Not to step into Steve Pond’s, well, pond, but I have this terrible feeling that, in fact, despite the vicissitudes of Academy voting, Harvey Weinstein may actually pull it off and get Quentin Tarantino an Academy Award.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he will -- though clearly with eight, count them, eight Academy nominations, Quentin’s picture “Inglorious Basterds” is guaranteed to win a few, most obviously for Christoph Waltz as Best Supporting Actor.
But that won’t satisfy Harvey or his creditors. (And, as we all know, he desperately needs a hit to keep them at bay!) Now, I’ve written enough about Quentin and “Inglorious Basterds” -- and been excoriated by the socalled “fanboys” for same. That’s not what this column is about.
Actually, I started out writing a column called “The Re-Running of America” about the fact that our current generation of motion-picture executives (of which, regrettably, I was once one) can’t even be original enough to come up with new ideas or remake classics like, say, “Huck Finn,” or “Sense and Sensibility.” Instead, they’ve already burned out so many brain cells that the best they can do is make remakes of movies they saw when they were kids -- I mean, did the world need another “Hitcher” (my ex-wife worked on the first one and even she didn’t like it) or “Fame.”
And I just heard about another because, in my minor career as a talent manager, a client just got called in on -- “True Grit.”
Which is what brings us back to Quentin. Remember, “True Grit” wasn’t a hit -- critical or otherwise -- when it first came out in 1969. What it was was an attempt by the Tinsel Town establishment (then on its last legs) to give an award to one of its own -- John Wayne (as “Rooster” Cogburn) - -before he keeled over, (Believe it or not, he hung on for another decade, finally dying on the exact date, June 11, that “True Grit” had been released 10 years before.)
It worked -- in a year that featured such breakthrough movies as Cannes winner “Easy Rider” (which changed everything), Wayne nonetheless won “Best Actor”… a payback for the former USC footballer (who reputedly was part of a gang tackle of legendary “It” girl Clara Bow during his playing days) for his years of solid service in everything from the “They Were Expendable” to the“The Searchers.”
And now they’re remaking that? What’s next -- “Cat Ballou II”?
Anyway, it seems in his desperate, fat, flailing-to-stay alive, Harvey Weinstein’s resorting to the same strategy -- with the bomb that was “Nine” (the Weinstein Company’s big hope for an Xmas hit and financial salvation), Harvey had to hike up his pants to cover his plumber’s crease and go back to the only thing he’s ever been truly successful at -- promoting Quentin Tarantino.
Again, before the hate mail starts pouring in from the fanboys (who wouldn’t know Quentin if they tripped over him), I’ve been one of Quentin’s biggest fans and, at least in the media, his biggest supporters, going back to my rave story in the New York Times, before his first picture,“Reservoir Dogs,” even came out.
