“ ‘Yeah, but, I’m set up at Miramax, rather the devil you know—I like those guys.’
“ ‘Dude, you gotta break the slave mentality. He pits us against each other. He knows I want to do the movie with you, he knows you want to do the movie with me, and he knows that I would like to go elsewhere and you want to stay there. So, we’re fucked. Look, I love you to death, and you know I am gonna do it, but I just want you to stay out of the negotiations because I’m going in there and I’m gonna play hardball.’ And he did. We’re paying Ben more than the entire budget of Pulp Fiction.’ ”
Affleck got $10 million against 10 percent of the gross, a bargain, considering that his rate is in the $15 to $20 million range. Jennifer Lopez, in a small part, got $4.5 million against 4 percent of the gross. Continues Smith, “Me and Scott Mosier, my producer, are at $4 or $5 million together, so now you’re at almost $20 million before you’ve shot a frame of film. So you’ve got $10 or $11 million to spend on the movie itself, as much as it cost us to make Dogma.” Jersey Girl came in under $40 million—now cheap for a Miramax film. But, concludes Smith, “If we had taken it independent, we probably could have made it for about $12 million, gotten the same people to do it for nothing. This was a company that could get away with paying people a lot less than what their quote was. But not anymore, man.”
Weinstein is not happy about the direction taken by his two “little brothers.” He says, “When I first came into the business, the idea of actors like the Robert De Niros or Al Pacinos of the world saying, ‘I need my tentpole, I’m gonna make a comic book franchise,’ was anathema. Now I have Ben and Matt, guys who grew up with me—and wisely so for their careers—saying, ‘I have to do the Sum of All Fears, I have to do The Bourne Identity.’ It’s the triumph of the agents. There’s nobody walking around at the agencies saying, ‘Wait a second, what are we talking about, their franchise property. What happened to the art of cinema? I’m gonna make sure that they make the coolest material.’ ”
“It’s tough for Harvey to get his head around paying Ben $20 million when a few scant years ago, he had him for scale,” Smith adds. “But once Ben and Matty became marketable beyond Miramax, in a world where they can make $15 million, no questions asked, versus struggling to get Harvey up to $10 million, for Ben especially, it’s just, ‘Harvey is a businessman, I’m a businessman.’ ” Smith thinks the seeds of the discord go all the way back to Good Will Hunting. “That film made $130 million, and Ben and Matt never really saw money beyond the initial payments. The Project Greenlight 2 negotiations were pretty ugly as well. The first one had worked, and those dudes were out there dancing like chimps to sell the show. They’d made Greenlight 1 at a deficit. They had lost money, but Miramax had made money. Harvey wanted to do the second series the same way, and Affleck kept saying, ‘I don’t care about making money, but at least I want to break even!’ Ben started calling it ‘Project Redlight.’ Matty and Ben are two people that Harvey strives every waking moment of his life to be in business with. It was like The Third Wheel, a little $3 million movie Ben and Matt produced. Miramax releases tons of bullshit anyway, why wouldn’t they release that?”
After finishing Jersey Girl, Kevin Smith had some time on his hands before starting Ranger Danger, his next picture for Miramax. Affleck asked him to direct his new starrer, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, at Disney. Smith told Affleck, “Ordinarily I don’t do pictures I don’t write, but being that it’s you and it hits at the right moment, it might be fun.” A big, mainstream movie, it would have been a nice payday for Smith, working in L.A., his new hometown during some down time, with his pal Affleck. His overall deal with Miramax allowed him to direct other movies so long as he didn’t originate them, so there was no contractual reason he couldn’t do it. Never thinking they would say “no,” he told the Weinsteins, “I would like to do it, but if you guys say ‘no,’ I will totally respect it.” He continues, “Lo and behold, they said ‘No.’ They asked Disney for half the movie, which is what they do. Michael Eisner said no.” According to Smith, Harvey and Bob said, “Why would you want to work for Disney? They fucked Dogma, they fucked the Clerks cartoon.”
“I don’t want to go to Disney, I just want to make a movie with Ben. But don’t we all work for Disney anyway?”
“Not like that.” Then Harvey gave Smith the Hallström treatment, showed a side of himself that Smith had heard about but never seen up close before. Says John Shestack, late of Artisan and one of the producers, “Harvey’s a twisted father figure to Kevin, and he bludgeoned him into not doing it, used every weapon in his arsenal of emotional blackmail, basically saying, ‘How can you do this to me, I won’t work with you if you direct it.’ ” Affleck told Smith, “Look, man, Disney would probably make the exact same deal that you have at Miramax,” but Scott Mosier, Smith’s producer, reminded him, “Yeah, Disney wants you to direct this script, great, but what happens if you bring Disney Dogma? They’re not gonna want to make it, and Harvey and Bob did.” Says Smith now, “Ben wants what Ben wants. But Miramax is my home. I had to pass.” Smith asked to do Fletch in October, and Harvey acceded, as well as agreeing to give Smith some of the money he believed he was owed on his past films. Recalls Harvey, “Kevin said, ‘I feel this, I feel that,’ I said, ‘How much?’ He said, ‘A million,’ and I said, ‘OK.’ I also gave him gross on his next two movies. He was torn between Ben Affleck and me. It wasn’t like I was giving him a million to not do that movie. I gave him a million because he was loyal, he stood up for me.” But the episode further poisoned the pond in which Affleck and the Weinsteins used to swim. “Ben was like, If you do this, Harvey, lose my phone number,” says Shestack. “He went to war, and it didn’t matter. Harvey just did what he wanted to do.”
So far, Miramax has not had much luck nurturing a new crop of Afflecks and Damons. “Who do you replace them with?” wonders Smith. “Ashton Kutcher? Good Will Hunting was lightning in a bottle. To be honest, I don’t see Miramax fostering those kinds of relationships.”
After pulling back from acquisitions, Harvey was incensed that Miramax could not boast of any of the best ones of the last couple of years. In 1999, Paramount Classics took Boys Don’t Cry, and Sony got Run Lola Run; in 2000, Paramount Classics scooped up You Can Count on Me, while Sony picked up Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; in 2001, Searchlight released Sexy Beast and The Deep End; Lions Gate acquired Monster’s Ball, UA put out Ghost World, and IFC released Memento. Harvey may continue to pick up the odd film here and there, even the dark and controversial ones, because he needs the street cred they provide to maintain the company’s bona fides, but whatever his motives, he deserves credit for releasing them. He acquired The Magdalene Sisters while financing the production of City of God. He also asked Tom Tykwer to direct Heaven from a script by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski. Says Tykwer, “After the first impression of him that was kind of horrifying, during that production I was completely free to do the movie I wanted to do, including even final cut. And it is exactly the movie I was hoping for. He had suggestions—my first reaction was, What is he talking about? But very often, if you get a strong reaction from him, there is often something true about it.” But Miramax is unlikely to get back into the acquisitions business in a big way anytime soon unless Disney steps on its budget cap. In 2002, Harvey sat on his hands while Focus took the Palme d’Or, BAFTA, and César winner, The Pianist, UA bought Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, Sony took Talk to Her, IFC released My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Y Tu Mamá También, Paramount Classics, Mostly Martha, while Searchlight acquired The Good Girl. Says Rudin, “The smaller, more interesting independent movies are no longer the main business of Miramax. Other people do them better now, are hitting the numbers that used to be their sole province.” Adds Elwes, “They’ve really ceded the independent game. It’s about keeping their hand in now, it’s not a business anymore.”
Perversely, when Harvey did find himself with a valuable acquisition, he wouldn’t release it. He had paid $5.5 milli
on for the North American rights to The Quiet American, based on the venerable Graham Greene tale set against a background of American meddling in Vietnam. It featured a sensational performance by Michael Caine and a not so sensational, although serviceable, performance by Brendan Fraser as the ruthless CIA agent. Harvey had tested the film in New Jersey on September 10, 2001. It scored around 60, not good, but not bad either. Director Phillip Noyce and his producer had a meeting at Miramax the next morning. “As we turned the corner to Greenwich, about twenty to nine, we could see people running along the street pointing up in a very animated fashion,” Noyce recalls. “I saw a hole six-eighths of the way up the building and what looked like a small commuter plane, its tail sticking out, embedded in the World Trade Center, with smoke just starting to rise from the collision that had occurred about half a minute earlier. We stood there for the next two hours as the tragedy unfolded, leaving when the second building collapsed. We finally had the meeting two days later. Harvey’s kids sang ‘America the Beautiful’ to us.”
In October, the film was tested again. The scores plunged into the 30s. Continues Noyce, “People were heard to comment in the bathroom that they didn’t appreciate moviemakers taking a swipe at America.” Harvey also showed it to some of his critics, who didn’t like it. Noyce delivered the film in May 2002 but was unable to get a response from Harvey. Then, in the summer, Gill told Noyce that the film was going straight to video. (Gill denies that he or anyone else told Noyce this.) The director hired Mickey Cottrell, a veteran indie publicist. “People have put their lives into these creations, and then they’re just locked up,” says Cottrell. “It’s like Hansel and Gretel. Harvey takes them into the wonderful candy house and then puts them in a cage.” Cottrell organized some critics’ screenings—against Miramax’s wishes—and tried to persuade Harvey to screen the film at the Toronto Film Festival. Harvey refused until he got a call from Michael Caine, who was so anxious for The Quiet American to see the light of day that he said, in Noyce’s words, “I will not do any publicity for The Actors [another Miramax film of his], and I’ll never work for you again.”
At Toronto, “There were no press kits at the press screening,” recalls Cottrell, who mobilized critics to pressure Harvey to release the film. It worked, and The Quiet American opened in November. But the problems weren’t over. “We had a horrible time when the film was released,” Cottrell continues. “They fulfilled their contractual obligations to the bare minimum.” Caine’s performance was Oscar caliber, but, says Noyce, “The film could only be seen for two weeks and then it disappeared. People were asking me how they could see the movie, and I’d say, ‘Haven’t you got a screener?’18 Outside of the actors’ branch, the screeners didn’t go out until a week before the voting for the nominations. They said they had problems putting the covers on.” Caine was nominated anyway (although neither the film nor Noyce joined him), and the conspiracy-minded suspected that Miramax failed to support Caine because they wanted Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis.
The Quiet American went on to do so-so business, grossing $13 million domestic, $25 million worldwide. Says Cottrell, “It should have done that much in the U.S. alone if Miramax had supported it.” Noyce is more forgiving. “Harvey is a tough guy, an egomaniac, draconian in his interpretation of the laws as he’s made them, but despite the checkered history of The Quiet American, we’re better off with him than without him.”
In the fall of 2002, Harvey backloaded his release schedule once again, as he had done in 2001 and previous years. Miramax released Frida, The Quiet American, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Gangs of New York, Pinocchio, Chicago, and several other pictures. Given the turnover in marketing, and the nature and expense of the pictures, it was a high-risk strategy. His attitude was, “I can do it all.” He seemed to feel that as long as the Miramax brand was on the movie, it would sell itself.
Given his success with Chicago—the film grossed more than $170 million— there may have been more truth in this than his detractors allowed. Rolled out slowly in a classic, old Miramax campaign, Chicago pulled away from the pack to become the biggest Miramax grosser ever. Still, the bottom line, not the awards, indicates that one film a profitable year does not make, and some of Chicago’s profits may well have been eaten up by Gangs’ losses. According to Miramax production consultant David Parfitt, at the end of shooting the hard costs stood at $105 million. Add another $10 million for its year and a half in post-production, and $40 to $60 million for marketing, it could have flirted with $175 million, while the domestic gross just reached $80 million. Pinocchio cost Miramax $20 million and grossed a mere $3.5 million; Confessions of a Dangerous Mind cost about $35 million and grossed $15.9 million; and the $20 million Hero was postponed again. Miramax profited on ancillary markets, including the Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown DVDs, enhanced and deluxed to the nth degree, as well as straight-to-video films like Seventh Inning Fetch, moneymakers that no one has ever heard of, but it’s probably easier to parse the origins of the universe than to penetrate the inky clouds that obscure the company’s financial picture.
Gangs can almost serve as a case study in what has happened to Miramax as it has tried to move into studio-sized pictures. Instead of beginning with a finished script and moving on to casting, the way indies used to be made, Miramax gave the cast pride of place, and Gangs had to begin principal photography without a satisfactory script to accommodate the busy schedules of its high-wattage stars, in turn required by the big budget. “Everybody knew the script wasn’t ready, but they thought they had no choice,” says a former Miramax executive. “If they didn’t go when they did, they would lose the cast and the director. But they went too early.”
Despite a stunning opening in which the rival gangs, dressed like refugees from the Mad Hatter’s tea party, face off, and a spectacular performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, the film was a mess, almost shockingly so, given who was involved. The most glaring problem, among many, was that DiCaprio was miscast as Amsterdam Vallon; he has neither the physical presence nor the acting chops to weigh in against Day-Lewis, and worse, his part was woefully underwritten, throwing off the dramatic balance between Vallon and Bill the Butcher Cutting (Day-Lewis). It’s the Satan problem in Paradise Lost, namely, the villain is more human and appealing than the hero, the sulky Vallon, who comes off like a punk. It is Bill the Butcher we’re rooting for. Vallon badly needs to rise to the stature of a tragic figure, torn apart by the conflict between extracting a pound of flesh from Bill for killing his father, and loving him for, in effect, becoming his new father. But he doesn’t. Nor does he seem to have much of an inner life at all, and when Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz) asks him, “Who are you?” she’s speaking for the audience as much as for herself. We never do find out.
This is not rocket science, it’s Filmmaking 101, but the army of great cinematic brains who worked on this movie was never able to put Humpty together. According to Parfitt, “The feeling at Miramax was that a lot of Marty’s work in recent years had been cold, and not character driven, and what would save this film from just being brutal was if we actually fell in love with characters in spite of all their faults. They wanted a real romance between Cameron and Leo. And genuine affection between Leo and Daniel. Kenny Lonergan was brought in to work specifically on character and dialogue, but it didn’t happen on the screen. That has to be between Marty and his actors.” Adds one former Miramax executive, “They talked themselves into, ‘Oh, it’s not so bad after all. It’s Leo, he’s a movie star, and every bit of time he has on the screen will be great.’ ” And with the draft riots intact, Gangs resembled nothing so much as a snake trying to swallow a beach ball. Harvey was right. The draft riot is a spectacular set piece dramatizing an event driven by complex historical forces, but it belongs in another film. It’s way too complex to explain with an embarrassing Monday Night Football–style voice-over.
In the epic confrontation between Scorsese and Weinstein, Scorsese won, but it was a Pyrrhic victory in which the wors
t of the New Hollywood asserted itself—the excess minus the drugs, presumably—with Scorsese in effect directing his Heaven’s Gate instead of Raging Bull. The clash between the two men indeed threw off its share of sparks, but it was somehow an anticlimax—with the director and producer going through the motions, not unlike Vallon and Bill the Butcher listlessly wrestling in the dust at the end of the film—and both sides lost. It seemed that perhaps Affleck was right; there is no Us/Them anymore. Scorsese’s insistence on his creative integrity as an artist seemed empty when the picture turned out to be so flawed, while Harvey’s attempts to enforce his authority likewise seemed beside the point. If the Gangs fiasco proved anything, it is that the economics of the system of production trumps everything else: creative genius, experience, personalities, intentions. Karl Marx would have been pleased.
Harvey barely dodged a bullet with Gangs—had Chicago not worked, he’d probably be buying a plot in the corporate burial ground—but, apparently motivated by his celebrated passion for movies, a burning desire to show that he and Scorsese are buddies, a positive addiction to heat and buzz, and an apparent taste for self-immolation, he signed a new deal with Warner’s and Graham King to market Aviator, a biopic of Howard Hughes, again starring DiCaprio, with Scorsese directing. This time the launching pad for the budget was set at $107 million, and if Gangs is any indication, who knows where it will end up. Reportedly, Scorsese was appalled to have Harvey involved once again, and made it known that the Miramax co-chairman was not particularly welcome on the set. “Graham King had nowhere else to go,” says a source. “That movie was going to die if it didn’t go to Harvey. That was the last resort of a desperate man.”
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