BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.(Harvey Weinstein)

I

Harvey Weinstein sometimes believes that Hollywood is out to get him. He believed this even before it was true. Weinstein, or Harvey--in the movie business, there is only one Harvey--believes that he is a target partly because Miramax, the studio that he co-founded with his brother, Bob, is based in New York. Mostly, he believes that the movie industry resents the success he's had in the past two decades, making movies--sometimes brilliant, innovative movies--that Hollywood wouldn't touch.

The view from Hollywood is a little different; people there say that they are repelled by his behavior, which can be spectacularly coarse, and even threatening. That may seem a curious reaction; after all, abusive behavior--starting with the casting couch--became something of an art form in the early years of Hollywood and never really went away. Adolph Zukor, Louis B. Mayer, Jack and Harry Warner, Harry Cohn, William Fox, and Samuel Goldwyn were, each in his own way, bombastic, bullying personalities. And in today's Hollywood tantrums are commonplace. But even in this context Harvey Weinstein stands out. Those who have been witness to his outbursts, public and private, describe not a lovable rogue but, rather, a man with little self-control, whose tone of voice and whose body language can seem dangerous; at times, he appears about to burst with fury, his fists closed, his teeth clenched, his large head shaking as he loses the struggle to contain himself.

At the Cannes Film Festival last May, Weinstein, who is six feet tall and weighs two hundred and fifty pounds, spotted Barry Diller, the chief executive of Vivendi Universal Entertainment. In a loud voice, he said to Diller, who is a fit five feet nine, "Why'd you call me a bully?"

"You are a bully," Diller replied, and the two studio executives stood toe to toe on the terrace of the Hotel du Cap, as an audience of actors, directors, models, and fellow-executives watched. Diller thought that there was going to be a fistfight.

Weinstein had been provoked by an article in which Diller was quoted as calling him a thug. Diller had done so because in Los Angeles the previous January, on the night of the Golden Globe awards, Weinstein had threatened a Universal executive. Although Miramax had received three Golden Globes, its best-picture candidate, "In the Bedroom," had not won, and Weinstein was irate; the Golden Globes often presaged the Academy Awards, in March. What was more, he knew of an upcoming story in the Post suggesting that he had orchestrated a whispering campaign to impugn "A Beautiful Mind," a best-picture candidate from Universal and DreamWorks SKG. Stacey Snider, the chairman of Universal, told me that Miramax, and specifically Harvey Weinstein, was to blame. (It was falsely rumored that John Nash, the mathematician on whom the movie is based, was an anti-Semite.) Weinstein says that the Post story originated with Universal and DreamWorks. Although Snider denied this, Weinstein said, "I blamed her."

After the Golden Globes ceremony, the Creative Artists Agency gave a party at the restaurant Muse for six hundred people. Snider was exhilarated, because "A Beautiful Mind" had won several awards, including best drama. When Weinstein saw her in the crowd, he headed her way and cornered her in an alcove across from the bar. To the petite Snider, he was a fearsome sight--his eyes dark and glowering, his fleshy face unshaved, his belly jutting forward half a foot or so ahead of his body. He jabbed a finger at Snider's face and screamed, "You're going to go down for this!"