BYOB Archive for June, 2009
BYOB – Non-Twitter Has Killed The Video Star Edition
BYOB – Tues679
Been on the run all day taping interviews… excellent and exhausting. And on the way out shortly for a screening. Will try to catch up soon. Meanwhile, SAG’s yea or nay is on it’s way…
I am ongoingly embarrassed to watch so many alleged journalists try to start picking the bones of Harvey & Bob Weinstein, anticipating the end, when the story is so very old and has not changed one bit. They started the company with too little capital. They have run the company with too little capital. When you have too little capital and don’t have a mega-hit to bail you out, you eventually go out of business. There is nothing more definitive about the next six months than about the last 26 months. They are just running out of chances… again. Tarantino has failed them commercially… again. (HW’s fault for indulging a niche filmmaker with 4 quadrant budgets and final cut.) And they are relying on an Oscar movie to bail them out… again.
They should have signed with Disney at $400 million a year when they could and more of the movies they have made or bought would have been distributed properly. Instead they went into the MGM distribution shit hole, their few big gambles failed to pay off, then went off on their own when MGM turned broke and pay-tv-less, and there is no loose, movie-crazy money out there to bail them out this time. (Ryan Kavanaugh has been bent over more times than Miss May, Miss November, Miss Dee Fied combined… but too many people in there already for him to save HW.)
Shut down TWC, open H&B Pictures, fund anything over $15 million individually with foreign money… and let’s move on.
Harvey Weinstein may be a lot of bad things, but he deserves the status of a legend and watching him twist in the breeze may amuse some jackals, but it does nothing for me. He did more for this business and for art house films than 97% of the people who are looking to dance on his grave. Fuck them and the failed ambitions they rode in on.
I am so done with trying to figure out how many sleeping pills were in the bottle every day in this town lately. Bullets, bankruptcy or bifurcation. Grow some balls and make a choice already.
Here’s some space for you all to chat while Lex sleeps it off.