Hollywood Hellraisers (42 page)

Over dinner one night at a smart restaurant Madonna leaned across the table to ask Warren if he’d ever done it with a man. He didn’t answer, except to say that he was willing to set her up with a lesbian. ‘It will be my present to you,’ he said. Warren was only too aware of Madonna’s close friendship with Sandra Bernhard and asked the comedienne to join them the following night. ‘Warren,’ Sandra said, ‘you know Madonna and I share
everything
.’ Later Sandra recalled that Warren’s ‘eyes lit up like a kid in a candy store. A wild ride, I thought to myself. A very wild ride.’

Although
Dick Tracy
was seen by many in the industry as something of a make-or-break movie for Warren, it was a measure of the respect he had in Hollywood that the likes of Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and James Caan were happy to appear with their famous features obscured by grotesque make-up, befitting the story’s comic-book origins. ‘We’re all wearing prosthetics except the women and Warren,’ said actor Paul Sorvino. ‘So we’re all ugly as hell and Warren looks beautiful. It’s a Warren Beatty dream.’

Hoffman came to work on the movie the day after he’d won the Oscar for
Rain Man
. ‘And I remember Warren getting down on his knees and bowing to Dustin,’ says producer Jon Landau. Pacino is the baddie of the piece, grandstanding as Big Boy Caprice, a role he was attracted to because Warren talked him into it. Discussions about the role on set went something like this: AP: ‘What should I do, Warren?’ WB: ‘You’ll think of something.’ And it worked. ‘This was the best direction I have ever had,’ laughed Pacino.

Cast as Tess Trueheart, Tracy’s virginal girlfriend, was Glenne Headly. On the set one day Warren was telling a journalist about press misinterpretation of his image when he made a grab for Glenne as she walked by. ‘Look at those legs,’ he sighed. Frowning, Glenne turned and said, ‘See, that’s how you got your reputation, Warren.’

Behind the scenes Beatty the perfectionist was driving some of the crew nuts as he constantly pushed for levels of excellence that matched his own. ‘I actually think Warren is a very collaborative filmmaker,’ says producer Jon Landau. ‘He doesn’t care where the good ideas come from. He was that way as related to the script, the casting and on the set. He was always encouraging people to give him input and to give him feedback. ’ Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg also revelled in the star’s company, and indulged him, according to some. Warren’s charm and magic also extended to some of Disney’s high-level female executives, real ball-busters by day, but on the set they were putty in his hands, draped on his lap dressed in cowboy boots and tight jeans.

Tension between Warren and Madonna was always inevitable, she being just as much a perfectionist and workaholic as he was. Hanging about while Warren fastidiously set up his angles she’d nag, ‘Hey, Beatty. Are you going to shoot this fucking scene or not, you asshole?’ They did behave like a married couple on set, their romance not hidden from the crew. They were even caught in a highly compromising position in a dressing room. But what the hell, they were in love.

Their social life was even more interesting, Madonna dragging him round clubs night after night. ‘He’d come in looking like hell,’ said a crew member. Places he would ordinarily avoid like the clap, a gay nightclub in south central LA, for example. Madonna was frenziedly gyrating on the dance floor. ‘Hey, pussy man, come on out here,’ she berated him. Completely out of his element, Warren declined. ‘No, I’m just fine. I can’t even breathe, let alone dance.’ Madonna sauntered over to where two women were dancing and started thrusting and throbbing rhythmically with them. ‘I should’a come here with Rob Lowe,’ she bellowed above the music. ‘Now, he’s a guy who knows how to party.’

Madonna often flirted with other women. Warren didn’t mind. (Of course he bloody didn’t), unlike Sean Penn, who in similar situations exhibited all the restraint of a bulimic at an all-you-can-eat buffet. However, Warren drew a line when it came to his male friends, especially Jack. Living as close by as he did, Jack often popped round and was delighted to learn of Madonna’s keen interest in art. They became very pally; he intrigued by this vampish pop princess, she flattered by the attention of so iconic a movie star. Warren, though, was less than happy with their friendship, knowing Jack the way he did.

Slowly and surely Warren began introducing Madonna into the high echelons of the film world. He turned out to be useful in other areas, too, such as teaching her some of his business acumen, suggesting, for example, that she start up her own record label. (Madonna did just that in 1992.) Rumours soon circulated that marriage was on the cards, with Warren supposedly telling friends that Jack would be his best man. But rifts began to open up, often spilling out into the public domain. At a restaurant one night Madonna told Warren to ‘keep your stupid opinions to yourself ’. Warren paid the bill and left Madonna alone to yell ‘Stop staring at me’ to the other patrons. Maybe Warren had had enough. He spent hours one night on the phone to Jack complaining that Madonna and Sandra Bernhard were planning a spectacular wedding ceremony and that Sean Penn was on his back for fucking his ex-wife. ‘I’m too old for this,’ he said. ‘Old enough not to want to look foolish.’ Friends and colleagues made their opinions known, too. Barbra Streisand phoned Warren to tell him he was ‘crazy for falling for a young floozy’.

It seemed that the blush had well and truly worn off the rose. Warren had developed the habit of holding the telephone at least two feet from his ear whenever Madonna called, wincing at the screech of her voice. It was almost a relief when the singer went off on her Blonde Ambition tour, which included songs from
Dick Tracy
in the running order. At one point in the show she turned to the audience and said, ‘Dick. That’s an interesting name. My bottom hurts just thinking about it.’ Subtlety is not a word in the Madonna lexicon.

Tensions remained, however. Because of post-production commitments to
Dick Tracy
Warren was unable to meet Madonna’s demands for emotional support during her tour. At the very least she expected him to turn up for the opening night, sending a private plane for him to fly out to Houston. He didn’t get on it. Madonna couldn’t comprehend Warren defying her and when the show hit New York and he turned up with Jack they were refused entry to her dressing room.

The simple truth was that Warren did not fit into Madonna’s rockstar world. He felt uncomfortable in it. The fact that practically everything they did was being recorded by a film crew didn’t help. Madonna had commissioned a documentary on her life,
Truth or Dare
, and when it was finished proudly screened it at Warren’s home in front of an invited audience of friends. Warren did not like what he saw. He particularly disliked how some scenes made it appear that he was under the thumb. The next day he got in touch with his attorney to demand that the offending segments be cut from the film. In other words, Warren was threatening to sue his partner, which never goes down well.

As the tour continued across America Madonna got increasingly steamed up, and by the time they hit LA she was ready to explode. Warren paid a visit backstage at the moment she was balling out her stage crew. He did his best ‘I’m not here, just ignore me, folks’ act, but some of the dancers spied him and cried out ‘Uncle Warren’ and ‘Dad’. Madonna now piped in, ‘Don’t hide back there Warren, get over here. You pussy man, what’s with you? Can you believe I have to do this every night? Are you going to be nicer to me now, Warren?’ Er, no. When Madonna was invited onto Arsenio Hall’s TV chat show and asked, ‘What does Warren Beatty have that we don’t have?’ she replied, ‘About a billion dollars.’

Disney had pinned much of their hopes for the movie year on
Dick Tracy
, hoping it would be another
Batman
. Katzenberg was indulging in a phoney war with fellow executive Don Simpson over at Paramount, overseeing their big summer release, the Tom Cruise car-race movie
Days of Thunder
. Simpson sent a fax over to Katzenberg saying, ‘You can’t escape the Thunder!’ Katzenberg promptly faxed back: ‘You won’t believe how big my Dick is!’

Big it was. The final budget was a whopping $47m, with Disney spending an additional fortune on marketing. The merchandising alone was huge, ranging from toys and games to action figures of Warren. ‘I think I’ve been made into dolls before,’ he joked, ‘but they had pins in them.’ With this kind of financial outlay Katzenberg had gotten Warren to commit to promoting the movie, something he hadn’t done even for his pet project
Reds
. Warren’s dislike of interviews and promotion was well known, but it was an attitude hopelessly out of date in this era of media saturation. So he went all out for
Dick
, even submitting to an interview with
Rolling Stone
, but when the questions got personal, primarily revolving around Madonna, he clammed up. Reporter Bill Zehme wrote, ‘To interview Warren Beatty is to want to kill him.’ But Warren has never hidden the fact that in interviews he protects the privacy of his lovers. ‘Fuck and suck’ was his pet term for scurrilous articles about his sexual profile.

Vanity Fair
asked Warren to pose for top celebrity photographer Herb Ritts. He did so, but couldn’t hide his boredom and disapproval of the whole thing. Apparently one of Ritt’s female assistants bared a breast in order to raise a smile out of him.

Ultimately
Dick Tracy
made money, but it wasn’t the massive hit Disney had hoped for. And when an inter-office memo from Katzenberg was leaked to the press, in which he lamented,
‘Dick Tracy
made demands on our time, talent and treasury that . . . may not have been worth it,’ relations cooled, you could say, between him and Warren. Maybe Katzenberg’s and Disney’s problem, countered Warren, was they had to put up with someone who had complete artistic control, ‘And they didn’t ordinarily affiliate themselves with gorillas like me.’ Katzenberg sent a peace offering to Beatty of a dartboard with his own face on it, two white doves in a gold cage and an olive tree. It didn’t work; Beatty wouldn’t speak to him for years.

In spite of the recriminations and sour ending,
Dick Tracy
is still a movie very near and dear to Warren, according to its producer Jon Landau. ‘It’s still the character that he gets and understands and believes people get and understand. When the Dick Tracy comic strip was introduced, I think there are a lot of analogies to where we are as a society today. People are looking for a heroic character that’s also relatable. You can have great action heroes that are rippled with muscles and fire guns that nail bull’s eyes hundreds of yards away, that’s not relatable, but I think in Dick Tracy people can see themselves in some ways. Warren gets that.’

Warren’s busted affair with Madonna also sank into recriminations. ‘He tossed me aside like a piece of old meat,’ she complained. Warren moved onto supermodel Stephanie Seymour, but not for long, she soon dumped him for Guns n’ Roses frontman Axel Rose, and Warren was alone yet again. But as usual, it wasn‘t for long.

You can’t handle the truth.

In the early nineties Jack Nicholson became part owner of a West Hollywood nightspot called the Monkey Bar, perhaps sometimes exploiting its facilities too willingly. Somebody driving past the place late one night spotted Jack outside the door howling like a wolf at the moon. The bar attracted all types of Hollywood revellers, notably Heidi Fleiss, who then ran America’s most notorious prostitution ring selling sex to the stars in Beverly Hills. Jack said he didn’t understand why men went to hookers. ‘I’m too Calvinist. Besides, I’m big Jack. I don’t have to pay for it,’ although stories around town hinted that Jack wasn’t averse to accepting the odd freebie from one of Heidi’s girls. He bagged the main prize too, Heidi herself. ‘He is very kinky,’ Heidi later revealed, ‘and loved spanking my bottom in bed. He gave me twenty orgasms that night.’

Jack was now such a legendary figure in Hollywood that his mere presence was enough to guarantee a film high-profile status. Producers had to pay through the nose for it, though. Even a supporting role, as in the military court drama
A Few Good Men
(1992), had a price tag of $5m for just ten days’ work. But look what they got, a grandstand performance that contributed immeasurably to the film’s massive global success.

On set Jack found himself acting with the cream of the new generation of stars, Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Keifer Sutherland and Kevin Bacon, all of whom idolised him as Jack had idolised Brando. ‘When I walked in for the first time,’ he confessed, ‘I felt like the fucking Lincoln Memorial.’ As a young unknown actor Cruise and pals Sean Penn and Emilio Estevez used to drive past Jack’s house late at night. If the lights were on they’d think, wow, he’s home, let’s knock on the door. But they always chickened out. Nah, nah, he’ll never let us in, they thought. One day on the set Cruise confessed all to Jack, who roared with laughter. They’d got the wrong house.

In February 1992 Jack and Rebecca had a second child, a son this time, christened Raymond, a more suitable name than Jack’s first choice – Landslide. Jack remained reticent about settling down with his growing family – they still maintained separate residences – and there were rumours he was up to his old tricks. Then he decided to do the decent thing and proposed, only to be rejected. Rebecca perhaps knew he’d never change his lifestyle, and besides, she’d begun a new relationship; Jack was history. It was a decision that hit him like a frying pan in the face.

In Rebecca, Jack sincerely thought he’d found a lady that he could spend the rest of his life with. ‘It’s tough accepting that it turned to dust.’ None the less, he fully intended to live up to his duties as a father and developed a strong and close connection with the two children, who became the most important things in his life. He’d take them to nursery school and loved it, although they were in the morning class. (Unlucky for Jack. ‘Morning ain’t my deal.’) He’d struggle later on to not sound like a hypocrite when lecturing them about avoiding alcohol, drugs and random sex. All he’d tell them was, ‘Everything they say is bad for you is bad for you.’ And Jack can speak from some experience.