The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (441 page)

And, of course they tell stories about Harvey Weinstein. Indeed, he is not just the kind of tent-pole that maintains the lore of picture gossip. He is the kind of guy who can keep “they” in business. And as he will tell you himself (or get Bob to tell you), he is over the top because he loves pictures. Not for Harvey your dry business-school training, your stress on the numbers. No, Harvey loves a show, he loves actors, he loves love. And so he stands steadfastly by that old standard, that you can do anything, screw anyone, so long as you insist that you love the business.

There was a time when Harvey and Bob were filmmakers. They made something called
Playing for Keeps
(Harvey wrote it, and they together directed it), so bad that nothing but love explains it. But they persevered, and in 1979 they founded their company, Miramax, dedicated to the making and distribution of independent pictures. They were good at what they did, and especially at identifying foreign-language pictures that would have an audience in America (e.g.,
Pelle the Conqueror
and
Cinema Paradiso
).

They progressed on stepping stones called
Scandal; sex, lies and videotape; The Crying Game;
and
Pulp Fiction
. Then in 1993, they took their decisive step, selling the company to Disney in return for more investment money. There were uneasy times: the Disney management did not exactly like or trust the boys; and Miramax went on a spree, buying up far more projects than they could handle properly. There are filmmakers still imprisoned on their shelves, but reluctant to upset Harvey (or Bob).

But they weathered their own storm and came back strong with
Emma; The English Patient; Scream; The Wings of the Dove; Good Will Hunting; Scream 2; Velvet Goldmine; Halloween H
₂
O; Shakespeare in Love; The Cider House Rules; Scream 3; Chocolat; Iris; The Shipping News; In the Bedroom
.

You know those films because they are among the best promoted in modern times. Miramax has virtually defined the art of Oscar advertising, and in
The English Patient
(which they picked up late in the day) and
Shakespeare in Love
they have two best pictures, and the unquestionable fact that the onetime indie, Miramax, had become a major studio. Alas, in the years since, it has declined, but Harvey’s shadow is still intact and it is very likely that soon he will be a character in a film.

Peter Weir
, b. Sydney, Australia, 1944
1967:
Count Virn’s Last Exercise
(s). 1968:
The Life and Times of The Reverend Buck Shotte
(s). 1970: “Michael,” an episode from
Three to Go
. 1971:
Homesdale
(d). 1972:
Incredible Floridas
(d). 1973:
Whatever Happened to Green Valley?
. 1974:
The Cars That Ate Paris
. 1975:
Picnic at Hanging Rock
. 1977:
The Last Wave
. 1978:
The Plumber
. 1981:
Gallipoli
. 1983:
The Year of Living Dangerously
. 1985:
Witness
. 1986:
The Mosquito Coast
. 1989:
Dead Poets Society
. 1990:
Green Card
. 1993:
Fearless
. 1998:
The Truman Show
. 2003:
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
. 2010:
The Way Back
.

Weir has an uncommon and beguiling aptitude for atmosphere of menace and mystery, often linked to strange and desolate places. He loves that brink of the occult, when perfectly found in landscape. But how pedestrian he becomes when he tries to explain these pregnant moods. The first part of
Picnic at Hanging Rock
is exquisite;
The Last Wave
never stops being—or advances on—a great idea for a film; the Indonesia disclosed in
The Year of Living Dangerously
is fascinating; and the Amish community in
Witness
cries out to take over the picture.

But plots get preference, and the films become clumsy and conventional. Without those alluring riddles of place and wonderment, Weir has shown himself as middlebrow decent as
Gallipoli
and
Dead Poets Society
, worthy cause pictures. The great failure of his career is
Mosquito Coast
, seeming an ideal subject in that Paul Theroux had given him themes of disquiet and place as good structure. But Weir could not see that the project was beyond Harrison Ford, and he delivered a muted muddle instead of a chilling
Swiss Family Robinson
.

Fearless
was a characteristic Weir project. Who else could have been so fascinated by the sensation of an air disaster and the dislocation of grief? The first half hour is dazzling, yet gradually the film succumbs to problems of script development and facile resolution.

So who was prepared for
The Truman Show
, which I rate as one of the great American movies, magically balanced between farce and dread, a unique exploration and prediction of America’s nature and fantasies—and this in many respects a portrait of the movies. I give a lot of credit to Andrew Niccol (who wrote it), to Jim Carrey and Ed Harris who made tricky roles human. But for Weir, and all of us, it was like a man stepping aside from, and above, his whole career and his medium—as if to say, this has to be said.

Though it never found a large audience,
Master and Commander
was in love with the ocean and a life thereon—but it was not easy to see why the maker of
Fearless
or
The Truman Show
had been ready to give so many years to such detail.

Johnny Weissmuller
(Peter John Weissmuller) (1904–84), b. Windber, Pennsylvania
He was six foot three, a little over two hundred pounds, and in the early 1930s he was the least dressed and most magnificent male body on the screen. Tarzan was the excuse, but Weissmuller was an extraordinary image—the high voice, the wide-spaced, stunned eyes, the very Aryan, carved head, with a sketch of loincloth glued to his body. He shaved his chest and his legs; he shone with body oil; and he did most of his own action, swimming and swinging through the trees. Lest anyone think he was taking it too seriously, he had a cry that was part Austrian yodel, part gorilla, and part testosterone. “Me Tarzan, You Jane,” he grunted, and every woman from Maureen O’Sullivan onward got the message. No subsequent Tarzan ever matched him—the loincloth was retired.

Weissmuller’s parents were Viennese (hasn’t Arnold Schwarzenegger ever considered doing Johnny’s story?). When they moved to Chicago, the boy learned swimming in public pools and in Lake Michigan. He became an unbeatable crawl swimmer, his very powerful arm movements dragging him to countless world records and five gold medals at the 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games.

He turned professional in 1929 and played himself in
Glorifying the American Girl
(29, Millard Webb and John Harkrider). Then Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg chose him as the new Tarzan. He was a remarkable success in films that used sound well, often borrowed jungle footage from other productions, and that seldom forgot the erotic undertones of Johnny and O’Sullivan or her successor, Brenda Joyce:
Tarzan the Ape Man
(32, W. S. Van Dyke);
Tarzan and His Mate
(34, Cedric Gibbons);
Tarzan Escapes
(36, Richard Thorpe);
Tarzan Finds a Son
(39, Thorpe)—his “Boy,” Johnny Sheffield;
Tarzan’s Secret Weapon
(41, Thorpe);
Tarzan’s New York Adventure
(42, Thorpe), the funniest of the series;
Tarzan Triumphs
(43, William Thiele), in which there is no Jane, but Frances Gifford plays a jungle princess;
Tarzan’s Desert Mystery
(43, Thiele);
Tarzan and the Amazon
(45, Kurt Neumann), with Brenda Joyce as Jane and Maria Ouspenskaya as Queen of the Amazons;
Tarzan and the Leopard Woman
(46, Neumann); a foolish attempt to extend—
Swamp Fire
(46, William Pine);
Tarzan and the Hunters
(47, Neumann); and his last turn in the part,
Tarzan and the Mermaids
(48, Robert Florey).

Weissmuller was a little rotund and elderly, to be sure, and the stunts were proving demanding. But what a disastrous mistake it was to replace him with that slick gigolo, Lex Barker. Weissmuller was reappraised as a B-picture hero, fully dressed—
Jungle Jim
(48, William Berke), a role he played in another fifteen films up until
Devil Goddess
(55, Spencer Bennett), by which time, absentmindedly, everyone called the character “Johnny.”

He was a famous swinger in real life, too: there were five wives (including Lupe Velez, a pro golfer, and a San Francisco socialite), and years of difficulty with the IRS. By the seventies, he was a host at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and by the late seventies, he was diminished by strokes and heart disease.

Rachel Weisz
, b. London, 1970
The idea, if you are an actress, is that you may have to do some foolishly strenuous and humiliating things on your way up. But then you win an Oscar, and everything changes. Of course, it’s only an idea, and the odd career of Rachel Weisz discourages every urge to trust in it. Perhaps life is clearer without an Oscar.

She is the child of an Austrian psychiatrist and a Hungarian inventor, born and raised in London, and then sent to Cambridge. Yes, she’s Jewish and unwilling to do anything to mask it—including putting a damper on her vigorous intellect. Just to prove the latter, she has been the companion to Darren Aronofsky, and the mother of his child. It was while at Cambridge that she was a big hit at the Edinburgh Festival, and then she won prizes in a revival of Noël Coward’s
Design for Living
.

After some television work, she attracted attention in
Stealing Beauty
(96, Bernardo Bertolucci); and she played a scientist in
Chain Reaction
(96, Andrew Davis). She was in
Going All the Way
(97, Andrew Pellington); and was a prostitute in
Bent
(97, Sean Mathias). She then played the lead in the fascinating but failed
Swept from the Sea
(97, Beeban Kidron), adapted from a Conrad novella. She bounced back in the crude
The Land Girls
(98, David Leland); and
I Want You
(98, Michael Winterbottom). And then she made it clear that she was happy to do her bit in the cause of old-fashioned fun in
The Mummy
(99, Stephen Sommers), where she seemed to enjoy herself.

Sunshine
(99, Istvan Szabo) was a failure.
Beautiful Creatures
(00, Bill Eagles) was something you might do for friends. She was energetic, with very dirty fingernails, in
Enemy at the Gates
(01, Jean-Jacques Annaud); and then it was time for
The Mummy Returns
(01, Sommers). There followed a run of misguided and bad films:
About a Boy
(02, Chris and Paul Weitz), which she helped produce;
The Shape of Things
(03, Neil LaBute);
Confidence
(03, James Foley);
Runaway Jury
(03, Gary Fleder);
Envy
(04, Barry Levinson);
Constantine
(05, Francis Lawrence).

Out of nowhere, she won the Oscar for
The Constant Gardener
(05, Fernando Meirelles), a generous reward for proper political sympathies. But she seemed to learn nothing:
The Fountain
(06, Aronofsky);
My Blueberry Nights
(07, Wong Kar-Wai);
Fred Claus
(07, David Dobkin);
Definitely, Maybe
(08, Adam Brooks);
The Brothers Bloom
(08, Rian Johnson). She is the mother in
The Lovely Bones
(09, Peter Jackson); and a bluestocking from pre-history in
Agora
(10, Alejandro Amenábar).

Tuesday Weld
(Susan Ker Weld), b. New York, 1943
From
Rock, Rock, Rock
(56, Will Price) to
Falling Down
(93, Joel Schumacher), so little of Tuesday Weld has been ordinary or expected. Is there any richer subject for Hollywood biography, or autobiography—for she is plainly smart and articulate enough, and she has survived all the craziness of being a mass media nymphet in the age of Eisenhower, as well as a girl burdened by the name Tuesday, while still managing to show that she can be an extraordinary actress as well as a great beauty, who was somehow woeful and ravaged by the age of twenty-five.

To take just one out-of-the-way example: she has scenes as Zelda in the TV movie
F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood
(76, Anthony Page) that are as good as any American actress has done on screen. Her best work is often that hidden, or that little proclaimed. Whereas, she seldom got the roles her talent and nerve cried out for—Lolita, say, or Bonnie in
Bonnie and Clyde
, a part she missed because of pregnancy. She has made many dismal pictures—and none more grisly than the “distinguished”
Falling Down
. It is hard to follow a line through her career. But I have never found a Weld performance not worth study. She never departs from her own tough standards of what is human and interesting.

She played Thalia Menninger in
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
(59–60) on TV;
Rally Round the Flag, Boys!
(58, Leo McCarey);
The Five Pennies
(59, Melville Shavelson);
Because They’re Young
(60, Paul Wendkos);
High Time
(60, Blake Edwards);
Sex Kittens Go to College
(60, Albert Zugsmith);
The Private Lives of Adam and Eve
(60, Zugsmith);
Bachelor Flat
(61, Frank Tashlin);
Return to Peyton Place
(61, José Ferrer); with Elvis in
Wild in the Country
(61, Philip Dunne);
Soldier in the Rain
(63, Ralph Nelson);
I’ll Take Sweden
(65, Frederick de Cordova); very good with Steve McQueen in
The Cincinnati Kid
(65, Norman Jewison); very funny in
Lord Love a Duck
(66, George Axelrod); brilliant, seductive, and lethal as the high-school Lulu in
Pretty Poison
(68, Noel Black), and very well matched with Anthony Perkins; rural, simple, and effortlessly treacherous in the love story with Gregory Peck in
I Walk the Line
(70, John Frankenheimer);
A Safe Place
(71, Henry Jaglom); as Joan Didion’s wasted heroine, Maria Wyeth, in
Play It As It Lays
(72, Frank Perry); in a TV version of Clouzot’s
Diaboliques—Reflections of Murder
(74, John Badham), her hair cropped, her demeanor agonized; epically stoned as Marge in
Who’ll Stop the Rain
(78, Karel Reisz), in a tragic love scene with Nick Nolte; a divorcée accused of killing her own child in
A Question of Guilt
(78, Robert Butler) for TV;
Serial
(80, Bill Persky); on TV again in
Madame X
(80, Robert Ellis Miller) and
Mother and Daughter: The Loving War
(80, Burt Brinckerhoff);
Thief
(81, Michael Mann);
Author! Author!
(82, Arthur Hiller); as the offscreen voice in one of the movies’ most ambiguous rape scenes in
Once Upon a Time in America
(83, Sergio Leone);
The Winter of Our Discontent
(83, Waris Hussein);
Scorned and Swindled
(84, Wendkos);
Circle of Violence: A Family Drama
(86, David Greene); as a woman in love with a younger man in
Something in Common
(86, Glenn Jordan);
Heartbreak Hotel
(88, Chris Columbus); and
Feeling Minnesota
(96, Steven Baigelman). More recently, she had small roles in
Chelsea Walls
(01, Ethan Hawke) and
Investigating Sex
(01, Alan Rudolph).