How the mogul of Miramax made winning Oscars into a business

If anyone were ever foolhardy enough to write a movie script based on Hollywood's furious annual battles over the Oscars, then a good working title for this year's drama might be "Get Harvey".

If anyone were ever foolhardy enough to write a movie script based on Hollywood's furious annual battles over the Oscars, then a good working title for this year's drama might be "Get Harvey".

Harvey is Harvey Weinstein, the larger-than-life, chain-smoking, braces-wearing co-chairman of Miramax, who has built his arthouse-oriented company largely on his ability to milk the awards-season marketing machine.

Over the past 15 years, he has transformed what was once a stilted exercise in industry self-congratulation, dominated by the major studios, into a dynamic promotional vehicle for the smaller, quirkier, more unusual films he specialises in - titles like Pulp Fiction, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love and last year's Oscar winner Chicago.

Instead of following the old industry logic, which said that winning an Oscar was everything, Mr Weinstein worked out that it was more important to be nominated, because the Oscars campaign season could be used as a marketing opportunity while his films were still in cinemas. "A successful awards season can make the difference between a movie grossing $5m [£2.8m] at the box office and a movie grossing $20m," he said recently.

The studio chiefs have been feeling increasingly resentful of Mr Weinstein's tactics, and his apparent readiness to turn Oscar season into mud-slinging exercises worthy of the worst political campaigns, because his titles have consistently edged out their big-budget spectaculars, with considerable financial consequences.

So it may be no coincidence that this year, the rules of the game were altered to make it harder for Miramax to compete.

First, the Oscars were brought forward almost a month, from late March to late February, narrowing the promotional window. Second, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued new campaigning rules to keep the Oscars clean, quiet and polite - adjectives nobody would immediately associate with Mr Weinstein. And third, the studio chiefs signed on to a ban on the practice of sending out video copies of the year's films to Oscar voters and other high-profile jury members. Ostensibly this was an anti-piracy move, but several independent film producers saw it as a direct strike against them. If Academy members don't have a way to see the smaller films, they argued, they will be swayed more easily by the big studios.

In the past few weeks, Mr Weinstein has managed, with a certain awe-inspiring brilliance, to change the awards-season script. "Get Harvey" has suddenly turned into "Harvey's Revenge". First, he was instrumental in having the ban on video copies overturned in court. Then came this week's Golden Globes nominations, in which the latest Miramax spectacular, Anthony Minghella's adaptation of the Civil War bestseller Cold Mountain, emerged with eight mentions, including acting honours for Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renée Zellweger.

Cold Mountain had been ignored in the various critics' end-of-year lists, and Mr Weinstein was facing the prospect of financial disaster because it was not an easy sell and cost more than $100m to make and market. Unlike last year's spectacular Gangs of New York, which made its money back largely thanks to the Oscar process, Cold Mountain is not a co-production but Miramax's baby alone. MGM, which had agreed to share the risk, pulled out on the eve of production.

What Mr Weinstein's enemies overlooked was the the body that promotes the Golden Globes, which are second only to the Oscars in promotional value and hold considerably sway over Academy voters. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is a ragtag collection of freelance journalists with no authority except that bestowed by the vast advertising revenue of their annual awards show. Most film-makers loathe them because they are more interested in collecting autographs than they are in actually writing anything.

But Mr Weinstein, according to inside sources, has been carefully courting them with special screenings and personal phone calls. The upshot: Miramax led the nominations pack with 13 mentions.

He could not have asked for a better Christmas present, not least because Cold Mountain opens in the United States on 25 December. If nothing else, he has made his film impossible to ignore. Once again, he has bucked the system.

Weinstein and the Oscars: His record on nominations and Academy Awards

2002
Chicago: 13 nominations, six awards
The Hours: Nine nominations, one award
Gangs of New York: 10 nominations
Frida: Six nominations, two awards
Quiet American: One nomination
Hero: One nomination

2001
In the Bedroom: Five nominations
Amelie: Five nominations
Iris: Three nominations, one award
Bridget Jones's Diary: One nomination
Kate & Leopold: One nomination

2000
Chocolat: Five nominations
Malena: Two nominations
Vatel: One nomination
Everybody's Famous!: One nomination
Taste of Others: One nomination

1999
The Cider House Rules: Seven nominations, two awards
The Talented Mr Ripley: Five nominations
Music of the Heart: Two nominations

1998
Shakespeare In Love: 13 nominations, seven awards
Life is Beautiful: Seven nominations, three awards
Little Voice: One nomination
Children of Heaven: One nomination
The Grandfather: One nomination
Velvet Goldmine: One nomination