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Harvey Weinstein, shown at the Directors Guild awards Jan. 29, tried to talk Avrich out of making his documentary. In the background is director Baz Luhrmann.Kevin Winter / Getty Images

Some people told him it was a death wish. A few have tried and were beaten back. But Toronto filmmaker Barry Avrich was determined to make his documentary about feared, revered and famously combative independent film mogul Harvey Weinstein - even if convincing insiders to go on camera was like "holding an ice cube in your hand."

"Hollywood is run on the 'you never know' fear factor, and even though I kept saying I wasn't doing a hatchet job, many yeses turned into nos at the last minute," Avrich says. So not only was it a challenge to get people to open up about Weinstein, but several promising interview subjects got skittish and backed out. "There are many people who said they would never work with him again, and ended up doing just that."

But against the odds, Avrich has completed Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project, a lively, respectful doc portrait of the man who aggressively pushed the art-house film company Miramax into industry dominance, earning the nickname Harvey Scissorhands (for his frequent habit of ordering re-cuts of foreign and even U.S. films) and more than a few enemies.

Avrich, who reassembles the "dream team" of former Miramax executives for the doc, says more than one insider told him, based on previous experience, how his project would likely play out. "Stage one [Weinstein]will be incredibly charming; stage two he'll try and buy the film so he can bury it, and stage three is war," Avrich recalls. "We never got to stage three."

When Avrich started doing the rounds to raise financing in 2009 (no one in the United States dared bite), The Weinstein Company was still struggling to hit a groove after restructuring cleared it of its massive debt. And early last year, when Avrich's cameras were rolling, Harvey and his brother Bob were caught up in an unsuccessful move to buy back Miramax, which they co-founded in 1979. Disney had purchased the company in 1993, after which hits like Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love and Bridget Jones's Diary cemented the Miramax brand.

In retrospect, Avrich says, the timing of the doc couldn't have been better. "It would have been even tougher to get people to talk about Harvey now because he's back. The thesis of the film was always 'don't count him out.' This is a guy who takes the punches, falls down and gets up again."

In this triumphant awards season run of The King's Speech, which The Weinstein Company distributes in the United States, some controversial side stories have nabbed headlines, including the possible release of a PG-13 version (minus the king's expletive bursts) to attract a wider audience of teenage history students. This coincides with recent criticism of the film's historical accuracy that surfaced in a rant by Christopher Hitchens (who nevertheless enjoyed the film) on Slate.com.

It's all free publicity gravy to Weinstein, who has stepped back into the media spotlight. On the upside, a re-invigorated Weinstein Company has been on a buying spree that began at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and continued last month at Sundance. On the downside, filmmaker Michael Moore launched a $2.7-million (U.S.) lawsuit against the Weinsteins this week over profits for Fahrenheit 9/11.

"Who knows, maybe I'll have to update the film again before it comes out in the U.S. this spring," laughs Avrich, 47, who has made more than a dozen documentaries, shot mostly on weekends ("some people play golf, I make movies," he says). He refers to Unauthorized as the final film in his "triptych" on controversial entertainment industry power brokers which includes 2005's The Last Mogul, about the late Hollywood kingpin Lew Wasserman, and 2006's Satisfaction, about legendary concert promoter Michael Cohl. Cohl's late cousin, TIFF co-founder Dusty Cohl, encouraged Avrich to pursue a Weinstein film and is an executive producer on Unauthorized.

Avrich has worked on hundreds of movie campaigns - including Miramax titles - for Canadian distributors as an executive for marketing agencies including Endeavor, which he co-founded in 2005. He knows how to sell a movie. Just not to Harvey.

"[Weinstein]kept saying it wasn't the right time for him professionally," says Avrich, who started seriously courting the mogul over a year ago and maintained a "courteous" communication. "We sat down for an interesting breakfast in L.A. and he pitched me ideas of people to make films about - in other words, talk me out of it."

Avrich says he never felt intimidated by Weinstein, "although he did ask me how I would like it if he showed up Monday morning with a crew to make a film about my life."

But filmmaker George Hickenlooper (who died last fall while promoting Casino Jack) is one interview subject who doesn't hold back in Unauthorized, offering hilarious imitations of Weinstein's explosive phone calls during the making of 2006's Factory Girl, threatening to take out full page ads in the trades announcing "Hickenlooper is a loser." But his openness is juxtaposed with director James Ivory's measured recounting of Weinstein's battles with producer Ismail Merchant about re-cutting the 1990 film Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. And Martin Scorsese, who had several well-known blowouts with Weinstein during the making of Gangs of New York, is particularly diplomatic.

Many people Avrich interviewed had previously dished to writers Peter Biskind, who wrote the popular expose Down And Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Cinema, and The New Yorker's Ken Aueletta for a 2002 profile on Weinstein. Both writers appear in Unauthorized. Avrich believes some of them decided to "keep the gloves on" with him, after feeling the effects of their words in print.

With the Oscars around the corner, and a King's Speech sweep looking ever more likely, Avrich believes this is only the beginning of an upswing for Weinstein. "He's left behind the empire-building, which in my opinion was a tragic distraction, and gone back to pure Harvey, being an indie talent spotter, picking up films and spinning the market," Avrich says.

"With Harvey, there's always going to be another act."



Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project opens Friday at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and airs on HBO Canada Feb. 21.

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