Film producers Graham King and Rick Schwartz were on the set of The Aviator, on a soundstage in Montreal in the summer of 2003, watching Martin Scorsese direct Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as Howard Hughes having a breakdown while building the largest airplane in the world.
“Show me the blueprints. Show me the blueprints. Show me Read More
On a recent Thursday afternoon in December, Larry Meistrich, the chief executive of Film Movement, spread out eight potential magazine ads on the company’s conference-room table. They were part of an advertising company’s pitch to oversee his two-year-old indie’s national campaign, to be launched early next year. He fingered one with a pithy catch line Read More
Spies, Lies, and Paranoid Wives
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) made watchable and rewatchable movies in a career that spanned over 50 years (1925-1976) and 53 feature films. The Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection (Warner Home Video) contains nine anomalous samples of his oeuvre . These are neither the best nor the worst, but somewhere still entertainingly in Read More
Stiller Crazy After All These Years
The best thing to come out of the ill-fated The Ben Stiller Show was Mr. Stiller’s star turn in the 1996 David O. Russell–directed comedy Flirting with Disaster , which would become the prototype for his onscreen persona as a poor man’s Woody Allen. A tightly wound matzo ball Read More
“I have never experienced an author like this,” huffed Elizabeth Sheinkman, the literary agent to Bergdorf Blondes author Plum Sykes-at least, she said, until she was fired recently via voicemail.
Ms. Sheinkman, who made two book deals for Ms. Sykes with Miramax Books totaling over $2 million, said it came as a shock when she Read More
Two days after the Oscars, Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein was already back at headquarters in New York. There were no trips to Disneyland. No recovery days from late-night parties at the Beverly Hills hotel. Just a return flight to headquarters. Work.
“With our 15 nominations, I feel like the Yankees,” Mr. Weinstein told The Observer Read More
On the morning of Jan. 27, when Frank Pierson, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and actress Sigourney Weaver announced the final film to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar as … Seabiscuit , an audible gasp could be heard from the gathered crowd. It was a little after 5:30 Read More
Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film, by Peter Biskind. Simon and Schuster, 544 pages, $26.95.
“Harvey does it because he loves film.” Some variation of that sentence has been uttered countless times by the rank and file of Miramax’s marketing and publicity army, by friends and enemies of Read More
It rained in L.A. over Christmas-and the land of sunshine, and car-detailing, and fame-fueled optimism, was in something of a pall.
At a holiday dinner, hard on the heels of the announcement that Air France flights had been canceled into LAX, the conversation wasn’t so much about toys, or excess, or the Schadenfreude that Read More
On a rainy night in October, Schiller’s Liquor Bar was closed to the public. But anyone passing by the restaurant’s location at Rivington and Norfolk streets would have noticed that the restaurant was hopping. Inside, Colin Callender, president of HBO Films, looking casual in a black V-neck sweater, moved about the room conducting equally casual Read More
