Wax of Miramax

Appellate lawyers often deal with a lot of unearned animosity, says Gary Wax.

“We get a case that’s been contentiously litigated for years, and the lawyers on both sides hate each other’s guts,” says Wax, of Greines, Martin, Stein & Richland in Los Angeles. “I had one of those recently where I contacted opposing counsel—I had never spoken to him before—but because he was so worked up about the last seven years, he immediately started calling me a crook.”

How does Wax handle it? “I follow the phrase, ‘Kill them with kindness,’” he says. “I’m so nice, so opposite what they’re used to, they start to disarm themselves and maybe talk to me like a human being.”

Wax knows a thing or two about dealing with irascible types. From 1999 to 2005, he worked at Miramax for an infamous boss. “Without naming the man, I witnessed him throwing things; I witnessed him telling his employees to replace themselves when he didn’t like what they told him,” he says. “I guess it helped prepare me for dealing with thorny opposing counsel.”

His experiences at Miramax didn’t curtail Wax’s love of cinema. His firm website profile includes his top five legal movies (see sidebar) and an open invitation to “ask him about the rest of his top 500 film rankings. He keeps a list.” 

“It’s currently at 558,” he says. 

That 558th film, Evil Dead II, is not the bottom of the barrel, he’s quick to point out, but his 558th favorite. “If it made it to this list, I think it’s a great movie.”

Movie watching began for Wax at the Edens Theater near his hometown of Deerfield, Illinois. “My mother was a big movie lover, and so a big part of my childhood was going to see movies and then renting movies. We definitely were one of the first people that had a VCR. Her love of movies rubbed off on me.”

Wax took that love to NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where classmates included future directors Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, World War Z) and Todd Phillips (The Hangover, Joker). Wax then moved to LA, couldn’t sell his scripts, and fell into a career doing independent film acquisitions for distributors. “I worked at a couple of smaller distributors as an assistant and then as a coordinator—helping identify movies that were financed independently and were looking for distribution. I started going to film festivals: Sundance, Toronto.”

At one company he searched for foreign films to distribute in America; at another, for American independents to sell abroad. But if a film in the festival was really good, he knew, the filmmakers always wanted to talk to Miramax. So when he heard there was an opening at the Harvey and Bob Weinstein-run company, he jumped. “I knew I would have a better chance of discovering more first-run movies that people really wanted to see.”

And he did: City of God, In the Bedroom, Garden State, The Station Agent, all of which he helped distribute, were huge indie hits. One of his favorite acquisitions was Samsara, a 2001 multinational film about how matters of sex and loyalty interfere with a Buddhist monk’s search for enlightenment.

All the while, unknowingly, Wax was honing skills he would use as an appellate lawyer. “When I would watch movies, I would always look for a hook,” he says. “‘What’s the hook that we can market? What’s going to get people into their seats?’”

It was Wax’s job to sell the finished project as best he could. The same is true in appellate law. “The facts are set. You have to read the entire factual record and figure out how to tell the best story that’s going to hold the audience’s attention,” he says. “There’s nothing I can do to change what happened. It’s just: How do I mold those facts into an interesting story?”

So how did he wind up in law? “Miramax imploded,” he says. “They laid off a bunch of people and I was one of them.”

In the aftermath, he had two epiphanies: He was getting tired of the volatility of the film industry, and his film acquisition bosses were always lawyers. So, mid-to-late 30s, he went to law school.

As for appellate law? “I got super lucky,” he says. “My love of writing and narrative—what made me want to write screenplays—was something that I could use writing appellate briefs. I never really saw myself as a person who wanted to get in front of juries and do cross-examinations; writing was always my thing. Once I realized that’s what appellate law was, I fell in love with it.”

A case that stands out for him is Garcia v. Holt. “A tenant was renting a house while manufacturing the largest collection of homemade explosives ever discovered in the United States,” he says. “At some point, a gardener, whom the landlord had hired to maintain the property, was doing his work, and there was so much explosive material poured around that he somehow triggered an explosion that completely maimed him. His family sued the landlord.”

Wax represented the landlord. “The case came down to: ‘What duty does a landlord have to discover what illegal things their tenants are doing?’” he asks. “The theory that the other side raised was it was a month-to-month lease; and so there’s this moment at the end of every month when a landlord has a duty to go and inquire what’s going on in the tenant’s place. Our argument was: Just because it’s a month-to-month tenancy doesn’t mean that the landlord suddenly has a duty, or even a right, to go in and start asking questions. Tenants are allowed to live in privacy. We won that appeal.”

Has Wax seen a good representation of his own career on the big screen? Not when it comes to appellate lawyers, certainly. “We’re just a bunch of nerds who sit there, looking at the computer screen, researching and writing,” he says. “It’s the least sexy thing to show.”

The most realistic movie about the law, he feels, doesn’t even contain lawyers: 12 Angry Men. But unrealistic representations are all over the place. “I’ve been watching Suits, and it’s a fun show, but every time I watch an episode, I’m thinking, ‘Yeah, that would never happen.’”

Wax still looks fondly on his Miramax years, particularly since it’s where he met his wife. “She was working in the music department,” he says. “We barely said five words to each other, but years later I ran into her when we were both at lunch meetings. I approached her table and asked her out. The rest is history. We have two boys, aged 14 and 12.”

Wax’s Top 10 films:

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
2. The Blues Brothers (1980)*
3. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
4. The Godfather (1972)
5. Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)
6. Raising Arizona (1987)
7. Goodfellas (1990)
8. Young Frankenstein (1974)
9. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
10. Breaking Away (1979)

* “People always laugh at me when I give The Blues Brothers as the second best,” Wax says. “But it has everything: action, comedy, great music. There are very few movies that have all those elements together.”

Wax’s Top 5 legal films:

1. 12 Angry Men (1957)
2. A Few Good Men (1992)*
3. The Verdict (1982)
4. True Believer (1989)
5. Primal Fear (1996)

* “Even though I really enjoy A Few Good Men, there are just a lot of unbelievable scenes. It’s all so over-the-top and performative.”