American movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has the demeanour of a fish monger, the soul of an artist and the temperament of a street fighter.
He is the subject of a balanced biopic, Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project, which is due to open at the Bell Lightbox theatre (350 King St. West) on Feb. 10. Barry Avrich’s documentary highlights Weinstein’s contributions to a cutthroat industry and describes him as a person.
He and his low-key brother, Bob, built Miramax, the film distribution company, into a major Hollywood player in the late 1980s and 1990s.
As well as redefining the art-house marketplace by promoting independent and foreign films, they reshaped the nature of Academy Award campaigning.
The films they’ve produced and distributed, from Shakespeare in Love and The Reader to Il Postino and The Crying Game, have won an astonishing 292 Oscar nominations and 67 Oscars. Not bad for two Jewish brothers raised in a working-class milieu in New York City.
Avrich, a Toronto filmmaker whose last documentary on Tinseltown was on Lew Wasserman, the legendary entertainment kingpin, brings a critical eye to his latest film. He could easily have performed a hatchet job on Weinstein. Instead, he paints a nuanced portrait of a driven, abrasive, restless and imaginative entrepreneur.
Weinstein is probably best summed up by two Hollywood insiders who appear on screen. The first one calls him as “a tough, tough guy with incredible taste.” The second one claims he is “50 per cent genius and 50 per cent asshole.”
Beyond any doubt, Weinstein is a controlling individual who seeks to massage his image. Avrich asked him for an interview, but he declined, saying he did not want this film to be made. Speaking of moguls in general, Avrich told me, “If they can’t control the story, they don’t want to be part of it.”
Unable to solicit Weinstein’s co-operation, Avrich worked around him, interviewing people like director Martin Scoresese, journalist Peter Bart and Toronto International Film Festival chief executive officer Piers Handling. Avrich portrays the young Weinstein as a “dreamer” who yearned to escape a dreary future and thirsted for respectability and acceptance.
Thanks to his father, Max, a diamond cutter, Weinstein learned to love and appreciate movies. His mother, Miriam, imbued in him an ambition for achieving the American dream of wealth and status.
The brothers began as concert promoters and segued into the film business when they formed Miramax, which was named after their parents. They operated out of a small, grimy space, their mom serving as office receptionist. While Weinstein was the public face of the company, making acquisitions and bullying employees, Bob, his partner and best friend, remained quietly behind the scenes as the valued money cruncher.
The key to Weinstein’s success, his annoying personality notwithstanding, was an ability to spot obscure but appealing films the major studios eschewed. From My Left Foot to Cinema Paradiso, Weinstein’s picks were impeccable. Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape was Miramax’s breakout hit, grossing $54 million in world sales, winning the top prize at Cannes and spawning an indie boom.
The Crying Game, with six Oscar nominations, struck paydirt, too, but “a string of disasters” left Weinstein in financial jeopardy. Disney saved him, buying ownership of Miramax and giving him and Bob a lucrative contract and a free hand to produce and distribute their brand of movies.
After purchasing Sling Blade for $10 million and thereby unintentionally inflating the price of indie films, Weinstein achieved his greatest triumph as Quentin Taratino’s Pulp Fiction became the first indie film to gross more than $100 million.
Still more triumphs lay ahead. The English Patient, his first big-budget film, won nine Oscars, while Good Will Hunting, which cost $20 million to make, grossed over $200 million. Amid these successes, Weinstein – who had a gift for buttering up actors – garnered notoriety by unilaterally recutting films and making hard-sell Oscar campaigning effective.
Avrich believes he lost focus by flirting with politics and launching Talk, a gossip magazine that lost $50 million and eventually closed.
At Disney, meanwhile, Weinstein’s relationship with his boss, Michael Eisner, grew toxic in the face of budget overruns and controversial films such as Kids and Priest.
Chicago, a musical that grossed a whopping $300 million in global sales, provided a reprieve. In 2005, however, Disney severed its ties with Weinstein, who proceeded to form The Weinstein Company.
Having reinvented himself, Weinstein lost his magic touch. Many of his films bombed. “More misses than hits,” the New York Times reported, noting his failure to deal with the challenge posed by new media.
Weinstein roared back with Inglorious Basterds, which globally grossed $313 million. But in 2010, Disney closed Miramax. Weinstein tried to buy it back, but Disney sold it for a cool $600 million-plus.
Despite the blows inflicted on him, Weinstein is far from finished, Avrich speculates. He will likely adapt to change and re-create himself.
True enough. His latest film, The King’s Speech, has picked up 12 Academy Award nominations. Watch out for Harvey.