Sin-ergy

Peter Biskind's new book Down and Dirty Pictures is one of the most talked about tomes around. It is a quote machine. In one passage from the book overrated director Bernardo Bertolucci says of Harvey Weinstein, "he started to believe too much in himself as auteur of the film ... He's like a little Sadaam Hussein of cinema."

Well, with quotes like that, you know the old Corsair would have to zero in and extract. Oh, and extract we did. Here's a little tidbit that clarifies the whole embarrassing Tina Brown Talk Miramax Eisner fiasco. Dig in:

"On July 1998, (Tina) Brown stunned the media world by 'ankling' The New Yorker in favor of a new venture, a magazine to be published by Miramax. Talk, as it was to be known, created yet another rift between (Harvey) Weinstein and (Michael) Eisner. The Disney chairman had his own relationship with Brown, and he was after her to do something for him.

"The Tina Brown hiring was a big problem,' says Joe Roth. Michael thought he was a friend of Tina's and Tina kept trying to get Harvey to allow her to let Michael know that this conversation was going on -- which was totally outside the business plan, and had to be approved.

"Harvey called Michael at ten o'clock the night before it was announced. Michael hit the roof. He thought having a movie company and a magazine, especially an expensive magazine, was a conflict, and he was against it. It was very different from the business that these guys had contracted for.' Roth adds,'Harvey was worried that if he had told him earlier, Michael would scuttle it somehow, so he took a chance, and probably sold Tina on the idea that he didn't have to ask permission.' Eisner would have vetoed the deal, and initially he told Harvey,'I'm not gonna let you do it.' In the end, Eisner was reluctant to humiliate Weinstein, who reportedly told him that he would only be in for $5 million. Still, the two men virtually stopped speaking.

"After losing the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a site for the Talk launch party when Mayor Giuliani discovered that Hillary Clinton, his likely rival in the race to become New York's new Senator, would grace the cover of the inaugural issue, Brown secured Liberty Island instead.

"On August 2.1999 the $200,000-plus, star studded party was held at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, bedecked for the occasion with festive Japanese lanterns. If Harvey wanted to buy his way into the charmed circle of New York's celebrity intellectuals, he succeded beyond his wildest dreams. Everyone who was anybody was there, 1,400 strong, from Salman Rushdie, just emerging from his fatwa-induced internal exile, to Madonna to Henry Kissinger. As the first round of fireworks blossomed over New York harbor in a spectacular display of fiery brilliance, George Plimpton exclaimed, 'This one's for Harvey and Bob Weinstein.'"