Former head of studio Miramax, and now co-head of The Weinstein Company with his brother, Bob, Harvey Weinstein was the talk of The Toronto Film Festival last night at the premiere of his new film Butter - and he wasn’t even there.
The film stars Jennifer Garner as an ultra-conservative housewife who strongly resembles controversial U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (the one who's extremely camp-sounding husband alledgedy has a clinic where he "fixes" gay people). Naturally, Bachmann heard about the film and wasn't too happy. Weinstein spewed (via actress Olivia Wilde who appears in the film) "In 20 years of coming to the Toronto Film Festival, I've never released a statement for a film. But I would like to take this moment to formally invite Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota and Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann to co-host with me the big premiere of Butter in Iowa in a few months from now. I know Michele will already be in Iowa for the caucus, so we can save some money on airfare and travel. I would, of course, be more than happy to fly in the other leading members of the Tea Party movement to make an entire day of it. We could take some math classes in the morning to help balance the budget, brush up on the Constitution in the afternoon, play some ping-pong, and then maybe some verbal ping-pong on gay rights and women's rights (especially the right to choose). But at night we can all go hand-in-hand to the premiere of Butter, a fun and important film where we'll share some popcorn and laughs. These are the kind of bipartisan effort that makes America great. I look forward to hearing from Michele, and I'm particularly looking forward to those classes on the Constitution. All my best, Harvey."
That's pretty funny. Harvey is lucky he's safe in Hollywood where the tea-party fanatics are few and far between. We await Shelly's response.