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Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film
Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film
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Author: Peter Biskind Publisher: Simon & Schuster Format: Softcover # of Pages: 560 Pub. Date: 2005 ISBN-10: 0684862581 ISBN-13: 9780684862583
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About the Book:
Peter Biskind follows up his entertaining, candid history
of 1970s American filmmaking, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, with
a gossipy account of the rise of independent cinema in the 1990s and
how it influenced the major studios. Down
and Dirty Pictures is groundbreaking expose that shines a
beacon into the world of independent film to reveal an irresistibly
fascinating industry, replete with the same inflated egos,
infighting, gossip, and greed as mainstream Hollywood, but also
marked by a genuine and passionate love of filmmaking.
Down and Dirty Pictures
chronicles the rise of the 1990s independent filmmakers and of the twin engines
– the Sundance Film Festival and Miramax Films –
that powered them. As he did in his acclaimed Easy
Riders, Raging Bulls, veteran entertainment journalist
Peter Biskind profiles the people who took the independent
movement from obscurity to the Oscars. He tracks the Miramax
domination of the Nineties, where the studio, founded by the infamous
Hollywood mega-producer Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob,
produced and distributed blockbuster indies including Pulp
Fiction, Sex, Lies and Videotape and Shakespeare in
Love. He follows Sundance as it grew from a regional film
festival to the premier showcase of independent film, succeeding
almost despite the mercurial Robert Redford, whose visionary
plans were nearly thwarted by his own quixotic personality.
In the late 1980s a generation of filmmakers began to flower
outside the Hollywood studio system and in the following decade, the
independent film movement bloomed. Dozens of lesser-known filmmakers
such as such as Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh,
and David O. Russell began walking away with coveted prizes at
Cannes and eventually the Academy Awards. Many of these directors
were discovered at Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival and then
scooped up by Harvey and Bob Weinstein. Peter Biskind met with Harvey Weinstein quite a few
times as he was writing the book, eventually depicting him as a
brutish, violent man who nevertheless managed to charm all the right
people in Hollywood and release a series of groundbreaking,
Oscar-winning films making Miramax (named after his parents Miriam
and Max) an Oscar factory that became the envy of the studios, while
leaving a trail of carnage in his wake. Down
and Dirty Pictures includes infamous Harvey Weinstein
stories – the time he put a reporter into a headlock and ushered
him out of a party, and the time he threw Nathan Lane against the
wall, among others. Candid, penetrating, and controversial, Down
and Dirty Pictures remains a must-read book for anyone
interested in the film world and where it's headed.
What people say:
"Over two decades worth of
Harvey Weinstein's alleged
aggressions and the fallouts they caused are laid out in Peter
Biskind's meticulous, juicy Down and Dirty
Pictures...."
— VICE
"...tales of Harvey
Weinstein's temper and ill-treatment of
filmmakers has been legendary – many of them recounted in Peter
Biskind's must-read book Down and Dirty
Pictures...."
— The Telegraph
"Known
for his angry outbursts, [Harvey
Weinstein's]
often aggressive tactics were chronicled in the Peter
Biskind book Down
and Dirty Pictures." — The Globe
and Mail
"Dishy, teeming, superbly
reported...packed with lively inside anecdotes...[a] juicy and
fascinating exposé." — Entertainment Weekly
"Sensationally entertaining."
— Los Angeles Times
"In Down and Dirty
Pictures, Biskind takes on the movie
industry of the 1990s and again gets the story...Peter
Biskind captures his era as John Dunne did that of the
Zanucks." — The New York Times
About the Author:
Peter Biskind is a respected American cultural critic and
film historian. He is now a contributing editor for Vanity Fair.
He was formerly the editor-in-chief of the Hollywood-insider magazine
American Film, and the executive editor of the
gone-but-not-forgotten Premiere
magazine
for a decade starting in 1986. His writing has
appeared in scores of publications, including Rolling Stone,
Paris Match, the Nation, The New York Times,
the Times of London, and the Los Angeles Times, as
well as film journals such as Sight and Sound and Film
Quarterly. He has published six books, including Easy
Riders, Raging Bulls, which was the basis of a documentary
film of the same name. |
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