CINEMA: INDEPENDENTS' DAY

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The Weinsteins also enjoy hondeling and hectoring. In 1993 Miramax heard that TIME was about to run a story revealing that Jaye Davidson, the "female" lead in The Crying Game, was a man (hardly a scoop, since Davidson had won an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor). Furious, Harvey called a top editor 18 times in one day in an unsuccessful attempt to keep the nonsecret a secret.

Miramax has always had a genius for picking films. Sometimes it picks them out of the gutter. The Miramax tactic: find a pretty orphan, take it home, dress it up and show it off. When TriStar said no to Pulp Fiction, the Weinsteins eagerly said yes and snagged their biggest hit ever. Last year 20th Century Fox backed out of The English Patient just before the film was to begin shooting. Instead Fox pinned its Oscar hopes on another sweeping morality play, The Crucible--only to see it swept away, at the box office and in the Oscar race.

Any movie executive would prefer fathering films to merely adopting them. But while you can make a lot of money producing pictures, you can also lose a lot. Miramax did indeed tank with some of its early in-house productions, like The Lemon Sisters with Diane Keaton and The Long Walk Home with Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Goldberg. It has been more successful with genre films birthed by Bob Weinstein's Dimension Films. Dimension plans sequels to Scream, From Dusk Till Dawn and Total Recall, originally made by another studio. Miramax, which traditionally had more pickups than homegrown product, is making more of its own films. The company is plunging into musicals, with movies of Chicago (possibly starring Madonna and Goldie Hawn) and Rent. Weinstein has vaguer plans for a monthly magazine, code-named Max, and for TV. "I don't think we need to do sitcoms," he says, "but rather more innovative stuff balanced with commercial properties."

There's always a risk when little companies get big dreams. Right now the entire indie industry needs caution. The current boom could be only a bump. Aging moviegoers could go back to TV. Or the next film by English Patient director Anthony Minghella could be more like his previous, invisible effort, Mr. Wonderful. Or the major studios could emerge from their stupor and figure out how to make the kinds of films from which the indies have profited.

But Harvey Weinstein is not a timid soul. His eyes for movies are as big as his stomach. And as his gut shrinks, those eyes get bigger. If there were an Oscar for chutzpah, he and Bob would win every year.

--Reported by Georgia Harbison/New York and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

For more information, see our Web report on independent films at time.com/indies