Miramax/Weinstein Co. partygoers celebrate new beginnings Sept. 30 with the help of M1-5's open bar (Photo: STV)

The date October 3 has always occupied a special place in my heart as the day when Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard 'Round the World slayed the Brooklyn Dodgers and launched my beloved Giants into the 1951 World Series. But a more complex legend is crafting itself today downtown, where my other hero, Harvey Weinstein, has claimed Oct. 3 as the date he reclaimed his supremacy among the world's greatest independent producers.

Yes, indeed--The Weinstein Company is open for business. Harvey and brother Bob have turned on the lights and unloaded the moving van. When you call their phone number ([212] 941-3800--you might need it after enduring Scary Movie 4), a receptionist answers, "Weinstein Company." The Los Angeles Times sent a fruit basket in the form of a $50,000 advertisement congratulating the Weinsteins, and Liz Smith gets all creamy and elliptically atwitter in today's Post:

WALT WHITMAN WROTE "Now, Voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find," and this seems an appropriate sentiment for saluting the first official workday of the spanking-new Weinstein Company, founded by those titans of moviedom, Harvey and Bob.

When the brothers created Miramax back in 1979, they changed the movie industry with imported independents and imaginative productions -- Shakespeare in Love . . . My Left Foot . . . Good Will Hunting . . . The Crying Game . . . Chicago . . . and on and on. Over time, their films won 60 Oscars and 249 nominations.

The Miramax label now belongs to Disney. But the Weinstein brothers, who named that first company after mom and dad, have sailed bravely forth under their own monikers. Already on tap are Matador with Pierce Brosnan . . . Derailed with Jennifer Aniston and Clive Owen . . . Transamerica with the new Emmy-winner Felicity Huffman . . . Mrs. Henderson Presents with Dame Judi Dench . . . and Scary Movie 4 for the kids.

In Now Voyager the movie, Bette Davis says -- in a then-glamorous plume of cigarette smoke -- " . . . don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." Harvey and Bob are back in business and they want the moon!

I mean, now you know it is real. And at last Friday's Miramax going-away party at M1-5, one of Harvey's right-hand men told The Reeler: "Miramax was great, but the Weinstein Company is going to be even greater. That's my quote." So remember this day: no more fire sales, no more politics, no more excuses for The Brothers Grimm. October 3 has a new Shot Heard 'Round the World, and it came from Tribeca. Hooray!