The idea of cinema as battleground, as a site of fierce contention over territory and beliefs, defines Harvey Weinstein's stormy 25-year tenure at Miramax, the homegrown company he and his brother Bob shepherded from bottom-feeding obscurity to the most powerful and influential of the mini-major studios. It also accounts for much of the speculation surrounding Weinstein's rumored departure from parent the Walt Disney Co. as that always-rocky relationship reportedly has edged closer to the breaking point (though Disney CEO Michael Eisner's recent announcement of his imminent departure reportedly assuaged Weinstein's angst).
Even if Weinstein parts ways with Miramax, he has bestowed on the company a legacy of more than 500 features that reflect his personality and interests in a manner far more intimate than is reflected in the film library of any other current mogul. A glance through the Miramax canon reveals a long history of creative warfare, with evidence to support both sides of Weinstein's contradictory reputation: as an intrepid trailblazer with an eye for provocative material and as a vindictive, censorious dealmaker who has buried films and earned the nickname "Harvey Scissorhands" -- in other words, as independent film's greatest champion and as the man who sold it down the river.
A self-styled studio boss of the old school, Weinstein is an anomaly amid the current Hollywood system in which executives are forced into a game of musical chairs, swapping companies before they can leave lasting impressions. The Miramax phenomenon invokes Hollywood's Golden Age, when stables of talent could be maintained through a form of indentured servitude and giants such as MGM's Louis B. Mayer, Columbia's Harry Cohn, Universal's Carl Laemmle and Warner Bros. Pictures' Jack L. Warner loomed larger than life over their backlots, ruling their empires with iron fists.
Alas, the star system has dissipated, and unions have earned artists leverage not enjoyed in the past. In his iconoclastic way, though, Weinstein has carried on the tradition of establishing stars behind and in front of the camera then leveraging their loyalty. (Weinstein's professional and personality quirks are criticized frequently, but as human traits in a creative industry that has become increasingly corporatized, they also apparently are easier traits to which to grow attached.)
Since the release of Steven Soderbergh's 1989 feature debut "sex, lies, and videotape," Weinstein's tastes have helped to dictate the course of indie and world cinema in that he has cultivated a stable of directors and stars who enjoy the freedom to work elsewhere but keep coming back to him.
Such long-term relationships have been key to Miramax's success, so any talk about Weinstein's legacy must begin with his foresight not only in opening untapped markets but also in catching new talent on the ground floor. Miramax has been called "the house that Quentin Tarantino built," but its decision to pick up the filmmaker's 1992 feature debut "Reservoir Dogs" seems obvious only in hindsight because Tarantino's trademark touches -- sparkling dialogue, jumbled structure, movie-geek reference points and whip-crack bursts of violence -- already were in place.
Hard-nosed genre pictures were an unproven quantity in the genteel world of early-1990s art house cinema, and "Dogs" posed a hostile threat to delicate sensibilities. Every Tarantino effort since then (except 1997's "Jackie Brown") has fired another mortar in the culture wars about movie violence, and no one knows how to convert controversy into cash like Weinstein.
Miramax then found another outsider artist in Kevin Smith, whose raucous 1994 debut "Clerks" might be the only feature shot for $27,000 that looks like it cost considerably less to make. But Weinstein possessed the instincts to transform Smith's underdog-made-good story into an unlikely career.
With Tarantino and Smith, Weinstein has accomplished what had gone out of fashion after the maverick films of the 1970s: He has made the director the star, stoking the surrounding cult of personality. If that has meant absorbing occasional failures and indulgences, such as Tarantino's 1995 dramedy "Four Rooms" (he was one of four directors on the project) or Smith's 2001 comedy "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back," then so be it -- the brand names continue to pay dividends.
Flagship titles such as "Clerks" and Tarantino's 1994 breakthrough "Pulp Fiction" furthered Miramax's image as a cutting-edge label, but those films tell only half of the story.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of "sex" to Miramax and the indie sector at large, but the company's other big 1989 success, Giuseppe Tornatore's Oscar-winning "Cinema Paradiso," proved equally integral to its future: The director's nostalgic, Italian-language ode to love and the movies revealed the incorrigible sap behind Weinstein's infamous bluster.
Since 1989, nearly every major title in the Miramax catalog has followed one model or the other: edgy, auteur-driven works from American indie directors in the Soderbergh mold or sentimental, widely accessible foreign-language films like "Paradiso." One side wins respect; the other wins Oscars.
Miramax has sponsored most of the United States' recent foreign-language boxoffice breakthroughs, but the success of those movies in opening the domestic marketplace usually has not translated into much of a shelf life. For example, Roberto Benigni's 1998 U.S. release "Life Is Beautiful" boldly (and perhaps recklessly) challenged the notion of what is acceptable in a Holocaust drama, but the filmmaker's reputation has collapsed with his fortunes after his 1999 Oscar-night clowning and his 2002 take on "Pinocchio."
"Paradiso," 1993's "Like Water for Chocolate" and 1995's "Il Postino" also were phenomena at the time of their domestic releases, but it is difficult to imagine curators and restoration artists of the future dusting off prints for retrospectives.
Like 1992's "Enchanted April," another formative title in the company vault, Miramax's foreign acquisitions mostly have been decorous travelogues to exotic places -- like pleasant getaways that evaporate during the flights home. But the exceptions have been remarkable in their historical importance, if not always their monetary success: With 1991's "The Double Life of Veronique" and the "Three Colors" trilogy (the 1994 U.S. releases "Red," "White" and "Blue"), Weinstein embraced one of world cinema's great visionaries in the late Kryzsztof Kieslowski, whose elegant, prismatic explorations of coincidence and fate are eternally seductive in their mystery.
Miramax also championed Zhang Yimou's 1991 U.S. release "Ju Dou" and Chen Kaige's 1993 drama "Farewell, My Concubine" -- among the opening salvos from China's celebrated Fifth Generation directors -- and those moves recently paid off again for the company with the release of Zhang's dazzling martial arts epic "Hero."
The beautifully calibrated fantasies of French stylist Jean-Pierre Jeunet do not carry the weight of those Chinese films, but there is no question that such pickups as the 1992 U.S. release "Delicatessen" and 2001's "Amelie" profoundly have increased the commercial Stateside potential of French cinema.
None of those foreign filmmakers save for Jeunet was a Miramax discovery per se, but Weinstein and his team deserve credit for seizing on such emerging masters and carrying them to new levels of recognition.
Since "sex," Miramax also has schooled the industry on converting unglamorous, low-concept art into cultural events. For example, it's one thing to sell the public on superheroes and space adventures but quite another to sell a sexually ambiguous Irish thriller with no recognizable stars and no obvious commercial hooks -- but Weinstein accomplished that with Neil Jordan's 1992 dramatic thriller "The Crying Game," which turns on a big second-act twist.
"Game" suddenly was splashed on magazine covers and became the subject of many obliquely phrased feature stories. Ironically, though, the film's well-kept secret was spoiled late in its Oscar campaign when Miramax, a victim of its own success, scored a supporting actor nomination for the androgynous Jaye Davidson.
After its absorption by Disney, Miramax's corporate complexion shifted from edgy acquisitions to greater investment in homespun productions. An avalanche of Oscars has followed, and the big winners have been not the risk-taking ventures that made the company's name but middle-of-the-road epics and period pieces notable mainly for their savvy in appealing to Academy voters.
The lush, literate romanticism of Anthony Minghella's 1996 best picture-winning release "The English Patient" comes closest to genuinely artful among the latter films, but most are slight, doggedly conventional dramas with a veneer of high class. And any conversation about 1998's "Shakespeare in Love" winning a best picture statuette -- perhaps the most inconsequential film to take that honor since 1989's "Driving Miss Daisy" -- leads invariably to discussion of the art of Oscar campaigning.
A trifecta of Lasse Hallstrom directed novel adaptations -- a superficial gloss on "The Cider House Rules" (1999), followed by lightweight renditions of "Chocolat" (2000) and "The Shipping News" (2001) -- followed the same playbook but collected minimal awards-season returns.
Weinstein then showed ambition in bankrolling Martin Scorsese's 2002 epic "Gangs of New York," but fellow 2002 release "Chicago" -- a light, crowd-pleasing musical with period trappings -- brought his company back to the Academy podium.
But for all of the noise Miramax makes each year before Oscar night, the Weinstein years are most enduring for their sense of discovery and adventure. Library titles such as 1996's "Citizen Ruth" and "Trainspotting," 1995's "Dead Man," 1994's "Heavenly Creatures," 1991's "The Lovers on the Bridge," 1990's "The Grifters," 1989's "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" and 1988's "The Thin Blue Line" do not share a statuette among them, but each heralded -- and, in several cases, introduced -- filmmakers whose work still reverberates within movie culture.
Critics and cinephiles might be quick to vilify Weinstein for chopping up some projects and shelving others indefinitely, but no current executive can boast a more sterling catalog on their watch. If Miramax passes into other hands, then the days of the one-man golden age are likely to fade as well.