HarveyWeinstein Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I've been keeping my eye on this whole Inglourious Basterds mishegoss, because I'm a fan of Tarantino's, and of Nazi movies, and of movies where Nazis are killed in spectacularly violent ways, even though the atrociously spelled title is enough to give a copy editor or any responsible writer an aneurysm.

When I read that Harvey Weinstein spectacularly dissed the movie in an interview with GQ, I was a little confused. According to WENN, Weinstein told GQ, "It isn't funny; it isn't exciting; it isn't a realistic war movie, yet neither is it an entertaining genre spoof or a clever counterfactual wartime yarn. It isn't emotionally involving or deliciously ironic or a brilliant tissue of trash-pop references. Nothing like that. Brad Pitt gives the worst performance of his life, with a permanent smirk as if he's had the left side of his jaw injected with cement, and which he must uncomfortably maintain for long scenes on camera without dialogue."

Look who wants to fight Oprah over an illiterate, overweight African-American girl: Harvey Weinstein. Actually, Harvey isn't fighting Oprah Winfrey directly; The Weinstein Company (TWC) and Lionsgate filed lawsuits against each other yesterday, both claiming the right to distribute Sundance award-winner Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire, according to indieWIRE.

On the surface, this is patently absurd. We're not talking about a sure-fire box office smash, are we? The premise of Push (not to be confused, of course, with the super-powered action movie opening tomorrow) is so "unsettling and bleak that no one would blame you if you didn't want to see it:." That's how Eric D. Snider began his review from Sundance. Even with Oprah and Tyler Perry getting behind the release, Push sounds like a tough sell. So why is Harvey suing?

His lawyer claims it's because a deal was in place with sales agent Cinetic Media, who went "behind their backs" to make a better deal with Lionsgate. Cinetic says that a deal with TWC was not in place. Beyond the 'he said, she said' legal disagreements, David Poland commented: "Unlike Lionsgate, TWC is NOT a company with a strong history of releasing films for black audiences. On the other hand, they now have Tom Ortenberg, who was probably drooling at the opportunity to top Lionsgate with TWC's first real urban film."

One of Broadway's biggest non-musical hits this year has been August: Osage County, a 3 1/2-hour comic drama about an appallingly dysfunctional family that completely falls apart when its patriarch goes missing. (The photo represents a typical moment.) It inspired rapturous reviews, won five Tonys (including best play), and won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. I saw it when I was in New York in May and can attest to its caustic, dark hilarity and its vividly realistic characters.

It's been known since at least March (thanks, Jeff Wells) that a film version was in the works, but now that Harvey Weinstein has signed on as co-producer, with The Weinstein Company taking worldwide distribution rights, things have heated up. (Not that this was a surprise, considering The Weinstein Co. co-produced the Broadway version, too.) And now the inevitable problems with a stage-to-screen translation become apparent.

First of all, there's the length. The playwright, Tracy Letts (who also wrote Bug, recently made into a weird Ashley Judd movie), is doing the adaptation. Surely Weinstein will pressure him to trim it down. Plays are allowed to run that long; movies usually aren't unless they're big, sweeping epics. Osage County takes place entirely in one house and spans only a couple days of time.

Then there is casting. The Broadway production had no major stars, no big names. The temptation would be to cast someone like Meryl Streep as the acerbic, pill-popping matriarch, Violet. But Deanna Dunagan won a Tony for playing the role, and while she may not be a marquee name, her performance is so brilliantly feisty and malevolent that she should be allowed to replicate it onscreen. She's earned it.

It's a common experience to read a book slated for a film adaptation and then approach the movie, if at all, with a trepidation bordering on fear. As an optimist who doesn't get too offended when his favorite stories get changed for a different medium, I generally try to minimize that reaction. Yet that is exactly how I feel about Stephen Daldry's imminent adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's The Reader. A large part of me is convinced that Schlink's lovely, challenging little novel – almost more of an essay than a novel, really – can't possibly survive Daldry's questionable prestige picture instincts. The book demands a small film, melancholy, withdrawn. Can we get that from one of the year's big Oscar hopefuls?

The logline IMDb plot summary [Ed.: corrected upon being informed that this is not the official studio "logline"] is already all wrong: "Nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Burk is reunited with his former lover (Winslet) as she defends herself in a war-crime trial." No. I'm loath to give too much away, but "reunited" is not the right word. In fact, the lack of a bona fide reunion between the two is part of what makes the novel so interesting, and the reason for that lack of reunion is at the heart of the moral questions it grapples with.

"By calling it Zack and Miri Make a Porno, you're drawing a line in the sand that kinda says, anyone who's remotely interested in a movie like that with that title, come on in. If you're offended by the word porno, stay the f*ck away. This ain't for you." -- Kevin Smith

Last month, I traveled to Red Bank, New Jersey and enjoyed a very cool lunch with a very cool dude by the name of Kevin Smith. While we scarfed down some tasty Italian food, I recorded roughly an hour and a half of our conversation -- all of which would be way too much to read in one post. Thus, I've decided to break some stuff up into sections and post them separately, then I'll be back with much more in the coming days leading up to the October 31st release of the pretty hilarious Zack and Miri Make a Porno. At one point during our conversation, Kevin told me about the alternate title Bob Weinstein wanted for Zack and Miri. Check it out:

Kevin Smith: "That [title] sh*t didn't come up until we were deep in the process. Because when I was sitting around with Harvey [Weinstein], we were talking about some Clerks II stuff and he asked what I wanted to do next. So I said there was this movie I was thinking about making called Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and he goes ...

[the following is written out in script form because it's easier to read, though keep in mind these are all still Smith's words]

Harvey Weinstein: Done. Green lit.
Kevin Smith: Don't you wanna know what it's about?
Harvey Weinstein: Kevin, doesn't that title say it all? That's a great title. Hopefully it's about a little more when we're done, but so be it.

So we were all up and running -- Seth [Rogen] read it, loved it -- and so it never really occurred to anyone. Two weeks into shooting I get a phone call from Bob Weinstein, and Bob goes ...

Bob Weinstein: Kevin, I've been thinking about the title a lot. That title just gives it all away. Why is anyone going to go see this movie if they know exactly what's going to happen based on that title?

As far as hustling movie producer archetypes go, I tend to prefer Joel Silver over Harvey Weinstein. Sure, Weinstein played a role in some of the great American independent films from the last decade of the twentieth century, but Silver's production credits have more spice to them -- The Matrix, Predator, 48 Hrs. -- hinting at the zany force behind their existence. The movies he has produced don't always please everyone (consider those last two Matrix movies), and sometimes his productions run into unforeseeable setbacks (Joss Whedon's troublesome Wonder Woman script). But now, Silver's trying a radical maneuver that reaffirms his maverick abilities: He's shopping around Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla, which tells the story of a drama surrounding a stolen painting and stars Gerard Butler, to other studios despite the plan to release it through Warner Bros. in October.

According to Patrick Goldstein in The Los Angeles Times, Silver said he showed the movie to Lionsgate and Sony Pictures to get some advice on how to market the film. However, when Goldstein asked Warner Bros.' top executive Alan Horn about the situation, Horn called the movie "very English," not "broadly commercial," and said the studio "might not be willing to spend the marketing money he wants us to." So it follows that Silver probably wants to sell the movie to somebody else.

This kind of thing has happened before. Jonathan Levine's teen horror flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was set for a release through The Weinstein Company, but when it was determined that the distributor might not provide the best home for the film, it went to the more agreeable Senator Films (although Senator has yet to release it). What troubles me is Horn's assertion that RocknRolla is "very English." Yeah ... so?

Earlier today, Peter wrote up a piece on movie mogul Harvey Weinstein explaining how The Weinstein Company created their division Third Rail as a dumping ground for movies they feel have only "ancillary value." Harvey and his younger brother and business partner, Bob, have been under a bit of an attack since ditching Disney/Miramax for their own shingle back in 2005, with a lot of sharks swimming the waters surrounding them, just waiting for enough money to bleed through the Weinstein's fingers.

An article over at the Sunday Telegraph by Tom Teodorczuk goes into some fairly good detail about the troubles facing the beleagured brothers. You can read the full piece yourself to see his analysis; suffice it to say that the Weinsteins have yet to bring that old Miramax magic to their independent shingle, probably for a variety of reasons, not the least of which include the troubles facing the indie film world generally. As Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeff Wells, quoted in the piece, notes, "The Weinsteins have suffered from the same pressures affecting the indie film sector that everyone else faces. There is a glut of product owing to hedge fund firms now investing in films."

For everyone who's ever watched a bad movie and thought, "If this is what they produced, I wonder what they threw away?," the Village Voice has found an answer. In an amusing and fascinating article posted today, reporter Tony Ortega says he and a buddy accidentally stumbled across a recycling bin full of paper from Harvey Weinstein's office -- and not just from the office, but from Weinstein's own desk. Ortega proceeds to tell us all the juicy details he learned about the daily work of a movie mogul.

So what is Harvey Weinstein throwing away? Lots of copies of screenplays, naturally, as well as daily sheets (prepared by an assistant, no doubt) listing phone calls he needs to make or return. As you might imagine, the roster of people seeking Weinstein's attention is staggering, with actors, agents, lawyers, producers, and reporters all vying for his time. Michael Moore called him on April 25 and Weinstein didn't return the call for over a month. I'd say being able to ignore Michael Moore for a full month is the very definition of power.

Strangely, Weinstein's e-mails are printed out for him to peruse. (Maybe he gets eye strain from looking at a computer monitor? Maybe he just likes wasting paper?) There were some pretty interesting tidbits in the copies he tossed, including lots of stuff about the Weinstein-produced Project Runway, if you're into that.

OK, so maybe they aren't turning all their movies into Broadway musicals, but it sure seems like it. According to Variety, The Weinstein Co. is out to produce a number of adaptations for the stage, beginning with Finding Neverland, which is expected to hit the stage in 2010 (or re-hit the stage, since the movie was based on a play by Allan Knee). After that, it's a stage version of Pink Floyd's The Wall (apparently adapted from the album, not Alan Parker's 1982 film). Then, other titles in the pipeline include the Miramax hits Shakespeare in Love, Chocolat, Save the Last Dance and Cinema Paradiso. Wait, a stage musical based on a movie that celebrates moviegoing? That's gotta be one of the dumbest things I've heard.

These certainly aren't the first movies to be exploited adapted for the stage, and they won't even be the first stage productions from the Weinsteins, who also had a hand in Tony-winner "August: Osage County," as well as the hit stage adaptation of The Producers and the soon-to-be-a-film "Frost/Nixon." The Finding Neverland musical is already being written, with book by original playwright Knee and music by "Grey Gardens" composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie. The Wall also is in the works under the care of playwright/screenwriter Lee Hall (Billy Elliot).

So far, it appears TWC is only adapting Miramax films, from back when the Weinsteins were in charge there, but maybe one day we'll get to see "Grindhouse: The Musical" or a stage adaptation of Fanboys (maybe it can even hit the stage before theaters, at the rate it's going).

When two movies with similar plots hit theaters around the same time, it usually just reveals the vapidity of Hollywood formula (as was the case when Deep Impact and Armageddon came out a few months apart). The situation changes, however, when the subject matter has far more thematic weight. Defamer's S.T. VanAirsdale points out the potential conflict brewing now that The Weinstein Company has picked up U.S. theatrical, DVD and television rights to the 2004 German film Operation Valykrie, a dramatization of the failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hilter during World War II. Sound familiar? That's because Bryan Singer's upcoming 2009 release, Valkyrie, tells precisely the same story, with Tom Cruise in the role of would-be assassin Col. Claus Von Stauffenberg. In the German movie, the character is played by Sebastian Koch, the debonair star of The Lives of Others and Paul Verhoeven's Black Book.

In addition to the overlapping content, VanAirsdale points out another potential conflict: Koch's female co-star in Black Book, the alluring Carice van Houten, stars opposite Cruise in Valkyrie, creating the sort of meaty overlap that money can buy. Harvey Weinstein's no slouch when it comes to instigating controversy, but his company hasn't exactly had the best of luck with its recent daring titles (few turned out for Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?). Personal drama has impacted Cruise's films before, but this might be the rare case where he would have nothing to do with it.