{"id":21051,"date":"2023-10-30T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-30T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=21051"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:15:56","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:15:56","slug":"harveys-hellhole-when-woody-met-harvey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/harveys-hellhole-when-woody-met-harvey\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvey’s Hellhole: When Woody Met Harvey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Welcome to Harvey\u2019s 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. Since <\/em>Woody Allen\u2019s latest<\/em><\/a> has recently shown up overseas, let\u2019s go back to that time when Allen and Weinstein briefly joined creepy-ass forces. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back, it made perfect sense that Woody Allen would get in bed with Harvey Weinstein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1992, the influential comedian and filmmaker was embroiled in controversy when former partner Mia Farrow alleged that he molested adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow. It didn\u2019t help matters much that he admitted to being in a relationship with Mia’s adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allen was already having trouble getting his movies made. The year before, he severed ties with longtime distributor Orion Pictures<\/a> when the financially-strapped studio couldn\u2019t supply the budget for his next project. Although Tri-Star would distribute his next two films \u2014 Husbands and Wives<\/em> in 1992 and Manhattan Murder Mystery<\/em> in 1993 \u2014 Miramax became the North American company that would release most of his \u201890s work. \u201cShunned by Hollywood means nothing to Miramax. We\u2019re talking about a comic genius,\u201d Weinstein enthusiastically told the Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/a>. \u201cChaplin was shunned by Hollywood; so were a great many other international filmmakers, including Fellini\u2014and those are the people who belong with Miramax.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It started in 1994 with Bullets Over Broadway<\/em>, a period-piece comedy Allen co-wrote and directed. John Cusack assumes the Allen stand-in role as struggling 1920s playwright David Shayne. He oversees a mobster-backed play with a crew that includes a fading actress (Dianne Weist) whom he has an affair with; a shrill diva (Jennifer Tilly) who\u2019s in the play because she\u2019s the mobster\u2019s girlfriend; and a murderous henchman (Chazz Palminteri) who becomes Shayne\u2019s secret co-writer. Bullets<\/em> snagged several Oscar nods: Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor for Palminteri and Best Supporting Actress for Tilly and Wiest. (Wiest was the lone winner.) It also became an actual Broadway musical in 2014, with Allen himself writing the book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Allen followed up the success of Bullets<\/em> with Mighty Aphrodite<\/em> in 1995. He was back in front of the camera as Lenny Weinrib, a sportswriter who gets involved with the biological mother of his gifted, adopted son. The mother turns out to be Linda Ash (Mira Sorvino), a prostitute and part-time porn star whom Weinrib tries to turn into an honest woman. Sorvino\u2019s star-making, dumb-blond turn got her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, the second in a row to a player in a Woody Allen film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next was Everyone Says I Love You<\/em>, a 1996 musical comedy for those who always wondered what Allen\u2019s Hannah and Her Sisters<\/em> would look like if it had adorable musical numbers. Allen wrangled up many stars for this story of an upper-class, New York family full of hopeless romantics; Alan Alda and Goldie Hawn are the parents, with offspring that includes Drew Barrymore, Natalie Portman and Natasha Lyonne (also the narrator). Allen plays Lyonne\u2019s dad, a Paris-based writer who, with help from her daughter, romances a young lady (Julia Roberts \u2014 WTF?!). Meanwhile, Barrymore\u2019s character is torn between Edward Norton\u2019s plaid jacket-wearing fiance and Tim Roth\u2019s smooth-talking ex-con. And all of them (except Barrymore, whose voice was dubbed) sing early 20th-century ditties like \u201cMakin\u2019 Whoopee\u201d and \u201cMy Baby Just Cares for Me.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the star wattage, Everyone<\/em> didn\u2019t rack up box-office tickets or Oscar noms. This may have inspired Allen to look elsewhere to fund his next film, Deconstructing Harry<\/em>, in 1997. Allen\u2019s semi-autobiographical, self-flagellating session, where he plays a degenerate, philandering author (he assembled another all-star cast \u2014 Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Demi Moore, Allen\u2019s Manhattan<\/em> co-star Mariel Hemingway, etc. \u2014 to aid in the flogging), was distributed by Fine Line Features. Producer Jean Doumanian got Fine Line to distribute Harry<\/em> and Wild Man Blues<\/em>, Barbara Kopple\u2019s documentary on Woody Allen touring Europe with Previn and his jazz band, as a package deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He returned to Miramax the following year with the black-and-white Celebrity<\/em>, another A-list frenzy. Kenneth Branagh goes all in as the Allen stand-in, practically mimicking Allen\u2019s neurotic, nebbishy mannerisms to the point where it\u2019s both fascinating and embarrassing to watch. He\u2019s Lee Simon, a failed novelist-turned-celebrity journalist who goes on wild escapades with hedonistic celebs played by Melanie Griffith, Charlize Theron and a post-Titanic<\/em> Leonardo DiCaprio. It amounts to Allen wagging his finger at not just our celebrity-obsessed culture, but at so-called artists who are really fame-seeking whores. This was another critical\/commercial bomb for Allen, who severed his ties not just with Harvey and them, but with longtime editor Susan Morse, who\u2019d cut all of Allen\u2019s films since Manhattan<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Miramax films (and even Harry<\/em>) were quite simply Allen at his most invincible \u2014 and most unrepentant. Fresh from a scandal that really should\u2019ve destroyed his career, Allen made dirty-minded, predominantly lily-white screwball comedies where characters (especially those played by Allen) go after objects of desire \u2014 usually in a manner that requires deception and gaslighting \u2014 no matter how much it hurts the objects of desire they\u2019re already with. And those objects are usually leggy, WASP-y goddesses who are ready to give blow jobs to any dude who knows his way around a typewriter. Female characters who didn\u2019t fit that profile often got a lot of hell. (For some reason, several of them were portrayed by Judy Davis.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Miramax, Allen would bounce from one distributor to another. There was an early-aughts stretch where he released his films through DreamWorks. He even dropped a couple films via The Weinstein Company, including Vicky Christina Barcelona<\/em>, another Allen film where  an actress (Penelope Cruz) snagged a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Allen\u2019s Miramax years started with a bang and ended with a whimper, it\u2019s a star-studded reminder of how powerful he once was. Here\u2019s a man who copped to shagging his stepdaughter and still had million-dollar movie stars begging to be in his films, and indie studios fighting to release them. It\u2019s a spell that continued right into the 21st century (remember when a proud Scarlett Johansson was his go-to shiksa for a trio of mid-aughts films?), until #MeToo and the takedown of many powerful pieces of shit \u2014 including his former business partner Weinstein \u2014 snapped everybody out of it. Although he tried to distance himself from Weinstein<\/a>, claiming the disgraced movie mogul never interfered with his films (Allen has always had creative control on his productions), that still didn\u2019t make people forget about how he got together with his current wife. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, Allen has been making\/releasing movies overseas, where people apparently have more tolerance for filmmakers who\u2019ve committed immoral acts. (How ya livin\u2019, Mr Polanski?<\/em>) Will Allen\u2019s latest production, the French-language thriller Coup de Chance<\/em>, get stateside distribution? Even if it doesn\u2019t, you can still access all those movies that pervy muhfucka did \u2014especially those he got with another pervy muhfucka to release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Bullets Over Broadway<\/a>,” “Mighty Aphrodite<\/a>,” “Everyone Says I Love You<\/a>,” and “Celebrity<\/a>” are all available to stream for free at various platforms.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Woody Allen’s Miramax movies were a quartet of dirty-minded, star-studded screwball comedies where a post-scandal Allen was at his most invincible — and most unrepentant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":21053,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399],"tags":[1422],"class_list":["post-21051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","tag-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22448,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21051\/revisions\/22448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}