THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 172 FEBRUARY 28, 2018
BURNING: FILMWAYS PICTURES/PHOTOFEST.KEEPS: MIRAMAX/KOBAL/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK.side; now he would see it for himself. On
the day of the first preview, he walked into
Harvey’s office at Miramax, in its fledgling
days in New York City. Bob closed the door.
Harvey was upset: He couldn’t locate sound
elements he wanted to use in promoting the
film for a commercial on The Cosby Show. He
began to lash out.
“He went from being seemingly happy,”
says Brewer, “to grabbing me by the sweater,
hooking his fingers around the collar and
swinging at my head.” Brewer, who had known
Harvey since he was 12, who had vacationed
with him, double-dated and worked at his side
for two years on Playing for Keeps, was in shock.
He pushed Harvey off and tried to leave, “but
they followed me to the elevator,” says Brewer.
“Harvey began to attack me again. This spilled
into the street.”
Then Harvey changed tactics, “going
from convincing to begging to threaten-
ing,” he recalls. (Years later, when Brewer
heard the infamous tape recording that
model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez had made
of Weinstein, he recognized his Jekyll-and-
Hyde mode.) Their professional relationship
ended, their friendship would never be the
same. “This person who had been very sup-
portive of my career was treating me like
an enemy,” says Brewer. (Weinstein denies
any physical altercation.)
Playing for Keeps marked a turning point,
not only for Brewer but also his friend. Having
failed as a director, Harvey would focus on
building an empire through Miramax, which
had begun to acquire and release films.‘AN ABSOLUTE BLOODY DISASTER’
The Weinstein brothers learned something invaluable from their directorial debut — to never do it againthe Weinsteins may
have been prudent to
follow suit. According
to Peter Biskind’s Down
and Dirty Pictures, a
2004 account of the rise
of indie films, many
came to see Playing as
a “two-headed beast.”
Former production
manager Jeff Silver
found himself wonder-
ing why there were
two of everything. “We
get one decision from
Bob, one decision from
Harvey,” Silver often was
told by various depart-
ment heads. “They
did a lot of yelling and
screaming about theL
ong before they
were world-famous
movie moguls, and
having just successfully
produced an indie hor-
ror feature, The Burning,
in 1984 Bob and Harvey
Weinstein decided to
try their hand at direct-
ing. Playing for Keeps,
the tale of inner-city
teens who open a rock
’n’ roll hotel, co-starred
Marisa Tomei in her
second film role.
“The movie turned
out to be an absolute
bloody disaster,” says
one executive who
helped engineer distri-
bution with Universal.costs, but they would be
the biggest instigators
owing to their inability
to decide anything.”
The movie had a bud-
get of $4 million (about
$10 million today), but
those involved say it
likely cost double that.
The brothers turned
to their rock-promoting
roots and tried to save
it with a blockbuster
soundtrack, featuring
Pete Townshend, Phil
Collins and Peter
Frampton, but Universal
dumped it anyway.
Released in 1986,
Playing and the sense
of failure thatThough Harvey even-
tually would develop a
reputation for ruthless
efficiency and earn
the moniker “Harvey
Scissorhands” for
interfering in other
directors’ pictures, each
day on the set of Playing
was a circus — marred
by arguments between
the brothers over what
to shoot and where
to set up the camera.
Weeks passed with next
to nothing achieved.
With rare excep-
tions (the Coens,
the Wachowskis), film
directing has suc-
ceeded as a solo sport;accompanied it con-
vinced the Weinsteins
to focus on producing.
As British comic Martin
Lewis told Biskind:
“Really dumb people
would have said, ‘This is
a great movie, Universal
screwed us, we’ll
make another movie.
Here comes Playingfor Keeps 2.’ In stead,
they said, ‘We’re not
Steven Spielberg, we
have to find a niche for
ourselves.’ Their skills
were that they under-
stood movies ... they
could market them. And
they went that route.”
Neither brother would
direct again. — S.J.Eventually, he would become not just a movie-
maker but a mogul. And yet the emotions that
drove him would remain unchanged.
“This was a person who had tremendous
anger issues,” says Brewer, “that no friendship
or sense of loyalty was going to contain.”I
n 2008, Wachowiak picked up the phone
and called Bob Weinstein. She wanted
to show him a movie she and her husband
had directed. “It was a stab in the dark,” she
says. By then the younger brother was no lon-
ger the awkward guy in the back office; he was
half of a global machine.
Wachowiak told Bob’s secretary she had
worked on The Burning, and to her surprise, he
took the call. After she’d offered to send him
snapshots from the set of their old film, along
with her movie, the conversation turned to
Harvey. She mentioned his “being difficult.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Bob. “He’s still like that.”
Today, she wonders why Bob spoke to her
at all. Maybe he was on the lookout for hisbrother’s misdeeds, she ponders, aware of all
the loose ends that eventually might be tied
up, potentially destroying their company. “I
believe he knew what was going on,” says
Wachowiak. “He was protecting Harvey. He
knew he was a big asshole.”
As she drives past an empty lot where the
Buffalo Memorial Auditorium once stood, she
can’t quite let go of the brothers, just like so
many others. She remembers one of her last
face-to-face meetings with Harvey, toward the
end of the Burning shoot. She was in a small
office that had been set up at a campsite on the
edge of town, alone, when he showed up unan-
nounced. “I was nervous,” she remembers. “He
looked at me, smarmy.”
“So,” said Harvey, with a grin, “Was seeing
me naked the high point of your internship?”
“No,” she retorted. “You disgust me.”
He laughed and walked away.↑ Poster art for The Burning, on which Wachowiak
worked as an intern in the production offices.↑ Leon W. Grant and Marisa Tomei in 1986’s Playing for Keeps.