Director James Gray hates Harvey Weinstein

[ms_mmelissa]

James Gray reveals the crowd-pleasing ending Harvey Weinstein wanted for 'The Immigrant' https://t.co/4O4Dggntr1 pic.twitter.com/YwnQ5j9Xzm
- The Film Stage 📽 (@TheFilmStage) March 27, 2017

• He had nothing to do with Weinstein buying the film and told the investors that sold it to him that it was a bad idea.
• The ending for The Immigrant was widely praised and considered one of the best endings of all time.

With The Immigrant I had final cut. So he knew he couldn’t make me change it. But he applied all the pressure he could, including shelving the film. So at that point the calculus becomes this:
a) Do I change the film, and in my mind destroy it? His cut was 88 minutes, had a Sound of Music-style ending with a soaring camera shot, with Marion [Cotillard] and her sister walking over a mountain in LA, narration saying “I made it, I made it,” soaring music, and all that. The audience doesn’t know that that’s not your idea. You get the blame because you’re the director and the writer of it. So I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to take the blame for that.’ What would happen is that that film would get bad response critically anyway, so then it would get the bad response, the film would bomb, and it’s not my cut.
b) Or, it’s my cut and the film never gets released. And maybe if I continue my career it becomes the legendary movie that I made that nobody could ever see.
So I felt that option b) was way better than option a). And he felt that this was just a totally terrible, obstinate, egotistical view on my part, because he felt his view was more quote ‘commercial’. I think I’m right.
I think actually I’ve been sort of borne out. Because when the film came out in the United States, Marion virtually won every critical prize without any support at all. Harvey could have easily gotten her an Oscar nomination, maybe even won her an Oscar, if he’d put his machine behind her.
But, you know, part of the absurdity of Ayn Rand is this conception that people always act out of self-interest. When in fact we act very frequently out of self-destruction. A lot of times we do very self-destructive things. And Harvey burying the movie was a very self-destructive act, which was basically an extension of the rejection of him. It violated his narcissistic principles. When you don’t do exactly what he wants, it doesn’t matter that it’s in his self-interest to protect the film - he doesn’t see it that way.

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