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Jewish World Review Nov. 5, 2003 / 10 Mar-Cheshvan, 5764
Lloyd Grove
Will Harvey Weinstein and Gregg Easterbrook now be pals?; crazed Quentin; more
http://www.jewishworldreview.com | NEW YORK Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein has forgiven Gregg Easterbrook. But Disney chairman Michael Eisner hasn't replied to the New Republic writer's pained personal apology for calling them in a recent negative review of Miramax's "Kill Bill" "Jewish executives (who) worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence." After receiving the letter from the Presbyterian pundit, Weinstein wrote back: "Bringing up my Jewishness . . . is obviously wrong. I would never say a 'Christian writer' is lacking in knowledge and is only out to provoke controversy by calling our faith into question." But Weinstein added: "I wholeheartedly accept your apology; your letter shows you learned from this experience, and despite all this I would choose to defend you in the future." After Easterbrook's remark on the New Republic's Web site sparked a firestorm of criticism (and he lost his job as an online football commentator for ESPN), his initial attempts to extricate himself didn't help matters. He acknowledged guilt for "mangling words" but insisted he was "ready to defend all the thoughts" he'd expressed. Charges of anti-Semitism flew. The Anti-Defamation League pronounced Easterbrook's backpedaling "insufficient." Then, late last month, a chastened Easterbrook wrote separately to Weinstein and Eisner: "I wish to apologize to you both for what I said, and for the manner (in which) it was said . . . It is not fair to raise faith or identity. Worse, to fall into stereotype not only is wrong to the person, it may be wrong in a larger sense for society, by feeding stereotypes." Weinstein noted in his reply: "As Claude Rains said to Bogart (in a film I'm sure you liked, made by a Jewish executive) this could be the start of a beautiful relationship. All my best. Harvey." Actually, it was Bogart who said something sort of like it to Rains, Harvey. But we and all men and women of good will get the idea. THE BRIEFING CRAZED QUENTIN: Nutty auteur Quentin Tarantino needs to chill after his bizarre Halloween night behavior, which included trying to break up a fight at one nightspot and almost getting into a fight at another. Wearing a hockey jersey reading "Tigger," Tarantino spotted two combatants swinging fists at the Park in Chelsea and attempted to enter the fray, requiring his bodyguards to restrain him. "But I always need to see the challenger!" Tarantino yelled, inexplicably, and then settled into a roped-off area where brazen and possibly myopic females tried to crawl between the couches to reach him. Hours later, Tarantino arrived at Hue, where he provoked a group of partying Brits by shouting: "The hell with soccer! It's all about hockey!" Some of the angry soccer fans shouted back insults but no violence ensued, and Tarantino calmed down after receiving the soothing attentions of the girls in the back room. He finally departed at 5 a.m., explaining that he had to get ready for his imminent departure for Tuesday's "Kill Bill" premiere in Paris. BEST SUPPORTING BROTHER: Gwyneth Paltrow is telling pals that she was so depressed by the death of father Bruce Paltrow a year ago, she almost passed on playing suicidal poet Sylvia Plath in the upcoming biopic "Sylvia." But her little brother, Jake, 28, persuaded the 31-year-old actress to take the part. "I didn't know if I'd be able to do the film, but my brother was insistent that I do it," Paltrow told friends in London last week. "My father died two weeks before I started shooting, which was the worst thing that ever happened to me." According to Gwyneth, who was "feeling like a zombie," Jake couldn't stand seeing his big sis so upset and thought she should do the part to keep her occupied. WINDOW SHOPPING?: Geraldo Rivera's ex-wife, C.C. Dyer, has been looking around for a place in the posh Carnegie Hill neighborhood to set up housekeeping with her boyfriend, saxophonist Clarence Clemons of Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band. Corcoran Group broker Wendy Sarasohn, a college friend of Dyer's, showed her a property that's even bigger than the townhouse Geraldo gave her as part of their divorce settlement. But Dyer tells me she's not buying so far. "I'm very happy where I am right now."
11/03/03:Herding off the hipsters; more
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