Fast Company is reporting, in a reed-thin update to their obit for Miramax, that the Weinstein Co. is laying off 30 people today. We're trying to confirm, but people familiar with the firm say insiders were bracing for another round.

If true, it's ironic to say the least that the Weinsteins are unleashing yet another round of what seem like perennial mass layoffs on the day after Disney shuttered Miramax, the company they founded in 1979 and sold off. The Weinstein Company, which is suffering under the colossal failure of Nine and the limited upside they're getting from Inglourious Basterds' success, was granted a reprieve by creditors last month, largely because the company insuring the debt that the brothers founded the company with is barely solvent itself, so what's the point of calling it in?

People close to the company say that, given the fact that a lot of contracts likely expired on December 31, the 30 figure probably includes people who simply didn't renew in addition to staffers who were actually fired. Weinstein is said to have a little over 100 employees.

Given the fact that Harvey Weinstein is at the mercy of his creditors, who have urged him with some success to cut costs and bail out of the company's ill-considered ancillary businesses like book publishing and luxury Facebooks, we expect that he won't work very hard to keep layoffs quiet. He's more concerned with impressing the people he owes money to than his (largely destroyed) reputation at this point.

Fast Company is reporting, in a reed-thin update to their obit for Miramax, that the Weinstein Co. is laying off 30 people today. We're trying to confirm, but people familiar with the firm say insiders were bracing for another round.

If true, it's ironic to say the least that the Weinsteins are unleashing yet another round of what seem like perennial mass layoffs on the day after Disney shuttered Miramax, the company they founded in 1979 and sold off. The Weinstein Company, which is suffering under the colossal failure of Nine and the limited upside they're getting from Inglourious Basterds' success, was granted a reprieve by creditors last month, largely because the company insuring the debt that the brothers founded the company with is barely solvent itself, so what's the point of calling it in?

People close to the company say that, given the fact that a lot of contracts likely expired on December 31, the 30 figure probably includes people who simply didn't renew in addition to staffers who were actually fired. Weinstein is said to have a little over 100 employees.

Given the fact that Harvey Weinstein is at the mercy of his creditors, who have urged him with some success to cut costs and bail out of the company's ill-considered ancillary businesses like book publishing and luxury Facebooks, we expect that he won't work very hard to keep layoffs quiet. He's more concerned with impressing the people he owes money to than his (largely destroyed) reputation at this point.

Years ago, publishers occasionally read—and published!—unsolicited manuscripts. Also sometimes poor immigrants became wildly successful thanks to their tireless work ethics. And America won wars! Not anymore.

The death of the slush pile means Anne Frank would never get published, these days, except that she still totally would, come on. Maybe not so much Mary Cahill or Philip Roth. But because of the internet and trial lawyers (everything can and must be blamed on the internet and trial lawyers) neither publishers nor producers accept anything that doesn't come from an agent, anymore. Oh, wait, this is also thanks to terrorism:

[Simon & Schuster] spokesman Adam Rothberg says the death of the publisher's slush pile accelerated after the terror attacks of 9/11 by fear of anthrax in the mail room.

So write a blog, instead! (Or get an agent. It is not that hard, lots of total idiots manage it.)

Anyway there is a lot of talk about how the internet is "democratizing" everything but of course every success story reported is a matter of actually having important connections (and luck). (It also helps, as always, to be independently wealthy.) Here is some really great advice from a "literary agent" and "screenwriting instructor":

...anyone can teach a three-act structure. What I want students to get in the mind set of is 'How do we write something with the purpose of monetizing it?'"

Maybe anyone can teach a three-act structure! But judging by the quality of mainstream screenwriting these days, most of which manages to be both formulaic and poorly constructed, no one actually is?

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Did you write a movie for Weinstein Co., and would you like a Writers Guild of America award for doing so? Too bad: Weinstein's not sending WGA members any screeners. Sorry, Nine, Inglorious Basterds, The Road, and A Single Man.

Last year neither Rachel Getting Married nor Synecdoche, New York were nominated, and some suspected it was because Weinstein Co. Sony (whoops!) didn't send out screeners. Because: "Over the past few years, it's been near-impossible to score a WGA nomination without sending its membership a screener, and last year, nine of the ten nominees had played the game."

Page Six spotted Bob and Harvey Weinstein saying tearful goodbyes to 30 laid-off Weinstein Co. employees at a TriBeCa steakhouse recently. So goes the Weinstein Empire's slow, painful collapse.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the latest round of layoffs brings the company's total payroll down to 70 or 80. Just for perspective, Nikki Finke reported that they had 224 staffers in November 2008. How many more tear-filled dinners can they stand before they go from the Weinstein Co. to just the Weinsteins?