Harvey’s Hellhole: Sundance ’95

Welcome to Harvey’s Hellhole, a monthly column devoted to spotlighting the movies that were poorly marketed, mishandled, reshaped, neglected or just straight-up destroyed by Harvey Weinstein during his reign as one of the most powerful studio chiefs in Hollywood. It’s Sundance time again, so let’s go back thirty years ago, when Miramax and several new, indie-distributor startups duked it out at the Utah-based film fest.

It’s 1995, and Miramax was officially in its mighty-studio era.

The indie distributor was still riding high from its most successful — critically, commercially, culturally — year yet. Pulp Fiction was its biggest asset: a hip, broad-soaked phenomenon that scored universal acclaim, historic box-office grosses, and an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. They made rising stars out of new filmmaking talent (Kevin Smith, Peter Jackson) while dropping the latest from influential, maverick directors (Woody Allen, Robert Altman). Releasing Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy throughout the year certified their rep as world-cinema connoisseurs. And, thanks to those horny-ass cineastes who like a bit of nudity in their foreign films, they had a hit with the saucy Sirens, starring then-It Boy Hugh Grant and usually butt-bald-nekkid supermodel Elle Macpherson. 

Whether you agree or not, Miramax was putting a lot of asses in art-house seats during this time. And once Miramax became a part of Disney in 1993 — making Harvey and them the Mouse House’s official indie-cinema curators — other majors started building their own boutique wings. New Line Cinema got the ball rolling in 1991, when The House that Freddy Kruger Built created Fine Line Features for its more sophisticated acquisitions. The year before Disney bought Miramax, Sony Pictures launched Sony Pictures Classics. And, right during Miramax’s banner year, Fox showed up on the scene with Fox Searchlight Pictures.

These mini-distributors were all ready to knock Miramax down a peg, showing the Weinstein bros that they weren’t the only ones looking for art-house prestige and paper. And they were ready to do it at that yearly indie-film battleground: the Sundance Film Festival. 

The 1995 fest was — no cap, as the kids say these days — an embarrassment of riches. Some of the era’s most influential indie films (and filmmakers) first made lasting impressions at that Sundance. Julianne Moore and director Todd Haynes began their decades-spanning creative partnership with the psychodrama Safe. X-Men director-turned-alleged sex offender Bryan Singer showed off his career-launching neo-noir The Usual Suspects (featuring an Oscar-winning turn from actor-turned-director-turned-alleged sex offender Kevin Spacey). There was also Richard Linklater (Before Sunrise), Abel Ferrara (The Addiction), Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation), Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave), and James Gray (Little Odessa).

A couple of about-to-blow-up directors showed debut films that won awards. A Complete Unknown helmer James Mangold got the Special Jury Recognition for Directing honor for Heavy, a lonesome, unrequited-love story starring Pruitt Taylor Vince and Liv Tyler. (It was released by Cinepix Film Properties, better known today as Lionsgate Films.) And before he directed Ghost World and Bad Santa, Terry Zwigoff landed two documentary awards – Grand Jury Prize and Excellence in Cinematography — for Crumb, his forever-fascinating bio-doc on outlaw comics artist R. Crumb. (Sony Classics snagged that one.)

The prom queen that year was The Brothers McMullen, star/filmmaker/Christy Turlington boo Ed Burns’ dramedy debut. Not only did it snag the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize, Fox Searchlight picked it up and made it their first release. Shot on 16mm and proudly made for $25,000 (most of it was filmed at Burns’ Long Island family home), McMullen made $19.3 million worldwide.

Miramax did have some winners on their side. The schmaltzy-as-hell, made-in-Hawaii, Japanese period drama Picture Bride, which won the Dramatic Audience Award, was originally bought by Miramax after its lukewarm response at Cannes the year before. Sundance screened the recut-by-Weinstein version, which features such additions as a brand-new score, looped dialogue for “a more articulate pidgin English” and a reworked love scene. (Producer Lisa Onodera inadvertently called out Weinstein’s perviness when she told LA Weekly, “He loves love scenes. He loves to see some kissing.”) The Cuban LGBTQ rom-com Strawberry & Chocolate, another period piece acquisition, got a Latin American Cinema Honorable Mention. A few months later, it was the first Cuban film nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar. As for Bride, it only grossed half its $2 million budget In theaters. (At least you can find Bride on streaming.)

Unzipped, a frenetic, rambling doc on frenetic, rambling fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi (directed by then-boyfriend Douglas Keeve), was also a Miramax winner, sharing the Documentary Audience Award with Ballot Measure 9. Another one that’s hard-to-find online (a VHS rip is out there), there will be a 30th anniversary screening of it at this year’s Sundance.

It seemed that Harvey and Miramax were more preoccupied with screening its upcoming slate of spring films — Atom Egoyan’s erotic puzzler Exotica, controversial Brit drama Priest, and charming Australian comedy Muriel’s Wedding (aka the movie that launched star Toni Collette’s career) — at the fest. They also had a midnight screening of Kids, that debaucherous look at promiscuous New York teens directed by Larry Clark and written by a teenage Harmony Korine. Weinstein bought the worldwide rights before Sundance, when producer Cary Woods showed him the movie. In a clever bit of carrot-dangling, Woods told Weinstein he was gonna look for “the new Miramax” to distribute it since Harvey went all Hollywood and became a company man for Disney. (I’ll get into all the bullshit Weinstein went through to get Kids released in a later column.)

Woods might’ve been looking for Weinstein to take the bait, but it was clear even then that Weinstein’s hold on the indie-cinema market was beginning to loosen. In later years, Weinstein would focus his attention more on collecting Oscar statuettes and turning into Hollywood’s most powerful ogre. But even as Sundance was evolving into a yearly hot ticket where aspiring filmmakers mingled with movie stars and studio bigwigs, Miramax’s Spidey-senses would increasingly lose its tingle. They’d usually acquire kooky, offbeat comedies (the last one they bought at Sundance that decade is still embarrassing as hell) that would die in theaters due to lack of marketing. 

Looking back, this Sundance almost seemed like a swan song to Weinstein’s hunger for championing challenging independent cinema. Several of the movies he brought to the fest  became some of the year’s most-talked-about films. It’s like he was giving his art-house brethren some last morsels of his team (and independent!) spirit before he peaced out and became a menace to Tinseltown — and society. 

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