Variety: Why is Harvey Weinstein smiling?
 
From Variety,
Oct. 16, 2000:
By Peter Bart,
Daily Variety Editor-in-Chief




ROME (Variety) -

Harvey Weinstein doesn't seem to get it.

When I ran into the Miramax Films co-chairman last week in this always frenetic city, a big grin was plastered on his broad face. He'd been racing around Italy, opening a new Nobu Restaurant with Robert De Niro in Milan, making the scene with a rail-thin Leonardo DiCaprio in Rome (local gossip reported that Leonardo had become rotund, apparently confusing the two). Along the way, he'd found time to supervise several Miramax movies shooting around Europe including the $85 million period epic, ``Gangs of New York.''

Happy Harvey seems oblivious to the fact that, by all accounts, he should be in a funk. After all, the market for arthouse movies is collapsing, the audience for European-made films has all but vanished and ``culture warriors'' like Lynne Cheney are singling him out as a prime culprit in making the edgy movies that are poisoning society.

Harvey's reaction seems to be: What, me worry?

Ask him about these portents and he has a ready answer. On the pressure from Washington: ``The movie industry deserved a slap in the face. We've been doing some things in marketing our films that we shouldn't be doing. I have a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old and I'm sensitive to these issues.''

But he adds: ``That doesn't mean I'm going to change the content and character of our films. We just have to be more ingenious in selling them.''

At the same time, he feels the R rating must be split into two categories so that ``Shakespeare in Love'' isn't lumped with films that are grotesquely violent.

On the market for art films: ``I believe there's a big future for European movies. If not, I wouldn't be spending half my time over here working my butt off.''

The problems are fairly clear, he says. The major studios have exhibited ``a homerun mentality'' in running their new classics divisions, thinking another ``The Full Monty'' is right around the corner. Further, too many films have been battling for too small a market share.

``But most of all, the quality is not there,'' he says. ``We just have to strive to make better, more provocative films. When you succeed, the potential audience is bigger than ever. Witness 'Life Is Beautiful' grossing $150 million and 'Il Postino' $100 million.''

No one can claim Harvey isn't trying. He's personally involved in a wide range of films shooting in Europe including Giuseppe Tornatore's ``Malena,'' which he's co-producing; ``Heaven'' directed by Tom Tykwer (``Run Lola, Run''), based on a script by the late Krzysztof Kieslowski, which Anthony Minghella is producing; and ``Chocolat,'' a film directed by Lasse Hallstrom.

There's also a Nicole Kidman thriller, ``The Others,'' shooting in Spain, a John Madden (``Shakespeare in Love'') movie, which recently wrapped in England -- a co-venture with Universal and Working Title -- and ``Four Feathers,'' a co-production with Paramount lensing in Morocco.

Shooting in Europe is never easy, Harvey acknowledges. The Mafia burned down the set of his Tornatore film in Sicily because he neglected to employ the services of a favored company supplying extras -- a mistake he doesn't plan to repeat.

And Europe is no longer a bargain; witness the mother of all Miramax movies, ``Gangs of New York,'' helmed by Martin Scorsese. Harvey is a regular on the intricate period set of this saga, presently in its fourth week at Cinecitta Studios outside of Rome. The movie stars DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz. Harvey and Scorsese even persuaded Daniel Day-Lewis to set aside his newfound career as a Tuscan shoemaker to play a key role.

No press visits have been allowed on the set. Indeed, security is so tight that all sorts of rumors have been spawned, suggesting that the movie is already way behind schedule, that Scorsese and Harvey are battling over the script and that Leonardo has become a fatty. They're all nonsense, insists Harvey: ``The movie is turning out so great I have to pinch myself.''

To be sure, this was a film Harvey had hoped to shoot at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he had planned to build a studio until, he says, ``Mayor Giuliani did a 180 360 on me.''

Then, too, a brief location visit by Tom Cruise a couple of weeks ago proved costly. ``He agreed with Marty that we should build another set -- a cathedral, no less. I had opposed it, hoping we could re-dress an existing set. So now we've built it and it's known as St. Thomas Cathedral in honor of Cruise.''

If Harvey seems good-natured in defeat, it's because he loves the process. What has always set him apart from virtually all of the other studio executives is his passion for films and filmmaking. He wants so desperately for his movies to work that sometimes it seems as though he actually wills them to success.

And that, in the end, is why Harvey is Happy.
 






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