Harvey looks at the guy kicking his seat and briefly considers having him killed

I think Michelle Obama’s great, but even I thought it was weird to have the First Lady as a presenter at the Oscars. But of course, you can’t say that without everyone thinking you’re Rush Limbaugh. Anyway, if you were wondering how it all came about, the short answer is Harvey Weinstein. He probably arranged it with the other Learned Elders of Zion– uh, I mean, his friends.

Michelle Obama presenting best picture from the White House? It was Harvey Weinstein‘s daughter’s idea.
According to Film Academy president Hawk Koch, the plan came from Weinstein and his daughter, Lily. That led to Koch and Oscars producers Craig Zedan and Neil Meron boarding a secret flight to Washington, D.C. two weeks ago.
Once they arrived, they met Weinstein and his daughter, and met with members of the First Lady’s staff to hammer out the details.
The person seen via satellite who handed her the Best Picture envelope Robert Moritz, the chairman of PriceWaterhouse Coopers, who handed over the envelope containing the winner’s name.
Jack Nicholson, who had introduced the First Lady from the Dolby Theatre stage, was holding a second envelope with the winner — in case something went wrong and they lost the connection. [THR]

So basically, Harvey Weinstein’s daughter wanted the President’s wife on the show, and Harvey Weinstein made it so, all with a couple phone calls. I mean why wouldn’t he be able to call in favors from the President? I swear, if that guy wanted an endangered okapi to lick whipped cream off his balls, he could make it happen before he lost his hard on. I imagine Harvey Weinstein’s office to be dark and filled with fog, with a giant hologram of his head floating above the room while an assistant pulls ropes that make fire shoot out of the walls like the Wizard of Oz.

Picture source = cinemafestival / Shutterstock.com

“HW, did you ever hear the philosophy that once a man admits that he’s wrong that he is immediately forgiven for all wrongdoings?”

Oral history articles are like my crack, and I’ve seen Pulp Fiction about a billion times, so Vanity Fair’s new oral history of Pulp Fiction was of obvious interest. Casting is a particularly tricky part of development, and it’s always fun to play the “what if” game (Nick Nolte as Han Solo?!? Nic Cage as Superman?!?). Some Pulp Fiction what-ifs and almost-weres include Daniel Day-Lewis as Vincent Vega, Paul Calderon as Jules Winfield, and Matt Dillon as Butch.

Harvey Weinstein was dead-set against giving the role of Vincent Vega to John Travolta. “John Travolta was at that time as cold as they get,” says Mike Simpson, Tarantino’s agent at William Morris Endeavor. “He was less than zero.” Simpson had given Weinstein a “term sheet” of Taran­tino’s demands, which included final cut, a two-and-a-half-hour running time, and final choice of actors. “One of the actors I had on the list was John Travolta,” says Tarantino. “And it came back: ‘The entire list is approved . . . except for John Travolta.’ So I got together with Harvey, and he’s like, ‘I can get Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Penn, William Hurt.’” By then, according to Simpson, “Daniel Day-Lewis and Bruce Willis, who was the biggest star in Hollywood, had both gotten their hands on the script and wanted to play Vincent Vega.”

John Travolta was washed up before Pulp Fiction, he was amazing in Pulp Fiction, and he hasn’t really done anything great since. Casting Travolta wasn’t like Christoph Waltz, where Tarantino discovered this amazing actor that no one had seen before. Travolta was around, but no one else thought he had it in him. I don’t know how many times Tarantino had to watch Look Who’s Talking coked out of his face to see that role in Travolta, but it’s one of the all-time serendipitous castings, where persona and role lined up just perfectly. It’s also fun to imagine Daniel Day-Lewis doing Pulp Fiction lines all perfectly enunciated in his Daniel Plainview voice. “Now HW, eating a bitch out and giving a bitch a foot massage ain’t even the same thing!” (I know that’s a Jules line, but I don’t care).

Bruce Willis’s interest in the project relieved Weinstein’s concerns that the movie lacked bankable stars. With the main role of Vincent Vega already cast, the only option for Willis was Butch, the boxer—which Tarantino had promised to Matt Dillon.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last we heard about Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, inspired by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, Anderson had already shown the film to Lord Xenu’s greatest living enemy Tom Cruise and gotten his blessing. But Scientology is nothing if not a cult of insane weirdos, and it turns out they aren’t all okay with it. Apparently The Weinstein Company (who’s distributing the film) have been getting harassed and receiving weird phone calls, prompting Harvey Weinstein to hire additional security guards.

Even though Anderson and star Philip Seymour Hoffman insist in interviews their film isn’t about the controversial religion, sources say Scientologists have been “inundating” the distributor, The Weinstein Co., with strange calls objecting to the film and are concocting plans to combat it when the film is released this week. “The Master” stars Hoffman as an enigmatic church leader and Joaquin Phoenix as an early disciple.

Sources tell Page Six that Scientology is countering the film’s marketing by running its own ads promoting its message in places where ads and stories about “The Master” appear.

Calls and mail from people believed to be Scientologists to Weinstein’s office have grown numerous enough that some on the film’s team have hired extra security, a source said. Weinstein had already been under close guard following a recent attempt to blackmail him by a man unrelated to the film. [NY Post]

Oooh, calls and mail, scary! Yeah, this one smacks of publicity stunt to me. A lot of us were hoping for some controversy between The Master and the notoriously litigious Church of Scientology, and maybe after that disappointing story about Cruise saying he was cool with the film, Weinstein is trying to provide it. I have a hard time believing Harvey Weinstein is scared of a few phone calls. I’ve heard Harvey Weinstein can choke you through the phone using only his mind, and when you wake up, all the money in your wallet is gone. He swallows rotisserie chickens whole and spits out the bones in baseball-sized pellets. Nothing scares that guy, he’s like Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt combined, with more body hair.

"And the super cool black president is played by Denzel Washington."

Iconic movie producer and poor tie-wearer Harvey Weinstein was in Paris yesterday, as French President and global poon scout Nicolas Sarkozy inducted him into the French Legion of Honor for his contributions to cinema. It probably didn’t hurt his chances that he produced The Artist, which won every single Academy Award this year, according to my attention span.

But Weinstein told a reporter from the Times of London that being around a president is no big deal for him, so long as that president isn’t pitching movie ideas at him, like a certain guy who currently occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His name rhymes with Barack Obama.

“The President sent me a book the other day and said ‘Why don’t you make this into a movie?’” Weinstein said. “I can’t tell you [what it was]. It was a spy novel.”

“I sent him an email back saying he was the most overqualified book scout I’ve ever had,” he told the Times of London. (Via The Wrap)

Obviously the story just sort of ends abruptly and Weinstein doesn’t even throw us a bone by telling us what book it is, but thankfully I have years of experience as an investigative journalist and I was able to find out which book Obama suggested to Weinstein…

Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Shutterstock

In my continued attempts to explain film-related legal issues in a more simple, straightforward manner than you will see in most mainstream outlets, I bring you this news: Michael Moore and the Weinstein brothers have settled their lawsuit over the profits from Fahrenheit 9/11.

Basically, here’s what happened: A couple chubby blowhards worked together to make a movie about 9/11, and the movie made a cubic buttload of money. Then the one blowhard was like “Okay, here’s your cut” and the other blowhard was all “Yo this seems a little light, ése” and the first blowhard was like “Eh, blow me.” So the second blowhard was like “I am going to do a bunch of research about this, okay I am done with the research now and you hid 2.7 million big ones in profits to avoid paying me” and the first blowhard was all “I repeat, blow me. And if anyone in the press is listening you can quote me on that.” Then the second blowhard went “I’ll see you in court” and the first blowhard screamed “THHUUUNNDDEEERRDDOOOMMEEE” — which is a standard answer to a complaint in California — so they went to court and ended up settling all secret-like for an undisclosed amount.

In summation, my OFFICIAL LEGAL ANALYSIS is that both of these guys should probably lose a couple pounds or calm down a little because all this stress can’t be good for their hearts. Here to help.