One year later, Miramax pulled out all the stops after landing two Best Picture nominations, including for the Italian-language drama "Life Is Beautiful. In , Miramax took advantage of a careful reading of Academy rules and scored four nominations for the Brazilian inner-city drama "City of God" -- even though the film had failed to land a Best Foreign Language film nomination the previous year.
The Weinsteins exited Disney-owned Miramax and founded their own company in -- and got right back in the Oscar race with two nominations for one of their first releases, the Felicity Huffman vehicle "Transamerica.
The following year, Weinstein pulled off another coup: landing five Oscars, including Best Picture for the mostly silent, black-and-white ode to Old Hollywood, "The Artist. Once tweaked, the movie tested off the charts with general audiences and won over the industry crowd at its New York premiere.
Still, Weinstein needed to win over one key crowd. Weinstein was concerned and, mid-screening, demanded an explanation from a colleague at the event. To do so, he turned on the marketing engine that had helped him nab the best-picture statuette for The English Patient and nominations for both Pulp Fiction and The Crying Game. Only this time Weinstein was going up against Hollywood royalty in Spielberg, no-nonsense marketer Terry Press, then at DreamWorks, and a film that had been the front-runner since July.
He really was kind of a beast. He also deployed numerous consultants to lobby the members, and started negative whisper campaigns. Weinstein played into the inherent narcissism of the Academy—its love of seeing actors and writers like themselves as heroic characters on-screen—and he pushed the novelty of the film. He recruited first lady Hillary Clinton to host its Dec. Then it was on to L. It was just crazy how good the reaction was — every bit as good as The English Patient , if not a little better.
Weinstein wanted Oscars for all these reasons. GILL There was the desire to win for the company. But he also would say to people from time to time, me included, that he wanted to be one of the great moguls, and that he had to win an Academy Award — personally — to be one of those. So, for Shakespeare in Love , we used the playbook for The English Patient — turbocharged, on steroids.
It was just absolutely murderous the whole way through. I mean, the hours were ridiculous and the demands were insane, just unbelievably crazy stuff. I was right.
You know how hard this is. Is there anything you can do to help me? DreamWorks and Miramax began trading barbs in the press about the number of ads they bought for their films.
They were coming out in December. And he did L. Times and New York Times ads — double-trucks. You can do whatever you want. Warren Beatty was at my wedding. How can anybody force somebody else to spend more money?
GILL Shakespeare was still in theaters. Weinstein had a terrible temper, but he also knew how to turn on the charm — he was literally thanked more times at the Oscars than God. And each awards season, he convinced talent to drop what they were doing to campaign for his movie full-time. That obviously predated Harvey by a lot, but the volume at which he did it was unprecedented. I know how to win.
And one year earlier, with Titanic and Good Will Hunting , young stars had made a lot of money at the box office by making themselves available for media once the movie started to take off. To win an Oscar would put you in the cinematic history books of our country.
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