Lately, Miramax has been going through a tough time. It's had to lay off a sizeable chunk of its staff, and there's been talk of a structural reorganization in Miramax's partnership with Disney. Maybe it's because of these upheavals that the company, known for its shrewd publicity campaigns, would be particularly sensitive about its current releases. Case in point: the Miramax response to Stranger critic Andrew Wright's review of Hero before it played at SIFF. Even though he wrote a rave review that called it "the don't-miss film of the fest," Wright took Miramax to task for sitting on the movie for two years and for mandating 20 minutes of cuts. It was this last bit that stuck in the craw of Harvey Weinstein, who had a publicist call Mr. Wright's personal cell phone to request a retraction. The thing is, the Internet was lousy with stories about a longer cut of the film, and even Miramax darling Quentin Tarantino told Fangoria magazine that he was lobbying for Weinstein to release the longer cut.
As it turns out, there is no longer cut. Not officially. Zhang did turn in a longer version to Miramax (who partially funded the production), but after an American audience test they asked him to make some cuts and changes, which he did. According to an interview in the July/August scr(i)pt magazine, Zhang said, "My boss told me that the U.S. market is the biggest market, so you'd better cooperate with them. Therefore, I did my best to cooperate with them." He went on to say that the 20 minutes he cut are gone for good, even for himself, though a bootleg of the longer version is apparently floating around China. Miramax was right, we were wrong, and consider this a retraction for the statement about mandated cuts.
Personally, I think this is more about responding to the "Harvey Scissorhands" nickname and their MiramAxe reputation when it comes to foreign films. Like it or not, the whims and appetites of Weinstein define Miramax. He loves to buy foreign titles, even when he can't release them. For me, that's a bigger problem than his penchant for cutting. For example, I'd love to see the Thai Western melodrama Tears of the Black Tiger again, but since Miramax bought it in 2001, I doubt I ever will.
