Don't tell Harvey Weinstein it's a two-horse race and his movie isn't one of those ponies.
"We're going to win best picture. This is the movie people love and it's Quentin's time. We are going for it and we are gonna get it," Weinstein told me Tuesday night at carmaker Audi's celebration of the eight Oscar nominations for 'Inglourious Basterds." "Look, best director may be a question -- and you can quote me on that -- but we won the SAG award for best ensemble, actors are the biggest branch in the academy and they love the movie." Perhaps he's using "Crash" as an inspiration, which in 2004 was able to stop the tide of precursor awards for "Brokeback Mountain" by upsetting at SAG.
Weinstein told me he thinks the preferential balloting for best picture (discussed in detail in Tuesday's 'Notes') is a good thing and will benefit 'Basterds' in a big way. That's why he's confident he can pull this out and doesn't believe pundit talk that the race has boiled down to just "Avatar" vs. "The Hurt Locker." He initially thought at this point Rob Marshall's musical "Nine" would be his ace in the hole but that film's best-picture dreams died with bad box office and some bad reviews. Although late-summer release "Basterds" was, with $300 million worldwide (Universal has international rights), a huge, much needed hit for Weinstein Co., major Oscar hopes were not part of the initial plan. As things evolved a campaign was hatched and the movie continues to march through awards season with high hopes of the ultimate upset on March 7, despite losses at the PGA, DGA and Golden Globes.
Now Weinstein, despite his own company's reputed cash flow problems and layoffs, says it is going all out with billboards, trade and newspaper ads, TV spots and everything else that can make a difference in the 20 days Oscar voters have to turn in their ballots, which are being mailed Wednesday.
Right after nominations were announced Feb. 2, the company wasted no time, especially in answering nagging questions about some mixed Jewish reaction to Tarantino's revenge story against the Nazis in World War II Germany. In fact, word got to the Weinstein group that a rep for a rival campaign was quietly trying to poison the well and suggest that "Basterds" was actually anti-Semitic, an accusation that has also been floated previously at two other best-picture contenders, "An Education" and "A Serious Man." Rather than letting any bad buzz take hold, the company took out a full-page ad in Thursday's Calendar section of The Times announcing a special screening of the movie that night at the Museum of Tolerance and thanking Rabbi Marvin Heir and Rabbi Abraham Cooper for their continued support of the film. The screening drew many elderly holocaust survivors and/or family members.
Producer Lawrence Bender talked about a screening cast member Daniel Bruhl was at a few months ago in a bad part of Berlin where a group of neo-Nazi skinheads tried to disrupt the movie but were successfully shouted down in unison by the rest of the German audience.
Controversy (or non-controversy) aside, 'Basterds' has seemingly been everywhere since the nominations. WME head Ari Emanuel threw a starry dinner at Mr. Chows Friday night, the American Cinematheque offered up a sold-out two-day Quentin Tarantino retrospective that included a late-night Q&A with the director on Monday, big lunches with Tarantino and company are planned for this week in L.A. and New York and Tuesday night, Audi (which supplied cars for use during production) bankrolled the Hollywood party at La Vida that between the Weinstein and Audi guest lists was so packed that at one time the fire marshal became a part of the conversation.
Among those spotted in the large restaurant's various rooms were academy members Robert Duvall, Valerie Perrine, Cher, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Dyan Cannon, Dermot Mulroney, Mary McDonnell, Elliot Gould, Robert Forster, Michael Keaton, Richard Chamberlain, Danny Huston, Erik Estrada, Sally Kellerman, Brenda Vaccaro, Frances Fisher,Candy Clark, Jeremy Piven, Melanie Griffith, Rosario Dawson, Heather Graham, directors Rod Lurie and Robert Rodriguez and many others including 95-year-old Norman Lloyd who also hosted a lunch with Roger Corman for Tarantino at Musso and Franks in Hollywood. Sophia Loren's son Eduardo was there and told Bender he has ties to two Oscar voters including his mother, although he said the maid usually fills out her ballot (not sure if he was kidding about this).
Mickey Rooney, 89, easily the oldest Oscar recipient in the room, told me he hasn't seen "Basterds."
"Oh we don't see pictures anymore, we just watch Turner Classic Movies," he said, but he is a voter and wife Jan says the ballot will get filled out. Rooney eventually made a beeline to the crush (and it was a crush) to meet Tarantino, who he said he really likes. After Rooney left I told Tarantino that he has the single longest-running career of any actor in the history of movies to which film maven Quentin added, "yes and he was Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier's favorite actor." You can't catch Tarantino on anything related to movies and in fact on Sunday he was also at the Santa Barbara Film Festival conducting an on-stage interview with 93-year-old Kirk Douglas about "Posse," one of his favorite westerns.
In the scheme of things "Basterds" is still regarded as a longshot to take it all, but Oscar maestro Harvey Weinstein is clearly fired up and later when he caught my eye one more time he said it again.
"We're gonna win this thing."
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