Miramax: We Went the Whole Nine Yards

As the executives in charge of supervising and marketing Miramax’s production of”The Yards,” we have firsthand knowledge of Miramax Co-Chairman Harvey Weinstein’s consistent enthusiasm and dedication to this project. So it was with great disappointment that we read Patrick Goldstein’s inaccurate discussion of the events surrounding the recent release of the film and his suggestion that Miramax is no longer dedicated to independent filmmakers (“Scrappy Miramax Disappears on ‘Yards’ Marketing,” Nov. 28).

While Goldstein is a terrific film writer, he unfortunately chose to base this story on inaccurate and incomplete information and excluded relevant facts that we provided him that contradicted his thesis. Had Goldstein included the relevant information, it would be obvious that “The Yards” is clearly not, as he suggests, evidence of “a change of priorities” at Miramax that has “moved the company away from quirky independent films.”

Goldstein failed to mention that we used the same plan to market “The Yards” as we used to great success on other films such as “Il Postino,” “Life Is Beautiful,” “Smoke” and “The Crying Game.” Our plan utilized aggressive publicity, platform release, crossover art theaters and selective newspaper ads--but no television ads during the first few weeks. These other films succeeded with that support, because they were embraced by both audiences and critics. To our great disappointment, “The Yards” did not succeed, because it did not receive the same support from critics or from audiences completing exit surveys.

We hope that the film will find the expanded audience it deserves through video, DVD and television. Sometimes good films just don’t perform well at the box office.

Contrary to the complaints attributed to director James Gray by Goldstein, we agreed to nearly all of Gray’s requests while making the film and remained supportive despite cost overruns totaling almost 40% of the film’s original budget of $17 million--an amount far more generous than other studios would have offered. It just did not make sense for us to throw more money at this film and drain funding from others, just to make the director and producers of “The Yards” feel better. And contrary to Gray’s claims, we gave him plenty of time to complete the film.

While we are in no way questioning the integrity of Goldstein’s account of Gray’s remarks, Gray himself has written a letter to Harvey Weinstein, saying that his comments to Goldstein were “cruelly isolated out of context” and that “I have stressed repeatedly, to the press and public, how supportive Miramax has been of my efforts.”

While discussing this article with us, Goldstein inquired about the film’s “superior” performance overseas as a possible contrast to problems with Miramax’s domestic release of the movie. We provided evidence to the contrary that was not included in the article. In the United Kingdom, where the film enjoyed stronger reviews and a marketing campaign developed and implemented by the film’s producer, Paul Webster of Film 4 (and not by Miramax), “The Yards” still opened poorly at No. 13 and dropped off precipitously after its opening weekend. Even in France, where we all expected the film to take off, the film opened modestly at No. 10 and substantially declined in each of the following weeks, grossing only $1.3 million in three weeks.

When he learned that the film’s performance overseas was lukewarm at best, Goldstein apparently changed his mind and decided it was no longer relevant to its domestic performance and left out the preceding facts.

With regards to the film’s L.A. premiere, the film’s producers were aware in advance that the cast would not be attending but that they would be at the New York opening. And, in fact, the New York premiere was attended by Miramax’s top executives and many of the film’s stars, including Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix and James Caan, and not just by Wahlberg, as stated in the article.

Perhaps most important--despite Goldstein’s claims to the contrary-- Miramax remains dedicated to producing and distributing top-quality independent and foreign films. Miramax’s successful “independent” releases this year include Spain’s “Butterfly,” this year’s highest-grossing foreign film; “East Is East,” a dark-themed British comedy about a Pakistani family; the Latino jazz film “Calle 54”; and “Hamlet,” which will be profitable because of its tiny budget.

In our opinion, there is no other film company that consistently releases such a diverse mix of films every year.