“I’m furious with DreamWorks. Sometimes, you do all you can and it just doesn’t come across, and everyone involved has to hold up their hands and accept that it didn’t work. That was not the case with this film.”

 

*     *     *

“I didn’t want to make this movie with that studio. I had the cash to do it independently, and wanted to. But I believed that they had a contract and owned the script, which they did not. We were already in production when I discovered there was no contract.”

 

-- Barry Levinson, quoted in the London newspaper,The Guardian, March 22, 2001 (“I Really Shouldn’t Talk About This...”).  

       Following public allegations against DreamWorks by director Barry Levinson and others, Jerome O'Connor, producer of the critically acclaimed Levinson film, An Everlasting Piece, sued DreamWorks, the film's supposed distributor for $10 million in damages for alleged breach of contract, as well as $100 million for what O'Connor alleged was a deliberate deception on the part of the film studio.  

         O'Connor alleged that DreamWorks not only suppressed the film, but also that the studio obtained the rights to the film by misleading O'Connor and Levinson. As explained in the federal complaint, DreamWorks allegedly obtained rights from O'Connor by falsely claiming that Levinson wanted to direct the film with DreamWorks    

            In fact, both Levinson and O'Connor wanted the film to be financed and distributed either by one of several other studios that were interested, such as Miramax Films, New Line Cinema, or Summit Entertainment, or independently with the substantial funds that Levinson and his agent, Michael Ovitz, had committed to the project. O'Connor and Levinson's wishes were foreclosed by DreamWorks, which allegedly defrauded both of them into believing that they had no choice but to allow DreamWorks to control the distribution of the Picture.            

       Evidence in favor of O'Connor's suit against the suppression of the film by DreamWorks was reported by a number of major newspapers. For example, as The Los Angeles Times reported:    

[T]he director smelled trouble for his latest film, "An Everlasting Piece," when DreamWorks decided to hold a test screening for the picture last July at a mall in Woodland Hills.

Made in Ireland for million with a no-name cast, the film was a quirky comedy about two young wig salesmen who try to corner the toupee business in the fratricidal world of Northern Ireland. Levinson was horrified to find DreamWorks assessing the film's commercial potential before a suburban audience accustomed to seeing broad joke fests and star-driven dramas.

"If you really cared about this movie, you wouldn't screen it in Woodland Hills," he said in his first interview since the film was yanked from theaters in New York and Los Angeles last month after a brief 11-theater holiday season run in which it took in a minuscule $75,000. "I understand taking 'Cast Away' to Woodland Hills or a teen comedy to Woodland Hills, but why our movie? You'd never open our movie in Woodland Hills, so why even test it there?"

It was the first of many questionable decisions, Levinson claims, that spelled doom for a movie that, despite mixed reviews, earned praise from the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post and New York magazine, in which critic Peter Rainer called it "a real original--as lyrically nutty as a vintage Bill Forsyth picture." Angered by DreamWorks' handling of the film, Levinson wrote a letter of complaint to studio co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg last month describing the studio's treatment of the film as "the most disappointing experience I have ever had in this business."

*     *     *

[W]hen other studios were refreshing their ad campaigns with new critic blurbs or ad slogans over the holidays, the ad for "Everlasting Piece" remained unchanged, running one lone critic blurb from Newsday. By then, hostilities had erupted between Levinson and the studio. He says the studio repeatedly lobbied him to cut any political references involving the IRA out of the picture, saying he should stick to wig jokes. He refused.

*     *     *

“What I’m most angry about is that it wasn’t like we made a deal with the devil,” he says. “We wanted to go somewhere else to finance the picture.”

 

---  P. Goldstein, The Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2001 (“Levinson At War With DreamWorks Over ‘Piece’”).  

                        The writer and star of the film, Barry McEvoy, was quoted in Ireland’s leading newspaper, The Irish Times, as follows:  

“Oh they dumped the movie, they definitely dumped it!”

His anger is palpable. This is no luvvie hissy-fit, he clearly feels deeply wronged by the company. “They pulled the film after 11 days. It got all these great reviews and they didn’t use any of the good reviews, they ran deliberately bad quotes. One of the quotes from the LA Times was: ‘A small miracle of comic imagination’. That’s the quote you should use. The quotes they finally used were: ‘A funny novelty’; ‘A laugh-filled comedy’.”

Is it true that (Dreamworks supremo) Jeffrey Katzenberg told Levinson to cut the politics? “Yeah, definitely . . . We were supposed to be released on 800 screens. He said: ‘Cut the politics’, Barry said: ‘No’ and we were released on eight screens.”

 

-- The Irish Times, March 19, 2001 (“Wigs On the Green”).

One of the more remarkable aspects of this situation is that "An Everlasting Piece" is a comedy. Set in the war-torn city of Belfast, it is about two barbers, one a Catholic and the other a Protestant, who hope to corner the market on toupee sales. The story is set against the backdrop of 1980's political strife and involves the barbers in comedic situations with some of the armed protagonists of the northern Irish conflict, including the Irish Republican Army (the "IRA"), the British Army and its locally-recruited, militarized police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (the "RUC"). The screenplay from which the Picture is derived is loosely based on the real-life experiences of the screenwriter's family.

The picture, which originally was scheduled to be released in 800 movie theatres nationwide, instead was released by DreamWorks on only eight screens, where DreamWorks then quietly removed the film, to the point where it could not be seen by the public anywhere.

These actions were undertaken in stark contrast to the many favorable reviews received by the film, from leading reviewers in such major media outlets as The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun Times, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Rolling Stone, and The Washington Post, and despite the fact that the film was made by one of the world's leading directors.

In response to O'Connor's lawsuit, DreamWorks strenuously denied the allegations and moved to have the case dismissed without a trial. The United States District Judge presiding over the case in Los Angeles granted DreamWorks's motion, holding in essence that DreamWorks, as a matter of contract interpretation, had the right to dump the film for any reason, and he also rejected the fraud claims. Following the decision, the parties settled the case, agreeing to drop their claims against each other.