Craig D. Lindsey
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. Let’s once again go back to a year that was horrible for him — but great for the movie industry — and talk about the one film he was banking on during that Oscar season.
It’s December 1999, and Miramax has had one very shitty year.
While it’s been documented time and time again that ‘99 was The Greatest Movie Year in the History of Mankind On God No Cap Deadass™, full of rising auteurs making daring, groundbreaking films that received box-office success and award statuettes, the most successful (and eventually most celebrated) films didn’t come from Harvey and them.
For one brief, beautiful moment in time, it was the majors that were giving the envelope-pushing oddballs time, space, and money to create the kind of original, offbeat cinema that Miramax proudly slung out in years past. But much like Mike Myers’ shagadelic superspy in that year’s sequel Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, the studio lost its mojo. From snatching up the wrong movie at Sundance to dumping long-shelved imports in theaters during the summer, the Weinsteins were not having the best movie year ever.
The Cider House Rules, Miramax’s big prestige film for the end-of-year Oscar season, was the Weinsteins’ last shot at obtaining an award-winning hit before the year — and the millennium — wrapped up. (The Weinsteins also had a hand in co-financing fellow Oscar bait The Talented Mr. Ripley, but even though Miramax distributed the film overseas, it was mostly a Paramount production.) It was another adaptation of a John Irving novel — the year before, his 1989 book A Prayer for Owen Meany saw a very loose movie version with the treacly tearjerker Simon Birch. But Rules was adapted by Irving himself. A project that took him over a decade to bring to the screen (he details the whole experience in his 1999 memoir My Movie Business), Rules was helmed by Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom, who directed ABBA videos before moving to America and helming such middlebrow heartwarmers as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Something to Talk About.
We have the perennially babyfaced Tobey Maguire as Homer Wells, the most grown-up orphan in a Maine orphanage during WWII. Thanks to ether-huffing orphanage director/mentor Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine, working that New England accent), Homer knows a lot about obstetrics. He also knows how to do abortions, since Larch also does that secretly.
Despite having a knack for caregiving — the kids, which include a pre-teen Kieran Culkin, future Boardwalk Empire temptress Paz de la Huerta, and the little brother from Malcolm in the Middle, adore him — he’s not chomping at the bit to follow Larch’s footsteps, becoming a man of medicine and uttering Larch’s loving pre-sleep farewell (“Good night, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England”) to the boys at bedtime.
He eventually gets the itch to venture outside when a pilot named Wally (Paul Rudd, predictably youthful) and his girlfriend Candy (Charlize Theron) come to the orphanage for an abortion. Soon, Homer tags along with them, going on an odyssey (get it?!) where he picks apples with a crew of African-American migrants (which includes Delroy Lindo, neo-soul queen Erykah Badu, and the late rapper Heavy D), has a fling with Candy while Wally is off in Burma, and discovers a dark secret that has him reluctantly going into the doctor bag Larch sends him.
Rules was a commercial success for Miramax, grossing $88 million worldwide against a $24 million budget. Although some critics had some issues with the story (Roger Ebert said he “left the theater wondering what the movie thought it was about and was unable to say”), it was reviewed favorably. Therefore, Harvey was ready to get this flick some Oscars.
According to Peter Biskind’s oft-referenced-around-these-parts book Down and Dirty Pictures, Weinstein gave his marketing division a hard time when they proposed an Oscar campaign that downplayed the movie’s controversial elements. “Harvey completely shit all over the Academy campaign for Cider House Rules,” said a source. “He told us that we would never get any nominations because we had fucked it up. The next day, we got seven.”
It eventually won in two categories: Best Supporting Actor for Michael Caine and Best Adapted Screenplay. The big winner that year was DreamWorks’ American Beauty, snagging the Best Picture Oscar that was jacked by Miramax the year before when Shakespeare in Love won over Saving Private Ryan. (This Miramax vs. DreamWorks rivalry would go on for years.) In a 2022 interview, Irving recalled how wild it was getting his Oscar that night, with Weinstein sitting next to him and Kevin Spacey announcing his name: “So my Oscar was in the company of people who have since been condemned, but I didn’t really have a choice in that. It was still a great moment.”
After that, Hallstrom became Weinstein’s go-to guy for handling Oscar-bait literary adaptations. The following year, he directed Chocolat, the confectionary rom-com starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. It made $152.7 million and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Unfortunately, he followed it up in 2001 with a dour adaptation of The Shipping News, with Kevin Spacey as a dim-witted single dad who relocates to Newfoundland. It was a critical and commercial bomb, and got zero Oscar nominations.
Hallstrom directed three more films for Weinstein: An Unfinished Life, with Jennifer Lopez and Robert Redford; Casanova, starring Heath Ledger; and The Hoax, starring Richard Gere. Unfortunately, these films were shelved by the Weinsteins and released after they left Disney to form The Weinstein Company. Although Hallstrom said at the time he wouldn’t mind working with the bros at their new company (“We buried the hatchet,” he said in 2006), he never collaborated with them again.
Rules marked a turning point for Miramax. 1999 proved that they weren’t the cool kids of Hollywood anymore. They weren’t even that powerful at Sundance, where they acquired many indie hits. (That story is for next month’s column.) After Rules, the Weinsteins were comfortable being run-of-the-mill studio moguls, making competent but inoffensive, mainstream prestige pictures guaranteed to get Oscar buzz. Of course, one of them got way too comfortable and fucked up not just his business, but the entertainment business as well.
Good night, Harvey, you prince of pain, you king of rape allegations.
“The Cider House Rules” is available to rent/buy/stream all over the damn place.
