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Post by kijii on May 25, 2020 17:21:14 GMT
....which one entertained you the most? I've always been impressed with how many of Beatty's movie characters take themselves too seriously and end up looking like clowns in the process... I think, as an actor, this is one of Beatty's greatest legacies.. Has anyone ever done this serious clown stuff better? Maybe W.C. Fields..? Consider these characters: Bugsy Siegel in Bugsy (1991)  George in Shampoo (1975)  Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)  John Reed in Reds (1981).. a fool on a fool's errand...but doing it with so much conviction......  Jay Bulworth in Bulworth (1998)  Paolo di Leo as the young gigolo in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961)   Joe Pendleton in Heaven Can Wait (1978)  Dick Tracy in Dick Tracy (1990)...straight out of the comic strip.. with yellow coat and two-way wrist radio watch..  Nicky Stumpo in The Fortune (1975)  Step back and look at John McCabe in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971).  Don't you see a fool who is trying to do something seriously? Warren Beatty has given us something of a Rogues' gallery of fools.. I'll swear, he could come out of retirement and play a movie version of Donald Trump better than anyone I can imagine............ |
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Post by politicidal on May 26, 2020 0:32:59 GMT
Hadn't noticed that recurring element to his roles but it's amusing now you mentioned it. Though I wouldn't call Dick Tracy a fool;it's ironic that the comic-strip character is probably the most competent of the bunch listed here. But the one I enjoyed the most was probably his performance in Bulworth. I saw that movie last year and it aged pretty well.
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Post by rudeboy on May 26, 2020 0:46:56 GMT
McCabe and Mrs Miller would be my favourite - he is excellent in that - followed closely by Reds.
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Post by Doghouse6 on May 26, 2020 3:58:40 GMT
I’ve never been a big Beatty fan. He’s not much of an actor (in my opinion) though a great screen presence. Very handsome still. I like Shampoo most, maybe Splendor in the Grass second. Bonnie and Clyde is third. However, his greatest role: Dobie’s big brother. Please permit a correction: Beatty played arrogant Milton Armitage. Dobie's brother Davey was played by Dwayne Hickman's real-life older brother Darryl. 
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Post by Doghouse6 on May 26, 2020 4:16:54 GMT
Please permit a correction: Beatty played arrogant Milton Armitage. Dobie's brother Davey was played by Dwayne Hickman's real-life older brother Darryl. You are correct. Shoulda looked it up. 😊 Ah, well, just one of those things. Neither of them really became fixtures on the show. Beatty made only five appearances and Darryl three.
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Post by london777 on May 26, 2020 21:48:30 GMT
If true, a very original perception. Unfortunately I have not seen enough of his movies to verify. Not a favorite of mine.
I think you weaken your own case by using the word "clown". In none of the movies in which I have seen him could he be called a "clown", though "misguided" or "doomed to failure" possibly. Getting out of his depth does seem to be a recurrent theme.
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Post by jervistetch on May 27, 2020 0:45:13 GMT
He was really out of his depth in THE PARALLAX VIEW.  I love Warren Beatty. I enjoy any movie he’s in, including the stinkers. I think he may be slightly nightmarish to work with when he’s directing and editing. The post production of REDS was a never ending ordeal due to Warren. It’s detailed in Peter Biskind’s biography of Beatty. I recommend it. It’s a great read.  |
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Post by telegonus on May 27, 2020 9:50:16 GMT
If true, a very original perception. Unfortunately I have not seen enough of his movies to verify. Not a favorite of mine. I think you weaken your own case by using the word "clown". In none of the movies in which I have seen him could he be called a "clown", though "misguided" or "doomed to failure" possibly. Getting out of his depth does seem to be a recurrent theme. Yes, and a fair assessment of Warren Beatty's career in films, as an actor, not necessarily as a director. I very much like Reds, even love it, after a fashion. A beautifully realized motion picture, much in need of "rediscovery".
There are films of Beatty's that I find exasperatingly bad, and yet I think he did well by Bugsy. It's not the story of "the real Bugsy Siegel", however as Beatty's "take" on Siegel it's inspired; and I think that this is due to Beatty himself having been inspired when he made it.
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Post by Lebowskidoo 🦞 on May 27, 2020 12:53:16 GMT
I remember really liking him in Bugsy (1991).  For a guy nicknamed "Mister Hollywood" he sure has had a hard time squeezing out more than one or two movies a decade. Maybe he's selective or not interested. Either way, it doesn't seem to have hurt his legacy any.   |
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Post by petrolino on May 27, 2020 16:22:44 GMT
When I think of that group of well-known American actors that emerged at different times in the 1960s, I think contemporaries Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight were actors who all did a great job of capturing the countercultural shifts of the late 1960s / early 1970s, with their work more explicitly exploring governmental overreach as the 1970s progressed, and becoming increasingly more paranoid in the process. They were intelligent, driven, literary men who came from a strong literary standpoint. We now think of them all as being overtly political figures too - Nicholson's opened up more about this in recent years, but I believe it was always right there in his work - and Beatty was born and raised in an intensely political climate in Virginia, a state that seems to demand political thinking of its people. Beatty, Redford and Nicholson also became accomplished filmmakers in their own right.
Actors they could get behind like Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall were a few years older, though no less focused upon what was occurring in America during turbulent times. Beatty got caught in a strange kind of limbo as he'd starred for classicists like Elia Kazan, Robert Rossen, Richard Brooks, his friend and early mentor George Stevens, right from his initial entry point into the world of feature-length cinema. Yet, he also became a go-to guy for a new breed of filmmaker - Arthur Penn, John Frankenheimer, Jack Smight, Arthur Hiller, Mike Nichols, Robert Altman, Alan Pakula, Hal Ashby ... something that's said to have surprised (even enraged) some critics and observers, though not all.
I think Beatty might have stood completely alone if not for Redford. Marlon Brando and Paul Newman were significantly older, while Steve McQueen and James Dean had a good few years on Beatty and Redford too. Burt Reynolds was around the same age, but he was a unique cinematic personality. Nicholson was heavily active at Roger Corman's creative stable throughout the 1960s, but he was a b-movie stalwart for many years, rising up through the ranks of the independents and taking on any on-set job required of him. Hoffman made his mark on stage but was a later bloomer in cinematic terms, at least compared to the rapid ascents of Beatty and Redford. Voight gained major roles in independent features as well as major studio projects, but really solidified his position in the 1970s.
To this day, I do feel that Beatty and Redford retain a certain freshness when I see them. They look as good in quaint period pieces as they do in rural expeditions or contemporary urban nightmares. I saw Redford in Sydney Pollack's 'This Property Is Condemned' (1966) for the first time a couple of weeks back and I think it's a perfect example of what I'm trying to get at here; a film that feels decidedly out of step with earlier, more celebrated Tennessee Williams adaptations.
"At 37, Warren Beatty is in the enviable position of being able to have almost any role he desires, a position he underlines by his readiness to discuss the roles he has turned down, only to see them subsequently portrayed by Robert Redford. In 1967, he was written off as a has-been in a notorious Rex Reed piece for Esquire, only to have "Bonnie and Clyde" open before Reed's ink had dried.
That was a film he starred in, produced, helped to write, and defended from Jack Warner in a legendary scene during which he went down on his knees in the mogul's office. Warner's strategy for the picture, after the initial reviews were negative, was to dump it into a string of Texas drive-ins. It can now be seen as a watershed film, a film that dramatically separates the newer Hollywood of more personal, venturesome, original films from the moribund Hollywood of the earlier 1960s.
"Bonnie and Clyde" eventually had more playdates than any other film in Warner Bros. history, and now "Shampoo" seems about to set a similar record for Columbia. Both films had the uncanny ability to attract quite mixed audiences: those who came for the entertaining surfaces, and those moved by deeper levels of meaning. "Shampoo," for example, has been described in some quarters as a "riotous bedroom farce" and in others as "an indictment of American civilization."
- Roger Ebert, interviewing Warren Beatty in 1975
Judy Garland, Elizabeth Ashley, Robert Redford & Warren Beatty
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Post by taylorfirst1 on May 28, 2020 15:56:00 GMT
I've never been a big fan of his. The only movie that he stars in that I truly like is "Bonnie and Clyde".
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Post by fangirl1975 on May 28, 2020 19:22:58 GMT
Clyde Barrow in Bonnie & Clyde is my favorite Warren Beatty performance. That being said Dick Tracy is an all round fun flick.
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