open letter to harvey weinstein

[Jeremy Blackman]

This is my final paper for a class called "Argumentative Writing & Rhetoric." I thought I'd post it here. The whole point of the paper is to persuade the audience. So be warned that I believe very little of what I write here... it's just a satirical means to an end.



Mr. Harvey Weinstein
Co-Chairman, Miramax Films
375 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10013

Great and Glorious Mr. Harvey Weinstein;

I would like to begin, if I may, Mr. Weinstein, with a word of warning. This is an unusual letter. I am not requesting money for a small independent production that will revolutionize modern cinema. I am not begging for Miramax box office passes. I am not asking you to sign my Pulp Fiction DVD. I'm not even requesting that you read my script. I know that the attention you elicit by process of natural selection entails a certain amount of misguided beseechment. It would, however, be a grave error to compress this document with your fist and plunge it into your trash can among so many childish letters, which linger like stale popcorn and grow a mold on your consciousness. If this letter contained such infantile shoe-licking and false praise motivated only by personal gain undermining your noble sentiments, I would expect that you shred these seven pages like so much lugubrious confetti, collecting on the ground where it might serve as a soft carpet to alleviate your calloused feet.

I seek only to bring to your attention, with all possible modesty, a matter that is beyond urgency. The sheer honesty of personal expression contained in this letter may naturally make itself appear extravagant by simple forces of relativity, but I promise you, Mr. Weinstein, that I make my case as simply and precisely as my emotions and convictions will allow. If my words appear sentimental, if my enthusiasm for the forces of goodness seems uncontrolled, if my unwavering concern for things looks fevered, it is a simple consequence of the unbending influence of instantaneous reality.

The sensory expressions of every last molecule of my being do not answer to an arbitrary authority that might disallow purity of thought, so I will state things plainly as they are. You, Harvey Weinstein, are in all discernible respects unlike any other human being on this earth. The blunt force of your personality has no choice but to dominate. If I might venture a guess, since there is no explanation given by science or reason, it is all a result of your dynamic biology and the velocity of your will. When I behold Mr. Harvey Weinstein, creator and custodian of Miramax, I feel an unfathomable sense of density. Raw masculinity pervades your presence, shapes your figure, and empowers your volition. What the world needs today is a strong leader, as I'm sure you're entirely aware. The consequences of strong and forceful leadership have proven, throughout history, to be almost universally positive and congruent with the best interests of mankind. As the people waver, you empower them, Mr. Weinstein, and they thank you for it.

It will not come as a great surprise, then, that when I see Harvey Weinstein, I see a great stately hero of the eighteenth century. The immensity of character can only be described in such anachronistic terms, but you stand at the podium in ancient robes, a tuxedo, top hat, a cigar dangling like a butterfly between your teeth, like Benjamin Franklin, the greatest CEO of them all. I compare you to Mr. Franklin not by your cultural proximity, but by utter force of being, a characteristic which, I find, transcends time and space. Ben Franklin was a capitalist from the crib, developing an entrepreneurial spirit previously unknown to this great nation. True, he lived a live of essential poverty, consuming only bread and water, but there are surely many other characteristics which the two of you inexorably share—electric process of ingenuity, connectivity of vision, undeniable and mystifying influence, a tireless work ethic, and streamlining ambitions into an indestructible force of creation.

All the grandiosity in the world acknowledges that such qualities are inevitably illustrated by the facts. To the extent that science can prove something, Harvey Weinstein has the power of a nuclear reactor. For all that we may lavish deserved praise on our friend Mr. Franklin, that eighteenth-century behemoth with so much of the universe at his fingers never produced a film. Were Benjamin Franklin alive today (if you'll forgive my speculation), he would come to you, Mr. Weinstein. With you producing his film, his penny saved would be your penny earned. I assume, of course, that Mr. Franklin, having an inextinguishable inventive spirit, would make an independent film rather than yielding his creation to the unchanging establishment. Some of the absolute greatest artists of our time kneel at your doorstep, Mr. Weinstein. Even your most skeptical critics acknowledge that you have changed the face of modern cinema. With great power comes great responsibility, which, with an open mind, you will continue to exercise.

The 1980s, I'm sure you'll agree, is the most regressive and frightfully medieval period in cinematic history. I trust you lamented the sudden decapitation of 70s independent film as much as anyone else with a sense of human dignity. When it appeared things were not improving, you emerged from the cultural dungeon, pagan prayers answered. In the great year of 1989, which saw a revolutionary spectacle of filmmaking, you and Miramax joined the renaissance by producing Sex, Lies, & Videotape. Independent artists were energized and inspired by this new culture like children fallen into an anarchic fantasy. They saw a bright new home at Miramax. These filmmakers came to you, Harvey Weinstein, and you swallowed them up like a benevolent sea goddess.

The Greeks envisaged the great Poseidon, ruler of the ocean, mover of the tides, conductor of the waves. You, Mr. Weinstein, are united with the classical imagination, atop a rock where the water crashes, synthesizing the soul of antiquity into a fugue in sea minor, the vast eternity your auditorium, the aquatic forces your song, the uncharted depths your glory. The fish swam in Poseidon's waves, 'tis true, and knew the power in which they made their little productions, their flapping of fins, their pulsing of gills, the bubbles which rose like permissive intimations to the surface.

Peering back through the pages of History, Mr. Weinstein, I see nothing but great deeds and charitable artistic service in the Miramax chapter. Yours is a considerable glory which every breathing human being lives with, like the greenness of the grass, the blueness of the sky, the wetness of the water. But even Hercules was half mortal, and his father, Zeus, was a pedophile. There are weaknesses in the world that corrupt the purest of ideas and tear down the greatest of men. I want Miramax, a priceless institution, to have some cosmic purpose in which it finds happiness. I want Harvey Weinstein, an exquisite human being, to live on doing good things which satisfy him. Above all, I want Cinema, that beautiful nursing child, to mature with nourishment and incorruptible vitality. Hades is nibbling on his toes, Mr. Weinstein, and if the fates conspire that it is so, this Messiah could be transformed into a corrosive little demon whose acid drool sizzles on the flesh of artists as he frolics, the pure creatures deformed and incapacitated by this performance.

All this fanciful abstraction, you must understand, is a direct result of the emotive manifestation of the natural conclusions intuitively drawn from scientific evidence. Despite your unquestionable leadership, the charioteering St. Nicholas at the reigns, I'm afraid the corrupting force is real, and clearly exposed by the facts. I say this as a profound admirer, Mr. Weinstein, nay, as a friend—your beloved institution is possibly beyond the exorcisms of divine ambulation.

I am sure you are aware of the undeniable and considerable force that the Academy Awards possess in the film culture. You have wisely recognized the institution as an effective vessel for bringing art to the masses. It is an unfortunate fact (one which I'm sure displeases you with seasonal frequency) that a Miramax film is seldom commercially successful without Oscarly validation. It is true that your organization has quite an impressively consistent record with the Academy, but it has maintained this at great expense to its own structural integrity and institutional durability. Are the people still your audience, Mr. Weinstein, or has that council of snobbery hijacked that sacred relationship? From their ivory tower they instruct and decree, accept and decline, ratify and pulverize. The Academy continues to bend Miramax to its will, and has made Miramax dependent on it. This predatory symbiosis is unsustainable. Since the Academy is obviously an unconquerable giant, the only solution, I fear, would be a radical paradigm shift at Miramax, one which can hardly be fathomed before considering all the facts.

As the nature of the world can be mercilessly paradoxical and self-defeating, it seems that the chief impediment to Miramax's glory is its own ingenuity. A grand force like Miramax shall inevitably elicit imitations. Large movie studios everywhere have created corporate children in a vain mocking of Miramax's honor—Fox has its Fox Searchlight, Sony and Columbia have Sony Picture Classics, Universal has Focus Features, and so on. And I regret to remind you, Mr. Weinstein, that your company is owned by Disney. I fear that the largest film corporations in the world have misinterpreted Miramax's example and have swept independent film into a permanent state of compartmentalization. It is essentially clear that independent film has no chance of galloping into the mainstream, where it unquestionably belongs, because the institutions prevent it. If the most glorious hope of the independent film movement was that it would, by sheer force of capitalism, force the mainstream to become more artistic, it has failed on the most profound terms. Mainstream movies, now clearly separated from quality films, are appealing to lower and lower common denominators to secure a permanent and sustainable piece of the public cashflow. As independent film is grappled and tightly controlled by these corporations, any discernible concept of art is systemically destroyed by the infantile culture of test screenings and target audiences.

I ask you, Mr. Weinstein, to consider for a moment the vast expanse between art and entertainment. They are, as pure and original entities, completely opposite concepts. Art is a thing made entirely for its own sake. Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime. Children spontaneously make art for the simple and instantaneously justifiable act of creation. Every known culture in the history of the world has made art, and they have done it for art's sake. Entertainment, however, is an entirely different enterprise altogether. As we know it today, entertainment is a business, and its functional and stated purpose is to make money.

There are two worlds on this earth whose habitats nurture entirely different classes of animalia. Consider, for a moment, their differences. The plunging ocean is the great frightening mystery of our time. Some tickle the surface with watercraft, and some dare to swim the vertical death slope. This thrashing mass of liquid is the last frontier, the great deep unknowable, unthinkable, unfathomable and limitless depth. Its creatures are soft and swift, moving with the waters as if cutting through air. These creatures do not live on the surface of the earth, so their water-slime and threatening smoothness repels mortals. They frighten the human touch, but when beheld in benevolence, enlighten the human soul.

The earth is shallow (except in fertile wetlands, tranquil lakes, life-giving rivers, and majestic mountains), and the ground, hard-packed with dry dirt and decorated with frivolous blades of grass, is unforgiving. The creatures of this rock mass crawl and jump and stagger within the inescapable bounds of linear gravity. They are victims of wind, sun, fire, rain, and snow—abused, nullified, and made entirely impotent by their exposed state, pulled out of the liquid stasis.

Different creatures emerge from different lands, Mr. Weinstein, and, by sheer virtue of their incompatible sensibilities and physical beings, do not cooperate. If entertainment is a white rabbit, art is the divine jellyfish which rides upon its back. The liquid creature does not hold the furry reigns with any discernible confidence, and the bouncing terrestrial is not entirely comfortable with the slime on its neck. The people, at long last, do not behold the performance with any significant cognition, for the incompatibility is frightful. The jellyfish, abused by the staleness of the air, the sharpness of the ground, and the gracelessness of gravitational movement, has no capacity for expression.

The days of Poseidon, Mr. Weinstein, float in distant antiquity like an ambiguous puddle. The forces of nature have simply rendered your strategy unsustainable. I write to you on this day not as a prophet of the apocalypse, but as a messenger of opportunity. The facts have proven, sadly, that the Miramax enterprise is but a momentary glory in the annals of time. I fear that the culture, with its lust for destruction, would end your legacy with inglorious peril, inscribing your name in the history books as Harvey "poisoned into inevitable defeat" Weinstein.

I ask, then, that you resign, Mr. Harvey Weinstein, climaxing your paternal guardianship of that cultural institution on the wings of achievement, with an indestructible sense of satisfaction that you have done the world a great heroic honor.

But wait, have I heard the voice of a cynical observer? Does he ponder the act of resignation and lament its injustice? Quite on the contrary, my friend. It's an absurdity that they call it "resignation." In fact, rather than writing a so-called "letter of resignation," Mr. Weinstein, I implore that you write a "letter of victory," for you have, by this courageous act, grabbed defeat by the ankles and incapacitated its ability to destroy a human legacy.

You shall leave the world of independent film, Mr. Weinstein, to take your rightful place as the baron of entertainment! Depose that dictator who now sits above you, that much-despised Michael Eisner, and transform the Disney corporation into an empire of imagination and quality family entertainment! Liberate Miramax, Mr. Weinstein, and give control of that resourceful institution to the filmmakers, who have proven again and again that art is best left to the artists! Rise to the top, Mr. Weinstein, and bring your brother with you, to the glorious empire of the multiplex, where you, Napoleon, shall hack limbs, bulldoze cities, ride that victorious war stallion, and cut through raw flesh with your mighty jaws, your army never tasting defeat—only the bloody sweet nectar of absolute power!


Sincerely, and With All Due Respect,

Jeremy Blackman

[pete]

whoa, with a letter this long (and that's in smaller fonts), good luck convincing anyone just to stay 'til the end.

[cron]

whoa, with a letter this long (and that's in smaller fonts), good luck convincing anyone just to stay 'til the end.

Especially Harvey Weinstein.

[A Matter Of Chance]

whoa, with a letter this long (and that's in smaller fonts), good luck convincing anyone just to stay 'til the end.

Especially Harvey Weinstein.

He'd probably end up just eating it

[cron]

JB, are you sending it for real?

How long did it took you to write it?

and , why is it on The Grapevine? Is it because you expect critisism and will correct it?

[ono]

It reminds me of one of those angry, insulting, form letter generators you find on the Internet, kind of like Mad Libs, you know?  A lot of empty rhetoric that says nothing and ends up hurting your brain.

Uh, nice job!  (Yeah, that's the ticket.)

[El Duderino]

nice job, JB.

[Myxo]

This is very well written.

That said..

As I finished each paragraph, I felt like I was watching a greased-up body builder flexing his muscles for a competition. However, if that was the desired effect, it worked well.

[cine]

(Yeah, that's the ticket.)

Even without the Critic av, he still talks like Lovitz.

Loved the letter, JB.

[cowboykurtis]

This is very well written.

That said..

As I finished each paragraph, I felt like I was watching a greased-up body builder flexing his muscles for a competition. However, if that was the desired effect, it worked well.

regardless of the letter -- your avatar is sweet

[godardian]

That letter is hilarious. Hopefully you'll get an A. I think it's an A paper, and I- with my Lisa Simpson avatar- don't just say things like that.

[Ghostboy]

I think it's a B- paper/letter, but maybe I should read it again. I found the writing, in and of itself, quite wonderful; the structure, however, was top heavy, and the flowery prose was in such abound that it managed to mask the points of your argument. But again, it may need a second read, one unobstructed by intermittent drifts of attention towards a bowl of cereal.

[Jeremy Blackman]

I think it's a B- paper/letter, but maybe I should read it again. I found the writing, in and of itself, quite wonderful; the structure, however, was top heavy, and the flowery prose was in such abound that it managed to mask the points of your argument.

That was my intention...   ... whether that's a wise intention is another matter altogether. This whole thing is completely not serious, and I wouldn't be surprised with a B. It's almost mocking the assignment, actually. But with a thesis like "Resign, Harvey Weinstein," the points of the argument almost have to be masked.

[godardian]

It's very Mark Twain... that style of argument works well for me, but then again, I'm a big fan of ice-cold sarcasm.  

[Jeremy Blackman]

I have to revise it before I get a grade, but here are a few comments: