Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film [Anglais] [Relié]

You've heard the rumors. The film industry is filled with ruthless executives who think nothing of brow-beating their employees, of using creative accounting to cheat filmmakers, and re-cutting a director's vision into a soulless crowd-pleaser. Well, it turns out those rumors are often true--at least according to Peter Biskind's highly entertaining Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film. Packed with industry anecdotes and history, the book chronicles the growth and eventual mainstreaming of independent films and offers the back-story to seminal works including sex, lies, and videotape and Pulp Fiction among others. Biskind, author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, divides most of his time between Sundance Film Festival founder Robert Redford and Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein. Biskind simultaneously credits these two as fostering, though ultimately ruining, the purity of indpendent film. Other indies are largely left out, although the now-defunct October Films appears prominently in the role of noble failure. Biskind has serious points to make, but he's not stingy with the war stories, either. (One particularly amusing scene involves October executives chasing Robert Duvall's agent through a Sheraton Hotel in an attempt to stop him from making a deal with Miramax to distribute The Apostle.) Those who have only a passing interest in the movie business may tire of Biskind's oft-repeated themes (Weinstein is an evil genius! Redford is a passive-aggressive control freak!) but for those who truly love film industry gossip, Down and Dirty Pictures is a feast of insider stories--each tidbit juicier than the last. --Leah Weathersby

According to Biskind (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls), most people associate independent filmmaking with such noble concepts as integrity, vision and self-sacrifice. This gritty, ferocious, compulsively readable book proves that these characterizations are only partly true, and that indie conditions are "darker, dirtier, and a lot smaller" than major studios' gilded environments. The intimidating image of Miramax's Harvey Weinstein plows powerfully through Biskind's saga; the studio honcho emerges as a combination of blinding charm and raging excess, a boisterous bully who tears phones out of walls and overturns tables. Former Miramax exec Patrick McDarrah, in comparing Weinstein with his brother and partner, Bob Weinstein, concludes, "Harvey is ego, Bob is greed." These two volatile personalities directly-and fascinatingly-contrast with the book's other protagonist, Sundance creator Robert Redford. Biskind presents Redford as passive aggressive, an invariably polite conflict avoider, but also notorious for keeping people waiting and failing to follow through on commitments. Because of the actor/director's elusive persona and his artistic tastes0which Biskind describes alternately as puritanical, conservative and mushy-the Weinsteins dominate throughout. Biskind brilliantly covers their career hits, from the high-profile acquisition of Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies and Videotape through backstories for Cinema Paradiso, Good Will Hunting and Chicago to brutal clashes with Martin Scorsese over Gangs of New York. And Quentin Tarantino's lust for stardom, Billy Bob Thornton's "ornery, stick-to-your-guns" personality and Ben Affleck's frustration about being underpaid are just a few of the other mesmerizing elements Biskind includes. Above all, Biskind conveys a key truth: the Weinsteins and Redford, whatever their personal imperfections, possess courage and a deep, overwhelming love of film.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

For most of the nineteen-eighties, American independent cinema consisted of a handful of scrappy auteurs, the heirs of Cassavetes and Warhol, who produced art at the margins. But the innovative marketing practices of a distribution company called Miramax, aided by the publicity prompted by RobertRedford's Sundance festival, set off an explosion of exciting, and suddenly profitable, low-budget films. Success, inevitably, brings its own difficulties, and, as in "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls," his account of Hollywood in the nineteen-seventies, Biskind shrewdly shows a vanguard becoming the establishment. This time, the story is less about directors than about producers, most prominently Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the Oscar-avid brothers who founded Miramax, and whose savvy and cinephilia are accompanied by a pattern of pugnacious behavior toward associates and a habit of recutting films that is strongly reminiscent of the old studio system.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

With a few more agendas than the U.N., Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures is a folklorist's survey of broken dreams, blinkered optimism, outright treachery and -- although the author doesn't always seem to see it -- striking dualities. It doesn't quite stand up as tragedy. Is there a moment between the covers where you think art will actually vanquish commerce? No. But there are certain classic things about it.

Consider, for instance, its two lead characters, one of whom apparently thinks of himself as Shakespearean -- Robert Redford, the media's crowned Henry V battling the "industry" at Agincourt (a k a Park City, Utah, site of the annual Sundance Film Festival) -- and one who really is: Harvey Weinstein, chief of the elephantine Miramax Studio. Biskind portrays Harvey as a combination of Falstaff and Iago. (Skulking along the sidelines is the other, more Caliban-ish Weinstein, Bob, who comes off as just slightly more profit-hungry and morally bankrupt than his epic brother. As a New York critic once said when asked if anyone had ever seen the low-profile Bob Weinstein, "Let's put it this way: Harvey is the one they send out in public.") These are the men principally responsible for the state of indie film from the early '90s on: Redford's festival provides the conduit for unknown independent films to reach the public and, more important, the media, and the Weinsteins then pilot their directors to fame and/or obscurity. In Biskind's account, they are Machiavellian schemers, capricious villains, opportunists and egomaniacs. Who, only coincidentally, occasionally do good work.

It's a sensational book, in the worst sense of the word, and a tawdry autopsy of an area of the culture that many probably presume runs on good faith and artistic integrity. As one indie insider said in December -- when advance copies of Biskind's book were being hunted down like the last Playstation on Christmas Eve -- everyone knows this stuff about the Weinsteins; the Miramax spin, he predicted, would be that no one knows this stuff about Redford.

But Down and Dirty is something other than a collection of sordid tales only if we have reason to believe the story of independent American cinema might have turned out differently. In other words, it rises above the level of gossip only if the reader is completely naive.

Redford, after all, is a movie star. Biskind's portrait of his self-absorption and zany managerial style -- best described as laissez-faire anal-retentiveness -- can hardly come as a surprise. But the author, who fell out with Sundance back in 1991, after penning an exposé on the institute's financial mismanagement for Premiere magazine, is ultimately so begrudging in his evaluation of anything benevolent Redford might ever have done -- and we all have to admit Sundance has done a lot of good for some people -- that he undermines his own credibility.

And then there's Miramax, which dominates the book the way it has dominated the marketplace. Harvey buys a film and buries it. Harvey buys a film and cuts it. Harvey strongarms a hungry young filmmaker. Harvey test-screens a Merchant-Ivory film at a New Jersey shopping mall. Harvey tries to strangle a journalist. Plenty of other stories are circulating about Harvey Weinstein that allege worse things still, and Biskind's only constraint seems to be libel law.

There's much more to the book than Miramax and Redford, and Biskind is very good on what makes movies and the people who manipulate them tick. He's also very kind to people who talked to him, and occasionally brutal with those who wouldn't. That he harbors so much bile for Redford (who didn't talk, of course) seems to be an outgrowth of the star's carefully cultivated image as an indie savior, the last line of defense between art cinema and Tinseltown vulgarity. The Weinsteins, on the other hand, can never really pretend to be anything but ruthless. But any journalist who has covered the Sundance Film Festival knows what Biskind means by "running on Redford time," and most movie insiders know all too well Redford's dithering over decisions that might have made some of his commercial dreams for Sundance projects come true. Most notably, a Sundance theater chain came very close to being realized -- until, as Biskind recounts, a Redford minion compared financier Paul Allen's money to a blimp landing in Redford's backyard: "You have no idea who's going to emerge from that blimp and come live in your house." That made Redford hesitate long enough for a corporate merger to take the decision out of his hands.

While the Redford-Weinsteins triumvirate fuels much of the book's business intrigue, Biskind also highlights a few featured players -- and it's here that we see some elements of a less predatory but still vital indie film industry. Biskind may not come out and characterize him as such, but Steven Soderbergh is the book's anti-Redford. Hugely talented, comparatively ego-less and an increasingly influential figure, Soderbergh has begun using his clout to get good pictures made (last year's "Far From Heaven," just for instance, despite his Weinstein-like interference with budgets and editing). Soderbergh is also the anti-Tarantino: Director Quentin -- one of the few people who talked openly to Biskind and still gets raked over the coals -- has directed only four movies (including the artful wheel-spinner "Kill Bill") since "Reservoir Dogs" rattled the Sundance cage, while Soderbergh has reinvented himself multiple times, done a balancing act of trash and art and parlayed his successes into real power.

The Weinsteins, too, have an opposite number in Bingham Ray, co-founder of October Films, which was the company Miramax always pretended to be (protective of filmmakers, devoted to film, etc., etc.). Like so much else in independent cinema, October got chewed up by corporate appetites, the onslaught of the suits and something it shared with a lot of filmmakers: an inability to read the handwriting on the wall.

The October story is a heartbreaker, the Miramax chronicle less so -- after the 20th or so tale about the brothers leaving yet another director writhing in the litter of excised footage and unkept promises, you begin to feel less disgusted with them and more with the filmmakers who, despite every warning sign, keep walking into the Weinsteins' web. You want to say "It's the money, stupid," but nobody listens.

Corruption can be a slow process, but not here. Independent cinema, for all the posturing, was never quite as pure as the driven snow of Park City. To regard as tragic either the mainstreaming of Sundance or the downward trajectory of Miramax -- from "sex, lies and videotape" to "Pulp Fiction" to "Shakespeare in Love" to last year's tarted-up Oscar-winner, "Chicago" -- is to give its subjects too much credit. Did the Weinsteins ever intend to do anything else but make money and win Best Picture Oscars (thereby making more money)? Did Miramax have any other aim but to destroy the market for anything but its own movies (and send foreign film, on which the company made its name, off to languish in subtitle limbo)? Could a festival survive without ink, cash and naked ambition?

Hardly. The contemporaneity of Biskind's subject matter gives it the odor of freshness; mammon's triumph over art was inevitable. You can smell it coming from the moment you crack the cover.

Reviewed by John Anderson

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

It wasn't so long ago that the Sundance Film Festival was an inconsequential event somewhere in Utah, and Miramax was a tiny distributor of music documentaries and soft-core trash. Today, of course, Sundance is the most important film festival this side of Cannes, and Miramax has become an industry giant, part of the huge Disney empire. Likewise, the directors who emerged from the independent movement, such as Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, and David O. Russell -- who once had to max out their credit cards to realize their visions on the screen -- are now among the best-known directors in Hollywood. Not to mention the actors who emerged with them, like Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Ethan Hawke, and Uma Thurman.

Down and Dirty Pictures chronicles the rise of independent filmmakers and of the twin engines -- Sundance and Miramax -- that have powered them. As he did in his acclaimed Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind profiles the people who took the independent movement from obscurity to the Oscars, most notably Sundance founder Robert Redford and Harvey Weinstein, who with his brother, Bob, made Miramax an indie powerhouse. Biskind follows Sundance as it grew from a regional film festival to the premier showcase of independent film, succeeding almost despite the mercurial Redford, whose visionary plans were nearly thwarted by his own quixotic personality. He charts in fascinating detail the meteoric rise of the controversial Harvey Weinstein, often described as the last mogul, who created an Oscar factory that became the envy of the studios, while leaving a trail of carnage in his wake. As in Easy Riders, Biskind's incisive account is loaded with vibrant anecdotes and outrageous stories, all of it blended into a fast-moving narrative. Redford, the Weinsteins, and the directors, producers, and actors Biskind profiles are the people who reinvented Hollywood, making independent films mainstream. But success invariably means compromise, and it remains to be seen whether the indie spirit can survive its corporate embrace.

Candid, mesmerizing, and penetrating, Down and Dirty Pictures is a must-read for anyone interested in the film world and where it's headed.

Peter Biskind is the author of three previous books, including Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. He is a contributor to Vanity Fair and formerly the executive editor of Premiere magazine. He lives with his family in Columbia County, New York.