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 go back 25 years ago this month, when Miramax released the first of what would be many troubled, big-budget, for-your-consideration literary adaptations the studio later dropped like a bad habit in the early 2000s.
Billy Bob Thornton’s career as a feature-film director began and ended at Miramax.
We’ll save how it began next year, when his Oscar-winning directorial debut Sling Blade turns 30. For now, we’ll talk about a movie that tried and failed to land Oscar gold for Harvey and them: Thornton’s adaptation of All the Pretty Horses.
Back when it was a project for Columbia, Mike Nichols was set to direct the movie version of Cormac McCarthy’s bestselling 1992 novel, a sprawling tale of teen Texas ranchers who grow up quickly and brutally during a Homeric journey crossing over the Mexican border. The story goes that, while shooting the 1998 political satire Primary Colors – another book adaptation! – Nichols dropped the script (by Silence of the Lambs Oscar winner Ted Tally) on the lap of co-star Thornton, convincing him that he would be a better fit as director. A part of me thinks Nichols dumped it on Thornton when Miramax hopped on board to produce and distribute with Columbia, dodging the bullet of having to answer to Big, Bad Harvey
Thornton was initially hesitant to take it on – helming an epic Western for $57 million was a complete 180 from his intimate, indie experience shooting Blade. According to Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures, Thornton offered to shoot the film for less, telling the suits, “Ah want to do this movie for $25 million, not $50 million, because Ah’m afraid that when you get into this $50 million thing that yuh not gonna want the movie Ah’m gonna give you, and yo’ gonna get scared.”
Much like how Weinstein rounded up an all-star cast and a connected director to adapt The Cider House Rules the year before, Horses was Miramax’s big prestige flick for that Oscar season. Thirty-year-old Matt Damon got $5.5 million to play 16-year-old cowboy protagonist John Grady Cole, with E.T.’s Henry Thomas taking on the role of loyal, stubborn sidekick Lacey Rawlins.
For Cole’s love interest, tempestuous aristocrat’s daughter Alejandra, then-It Latina Penelope Cruz got the gig – much to the studios’ disapproval, according to Thornton. “There was a regular white girl from Long Island that they wanted me to cast in Penelope Cruz’s part,” Thornton told a live audience in 2008. (All signs point to former Long Island resident Natalie Portman, who was reportedly considered for the role.) They also wanted French legend Jeanne Moreau to play Cruz’s disapproving aunt, which was eventually, thankfully given to veteran Puerto Rican actress Miriam Colon. Thornton had three words for both suggestions: “She ain’t Mexican!”
The studios didn’t just hound Thornton about casting. They wanted him to dump his regular cinematographer Barry Markowitz, in favor of a veteran like Roger Deakins or Tak Fujimoto, but Thornton stood his ground. (Markowitz’s breathtaking, vista-filled cinematography is actually the best thing about Horses.) They also weren’t keen on the electric guitar-heavy score from acclaimed producer/musician Daniel Lanois, who also did the score for Blade.
Thornton has admitted he made a mistake showing a three hour-and-50 minute assembly cut to all the execs, assuring them he will cut the film down to three hours. As some execs raved about what they saw, another exec – “one very big studio executive,” Thornton said, making a rotund shape with his hands – nasally told him that it’s too long. Who wants to bet that Ol’ Billy Bob was talking about Harvey Scissorhands?
Truth be told, then-Columbia head Amy Pascal was the first to badger Thornton about cutting it down to two hours. But it eventually became Weinstein’s job when Miramax took on domestic distribution. (Columbia would handle international duties). Weinstein had already been down this road with Thornton, who wasn’t trying to hear the editing notes Weinstein had when he was cutting Sling Blade. Thornton whittled it down to two hours and 42 minutes, but Weinstein predictably wanted to trim more fat. As Damon said in Pictures, the whole experience made Thornton dangerously lean as well: “He lost all this weight, went into the hospital with a heart problem, he was so stressed he couldn’t sleep.”
Horses was ultimately taken away from Thornton, as the nearly three-hour movie was hacked away to an hour and 57 minutes. They also got rid of Lanois’s slide guitar-heavy music, replacing it with a twangy score from singer-songwriter Marty Stuart. The movie also went from dark to melodramatic. Weinstein tried to market it as a sweeping love story, with the doomed romance between Damon and Cruz’s characters serving as the selling point. (The Harlequin novel cover-looking poster included the laughable tagline, “Some passions can never be tamed.”) I wouldn’t be surprised if Weinstein leaked the rumor that Damon and Cruz were romantically linked at the time – which they both denied – in order to get more asses in those seats.
While Horses was supposed to be Miramax’s big gift that holiday season – it even hit theaters on Christmas Day – critics and audiences treated it like a lump of coal. While a few reviewers gave the film props (Roger Ebert went three-and-a-half-stars with his review), others were fully aware that this was a full-on botch job. “Although the actors work hard, the haunted soul of the book resists capture onscreen,” wrote Rolling Stone film guy Peter Travers. “It doesn’t help that Damon and Cruz fail to generate sparks or that the second half of the film, in which John and Lacey face hell in a Mexican prison, feels bluntly edited to fit a two-hour running time.”
Ultimately, Horses didn’t scare up any Oscar nods. It seems like the bigwigs gave up on it long before it hit theaters – Weinstein didn’t even attend the L.A. premiere, claiming he couldn’t fly out due to bad weather. The film’s mishandling by the powers that be still irks Damon, who ended his 2013 Playboy interview by mourning what could’ve been. “Everyone who worked on All the Pretty Horses took so much time and cared so much,” Damon said. “We made this very dark, spare movie, but the studio wanted an epic with big emotions and violins.”
Thornton hung up his director hat after this. He released one more film for Miramax: the Southern-fried comedy Daddy and Them, which was actually shot in 1998 but was shelved and later released in 2001. (He did come out of retirement to direct the period drama Jayne Mansfield’s Car in 2012.) Although Thornton has said his cut still exists, he’s not releasing it out of respect for Lanois, who’s still sore about Weinstein replacing it and, since he owns the rights, opted not to have his score used for a director’s cut.
While it’s hard to say if All the Pretty Horses could’ve been an Oscar contender if Weinstein and all the studio folk just left Thornton the hell alone, the hastily-assembled Oscar bait they ended up with certainly made critics, audiences and Oscar voters aware that Miramax’s rep as a maverick, independent, quality-churning studio was beginning to turn into horseshit.
“All the Pretty Horses” is available to rent or buy.
