Star_How Warren Beatty Seduced America

by Peter Biskind

  Younger had to make the train to Philadelphia, where he lived. The next night, about 1:30 in the morning, his phone rang. It was Beatty. Younger recalls that he was in “panic mode.”

  “Robert, you have to do me a favor.”

  “What is it?”

  “Robert, Robert, Robert, did we ever talk about money? When I had you look at those proofs? Did we?”

  “No, Warren, actually we didn’t. No.”

  “So get on the phone with Diane and get the bitch off my back. She’s killing me. I’ve got too much to do, she’s losing her mind. Just tell her that we had no money discussions whatsoever. You live in Philadelphia, get her out of town. Invite her to a swap meet or something.”

  “I don’t want to invite her to a swap meet.”

  “She’s acting like a big baby. She was awful on the set, bitching and moaning. She wouldn’t speak to me. She cried all the time. I couldn’t talk to the actors, I couldn’t focus on my performance. She always feels slighted. She gets pouty, loves to go stalking off. She’s a pain in the ass, mainly.”

  “This is between you and her. I don’t feel comfortable calling Diane. Besides, it’s two in the morning, she doesn’t take calls after eleven o’clock.”

  “She’s there and she’s up, I just talked to her. Tell her to back off.”

  Younger called Keaton, who did pick up, and unleashed another fusillade in her proxy war with Beatty.

  “You deserve to do that poster, he’s really a shit. He can’t get away with this kind of thing.”

  “Di, that’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s over. Let it go.”

  “I won’t let it go. I insist. You have to insist. And I want to be there when he apologizes to you, and I want to be there when you sign the contract for the poster.” Younger’s call waiting began to beep. An hour had passed, he was tired, clammy with sweat. He told Keaton, “Hold on a minute, that’s probably Warren. I gotta go.”

  “Oh, it’s your new friend?”

  He picked up. Beatty said, “That was her, right?”

  “Yeah, that was her.”

  “Can you at least tell her that I’m clean here?”

  “She knows that we didn’t talk money, but what I really don’t like is your bringing me into this. It’s a private argument. You’re acting like children. I feel targeted.”

  “But it’s all about you, Robert. It involves you. She thinks that I’m cheating you, in not giving you the poster job. You understand I can’t give you the poster job. It’s Paramount, it’s Paramount, they’re doing the poster.” Younger thought, but didn’t say, I’m sure if I was Milton Glaser, Paramount might not be the issue. He also didn’t say, “Why did you go around saying you selected the image?”

  Beatty suddenly dropped the subject and veered off onto True Confessions, a movie with Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall that had just been released. Suddenly Younger’s call waiting began to ring again. But Beatty wouldn’t let him get off. Younger found it impossible to break the connection. He was drawn in, uh, seduced. There was that feeling of intimacy, warmth, well-being. Beatty took another call, and put Younger on hold, came back, told him who the other call was from, and recounted the conversation. Younger’s call waiting rang again, stopped, then started. Younger said, “I’d better get this.”

  It was now 3:30, 4:00 A.M. Keaton was angry. She said, “Oh, so you and your new buddy Warren, you’ve been having a nice conversation? I’ve been ringing and ringing, you must have been enjoying yourself. I’ve been calling for over a half hour.”

  “I didn’t keep track of the time. Should I have?”

  “You’re making a mistake if you consider him a friend. He’ll just use you and spit you out. What did he tell you to tell me?”

  “He didn’t tell me anything to tell you.”

  “Robert, why don’t you just stand up to him? What are you afraid of, losing your Warren Beatty connection? Damn!” She slammed the phone down. Younger had plenty of time to think about that night, because he didn’t hear from Keaton for six months. Whatever had happened had damaged and nearly ended his relationship with her. He started to suspect Beatty had involved him for that purpose. “He knew I was no competition, but he also knew that Diane was very fond of me. Warren has learned some very interesting tricks.” He explains. “Dispatching any kind of male friend—even if not a threat—is part of a skill of being a lover. He’s really clever. I guess it’s called manipulation.”

  Younger always wondered why Keaton hung in so long. “He did ask her to marry him a couple of times. But by that time, she knew too much. Knew he was incorrigible. She would have liked it to be, You’re mine and I’m yours. It was all about faithfulness for her, let’s build a family, sharing. Diane actually believed she was going to make him monogamous, but it wasn’t in the cards. Yet she was riding it because she was an extremely driven woman, and extremely—I don’t want to call her opportunistic, but it’s not not opportunistic. The trophy wasn’t just her, it was him too. He was a Hollywood Royal, and she aspired to that.”

  For his part, Beatty “didn’t ever think his relationship with Diane was going in the direction of marriage,” says Judith Evans. He “is a very conventional person about women. He always used to say he wanted to marry a librarian.”

  Beatty and Keaton continued to see each other sporadically. She went on to star in Alan Parker’s Shoot the Moon (1982), and was romantically linked to co-star Peter Weller. Although their relationship would never be the same, Keaton patched things up with Younger, and she told him to call her at home, advised him of the best times to reach her. Every time he called Keaton, Beatty was in bed next to her. In the course of one of these calls, Younger said, “I thought Warren doesn’t come by much.”

  “Well, he’s really here on this one,” she replied. “Do you want to talk to him?”

  “No, not really. Can I call you later? Or why don’t you call me back another time.”

  “Sure.”

  “This is about Peter, right?”

  “What do you think? I don’t take it personally!”

  8

  ONE FROM THE HART

  How Reds swept the Oscar nominations, but lost to Chariots of Fire, after which Beatty plunged into the Hart campaign, and gave Ishtar to Elaine May as a thank you for Reds.

  “Losing the Oscar broke Warren’s heart, because that was really the first time he’d had a chance to do everything he ever dreamed of.”

  —Dick Sylbert

  AS 1980 WORE on, Beatty’s lovers came and went, Ronald Reagan was elected president, and John Lennon was killed, but Reds was forever, or so it felt. Even shooting had resumed—in stutter-step fashion—in August 1980, and continued in a desultory way into winter in New York and Washington. As late as the middle of May 1981, Beatty would do five additional days on the Paramount lot.

  Meanwhile, back at Trans-Audio on 54th Street, postproduction ground on. Rumors were rife that Paramount was going to shut down the New York operation and move it to L.A.

  Diller called periodically, screamed at Beatty. Beatty screamed back. Among other things, the Paramount chief demanded that Beatty rein in David MacLeod, who had substantial expenses. Beatty responded by threatening to quit. He yelled into the phone, “You want to come in here and take over? You do it. I’ll leave!”

  Craig McKay was cutting one of Beatty’s scenes, sorting through the takes for the millionth time, when he came across a close-up in which it was clear to him that Beatty was giving his best line reading. But crow’s-feet were faintly visible at the corner of one eye. Recalling that Beatty had once warned him, “I’m the biggest narcissist in Hollywood,” he mentioned to his assistant, “That’s his best take, but he’s gonna react to that.”

  “Yeah, he’s gonna want you to cut it out, because he doesn’t look too good.”

  “Well, I’m gonna leave it in, because we don’t know if he’s going to spot it or not.” When McKay was ready to show him the sequence, Beatty sat down at the editing bay and folded his arms
across his chest as the editor ran the scene for him. According to McKay, he said, “It’s good, it works.” Then he paused for a moment, and added, “You know that shot of me where I say this, this, and this?”

  “Yeah,” McKay replied.

  “Don’t you think it’s got a little too much character?”

  “Warren, it’s your best performance.”

  “Well, it’s good, but it’s not quite the tone I want. Find something else.” And he walked out of the room.

  There was such a crush of footage, that every once in a while Allen brought in a “guest editor” to work on a few selected scenes, like Jerry Greenberg, who had cut the ambush in Bonnie and Clyde. “The tenor of that cutting room when I arrived was dour,” he says. “Most of the assistants were abraded. They were working day and night. You can’t just throw more people at a situation and make it happen quicker, better. It happens quicker, worse. Dede is not an easy person to work with under that kind of duress. And she was very open about how difficult Warren had become.”

  Among other things, Greenberg was brought in to recut the scenes between Bryant and O’Neill, particularly the bravura “seduction scene” set in Provincetown wherein he initiates their affair. According to one source, “Jack was so good that Warren and everyone else said, ‘Oh my God, this scene is unbelievable. He walked away with the movie.’” But it was Greenberg’s opinion that Beatty thought Nicholson’s performance could use the help of a good editor, although the director would never—ever—come out and say so. According to him, Beatty said, “‘You know Jack, right? Nicholson?’

  “‘Yes, I know Jack.’

  “‘And you appreciate Jack’s acting?’

  “‘Yes, very much.’ This was at a time when Jack was still that brash youngster, and playing Eugene O’Neill might have been a stretch for him. That was Warren’s implicit [meaning], implicit in his asking me to work on Jack’s scenes.” But, according to actress Joyce Hyser, who would live with Beatty in the late 1980s, “Warren was a little in awe of Jack as an actor, how versatile he was. Jack really blew him away when he was doing Reds. Sitting behind the camera, he’d get so caught up in Jack’s performance, he’d forget that he was directing.”

  Of course, admiration and competition are by no means mutually exclusive; the one may engender the other. Says a source, “Jerry came in and recut the scene. Nicholson was diminished in it.” Adds a second person who saw Greenberg’s cut, “I was shocked. The sexual tension that just kept building and building and finally culminates in that kiss, when she stands up on her toes—it was just wonderful—had dissipated. Jack had ad-libbed really wonderful, funny, sarcastic things—they were gone.” The source continues, “Warren looked at the scene, half of what it used to be, turned around to Jerry and said, ‘Jerry, when do you want your blow job, now or later?’” (According to assistant editor Billy Scharf, Beatty proferred his “blow job” compliment to Greenberg for his work on a different sequence.) Cynics among them concluded that Nicholson’s performance was too good. As one put it, “Beatty couldn’t handle it.”

  “The big fight was how the movie was gonna end,” recalls Beatty pal Pat Caddell. When the White Army attacks the train full of Bolshevik officials returning from Baku, interrupting Reed’s dispute with Zinoviev, the Red Army troops guarding them charge out of the cars to counterattack. Reed runs after them, and is shown frantically chasing a caisson. It’s a reprise of a scene from the beginning of the movie showing Reed in Mexico, in the heat of battle, chasing an artillery piece, which he catches up to and clambers on. But this time he doesn’t. The brief image of the caisson disappearing into the dust of battle as Reed futilely chases it is a perfect illustration of Beatty’s point to Griffiths that “a bullet is worth a thousand words.” But what words? For all that this image crystallizes the themes of the movie, there remains an ambiguity. On the one hand, the revolution vanishes into the distance, just beyond Reed’s grasp. More was shot—Reed catches up to the caisson and gets on—but wasn’t used, once Beatty decided that he wished to convey the notion that revolution is an ideal never to be realized. “For me, you will never catch it,” he says. “You will always be chasing after the revolution. If he had gotten onto the cart, then where would he have gone? China? A new movie! If you’re chasing the locomotive of history, you do your best, you fire your best shots, and you live and learn, and then you die. It would be great if you had some fun, and it would be really great if you had some kids.”

  But the White Army attacks soon after Goldman’s argument with Reed in which she forcefully asserts that the Bolsheviks have betrayed their principles, and immediately after Reed’s argument with Zinoviev, suggesting that instead of running to join the Red Army in battle, Reed is trying to escape the Bolsheviks. Beatty was happy to have the scene read either way, or both, leaving the issue of Reed’s disaffection unresolved.

  After the picture editing is finished and the movie is locked, the sound mixing begins, wherein—to oversimplify—dialogue, sound effects, and music are blended together. At the time, a mix for a standard picture might have lasted five or six weeks. The mix for a long film like this one might have stretched to eight weeks. Reds took four months to mix, through the summer of 1981, for the simple reason that Reds was never locked. Says Dede Allen’s son Tom Fleischman, a sound mixer, “While we were mixing, he was recutting the movie. Rewriting the movie! Dede was upstairs trying to keep Elaine away from the Moviola. She had gone in and wanted to do something, and Dede said, ‘No, there’s no time. We can’t do any more.’”

  But Beatty’s faith in May’s instincts remained undiminished. There is an important scene at the end of Part 1—Reds was one of the last movies released with an intermission—that takes place in a St. Petersburg factory. The workers are debating whether or not to strike, a first step toward fulfilling the Bolsheviks’ pledge to take Russia out of World War I, which they regarded as a capitalists’ war. Reed is asked to speak, and does so, unwillingly at first, then with increasing passion, as the crowd sings the “Internationale.” The scene is a prelude to the actual outbreak of revolution, and is gradually transformed into a montage featuring stunning night shots of backlit marchers emerging from the murky darkness waving blood-red flags and banners, cutting to triumphant workers pouring through the Winter Palace, and ending with Reed and Bryant in a passionate embrace. The factory scene was shot in Finland, and neither the actors nor the extras spoke Russian. “They were just speaking nonsense, counting, and stuff like that, so we did this quick-and-dirty temp mix with a loop of crowd effects and music,” recalls Fleischman. “When it came time to actually mix the film, Warren wanted to write real speeches for the actors, hire Russians to voice them in their native tongue, and then hire Russian speakers for the crowd to respond to the speeches, so that if you were a Russian watching that scene, it would all make sense.” Beatty hired Zina Voynow, Sergei Eisenstein’s sister-in-law, to corral all the great Russian actors in New York, most of whom could not find employment. Scharf went to Cleveland and taped the Cleveland Choir singing the “Internationale.” Maurice Schell, one of the sound editors, laboriously recorded the results. It took days to mix all the elements. Beatty looked at it and loved it. It was exactly what he had asked for. Then he screened it for May. She said something like, “I hated that.”

  “You hated what?”

  “I hated the way—something’s changed. And not for the better.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, the sound, the whole thing with the revolution…” Says a source, “You could see the people who did the work, melting like—‘Oh my God, can someone put tape over her mouth?’ ‘Shut up Elaine, you’re ruining everything I did. You don’t know anything about sound.’ They tried to tweak the mix to make her happy. After a few weeks of work, they screened the reel for her again. She said, ‘Yeah, it’s better, but it’s still not quite like it was.’” Says Fleischman, “Poor Maurice had done so much work, he was ready to slit his wrists. We didn’t know what el
se to do, and Warren would not let go of this. It just bothered him. There was something in him that was saying she’s right, and he would not just say to her, ‘No, no, we can’t get that back,’ because there was no way for us to reproduce what was in that temp mix that was thrown together six months before. Finally, Warren said, ‘Well, we have to use the temp mix.’ He scrapped the whole idea of Russian actors, and we actually took the one copy of the temp mix that existed for that scene and transferred it into the master.”

  Schell and Voynow were furious, considered taking their names off the picture. Says Scharf, “It was extraordinarily discouraging to those people, but Elaine was right. Because she had the perspective of standing back, and he knew to trust not the people who spent hours of their lives creating it, but somebody who had no stake in it.”

  With the endless cutting and recutting, “they made the film many many times,” as sound apprentice Susan Lazarus puts it. Some of the editors thought it was getting worse, not better. At three hours and twenty minutes, McKay and Allen cut a three-hour version, which they both liked, but Beatty insisted on restoring the footage. Recalls Cindy Kaplan, “It was frustrating for Dede, because you couldn’t talk any kind of sense into him.” To this day, the star insists that he wouldn’t change a frame.

  As the picture inched toward completion, Bluhdorn began pressuring Beatty to show it to him. He resisted. “I never liked to show people pictures early. He thought if the film worked, I would have showed it to him already, so he assumed it didn’t work. He thought I wasn’t showing it to him because he was going to be embarrassed and humiliated, since Reds was a Communist picture. He was so miffed he went out and bought Ragtime. Which was also a period movie, and also expensive.” Beatty suspected that Bluhdorn may even have contemplated shelving Reds and giving its slot to Ragtime, which made him crazy. According to Pikser, Beatty treated Bluhdorn and the studio as the enemy. Art director Simon Holland remembers him saying, “One of the things that gives me the biggest kick about making this movie about an American Communist is that I got the money to do it from one of the most right-wing fascist people in Hollywood, Charlie Bluhdorn!” But the bottom line was that Paramount made the picture, and no matter what Beatty said in private, publicly he was careful to heap praise on the studio.