This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2015/jul/07/jerry-weintraub-oceans-eleven-rat-pack-old-school

The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Jerry Weintraub: indefatigable champion of old-school and retro film Jerry Weintraub: indefatigable champion of old-school and retro film
(about 3 hours later)
Jerry Weintraub never exactly became a household name, but he was a prominent enough Hollywood insider, finagler and mythmaker to earn his own HBO documentary profile, called His Way – along the lines of Robert Evans’ The Kid Stays in the Picture. His Way – named in honour of Weintraub’s connection with Frank Sinatra – allowed Weintraub to ramble happily along about making deals with Elvis and setting up films, as well as accepting the plaudits of his high-profile Hollywood pals, George Clooney and Julia Roberts among them. If nothing else, it shows Weintraub as a Hollywood made man, a capo among capos. Jerry Weintraub never exactly became a household name, but he was a prominent enough Hollywood insider, finagler and mythmaker to earn his own HBO documentary profile, called His Way – along the lines of Robert Evans’s The Kid Stays in the Picture. His Way – named in honour of Weintraub’s connection with Frank Sinatra – allowed Weintraub to ramble happily along about making deals with Elvis and setting up films, as well as accepting the plaudits of his high-profile Hollywood pals, George Clooney and Julia Roberts among them. If nothing else, it shows Weintraub as a Hollywood made man, a capo among capos.
For this seems to be the essence of Weintraub: a Sammy Glick style motormouth hustler in an age of a corporate, machine-oiled film-making. In fact, his whole career seems to have emerged through a haze of cigar smoke and cocktails: he tended to favour the nostalgic, the old-fashioned, the sort of thing you can imagine being discussed in studio back offices by an earlier generation. In the 70s, when Weintraub began to make his mark in the film business, Hollywood was a wild west: the old studio system had collapsed, the old certainties had disappeared, new and strange forms of cinema had appeared – from the counterculture, from the B-movie ecologies of sex and horror. Weintraub was a graduate of the mailroom at William Morris agency, the kind of place where ambitious wannabes steamed open their bosses’ letters, before talking himself into an junior agent’s job at the MCA talent agency. It was the classic favour-for-a-favour route, and Weintraub ended up promoting successful concert tours in the 70s with the likes of Presley, Sinatra, Bob Dylan and John Denver: unhip but remunerative acts that allowed Weintraub to cross over into TV and other media. In fact, it was via Denver that Weintraub really got into the moving-image business, via a string of TV specials, and it was his louche, music-industry background that no doubt eased the path to his joining forces with Robert Altman for Weintraub’s first movie credit: legend has it they bonded over a joint, and Weintraub ended up getting the $2m backing for Altman’s 1976 country-music epic Nashville.For this seems to be the essence of Weintraub: a Sammy Glick style motormouth hustler in an age of a corporate, machine-oiled film-making. In fact, his whole career seems to have emerged through a haze of cigar smoke and cocktails: he tended to favour the nostalgic, the old-fashioned, the sort of thing you can imagine being discussed in studio back offices by an earlier generation. In the 70s, when Weintraub began to make his mark in the film business, Hollywood was a wild west: the old studio system had collapsed, the old certainties had disappeared, new and strange forms of cinema had appeared – from the counterculture, from the B-movie ecologies of sex and horror. Weintraub was a graduate of the mailroom at William Morris agency, the kind of place where ambitious wannabes steamed open their bosses’ letters, before talking himself into an junior agent’s job at the MCA talent agency. It was the classic favour-for-a-favour route, and Weintraub ended up promoting successful concert tours in the 70s with the likes of Presley, Sinatra, Bob Dylan and John Denver: unhip but remunerative acts that allowed Weintraub to cross over into TV and other media. In fact, it was via Denver that Weintraub really got into the moving-image business, via a string of TV specials, and it was his louche, music-industry background that no doubt eased the path to his joining forces with Robert Altman for Weintraub’s first movie credit: legend has it they bonded over a joint, and Weintraub ended up getting the $2m backing for Altman’s 1976 country-music epic Nashville.
Related: Swingers: the incredible allure of the Rat PackRelated: Swingers: the incredible allure of the Rat Pack
In fact, Nashville, with its ironic tone and rambling structure, was not especially typical of the projects Weintraub sponsored. His next film was the John Denver vehicle, Oh God!, with crotchety Borscht belt comic George Burns. (Cruising, directed by William Friedkin, the notorious gay serial killer film was a mis-step; it was an unlikely brush with gruesome thrillerdom that Weintraub never repeated.) Diner, which he got greenlit by MGM, was much more like it, harking back to the kind of 50s Jewish life he knew well. The Karate Kid, a bona fide commercial blockbuster, took a tried-and-tested structure – one that had just won the best picture Oscar for Rocky – merged with a then-modish teen-movie template. In fact, Nashville, with its ironic tone and rambling structure, was not especially typical of the projects Weintraub sponsored. His next film was the John Denver vehicle, Oh God!, with crotchety Borscht belt comic George Burns. Cruising, directed by William Friedkin, the notorious gay serial killer film was a mis-step; it was an unlikely brush with gruesome thrillerdom that Weintraub never repeated. Diner, which he got greenlit by MGM, was much more like it, harking back to the kind of 50s Jewish life he knew well. The Karate Kid, a bona fide commercial blockbuster, took a tried-and-tested structure – one that had just won the best picture Oscar for Rocky – merged with a then-modish teen-movie template.
His luck ran out with My Stepmother Is an Alien – a comedy with Kim Basinger and Dan Aykroyd, directed by Richard Benjamin, another of the old-school stand-bys – and its catastrophic losses led swiftly to the bankruptcy of his production entity, the grandly named Weintraub Entertainment Group. Through all this Weintraub endlessly promoted his friendship with President George Bush (Weintraub’s wife Jane Morgan had been a girlfriend of Bush’s) and to some extent explains his survival as a Hollywood player during the bad times. His luck ran out with My Stepmother Is an Alien – a comedy with Kim Basinger and Dan Aykroyd, directed by Richard Benjamin, another of the old-school stand-bys – and its catastrophic losses led swiftly to the bankruptcy of his production entity, the grandly named Weintraub Entertainment Group. Through all this Weintraub endlessly promoted his friendship with President George HW Bush (Weintraub’s wife Jane Morgan had been a girlfriend of Bush’s) and to some extent explains his survival as a Hollywood player during the bad times.
Amazingly, Weintraub’s indefatigable attraction to backward-looking properties came up trumps with the Ocean’s Eleven series: a remake of the 60s heist film starring – yes – Frank Sinatra. By the early noughties, retro was in, and Weintraub could forget about another embarrassment: the feature film version of British TV spy show The Avengers, starring Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman, which completely failed to catch fire. But, led by an effervescent George Clooney, and orchestrated by a resurgent Steven Soderbergh, Ocean’s Eleven worked brilliantly; pitched at just the right level between slick hi-tech film-making and pre-Mad-Men Rat Packism. Amazingly, Weintraub’s indefatigable attraction to backward-looking properties came up trumps with the Ocean’s Eleven series: a remake of the 60s heist film starring – yes – Frank Sinatra. By the early 00s, retro was in, and Weintraub could forget about another embarrassment: the feature film version of British TV spy show The Avengers, starring Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman, which completely failed to catch fire. But, led by an effervescent George Clooney, and orchestrated by a resurgent Steven Soderbergh, Ocean’s Eleven worked brilliantly; pitched at just the right level between slick hi-tech film-making and pre-Mad-Men Rat Packism.
Eleven, and its two sequels, Twelve and Thirteen – sequels were a very Weintraub preoccupation – were huge worldwide hits, and put him back in the game. He had one more fantastic retro hit in him, the Soderbergh-directed Behind the Candelabra, which distilled the Vegas era in all its camp glory. Notoriously, neither Weintraub nor Soderbergh could get studios to back the film, supposedly because of its gay subject-matter; shamefully for Hollywood, TV operation HBO had to step in, a decisive changing-of-the-guard moment in the struggle between the small and big screens. At the same time, Weintraub’s franchising, money-chasing instincts led him to participate in the Karate Kid remake featuring Will Smith’s son; it dumped karate in favour of kung fu, presumably to get Chinese producers onside, and Weintraub refused to change the title. It was a mess. And in between the two he got his pal George Bush his own HBO documentary, 41. What goes around, comes around, would seem to be Weintraub’s motto. Ocean’s Eleven, and its two sequels, Twelve and Thirteen – sequels were a very Weintraub preoccupation – were huge worldwide hits, and put him back in the game. He had one more fantastic retro hit in him, the Soderbergh-directed Behind the Candelabra, which distilled the Vegas era in all its camp glory. Notoriously, neither Weintraub nor Soderbergh could get studios to back the film, supposedly because of its gay subject-matter; shamefully for Hollywood, TV operation HBO had to step in, a decisive changing-of-the-guard moment in the struggle between the small and big screens. At the same time, Weintraub’s franchising, money-chasing instincts led him to participate in the Karate Kid remake featuring Will Smith’s son; it dumped karate in favour of kung fu, presumably to get Chinese producers onside, and Weintraub refused to change the title. It was a mess. And in between the two he got his pal George Bush his own HBO documentary, 41. What goes around, comes around, would seem to be Weintraub’s motto.