by Thomas Hart

G21 Muckraker

AUSTIN, REPUBLIC OF TEJAS - I gottah admit, I didn't take to Shirley McClain's brother right away. Strange, cause I used to adore her back in her Rat Pack days, when she hung with Frank, Dino and their crew, before she turned whoo-ee-ooh New Agey on our asses. But Warren Beatty? Well, I didn't cotton much to him at first because he was too much a pretty boy in that George Hamilton, too gay kind of way. I think y'all know what I'm sayin', Fellow Sanitation Engineers. I think I saw "Shampoo" a couplah times and I still don't remember a thang about it.

Before I get into all the reasons I think Warren Beatty is a creative genius and an asset to American movies, I gottah tell y'all the one thang - and I'll admit that maybe this is only me - that has always creeped me out about the guy. Because he's got them dark eyes where you can't really even see the pupils on film, I've always felt like he was never focusing on anythang. Y'all know what I'm sayin'? Like the kindah boss who talks at you but never really makes eye contact one of those folks that seem to be looking at your shoulder rather than yo' face when they speak to you? I think Charles Grodin has that same danged quality, come to think of it! It creeps me out.

So that made it harder for me to warm up to Warren Beatty, too. I kept wondering why he wasn't looking nobody in the eye. I started thinkin' the man had Little Orphan Annie eyes.

That there phobia of mine ended during "Heaven Can Wait". In that scene at the end where the new Joe sees Julie Christie and wants to talk to her for reasons he can't understand, for just a moment, it seems like Warren Beatty's eyes were focusing on something ... Or mebbe that was just my imagination.

I'm trynah put my finger on when Warren Beatty won me over. At first I thought it was about the "Heaven Can Wait"/"Reds" period. But then I realized that he knocked my danged socks off the first time with "Bonnie & Clyde". Yep, that's the big turning point for Tabloid Hart. And when I got to thinkin' about it seriously, I realized that that was a big turning point for Hollyweird in general. I'll tell y'all why.

That final scene, directed by Arthur Penn, in "Bonnie & Clyde", made us know that it hurts to get shot and that's something no American made films before that had the cajones to do. Back then, they had these movie standards, since replaced by the lame-ass ratings system, that said you couldn't show a bullet being fired in the same frame with a person getting hit by that bullet. Well, Penn blew that one right out the window with Warren Beatty, who produced the film's, blessing. Beatty was going for something different than every American film around with "Bonnie & Clyde" and he did it. He made a film that people who know about such stuff will look at for years to come. The movie also started a fashion trend, of course, with every girl with the bucks down here in Bubbaland and elsewheres dressin' like Fay Dunnaway's Bonnie Parker. That stuck until Diane Keaton came along with the "Annie Hall" look.

Speaking of which, let's face it: Warren Beatty is the flat out stud that Woody Allen wants to be. Look at his list of leading ladies, most of whom we all know he has boffed at one time or 'nother:

• Faye Dunnaway,
• Julie Christie
• Dianne Cannon
• Yes, Diane Keaton
• Madonna
• Annette Benning (his leading lady in real life now.) I'm green.
• the scrumptious Halle Berry

"Bugsy" was a masterpiece of casting and atmosphere like few other movies in the gangster genre. It wasn't a gangster movie at all, far as I'm concerned, but a real look at a complex and visionary man and his romance with a daring woman.

Which brings us up to "Bullworth", fellow Sanitation Engineers. Again, there is no movie quite like it comin' from the "normal" Hollyweird crowd, just as there was no movie like "Reds". If "Reds" was the last movie Beatty ever made we wouldah had to take the man seriously, far as Tabloid Hart is concerned.

Remember back a couplah years ago when folks were talking about how Beatty should run for President? Luckily, he was smart enough to realize that politics, in that way, was not his schtick. You would think folks would have got that message after seeing "Bullworth" but - "Hello!" - this is America where people don't get any ideas unless you pound it into their danged brainpans like a soap commercial.

So, yeah, Warren Beatty, throughout his career, has really surprised me - and that don't happen much to a guy who specializes in trashing Hollyweird and them there film types that come out of it like pellets in a Pez factory. The man actually has some substance behind his good looks, from what I've read in interviews of him, and he knows what matters and what don't. A lot of people, considering his playboy image, probably thought he'd never settle down and get married, but when he did he picked one of the classiest, sassiest, most versatile women in film today. (The foregoing in no way, shape or form means that I have given up my worship-from-a-distance of J-Lo. Ben Affleck can kiss my ass.

Hey, Ben! I'm recommending right now that you keep your skinny behind out of Texas if you know what's good for you. I got a can of whoop-ass with your name on it, my friend.)

Now, I know this column is normally supposed be about The Dish, all the awful shit you can say about some celebrity, rather than a kiss-up, but I don't mean to be no Johnny One Note. Just as I have had wonderful thangs to say about the Queen of My Dreams, J-Lo. Now and again I have to devote some of the space I've been allotted in these here pages to other folks who deserve an "Attaboy!" and I for dang sure thank Warren Beatty is one of them.

Are you listening Motion Picture Academy?

That this man has not gotten more Oscars is as bad as the dissing they gave to my main men Roger Corman and Vincent Price.

When will you people learn?

From what I said so far, Fellow Sanitation Engineers, y'all have probably already guessed that I cain't wait for the next thing that Beatty brings to the screen. This man has "chops", as my musicians friends like to say. I'm sure he's cogitatin' over something else to make us stand up and take notice. 'Course now that he's a Dad, I guess some of his creative fire is goin' elsewhere for a little while. But I'm sure we haven't heard the last word from the man.

What will be most interesting, from a gossip columnist point of view, is whether he's gonnah do his next movie with his wife, Annette Benning, or pick another actress or actor with Big Q like he did with "Bullworth".

My money's on the latter choice, just because this guy is such a danged savvy business man. Go back and look at the casting in his ouerve. He's always been right on the money in bringing in the names that we in the peanut gallery could relate to at the time. I expect he'll do the same again. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he made a movie with a Will Smith or a Pink.

Since "Bonnie & Clyde" was his Texas movie, I don't expect he'll be comin' this way again any time soon. Too dang bad. I'd like to shake the man's hand one day.

Meanwhile, I'm up for anythang he's willing to devote his passion for good story-telling and irreverent insight into. I still think casting Jack Nicholson as Eugene O'Neill was a masterstroke.

The only thang a trailer park guy like me regrets about Warren Beatty is that I cain't think of one drive-in style movie he ever made. Because I have modeled myself after my he-ro, Joe Bob Briggs, I have to hang my head about that sad fact. Warren, are you listenin'?

And REMEMBER: It will take more than a few tornadoes to blow away all the trailer trash...

QUESTIONS? COMMENTS? E-mail Tom down in the trailer park. Go ahead!

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