A: Yes.

Oh come on, like you even had to ask. In this video (to promote Our Idiot Brother), our favorite former Bat Mitsvah DJ (tough luck, Michael Rapaport) pitches Harvey Weinstein on a few ideas he has to shake up the movie biz. (“You know how trailers are usually at the beginning of movies? What if we put ours right in the middle.”). It’s not that they’re the best jokes I’ve ever heard, but Paul Rudd, he’s so damned likable. He’s so charming that just being in the same room makes Harvey Weinstein seem downright decent, and that guy’s like the Jewish Darth Vader. Heck, I haven’t seen Harvey Weinstein this likable since he tried to whack Troy Duffy.

What’s that? You don’t like Paul Rudd? Well in that case, I’ve got something for you:

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The most laughable part of the documentary Overnight (which you should definitely check out if you haven’t seen) is when they imply that Harvey Weinstein might’ve been trying to have Troy Duffy killed.  But the fact that people would believe that about him shows you what kind of reputation Harvey Weinstein has.  And now he’s pissed at the MPAA, which is good news, because the MPAA are a bunch of corrupt A-holes.

In response to the ratings given to two of its upcoming films, The Weinstein Company (TWC) announced today that it has engaged a formidable legal team to challenge the NC-17 rating for BLUE VALENTINE and the R rating for THE KING’S SPEECH.

THE KING’S SPEECH drew an R rating due to its multiple occurrences of strong language, even though it is used in a non-aggressive, non-sexual, therapeutic way.

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He’s been satirized by Tom Cruise (well, by Tom Cruise’s fat suit, anyway), has the kind of name that goes well in an Entourage script, and Overnight even faintly implied that he tried to have Troy Duffy killed.  Now Harvey Weinstein, the original bear Jew, is the subject of a supposedly unauthorized biography.  IFC Films acquired the rights to Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Story, a documentary by Canadian director Barry Avrich, with plans to release the film in the US.

A statement from IFC described the film as a “powerful, uncensored, no-holds-barred account” tracing Weinstein from his early days as a theater operator and concert promoter in upstate New York to the present day as the head of an embattled independent-film company.

Weinstein apparently did not cooperate with the production and tried to persuade Avrich not to move forward [at one point even telling him that Tarantino was already doing a similar project]. But that did not stop the director from making the film, and it apparently won’t stop IFC from releasing it — even though James Dolan, the chairman of IFC parent company Rainbow Media, is a known friend of Weinstein. [LA Times]

More Weinstein gossip:

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You’d better get your cousin Timmy a bowl of ice cream and a hanky for his tears, because little kids shouldn’t have to hear stuff like this.  Sadly, it’s true, Timmy, Miramax is dead.  The 31-year-old company founded by Harvey and Bob Weinstein (they left to form The Weinstein Company in 2005), which gave Quentin Tarantino his start, among other things, is packing their sh*t and leaving town like one of your stepdads.

My Left Foot, Reservoir Dogs, The Piano, Pulp Fiction, Sex Lies and Videotape, Clerks, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, The Crying Game, The Talented M. Ripley, Chicago, The Aviator, Kill Bill I and II, Ciderhouse Rules, Good Will Hunting, Swingers…

Eighty people will lose their jobs. The six movies waiting distribution — “Last Night,” “The Debt,” “The Tempest” among them — will be shelved, to gather dust, or win a tepid release.

“Miramax wasn’t just a bad-boy clubhouse, it was a 20th century Olympus,” filmmaker Kevin Smith wrote to TheWrap.

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It’s well known among people who’d know such things that Tom Cruise’s character in Tropic Thunder, Les Grossman, was based on studio head Harvey Weinstein, who’s infamous for being a bit of a tyrant.  Like most things related to Tom Cruise, the reality is more interesting than the movies.  GordonandtheWhale recently found (on lettersofnote) this 1988 letter from Weinstein to Thin Blue Line (a landmark documentary) director Errol Morris, who had accused Weinstein of not doing enough to promote his movie.  Apparently, the feeling was mutual.  The letter read, in part:

Heard your NPR interview and you were boring.
[...]
If you continue to be boring, I will hire an actor in New York to pretend that he’s Errol Morris.  If you have any casting suggestions, I’d appreciate that.

I actually don’t think Weinstein comes off that mean in this.  As my grandad taught me, promoting a documentary is war.  It’s not like finger banging Mary Jane Rotten Crotch through her purdy pink panties in the alley behind Chick Fil-A. Take it from Werner Herzog, who was once asked about Grizzly Man and responded by biting the head off a live turtle.  The man is a publicist’s dream.