Since losing their brand, life hasn't been right for the Brothers Weinstein. Could a name change though really bring back that magical English Patient era?

• Their company may be ailing, but Weinsteins are ready to make a play to get their name back. The Wrap reports that Harvey and Bob are preparing a pitch to Robert Iger to buy back their old Miramax brand now that Disney has all but shuttered the division. When they left Disney, The Wrap reports, Michael Eisner refused out of spite to let them take the name — which is a hybrid of the Weinsteins' parent's names - with them. But with Disney now under less vengeance driven management the Weinsteins hope is that the time be be ripe for an historic reunion . [The Wrap]

• George Clooney is reportedly "circling the lead" role in the long awaited new film by Sideways and Election director Alexander Payne, a family drama/comedy entitled The Descendents. [Variety]

• Suggesting that Oscar's new producers may be taking a step away from from the Hugh Jackman mold, Nikki Finke reports that the hosting job has been offered to and turned down by both Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. Which means there is only one Tropic Thunder star left to host...Jack Black, your day of destiny has arrived. [Deadline]

• Hollywood is saved! In earnings season, Viacom reported "better-than-expected third-quarter profit gains thanks to improved theatrical film and TV advertising trends, as well as cost controls." Marvel however, ruined the party by reporting lower profits in Q3, as they had no theatrical releases last quarter. Thanks for nothing Marvel. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Sony Classics has picked up the US rights to Mother and Child a drama about three women and their children, which received gushing reviews when it debuted at the Toronto Film Festival in September. [Variety]

• Diversity is at last coming to late night TV. Fifteen years after Arsenio Hall went off the air, the next few weeks will see the debuts of talk shows built around George Lopez (TBS), Wanda Sykes (Fox) and Mo'Nique (BET). [The Wrap]

• The Atrios are in! The casting society of America handed out their annual awards at a banquet last night, giving top honors to Star Trek, Mad Men, Up and Milk. Kath and Kim's John Michael Higgins hosted the fete. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Most brilliantly understated headline of the morning: "Paranormal Activity sequel a possibility. Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman reveals Tuesday." Yes, well there is always that chance that Viacom has decided they've made enough money this decade. [Hollywood Reporter]

• The unsinkable Jim Belushi juggernaut rolls on. The According to Jim vet has signed up with Diane English and Barry Levinson to create a courtroom TV drama based on famed defense attorney Mickey Sherman. [Variety]

• The Wrap reports that Project Runway's move to Lifetime has not quite worked out as Harvey Weinstein and company expected. After a very strong debut, ratings have fallen off more than 20 percent. Worse for Lifetime, having the show on its network, for which it paid a hefty price, has done little for its overall ratings picture. In fact, Lifetime's ratings in the critical 18 - 49 female demo are off 13 percent from last year. On the other hand, after losing its signature show, Bravo's ratings are up this year by 5 percent in the 18- 49 demo, and it had its "best ratings quarter ever this summer." So who is auf now Frau Klum? [The Wrap]

• Anthony Hopkins has signed on to play Thor's dad Odin in the Marvel film adaptation of its comic book series. Chris Hemsworth will star as the thunder god, while Natalie Portman will take on the thankless love interest role. Kenneth Branagh is, amazingly, directing. [Variety]

• And the new Mad Max will be...Charlize Theron. Little is known about the working script, but the Oscar winner will apparently be the front woman in director George Miller's reboot of the classic series. [Variety]

• Sethe MacFarlane's American Dad has been renewed for a sixth season. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Sony reported its fourth straight quarter of losses, although the hurt this past quarter was not as bad as analysts had predicted. The company saw sales fall off another 20 percent overall. The motion picture division saw a "30.4% year-on drop in sales — or 20% on a U.S. dollar basis. But as the NY Times reminded us this weekend, what matters is that Michael and Amy really really like each other. [Variety]

• Tensions flared at the wrap of the theater owner's ShowEast conference over the taking forever rollout of digital technology. The Hollywood Reporter reported, "it sounded more like a threat than a promise when University Mall Theatres' Mark O'Meara kicked off one d-cinema presentation by declaring, 'Digital cinema is here to stay.'" [Hollywood Reporter]

• Prepare yourself for Fish Hooks. The first new animated show to be greenlit by the Disney Channel in three years will soon be tormenting your dreams as it is forced down grown-up America's throats by a nation of over-hyped children. [Hollywood Reporter}

Heller doesn't disclose it in her Huffington Post article or bio, but she was until recently an editor at the site, we hear. A spokesperson for the website writes under a CityFile post that Heller is no longer with the company, but that hardly washes away a major source of bias. Then again, conflicts of interest are part of the magical fuel that helps drive the Huffington Post. No writer really works for free.

UPDATE: A tipster writes to inform us that, behind the A Small World firewall, Heller is still listed as editor in chief of A Small Magazine. The site has given the magazine less prominence on A Small World's home page, our tipster adds, after a "disastrous" article on "Young Power Couples," which prompted A Small World co-founder Louise Wachtmeister to comment as follows:

An all time low!

Not like the old days, discrete and understated.

I sadly state this and I am a co-founder of ASW .

I am embarrassed and want to state that I have nothing to do with this. If I was the editor, I would listen to feedback, not criticize it, and in some cases apologize to the members.

Louise

(Pic via Starworks)

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the latest round of layoffs brings the company's total payroll down to 70 or 80. Just for perspective, Nikki Finke reported that they had 224 staffers in November 2008. How many more tear-filled dinners can they stand before they go from the Weinstein Co. to just the Weinsteins?

Weinstein Co. will offload its majority stake in ASmallWorld.net to mogul Patrick Liotard-Vogt, scion of the family that started Nestle Corp., sources tell the Times. There's no word on the price.

But there's every reason to think it will be depressed. A Small World was movie honcho Harvey Weinstein's first internet investment, and it soured quickly: Fully a year and a half ago, the VIP members were already complaining about emails pestering them to log on to the site and about the increased ads. Traffic has remained flat for years, while Facebook soared. The problem was fundamental: Rich guys don't want to socialize only with one another, and once you let in enough attractive young women and such your VIP site loses it cachet and everyone might as well just hang out on Facebook, which Metcalfe's law teaches us is exponentially more useful anyway.

Not that Weinstein suddenly realized any of this; he's cutting his losses only now that circumstances have forced him to, and probably at a fire-sale price. At least now he can focus on trying to save his flailing movie company. The members of a Small World have plenty of other ways to entertain themselves.

Ah Fortuna's bitter harvest! Just yesterday the giants of entertainment stood arm in arm demanding the world come to its senses, and righteous intelligensia stared down the American rabble, asking of those who would dare judge a Roman Polanski, have you no decency sirs?

That was yesterday. Today the rabble is taking names.

Reading great political significance into the Polanski defense, Politico has done an accounting and reports that "Movie industry types calling for the release of director Roman Polanski last year gave $34,000 to Obama's presidential campaign and the Democratic Party, FEC records show."

Leading the list of supporters of both child rape and Democrats is mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose prominent role in the Polanski defense is paired with his $28,500 donation to the DNC. Politico doesn't say what the relationship of those two actions is, but they of course, do nothing to stand in the way of you drawing your own sinister conclusions.

Meanwhile in the LA Times, blogger Patrick Goldstein has a fascinating point that should pause the mob in their tracks before they storm the Paramount gates. After weeks of accusations that Hollywood was using the Polanski case as an opportunityto shove their pro-child rape agenda down the American throats, Goldstein points out that the Polanski defense has not been particularly Hollywood-based at all. He writes of the signatories to the Polanski defense petition:

All of those filmmakers, along with Harvey Weinstein, live far, far away from Hollywood and, with occasional exceptions, make their movies outside of Hollywood as well. If you look up the rest of the names on the best-known petition in circulation, it is filled with the names of foreign filmmakers, writers and actors — including the likes of Pedro Almodovar, Wong Kar Wai, Alfonso Cuaron, Isabelle Adjani and Salman Rushdie — who also rarely set foot in Hollywood. If critics like Teachout want to claim that high-brow artists and writers have rushed to Polanski's defense, fair enough. But to say that Hollywood is in his corner, as part of a political argument that Hollywood is a liberal elite woefully ignorant of mainstream values, is just hogwash.

There's no petition going around with the names of the real Hollywood elite — A-list filmmakers and studio chiefs like Steven Spielberg, Alan Horn, James Cameron, Amy Pascal, Jerry Bruckheimer, Brian Grazer, Tom Rothman, J.J. Abrams, John Lasseter or Michael Bay — because the real Hollywood elite isn't supporting Polanski. In fact, they haven't offered the slightest hint of backing for Polanski. It's only European and New York-based artists, who clearly see the world in a very different light than the real Hollywood elite.

We did our own geographic accounting of the Polanski defenders, adding up all the home cities of all the public American supporters we could find whose hometowns we could determine. Here is what we came up with:

• New York: 18 Supporters
Woody Allen, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, Kent Jones,Harmony Korine, Richard Pena, Jerry Schatzberg, Julian Schnabel, Barbet Schroeder, Paul Auster, Mike Nichols,Diane von Furstenberg, Harvey Weinstein, Adrien Brody, Jonathan Klein, Natalie Portman

• LA: 8 supporters
Scott Foundas, John Landis, Alexander Payne, Taylor Hackford, Steven Soderbergh, Michael Mann J. Neil Schulman, Harrison Ford

• Elsewhere USA: 2 supporters
David Lynch, Terry Zwigoff

Like Politico, I'm not saying this necessarily means that all New Yorkers practice moral relativism when it comes to high crimes by filmmakers, but as a native Los Angeleno, I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

And while the backlash against the defense does not yet have a body count, it may have a lost-commercial-shoot count. Mediabistro's Agency Spy blog reports on a rather obscure tip that Martin Scorsese was cut out of a group of directors hired to shoot ads for the 2010 census because of his Polanski support. The blog has a hard time nailing down the truth of this rumor but state pretty decisively that Scorsese's name is now m-u-d at the agency handling the census account.

And while America points fingers, the accused himself sits in his alpine chalet/cell, awaiting our justice.

"I'm too superficial to read The New Yorker because it's so unrelentingly boring. Even the cartoons suck these days," begins Finke's post reacting to the profile. Touche, babes! I feel you. But occasionally they come out with something interesting, and this—in or out of context—is definitely one of The New Yorker's more valiant efforts. Too bad it's so mediocre. Highlights:

• The New Yorker loves to write about bloggers as secluded, melodramatic cretins sniping away from the comfort of their living room while they're too socially anxious to do anything else. Which is true. Also, we learn her cat's name:

  "...In seclusion she manages to seem ubiquitous, covering the golden acres from Santa Monica to Sunset-Gower from a home newsroom containing six phones, a laptop, and her cat, Blue. Her all-knowing voice on the phone is reminiscent of Charlie of "Charlie's Angels"-yet she salts her site with references to her diabetes and dental work, drawing readers into the drama of her daily struggle."

  
  

• Finke does drams. Watch her recount the tale of her learning Dick Cook was being canned/leaving Disney: "Finke told me, 'I literally ripped the I.V. out of my arm to leave the hospital, and I would have had the story an hour earlier if I hadn't stopped to get an antibiotic.'"
  
  
• This was nice: Studios hosting dinners with Hollywood journalists having a salon about how the journalists were going to do their jobs. Finke didn't show, naturally.

  "In April, 2007, Stacy Ivers, who was then in charge of media relations at Universal Pictures, invited about thirty people-a mixture of journalists and P.R. executives from the studios and talent agencies-to dinner in Laurel Canyon. Ivers's idea was that the two camps could mingle over salmon and lemon bars, and hash out Hollywood's new rules of reporting. Ivers's dinner, attended by most of Hollywood's top corporate publicists, as well as by Fleming, Waxman, the Variety reporter Anne Thompson, the Hollywood Reporter's film editor, Gregg Kilday, and a Los Angeles Times editor, Sallie Hofmeister, among others...."

  
  

• Several allusions comparing Nikki to the communist witch hunts of Hollywood, including Warner Bros. studio chief Jeff Robinov.
  
  
• Nikki just making fun of Friend:

  After a moment, she added, "I did call Peter ‘Ovitz's buttboy' "-a suggestion that Bart was too submissive to the former agent Michael Ovitz, an enduring adversary of Finke's. "I can't help it!" she said, laughing. "It's like meanness pours out of my fingers!"

  
  

• Finke talking to her cat and her assistant the same way: "She was often funny and warm, and at times appealingly distractible, breaking off to talk to her assistant ("I can't eat this-no offense, but it's gross! Yuck!") or her cat ("Yeah, there's food there-what the hell is your problem?")."
  
  
• Nikki Finke, the lonely, sad blogger:

  "One Saturday evening, after we concluded a three-hour call, she phoned back twenty minutes later to say, "Everyone tries to portray me as sad, pathetic, lonely-that's not me at all." "I don't think of you that way, Nikki," I said. "You don't know anything about my private life," she said, quietly. "That's probably true." "O.K."

  
  

• Nikki Finke, the depressive maniac:

  "There was a constant undercurrent of a kind of financial and professional desperation," her friend Bernie Weinraub, who was then the Times' Hollywood correspondent, says. After Finke's book was cancelled by Dial Press, in 1996, she wept so intensely that Lisa Chase, who edited a column Finke was writing for the New York Observer, called the Los Angeles sheriff's department and asked them to check on her. Deputies arrived at Finke's apartment at the same time as Weinraub, who had also spoken to Finke and grown concerned, and when she opened the door, sobbing, holding a knife she was using to open a package, the deputies shouted, "Put down the knife!" Later, Weinraub would jokingly blackmail her about that moment-and Finke would tease him about the time he'd fallen asleep while interviewing Jim Carrey.

  
  

• Nikki's excuses for missing deadlines, two of which I've used: "‘I was locked out of my apartment,' ‘I had food poisoning,' ‘I was being evicted.'"
  
  
• Endeavor agents talking to Friend about Ari Emmanel's handling of Finke during the Endeavor-William Morris merger:

  "Ari fed Nikki perfectly," one Endeavor agent says. "He used her just enough to help the merger."

  
  

• The only person Finke's afraid of:

  Finke is tickled by such bluster, and says that the silky David Geffen is the only person in town she's actually afraid of, adding, "I'm sure he'd take it as a compliment." (Geffen, perhaps cultivating his reputation for veiled menace, said, "Just say I had no reaction at all.")

  
  

• And finally, Finke's kicker:

  "I don't think for a minute these people like me," Finke told me. "They talk to me because that's how the game is played. They'd like to ignore me, but they can't. The best way for them to think of it is: I get bitch-slapped today, and someone else'll get bitch-slapped tomorrow."

That person—or people—according to Finke's blog post, are David Remnick, Tad Friend, and most of the New Yorker's working masthead. But before we get there, let's do a quick rundown of the language used in Friend's piece:

• Finke portrays many of the town's leaders as jackasses who golf at exclusive preserves
  
  
• Jeff Zucker, the C.E.O. and president of NBC Universal, is "one of the most kiss-ass incompetents
  
  
• "Stick it where the sun don't shine, you asswipe," she recently counselled a CBS publicist.
  
  
• Nikki wrote it like the runaway bride was a whore."
  
  
• In October, 2007, Finke posted a story about Jeff Robinov, Warner Bros.' president of production: "Warner's Robinov Bitchslaps Film Women."
  
  
• "I did call Peter ‘Ovitz's buttboy'"
  
  
• "Then you see a comment-maybe from someone who's in an insane asylum-saying, ‘When I worked there, he shit in the kitchen sink and wiped his ass with $100 bills.'"
  
  
• Nikki's response was that I was a pussy.
  
  
• "New Line was left holding its dick"
  
  
• "starts whining like the pussy he is,"
  
  
• A source of Finke's says, "Somehow I've become like the poster child for her-I'm her bitch."
  
  
• Ray Stark once told Finke, "Girlie, if you ever fuck me, I'm going to personally come over to your house and give you a hysterectomy."
  
  
• "You make me sound like a wuss!"
  
  
• bitch-slapped today, and someone else'll get bitch-slapped tomorrow

And that wasn't even a thorough search. This thing's full of awesome Finke-isms. But the bottom line is that the juciest stuff in the profile about Nikki—she changes posts on the fly, she can be shifted by her sources, some people are afraid of her, some not so much, she's a rebel, an outsider, comes from money, lives a mysterious life, is kinda kooky—are things we already knew or could've guessed. The best part of this story, of course, is Nikki's reaction.

Hollywood Manipulated The New Yorker the title of her post proclaims. How does she go after the New Yorker? Her full assessment, in its most basic form is

As I expected, it's an amusing caricature, only occasionally true but hardly insightful. Still, I'm relieved that The New Yorker didn't lay a glove on me.

Ah, but there's more. Finke argues that Friend's reporting was mediocre, and that he and the New Yorker got totally played by Hollywood. Back to the bullet points, one more time:

• Her time was wasted.
  
  
• The best stuff she gave Friend wasn't even used.
  
  
• She spoke with Friend on piles of pre-conditions only.
  
  
• Friend's work was "no better" than David Carr's NYT profile on her.
  
  
• She found Friend "easy to manipulate."
  
  
• She enjoyed "bitchslapping" New Yorker EIC David Remnick "throughout but especially during the very slipshod factchecking process"
  
  
• The New Yorker "bent over" for Hollywood.
  
  
• Brad Grey's flack Steven Rubenstein got every reference in the story to him deleted.
  
  
• Harvey Weinstein had "cunt" replaced with the word "jerk" on his quote.
  
  
• More on Hollywood "had their way" with the New Yorker, and then this Eminem-esque kicker: "You, too, can make The New Yorker your buttboy. Just act like a cunt and treat Remnick like a putz and don't give a fuck."

Jesus.

I contacted Tad Friend, David Remnick, and deputy editor Pamela McCarthy at The New Yorker for comment on Finke's rebuttal. None of them replied. The New Yorker's PR director, Alexa Cassanos, did:

No, no comment from David or The New Yorker. Thanks for checking though.

I figured I'd fire one Finke's way since she's having such a great morning. What'd she think of the New Yorker's silence? Also: what she thought of the article's assertion that she could be "(positioned)..to some degree."

I have no idea what that sentence means. I do know that in the 3rd graf of the story it reads, "she's very, very, very accurate, extraordinarily so..."

And that, right there, is the Nikki Finke story: playing her own press as hard as the subjects she covers try to work her, and when occasionally caught in the middle, celebrating the nihilism of her bloodsport with a hearty "who cares?" Finke is Shiva, a force of destruction, kinda crazy and overly obsessive, caring only about how respected and powerful she is, and taking it by brute force. She's playing her game by rules she makes up as she goes along, elbows out, and occasionally tossing around doublespeak to back her transgressions and fouls. It's really quite fun to watch even if, as Finke might suggest, you have no reason to give a fuck.

The list of celebrities willing to publicly criticize Polanski is still pretty short, and so far, Team Child Rape Is Bad is not well-stocked with winners — when two of the biggest names are Kirstie "I wish I was black" Alley and Sherri "the earth is round?" Shepherd, we have a problem. Hell, the anti-Polanski side even lost the Little House War: Half Pint defended Polanski on The View, while we get Nellie Oleson. As it turns out, Alison Arngrim (Nellie) is one of the few actors publicly asking the obvious question about Hollywood's wagon-circling: "If Roman Polanski were a Catholic priest or a Republican senator, would these people feel the same way?"

The L.A. Times casts the tension between celebrity rape apologists and those who believe Polanski is not above the law as typical of the gulf between Hollywood liberals and "real" Americans, but Jill Filipovic at Feministe calls bullshit on that: "No, LA Times, it is not 'Hollywood vs. Middle America' in the Polanski case. It is a self-protective and sometimes tone-deaf industry against the entire rest of the country." Bingo. Can we please put a stop to this "Liberals don't care about child rape" meme? Yes, many conservatives are on the right side of this debate, but so are a whole lot of liberals who don't happen to work in the film industry. As Melissa Silverstein points out at Women & Hollywood, rape is a feminist issue. Most of us haven't forgotten that, even if Feminist Majority founder Peg Yorkin told the L.A. Times "It's crazy to arrest him now. Let it go." (The HELL, Peg Yorkin?) Eve Ensler and Katha Pollitt, off the top of my head, very much say otherwise. Not to mention pretty much every feminist blogger in existence. Hollywood doesn't speak for the left; Hollywood speaks for itself.

But what's going on with the apologism from so many, and the silence from so many more, if it's not liberalism gone mad? Well, The L.A. Times has a pretty good suggestion elsewhere in that piece. Referring back to Mel Gibson getting a pass on his anti-Semitic bullshit, John Horn and Tina Daunt write, "The criticism of Hollywood at the time was that in a business contingent on relationships and currying favor with the powerful, no one was willing to denounce such a prominent artist." Same deal here. As Silverstein told them, "I think people are afraid to talk in Hollywood. They are afraid about their next job." (Silverstein, an independent marketer of women's films, is very conscious that she's risking her own professional ass by speaking out, by the way.) When you've got people like Harvey Weinstein out there pushing the petition, bloviating about government irresponsibility and characterizing child rape as a "so-called crime," who's going to stand up to that?

People who don't work in film, people who are already well-known for their unpopular opinions, and people you've never heard of, for the most part. Otherwise, say Horn and Daunt, "It's almost impossible to find anyone [in Hollywood] publicly condemning Polanski." It's understandable, but no less disappointing for that. I like to imagine Kate Winslet and Rachel Weisz having screaming matches with their petition-signing partners at home, but I have no idea if their own failure to sign (so far) is in any way meaningful. Perhaps they're conflicted. Perhaps they're indifferent. Perhaps they just haven't gotten around to it yet. That's the benefit of silence: Nobody knows what you're thinking.

Unfortunately for rape survivors, liberals, feminists, parents, 13-year-old girls and other decent human beings dying to see some high-profile celebrities follow the French government's lead and say, "Hey, wait a minute, upon further reflection, dude committed serious crimes and is not actually above the law," that's also the enormous drawback of silence.

In Roman Polanski case, is it Hollywood vs. Middle America? [L.A. Times]
Backlash builds against support of Polanski [CNN]
For Studios, Polanski's Box Office Is the Key [NY Times]
Dissent of the Day [Daily Dish]
Does the Brotherhood of Fame Endow You With a Lifetime Exemption From Accountability? [Huffington Post]
Roman Polanski Has a Lot of Friends [The Nation]
Rape Is a Feminist Issue [Women & Hollywood]
Heartbreakers [Feministe]

"Film-makers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision," says the petition which, according to the Guardian,

has now been signed by more than 70 film industry luminaries, including Polanski's fellow directors Michael Mann, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodóvar, Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, Julian Schnabel, the Dardenne brothers, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Wong Kar-Wai, Walter Salles and Jonathan Demme. Actors Tilda Swinton, Monica Bellucci and Asia Argento, as well as producer Harvey Weinstein have also put their names on the petition. Yesterday, Weinstein stated he was "calling on every film-maker we can to help fix this terrible situation".

Meanwhile, the media is abuzz with speculation as to why after all these years, Polanski was arrested now. Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff opined that the arrest is revenge by prosecutors for the humiliation they endured after last year's documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired depicted the circus surrounding the original case.

The LA Times however, claims that Polanski provoked the arrest by taunting law enforcement with their inaction. They write:

Polanski's attorneys helped to provoke his arrest by complaining to an appellate court this summer that Los Angeles County prosecutors had made no real effort to capture the filmmaker in his three decades as a fugitive. The accusation that the Los Angeles County district attorney's office was not serious about extraditing Polanski was a minor point in two lengthy July court filings by the director's attorneys.

The piece goes on to describe how, despite the fact that Polanski had visited Switzerland before, the widely publicized nature of his appearances at the Zurich film festival goaded prosecutors to action.

And while Polanski's victim Samantha Geimer may be "over it" a significant lynch mob is still roaming the internet demanding justice for what they remind us, was not just some private between adults indiscretion.

At Salon, Kate Harding writes a hang 'em high piece succinctly entitled "Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped a Child."

And over at moviecitynews, David Poland rebuts seemingly the rest of Hollywood with a nice list of retorts to the "But he's a great director who's been through so much" arguments.

Turning back the clock, awards blogger Tom O'Neil wonders whether Polanski even deserved his best director Oscar for The Pianist, pointing out that the director of that year's Best Picture Chicago, was strangely denied the traditional accompanying statue and ponders whether the award might have been Hollywood's show of support to the exiled molester.

The bottom line, the Wall Street Journal adds, is that Weinstein needs a string of hits like Basterds — or $50 million in new money. The latter could be tough given another thing the Journal is reporting: that Weinstein failed to pay back a $75 million bridge loan earlier this year and is just piling up interest on the money. Basterds has racked up an impressive $111 million at the box office but, as noted here previously, it isn't saving Weinstein's ass because all the proceeds have to be split with co-producer Universal Pictures.

Weinstein's hopes for rescue when the big budget, Oscar-bait musical Nine opens this year appear to be diminishing with the rumor mill churning with word of a troubled post-production.

Weinstein's best hope for salvation is to dig deep down, past where his soul would be, and grab hold of that internal, obnoxious genius that empowers him to turn decent movies into great films. It would appear that digging process has already begun.

• In the first big pick-up of the Toronto Film Festival, The Weinstein Company came out on top after an "all night negotiating session" over the rights to designer Tom Ford's directorial debut A Single Man. For the newly contractually-joined pair, it was all a beautiful dream. Ford told Variety "Harvey and I have talked about a collaboration for years, in fact, since our first meeting more than 10 years ago." [Variety]

• Weinstein denied rumors, however, that the release of the Rob Marshall musical Nine is being pushed off until next year, a move which would have knocked it out of the Oscar race. The scuttlebutt started when when Weinstein pushed back the release of The Road, landing it on the same date as Nine had been booked to bow. The change would have shaken up an already wide-open Oscar race but Weinstein declared yesterday that we can handle two releases on one day just fine, thank you very much. [Hitfix]

• At Goldman Sachs' Communicopia in New York, Rupert Murdoch thrilled attendees with his plan to save big media by charging for NewsCorp content, starting with the Wall St. Journal Blackberry edition. Jeff Zucker for his part declared NBC's Jay Leno was blazing a trail to the future with his 10 PM show. Asked about a possible Vivendi deal to buy NBC from GE, Zucker was coy saying the company has been "a great partner." [Variety]

• If you worried that we were running low on ideas after Battleship—the A-Team film is moving forward. Jessica Biel and Sharlto Copley are in talks to star. [Hollywood Reporter]

• Red hot quirky comic Zack Galifianakis is in talks to star in the new film by writer-directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden. The movie "It's Kind of a Funny Story" will also star Emma Roberts and is described as a "coming of age dramedy.' [Hollywood Reporter]

Until this weekend, Hollywood's code of honor has been revolved around an iron commandment: We do not release more than one horror film per weekend. And thus, since the days of Chaplin and Pickford, no third-tier, shamelessly exploitative attempt to ring dollars out of the pockets of gullible teenagers looking for cheap screams has had to compete on its opening weekend with any other third tier, shamelessly exploitative attempt to ring dollars out of the pockets of gullible teenagers looking for cheap screams.

And thus has Hollywood grown and flourished, its blessings divided equally for its rulers to rejoice.

The opening weekend for these films is especially important as once word gets out of what a low-rent, awful-not-in-a-good-way, tedious march through hell these movies are, their grosses typically fall off something in the range of 99.99999 percent in their second weekends.

So although Final Desitination hauled in $23.3 million for Warner Brothers this weekend and Halloween 2 brought Papas Weinstein a nothing-to-sneeze at $17.4 million, the pure tragic dilemma Hollywood is pondering is: why couldn't Halloween have moved to another weekend (say one closer to, uh, Halloween), letting Final Desitination sop up the entire horror shopping dollar of a combined 40.7 this weekend, and then gotten its own 40 millionish some other week?

The scuttlebutt around town is that Halloween had been booked for this weekend when Final Desitination nosed its way onto this precious late summer patch of sand. So, people ask, facing up to that showdown, why couldn't the Weinsteins see what was clear to the entire world and its grandmother: that Final Desitination was clearly the stronger of the two low-rent exploitation franchises (it's even, as the title suggests, in 3-D), and seeing that, why couldn't they swallow their scheduling pride and get the fuck out of the way?

As with many things Weinsteins, we can glean motives only through a glass darkly, but a few hypotheses have surfaced about why this tragedy had to happen:

• Moving the release date was prohibitively costly.
• There was a belief that FD3-D skews female and H2 skews male so there is room for both.
• This was the Weinstein's first window after the Inglorious Basterds release and thus their chance post-Basterds to get Halloween out during the summer months.
• With their flurry of deals that they are getting into and out of, they may have needed to release Halloween by a certain, because perhaps of some expiring treaty.
• They couldn't swallow their pride because they can't swallow their pride. That's why they they call them Weinsteins after all.

Whatever the true reason, one horror scenario is going to haunt the dreams of Hollywood executives until the end of their days; when studio chiefs go to sleep at night it will be the face of those lost millions looming before them, along with the eternally unknowable specter of what could have been.

The movie cost $65 million, with another $35 mil for marketing. The Weinsteins were god damned determined to market the hell out of this! And that's great and all. But the WSJ explains the problem:

The company co-owns the $65 million film with Universal Pictures, so it will only reap half the profits — a symptom of the studio's financial troubles and the reason that even a hit like "Inglourious Basterds" may not be enough to save them.

Oh Harvey. Next time keep all of the Tarantino flick and sell off half of Miss Potter.

According to Guest of a Guest, Weinstein is leveraging the substantial marketing might of A Small World, the exclusive "Facebook for millionaires" that the Weinstein Co. stupidly invested in three years ago, on behalf of Basterds.

All 400,000 of them! And A Small World's self-satisfied, plugged in, wealthy membership are just the kind of people to go wild over a chance to win some signed movie crap.

As the Weinstein empire downsizes, Harvey is not too far from a joke Bruce Feirstein made in the New York Observer a few years back about his no-stone-unturned approach to awards campaigns:

I keep having this vision that I'm going to open the front door and find ... Harvey Weinstein himself, doing some door-to-door lobbying: "I've got Anthony Minghella out in the car. Want to meet him?"

Weinstein is reportedly trying to unload his stake in the site, which recently announced that it "plans" to be profitable by the end of the year. Smart move!

New York Times writer David Segal goes for the jugular with some of the contextualizing work done here. There're the great anecdotes from filmmakers the Weinsteins have worked with, like Quentin Tarantino's story about the time Harvey wanted to buy a restaurant just so he could blow smoke in the fire marshall's face:

The story killed, and when the laughing died down, Bob smiled, waited a beat and added another punch line. "A million dollars," he sighed, "for a cigarette."

Ah, the flush years. They must seem kind of distant now.

Or Weinstein loyalists like Kevin Smith sounding "wistful" about a failure to promote a film:

"They had impeccable taste when they were hungry," Mr. Smith says. "The problem is that they're not really hungry anymore. They're starving and desperate."

Or guys like the producer of Fanboys going on the record about how terribly trite he thinks the Weinstein's tastes have become:

To Dana Brunetti, who produced "Fanboys," the whole episode was a blown opportunity. "I don't think the Weinsteins understood that they had this stalwart audience of ‘Star Wars' fans in their back pocket," he says. "They just wanted the movie to be whatever had been hot the previous weekend. It was ‘Superbad' one weekend, something else the next."

All things that would've never have been mentioned in public - or private, maybe - by the talent in the Weinsteins employed in their heyday. The Weinsteins' strange fraternal relationship with each other is documented; so are moments of affability, to push home the point that Harvey and Bob aren't the bulldogs they used to be. But key to understanding the Weinsteins, and the way they keep getting by despite hemorrhaging money on failure after failure, is a scene in which Harvey's rattling off the company's slate of current and upcoming releases.

...the brothers were downright generous with me when it came to screening their coming movies. In fact, they shared as much of their slate as was ready - six movies in all, as well as ads, DVDs and rough cuts of unfinished products. The goal, they said, was to demonstrate the strength of these films. For Harvey, it also seemed as if the screenings were supposed to bolster his case if - or, perhaps in his mind, when - he had to complain about this article. We showed him everything and he still said we're doomed, was the subtext. If there is such a thing as prevenge, this is it. "You see this?" Harvey asks, pounding a finger against a sheet of paper. It's a Nielsen NRG tracking poll, a gauge of public interest in coming movies. He points to figures besides "Inglourious Basterds." Here's the G-rated version of what he says next: "This is called ‘smash hit'!"

Or the "next big thing" strategy, which is what they've been riding on for a while, now: sell investors on the idea that whatever comes next will, in fact, be the great success, just based on concept alone: a new Kevin Smith movie, starring the fat Jewish guy from all the Judd Apatow movies: huge! A new Holocaust movie, starring the Academy-loved Kate Winslet: blockbuster! And so on. They even take to admitting that they're nothing more than film producers, which is something they failed to realize when they tried to diversify into a multimedia company.

"What happened was, I got more fascinated by these other businesses and I figured, ‘Making movies, I can do that in my sleep,' " he says in an interview in his office in downtown Manhattan. "I kind of delegated the process of production and acquisitions. Yes, I had a say in it, but was I 100 percent concentrating? Absolutely not. I thought I could build the company and delegate authority, and that's where it went wrong."

But while they now praise the virtues of being scrappy, independent film producers again, it has to bruise the egos of the Weinstein Brothers. So much so, that they'd let a New York Times reporter in their buisness to get the story of their next success strategy out, and in the process, risk having to read damaging anecdotes about themselves like this one, delivered by Kevin Smith:

At the premiere [of Zach And Miri Make A Porno], he introduced Mr. Smith to the actress Sarah Chalke, which was awkward because the woman was actually Traci Lords, a co-star of the movie. "The old Harvey would never would have made those kinds of mistakes," he says. "He just wasn't as present, he wasn't minding the farm, so to speak."

The diverse business approach for a film company becoming a media company was a new trick, weakly executed by an old dog, getting older. The question then becomes something along the lines of: will they keep up? As major studios have learned the hard (and Twittered) way, making and marketing films has become an entirely different game. Can the Brothers Weinstein get with it? Or have the innovations and advances in the realm of their fundamental business - just making movies, and nothing else - already passed them by?

"Weinstein has been shopping around his stake in a small world. He needs liquidity fast, willing to take a heavy discount (as in 50% or more), the sharks should be circling soon."

We checked up their tip with a source close to the Weinsteins and got confirmation that the company did at least entertain the idea of selling its share in A Small World. "They were approached by an interested party and were willing to hear what they had to say," says our source.

As we've mentioned from time to time, the Weinstein Co. is in a tight spot. If Inglourious Basterds and Halloween II don't do gangbusters, it might not have enough cash on hand to promote the rest of its 2009 slate of films. Selling their share of A Small World probably wouldn't generate much — it was never revealed how much they paid for their stake in 2006 — but desperate times call for scrounging for pocket change wherever you can find it.

A Small World—which is supposed to be an exclusive digital playground for the hyper-rich—can't be a growth business in the midst of the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression. The Weinsteins might just be cutting bait, and that might even be a smart move irrespective of their larger financial picture.

Quentin Tarantino is inescapable, from The Atlantic to Jimmy Kimmel, and Weinstein seems to be leaking gossip items to engineer the appearance that he's blithely spending money in St. Tropez. But if Inglourious Basterds doesn't perform at the box office in ten days, Weinstein's days lounging around the French Riviera will be numbered.

He has leveraged his entire company on the fortunes of Tarantino's movie: According to Nikki Finke, the Weinstein Company has pushed back the remainder of its 2009 slate of films—save Halloween II, which opens a week later—in order to put all available resources into marketing Basterds. The Weinsteins could barely come up with the $30 million marketing budget for Basterds, and if they lose money on it, they won't be able to afford to market the rest of their pipeline—including All Good Things, Youth In Revolt, and Hurricane Season. And given the fact that they hired a bankruptcy consultant to help renegotiate their considerable debt earlier this year, it's unlikely they'll find new avenues of financing to fill the gap.

Harvey Weinstein was once the unchallenged master of buzz generation, but he most recently fell flat on his face with The Reader, which like Basterds, had a Nazi thing going on. While The Reader notched an Academy Award—a game the Weinsteins still know how to rig—it pulled in just $34 million domestically and $100 million or so worldwide. That's $70 million more than the Weinsteins spent to make it, but Basterds needs to make several times that in order to pull the company out of its hole. And the Weinsteins won't get all the money—if there is any—since they sold part of the movie to Universal in order to get it made.

So here's hoping that Harvey's hype machine, which for Basterds has included rafts of ads on TNT's Dark Blue, the BET Awards, and sponsorship of ESPN's Espy Awards, can turn the movie into a phenomenon of Pulp Fiction proportions. Somehow, though, we don't think offering Quentin Tarantino to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg is really going to get it there, but we do like this little anecdote:

Goebbels provides one of the most amusing moments in Inglourious Basterds, crying when Hitler praises his latest film. "If Hitler says that this is the greatest movie you've ever done, I can see Goebbels getting choked up," Tarantino said in explaining the scene. "When Harvey Weinstein does that, I get a tear in my eye."

Bob, who used to be known as the money-maker of the duo until the Weinstein Co. started steadily going broke, lets his big bro hog the limelight (basically he's played quiet Prince Geoffrey to Harvey's Prince Richard in the Weinstein Family Players' production of Lion in Winter). But he's just as legendary in the scary boss department. Many moguls have whole fleets of scared, skittering assistants—the one who survives the longest wins... something—but it looks like the recessiony times have forced Bob to cut down to just one "fuckface" around the office.

Whoever lands this plum position will be miserable. On call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week (wouldn't it be great if there was some snappy way to abbreviate that phrase??), and forced, basically, to do everything. From answering phones to running random personal errands to booking travel — which includes what can only be called consensual kidnapping — to entertaining obnoxious "A-list talent" to the ominous-sounding "gate-keeping."

There is, of course, no mention of pay.

A top NYC entertainment executive is looking for an executive assistant.

The ideal candidate should have excellent communication skills, excel under high pressure, and be motivated, dedicated and extremely loyal. This person will be representing the executive and the company, and must be professional at all times. This is a 24/7 job; you will be the only assistant to this executive. You must be available on nights and weekends, and expect to spend long hours in the office.

Responsibilities include:

· Managing heavy phones, rolling calls, and maintaining call sheet

· Scheduling meetings and managing calendar for all work and personal related matters

· Supply constant mobile communication and attend to personal errands

· Preparation and submission of expense reports

· Liaison between executive and studio presidents, financial institutions, talent agencies, principal investors, fortune 500 CEOs, writers, directors, producers, and A-list talent

· Able to juggle multiple tasks, deadlines, and responsibilities

· Booking all travel and travel arrangements

· Traveling with executive, usually at the last minute and for unknown periods of time

· Superb gate-keeping skills

· Ability to travel on a moments notice and stay away from home for uncertain amounts of time

· Ability to stay on top of an ever-changing day and night

· Attending events and company-related functions with executive

· Take dictation and be responsible for speaking on behalf of executive

· Coordinate screenings, meetings, private lodging, parties, etc. for executive and senior staff

Experience and qualifications must include:

· BA/BS degree

· Expansive knowledge of film and the film industry

· Must know how to do script coverage

· Minimum 2-3 years experience assisting another top-level executive or high-level professional

· Organized and detail-oriented

· Excellent writing and communication skills

· Personable and professional demeanor

· Minimum of three references

· Must know how to use blackberry and Microsoft Outlook

· Mac & PC literate

If you meet all necessary qualifications and are interested in this position, please send your cover letter, resume, and list of references to: filmexecasst@gmail.com

Image via Getty

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."