Moguls, Monsters and Madmen, page 27
“Harvey, I’m not telling the stories that maybe you think I’m telling. People have told me some salacious stories, but I’m not going down that road. This is a film about you and your movies, so you have nothing to worry about.”
“Barry, this is not over. I don’t want you to make the film, and I’m not through with you.”
“I hear you, but I’m making the film.”
We hung up. Eddie said, “You handled it well. You went back at him. It’s fine, keep going.”
Harvey Weinstein hadn’t yet declared war. It was still cat and mouse. When the New York Times contacted him for another story about the film, he told them, “Barry is a great filmmaker.”
After that, he kept checking in on me. He tried coercion. He tried threats. He recommended people to interview for the film. He contacted people I’d already lined up and compelled them to pull out. Periodically, he would even ignore me.
When my mother, who knew about the threats over the Wasserman film, heard I was making a documentary about Harvey Weinstein, she asked, “Can’t you pick another dead one so at least he can’t kill you personally?”
My mother—an overnight Harvey Weinstein expert—was almost right, but it wasn’t me Harvey was determined to destroy. Just my documentary.
Harvey Weinstein was born in 1952 in Flushing, New York. He grew up to be a tough, flamboyant brawler. His loyal brother, Bobby, two years younger, was quieter and more self-contained. Physically, they were not impressive: two fat guys raised in a six-storey, rent-controlled apartment building. Their father, Max, was a diamond cutter who had health problems; their mother, Miriam, was the family’s driving force.
Miriam instilled in the brothers the desire to make money and acquire status. Max developed their artistic taste by taking them every Saturday to the Mayfair Theater, which showed foreign films by directors such as Fellini, Visconti and Rossellini. Harvey would later claim that François Truffaut’s 400 Blows had the greatest impact on him. At fourteen, he took brother Bob and six friends to see it at the Mayfair, thinking they were going to see a pornographic movie. When the lights came on, Harvey and Bob were the only ones left in the theatre. As well as being mesmerized by the film, Harvey considered its provocative title a lesson in marketing.
Max taught his sons another strategy vital for their film career: the art of display—something my father had taught me too. One diamond looked like another until you placed it on a black velvet cushion. Then, it became the only diamond anyone wanted to see.
Given a choice between the Vietnam War and college, Harvey left New York City in 1969 to attend the University of Buffalo. Like Wasserman and Cohl, he began his career as a concert promoter by bringing music acts to the city. He eliminated competition at the university, reportedly by using cutthroat tactics, and then started a concert company with his classmate, Corky Burger. Five years later, Harvey and Corky Presents was producing 2,000 concerts a year. Harvey dropped out of college and acquired a run-down, 2,000-seat theatre called The Century, which he used for concerts and Saturday-night movies. His brother, Bob, gave early promise of his marketing shrewdness when he conceived of the idea of showing three movies for the price of one.
In 1979, when he was twenty-seven, Harvey sold his shares in the concert company and moved back to New York City to start a film company with Bob. They called it Miramax after their parents Miriam and Max, and defined its mission with reference to Star Trek: “To boldly go where no one has gone before.”
Soon after setting up an office, Harvey was smitten with his stunning, socially prominent secretary, Eve Chilton. His relentless wooing of her upset the company’s small staff but he persisted and married Eve within the year. The two eventually had three daughters.
In 1969, Easy Rider had exploded onto movie screens. Its success heralded a wave of films by independent and innovative directors, such as Peter Bogdanovich, Mike Nichols, Stanley Kubrick and Francis Ford Coppola, in a movement that became known as The New Hollywood. By the 1980s, however, the big studios had once again pushed aside these story-driven films with blockbusters like Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark. In 1986, Miramax, with twenty employees, was still struggling for focus and barely staying afloat. The Weinstein brothers sold 45 per cent of Miramax to the UK bank, Midland Montagu, for $3.5 million and a $10 million line of credit. Harvey and Bob used the cash, combined with the film savvy they acquired as boys watching art films at the Mayfair, to finally find their métier. Harvey acquired the Italian movie Cinema Paradiso, which he reshaped and repositioned for a mainstream North American audience. He had a fixed idea about how long anyone would sit for a movie, and this led him to cut forty-five minutes from the film. He was right. The film, which had been poorly received in its original version, grossed more than $12 million, won a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars in 1989.
A year later, Harvey did much the same for the independently produced Sex, Lies, and Videotape, which won an Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Instead of relying on reviews, small ads and word of mouth, which was typical for indies, Miramax spent an unheard-of $2.5 million on a TV campaign. The film ultimately grossed more than $54 million worldwide and won a Palme d’Or at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. It also brought director Steven Soderbergh into prominence, while also highlighting the importance of Robert Redford’s Sundance Festival.
The British drama The Crying Game failed in its 1992 UK and New York releases. Miramax created for its North American release the most talked about film-marketing campaign ever. He demanded that moviegoers promise—on their honour—never to reveal the shocking twist. That film grossed $63 million; received six Academy Awards nominations, including Best Picture; and won a Best Original Screenplay for writer and director Neil Jordan. Miramax had found a winning formula: acquire indie and foreign films, repackage them as mainstream blockbusters and use aggressive advertising to take them from art houses to the suburbs.
The Weinstein brothers were riding high in the entertainment business, but you wouldn’t have known it by the manner in which it was conducted. Their staff worked in a stuffy, fluorescent-lit two-bedroom New York apartment-office, in an atmosphere some described as a hothouse of anger and fear. Bob hunkered down in one bedroom, Harvey in the other, and everyone else was packed into the living room among filing cases and small desks.
“It was high pressure and unforgiving,” recalled Eamonn Bowles, now president of Magnolia Pictures. “At first, it was also bracing. Everyone was very smart, and there wasn’t much backstabbing because we all seemed united in avoiding Harvey’s and Bob’s wrath.”
Their episodes of rage apparently included tearing phones out of walls and using anything else that was handy as a potential weapon.
Director George Hickenlooper vividly recalled working with Harvey on his film Factory Girl. “He would call me in the middle of the night, and shout into the phone, ‘Why are you sleeping? You’re a loser, loser, loser!’ I’d say, ‘Huh, huh? What did I do?’ ‘You’re a fucking idiot. I’m going to take out an ad in Variety, full page, and say don’t ever hire Hickenlooper. He’s a loser!’”
Harvey was especially keen on reshooting a sex scene between Sienna Miller and Hayden Christensen. Before the cameras rolled, Hickenlooper claimed Harvey had instructed Hayden, “You’re going to hump her and hump her and hump her and hump her, and then you’re going to flip her over and do her the other way. Then she’s going to get on top of you, and then there’s going to be a tear running down her cheek, and the whole audience is going to tear up with her. That’s how it’s going to be done.”
Following orders, Hickenlooper sent Harvey a video playback, leading to another call five hours later on set. “He shouted, ‘Where’s my wide shot? Where’s my wide shot?’ I told him, ‘We were in a confined space. I couldn’t go wider.’ ‘You’re lying to me! You’re a liar! You’re lying to Harvey Weinstein. I’m going to take another ad out in Variety and say George Hickenlooper lied to Harvey Weinstein. You’re fired!’”
Not knowing where he stood on the film, before packing up his belongings to vacate the set, Hickenlooper decided he might as well eat the free catered lunch. Word got back to Harvey that George was leaving the set and he called him on his cell. “Harvey came shouting at me, ‘What are you doing? Get the fuck back in there!’ He was like an alcoholic patriarch with everyone in constant fear of being spanked, or beaten or talked down to.”
Harvey justified the abuse by pointing to his record of success. As Hickenlooper recalled, he would shout, “‘Do you know how many Oscars I’ve won? Do you know how many Golden Globes?’ Gee, Harvey, do you know how many Boy Scout badges I’ve won, plus an Emmy?”
Meryl Poster, a long-time Harvey stalwart, surprised me by agreeing to be interviewed. After starting out as Harvey’s second assistant, Poster rose through the ranks of Harvey’s various enterprises before branching out on her own. Why was she showing up? I decided she must be Harvey’s eyes and ears. My suspicions were confirmed when she arrived with an assistant and a tape recorder. I told her, “I don’t want to lose you, Miss Poster, but no taping of the interview, and your assistant has to go. You can, of course, say no to any of my questions.”
She surprised me by giving in to my conditions. She confirmed stories about Harvey’s temper tantrums, as many others would do. “I quit after the second week, but he begged me to come back. I told him he needed anger management. He would blow up and then feel badly.”
Harvey emailed me to ask, “How did the Meryl Poster interview go?”
As if he didn’t know.
The late New York Times writer David Carr, recalled, “Harvey would tell me again and again, ‘I’ve mellowed. I’ve got my blood sugar under control.’ If you typed in ‘mellow’ and ‘Harvey Weinstein’ your search engine would blow up because of all the times he’s said that. He’s very volatile, but he’s also very accessible, a fun, smart guy to talk to about books, films or television shows.”
Like everyone else I interviewed, Mark Urman, an indie film distributor and former Miramax employee, agreed that Harvey had been a game changer in the film business: the outsider who became the ultimate insider. “I think Harvey understood very early that he would have to turn some of his liabilities into assets,” said Urman. “Harvey was always sloppy, but famously so. His clothing was always stained, sometimes so egregiously that you could only scratch your head and wonder, ‘How is it possible that there is so much sauce on that shirt?’”
Film historian and author Peter Biskind, who wrote the definitive book on the indie film business of the ’90s, Down and Dirty Pictures, called Harvey a Reverse Waldo. “Once you saw him in a room you couldn’t see anyone else. That happened with me even before I knew who he was.”
Harvey’s spectacular success with Sex, Lies, and Videotapes and The Crying Game had not gone unnoticed by the big studios. Many set up their own divisions to chase indies. Spurred on by this new competition, Harvey began scooping up films he didn’t want just to keep them from the competition, inflating prices and leaving him cash-starved once again.
“It became a trend to use Hollywood stars in independent films,” said Peter Biskind. “Finally, they began to cost as much as low-budget Hollywood movies.”
Harvey also became known as Mr. Scissorhands for the way he recut films. Independent directors began to say, “The good news is that we sold our film to Miramax. The bad news is that we sold our film to Miramax.” Peter Biskind reported, “Sometimes Harvey would have students cutting the films of famous directors. One told me that he was in a dentist’s chair having his teeth drilled when he heard Harvey was cutting his film. He didn’t know which was worse, the drilling or the cutting.”
I was excited when James Ivory of the famous Merchant Ivory team agreed to be interviewed. After waiting ninety minutes with my crew, I phoned him. “Hello, it’s Barry Avrich. We’re wondering where you are.”
“I can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“Well, there may be one more film I want to make, and if I do your interview, Harvey won’t green-light it.”
“Mr. Ivory, you’ve made a commitment to me, in the same way you make a commitment to actors and others on a film. I have a crew ready to roll here.” He knew I was right, and he agreed to come.
Ivory explained that his connection with Harvey began while he was riding a subway, trying to figure out how to get the next Ismail Merchant/James Ivory movie financed. “Suddenly, it became clear. For a certain kind of film, all subways and roads head in one direction—to Harvey Weinstein’s office.” But as almost every director discovered, working with Harvey came at a price. “Harvey had a carnivorous appetite for dismembering his films,” said Ivory. “With Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, Harvey wanted us to do things to the film that we didn’t want to do, and he began ranting and raving and charging around his office. Ismail had a very heavy briefcase, and he slammed it against a big glass partition. There was this loud cracking sound, and it shattered. Then, the two of them were going to take the fight into the street.”
Ivory and Merchant showed their version of the film to their stars, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. “Paul told Harvey, ‘That’s the film I’ll do the publicity for, not another,’ and that settled Harvey down.” The two filmmakers and Harvey didn’t speak to each other for two years. Then they tried another collaboration in 2000 with The Golden Bowl. This time, when Harvey brandished his scissors, the British filmmakers insisted on buying back their film rights, which they then sold to Lionsgate Films.
Harvey often spent huge amounts of money on marketing and acquisitions, while counting on the next hit to cover the deficit. Meanwhile, brother Bob would bring in money with horror and controversial films. Harvey sometimes was accused of deliberately seeking an X-rating to stir up controversy and create box-office interest. “I remember doing a television clip of Helen Mirren walking around in her underwear,” said Mark Urman. “It aired all over the news. We had been looking at small images, but when these were blown up, we discovered Helen Mirren wasn’t wearing any panties. She had on a garter belt, and what we thought was black lace was Helen Mirren.”
Despite the controversies, that same year Miramax picked up a Best Picture Oscar for My Left Foot, an inspirational movie about a young man with cerebral palsy, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, who won Best Actor.
In 1993, the Weinstein brothers sold Miramax Films to the Walt Disney Company for $60 million. The agreement called for both Harvey and Bob to stay on until 2005. Now able to play for higher stakes, Harvey diversified, with investments in the fashion house Halston, the cable network Ovation, a long list of restaurants, the Bravo hit Project Runway and dozens of Broadway productions. In 1998, he hired former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown to launch a magazine called Talk. That venture alone eventually lost him $50 million.
Taking a leaf from Lew Wasserman’s playbook, Harvey became a strong supporter of Bill Clinton, and then of Hillary Clinton, donating $750,000 and raising another $14 million.
The prestigious awards continued to pile up. In 1996, Miramax received nine Oscars, including Best Picture for the epic film The English Patient, in which Harvey invested $30 million for a gross of $78 million. The dénouement was not so good. The film’s producer, Saul Zaentz, claimed he had been cheated out of millions in profits, while Harvey adamantly insisted the film was not profitable due to high marketing costs. Zaentz said, “Harvey is a pushcart peddler who puts his thumb on the scale when the old woman is buying meat.” More accounting questions were raised over Good Will Hunting, which was nominated in 1997 for Best Picture. For an investment of $20 million, the film grossed over $200 million. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who had written and developed the film, were left feeling shortchanged by millions of dollars, while co-star Robin Williams, with a different contract, made more than $20 million. “Matt and Ben shamed Harvey into giving them each one million dollars,” said Biskind. “As a gesture, Harvey dumped a bag of fake money onto a bed. He could have given them forty-five million dollars and still made out like a bandit.”
In 1998, at the height of his power, Harvey launched an all-out military-style campaign to win Best Picture for Shakespeare in Love. He succeeded, unexpectedly beating out Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. “No vote was too obscure to pursue,” said Biskind, referring to the votes of members of the Academy. “He did screenings at retired actors’ homes, mailed out cassettes and sent stars and directors on the road. Harvey knew that just as you could win by one vote, you could also lose by one vote.”
Despite such successes, Miramax entered a phase in which the company floundered, while other distributors were successfully releasing indie films using their formula. By 2002, Miramax had laid off 15 per cent of its staff.
More serious trouble was brewing. When Disney chairman, Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Harvey ally, departed the company, the Weinsteins were forced to deal with his heir, the less pliable Michael Eisner. The deterioration of the Disney/Miramax relationship came as no surprise to many in the industry. Disney was a corporate monolith, which had built its success on children’s animated features and theme parks. Miramax had built its success on risk-taking, both in deals and in content. Tarantino’s 1994 iconoclastic Pulp Fiction included scenes that featured hypodermic needles and anal rape. In Priest, which also was released in 1994, priests were portrayed in both heterosexual and homosexual encounters. This led directly to a boycott by the Catholic League, a stockholders’ revolt and the picketing of Walt Disney World. Kids, in 1995, was about a day in the life of sexually uninhibited, drug-taking New York teenagers with a suggestion of child pornography. These were not the kinds of films with which Disney was usually associated.
Gangs of New York, at $90 million, was Harvey’s most expensive film. Directed by Martin Scorsese, it was supposed to reestablish his prestige and remake his fortune. Though it had a 2003 Best Picture nomination, it was only a modest box-office success.
