Julia Stiles loved the Down To You script, but really wasn’t fond of the finished product.
The actor appeared on the Films To Be Buried With podcast on Wednesday, and said the 2000 rom-com “was executed very poorly”.
She didn’t hold writer-director Kris Isacsson responsible, however, but blamed Harvey Weinstein’s creative control for ruining it.
“It was a time when teen rom-coms were really popular, and the director wrote the script,” Julia said on the podcast. “He was a first-time director and he was a very, very intelligent, capable guy. The script was very good. And then Harvey Weinstein got his hands on it.”
Weinstein is currently being held at Rikers Island, awaiting an April retrial on rape charges after his 2020 conviction in New York was overturned. He is still serving time for rape from a Los Angeles case.
Julia recalled the then-powerful head of Miramax studios nabbing the film’s distribution rights. She said on the podcast that “because of the success of Save The Last Dance, or the success of 10 Things I Hate About You, with me dancing on the pool table, he needed to have me dancing in the film.”
Down To You ultimately included a moment in which Julia’s character dances around a room — and across a pool table — to Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together.
“I felt so slimy doing it the whole time,” Julia admitted on the podcast. “It was annoying.”
She recalled: “I was like, ‘Well, this is so cheap, and it’s not adding to the story.’”
The film was ruthlessly panned by critics. One reviewer in particular blamed “all sorts of hokey moments”.
Weinstein’s infamous penchant for micromanaging movies once earned him the nickname “Harvey Scissorhands” and left more than a few filmmakers unhappy.
Among them are Guillermo del Toro, who publicly disowned his first major studio film Mimic (1997) after seeing the finished product, and James Gray, whose 2000 crime-drama The Yards was reportedly buried by Weinsten after the mogul demanded new ending.