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February 01, 2006
Harvey Heaven: New York's Weinstein Double Feature
Good Lord. For whatever reason, my eyes continue to burn after two full days convalescing back in New York. Could it just be a lingering Sundance hangover? Doubtful. The weather? Don't think so. The radioactive rupugnance of The Tenants, the new Dylan McDermott/Snoop Dogg "drama" that screened last night for aghast New York critics? Not that, either.
Honestly, I think it comes down to the heat reflecting off the last week of local Weinstein Company stories I have not been able to to write about until now. Seriously: You know how irritable I can get when precluded from spending quality media time with the brothers (Harvey in particular), and nearly seven days have passed since Caryn James busted out her 25-watt intellectual repair lamp to illuminate the crossroads at which the boys are supposedly stalled:
[T]here's no need for a Weinstein Company that releases treacle like Mrs. Henderson Presents, even if Dame Judi did win an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love. The spunky British widow who runs a nude vaudeville theater during World War II is a role she can do on automatic pilot; the director, Stephen Frears, left no signature; any company could have released it.
Hoodwinked, a Weinstein Company acquisition, is a more hopeful sign. This fractured revision of Little Red Riding Hood may be a quasi-Shrek with cheaper animation and bad songs, but it has some charm, an edge and a sequel coming up. Imagine how happy the Weinsteins would be to take a bite out of Disney's animation market.
Ah, yes. Imagine: Harvey and Bob, trolling Best Buy for the most sophisticated PC's they can find on sale, striving to upgrade their staff beyond the Commodore 64s that animated Hoodwinked and really put the wood to the Mouse. Anyway, the relentless marketer in Harvey is just fine with Dench's Mrs. Henderson Oscar nod, and the truth behind Hoodwinked is that any company could have released it. Of course, the final score will probably prove that dropping a few million on some mercenary CG shite beats dropping $7 billion on Pixar, but leave it to James to recast budgetary limitations as calculated, influential stabs at revenge. The day TWC can compete with "Disney's animation market" will be the day I can read Caryn James without succumbing to a migraine. (Check her profound revelation that "Dimension, the horror-and-action division run by Bob Weinstein, has earned lots of money but little cachet." Because, you know, Miramax was always more about cachet than money.)
On the other hand, while Phoebe Eaton's revealing, reported New York Magazine profile of the Weinstein renaissance perpetuates some of the mogul myths we have come to know and love about the brothers, it also implies that TWC is as wounded a predator as it is bloodthirsty:
What happened to Harvey's storied leverage? When Miramax was at its height, Harvey had struck an inspired deal with the Today show for its book division: Hand over some stars, and a certain number of Miramax authors could slip under the barbed wire. Inviting editors and book reviewers to premieres also had a funny way of lofting Miramax books to the top of the pile.
Harvey smiled and looked fidgety. "Unfortunately, in the new administration, in the new life, we play much more fair than we used to. We're trying to clean up Dodge City now. We drink milk. I used to yell and scream, ten years ago, fifteen years ago, and say, 'What are you talking about, Mr. Today Show? You're an idiot!' But I think anger can motivate you differently."
These days, the motivation is all about the IPO. It's what all his investors are waiting for. It's what Harvey and Bob are waiting for. "We own 51 percent of a billion-dollar company," said Harvey. "That’s $510 million. No matter how many bonuses I earned at Disney, they'd be dwarfed by the amount of money we can make on this deal. Disney did us the biggest favor in the world."
Basically, Disney's favor was allowing the Weinsteins the luxury to fail: Whatever cash the Weinsteins have on hand, they claimed from rigging a Disney accounting apparatus ensnared for years in the company's boardroom drama (and believe me, they were not writing personal checks to acquire films at Sundance). They no longer have the wide, deep shelf on which to stow expensive stinkers like Proof and The Great Raid, and their investors--who are putting up the real money that the Weinsteins will gamble with--will not tolerate extravagant failures on failures like Gangs of New York or Cold Mountain. Retaining the Dimension imprint (and Harvey's overall marketing genius) makes failure exceedingly unlikely, but Wall Street will demand a more enduring bellwether than the Scary Movie franchise.
In other words, the Weinstein Company is vulnerable. But all that swagger evidently still counts for something, continues Eaton:
Plans were ... shown to Goldman Sachs and the Quadrangle Group, and Goldman suggested recasting the numbers; individual films were no longer being displayed. As for the Weinstein Company's projected slate through the end of 2006, some snickered at how every single movie showed a profit, though two-thirds of all movies break even or lose money. The plan projected the studio to be profitable by 2007, generating close to $1.8 billion in annual revenues five years from now.
"For us to raise the money wasn't difficult," says Harvey, "because who else is going to fight like crazy to protect the investors' money?"
Right--that fabled Weinstein tradition of "protecting the investors' money." But hey: They got it (at least on paper), and do not say you cannot wait to see what they, um, "guard" it on this time around.
Posted by stvanairsdale at February 1, 2006 02:39 PM
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