Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 15, 1990 TAG: 9006150121
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
However, "If you want to say that I stood on this coffee table and pulled my pants down, there is no way that I can prove that this did not occur," says the producer, director and star of the mega-hyped "Dick Tracy," opening today across the nation, including Tanglewood Mall Cinema in Roanoke, Plaza Cinema in Radford and New River Valley Movies in Christiansburg.
"In fact," Beatty continued, "if I go to court and try to prove it didn't occur, I will bring attention to that falsity, and 50 percent of the people will think it did, and 50 percent will think it didn't. And there's no end to it."
So what does this have to do with "Dick Tracy?" Not much. But, as faithful checkout-line browsers know, it has plenty to do with the 53-year-old screen idol's tabloid-touted friendship with pop music phenomenon and "Dick Tracy" co-star Madonna.
"Absolutely," he says. "Absolutely. Absolutely. The irony of it is that even in all of this [media] drivel about unimportant things, like me and Madonna, even that information is inaccurate. I don't think anyone realizes how much is made up."
"Please print this," he adds. "I never say anything about personal relationships that I have. If you read something that I have said, it's not true. I don't talk about personal relationships, male or female. I don't talk publicly about private things."
He hasn't talked publicly, period, for the past 13 years - even with the release of his 1981 drama "Reds," which earned him the Academy Award for best director.
"I felt that an actor shooting his mouth is taking up too much space and attention," he said.
So why the change of heart now?
"I realized that if we are societal animals, we can't really responsibly remain above this exchange of information," he said. "So now I talk, knowing that in this communications mayhem I will be taken out of context and misquoted and made to look foolish. But what the hell."
In the course of a 45-minute interview, the star of "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Heaven Can Wait" does talk, despite a reputation for being difficult. No, he doesn't refuse to answer questions. No, he doesn't take forever to respond. But his conversation is full of pauses and digressions.
Leaning amiably forward, legs spread wide, he's a little like an enthusiastic friend who gets so caught up in what he's trying to say that it comes out in pieces, phrase by phrase.
He talks about John Reed, the leftist hero of "Reds." About the under-appreciated genius of Jimmy Carter. About the technological abuses of the media, which he calls "a communications-technological crisis." And, occasionally, he even talks about his gangbusters new film.
"My interest in comic strips existed when I was a kid," he said. "I was interested in the simplicity of it, the color of it, the primary colors as I remember them. The primary emotions. The primary concepts of good and evil. For me, the picture's fun because it has its own world, and it's a world as I saw it as a 5-, 6-, 7- year-old. . . . It's simple and silly."
Beatty was born in Richmond, Va., March 30, 1937. Cartoonist Chester Gould's hard-boiled law officer began his crime-busting career as "Plainclothes Tracy" in the comics section of the Sunday Detroit Mirror Oct. 4, 1931.
Like most boys his age, Beatty grew up with the crime-fighter in the yellow fedora and color-coordinated trench coat. The heyday of the detective with the razor-sharp profile under a snap-brim hat came during the years Beatty was a kid in Arlington. The villains Mumbles (played in the film by Dustin Hoffman), Big Boy (Al Pacino), Spuds Spaldoni (James Caan), 88 Keys (Mandy Patinkin) and Breathless Mahoney (Madonna) battled Tracy in the years before and shortly after Beatty was born.
"By the time I reached puberty, I had learned how not to enjoy primary colors," Beatty continued. "My fascination with twinkling stars and full moons decreased as I attempted to get wise."
So in a way, the creation of "Dick Tracy" was a process of unlearning some of the more restrictive adult techniques Beatty - and his crew - had finessed in previous films.
"I always considered, as a director, the primary objective was to get out of the way of the substance," he said. "But I really wouldn't call the story of Dick Tracy a tremendously substantial story."
In other words, what we have here is a stylistic bonanza.
Production designer Richard Sylbert was allowed to paint his sets a vibrant palette of primary colors, and light them with the melodramatic artificiality of German Expressionism. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro got to shoot self-consciously arty camera angles and close-ups. And makeup designers John Caglione Jr. and Doug Drexler partly disguised the heavy-hitting cast behind witty prosthetics that recall the eerie look of Chester Gould's underworld villains.
Refreshingly, he doesn't try to defend his comic-book film as a piece of great intellectual art. "I think most of us enjoy fast food," he said by way of analogy. "We know it's not really that good for us but it's not that bad for us. . . . We like to know where the pickle is and if the right kind of lettuce is there, and if they're using the kind of cheese we like."
Some of the information in this story came from The Hartford Courant.
by CNB