..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

March 13, 2003

Andrew Goldberg of The Smoking Gun.com tells MCN that the unsealing of the Samantha Geimer Grand Jury transcript was not the work of Miramax or any mysterious Oscar-related envoy, but the work of Conde Nast, in response to a legal threat by Roman Polanski over a few sentences of a Vanity Fair story in the September 2002 issue.

Goldberg asks, "How many people do you think were even aware that minutes from grand jury testimony taken in 1977 were unsealed in 2002?"

He already answered that question. Conde Nast, the publisher of Vanity Fair, best known to the the world as the Oscar party maker, and The New Yorker, a smart, serious newsier magazine that ran a somewhat damning profile of Harvey Weinstein earlier this year, knew about the transcript.

And so comes the question, why hasn't this information been published before? And why has it appeared in the final weeks of an Oscar campaign?

The blur of modern media alliances allows for all kinds of conspiracy theories. Appearances by Miramax Oscar nominees and winners will be critical to media coverage of the Vanity Fair party. Likewise, cover opportunities with such Miramax talent as Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jude Law, Uma Thurman, Richard Gere, Johnny Depp, Robert Redford, Gwyneth Paltrow and Juliette Binoche, among others, are subject to the whims of comfortable or strained relations. There are even rumors, which are really rumors, about how Ken Auletta got access to Harvey Weinstein for that New Yorker profile.

Conde Nast officials have not returned phone calls about the unsealing. The Smoking Gun's Mr. Goldberg points out, "We obtain documents the same way we have for the past six years, through court files and through sources. We have never spoken to, seen, or had any contact with anyone at Miramax. Plain and simple, we got this document from a court file."

Movie City News is not questioning the integrity of The Smoking Gun.com site or its operators. However, as any journalist knows, when there are sources, there are always motives - whether the simple thrill of celebrity, personal interest or professional manipulation. No one can argue with the legitimacy of the choice of The Smoking Gun to run these transcripts whenever they were found.

In a Thursday story in the NY Post, Miramax's Amanda Lundberg said, "People suggesting smear campaigns are conducting the worst kind of smear campaign themselves. Most people talk about this with very little knowledge of what is actually going on."

Perhaps there have never been smear campaigns. Perhaps no one has ever operated outside of the spirit of the Academy Awards. Perhaps that thing that sounds like a duck and walks like a duck is just a short man with hemorrhoids. Or, perhaps, it is a duck.

MCN Perspective
Smoking Gun's Introduction
Transcript Pages 1-18
Transcript Pages 19-36