Is Altman Dressed for Success? : The Filmmaker’s ‘Ready to Wear’ Gets Fitted by Miramax’s Weinstein Brothers

Miramax Films chiefs Harvey and Bob Weinstein always find some way to goose the public’s attention whenever their scrappy New York-based company has an important new movie to crow about.

Last weekend, the feisty brothers stunned insiders in Hollywood and even at Miramax’s own parent firm, the Walt Disney Co., with a splashy, uncustomary, four-page ad in the Sunday New York Times promoting the upcoming Christmas Day release and soundtrack for its new Robert Altman film, “Ready to Wear” (“Pret-a-Porter”)--a sendup of the fashion industry. Such costly advertising more commonly accompanies mass-appeal “event”-type movies.

But, the publicity-driven Miramax, which for years has built its name on the bold marketing savvy of the Weinsteins, refuses to play by any such rules. Not when they’ve had great success selling such non-mainstream movies to the general public as “The Crying Game” and “The Piano,” which were originally thought to have limited audience appeal.

The ad, however, didn’t come without some backlash from Miramax’s arch nemesis--the Motion Picture Assn. of America, which has regularly engaged in ratings disputes with the company.

On Monday, Miramax received a faxed letter in which the MPAA threatened to revoke the film’s R rating because the first page of the ad, a soundtrack tie-in to the movie, featured artwork of supermodel Helena Christensen--her nude body barely covered with a feathered boa--that the MPAA had banned from movie ads. Though the page was paid for by Columbia Records, which is releasing the soundtrack, the MPAA objected to one line of copy that read, “See the movie.” The MPAA letter said that if Miramax agreed not to use the artwork in any future advertising for the movie--it can be used for promotion of the music album only--the revocation proceeding won’t go forward.

The Weinsteins refused to comment on the matter. The author of the MPAA letter, Bethlyn Hand, who heads the association’s advertising administration, also declined comment.

Provocative shots of Christensen also appear on two of the other ad pages, which are key to Miramax’s strategy of selling the fashion farce as “an intelligent, sexy comedy,” says Harvey Weinstein. “We are counter-programming it against more mainstream movies,” he adds. “There is nothing quite like this movie that’s out this season. It’s upbeat, upscale, stylish and seductive.”

That may be true, but Miramax is up against several other movies in the market competing for that adult dollar over the Christmas holiday, including Barry Levinson’s sexual-harassment drama “Disclosure”; “Nell,” starring Jodie Foster, and Robert Benton’s “Nobody’s Fool,” starring Paul Newman.

“Ready to Wear” is a tale of “sex, greed and murder” set against the backdrop of the twice-a-year Paris fashion show known as pret-a-porter. Altman’s all-star cast, which includes Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Lauren Bacall, Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Kim Basinger and Stephen Rea, intermingle with real-life designers and supermodels.

Miramax is also taking the unusual step of opening the movie nationwide on 1,000 screens--the widest release ever for an Altman movie. The iconoclastic director’s quirky pictures, including his most recent titles, “Short Cuts” and “The Player,” are typically released in many fewer theaters since they tend to attract a more limited sophisticated adult audience.

“Ready to Wear” is similarly more unorthodox in its storytelling approach, but Weinstein believes it is Altman’s “most commercial film since ‘MASH,’ ” the director’s 1970 irreverent black war comedy.

Altman is all for Miramax’s strategy to release his movie wide, which also worked well for the distributor when it released Quentin Tarantino’s edgy “Pulp Fiction” on more than 1,100 screens earlier this year.

“This is an accessible film, so there’s no reason not to go out there with it,” said Altman, unabashedly characterizing his own movie as “a smart, modern comedy, a bedroom farce.” It’s Altman’s contention that the theme of the film--”what we wear and why we wear the things we wear”--is something all moviegoers should be able to relate to. “Everybody loves nudity, and this film is about nakedness,” said the director, whose closing scene in the movie involves a nude fashion show. “There’s nothing you have to educate the general public on to take a slow move on this thing.”

In yet another unconventional move, on Nov. 30--just three weeks before the film’s release--Miramax changed the title from “Pret-a-Porter” (pronounced por-tay ) to its English translation, “Ready to Wear.” Weinstein quips that he was tired of people mispronouncing the French title. When he went to his mother’s mah-jongg game last week and “six of the biggest Jewish yentas, including my mother, couldn’t pronounce the title,” he suggested to Altman that they translate it into English.

“I was getting (the mispronunciation) from very literate people . . . and it embarrasses me to correct them,” Altman concurred.

Miramax also pushed back the film’s opening from Dec. 21 to Dec. 25, which raised some suspicions in Hollywood that the company may be wanting to limit exposure to any potentially negative reviews in daily newspapers. Common wisdom in the industry holds that moviegoers are less likely to read reviews over Christmas weekend.

But Weinstein winces at any such suggestion. “We’re so proud of this movie, we are welcoming the critics.” Reviewers from magazines who have seen a rough cut of the movie have been, he asserts, “unanimous in their praise.” The New York Times ad includes glowing quotes from reviews in Playboy, Harper’s Bazaar and GQ. The film also just received a rave from Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers.

The fashion trade press, however, has been far from complimentary to Altman and his film. Ever since cameras rolled on the movie in Paris last spring, there has been highly publicized sniping from the fashion trade, which has served as fodder for many gossip columns on the East Coast. Miramax insiders like to refer to the campaign as “bitchy sewing circle stuff.”

It’s been no secret that Altman and John Fairchild, editorial director of the fashion industry bible Women’s Wear Daily, have had a running public feud since production began. The capper was last month when WWD ran a particularly nasty review of the movie after sneaking a reporter into an advance screening. It’s been reported that representatives from Fairchild Publications say they were uniformly banned from seeing the movie prior to its opening--a claim that Weinstein and Altman flatly refute.

“We have not had screenings for the official fashion press,” said Weinstein, who was waiting until Altman delivered a final print (which he now has) before showing it to non-movie press. “We’re interested in movie reviews,” Weinstein explained. “Movie critics have seen enough rough cuts to know exactly how to review things.”

As further proof that Miramax “is not hiding this movie,” Weinstein pointed out that about 250 journalists and critics are being brought to a New York press junket, which begins today and runs through Monday. Weinstein estimated that Miramax will spend around $10 million to market “Ready to Wear,” though one knowledgeable source put the figure closer to $15 million. Miramax is hoping the movie’s launch will be boosted by sales of the soundtrack, which came out Tuesday featuring Janet Jackson, the Rolling Stones, Salt-N-Pepa, U2 and Ini Kamoze. Additionally, a book composed of the film’s script and a collection of photos and interviews from the set, which Miramax is publishing through its own division, will be in stores Dec. 15.

The glossy consumer fashion magazine Elle, whose staff consulted on the movie, is co-sponsoring the film’s gala world premiere in New York on Monday at Roseland, which will benefit AIDS programs and will include a special live performance by Prince and a silent auction fashion show. A less extravagant L.A. premiere is planned for next Wednesday.