For those of you unfamiliar with Errol Morris, here's the short version. He’s an occasional film maker, he won Best Documentary at the 2004 Academy Awards for his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, and apparently is not a very good salesperson. At least, Harvey Weinstein doesn’t think so.
Morris put together a great documentary in 1988 called The Thin Blue Line and like any good documentarian, made an appearance on NPR in an attempt to promote his film. Maybe he sold it well, and maybe he didn’t, but one man he didn’t sell was Harvey Weinstein, the head of distributor Miramax at the time. Weinstein wrote Morris a letter telling him just how boring and terrible a performer he is and that he better bone up or he’ll “hire an actor in New York to pretend the he’s Errol Morris.”
It’s hard not to laugh at just how ridiculous the letter is. Harvey Weinstein’s temper has a reputation of its own and you can smell the douchebag emanating from the computer as you read this. The letter is 21 years-old so I guess ErrolMorris.com felt it’s been long enough that this won’t open any wounds between him and the mega-producer, even in the face of Weinstein’s economic woes. Give it a read for a bit of film industry humor to start your day.
