Big Tex Weinstein

Here’s some Hollywood meets the Ad Jungle grist for the rumor mill.

Yesterday, while working on a radio production at Reel F/X, we noticed that something odd was afoot.

Reel F/X, the postproduction/animation studio that slaved away on one of my team’s yet-to-be-released-for-air Gatorade spots, is located in Dallas’ Deep Ellum district.

Deep Ellum is a funky, dirty, bar and restaurant district that fairly well represents what is left of Dallas’ seamy underbelly. So, after pulling into the Reel F/X parking lot in Matilda, I was a little surprised to see two shiny, black limos idling in the drop-off zone.

Entering the building, I encountered a guy talking excitedly into his cell phone– not an unusual sight, but what made him interesting was the pile of Neiman Marcus bags at his feet. Like the limos, this was just a wee bit out of place in Deep Ellum.

Heading to the recording studio, I bumped into one of their producers and asked what was going on with all of the out of place characters.

It turns out Harvey Weinstein was there for a meeting, and not only was it a big enough meeting to require a couple of limos, he flew in an advance team from his company the day before.

What were the specifics behind what he doing there? I didn’t ask– and I’m sure I wouldn’t have been told had I done so (hell– I wouldn’t have told me if I were in their shoes), but it doesn’t take much imagination to start guessing.

I began working with Reel F/X in 1995 or so when the founder, Dale Carmen, would help me out with motion tracking and camera stabilization postproduction work. Over the years, he’s managed to grow and expand the business and Reel F/X now employs a few hundred people in their animation pits in Texas, California and Florida. Reel F/X has also recently begun to create their own branded content through their new production studio, Exclaim Entertainment. Exclaim’s first big production is Boz the Bear, an education and morals effort akin to Barney, only furry, green and Christian.

Knowing that the Weinstein Brothers have produced animated features in the past (and have a few currently in the pipeline) and knowing the type of content Reel F/X produces and assists on, astute readers probably won’t have to go very far out on a limb in connecting the dots.

Of course, with all the Neiman Marcus bags, he could have just been here for the chocolate truffles.

UPDATE: A couple of interesting notes; specifically, a couple of interesting investors in the Weinstein’s new company. It turns out, not only is WPP an investor in the company, but so is Mark Cuban. Cuban founded Broadcast.com here in Dallas and later sold it to Yahoo! for somewhere north of a cajillion dollars. Broadcast.com’s headquarters, that later became Yahoo!’s headquarters, was sold to Reel F/X when Yahoo! consolidated operations back in California.

RespondEmail Article Friday, March 31st, 2006 at 02:09pm Mack Simpson

Entry Filed under: Ad Monkeys, Monkey Town       |       add this post to del.icio.us