Bloated Beatty bio a paean to actor, filmmaker

Published 30 January 2010 in Winnipeg Free Press:

Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America
By Peter Biskind
Simon & Schuster, 627 pages, $36

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

The bloated new biography of Warren Beatty has made headlines with its claim, really just a guesstimate, that the handsome Hollywood actor has bedded nearly 13,000 women.

Author Peter Biskind draws on "simple arithmetic" to arrive at that number, and says it could quite conceivably be higher.

The calculation, based on the assumption that Beatty, now 72, averaged a woman a day for about 35 years, seems rather silly.

And it is without doubt one reason why Beatty, whom Biskind interviewed several times, has denounced Star. But it can't be the only reason.

Biskind corrals information from books, articles and interviews to portray Beatty as both admirable and contemptible, likable and unlikable, in a tome that is sometimes fawning and sometimes critical.

The New York-based writer declares Beatty "one of the foremost filmmakers of his generation," of the same calibre as Martin Scorsese, despite a slim oeuvre as both director (four films) and actor (fewer than 25).

Orson Welles directed just two great films, Biskind contends, but Beatty has directed three: Heaven Can Wait in 1978, Reds in 1981 and Bulworth in 1998.

On the other hand, the book reports that Beatty has repeatedly grabbed for more credit than he deserved, especially as a screenwriter.

His successful bid for credit on the Dick Tracy script pushed legitimate writer Bo Goldman off the list.

Similar manoeuvring in the Writer's Guild arbitration process robbed other wordsmiths of credit for other movies as Beatty tried to burnish a Renaissance man reputation.

Beatty is described as powerfully charming when seeking the favour of studio brass or beautiful women, but so unpleasant when in charge at film sets and editing rooms that many people have sworn never to work with him again.

Past girlfriends Julie Christie and Diane Keaton were persuaded to work with him on Heaven Can Wait and Town & Country, respectively, but quickly grew to loathe him on the film set.

Christie reportedly refused to look him in the eye when shooting a scene in Heaven Can Wait, and Beatty used co-director Buck Henry as go-between for the chilly former lovers.

He barely communicates with another famous woman in his life, Oscar-winning sister Shirley MacLaine.

The seeming duality in Beatty's personality is mirrored by this book's split personality.

Much of Star is a film geek's insightful reconstruction and analysis of Beatty flicks -- the deal making, creative stages, esthetic achievements, promotion, and critical and commercial success or failure.

On that score Biskind, the author of five previous books on American cinema and the former executive editor of Premiere magazine, does a bang-up job.

His chapter on Bonnie and Clyde, for example, makes one want to run out and rent the 1967 drama for another screening to appreciate its groundbreaking qualities further.

And if one could endure the dreadfully dull Town & Country, there might be fun in trying to identify the scenes in which Keaton's body double was used after she walked out on production.

Accounts of the production of the 1987 megaflop Ishtar and 1991's critically acclaimed Bugsy (where he met wife Annette Bening) are also entertaining.

At other times Star is like a sleazy gossip rag, repeating story after story of supposed Beatty sexcapades uncritically and without regard to relevance.

Biskind quotes Joan Collins as saying the young Warren she dated in the early 1960s wore her out with his insatiable sexual appetite.

He reports that Beatty raved to friends about the amazing fellatio talent of another early flame, Jane Fonda.

He quotes a Hollywood executive who used to relax with Beatty in a steam room as saying the actor's penis is "normal, not ridiculously big."

And on and on. It's all a case of too much information. Far too much, in fact.

The prurient content puffs up this book to a size that exceeds Beatty's merit as an actor and director, despite whatever Biskind thinks of his subject.

Biskind not only puts Beatty on the same level as Scorsese, in the book's final chapter he says the Virginia native is a better director than Clint Eastwood.

Sure, Eastwood has directed about eight times as many movies and won four Academy Awards to Beatty's one. But Biskind insists "Beatty's pictures were better."

This is purely subjective, of course, but Biskind risks damaging his own credibility when he asserts that Beatty's work is definitely "better" than Eastwood's Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, Gran Torino and so on.

What may be at work here is a man-crush. After all, Biskind writes of how being around the star gave him "an almost palpable sense of well-being, as if I were a better person because Warren Beatty liked me."

He also describes Beatty in his early 20s as "indecently pretty."

That might explain this book's flabbiness. Maybe Biskind loves Beatty so much he finds it nearly impossible to stop going on about him.

The reader won't be quite so fond of Star.