“I wonder how much Harvey donated to the campaign to get this”: Hillary Clinton Played a Part in The Worst Oscar Campaign in History That Snubbed Steven Spielberg of a Sure Win

To this day, Shakespeare in Love winning the Best Picture Oscar over Saving Private Ryan remains the biggest and most humiliating snub in the Academy’s history. For the world out there, Steven Spielberg was destined for the most surefire and deserved Oscar win of the decade. At Miramax, however, Harvey Weinstein was playing fast and loose with his campaign to grab the Oscar away from right under Spielberg’s nose.

Saving Private Ryan was considered a masterclass in the on-screen depiction of war in all its brutality. Steven Spielberg’s film contained an element of such devastating realism that it became an instant classic and set a standard for all movies to come. What was widely accepted as the legendary filmmaker’s assured magnum opus instead became a precautionary tale about Harvey Weinstein, his dirty politics, and the fate of those who went up against him.

Saving Private Ryan Befalls an Oscar-Worthy Tragedy

On the night of March 21, 1999, the ground fell out from under Steven Spielberg’s feet at the 71st Academy Awards. A long and dirty Oscar campaign led by the ferociously hungry Harvey Weinstein guaranteed a win for his 1998 film Shakespeare in Love which paled in comparison to Saving Private Ryan.

According to Peggy Siegal, an independent publicist at the time, Weinstein convinced everybody that “the greatest thing in the world was to win an Oscar. To win an Oscar would put you in the cinematic history books of our country. If you win an Oscar, you are part of American history, and it doesn’t get better than that. The American Nobel Peace Prize is the Oscar.”

As such, to serve his interests, Weinstein set up a campaign that witnessed the nastiest crusade to win the prestigious award. A key donor in Clinton’s Presidential campaign, he arranged for First Lady Hillary Clinton to host the world premiere of Shakespeare in Love. This in turn struck a chord among the opposition. Terry Press, DreamWorks Marketing Chief and a close friend of Steven Spielberg quipped: “I wonder how much Harvey donated to the campaign to get this. This didn’t come for free.” [The Hollywood Reporter]

Harvey Weinstein went on to skirt around a lot of the Academy’s established bans, including wining and dining the Oscar voters, setting up a personalized team of publicists who were also Academy members, targeting audiences at the local Starbucks and in the international markets, and organizing screenings at every venue containing Academy members (including the motion picture retirement home on Mulholland Drive).

Meanwhile, trade papers and magazines like Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, L.A. Times, and The New York Times ran ads paid by Harvey Weinstein to promote Shakespeare in Love. By the end of the Oscar campaign, Gwyneth Paltrow’s face was everywhere. And Saving Private Ryan fell victim to the age-old trick of not marketing itself enough to compel the Academy voters.

Steven Spielberg vs. Harvey Weinstein: Oscars 1999

According to Mark Gill, former Miramax L.A. President, Harvey Weinstein wanted the prestige of being an Oscar-winning producer in Hollywood. Gill revealed during a 2019 interview with The Hollywood Reporter:

There was the desire to win for the company. But he also would say to people from time to time, me included, that he wanted to be one of the great moguls, and that he had to win an Academy Award — personally — to be one of those.

Weinstein always had bigger plans in store for himself and the 1998 film was the stepping stone that would take him to the upper echelons of the cinematic society. His expenses behind the Oscar campaign and his team of publicists even frayed the press. Calls began flooding in, to warn DreamWorks’ marketing chief Terry Press about the behind-the-scenes power grappling:

They’re trying to get us to write stories saying that the only thing amazing about Ryan is the first 20 minutes, and then after that it’s just a regular genre movie.

Recognizing what he was up to, Press (who in David Geffen’s own words, “never hesitated to speak truth to power,”) ran to the director with the information and warned him: “Just so you know, this is getting ugly.”

Steven said to me — I’ll never forget this — “No matter what, I do not want you to get down in the mud with Harvey Weinstein.” That was the exact quote. I said, “Are you sure?” And he said, “I don’t want any negative campaigning.” I said, “OK.”

A few months later, Spielberg realized his mistake. Undermining Harvey Weinstein was not something one got away with unscathed. Soon after the Best Picture announcement, Press ran out of the Academy, fuming “This will never happen again” to Weinstein’s face after he smugly showed up to congratulate Steven Spielberg on his Best Director win. Still burning from the unfairness of it all, she told Jeffrey Katzenberg [DreamWorks co-chief], “I will never take the high road with these people again. The next time, you’ll find me in the mud.”

Spielberg, meanwhile, was devastated. His win was so assured that the Academy even arranged to bring out Harrison Ford, his close friend and collaborator since the days of Indiana Jones to announce the Best Picture winner. The look on Ford’s stricken face, after he opened the envelope, defined the betrayal that every fan has felt since that fateful night. Terry Press later admitted, “Steven was no longer naive about what Harvey was capable of.”

Shakespeare in Love and Saving Private Ryan are available to stream on Max and Paramount+ respectively.