Late in Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures, Guillermo del Toro shows up. He's been hired to make his first American film for Dimension Films, a picture that would turn out to be Mimic. The Weinsteins have slathered del Toro's butt with compliments, and Mira Sorvino (then a fairly big deal) insists that the young director be hired. As will happen with the Weinsteins, the filming turns into a nightmare. Neither brother understands what del Toro is doing, foolishly believing they were getting a fun, kicky monster movie that the gravel skulls across America could embrace. What was being delivered in the dailies was a moody, pensive horror story about the fallacies of human life. In other words, not the kind of stuff that would pack a multiplex on a Friday night, or gather an armful of MTV Movie Awards. Pressure started to mount, and the brothers began to basically antagonize del Toro, causing the man to break down in tears repeatedly on the set. Were it not for Sorvino defending him, del Toro would have been fired.
Like a lot of Hollywood bigwigs, Bob and Harvey Weinstein love to bask in the glow of other people's acclaim. They themselves hardly ever do any of the heavy lifting, the exception being Bob Weinstein's lone directorial effort, Playing for Keeps. Never heard of it? Neither has most of the world. Miramax was notorious in the late 90s and early 2000s for having massive vaults full of movies that they had bankrolled, confiscated from the directors and other producers, and locked away. It was a mercenary way of operating a movie studio, throwing money at projects to see what sticks. This method worked out of sheer luck. Were it not for Soderbergh, Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and a handful of other indie darlings, Miramax probably would have sunk. They were in the right place at the right time.
They are neither creative or clever. They are just rich. To be a studio head, you need to value money over good work. Being in the movie business allows people like the Weinsteins to have their cake and eat it, too. The films they finance get critical acclaim, accumulate awards and money, and the brothers get to tag along with the actual creative forces. On the surface, it looks like they care about cinema. It's utter bullshit. When the Weinstens lost Miramax in 2005, they took with them the Dimension Films label. It has provided them the money necessary to keep The Weinstein Company up and running. With the exception of a small pool of films, most of The Weinstein Company's pictures have done little business. Dimension (sometimes labeled Dimension Extreme) keeps the lights on, but further pollutes the genre pool with lame horror films and watered down sequels.
As I end my time with the Hellraiser series, I am reminded of something Lewis Black once said many years ago. He was describing what anybody named "Bob" is really like.
"You meet Bob when you're stuck in an airport cocktail lounge for two hours, because the airport's been watching the Weather Channel, and you're stuck next to Bob and Bob starts talking about his wife and kids, and he buys you some drinks, and shows you pictures of the family, and you start to think 'Hey, Bob's not a bad guy,' and then Bob tries to sell you insurance, and you have to say 'Fuck you, Bob!' That is a Bob."
Yes, fuck you, Bob. Fuck you, indeed.
