The Weinsteins are behaving like people on the brink of bankruptcy. They laid off 11% of their staff late last year. They overplayed their hand with Project Runway, stupidly trying to wring more money out of the show by taking it to Lifetime in violation of its contract with NBC, resulting in costly litigation and a multimillion-dollar settlement. They apparently lost the rights to produce a sequel to Sin City for lack of cash. According to Nikki Finke, they can scarcely afford the $30 million or so required to release Quentin Tarantino's Ingourious Basterds in August—they haven't released a film since February, and Finke says they've pushed back the release dates of most of its 2009 slate in order to "hoard cash" for Basterds and Halloween II, which also comes out in August. Tarantino, Finke says, has been gaming out the worst-case scenario: What happens if the Weinstein's can't come up with the cash to release it?

All of which explains why the Weinstein Co. recently hired Miller Buckfire & Co., a consulting firm that specializes in distressed companies and bankruptcies, to restructure debt and help the company raise capital. The move is a tangible and indisputable indication of the money troubles that the Weinsteins previously dismissed as baseless rumor, but they're still gamely trying to spin it is routine: "As a matter of practice we have always worked with financial institutions to explore our options with respect to equity and possible investments and it is something we will continue to do."

In that light, Bob's attempt to sell his Beresford apartment—complete with a "terraced master bedroom" and a "gargantuan coatroom"—looks like desperation. He wants $34 million for it, a 70% premium on what he paid for it five years ago. But that makes sense, since the real estate market has been on a real tear since then. For Bob, it's a significant downsizing: He bought a $15 million brownstone on W. 70th St. last month, so if successful, the deal would liberate nearly $20 million in cash—which could go quite a long way toward helping release Basterds.

But the Observer is skeptical that Bob can get what he wants for it:

And it's more than anything in the building has ever sold for: The mega-investor Bill Ackman spent $26 million, a relative pittance, on his new duplex one floor up; Jerry Seinfeld spent just $4.35 million on Isaac Stern's duplex last decade.

One broker who has seen the apartment complained that it faces south, which means its views of Central Park aren't ideal. "You do see the park when you're that high. But, obviously, the coveted view is east."

This handy summary of what went down in the last few months of Axium's history comes from a tipster.

Things are worse than they seem and I bet this story is going to get uglier and uglier. Nobody knows any of this for sure. But here are some rumors that had been floating around the company.

1. Axium 'forgot' to pay some pretty high tax bills recently.
2. The 2 formally in charge, John Visconte, and Ron Garber, used to work in Wilshire and had bullet proof glass in their office.
3. Those same two were let go from their positions about a month ago. No warning. No nothing.
4. Two months ago the company laid off all their contractors and many employees. I would guess the total number of laid off: 60
5. The company was spread VERY thin. We offered things like check-cashing services to personal loans to employees to a real estate division (that nobody really knew anything about).
6. Bottom line - the company was fucked. Most people believed there were shady things going on. But i guess what we didn't know - didn't hurt us.

Um, wow. Being the intrepid gumshoes that we are, we did some additional digging and found out that two of Visconti's other companies, Unity America Fund and Park Avenue Productions, were found to part of a 2005 campaign contributions reprimand that Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa recently received. Keep those tips coming, we'll have more on this story as the week progresses.