Eulogising Miramax
Disney are most certainly feeling the pinch. The hot news this month from the studio giant with the big round ears is that Robert Zemeckis' ImageMoversDigital is set to be no more, following hot on the heels of the decision to get rid of the sadly declining Miramax.
Personally, I will shed far more tears for Miramax, than I will for IMD (though I wouldnt ever go as far as this).
Flicking through this month's 250th Birthday Issue Empire mag (I honestly despair at their continued level of self-congratulation) the one thing that stuck out the most for me was the final page- a memorial of sorts for the now sadly departed Miramax in the genius shape of a scene from modern classic sex, lies and videotape.
While the scene wasnt actually the most memorable of the film, it brought back to me just how much I adored the film, and specifically James Spader's performance in it, the first (and astoundingly, only) time I saw it. Any film of any sort that manages to tease a good performance out of stoney-faced Andie MacDowell has got to be a winner in life as well.
And now Miramax, it seems, is officially no more.
Of course this is not new news- the offices were closed way back at the end of January, and some might say the very first beginnings of a death knell may well have been sounded as early as 1993 when Miramax became part of Disney, and definitely were heard back in 2005 when the Weinsteins left to form their own new company.
But while there is a news industry, there will always be news, and the potential sale of the Miramax arm was still big news up until this week, with the strength of the brand seemingly giving off the final fumes of hope in the shape of new buyer rumours. For that, we shall have to wait and see, with the latest strong rumour placing Lions Gate squarely in the lead to buy the fallen giant for as little as $300-$500m (including the six shelved projects currently waiting salvation), but no matter where the stable of some 600 films goes in the end, the one certainty is that Miramax wont be anything like the creature it was during the heady days under the Weinsteins.
In response to the renewed stories centred on the impending fate of the artist fomerly known as Miramax I naturally began to trawl through my shockingly considerable DVD and Blu-Ray collection to see what sort of effect the formerly Weinstein-helmed indie had on my own filmic education, and to the modern history of cinema in general. And wouldnt you know it, the first one to catch my eye was one that has split critics and fans almost in half since it burst onto the scene way back in 1994.
Say what you like about Weinstein Brothers, they knew how to put out a film. The first film under the Miramax banner that I really became aware of was Clerks, though at the time I had no idea of the concept of film production or distribution companies, so the logo at the start before the credits meant very little to me. Clerks occupies an interesting position within general cinematic history- it is derided and adored in equal measure, and it is the standard by which any self-respecting indie-film-maker measures the success of their own work- and it certainly still means a lot to me.
Never be confused- Clerks isnt merely the manifestation of exactly what a slacker would create if given a film-making opportunity, it is rather a pin-point commentary on a particular American sub-culture: the disaffected, "sexually active" youth, borne of survivors of the dense, culturally important 60s and 70s who have every constricting expectation to live up to, but no means to excel unconventionally thanks to the imprisonment of mass-consumerism and accessibility.
In fact, Kevin Smith would later go on to focus on the same idea in his more effective later projects, and in the process began making pictures precisely for that sub-culture (more of which shortly). A large portion of the criticism aimed at Clerks (and Kevin Smith less specifically) is often unfair - even in the case of our own Ray DeRousse- and is usually a direct response to the fact that the grotesques painted by Smith and View Askew are painfully close to the bone to sit comfortably at all, so they are often dismissed as disgusting and puerile.
Sadly for our generation, people like Randall, Zach, Miri and even Jay and Silent Bob exist- they are the sluggish majority, occupying scuzzy McJobs, and so disillusioned that they fail to even bat an eyelid when someone offers them a chance to redeem themselves, unless it is a chokingly quick rise to soluble fame at the hands of SimonCowell.
Another thing that critics largely ignore when tearing strips off Clerks and Kevin Smith's greater portfolio is that a lot of art is very specifically targeted to its audience- curiously consumerist culture applauds most marketing and content that is perfectly demographically suited, but films remain to be critically destroyed when they dont cater to the mysterious idea of the wider audience. Clerks is aimed squarely at the same kind of people it portrays, to an almost uninclusive degree; chiefly because of the sub-social relevance of the characters' attitudes and speech patterns the film can be inaccessible to "non-demographic" audiences, a fact that shouldnt be as frowned upon as fervently as it clearly is.
I would challenge anyone to make a film that comments so well upon that sub-culture while simultaneously including it as its chief audience, just as I would challenge anyone to make a film that better represents a giant fuck you to those who would choose to believe that that sort of lifestyle exists only in the grotesque imagination of disgusting, amoral directors.
From Clerks, along the shelf, my collection includes Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction and The English Patient - all phenomenally successful films in their own right, and each an unbelievably significant release in the grand history of cinema. Like Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino attracts an undue amount of criticism, disproportionate to the critical accomplishments of his films, probably because of his personality and the manner in which he pursues an artistic manifesto that a vocal minority will never agree with. And it is probably this that made his relationship with Miramax an inevitability.
Like him, the company has had its fair share of critics; a lot of whom would point to the specific creative decisions that lead to the failures of certain films, like Hellraiser: Deader, Jersey Girl and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights or the overall failures of larger offshoot projects like Miramax Family (The Neverending Story III, anyone?) and Dimension Films, rather than focusing on any of the unbelievable successes they had.
And Dimension Filmswas a failure - especially in terms of the quality of the films they put out during the Disney association and the majority of the same films' financial track records. While the Weinstein's viewed the company as a still-viable financial option, and took it with them after their not unacrimonious split from Disney in 2005, there is little beyond the Scream franchise (apart from the flashes of excellence of Equilibrium and Bad Santa) to suggest that the company deserves its longevity. The fact of the matter is, five or six films do not an excellent company make- and the terrible lows of most of the genre sequel that they consciously chose to put out are a difficult dark patch to forget.
As well as thes monumentally significant releases mentioned above, Miramax were responsible for some of the most personally affecting "smaller" film releases- from Eagle Versus Shark, Equilibrium and The I Inside to more recently Adventureland, which take up some of the most prized positions in my collection. Indeed, in stark contrast to the persistent rumours surrounding the Weinstein's overbearing interference in certain projects, Miramax garnered a reputation for putting out creatively adventurous films, which would not have been financially viable options for other studios. sex, lies and videotape was one such project, and the company made some excellent early choices to cement that indie-cult success, putting out Almodovar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and The Crying Game, films I had never seen anything like before which spoke with a voice I never thought available on the silver screen.
It is just a shame, in my opinion, that the greatest financial success was not an indie-flavoured project that would not have done good business on any other label, but was rather the sprauling and be-sparkled hit and miss that was Chicago. $300m, even in today's bloated world of budgets and box-office behemoths, is a ridiculous return- especially on a musical, and it is a success that is very unlikely to be repeated any time soon: just look what happened whenNine tried to repeat that success.
But, believe it or not, money isnt the only indicator of quality- over only a decade or so, Miramax received an astonishing 200 Oscar nominations, with a fraction of the resources and man-power of its competitors. And the pinnacles of those achievements? How about Shakespeare in Love pipping Saving Private Ryan in 1999? Or The English Patient's frankly obscene haul of awards? Or was it Clerks return of more than $3m in box-office readies on the back of a measly budget of just north of $27,000? Compelling options one and all.
So what really went wrong?
Well, while money is surely no indicator of quality, it is still the hamster that turns the Hollywood wheel. Come to that, it's also the nuts and bolts, the raw materials and the axel grease on the Hollywood wheel. And it made a terrible and telling difference to the output of Miramax, and to the financial returns on that output.
The Weinsteins made some bad decisions as well as some great ones- who in American film journalism can forget the ill-fated run of Talk magazine which disappeared into the ether after three uninspiring years and $100m? But the most terrible? That has to be the decision to accept Disney's dollars. While it made their lives infinitely more easy, the luxury afforded by the greens robbed the Weinstein boys of the adversity that had inspired the majority of their early releases to success and came with the fatal caviat that they would have to surrender a certain amount of creative control away to the Disney big wigs. Hence the to-do over Fahrenheit 911, which has entered history as the straw that broke the camels back in the ill-fated relationship between Harvey, Bob and Mickey Mouse's handlers.
Making film with relatively small budgets was what the Weinsteins knew, it was the context in which they were able to provoke extraordinary financial returns for their films, and it was the arena in which they garnered the most positive critical reactions they would ever go on to attract. So, when they were suddenly able to spend more and more on their boutique projects, multiplying their $8m budgets up to $60m, the margin for error became frighteningly slim, with the bloated budgets spelling disaster when the films werent received as well as planned.
And anyway, it was fundamentally a marriage made in Hell from day one. Anyone with even an ounce of foresight, could have seen that Miramax didnt make Disney-esque films- in fact, it was part of their appeal- and there was no way the combination would produce anything sustained and successful without a change of direction for one of the two. And Disney arent exactly famed for rolling over.
Not only that- but the 21st century saw a development in cinema that seemed to catch a lot of people by surprise- the turn of the century brought an avalanche of small, quirky, hard-to-market films that the marketplace for independent film imploded before our eyes. The term Independent Film doesnt even mean what it used to any more, with the definition shifting more to include everything from viral movie making to self-made projects on the internet- Miramax was essentially robbed of its unique selling point by the saturation and destabilisation of their marketplace. They would never be able to hold the same strangle-hold over that particular arena, and that spelt disaster.
Eventually, it seems that Disney noticed what was patently obvious to everyone else, and they announced that they would no longer be pursuing the Miramax style of movie making that just plain didnt suit them. From there, the potential for disaster became a horrifying reality, and we were all destined to be robbed of one of the most important film companies far sooner than would surely have happened had the Weinsteins not gone for the tasty buck.
In short, if it wasnt for Miramax, I would have a far more sparse collection than I currently do, and I thank them heartily for the work they did. As a company, they probably shaped my early film education more than any other cinematic corporation- they introduced me to Tarantino, to Almodovar and to. But most of all, Miramaxintroduced me to the idea that films did not have to be made for that inaccesible, imaginary wholesome majority of audiences who were the unrealistic ideal that I could not dial into at all- they offered me a more personally intriguing alternative, and until it all started to free-fall, they really had it going.
And so, for now, let's just say adieu, and hope better times lie ahead for what was once called Miramax, if only to satisfy my curiosity over the six mysterious projects that have remained shelved in the cross-fire, including Sam Worthington'sThe Debt, Jennifer Anniston'sThe Baster and Helen Mirren'sThe Tempest. All of interest for different reasons.
If the news sites are to be believed, Disney will limit the level of new investment into Miramax to funding these six releases while they actively seek out a buyer, but forgive me if I am skeptical that a corporation so willing to cut off the purse strings entirely will indeed put out six films without an obviously gold-plated option among them.
And, as the final eulogy, watch and remember just how astonishing this moment of Miramax magic was the first time you saw it...