It wasn't much of a surprise when it was announced that Disney would be "restructuring" Miramax down to three films a year and cutting their staff by 70%.

When Disney studio chief Dick Cook was ousted last week, it was pretty common knowledge that an absent Cook, who was long a proponent of keeping the Miramax brand alive, certainly wasn't going to help things. Miramax hasn't been sufficiently profitable for a while, at least by Disney's standards. Sure, they've turned out some quality films over the last few years (No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood) but most people attribute those victories to New York's Worst Boss '07, producer Scott Rudin, and not Miramax head Daniel Battsek, the Brit who couldn't zero in on American tastes without the help of producers like Rudin: ears for quality and easy ins to studios. Miramax has also had far more than their fair share of failures lately, which the LAT report nicely reduces to their most recent three (Extract, Cheri, and The Boys Are Back). Are we forgetting Adventureland, Eagle vs. Shark, Blindness, etc? Because, well, we shouldn't.

These are mostly expensive films with fairly "bankable" stars being trotted out as "independent" fare, or as the LA Times enjoys calling it: "smaller, offbeat movies," which is a nice euphemism for anything that doesn't have a nailed-down demographic of conspicuous consumers (or, for that matter, teenagers). But big studio dramas used to do really well! Remember the 90s? Braveheart, Schindler's List, American Beauty, Gladiator: these films used to win box offices and Oscars. Not anymore. In their place are smaller affairs: The Reader, Crash, Revolutionary Road. Restrained pieces of moviemaking that aren't as epic as their history would suggest. Times change.

Picturehouse, Warner Independent, and now, Miramax: all of these were so-called "specialty division" studio-within-studios that failed. They were built up to lure stars with the promise of getting their art-house rocks off in exchange for a multi-picture deal involving a blockbuster. Why? Because, for studios, they weren't worth the cost of the money they were losing devoting resources to making or acquiring and marketing these mostly unprofitable movies. So: studio indies are coming to an end. Thank god.

Miramax got their name by making movies like Swingers and Pulp Fiction. They stumbled upon raw talent who could make an incredible movie on the cheap, and the profits were extraordinary. When you have the backing of a studio like Disney, or Warner Bros, that's never going to happen. As much as they probably enjoy the schadenfreude of Disney fucking up their baby, even The Weinstein Brothers, still hopped up on the memories of their last moneyed days with Disney, are now caught between pissing cash into the wind on highbrow stuff, or focusing on making more stuff like Halloween 2. Layoffs are impending for Miramax employees who once thought they had the safety of a studio that cared about "good" movies. Disney's commitment to "quality" extends as far as their bottom line, like so many other multinationals trying to turn a buck.

Independent film used to be a game of digging through the dark to find something incredible, and that might be what it's returning to. Hollywood's new producers are savvy to New Media marketing games; they know how to make good films while keeping the kitchen sink. We can try to avoid the symbolism of Miramax's doom as much as we want to, but in the end, it's simple: conglomerates are out of the art-house game, which means its full-on open season for underdog movies again. Let the new Weinsteins emerge.

As presumed, any scenario edging out the late Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella would have been anathema to the Academy and their Mirage Enterprises colleagues alike, but the Oscars' ironclad "three-producer" rule would have necessitated choosing one or the other of co-producers Donna Gigliotti and Redmond Morris — both responsible for much of the actual work rushing The Reader to eligibility in 2008. Then there was the Rudin Factor, bolstered by recent rumors that the man who yanked his name after a grievous tiff with Harvey Weinstein wasn't prepared to leave awards season empty-handed, or at least without another invitation to the annual nominees luncheon.

But Rudin is officially out for good, and Gigliotti and Morris will join their late counterparts in spirit on Feb. 22 per a release distributed this afternoon:

Because four producers were listed on the credits form submitted for Oscar consideration and Academy rules allow for only three producers – except in “a rare and extraordinary circumstance” – to be nominated and potentially receive Oscar statuettes, a meeting of the executive committee was necessary. In the end, the committee determined that the circumstances of The Reader – in which the two original producers (Minghella and Pollack) both died partway through the process – met its definition of “rare and extraordinary” and that all four submitted individuals should be named as nominees.

We agree — it's only fair. And anything that keeps Martin Vega extra busy is fine by us.

• ‘The Reader’ Goes Forward With Four Producers [Carpetbagger]

DEFAMER: There's a legend that Harvey Weinstein dispatched an associate to buy the rights to The Reader, saying not to come back without them. How soon after you were familiar with the book did you know you wanted to direct its adaptation?

STEPHEN DALDRY: Just as soon as I read the book. It was not immediately after it was published; it was a couple of years later. I immediately started to phone up to see who had the rights, and it was my old friend Anthony Minghella. I asked what he wanted to do with it, and he said he wanted to do it himself — write and direct it. And so I kept badgering him over the years: "Are you going to make it, or are you not? What's happening?" I think in the end Anthony realized he wan't going to get around to it for at least a few more years, and he felt a responsibility to [author Bernhard] Schlink to get it made at some point. He eventualy relented very generously and allowed me to make it, with him and [Minghella's producing partner] Sydney Pollack.

D: 36-year-old Hanna's seduction of 15-year-old Michael has proven pretty controversial in the last week, essentially hijacking the discussion of why these two have a relationship in the first place. Do you resent that the conversation has taken that turn?

SD: It's funny, isn't it? Did you watch Mr. Schlink's interview with Oprah Winfrey when the book first came out? The first thing Oprah started talking about was the abuse. Interestingly enough in that interview, it took Mr. Schlink some time before he realized that what Oprah was talking about was not the atrocities Hanna was involved in, but rather the abuse of a 15-year-old boy. He was slightly taken aback, and later said, "This seems to be a peculiarly American question."

But the key element of that relationship is the sins of of the past — not the sins of the relationship. Does the boy love her profoundly and maybe too much because it's his first love? Yes, he probably does. Should she be involved with a 15-year-old boy? Inevitably, different cultures will have different ideas about that. And I do understand that it's a bigger moral issue in America than it might be in other societies. Having said that, I think I'd be disingenuous if I didn't say yes — there is a controlling element about a 36-year-old woman having a relationship with a 15-year-old boy. But I don't think the subject of this story is child abuse. And of course he's not a child; he's going on a 16-year-old sexual being.

D: At least it's deflected some attention from the Scott Rudin/Harvey Weinstein meltdown a couple months ago. As the filmmaker, what was your impression of that imbroglio at the time, and how do you think it impacted the final product?

SD: I don't think it did impact the final product. It's funny, isn't it? I spent two years on this. People talk about the sex scenes, and we took two days shooting those. People talk about the argument between Harvey and Scott, and that took two weeks. In the overall scheme of things, these aren't necessarily pivotal moments for me. In finishing the film, we absolutely did need more time, and Scott was absolutely fantastic — and in the end, so was Harvey — in getting a solution that we were all very happy with. So the fact that subsequently, Harvey and Scott couldn't get on, was a sadness for those two. But it came to a very happy resolution for me.

D: These guys tangled over your film The Hours, too. Did you ever see this coming, or at least have any reassurances early on that such pyrotechnics could be avoided on The Reader?

SD: Yeah, I've been through it with them, and I know how they do it; they have a good old time! I'm just being ridiculous, but yes — they have a combative relationship. There certainly wasn't a creative burden. It was more a practical point about resources and time. And neither of those two were my immediate producers. My immediate producers were Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack.

D: What was your reaction when Rudin took his name off the film?

SD: I thought it was absolutely the best thing for him, given the potential meltdown those two were heading into on a personal level.

D: To what extent do distractions like these — especially all the awards-race politics — rattle your faith as a filmmaker?

SD: It's only in the United States. To be frank, the discussion only happens when I get to Los Angeles. I'm sure that the infighting on movies is much more interesting here than it is anywhere else in the world. You have to take it all with a big pinch of salt. I don't think one can worry too much about it. It would, again, be disingenuous of me if I suggested that I'm not aware there's a marketing advantage to the so-called "awards season." But I think that one has to perceive it as a marketing exercise, not get caught up in the idea that it's too important. I don't come to Los Angeles very much, but what's great about it is that everybody's sort of here, and it's like a mini-film festival. Everybody's rushing from screening to screening, and you meet your friends, and there's something rather collegiate about it — not a competition. It's rather lovely.

Not that Harvey isn't a stand-up kind of guy. He'll be paying off his $1 million Reader bet any day now, and he did race to cloak Fergie's labia when the singer so indecorously exposed herself on the set of Nine. But the Rudin/Weinstein blow-up — triggered in large part by Weinstein's insistence to rush The Reader into theaters for 2008 Oscar consideration, opposite Rudin's other Kate Winslet drama, Revolutionary Road — reflected an ugliness stretching farther than just the point of no return, disappearing deep into the black horizon of mutually assured destruction.

Until Wednesday, reports Page Six:

Weinstein told the audience: "I'd also like to do something that isn't a very popular thing to do, which is to thank Scott Rudin for all the hard work on this film."

David Carr witnessed even more magnanimity before the screening, when Harvey boasted of his good mood and "how lovely it was that people were paying attention to the film." (What? Who'd miss the new Porky's?) We hope this leads to a gregarious new era of détente between Harvey and all his adversaries, from the folks at Bravo to the Fanboys cult to his indefinitely postponed fall release slate. Life really is too short to have Killshot mad at you forever.

• Harvey's Peace Feeler [NYP]

• Détente Rules, at Least for a Night [Carpetbagger]

Winslet, who wasn’t involved in the machinations, acknowledges that the back-to-back schedule puts some pressure on her, but prefers to view her glass as half full: “How the hell did I get that lucky [to have two compelling roles] in the same 12-month period? It’s really rare and remarkable, and I don’t take that position lightly. It might not happen like that again—I’m well aware of that. You know, the truth is, I’m just going to bloody well make the most of it.” [...]

This year she hopes not just to be nominated but also, she freely confesses, to take home some hardware. “Do I want it? You bet your fucking ass I do! I think that people assume that I don’t care or don’t want it or don’t need it or something. It’s hard to be there five times, and I’m only human, you know? But I don’t go home and cry, because we’re all grown-ups here.”

Well, not all of us — but again, if "half-full" is the mantra, consider Harvey's charitable million an investment in Winslet's future.

• Isn’t She Deneuvely? [VF]

One awards-season wag points out the notable absence of The Reader from the Weinstein Company Web site, which may not be as insidious as it sounds; a cached version of the site dated Oct. 6 — three days before Rudin's escape — didn't feature the film either (God forbid any marketing resources be expropriated from the Zack and Miri campaign, which isn't faring so well itself). Meanwhile, another report sketches a fraught relationship between Reader director Stephen Daldry and Weinstein's designated Reader go-between Donna Gigliotti: "[T]he entire team 'despise her,' 'won't deal with her' and 'regard her as a [Weinstein] stooge.'" And so soon after Rudin threw in the towel! Are you shocked? OK, us neither.

Again, we may never know, but Rudin's motivation is likely twofold: First, cut his losses and save face with Daldry, Kate Winslet (essentially out of the picture now herself) and the survivors of the late co-producers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack. Second, as we noted in our cluttered Rudin/Weinstein scorecard a few weeks back, the principals at Rudin's go-to Oscar-campaign firm once were Harvey's field marshals at Miramax. We're not the only ones skeptical that they would go back into the fire — particularly on this project, with the only despot in town who spends a million dollars to buy bad press. Life — and the turnaround time here — is way, way too short.

• Scott Rudin takes his name off ‘The Reader’ [InContention]

• 'Reader is Rudinless [Hollywood Elsewhere]

• Oh Well... [The Hot Blog]

Patrick Goldstein has the news at his blog, though details are foggy and fairly speculative; pretty much everyone knows by now how fiercely Rudin and Weinstein loathe each other, with both Weinstein and his pocketbook suffering last week as Rudin's authentic hate mail made the tabloid rounds. But contumely is the coin of the realm with these guys. As sure as their awkward public detente of 11 days ago was bullshit, couldn't they just as easily keep their mouths shut for two months as director Stephen Daldry went about his post-production business for a Dec. 12 opening?

Ha. Like The Reader isn't just any movie — it's the final co-production of the late Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella, and the film for which Harvey wants star Kate Winslet to compete against herself for an Oscar next year — these aren't just any tyrants. Someone to had to win, and win now. Goldstein notes that Rudin's talent relationships (Winslet, Daldry and screenwriter David Hare in particular) couldn't withstand the now-regular strafing, adding that Daldry isn't necessarily equipped to complete the film without Rudin guarding his back from a Harvey incursion.

But finish it he will, under contract, assuming Dec. 12 still stands. If so, it's a worst-case scenario for everyone involved: Daldry will rush it, Winslet won't promote it, Rudin won't discuss it and Weinstein will drop the equivalent of a late-term abortion on a skeptical critical corps that can't wait to watch him burn through the last of his nine lives. It's not the film's fault, but hey. it's always the children who pay.

• New Shock Wave Hits 'The Reader' [Big Picture]

The contents may in fact be untrue — just Rudin doing his malevolent macher business as usual. Harvey's survived worse. Alas, the e-mail itself turned out to be quite real, as Nikki proved last night in a post to Deadline Hollywood Daily. But what about Rudin's Page Six denial? Oh, that? Never mind:

Scott Rudin confirmed to me Monday night that it is his email describing Harvey Weinstein's alleged callous treatment of the late Anthony Minghella's and the deceased Sydney Pollack's families. Rudin also claimed to me that HW's people all day pestered him "to protect Harvey and deny the email and lie to Page Six" — so he told me he did "in order to keep peace for the next weeks that the two of us still have to work together on The Reader."

Yowza! Let this be a lesson to always use pencil when updating your Rudin/Weinstein Blood Feud Scorecard. To recap: After resurgently pushing The Reader into the '08 Oscar race, Harvey Weinstein lays million-dollar odds that his mortal enemy Scott Rudin could go another three or four months without publicly fucking him. (At least he didn't threaten to shoot himself this time, though he might be wishing he had.) Rudin, meanwhile, one of the most press-savvy moguls in town — with Harvey's own cutthroat Miramax publicity alums on retainer — lies to Page Six (and, by extension, Variety, the LA Times and everyone else for that matter) to protect... Harvey?

Is this a joke? We know they have e-mail, but don't these people have phones? Is this the new wave of Oscar strategy: Set your film up for an impossible delivery date, alienate your lead and the press, and spend a tenth of your awards-season budget on accidental philanthropy? We knew Harvey was a trailblazer, and maybe the fumes are burning our eyes too much to see the genius here. Moreover, perhaps that's the point; one thing pretty much everyone can agree on at this point is that this is a playbook written in Braille.

• Harvey: Blog Story's 'Insane' [NYP]
• Harvey Weinstein's Offer I Can't Refuse [DHD]

No word yet on whether or not Winslet will promote The Reader so close to Sam Mendes's Revolutionary Road or what kind of platform release the film faces with MGM out of the picture, but official word from Rudin, Weinstein and Daldry after the jump suggests at least three-quarters of a happy family:

The Joint statement released Sunday was kind of lovely in an eerie, WTF way: "We are issuing this statement together to emphasize the fact that we are in complete agreement on the date we have chosen to release The Reader," said Rudin and Weinstein. "Working together, we developed a plan to extend the post-production schedule in order to give Stephen Daldry the additional time he needs to successfully complete the film in time to release it on December 12, 2008."

One report places that extended schedule at a full month, overlapping with Daldry's current adaptation of Billy Elliott for Broadway. By all indications, a Factory Girl-esque race to final cut was the last thing the director wanted (at least he can skip the reshoots), but he's got his public happy face on for now. "On their own, Scott and Harvey spent this weekend working together to find a way to accommodate my needs so that I may fulfill my obligation to the studio without compromising my vision for the film," he said. "I am thrilled and relieved that we have all found a way forward to work together to bring The Reader to theaters this year."

Great — The Harvey Renaissance is back on! Let's keep it this way, Fanboys notwithstanding.

It's fairly speculative for now, with MGM reportedly acknowledging the break-up to The Business Sheet and TWC staffers cranking the Muzak lest they hear the press ringing their phone ringing off the hook. (Or, more officially, Weinstein reps were not available for comment.) What we do know is that Harvey isn't capitalized enough to market and distribute Porno, The Reader and any of the five films in between — The Road, Killshot (a recent shelf-rescue capitalizing on star Mickey Rourke's Wrestler buzz), Fanboys, Crossing Over and Shanghai — without some outside help. And that's not counting the putative Oscar campaigns planned for at least The Road and The Reader, the latter of which film's embattled '08 release (it's not even finished, for Christ's sake) is looking decreasingly likely by the day.

We're also tempted to wonder what kind of hand Rudin might have had in pulling MGM's plug, but let's face it: He's too busy for sabotage, and the fraught MGM/TWC relationship didn't need him to push it over the cliff when Harry Sloan and Harvey were disintegrating just fine by themselves. Moreover, MGM has its own December delivery to worry about with UA's bumped-up Valkyrie — even more potential awards-season fodder (or so it hopes) that didn't need competition from Kate Winslet's own WWII Nazi drama. And its not like these were blockbusters; MGM did all right collecting its cut from joint releases like the $70 million sleeper 1408, but what does it lose hacking off The Road or Zack and Miri — an R-rated comedy with stick figures on the poster — at the knees?

Answers are forthcoming, believe us. For know, all we really know for sure is that this totally screws up our bold prediction for Harvey's return to supremacy.

• MGM Showing First Signs Of Weinstein Breakup [The Business Sheet]

The resulting squabble can be seen from outer space, but thankfully we've wrangled a closer vantage point than that. We handicap the bloody duel and predict our winner after the jump.

HISTORY: Rudin and Weinstein last clashed when Paramount sold Miramax the international rights to The Hours, also helmed by Reader director Stephen Daldry. Everything was fair game to Harvey — Nicole Kidman's prosthetic nose, Philip Glass's score, final cut — and the drama is generally blamed for costing The Hours its Venice Film Festival premiere. But it worked: Kidman won, Glass was nominated, and the $25 million film did more than $108 milion worldwide. EDGE: Even.

PRAGMATICS: Whatever version of The Reader test audiences saw last month in New York wasn't the final cut; we hear it's still at least a month away, which plunks cash-strapped Harvey in a late-December marketing and release-date dilemma. Not that he gives a shit just as long as he has an actress to threaten suicide over, but Rudin does care, as well he should — he has Winslet's other Oscar bait, Revolutionary Road, opening Dec. 26 (not to mention Doubt on Dec. 12). EDGE: Rudin.

CLOUT: Rudin may be the incumbent Best Picture winner, but he shares co-producing credit on The Reader with the late Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella — the latter of whom was on the very short list of Harvey BFF's before he died last spring. Depending on how the duo's Mirage successors play along, Harvey has enough political juice to hold out for his way. EDGE: Weinstein.

MONEY: Weinstein did nicely with Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but not well enough to bet the house on Reader, Shanghai and The Road within a month of each other. And that's not counting the Oscar push, which the Mirage gang will want done right or not at all. EDGE: Rudin.

OSCARS: Rudin has Harvey's ex-Miramax miracle workers at his disposal in New York, but even if Winslet is stronger in The Reader, she'll win or lose based on the campaign that DreamWorks mounts for Revolutionary Road. Harvey's cheap ass is counting on the subsequent comparisons, of course — even he doesn't know if he'll be around to pay his own way next year. That strategy might work for Kevin Smith films, but it won't work here. EDGE: Rudin.

WINNER: Scott Rudin. The Reader — coming in 2009 to a theater near you!

• Indie heavyweights split over 'Reader' date [THR]

Prize-winning actor and director Tommy Lee Jones is suing the makers of No Country for Old Men, the 2007 West Texas crime thriller that garnered four Academy awards, claiming they have failed to pay him more than $10 million he is owed according to his contract. ...

In the lawsuit, Jones claims he signed a contract with N.M. Classics on April 3, 2006, agreeing to act in the film, as well as to provide "additional related services" for the movie's promotion. In exchange, the lawsuit says the company promised to pay Jones a fixed "up-front" fee and, depending upon the film's financial success, "significant box-office bonuses and 'back-end' compensation."

Those pledged to be "significant," according to the lawsuit, because they were supposed to compensate for Jones' reduced up-front fee. ... Jones also argues the company breached his contract by failing to pay him the bonuses and wrongly deducting unauthorized expenses from his back-end pay. He says he was fraudulently made to render his services under a contract the company knew contained mistakes, though they didn't inform him of them until after the movie had been made, by which time it was too late.

The "mistakes" allegedly included an unspecified "major issue involving the deduction for home video expenses" and — shocker! — the formula used to calculate box-office-based bonuses. Jones reportedly agreed to back-end terms similar to those of Rudin and the Coens, none of whom have yet sued (nor are expected to sue) for restitution of their own. It's a mournful, illusion-shattering turn of events, to be sure; they seemed so happy, and Paramount has never, ever screwed anyone! We hope a resolution can be achieved swiftly and amicably out of court, lest the ensuing trial suddenly entitle Bardem to sue over the "mistakes" that yielded three months of coiffure-induced sex deprivation. No studio can survive slopes this slippery.

• 
  Tommy Lee Jones sues Paramount [SA Express-News via DHD]

Today, however, brings renewed optimism from Harvey, who planted a sigh of relief in Variety that The Reader has legs:

After a successful screening in New York of The Reader, the Weinstein Co. has decided to release the film for Oscar contention this year. ...

[G]iven the strong reaction to the test screening, the Weinstein Co. has decided to go full throttle on securing a release date and mobilizing the marketing materials.

We can't say we're holding our breath, but along with Revolutionary Road, Rudin's got both of Winslet's Oscar turns for '08 — plus a wealth of Minghella/Pollack memorial goodwill to spare within the Academy. It's a no-brainer, but still — is this the same "full throttle" that so, ahem, mobilized the Weinsteins' Grace is Gone and Factory Girl? And who would survive a New Year's death-match between Harvey and Rudin if the throttle dies, anyway? So many questions!

[Photo Credit: Flynet Online]

• Minghella-Pollack film eyes Oscar run [Variety]

You know we love you. We've seen everything you've done multiple times, once even all in the same day. Our hearts soared when Daniel Day-Lewis credited your "mad, beautiful head" for his Oscar triumph this year; his appreciation spoke for us as well. Sure, we have issues with Magnolia (OK, we hate it), but at least when the DVD came around we were able to make a little more sense of your passion and indulgence. That behind-the-scenes doc by Mark Rance? Fantastic. We'd have preferred the commentaries like those in Boogie Nights and Sydney (a/k/a Hard Eight), but hey. If you're going to charge us for two discs, you'd better make the second one worth our dime.

Which gets us to this new two-disc "collector's edition" of There Will Be Blood, which Paramount Vantage released April 8. Pardon us, but what the fuck is this?

We're sitting here with our favorite film of 2007, looking for your commentary. Nothing. We bust out the second disc. Photo clippings from your research? Three deleted scenes — only one of which features, you know, editing? And, finally, an exhumed silent short about the history of oil drilling? Really? $30 for two discs and all we get is a public-domain two-reeler from 1923?

Look, PTA, we know it's probably not your fault. There's probably a commentary sitting on some hard drive in Vantage boss John Lesher's office waiting for the precise moment when "collectors" will be ready to part ways with another $30 to hear it. There's probably behind-the-scenes footage with Scott Rudin arriving on location in Marfa, Texas, overdressed and throwing a BlackBerry at the assistant whose weather forecast turned out 15 degrees cooler than the actual temperature. We know there are interviews with you, Day-Lewis, Paul Dano and Ciaran Hinds floating around. We know because it's you, and we expect great things. Not... this.

So get with the fucking program already, PTA, and stop jerking us around with the most stingy, shabby, half-assed miscarriage of DVD justice since Mulholland Drive. You're not that pirate George Lucas, and we're not "collectors"; we're fans — true believers and dedicated followers who deserve better. And you're a candid visionary, so tell Paramount to fuck off and send us the real DVD already, for Christ's sake.

— Love, Defamer

"For those of us who are making work that requires a kind of intellectual conversation, we rely on that talk to do the work of getting people interested," said Mr. Rudin, who produced No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, two Oscar-nominated and critically championed films last year. "All of the talk about No Country, all of the argument about the ending, kept that film in the forefront of the conversation" and helped it win the best picture Oscar. ...

Mr. Lacey added that the [New Times] chain still has five full-time film critics and that worrying about whether each city had its own critic seemed silly at a time when major metropolitan dailies can't afford to cover the presidential race. (The loss of a critic in New York, where some films see their only light of day, would seem to be more problematic.)

We, too, went on the record with Carr today to espouse our only slightly obvious belief in the power of the Web, where much of Rudin's beloved "intellectual conversation" actually took place and where old-schooler Lacey would do well to invest resources as opposed to slashing them. When "new media" like the Internet finally take off one of these days, we'd hate to see such progressive cultural pillars caught ill-prepared.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Now on the Endangered Species List: Movie Critics in Print [NYT]

No Country for Old Men was a great film. I'm not trying to say it was anything but spectacular. But I'm going to fucking take the Coen Brothers to task on something. Ready? WHY THE FUCK IS THERE JACK LINK'S BEEF JERKY SO PROMINENTLY PLACED IN SUCH A PIVOTAL SCENE?"

Aside from it being so fucking distracting, it's also a completely unnecessary anachronism. I hope it's just some attempt at sneaky product placement that they were forced into as a means of paying for the film. Otherwise, guess what. GIVE BACK THE FUCKING OSCARS. HAND THEM TO P.T. ANDERSON. YOU TOO, RUDIN. UNACCEPTABLE OVERSIGHT."

• I Eat Your Jack Link's, I Eat Them Up [I Know What It Is]

[C]heck out this official press transcript from the Oscars website and see how they chose to present Rudin's words:

UPDATE: The missing text has appeared!

CATEGORY: BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE YEAR SPEECH BY: SCOTT RUDIN, ETHAN COEN AND JOEL COEN FILM: "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN"

======BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION======

Scott Rudin:
This is an unbelievable honor and a complete surprise. [...]

I want to thank my friend, Sydney Pollack, who taught me that with the responsibility — with the opportunity to make movies comes the responsibility of making them good. This for him.

======END TRANSCRIPTION======

We'd be disheartened to think that a sweet declaration of superproducerly love for Rudin's loyal partner—always available to dispose of scores of assistants who "didn't work out," no questions asked—would be deemed inappropriate content by the Academy historians. We'll therefore chalk this one up to human error, and not to a small army of Sid Ganis-led standard and practices wonks, black Sharpies at the ready should a winner's acceptance speech give off even the faintest scent of fruitiness during Hollywood's most hallowed and rigorously heterosexual awards sacrament.

UPDATE: The transcript now contains the Barlow mention:



All is right with the Gays and the Oscars!

• Oscar archivist deliberately scrubbing gays? [Good As You]
• oscars.org/transcripts

His tantrums are the stuff of legend. Battered by screaming fits, tossed objects and abrupt firings, his assistants rarely last long — a 2005 Wall Street Journal piece estimated that Rudin went through 250 assistants in a five-year period (even Rudin admitted to 119, though his figure excluded assistants who didn't survive a two-week trial period). On the other hand, the industry is full of ex-Rudin assistants who've used the experience as a steppingstone to success.

Sony Pictures chief Amy Pascal, who is releasing the Rudin-produced "The Other Boleyn Girl" this month, worked for Rudin as a young production executive. "He was tough," she recalls. "You'd give him script notes and get back his response, written with a big black pen, saying 'TERRIBLE IDEA!' But you'd always forgive him because he's so smart, cares so much and he gets movies made that no one else can."

Certainly, his brutal, call-roller cleansing regime is a matter of public record: Assistants' rights groups have been targeting Rudin ever since a mass grave was discovered behind his Paramount HQ by an after-hours security guard, who couldn't help but notice a human hand jutting out from a carefully tended flowerbed, still clasping a retrieved Diet Coke can whose lack of vanilla flavoring was what ultimately did them in. But for the elite few with the fortitude to survive the apprenticeship, great things are almost invariably in store: Pascal's time under the tyrannical mentor, for example, is widely credited with earning the Sony head the incongruous sex-parts that would ultimately win her titles like Showman of the Year.

• For Scott Rudin, there will be quality [LAT]