SUBMITTED BY Timbo

December 15, 2003 — Newsweek profiles Vadim Perelman, the director of "House of Sand and Fog", who went from living in a tenement to directing a Hollywood feature that is receiving critical praise.

When Perelman was a boy, his father was killed in a car accident, and his family left Kiev for Rome. At 15, Perelman wound up a street kid. Later, he and his mother moved to Canada, and his mother remarried. Perelman fought with his strict stepfather, so he hit the streets again and started stealing. He was arrested and decided to get his life together, eventually becoming a successful commercial director. In 2000, he read Andre Dubus III's best seller, "House of Sand and Fog." He knew this was a film he had to make. Problem was, he had zero experience. He called Dubus anyway: "I told him my life story. I said, 'You're going to get all these people coming at you, but they will all have agendas. I have nothing to lose, and I will fight for this to the death'."

Before Perelman even had a script, he got a call from Miramax's Harvey Weinstein. For an unproved filmmaker, this is like getting a call from the Godfather. Perelman hoped that Weinstein would finance the film. "So I go to his suite at the Peninsula [hotel], and he's sitting there like Jabba the f--king Hutt with his Diet Cokes and his Marlboro Reds," Perelman says, laughing. "I'm not intimidated at all. He's like my f--king uncle."

Weinstein did want the film, but he wanted Todd Field ("In the Bedroom") to direct it. Perelman said no. "And Harvey's like, 'You're a tough customer, aren't you? I'll give you $500,000, a producer credit on the movie, and anything from the Miramax slate to direct'." (Miramax sources say Weinstein offered him only a few scripts.) Perelman read them, but couldn't let "Fog" go. (Weinstein later bought the film's U.K. distribution rights.)

Read the rest at the link below.