will, he will.”
“Guys, this is going to be like one of these epic battles. I don’t want to have anything to do with this. I’m gonna get tarred and feathered.”
“Take the movie, he’ll do what you want.” Searchlight, Universal Focus, and Lions Gate were interested too, “but the Miramax guys came to our condo and wouldn’t leave,” Penotti continues. The deal stipulated that in the unlikely event Bedroom grossed more than $10 million, Miramax had to pay GreeneStreet bumps that kicked in when the film hit specified thresholds, like $15, $20, or $25 million. As far as Miramax was concerned, this was just funny money because no one anticipated that the film would do that well.
Meanwhile, Robert Redford had his hands full trying to shore up his empire, which was crashing around his ears after the Vulcan Ventures deal collapsed. According to a source, he had told the personnel at Sundance Productions to take a back seat while he dealt with the cash hemorrhage in the cinema centers. So they did, waiting in suspended animation for something to happen, while the star negotiated with chief executive Jeff Kleeman to expand his responsibilities at the same time as he planned to fire everyone at his other companies, Wildwood and South Fork. Then he disappeared, just as he had so many times before, ceasing to return his phone calls.
General Cinema, meanwhile, like all the other exhibition chains, had overbuilt. In the winter of 2001, it declared bankruptcy, capsizing yet another vessel in the Sundance flotilla. Two theater complexes, one in Philadelphia and one in Portland, Oregon, were half built. According to a former Sundance executive familiar with the story, the cinema project had been so badly managed on the Sundance side that even had General Cinema remained solvent, there would have been plenty of trouble. “Financially, the cinemas just spun out of control,” says one Sundance source.
Toward the end of March, just weeks after the cinemas had gone belly-up, Redford acquiesced to the inevitable and finally closed down the new Sundance Productions, only a year old, and laid off the employees, Kleeman included, who were now free to join the cinema centers staff on the unemployment line. Subsequently, Kleeman had to go to court to collect the balance of what he said was owed him on his multiyear contract.
Redford commemorated the twentieth anniversary of Sundance by dismissing other key people. Liz Manne, who had brought the channel back from the brink of extinction, increasing the subscriber base from three million to ten million in three and a half years, was fired in 2001. He also dropped his publicist, Lois Smith, who had been with him since the 1960s, and terminated the head of the catalogue, Patricia Warren, who was widely credited with turning it around.
Working for Redford was so difficult and disillusioning that one young, idealistic staffer, after a year or two in his employ, gave up his dream of going into the film business. “Bob is considered one of the good guys, and he wasn’t all that good,” he says. “So I figured, it probably will only get worse.” Former producer Barbara Maltby, who worked for Redford on and off for twenty years, explains the bitterness this way: “When Bob is good he’s as good as it gets. He has real vision and has certainly served the greater good in terms of helping people in the movie business. He is extremely smart, has good intentions, and most unusual for the industry, he can listen. Fatally, he also has great charm and lives in the moment. When the focus of his gaze is on you, you feel like you’ve won the golden ring. But when his gaze moves off you, you’re forgotten, because he’s on to the next person. This is extremely hard not to take personally, and sometimes it is personal. You have not lived up to expectations—his. But not only have you failed him, you’ve failed yourself, because you’ve been snookered by your own narcissism, thinking you’re special, more special than the hundred people who came before you. So there’s a double sense of failure. He’s very Clintonesque.”
THE OSCAR SEASON was always a stressful time at Miramax, with its small marketing staff working around the clock, under the Weinstein lash. Harvey himself was coming off the disappointment of seeing the presidential election stolen from his friends and political allies by George W. Bush. Then came the Golden Globes, which had assumed more and more importance every year, having gone from a joke to a dress rehearsal for the Oscars. When Binoche lost to Renée Zellweger (Nurse Betty) at the ceremony on January 21, 2001, after Chocolat lost to Almost Famous, Harvey had a public meltdown. He gathered his publicity troops in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hilton, lit into them, singling out favorite Marcy Granata for particular abuse.
February rolled around, and O was still sitting on the shelf at Miramax. Now that the election was over, Tim Blake Nelson assumed that Miramax would finally open the film. He met with both Weinsteins at the Tribeca offices. According to him, Harvey said, “We do not feel it is in our interest or the film’s interests that Miramax release it. We would like to find somebody else to release it.”
Nelson said to the brothers, “You’re talking to the wrong guy. Talk with my producer, Eric Gitter, about the terms of the contract. I have to warn you, though, he takes contracts very seriously.” At that, Harvey, who should have been in a reasonably good mood—Chocolat had made a comeback, improbably scooping up five Oscar nominations—lost it. According to Nelson, he shouted, referring to Gitter, “I will string him up, I will kill him, I will—he does not want to become my enemy, and he will become my enemy if he holds me to this contract. I will ruin him.”
In a button-down shirt and suspenders, Harvey met with Gitter in early March at the posh Peninsula Hotel on Little Santa Monica in Beverly Hills. Says Nelson, “It was one of those famous Harvey meetings. It was ugly. Eric says he broke glasses. There were obscene threats.” What precisely happened in that room is cloaked by a confidentiality agreement, but Gitter suggests that Weinstein overturned furniture, and says that although Harvey never laid a hand on him, he got close enough so that “I could smell what he had for lunch. It wasn’t attractive.” The producer says Harvey told him that “his agenda had changed specifically because of his work with the Democratic campaign.” Gitter’s response was, “Honor the contract. One thousand screens, $10 million P&A, or I’ll see you in court.”
True to his word, Gitter filed suit on March 19, amending it on April 17, 2001, asking for $17.85 million—$10 million for compensatory and $7.85 million for punitive damages. According to the New York Observer, the complaint alleged that unless the O team acceded to the transfer of the film to Lions Gate, the Weinsteins “would see to it that the film was released on one thousand poorly venued screens at inopportune times with no public relations support,” and that Harvey threatened to “invest the required print and advertising funds in an inappropriate manor [sic] and would ‘bury’ the film in the press.” Gitter was quoted as claiming that Harvey threatened that “he and his brother would see to it that ‘no one in Hollywood’ would do any future business with Mr. Gitter, personally.” Miramax settled with the plaintiffs out of court for an undisclosed amount. Lions Gate opened O on August 31, 2001, almost two years after the fall 1999 release date originally envisioned, and the film, of course, flopped.
A few weeks after Harvey’s meeting with Gitter, the Academy Awards for 2000 were held. Miramax, which had ten nominations, won nothing. For the second year in a row, DreamWorks walked away with the Best Picture Oscar, this time for Gladiator. Traffic, which had been nominated for five Oscars, among them Best Picture, won four, including Soderbergh for Best Direct
or.
Among the projects Soderbergh and Clooney initiated were Clooney’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind at Miramax, Nolan’s Insomnia at Universal, the Russo brothers’ Welcome to Collingwood, and Kerrigan’s In God’s Hands. One of the filmmakers Soderbergh also called was Todd Haynes. Haynes, who had moved from New York City to Portland, Oregon, had not made a film in four years, since Velvet Goldmine. Now he had a project called Far from Heaven, an homage to Douglas Sirk, about a suburban housewife whose life changes dramatically when she discovers that her husband is gay, and she falls into a relationship with her gardener, who happens to be black. One thing led to another, and the two met for drinks in L.A. Soderbergh told Haynes, “I’m in a position to try to make it a little easier for people whose work I think is worth it, and I would really like to do whatever I can to help you with this.” Soderbergh agreed to become Haynes’s executive producer.
In June, Harvey found himself bidding against the former third Weinstein for Haynes’s new picture, now budgeted at $12 million and change, with Christine Vachon producing and Julianne Moore playing the lead. Greenstein never gave any indication that he knew who Haynes was, or had seen any of his films. Says Haynes, “He was riding almost exclusively on Soderbergh’s word, his creative instincts.” Vachon knew that difficult as Harvey could be, at least he could be depended on to know who Sirk was, which could not be said of Greenstein. On the other hand, she felt uncomfortable assuring Haynes that she could protect him from Harvey, because tough as she was, she wasn’t sure. Haynes himself was tilting toward USA, and indeed, that’s where he made his deal.
But Harvey wanted a chance to make his pitch to Haynes anyway. And at that point, the deal could have been undone. The last thing the film-maker wanted to do was get on the phone with him. He was still bitter about Velvet Goldmine. “He made suggestions that I didn’t follow, and then he just buried it,” says Haynes. “Even afterward, they threw out a DVD, they didn’t ask for a director commentary, my name wasn’t on the cover of it, it was buried in the minuscule billing block. He can’t even do the really small things that don’t cost anything—he never shows any respect.” But Vachon said, “Look, Harvey knows you made the decision to go with Scott at USA, he just wants to talk to you.” As a courtesy, Haynes finally agreed. He recalls, “Here I was in Portland, in my beautiful old arts and crafts house, surrounded by these fruit trees and flowers and vegetables, and I had just spent the night with my friend making out in the fire pit in my backyard, and suddenly I’m on the phone with Harvey Weinstein who’s in Capri, and is screaming at me and calling me names like I’ve never been spoken to by anyone in my life. It was brutal.”
Haynes began what sounded like a rehearsed speech by saying, “Look, Harvey, I just want to thank you for your interest, and tell you that I’m not naive enough to think that you guys aren’t seminal players in the world in which we all work, and that in the future there will be opportunities I’ll look forward to exploring with you. On this one film I’d like to have a different experience.” If Haynes thought Harvey was going to pat him on the back and wish him well, he was mistaken.
“WHAT? YOU FUCKIN’ MADE YOUR DECISION? You fuck, you didn’t fuckin’ give me a chance to fuckin’ talk to you?” With sinking heart, Haynes realized there had been a misunderstanding somewhere along the line, and Weinstein appeared not to know he’d already made his choice. Harvey growled, “I’ve spoken to Christine and Julianne and they all want to go to Miramax.”
“Harvey, if that’s really true, it’s the result of your intimidation. People don’t tell you what they really think. You’re a very powerful person.” Then Haynes seized the occasion to unburden himself of the feelings he’d been harboring for four years, ending with, “I wasn’t listened to on Velvet Goldmine, why would I be listened to on this?”
“It’s not my fault that Goldmine didn’t do any business,” Harvey bellowed. “I spent $2 million on that film, and we made back shit. You fucking little motherfucker, you’re just a spoiled brat, you think you’re such a fucking genius you wouldn’t, like, listen—you fucking prima donna, you fucking arrogant prima donna.” According to Haynes, Weinstein threatened to spend $10 million to keep Moore, who at the time was starring in Miramax’s The Shipping News, from getting an Oscar nomination for Far from Heaven. Miramax VP Meryl Poster had been on the line the entire time, and she said to Harvey, “Well, Harvey, you’ve just alienated yet another director from the Miramax stable.” Harvey replied, “It’s good for the directors to hear that kind of talk. You know what your problem is, Meryl? You’re too soft!”
Afterward, Haynes called Soderbergh, told him, “Man, I got this unbelievable tirade from Harvey on the phone.”
“You’ll get the basket. Of cheese, and gherkins.”
Says Haynes, “I didn’t get a basket, I didn’t even get a fax apologizing for it. I got a call from him a couple of days later but I wasn’t gonna take it. Later I wondered, Should I have just hung up instead of staying on the phone? Why subject myself to this? I don’t need anybody to talk to me like that for any reason at all. I felt like I’d been in a car crash. Completely drained and physically impaired by it. It took the wind out of me.”
Losing Far from Heaven to Greenstein was bad enough, but Harvey was faced with difficulties wherever he turned. Talk magazine was going down the drain, All the Pretty Horses lost him more money and face, a teen comedy starring Kirsten Dunst called Get Over It tanked, Malèna had done nothing, and Chocolat folded at the Oscars. During the contretemps involving O, the filmmakers got the impression that Bob Weinstein was no more happy with the situation than they were. He wanted Dimension to distribute the movie, thought he could make money on it, while Harvey, who had no personal stake in it, put his political connections first. For a while, the division of labor between the brothers—Harvey won the Oscars, while Bob made the money—seemed to satisfy both. But Harvey wasn’t bringing home Oscars anymore, and he certainly wasn’t making much money. On the other hand, the rise of Dimension had been so dramatic that it couldn’t help but have affected the relationship between the two. Dimension’s contribution to the Miramax bottom line rose from approximately 25 percent in 1992 to nearly 75 percent in 2000, when it ponied up $339 million in grosses on eight pictures, for an astounding average gross of $42.4 million per picture, to Harvey’s relatively paltry $137 million on twenty-one pictures, representing an average gross of $6.5 million per picture. On the strength of Scary Movie and Scream 3, Bob for the first time was elevated above Harvey on Entertainment Weekly’s annual power list, 8th place to Harvey’s 22nd. Staffers noticed that Bob began to stand up to Harvey more. In the past, the brothers had shared marketing and publicity staffs, but now Bob insisted on his own.
Some Miramaxers felt that the relationship between the brothers had sunk to an all-time low. Says one, “They didn’t talk for a while. It was very tense, very ugly.” Harvey would corner Bob, say something like, “You never give a shit about Miramax, you never watch any of my pictures. Are you coming to the research screening of All the Pretty Horses?” Bob replied, “Nahh, I’m goin’ to the Knicks game.” But he took a tape and watched it at home. The next morning, he told Harvey, “I hated it.” It endlessly aggravated Bob that Harvey was trying to compete with him with teen comedies like Get Over It. “And Harvey couldn’t wait to shit on Bob when he comes out with something like Dracula 2000 or Highlander-Endgame,” says one staffer. “When Scary Movie did great, Harvey hated it. That he hadn’t had a huge commercial hit in a long time was absolutely killing him.” The Weinsteins had snapped up a Nicole Kidman vehicle, The Others. Harvey was heavily invested in the relationship with Tom Cruise, whose company, Cruise/Wagner, was to produce the film, and now with Kidman, who was coming up fast, especially since Paltrow, prone to dark, anti-Miramax moments, seemed like she might be the wrong horse.
Ultimately, it went to Dimension, but the decision poisoned the well even more. According to Kevin Smith, something of a Miramaxologist, “Harvey was pissed
because Bob had a movie that was not a Dimension movie, it was clearly a Miramax film, and he felt like Bob didn’t know what the fuck he was doing with it, it wasn’t tracking. Harvey stepped in and took the marketing away from Bob.”
Harvey knew the public was salivating over the Cruise-Kidman divorce, and he pulled off a publicity coup, managing to get the two of them together for the first time since the divorce announcement at The Others premiere, creating a media frenzy. The Others was released on August 10 to a healthy $14 million opening weekend, and the picture went on to gross $96.5 million. It was another one of those inexplicable Miramax marketing miracles. Continues Smith, “If Harvey hadn’t gotten involved, that movie did a quiet $40 million and slunk off. But it caused a lot of friction between the brothers. [Publicly] Bob said, ‘Harvey came in and saved the day.’ But the word was that Bob was pissed off because Harvey took over. They didn’t talk for weeks. Bad blood. There were whispers, veiled threats about splitting up the company. Bob wanted to go off on his own. I don’t think they’d ever come closer to severing ties than over The Others.” Splitting up Miramax was almost unthinkable, but Bob, who was responsible for most of the company’s profits, was also sharing their performance-based bonus 50-50 with his brother and was losing millions.
Ever since Miramax had moved into 375 Greenwich in 1991, Bob’s and Harvey’s offices had been side by side on the third floor. The space was redone, and during the construction in August and September 2001, both brothers moved up to the fourth floor. Staffers, used to reading the Miramax tea leaves, thought it was significant that when the renovation was completed, Harvey moved back down to his spanking new office, but Bob, who wanted a corner office like Harvey’s, stayed on the fourth floor.
Down and Dirty Pictures Page 64
