Product Description

Persistent. Lucky. Sly. Audacious. Jerry Weintraub has been called a lot of things as one of Hollywood’s longest-working producers and most powerful talent managers. Though he will use any means to get to the top of the game, he’s experienced both its highs and lows during an enviable five-decade career. In this star-studded, feature-length documentary, the man himself spins compelling yarns of his life, loves, and livelihood. Nothing can stop Jerry Weintraub until he gets His Way.

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Talk about Hollywood dish. His Way is one of those rare documentaries about the behind-the-scenes machinations of Tinseltown--warts, egos, and all. His Way, which premiered originally on HBO, profiles the legendary film producer Jerry Weintraub, who has been a producer for so long (since the 1970s) that he has started to remake his earlier films (The Karate Kid, Oh, God!). Weintraub's story is a fascinating one, because his career is considered a shining example of how to be a successful Hollywood player. Yet a good portion of Weintraub's films over the years (Cruising, All Night Long, the third Karate Kid) have been critical and commercial flops. (And he also is responsible for a lot of successes, too, from small gems like Diner and Nashville to the megahits of the George Clooney Ocean's films.) Yet at a certain level in Hollywood, as His Way clearly demonstrates, there's no such thing as failure, and Weintraub is portrayed as a man whose connections and networking have allowed him to become--and continue to be--one of the heaviest hitters in Hollywood.

His Way seems to have been filmed alongside Ocean's Thirteen, because there are entertaining (and potty-mouthed) tributes from several of that film's stars, including Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, and Don Cheadle. Weintraub himself has excellent dish about some of the people he worked with early on in his career, such as John Denver (the original Oh, God!), Robert Altman (Nashville), and Frank Sinatra. And the viewer also gets to bask in Weintraub's reflected glory, in his magnificent pad overlooking the lights of Los Angeles, with his too-tan face and slightly too-tight smile beaming over the whole lot. And why not? Weintraub worked his way, hard, to the top of Hollywood, and His Way shows how it's highly unlikely he would ever need to consider stepping down. A must for film fans. --A.T. Hurley