CINEMA: INDEPENDENTS' DAY

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Your basic movie-mogul breakfast menu would include strawberries, decaf, a splash of Evian, maybe a Diet Coke. But Harvey Weinstein has never got with fit-for-life cuisine. One morning at the recent Sundance Film Festival, the co-chairman of Miramax Films eagerly devoured a greasy omelette (the secret ingredient: cholesterol) while schmoozing with a reporter about art, movies and life in general. It's been said that a family of four could subsist for a month on the crumbs that stick to Weinstein's shirt. That family may soon need to find other means of dietary support: the big guy has shed 50 lbs. and is down to a merely huge 225. He hopes to drop 65 lbs. more. "I want to be Paul Newman's weight," he says in the burly baritone that has struck awe, fear and amusement into the small independent-film community.

That community, usually ignored by the big Hollywood players, is now the hot place to be. In last week's honor roll of Oscar nominations, four of the five finalists for Best Picture (The English Patient, Fargo, Secrets & Lies and Shine) were released by independent companies; only Jerry Maguire came from one of the seven major studios. Indie films did handsomely in all top categories: three of the slots for Best Actor, four for Best Director, all five for Best Actress. For once the Oscars looked less like the Tonys and more like the Obies. Off-Hollywood had beaten Hollywood at its own prestige game.

Weinstein, 44, and his partner-brother Bob, 42, had special cause to rejoice. Miramax corralled 20 nominations, more than any major studio and the most ever for an indie outfit. The English Patient, with enough sand and grandeur to make it Lawrence of Arabia with women, snagged 12 nominations. The Weinsteins have also scored in the real world of the box office. Scream, the teen horror movie made by their company's Dimension Films division, has scared up nearly $80 million--more than most of Miramax's nominated films. From its 1996 slate, the company has grossed $250 million, as much as all the other indie companies combined.

In a volatile business, the Weinsteins have long been king of the indies. "They're artists, entrepreneurs and passionate maniacs," says DreamWorks exec Jeffrey Katzenberg. "They have extraordinary gut meters for what's good, they're unbelievable salesmen, and they're equally painful to have to deal with. Together they are the Irving Thalberg of our time."

In his time of triumph, Harvey Weinstein grandly spreads the glory around. "This is a great moment for independent films," he says. "It shows that risk has its rewards." The risks are mostly of finance, not of film form. The big winners among little movies didn't dabble in delirious innovation (the hallucinogenic Trainspotting got only a screenplay nod). The primary appeal of their stories is not to the young mass audience, which prefers spectacular fantasy and broad comedy, but to older viewers, more sophisticated and more sentimental, liberal in their politics and conservative in their desire for humanist affirmation--folks very like the typical Oscar voter. This audience wants, as Fine Line president Ruth Vitale puts it, "movies that touch your heart, that make you pause, think, maybe pick up the phone and call your dad."