Ain't It Cool News: Quentin Tarantino Interviews Bob & Harvey Weinstein. "BOB: Harvey had told Phil Collins when they did the Genesis movie, Phil said, I have this Amnesty International benefit movie, a comedy concert, what am I gonna do with it? And Harvey told him “my brother is the best promoter of movies in the country.” I hadn’t promoted anything outside of Buffalo. So that’s part of Harvey’s vision – taking care of his little brother. He decided that I would now travel across the country It would be a great…experience for me to take this movie around the country. I would call Indianapolis, Chicago, and so on and I would take the movie to that town.

QUENTIN: – This is worth mentioning, actually—I find it interesting—in the old days, with the exploitation companies, there weren’t three thousand releases: they could maybe, MAYBE afford TEN prints IF they were flush with cash, and they would take it into Chicago, the ten prints would be in Chicago—and so would YOU—and then you left Chicago and went to Cleveland and the prints would come with you…you schlepped it around.

HARVEY: Our first experience at Cannes, we’re trying to get into the Palais des Festival where they show all the competition movies. No ticket, no nothing, our first Cannes. So, I said to Bob, let’s do like we do back home--let’s sneak in. So in through the exit, up the back stairs—we get there, it’s completely sold out, everybody’s in black tie, we’re in jeans. We were sitting on the step, the gendarmes come, we’re sitting there watching, we’re about to be removed…all of a sudden this baritone voice says:

LEAVE THOSE BOYS ALONE!

…it was Sean Connery. I mean (laughs) these cops were pretty scared of him.

HARVEY: The Playing For Keeps experience was a turning point, like Bob said. We were working and distributing movies but, we didn’t understand the mind of a director. We didn’t know until then that we had to fight for these movies because we hadn’t had the experience ourselves, it was transformational. so with renewed vigor and passion and, now, the ability to advise filmmakers, we became different people. It became as personal to us, somebody else’s vision, as it was to them. The other people that we worked with, we told them, “look, we don’t care what the rules say.” It used to be, we’d do all right in Europe, we’d play it at the Lincoln Plaza theaters –

QUENTIN: The thing that I got a kick about with Harvey—ok, we had a big discussion about the ear scene. All right? And you know, it wasn’t like I’d just made the movie and, ok guys, we’re seeing it for the very first time. I’d been on the film festival circuit for a year. So I knew the movie. And I’d seen people walk out a bunch of times. But I knew it’s strengths and it’s weaknesses, I’d seen it with a zillion audiences. So, I was kinda confident about it—“look, the movie is what it is.” So the thing is about Harvey—when he’s trying to get his way, all right, he’s not like this…ogre-jerk, all right, trying to beat you into submission. He’s like, the coolest guy ever, you want him to like you so that the charm just keeps coming and he keeps telling you about how great you are and it’sallgonnabegreat. You just don’t wanna take all that positive and turn it into negative. So the thing was I still knew my movie and it had its strengths and I had “I’d seen it for an entire year” behind me, and I said, well, no Harvey, if that means going from an audience like this [hands faaar apart] to an audience like this [hands a lot closer together] then so be it, that’s the movie I made. Ok, and then without really missing a beat—ok maybe there’s quarter of a beat in there—Harvey goes “ok, then we’re not gonna touch a FRAME and I want you to remember it was MIRAMAX THAT DID THAT!” (LOUD AUDIENCE LAUGHS) And I’ve never forgotten it!

HARVEY: The ad campaign was, keep the secret, don’t tell anyone the movie’s secret. We often collaborated with directors when talking about marketing. The first Pulp Fiction poster was based on your love of that pulp genre, looks like one of those book covers. So the ideas come from Quentin, from Roberto Rodriguez, whoever, they all have ideas. So: Neil Jordan is this brilliant writer, poet, director, and when I asked him if he had any ideas, he just fell silent. And during his silence I thought, well, well, we should just keep it a secret. That’s exactly how it happened. When they brought it over from England we created this whole keep it a secret, keep it a secret campaign. Neil Jordan came to the academy awards, we thought we were gonna win em all. But, you know, we were up against Unforgiven. Clint Eastwood walked to his seat and got a standing ovation! For walking to his seat. When the first award went to Unforgiven I said, I’ll see ya at the bar. So we all went to the bar. We just sat and drank while the TV went Unforgiven, Unforgiven, Unforgiven…Clint Eastwood…Unforgiven…

HARVEY: (quiet and serious) I hated to say this but I voted for Schindler’s List too. We always vote our own ticket, but that movie, you know, was very important to me, personally. It’s a steadfast rule otherwise and I’ve never broken it since. We got it because we were hanging around with Quentin, and Jane Campion wanted to meet him, and we said, ok you can meet him but we get to make The Piano. And there was Holly Hunter!

BOB: I remember when Pulp Fiction came out, you told me, “Miramax can’t do this.” You can’t gross a $100 million, you can’t do what Paramount can do. So at one point you were saying, “you know what, for some of my movies, I’m gonna go with you guys but…for some others…” And I said to Harvey, well there’s our challenge. Our best filmmaker, our premier filmmaker, is telling us we can’t do this. So our discipline was to say, you know, we know they can’t gross $40 million from The Piano, but we thought it would actually be easier for us to go out to 3000 theaters in a commerial way, something they never wanted to see happen. I mean, even though the ghetto had gotten bigger, we were “movin’ on up,” (Quentin guffaws), something they didn’t want…

BOB: My assistant and I were talking about the kind of films we loved, Halloween was one of them, my brother and I saw it at the 8th Street Playhouse, with an audience, when it came out, and he said Bob, I think I found the script you’ve been looking for and it was Scream. Hesent it over and I read the script right away. Then I called the agent and asked him how much he wanted for the script, and he paused, and he said $500,000. I said, ok, fine. And he said, hold on, let me get back to you.

So I knew this was golden. I’d never read anything like it, it just was perfect. It ended up costing $850,000, my brother said, swallow your pride, you’ve got to give it to them whaever it was, we went back and renegotiated. I now have to tell a Miriam story – Mom, stand up – Miriam Weinstein stands up to wild applause…a sweet moment… Don’t take no for an answer came out of my mother’s mentality growing up, she would check out homework and make sure we did each little bit...those lessons came in here." There's a lesson or two in here about the film industry and life.

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