“Fanboys”
What is it? A broad comedy from writer-director Kyle Newman about twentysomething high-school friends, a nerdy crew (including Jay Baruchel) who reunite after one of their number (Chris Marquette) is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and decide to break into Skywalker Ranch so they can screen “The Phantom Menace” before its release.
What the hell went wrong? Proof, if proof were needed, that Weinstein’s influence isn’t limited to prestige fare, “Fanboys” arrived just as the mainstreaming of geek culture a la “The Big Bang Theory” reached critical mass, and in the wake of the success of Apatow-coms like “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and “Superbad.” Originally planned for release in August 2007, it was pushed back to 2008, and it soon emerged that Apatow’s producer Shauna Robertson had been brought on by the Weinsteins to retool the movie, with one possibility being that the cancer motivation for the movie would be removed entirely. Adam Sandler favorite Steve Brill (who Newman claimed had never seen “Star Wars”) was brought on to helm reshoots (winning even less goodwill from fans by calling one “a dumb cunt” in an email), and a new cut was test-screened alongside Newman’s original version. Eventually, in part thanks to support from producer Kevin Spacey, and an online petition from Star Wars fans to ‘Darth Weinstein’ threatening to boycott the studio’s spoof “Superhero Movie,” Newman won out, being allowed to, as he says, “retake their film and recut it as best I could into a version of mine,” and the film was eventually released, though not without further release date shifts: it initially hit limited release eighteen months later than planned, in February 2009, with the budget having doubled over time.
How did it all shake out? As ever, the controversy seemed to have taken The Weinstein Company’s faith out of the movie: it never played in more than 45 theaters, which is curious for a movie aiming at a wider audience, and took just $688,529. The film was clearly not Newman’s ideal version (producer Dana Brunetti would later agree that the Weinsteins “fucked it”), but got mostly poor reviews even in light of the cancer aspect of the story, though it apparently did better on home video.
Bitterness Level: 7/10. “They fucked up,” Dana Brunetti would later tell Collider of the Weinsteins, though he suggests that Harvey Weinstein originally loved the movie and changed his mind only when his employees got cold feet about the picture.
“Hero”
What is it? Celebrated Chinese director Zhang Yimou‘s sumptuous, thrilling wuxia epic (which made our list of the 25 Best Action Movies Of The 21st Century), starring Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung, Chen Daoming, Donnie Yen and Zhang Ziyi, which details assassination plots, rivalries and romances during the Warring States period of Chinese history.
What the hell went wrong? Very little, actually. Miramax was a backer of the production from the beginning and were always going to get the U.S. distribution rights for a market that, post “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon,” seemed primed to embrace its next wuxia epic. And so while “Hero” was one of the most expensive ever Chinese productions, it went on to smash all box office records when released in China in 2002. It was only afterwards that a few bumps in the road led to a 2-year delay before the film was put out in the States, during which time the rumor mill went into overdrive with stories of Weinstein not being happy with the cut and/or getting cold feet over critical evaluations of the film’s politics. There was added fractiousness because of DVD imports of the film from China that were available in the U.S. before the film had been properly released theatrically; Miramax ordered a cease-and-desist to those sites selling them. According to Weinstein himself in a guest post for Variety, the real reason the film didn’t make its first projected release date of 2002 was that it wasn’t delivered in time, but its micro-release, to qualify it for the 2002 Best Foreign Film Oscar (for which it was nominated), also meant he wouldn’t be able to campaign the film for the 2003 Oscars as he had intended. And then the date moved back again and again, for various reasons including wishing to stay clear of Jackie Chan‘s “The Medallion.” That said, Weinstein meantime was persuading Zhang to make significant cuts to render it more digestible to a U.S. audience.
How did it all shake out? Two years after its Chinese release, the U.S. version finally hit theaters… and pretty much vindicated whatever strategy Weinstein was pursuing by opening huge and going on to become the 3rd highest grossing Foreign Language film of all time in the U.S. Furthermore, an uncut version was released on DVD, having been championed by a post-“Kill Bill” Quentin Tarantino (he “presents” the film, allowing it to get the added kick from his name).
Bitterness Level: 0/10 non-existent. Not only was Weinstein at pains to point point out the reasonable, non-Scissorhandy reasons for the delayed release in his guest Variety post, Zhang himself stated that because he wanted “to get across themes that would be understood by a Western audience,” he was in fact grateful for Weinstein’s input on cuts for the U.S. He told the New York Times: “America is a big market, and I wanted it to succeed, so I agreed,” and even went on to endorse the use of Tarantino’s name, saying “”Making that association was very useful for getting the film out to an American audience.” Zhang and Weinstein, up a tree…
“The Lovers On The Bridge”
What is it? Long, long before the skullfuckery of the brilliant “Holy Motors,” French director/mad scientist Leos Carax made “Les Amants Du Pont-Neuf” (to give it its more evocative and precise French title). Starring Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant, it’s a delirious love story between an alcoholic street performer and a heartbroken painter who is slowly going blind, both of whom live rough on and around the eponymous Parisian bridge.
What the hell went wrong? To be perfectly fair, ‘Lovers’ was a colossal folly before Miramax got anywhere near it: production costs spiraled out of control due to the difficulties of filming in central Paris, star Lavant’s injury (in a shoelace-tying incident, no joke), and then because of delays as financiers balked and expensive sets suffered major weather damage during the many production hiatuses. When it was finally completed and released in its native land, the way-over-budget movie, one of the most expensive ever made in France at the time, was a box office flop and cleaved critical opinion too. This was in 1991, and apparently unable to think what to do with a sporadically brilliant, but unwieldy, self-indulgent, oddly paced, 2-hour-plus French oddity, Miramax simply buried the film deep in some oubliette. For eight years.
How did it all shake out? During that time, the cinephile world being the cracked place it is, ‘Lovers’ gained a kind of cult cachet in absentia, and became a cause celebre among the many critics who were on the more rapturous end of the spectrum. And it finally did see the light of day, albeit briefly, in a tiny theatrical run, but more importantly a home video release in 1999, after being championed by Martin Scorsese (it was a Martin Scorsese Presentation in the States) and finding a viable avenue in Miramax’s Zoe shingle, which was designed specifically for the release of French films into the U.S. market. It made less than $30k at the U.S. box office (Box Office Mojo records a 2-theater, 3-day release), but who’s to say that the strategy of sitting on it and letting buzz build did not, in this case, contribute to its reputation, and to its healthy repertory and home-media afterlife?
Bitterness Level: 3?/10 — difficult to tell as Carax is famously reticent in interview, and seeing as the entire endeavor seems like it was such an amour fou, its delayed Stateside release probably doesn’t register that high on his personal Richter scale. Indeed, as this rare (and kind of hilarious) Guardian interview suggests, perhaps it was just an extension of the state of aloneness in which he found himself after the film: “I was very lucky when I started to meet people I would work with for 10 years… Lavant, Escoffier, and then I made films with my girlfriend. But ‘Les Amants du Pont-Neuf’ ended all that. We spent three years working on it and everyone either died or separated or fought. After that I was left alone.”
“Prozac Nation”
What is it? An adaptation of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s seminal memoir about a bright, Harvard-educated girl who finds her life collapsing after mental health issues and substance abuse. Erik Skjoldbjærg, director of the original “Insomnia,” helmed the project, with Christina Ricci in the lead role (she also produced the film), and Jason Biggs, Anne Heche, Michelle Williams, and Jessica Lange in support.
What the hell went wrong? Released in 1994 when the author was just 27, “Prozac Nation” was a powerful look at clinical depression that became a touchstone for many across the 1990s. In the wake of the success of “Girl Interrupted,” a long-developing movie version from Millennium Films got the green light, wrapping up in 2000 and premiering at TIFF the following summer. Reviews were tepid (though they praised Ricci’s performance), but perhaps sensing awards potential, Miramax acquired the movie, setting it for a fall 2002 release. Then, in February 2002, Wurtzel found herself at the centre of a storm, giving an interview in which, talking about 9/11, she said, “I had not the slightest emotional reaction… I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting. People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me.” With the media in an uproar, the studio delayed the movie, with Ricci telling the Calgary Sun, “We have to distance ourselves as far as possible from the controversy.” A New York Times piece suggested that the studio continued to be wary of Wurtzel, but other reasons may have been behind the ever-growing delays (it was still without a date in 2003, despite having opened in other territories), with an unnamed Miramax exec telling the Times, “A lot of distributors find themselves enamored of a movie. Then when they get down to the marketing and have test audiences screen it, the response is not what they hooped.”
How did all shake out? Not well for the movie: in a preview of what would eventually happen to another of Harvey’s lost darlings, “Grace Of Monaco,” the movie eventually received its U.S. premiere on cable, airing on Starz! in March 2005, three-and-a-half years after its TIFF screening, and hitting DVD later that year.
Bitterness Level: 9/10. The outspoken Wurtzel pulled few punches, telling the Times in 2003, when the film was still in purgatory, “As you should have figured out by now, it’s a horrible movie. It’s just awful. If they thought it was good, they’d have released it long ago.”
