Entertainment Weekly's recent article on The Reader's Oscar chances featured a funny/sad quote by Harvey Weinstein, in which he compared himself to Billy the Kid. It's been a popular quote! Because it's very silly.

When asked if he was responsible for the anti-Slumdog Millionaire backlash, the "indie" movie exec haughtily replied: ''What can I say? When you're Billy the Kid and people around you die of natural causes, everyone thinks you shot them.''

It's a classic non-denial denial. Harvey needs nothing more than to preserve his reputation as the master of the dark art of Award Campaigns. But, just as the old trick of nabbing tiny festival films on the cheap and then touting them into mainstream hits became a crowded business, so has the business of winning awards by pushing damaging information.

It's kind of sad because ol' Harv still seems to fancy himself some kind of powerful renegade who can roll through town any day he likes, taking any Oscar he wants. Which was sort of true back in the heady days of The English Patient or even Pulp Fiction. But now Weinstein's dream machine has slowed to a near crawl, and The Reader received something of a lifesaver, pity nod (doesn't hurt that it's about the Holocaust either). And Harvey knows it, so he's been forced to puff himself up to scare would-be attackers. Only it doesn't really work—it just makes him look smaller. See Billy the Kid got to live fast and die young. Weinstein has to go about getting older and softer. And that's hard.