Lardass is off by a whole-ass decade, Miramax got big in the '80s on the back of about a half-dozen indie movies that ended up being huge commercial successes. Then it was bought out by Disney in '93 and used as a label for movies deemed too edgy for Touchstone. Weinstein Company was as far from indie as it gets, they just did small-budget productions and award bait. Dipshit Bob's too high on the dew chicken to remember there's a difference between budget allocation and mainstream-versus-indie production values and distribution models.
yeah, and that is the point that Robert missed with his stupid tweet. His intention was to dismiss Weinstein as part of the hollywood culture, and place him in the indie scene, as if saying that a lot of the problematic people gaming might have also come from the indie scene, like the dude that killed himself because of Zoe Quinn.
But what the fatass isn't saying is that Miramax was never part of the trully indie system except for the early 80's. When money started to roll in under the sucess of stuff like Sex, lies and VideoTapes, they caught the mouse eye and were bought by disney for over 60 million, a crazy fortune for the time. So, a bunch of their "Sundance Darlings", like Goood Will Hunting, were made under big Hollywood money.
The difference s that Miramax kept things on the downlow production wise, they never escalated over blockbuster levels, and used a good chunk of their budget to sell the fuck out of the movies. Once the Weinsteins got the reputaion of "Oscars-makers", they could get cast over big Hollywood names without the big check that usually follows them. Heck, the big names were practically doing the Miramax flicks for free for a chance to get that stupid statue.
So no, Miramax, at least in the bulk of it's major sucesses, was never "indie". Sure, they had auteurs directors, and smaller budgets, but the influence system and who was holding the real money? yeah, that was very much hollywood like, and it was the very same system that enabled Weinstein to gorge himself over naive good looking girls like he did, and the reason on why everybody else looked away.
Being Indie, mean you are independent, separated, that you don't have any clout. You can use the "i can make you a star" line if you are part of the very system that makes or breaks "stars". You won't see the guys who made "Turbo Kid" getting any pussy using that line, that's for sure.