Warren Beatty: Dick Does Tinseltown

The casting of Tess Trueheart, Tracy's perennial sweetheart (and in the old strip, his wife) proved tougher than expected. In tried and true Hollywood fashion, Beatty interviewed just about every beautiful young actress in town, searching the glossy starlet crowd in vain for that innocent girl-next-door quality he felt Tess needed. One well-known blonde actress remembers, "Warren thought maybe I'd make a good Tess. He suggested that maybe I'd like to come by his house later. I told him that if I was cast, then maybe I'd come by his house later."

It was Sean Young who finally got the role. But after about a week of shooting, Young--no stranger to losing film parts-- became the film's first victim.

"Tess was a tough call," notes one film aide. "What Warren needed from Sean he couldn't get."

"The chemistry between them just wasn't right," says co-producer Jon Landau. Another observer remarked, "Sean was too hard for Tess--she just didn't have it. Nothing was happening between her and Dick--the sparks weren't flying."

Beatty and his team spent a long weekend watching scores of other videos before finally settling on Glenne Headly from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

The film's most coveted role was not Tess, but the pivotal part of bad girl Breathless Mahoney, a classic femme fatale who tries to bend the upright Tracy to her lowdown ways with such vintage vamp dialogue as, "You're lying--you want me the same way I want you." Some of the top names in the business--among them, Kathleen Turner, Kim Basinger, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Melanie Griffith--were considered, but from the moment that David Geffen sent Madonna to see Beatty about the part, she emerged as the front-runner.

Observers say that from the very first encounter, there were sparks--no small matter, when you consider that it's always been part and parcel of Beatty's movie modus operandi to have a highly visible romance with his female co-star. Besides that, insiders insist, compared with high-priced actresses like Turner, Madonna was willing to work cheap--when you take in $35 million a year, you don't need the money.

Apart from their immediate, simpatico understanding of one another's game--Beatty and Madonna are, after all, the sexual icons of their respective generations--the two stars shared a much stronger bond, a hotter draw than just lust: both badly needed a hit picture. Everyone in the business who had hired Madonna for a movie had hoped she'd bring her fans, the very kids that movies court, to theaters. Her following showed some interest in Desperately Seeking Susan, but three successive films thereafter--_Shanghai Surprise_, Who's That Girl?, and Bloodhounds of Broadway--had been flops.

For Beatty, the stakes were--are--even higher. After the commercial failure of Reds and the mega-disaster Ishtar, Beatty knew that many in the film business questioned his judgement. And not only that--he was a virtual unknown to today's kids, just some middle-aged guy Mom used to have the hots for. To remain a player in the Hollywood game he so dearly loves--to have carte blanche control over expensive personal projects--Beatty must deliver a big, popular, moneymaking smash. (Those close to Beatty say that he never intended to direct Tracy, but with so much at stake, he felt he couldn't possibly entrust this throw of the dice to someone else.)

So, though he actually prefers to work with women with whom he's had long-term relationships, Beatty decided to team up with Madonna. Their romance began almost immediately, an affair conducted in classic Beatty fashion, just within camera range of LA.'s hordes of paparazzi, and overnight the tabloids were filled with photos of Beatty and Madonna ducking into, or driving away from, this hot nightspot, that trendy restaurant. Some industry insiders wonder if, in fact, there was any real romance at all between the two, suggesting instead that these two media manipulators were just playacting a hot fling in order to generate reams of copy to help launch Dick Tracy.

Lending some credence to the possibility that their off-screen relationship was not just high-visibility publicity was the private surprise birthday party Madonna threw for Beatty at her house high above Sunset.

"I've never even known him to have a birthday before," says a friend who was invited. "He walked in the door with her and everyone was there: Jack and Dustin, Nick Roeg and Theresa Russell, all his pals--only Roman was missing. And he stayed and had a good time."

Whether their teaming is business, or pleasure, or both, Beatty had to pay a price to work with Madonna, for she's no handmaid worshipping at the feet of the master. Warren may be big guns in the movie world, but in the outside world, it's Madonna who's the real star.

"She's no weak sister," says a Beatty friend, of Madonna. "She's a street kid and she doesn't take any guff from him. Diane Keaton used to say, 'Warren, if you don't get off the phone, I'm leaving.' Madonna just yells, 'Get off the fucking phone,' and that's it. She gives him hell."

It was Al Pacino, not Beatty, who, observers say, was the only one prepared to stand up to Madonna. On one occasion Beatty was trying to get her out of her dressing room, but Madonna kept delaying, telling him, "I'm doing my makeup." Pacino was losing his cool, and when, half an hour later, she showed up in full makeup for the shooting of Pacino's close-ups--in which she wouldn't be seen at all--he had finally had enough. "Get me my agent on the phone," he reportedly yelled. "This woman's not a professional."

While Beatty felt that the casting of Tracy was crucial, production aides say that he was obsessed with his central notion--bringing a comic strip to the screen as never before-- and was determined to make the film's distinctive look the real star of the film. To pull this off, he hired an Oscar-winning triumvirate of the film industry's greatest talents: cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, costume designer Milena Canonero, and production designer Richard Sylbert. Together they agreed that creating the world of Dick Tracy on the real streets of Chicago would be an expensive nightmare. "Even if you could have afforded it, it would just have been The Untouchables with a guy in a yellow hat," notes co-producer Jon Landau.

A whole new world was required, "like no country you've ever seen before," explains designer Sylbert. "An artificial generic world shot against an artificial sky in bold, primary, comic book colors, with the cityscapes painted on mattes." Sylbert used only six basic colors to create Tracy's under-detailed world, where a car means "a car," not a Ford or a Mercury, where money is simply marked Dollar, and the newspaper is called The Daily Paper.

Except for recycling the old Hennessy Street set from Annie at Burbank and finding an old wooden warehouse and brick garage off the lot, the film was shot entirely on Universal sound stages. Insiders say that Sylbert's attempts to create innovative artifice actually managed to keep the costs down. "We shot the movie cheaper than we could have done five years ago," notes producer Barrie Osborne.

On the other hand, having to light the film so brightly caused unexpected headaches. Said a crew member, "Madonna lights like a dream but that kind of light is harsh on aging faces--and Tracy has to look perfect--unblemished."

Drexler and Caglione tried at first to give 53-year-old Beatty an artificial nose and jaw, to make him look like Gould's Tracy--but observers who saw those early tries say that with prosthetics Beatty wasn't Beatty; he looked like a Lebanese arms dealer. So that approach was deep-sixed fast in favor of shooting Beatty with side lighting and long lenses--the same techniques used on Streisand in the last few years.

Even with the tricks of lighting, however, there was Beatty's lifestyle to contend with. Beatty the director was, as usual, happy to work himself to death; but Beatty the actor couldn't afford to look puffy on screen. So, apart from the obligatory disco dates with Madonna, Beatty partied little during production, preferring to see friends on the set. Everyone who was anyone showed up to watch the Tracy shooting sooner or later--from Jack (Nicholson) to Jackie (Onassis).

Finally, the film finished shooting on June 23, 1989. But three months later, there was a new cloud on the horizon. In October, Floyd Mutrux and Art Linson filed suit against Beatty, claiming they're owed at least $500,000, plus on-screen credits as executive producers of Dick Tracy. Their deal, they say, also promises them 5 percent of the profits. Though Beatty, through his lawyer Bert Fields, reportedly responded no way, at press time, Mutrux and Linson were indeed receiving screen credit.

Meanwhile, Disney is preparing to merchandise the daylights out of Tracy, for the tie-ins seem infinite: everything from wrist-top video games to Pruneface masks. And if the picture is a hit there will be the inevitable sequel. Several of the major sets have been put aside, but Beatty has made it clear that his directing chores end with this one.

Sequels, merchandising, and all the rest depend, of course, on a monster hit which those most intimately connected with the picture swear it will be. Disney topper Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was Disney's main worrier on the film, reportedly told Beatty, "You guys have got a lot of nerve--but it works."

"Down the road from now in years to come," says co-producer Jon Landau, "people are going to be using the film as a yardstick for their own work. They'll be saying, 'It's a film like Dick Tracy.' It's going to be one big surprise."

But old-timers tend to be more cautious. Nothing is certain in Hollywood. Says designer Richard Sylbert, "We've let go of the trapeze on this one, we've abandoned cinema history, everything we've known before--and now we're stretching for the bar at the other end."

The drums are rolling, the spotlight is on and we won't know for sure until mid-June whether Beatty's Tracy has made it all the way to the other side of the Big Top.

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Ivor Davis is the West Coast correspondent for The Times of London, and has written for The New York Times and Los Angeles magazine.

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