| Title | : | Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0684862581 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780684862583 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 560 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2004 |
Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film Reviews
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Here's a summary of Down and Dirty Pictures:
1) Harvey Weinstein acts like a lunatic because of some movie deal
2) Another either repellent or uninteresting Hollywood exec has a bad business experience because of some movie deal
3) An either repellent or uninteresting actor or director has a bad creative experience because of a movie deal
4) Repeat above for 12 chapters
Possibly the most interesting thing about the book is how the author, Peter Biskind, somehow manages to bring himself across as equally repellent as his characters despite not even being part of the story. He's the type of know-it-all who feels the need to interrupt his reportage about the distribution of Life is Beautiful to rattle off the titles of six obscure Holocaust movies he thinks are better.
Despite all that, DaDP is surprisingly readable, assuming you don't actually have any interest in Nineties independent movies. Biskind assumes you've seen them all, even the ones that were forgotten months after they came out. This book isn't about great food; it's about how that food makes it's way through assholes that shit it out into the world. -
Want to know how horrible a person Harvey Weinstein is? I mean, apart from being a rapist.
Harvey's always been a right bastard and so has his brother Bob.
Favorite part was the segment on the Weinstein-Billy Bob Thornton feud. -
A book I really enjoyed, with stories of Hollywood , insider gossip, how the whole thing is a shady messed up world. I haven't found another book quite like it about the movie business, still looking.
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I'm one of those who came of age in the `90s and who loves film, remembering all the great films that that decade produced is great fun as well as finding out how they came about from the mouths of the filmmakers themselves. That said, I loved the book but it goes further than talking about the directors and actors, to the guys who held the purse-strings and the exposure, namely the Weinstein brothers, Harvey and Bob, who created Miramax and Dimension, and Robert Redford, the movie star who founded the Sundance Film Festival.
You read about the Weinsteins' humble beginnings as concert promoters onto small films released on tape, and then small pictures released widely to garner a small profit. From there they go large, getting more pictures, some of which gain success enabling them to seem attractive to a massive corporation like Disney who then buys them and gives them the financial clout to corner the market on low budget films. Redford starts Sundance which then grows, after the initial few years, into a recognisable entity and then comes to be regarded as the place to have your film shown at, given how guys like the Weinsteins go there to buy films.
The Weinsteins themselves come across as monsters. Both screaming and abusing staffers, making them wait hours for meetings, docking pay, threatening them, throwing furniture. They really seem like bipolar ogres smashing around to get what they want. Redford comes across as a control freak who is unable to make decisions and thus contributes greatly to the Sundance brand failing to become as mainstream as he had hoped.
Contributions are from many recognisable faces, from the superstar directors Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee and Kevin Smith to actors Edward Norton, Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Even Harvey Weinstein agrees to contribute to the book (Redford declines as he holds grudges). Biskind uses these to create a vivid and compelling portrait of the `90s throughout. While some might say the narrative is repetitive (Weinstein doesn't change nor does Redford and the anecdotes rarely differ - Redford bumbling about, Weinstein screaming foaming at the mouth) I found it too interesting and could easily have kept reading until the present day (it stops at 2003).
I loved it, as a fan of good writing and a fan of film, it's a fantastic read and utterly great fun. Here's hoping Biskind does a follow up of the `00s. -
peter biskind’s silly vendetta against robert redford makes me think he was not the right person to write this book. he treats the sundance institute like an indie slaughterhouse and backs up his claims by saying redford means well but is simply a reticent and prideful man who only cares about his own interests at the end of the day. he’d reluctantly give redford a compliment and then backtrack by listing all the “atrocities” he’s committed against indie filmmakers, while simultaneously expounding on many (but definitely not all—he was careful to skirt around the most glaring one) of harvey weinstein’s myriad faults, and then basically forgiving him for them “because that’s just the way he is” and that’s how the job gets done. he paints redford as the villain in scenarios in which he did nothing wrong, and will then explain, in an overly forgiving tone, how weinstein verbally assaulted a woman at a public event or threatened to kill an employee because they didn’t have the paperwork he needed.
overall, this book is a nicely detailed exploration of the indie boom post-1980s high concept, conglomerate conscious cinema. but it’s entirely too unbalanced in favor of miramax, and I now know more about harvey weinstein than I ever, ever wanted to know. -
3.5★
An intriguing look into the world of independent filmmaking and distribution with the focus mainly on movers and shakers such as Miramax, October and Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival. Most of this book is incredibly eye-opening, to see what goes on in the not so glamorous side of the business. However, when you’ve read one incident you’ve kind of read them all leading to a repetitive experience, notably during the Sundance elements.
As you would expect the Miramax stories and anecdotes are mouth watering and had the chapters been smaller would’ve no doubt converted this book into a ‘page turner’. Still, it’s a great insight into how one company, in this case Miramax, transformed from an indie distribution powerhouse into a conglomerate backed studio, thus helping to turn the independent business model they had successfully spearheaded on its head and bringing an end to this specific era of filmmaking. -
What's your favorite movie? Is it Magnolia? The Royal Tenenbaums? Pulp Fiction? Raising Arizona?
If you're like me, you take great comfort in how fundamentally different these movies are, how they seem to come from a realer place than, say, The Matrix, or Star Wars.
You may then be surprised to open this book up and flip through its pages to find that numbers, figures, and dollar signs are all you see.
The disarming truth of American independent cinema is that, in a sense, there is nothing different about it. The ones who made the deals which brought us our favorite movies were suits who were successful to the extent that they cheated, lied, and stole. There was a hidden empire behind these movies, and it was no less a monarchy than Hollywood. We are dismayed to find that any notion of "independence" disappeared by 1994, and all watersheds of queer or feminist cinema were quickly forgotten about by that time, as well.
Peter Biskind does plenty to disabuse us of the idyllic notion that an impassioned, artistic vision is all you need to succeed. But -- and I think this is as much Biskind's intention as the self-evident truth of the matter -- the book fails to attribute anything damning to the space and act of creation itself. We would not have had the movement that engendered Magnolia et. al. without the Weinsteins, sure, but it was still discerning, compassionate, and artistic minds which produced these films. The "dirty" which pervades this book comes not from the ideology or production methods of the films themselves, but from the competitiveness of the players involved in marketing and the homogenization of a certain style.
If you've wondered exactly where your favorite movie come from, this may be the most informative book you could possibly find on the subject. Biskind lends valuable attention to the provincial film movements of the early '80s and the queer and feminist ones in the late '80s and early '90s, largely forgotten in the public consciousness today, and traces the cultural forces that led the Coens and the Andersons to become the filmmakers we do remember.
Peter Biskind's understanding of '90s American cinema is a nuanced one, and essential if we are to engage with these movies responsibly. -
12/13/18: Still a completely addictive read. And who knew that Harvey Weinstein would turn out to be even more of a complete monster than this book had already painted him as? Oy veh.
A quasi-sequel to Biskind’s Easy Riders Raging Bulls, which I re-devoured recently, Down and Dirty Pictures illuminates how the seeds the 70’s filmmaking mavericks planted sprouted a decade or so later. It is less about independent movies themselves as it is about the complicated process of how they are funded, how they get made and how they get distributed (or not distributed as it turns out). It starts in the mid-80’s but really gets going with the 1989 release of Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, the game changing hit launched at Sundance that kick-started the independent film scene into the glory days of the 1990’s, when Miramax films rose to prominence and Sundance was cemented as the annual launching pad (and studio acquisitions feeding frenzy) for indie films that it remains today. It’s a fascinating, juicy read, but also rather depressing. The main players are Harvey Weinstein, the man who with his brother Bob founded Miramax Films, and Robert Redford, the movie star who launched Sundance. Problem is that Weinstein is a massively insecure, volcanically abusive, horrible human being – the kind of boss who populates your worst nightmares - and Redford is a passive aggressive control freak (milder-mannered and well-meaning, but no less of a nightmare). Between them and their studios and organizations they did the world of independent film a whole lot of real good and a whole lot of terrible-bad. The genuine indie films – funded outside of the studio system and made out of passion and love above all other concerns, including monetary – were eventually supplanted by bigger budgeted quasi-indies. There is a world of difference between genuine zero-budget films like say, Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise (1984) or Rose Troche’s Go Fish (1994), and such relatively big budgeted, Oscar-winning indie/mainstream hybrid fare like Shakespeare in Love (1998). Once the big studios got involved in indies (after all, Miramax et al proved there was big money to be made) the former kind of film became the extreme exception and the latter the norm; as usual, the little guys got almost entirely squeezed out. Today the extreme polarization is evident: 75% of the year the mainstream Hollywood movies available are mainly a wasteland of superheroes, sequels, franchises, and retreads, while late in the year we are offered the more mid-budget independent efforts, which sprout up just in time for Oscar season (luckily we haven’t yet devolved to the point where shitty, bloated, empty blockbusters like Man of Steel are Oscar bait for anything other than technical awards). In short, the entire situation - further marginalization of the work of artists in favor of expensive corporate junk - pretty much sucks. But I digress. Back to the book, Biskind is a fine writer, with a talent for film analysis – as above, the book is more about the nuts and bolts of filmmaking but Biskind occasionally editorializes, and his pithy observations are to my mind generally spot-on (Bravo, I say regarding his contempt for the borderline offensive Roberto Begnini starrer Life is Beautiful (1997) and to his praise for excellent but all-but-forgotten films like L.I.E. from 2001). He is also adept at explaining the rather convoluted progression/regression of the indie film scene, keeping it all compulsively readable, hard to put down, and all those other clichéd phrases. But as I said earlier, it's a pretty depressing story. By the way, Down and Dirty Pictures was published in 2004 – I’d be very interested in reading an updated version. -
I finally polished off Peter Biskind's "Down and Dirty Pictures," the saga of the rise and fall of independent film in its Sundance and Miramax incarnations, from "sex, lies, and videotape" to the big-budget, mainstream not-really-indie flicks Miramax now supports (Kate and Leopold? She's All That?)
I'm a big fan of Biskind's gossipy dissection of the "golden age" of 70s cinema, "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls," and "Dirty Pictures" shares the same dedication to movie minutiae, the same exhaustive sourcing, and the same penchant for titillating tales (although this time around instead of sex and drugs we get frequent updates on both Harvey Weinstein's temper and his inhalation of various foodstuffs). In fact, the anecdotes about Harvey's rages -- frequently attributed to anonymous, no doubt fearful sources -- grow tiresome. Enough! We get it! The man's a pitbull! Now tell me more about the movies ...
Truthfully, this seems like a story told before the time was ripe. Yes, since the events described are recent we have the benefit of fresh memories, but genuine insights seem obscurred by the copious details, byzantine deals, and unwieldy cast of characters. It's like those Magic Eye mosaics -- supposedly if you stare long enough you can spy the clipper ship floating beneath the surface flotsam, but I've never had the patience for those. Just draw me the damn picture!
Still, it's a fascinating book if you love movies or, in particular, if you have ever dreamed of making your own. Fascinating and discouraging. As a collaborative and commercial art, filmmaking requires resources, which means inspiration, vision, and talent won't get you across the goal line. You have to have the means, the opportunity, and the personality to persuade someone with deep pockets to commit to your dream, and you run the risk that the dream will become a pitbull-populated nightmare. Honestly, there is no truly independent cinema, unless you can make your entire movie yourself. Otherwise, you're bound to be dependent on someone to finance the filming and post-production, to distribute and market the movie, to put it on the screens and put asses in the seats.
Where is the National Endowment for the Arts in all this? Are there grants that would enable filmmakers to create without commercial considerations? Of course, grants don't necessarily allow greater independence; they just enforce different constraints.
Yesterday I saw a CNN/Money story that posited Newmarket as the "new Miramax." Biskind pointed out in his book that every new indie (October, Grammercy, Focus, et al) has been anointed the "new Miramax," but only Miramax is really Miramax, in all its profane glory. -
I started to read this book in October 2017 as the Harvey Weinstein me-too details exploded in plain view. I had heard that Down and Dirty Pictures was sloppily written, could use tightening up by a good editor and was ultimately depressing. All true. But the portrait of Weinstein that Biskind drew back in 2005 is as damning as the view of Weinstein that has emerged more recently.
This book shows how abusive, cruel, sadistic Weinstein was to every person who worked for him, male and female. Sometimes stories of sexual abuse and harassment are so at odds with the deference with which a man treats his male colleagues that the disconnect creates a cognitive dissonance that has to be bridged. No effort needed here. Harvey W's abusive behavior with young women can be viewed as a seamless extension of his abusive behavior with competitors, peers and underlings. With both groups, Weinstein seemed intent on humiliating, dominating and making life a misery for them. Kudos to Barry Diller called him out as a bully to his face in about 2000, and to Spike Lee who anticipated that "God don't like ugly" and that one day Harvey's heinous behavior would come back to bite him in the ass (that’s a mild paraphrase of what Lee actually said).
DOWN AND DIRTY PICTURES is supposed to be equally about Robert Redford and the rise of Sundance. But that story is such a bland tale of Redford's egotism and egocentricity -- anyone who has read a Vanity Fair dispatch from Sundance can write that subplot in their own head on their own. Just breeze through those chapters.
It’s fascinating to read about the rise of Harvey knowing the fall that lay ahead. And fascinating to see how Harvey set his own trajectory in motion.
It is a wonder the fall took so long. According to Biskind, Harvey's powers were on the wane and his movies were losing money (despite the suites at the Peninsula Hotel) even at the time of the book's publication in 2005. A slew of film people had already vowed never to work with such an abusive, unethical bully again. But the book was also criticized for being a hatchet job on Harvey. Pretty sure Harvey's forces had gone into overdrive to undermine its credibility.
If I were Biskind and his publisher, I would retrofit the book to be about the rise of Miramax, cut the lackluster Sundance story, and add a hundred paged epilogue. Edit well and send back out to the world. The book as it is is no sacred text. But the story is an important one that should be read and learned from. And it stops in the second act, just as Harvey's trajectory begins to enter its long -- and then sudden -- decline. -
Biskind researched the crap out of this book and the portrait of Miramax is even more terrifying than you can believe. I kept wishing they'd come out with one more flop at the right time to finally doom them but the book also convinced me that every other straight white male in the film business also admired their relentless misogyny, homophobia and starfucking. I loved the presence of Spike Lee in this book, constantly goading Miramax and all of the film studios, calling the Ws "Satan" and that "fat rat fucker," as well as Christine Vachon and Todd Haynes managing to make "Far from Heaven" by telling W. to fuck off. But the overall portrait is of independent film as the same old shit, nothing but a con to get directors and actors desperate for exposure to sign over all of the money in their movies to Miramax or Sundance (Robert Redford is as bad as the brothers) and getting nothing if they break or flop.
I held back a star because this book could have held back 15-20 superfluous W. anecdotes. You know by the 10th one that he will scream at people, hit them, throw stuff, and act as a sexual predator and will get away with it for decades and decades because the movie business is completely rotten. I would have loved more interviews with Spike, with Todd Haynes, with Christine Vachon, with Kimberly Peirce, with Jane Campion, or Cheryl Dunye. Soderbergh and David O Russell are also overexposed and are not nearly as talented as they think they are. -
Very amusing description of the US independent film scene during the 1990s, especially of its business aspects. I am not sufficiently familiar with the field to judge each argument on its merits. In any case the notion that during the 90s there was an attempt to create a middle ground between the traditional independent film scene and large Hollywood studios, an attempt that eventually failed, makes sense.
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Fascinating, with some great insider information and thoughtful perspective on the industry. I'd say it's as good or better than Easy Riders, Raging Bulls but the 'in-progress' nature of the subject matter causes this to end on a "to be continued" note rather than providing an opportunity for reflection and retrospective.
I'd love to read an updated version that ends with either the Weinsteins leaving Miramax in 2005 or - better yet - one that runs up until 2017. -
Amazing. Start to finish. It starts off sprinting and never slows. Peter Biskind has the ability to take reality and pace it like a non-stop action movie. The insights into the film business are better than most industry books I've read. call into work, cancel plans, set aside a day or two to read this, once you pick it up you won't put it down.
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Tries to push the idea that the distributors are the true heroes of the indie film business; I do not buy it. Pretty interesting but nowhere near as good as Easy Riders Raging Bulls.
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Сиквел "Бешенных быков" и еще одна монументальная работа Бискинда, на этот раз рассказывающая про инди кино 90-х, выбившееся из маргиналов на оскары и в мультиплексы.
Захватывает книга очень много, от главных участников до пузатой мелочи: Санденс Ренфорда и его замашки фараона, братков Вайнштейнов, рулящих "Мирамаксом" как ОПГ, эгоманию Тарантино, взлёты цен н независимые фильмы после "Тупого клинка", мучения Содерберга. Разве чт�� Коэны прошли по касательной, но это не так страшно, книга и без того немаленькая.
На протяжении всё истории Бискинд развивает нехитрую мысль, что никакого свободы в кино не существует, а есть кровожадные дистрибьюторы, только поменьше, и приходит ровно туда, где заканчивалась его "Беспечные ездоки, башенные быки" - смертью от большого успеха и выхода в мэйстрим. Забавно, что книга заканчивается до банкротства "Мирамакса" и суда над Вайнштейном, так что история в общем-то поддержала идеи автора. -
fascinating and prescient. learned about a lot of movies that mean a lot to me and maybe 14 other people
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Read in 2004. Biskind is always a good read about Hollywood.
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I had some problems with Biskind's beloved classic "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls." I felt that Biskind had trouble balancing his reverence for his subjects with the requirements of the historian in that one. I felt that he often excused bad behavior -- especially misogyny-- of his subjects and had difficulty separating truth from legend. As a result, it was sometimes difficult to parse whether you were reading a credible history or a work of legend. While that book is an essential classic, it is a flawed text.
Oddly enough, in a book about the once-larger than life Harvey Weinstein, Biskind does a much better job bringing his subjects down to Earth.
"Down and Dirty Pictures" is the unflinching, incredibly detailed (it runs at 25 hours on audiobook) story of independent film from "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" to "Gangs of New York." It is a story of indie film from its rebirth to its near-death as every studio set up an "indie" in-house.
The book is must-read material for anyone working in the entertainment industry because Biskind might be better than anyone at recounting the interactions between business and art that define Hollywood, though Kim Masters who appeared in the special thanks for the book deserves consideration there as well. Why did Tarantino become Tarantino? Why don't more people know the names of Allison Anders or Alexandre Rockwell? What even is an indie? The answers are all in here and they are so complex and so fascinating that it is alternately exhilarating and heartbreaking.
While the book is as excellent an account of 90s independent film as one could imagine, the book also has a serious flaw that becomes more noticeable with each passing year. While Harvey Weinstein is depicted as an abuser -- his mistreatment of Miramax employees, collaborators, and competitors examined at length -- there is no mention of his sexual crimes. It is unclear if Biskind was undermined by NDAs or if he himself hoped to avoid litigation at a time when no one would go on the record about Weinstein's sexual assaults and other crimes. This stuff was known by his sources at that time, and Kim Masters has said that this story was out there for years before the Times published. But, the absence of discourse around Weinstein's sexual crimes and how his misogyny likely ended countless careers for women in Hollywood renders the book incomplete regardless.
With that massive caveat, I think "Down and Dirty Pictures" is among the best film histories ever written. It is recent enough to be relevant to anyone working today and yet, it is distant enough to feel like a timeless classic not even 20 years after its publication. Hopefully, Biskind or someone else will plug the holes in the narrative, but if not, "Down and Dirty Pictures" will still stand as a monumental document of a complicated time in Hollywood history. -
This book makes Miramax and the Weinsteins out to be a pox on, not just independent cinema, but the film world as a whole.
The Weinsteins sound like the worst caricature of Hollywood producers. Demeaning to everybody around them, almost psychotically so to interns, but having no sense of what makes movies good, driven solely by greed and their own ego.
It made me not so much want to watch more independent movies, but viscerally angry that they have been able to thrive despite destroying people's careers, making terrible movies, and making people despise them along the way, yet have few still would speak about it to protect their careers.
While the book doesn't say it, it really seems like the Weinsteins set out to actually destroy the nascent American independent cinema of the 90s. By flooding the market with over-marketed foreign films, buying films by up-and-coming directors and never releasing them, or chopping up films in post-production hell, they stifled careers and prevented the industry from evolving.
Some people praise their ability to market indies to the world at-large and merging indie with studio system, but they also seem responsible for the current wasteland that is creative filmmaking, where studios imitate indie films to make films cheaply and overmarket them, giving them some praise simply because they were supposedly independent.
They probably didn't invent the concept of hyping movies for Oscars and belittling the competition, but they may have mastered it. And you look at some of the heavily praised Miramax movies of the last two decades and begin to wonder if they were good or simply the result of successful word of mouth marketing campaign.
But who cares if the company producing it is the same kind of demeaning, manipulative personality that people avoided the major studios for in the first place? Who cares if it crosses some border of sex and violence.
The book criticizes Redford and Sundance for not knowing what they were doing, but looking at a list of the films that came out of Sundance and I couldn't help but get a little sad for what was and what could have been. Sundance was a beacon of integrity in comparison. You had movies like Blood Simple, El Mariachi, and Stranger than Paradise.
Then you look at some of the movies that Miramax brought up, like Dogma and Gangs of New York that make it seem like they have any idea what makes a good movie and maybe they were all terrible all along. -
This is the most bizarre, the most insightful, and the funniest Hollywood tell-all ever – a meticulously researched tale of three movie studios – or companies or whatever they are – and how they operate. The Weinsteins are especially ruthless and tyrannical, Dreamworks a combustible mix of personalities, and Sundance just plain lazy. But out of these companies come great stories, the most unforgettable being a screenplay purchase that ends up in a foot chase through a hotel - the sought-after writer being pursued by one production company trying to catch him before he signs with another production company. It’s insane but true. The interviews all confirm it.
Spielberg comes off as insulated from the world, surrounded by yes men, dragged into Dreamworks for the clout of his name but never particularly devoted to it, still making movies with other studios instead. The way Jeffrey Katzenberg shamelessly steals the plot of A Bug’s Life like a thief in the night just to undermine this former friends at Pixar is lower than low. Robert Redford appears asleep at the wheel for most of his time at Sundance, never calling people back, making promises he forgets the next day. But, by far the worse of them all are the Weinsteins.
Mind you, this book was written far before the rape allegations, and that’s when I read it, but it prepares you all the same. Harvey Weinstein is a monster even before he was a monster, bullying his employees, manipulating the Oscars, terrorizing writers, actors and directors alike with his explosions of anger and rage. But people trying to make it into the movie business are desperate, almost by definition, and if a psychopath is your only way in, then that’s your only way in. The story of Miramax is both horrifying and heart-breaking. The rest of the cast, despite their flaws, are angels in comparison. When the news of Weinstein’s rape allegations finally broke, I remembered this book and wasn’t a bit surprised.
He’s the bad guy of the book – I don’t think there really is a good guy, though some likeable minor characters you feel for, Julie Taymor and her husband/composer Elliot Goldenthal for example, nice people who also suffer the wrath of Weinstein.
I’ve been reading a bunch of behind-the-scenes of Hollywood books lately, for some reason, and this is still the best of them so far. -
UGH, FINALLY finished this. I have to say that most of the reason that I hated this book had little to do with the research or the author's ability to string together a history narrative. I hated reading this book because basically everyone in it is terrible. I was indifferent regarding most of the known players in this book (the Weinsteins, Redford, etc.) prior to reading it, but am now in full on loathing for everyone. It makes me glad I'm not much of a movie fan anymore because I feel dirty having supported any of these people.
Overall, the author did a great job with the subject, up until the last few chapters where it sort of petered out rather than made a strong wrap-up. And while I get why it did kind of meander to a stop rather than actually conclude (events and what happened next weren't KNOWN because the book timeline ended in about 2004/2005, and all of these players are mostly still in the game), it felt really jarring considering the meticulous tone of the earlier chapters. Moreover, big players through the first 2/3rds of the book just... didn't appear again. Most jarring examples are Bingham Ray, who ended up in a coma and wasn't seen again until the last chapter where, whoops! He's fine! He's working for Universal! Just, what? Also, Redford, for being a huge presence in the earlier chapters just doesn't exist except for a brief mention in the conclusion chapter.
So, while I'm glad I read this book as it gave some pretty deep history and insight into the US's independent film movement, I am SO FREAKING GLAD I'M DONE WITH IT AND NEVER HAVE TO READ IT AGAIN. -
Having read "Easy Riders and Raging Bulls" - I thought I'd check out the sequel, about indie cinema in the 1980s and 1990s. The subject itself seems very interesting and is worthy of being studied in greater depth. There was an excellent book to be had in the subject matter - it's just that Biskind didn't write it.
While I can't fault his research and scoring interviews with most of the key people involved, which seem impeccable - I didn't find the various machinations and double-dealings quite as intriguing as the ones in "Easy Riders..", which seems a shame, as the 1990s, in their own way, were just as revolutionary as the 1960s had been.
The main points I got from the book are: 1) The Weinstein brothers, contrary to their working-class hero image, seem to be sociopathic thugs not above using outright intimidation to get what they want and 2) Robert Redford is pretty unreliable and fickle.
There's other stuff about Quentin Tarantino (he likes being famous - who knew?), Kevin Smith and Steven Soderbergh, but while they've made some excellent films, they aren't exactly charismatic personae. Sure, they're guys you can hang out with, but would you want to? At least Biskind does cover some of the women involved in independent film, like Allison Anders, instead of focusing entirely on the 'boys club' of "Easy Riders...".
After a while, I was bored of reading dollar signs and which indie set-up was going to score the hit of the year. If you're into the business side of the film business, this is the book for you. -
Using the same blend of cultural history, sharp-witted (occasional waspish) film criticism, and pull-no-punches gossip as in his earlier (and brilliant) Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Biskind tells the story of independent US cinema in the 1990s and early 2000s, with a particular focus on the Sundance Festival and production company Miramax. Unlike with Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which I treated in part as a guide to which 70s films I should I add to my rental queue, I'd already seen most of the films discussed here. Finding out more about their production - the fights, the vision, the compromises, the personalities - has definitely enriched my experience of many of them, though (and tainted one or two...).
Harvey Weinstein emerges from this as every bit the vicious, vindictive, manipulative bully (albeit minus the specific charges of sexual harassment) that recent press coverage has painted him as. There are a couple of brave individuals who were willing to stand up to him (and speak on the record to Biskind), including Mira Sorvino and Ethan Hawke, but what comes out of this account most clearly is how many people went along, out of varying degrees of self-interest, inertia, and fear. Several episodes also show the consequences for those who defied Harvey, though; "You'll never eat lunch in this town again" very much springs to mind. I can only marvel at how many people Biskind spoke to; goodness knows how he got away with publishing this, given Miramax's notorious tendency to lawyer up at the slightest provocation.
Compulsive and fascinating reading. -
Author Biskind would have been a worthy companion to the New Journalism stars of the 60s and 70s, including Wolfe, Mailer, and Thompson. Here, he covers the whirlwind independent film genesis of the Miramax company during the late 80s through the 2000s with an incredibly fulfilling amount of detail and humor. Unafraid to include his own opinions of the many celebrated and over-celebrated directors during this period of art and greed, and more greed, Biskind saves his most lethal profiling for producer Harvey Weinstein. After chapters of documentation of the man's heinous behavior and abuses, it's hard to believe his sexual assaults were still ignored by Hollywood (and possibly unreported by Biskind, himself, as there are none in the book). This renders Weinstein's reign of terror in Hollywood comparable to those practiced in Roman times and Nazi Germany--without the genocide campaigns. Biskind also writes about the business side of film distribution that, when it isn't endlessly providing shocks re: the annihilation of great director's work, is amazingly boring to read. One incredible fact to take from the book: Miramax destroyed more great director's work, and the casualty list is long, from James Gray to Bernardo Bertolucci. Many chapters feature these men and women entering deep depressions, if not hospitals. Powerful and entertaining stuff, and never too gossipy to betray the seriousness of its subject matter.
