What’s up with the people at Miramax? Like it’s not enough that they buy up rights to good films and then sit on them for years but when they finally do give something a release they have to royally screw it over, even if it’s just on DVD …
Case in point: Miramax finally put out a Region 1 DVD of Avalon back in December. Now, I’ve had a copy of Avalon for ages, but it was a Hong Kong bootleg and seeing as the Brothers Weinstein actually decided to (gasp!) release the film in it’s original aspect ratio and with the original languages intact (the audio even defaults to the original Polish) I figured I’d be a good boy and buy an official copy. I mean, if I want them to actually do something with the other properties they’re holding I should support the ones they do actually package up right, yes? Well, I go looking around today and come across a little article that point out that not only did the Weinsteins bring in a writer to ‘plump up’ the script a bit and flesh it out for American audiences in the English dubbed version – the writer was Neil Gaiman and I was already aware of this part – but it turns out that when they did the subtitling they based the subs NOT on the original film but on their own rewrite of it. Thus, you get subtitles popping up when nobody’s actually speaking and you have Gaiman explaining – or just making up explanations, really, cause how would he know – things that the film’s director intentionally left vague. So sure, there’s an untouched version of the film on there, but unless you speak Polish you’ll never know what the original dialog actually said. This sucks. I’m gonna go buy another bootleg.
Addendum: My spellchecker suggests ‘weeniest’ in place of Weinstein. This strikes me as being entirely appropriate.
For Immediate Release
Press Contact – Holly Yanez 310 379 0683
Harvey Weinstein says “Crucify Them” and Hollywood says “OK”
12th March, 2005 Hermosa Beach, CA- As Shirley Yanez, British Evangelist for Genius, philanthropist and published author lies fighting for her life, her partner and co author, Holly Yanez continues to battle the “Pontius Pilate of Pictures”, Mr. Harvey Weinstein, the current chief of Miramax Films.
Four years ago when two women, not in the movie business, went to Mr. Weinstein asking for help to save the modern day Michelangelo a story began that has resulted in a Hollywood cover up of gargantuan proportion. Mr. Weinstein is spitting blood and demanding their heads according to hundreds of industry insiders and television and movie executives over the publication of the book “Looking For Harvey Weinstein”. Unofficially the story from journalists all over the world, including many Shirley and Holly Yanez now call friends, is Harvey Weinstein will do ANYTHING to prevent exposure for the little pink book bearing his name. He is good friends with Rupert Murdoch and controls the global media with his iron fist. Only recently an article in The Mail On Sunday written by Claudia Joseph dubbing Mr. Weinstein as the “Saddam Hussein Of Cinema” has disappeared from the newspaper’s archives.
The women’s fight for the truth to be told about the book, written to raise money for art and never intended for publication, has financially ruined them and put Shirley Yanez in critical condition in a Los Angeles Hospital due to stress and malnutrition. She has no money or insurance to cover mounting medical expenses and still no one is brave enough to help them stop Mr. Weinstein’s brutal, underhand persecution.
The reason Mr. Weinstein has not elected to sue them in his usual, heavy handed fashion is because he can’t. That is without exposing his dirty laundry. The original manuscript, a satirical roman a clef entitled “Looking For Bob” sat with the Miramax legal department for almost a year, in 2003, while he supposedly considered helping the women save their artist. However Harvey liked the idea so much he stole the concept, announced the publication of another book in the Los Angeles Times, November 2003, “The Twins Of Tribeca” and double crossed the women. All they had left in the world was their manuscript telling their true story. “Looking For Bob” was quickly revised and “Looking For Harvey Weinstein”, exposing everybody and everything they encountered, is a hilarious, self deprecating love story, self published in April, 2004.
Now almost a year later neither Miramax nor Disney have responded to countless pleas for media sanctions to be lifted and just go about their business waiting for the project to die.
If someone in the media doesn’t stand up soon and say enough is enough it will not be the death of a book Mr. Weinstein has ordered but the death of an author.