Dustin Hoffman
"He was wearing sunglasses, sitting on a bench. He made some kind of double entendre, something about sixty-nine flavors, and I just kind'a looked at him. He said, 'You don't like that flavor, huh?' I told him later I thought he was hostile."
The Producer
"It was very difficult to work with him. Everybody was subservient to him. He will suck you dry of your creativity, your craftsmanship, and then once all of that is done, then maybe he'll feel comfortable for a minute, but then he'll come back and ask for a little bit more."
Buck Henry
"It's funny, I did two movies with him - Heaven Can Wait was the other - and in both cases the lead actresses didn't want to look at him."
Johnny Carson
"Warren wanted a baby so he could meet baby-sitters."
Sandra Bernhard
Before he left Toronto, Beatty paused for a few moments to make out with Sandra Bernhard in front of the elevator bank of their hotel. "I didn't know if I should have taken that as an insult or a compliment - but it was fun kissing him," she says. "He used to call me late at night, and be kind of sexy, say, 'It's Uncle Warren. What are you doing? What are you wearing right now? What's going on?'"
Dick Tracy
The project went through many permutations, and by 1985, Linson and Mutrux were out, and Beatty took control of the project. Mutrux was bitter. "Warren has a reputation for using people," he says. "'Yes's' turned into 'maybes' which turned into phone calls going unreturned. Warren kills projects. Movies die at his feet. We're talking an epidemic jerk-off here - you're playing with other people's dreams. Warren is the most flagrant violator. How come I decided on him? I guess my brain was damaged."
James Toback
"Jimmy was around all the time. One of the great two hours of my life was having lunch at the Essex House with Warren, Toback, and Norman Mailer. When I got to the table, they'd already been talking for at least five minutes about their bowel movements, and continued for another ten minutes after I sat down."
AIDS
AIDS was in the air, but for the heterosexuals, it wasn't yet a reality, and Beatty didn't use condoms. Or at least not always. He had been at a New Year's Eve party the year before. When the clock struck midnight, suddenly his voice was heard above the general merriment - the smooching and the carousing - saying, "How do we know AIDS is a homosexual disease? Do you know of any other homosexual diseases?" Everyone just froze.
Bulworth
"Jimmy took the worst abuse I ever saw," Pikser continues. "Warren was really battering him for the stuff he had written, really being insulting. He would say, 'What were you high on when you wrote it? Is that why you think it's funny? Let me tell you it's not - can I suggest something to you? The next script you write, don't make it a comedy, okay? Because I don't think you really have any idea what funny is.'"
The Head Of Distribution At Paramount
"Beatty was the greatest mind-fucker who ever lived, period. He always held himself above it all. He was the king, and the insitgator. I'm sure Evans had something to do with it. Towne went along, too. He wanted to be one of then. They were all very close." (Towne denies that he worked on the script during the strike.)
The Shadows
The fact that Beatty had no use for Jimmy Carter and was personally friendly with Reagan may have taken some of the sting out of the new right-wing hegemony, but he nevertheless threw himself into Hart's campaign, albeit still operating in the shadows.
Mastectomy
One night he got a phone call from a woman he didn't remember, who was married and lived in Colorado. She'd had breast cancer and a mastectomy. Her husband didn't want to sleep with her anymore. Beatty was outraged, told her, "I'd fuck you in a second, fly out here."
The Director
One day the actor apparently said something to Chelsom that caused the director to rush out of his trailer, slam the door behind him, and yell at the top of his lungs, "You cunt."
Francois Truffaut
"He seems to me an extremely unpleasant person. He and Marlon Brando, and several others, are on a little list that I've classified in my head as 'Better to not make films at all than to make films with these people.' "
Robert Rossen
"If I die, it'll be Warren Beatty who killed me."
Town & Country
"When you enter Warren's World it is more complicated than any world you will ever enter. Nothing is easy. It is so complex and so unnecessarily complex."
Britt Ekland
"Warren could handle women as smoothly as operating an elevator. He knew exactly where to locate the top button. One flick and we were on our way."
Madonna
One night, in the spring, she dragged him to Catch One, a black gay and lesbian disco on Pico near Crenshaw in South Central L.A., replete with a drag queen room. Looking uncomfortable in a three-piece Versace suit to her hoodie and shorts, Beatty as usual refused to dance, declining her invitation. Making herself heard over the music, she shouted, "Hey, Pussy Man, come on out here."
Down And Out In Beverly Hills
"What's your address," a soft voice whispered. Shortly thereafter, the doorbell rang. Mazursky's two teenage girls were there with their fourteen year-old -friends. They were extremely striking, and the director well knew that teenage girls "made Warren tremble." They shrieked with delight when Mazursky told them who was at the door. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was uncomfortably aware that he was pimping his own girls in exchange for a commitment to the picture.
The Model
She recalls, "He would always say to me at the end of every phone call, 'Don't do drugs. Read books.'" (Beatty has no recollection of her modelling, says she was an actress.)
Plutocrat
"The underbelly of this country isn't being heard. How could they?" he asked rhetorically. "They don't have the means of being heard. It takes money to be heard. Even though I am a pampered, rich Hollywood cultural plutocrat, my leanings are to try to articluate something on behalf of those people. As the disparity of wealth increases, there are an incredibly large number of them."
Jews
"He loved that I was Jewish, and that I wasn't a self-loathing Jew, because he said that all the Jews he knew in Hollywood were self-loathing Jews." Beatty prided himself on his command of Yiddish, especially gross, politically incorrect sexual and racial slurs that he used to shock his Jewish friends. Speaking of an actress who wasn't right for a role, he'd say, "She's too pretty, I want her to be more of a mieskeit," that is, homely. Hyser goes on, "He acted more Jewish than I did. He's not a whiner, but he's got the guilt, real Jewish guilt. I don't know where that comes from." She tried to make him more hip, bought his clothes for him and convinced him not to wear his pants so high.
Bob Dylan
Beatty was so secretive that Dylan thought he was a Mason.
Hal Ashby
He lived out the last weeks of his life in excruciating pain, for which he blamed Beatty, and wouldn't let him visit.
The Screenwriter
He recalls, "I suddenly realized he was some sort of high priest. His name was spoken in whispers."
Piano
Sometimes the call would be blowback from an old girlfriend who wanted something - a loan, a job, just reassurance that he'd still take her call. He'd glance at a scrap of paper his assistant shoved in front of his nose, and grunt, "Uh huh, I gotta take this call." He'd put the receiver to his ear and say, "Really, really." And then, "You know something? You're a very disturbed person." And hang up. "Can you imagine?" Beatty explained. "She wanted me to buy her a piano."
Love Affair
Hepburn slept on one side of her face, and when she awoke, the lesions were inflamed. Beatty was visibly upset. As soon as he was alone with Berg, he observed, "My God, her face looks like a fruitcake."
Axl Rose
"I'd like to dedicate this next song," he exclaimed, to "a man who is so empty that all he can do is play fucking games. A man who is a parasite. A man who lives his life sucking other people's life forces, their energy. An old man who likes to live vicariously through young people, suck up all their life because he has none of his own. I'd like to dedicate this song to a cheap punk named Warren Beatty."