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Page 457: ...Still,
it's a business, and money is money, so some studios hold their noses
with one hand
and Harvey's with the other, trying to structure
deals so that their exposure to Miramax is limited. Miramax got a
piece
of Fox's Master and Commander, but as Russell Crowe, the picture's
star puts it, "It's best to keep them in a subservient position,
and make sure there's no blood in the water." Universal, where
there was a considerable amount of ill will in the wake of A Beautiful
Mind,
is co-producing Cinderella Man with Miramax, also starring Crowe.
It was an old deal, pre-dating Mind. "We've never had a bad
experience on the actual partnership," says Snider. "For
the most part, when he's not been yelling at me, Harvey has been
respectful." But
Universal has constructed the deal in such a way as to keep Miramax
at arm's length. "If you're not careful, and not just careful
but paranoid, you can end up in having to grant a concession to
a demand that never
in a gazillion years should have been made in the first place," says
a source there. "Harvey will do things that no partner would
do to another partner, like competing against you by setting a release
date
on one of your dates, and extracting a favor in exchange for moving
off it. You have to build a wall around your business so your movie
is protected." In
the case of Cinderella Man, Universal is overseeing the production
and controls domestic distribution, while Miramax is taking international.
Still, observes Mark Gill, "There’s no such thing as keeping
Harvey at a distance." Grazer and Ron Howard, who are producing
and directing, respectively, for Universal, were still smarting from
the Mind fracas and entered the relationship with trepidation. "We
were seduced by the idea of doing the movie, but we were equally
scared of Miramax," says Grazer. "But as much as I hated
them, I have enormous respect for what they've accomplished. I felt
like if they're
capable of being that effective for themselves, they can be that
effective for us. Sort of what Spiro Agnew said to James Brown when
Brown was invited
to the White House. He said, “If you can stop a riot, you can
start one.' You should either do a movie with somebody or you should
not do
a movie and walk away. My choice was, I’m going to trust Harvey – until
something else happens. |