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Amazon.com Exclusive: Joe Laitin and Warren Beatty Excerpted Interview
Excerpt and photographs courtesy of the author, Suzanne Finstad, by permission of Peter Laitin.
Beatty with Joe Laitin |
JL: There apparently aren't that many people who really know you anyway. I don't know whether you deliberately keep people at arm's length. I suppose you do...
WB: I am finding more and more that it's really very hard to please a lot of people. And I would say it's impossible. And so I have been allowing that need to try to please a lot of people to slip away from me in the past couple of years. So that I realize now that there will be a lot of people that dislike me just on principle, there will be a lot of people that will resent me, there will be a lot of people that will like me, and there'll be an awful lot of people that just don't really care one way or the other. So if I allowed myself to be upset by that, then I'd be a pretty upset person.
So I've got to just enjoy my own work. My business is not exploitation and my business is not selling pictures. My business is not figuring out good angles for press and so forth. My business, or my work, is acting right now. And once I forget about that, I'm gonna be a boring actor and I'm not gonna have any fun at it. And that's why I hire people to do--that's why I have an agent, that's why I have somebody who's a press representative, and that's why I have a business manager. Because I don't want to think about those things. And I find that if I try to think about them, I don't do it well. All I know is when I'm enjoying my work in acting and when I'm not, when I think I'm doing well and when I don't.
It's like the more attention that is brought to you, the more obstacles that are put in your path, just doing an honest day's work creatively. There are more obstacles.
With sister Shirley Maclaine |
It's nice to have a guy from Time magazine want to come and talk to you on the set. On the other hand, he wouldn't want to come and talk to you if you were doing a play off-Broadway somewhere, and maybe you would be able to concentrate a little better. And if he comes onto the set, you've gotta either be polite to him and acknowledge his presence and talk to him, or you have to forget about him--if he tries to talk to you, ignore him and just think about your work. In which case, he's gonna think you're a nut, or that you're trying to be rude to him or offend him in some way. And that's why, when a lot of strangers come on the set, I usually go to my dressing room or something. But there can be an awful lot of those obstacles, and those obstacles, I think they can just eat you up.
JL: Are these quotes of yours and Shirley's [Maclaine] in print without any direct communication between you, is that widening whatever breach there is between you, Warren?
WB: Not on my part, it certainly isn't, and I don't feel that there's a specific breach between us. And I'm sure that she feels the same way...
JL: Now this is the only part that I'm really interested in, because if you don't really want to communicate with her, I'm very curious to know why. It may explain a part of your character that I don't know anything about.
WB: Well, I don't blame you for being curious, but that doesn't mean that I've got to, you know, go into my sister.
Book Description
“Whatever you have read or heard about me through articles or gossip, forget it. I am nothing like that Warren Beatty. I am nothing like what you have read.” —Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty guarded his privacy even before he became a movie star, when he burst onto the screen in 1961 as the earnestly handsome all-American boy in Splendor in the Grass. When he started acting, Beatty kept secret the fact that actress Shirley MacLaine, already a star, was his older sister. Over time, he has cultivated a mystique, giving few interviews and instructing others not to talk about him. Until now.
Through years of groundbreaking research, lauded biographer Suzanne Finstad gained unprecedented access to Beatty’s family, close friends, and film colleagues, including such luminaries in the arts and politics as Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn, Leslie Caron, Robert Towne, Mike Nichols, and Senators John McCain, George McGovern, and Gary Hart. Weaving hundreds of these candid interviews, photographs from private albums, personal letters, diaries, and the previously unpublished papers of the late Natalie Wood and mentors such as directors Elia Kazan and George Stevens, playwrights Clifford Odets and William Inge, and agent Charles Feldman, Warren Beatty unveils the real Beatty—a complex, sensitive visionary torn between the “fairly puritanical, football-playing boy” from Virginia and his Hollywood playboy image.
Finstad paints a rich, fascinating portrait of the secretive film legend, taking us back to the “unrealized genius” parents who molded arguably the most famous brother and sister in Hollywood history, tracing the family influences and events in Beatty’s past that directly inspired McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait, Reds, Ishtar, Dick Tracy, Bugsy, Love Affair, and Bulworth, and led to his political activism, culminating in a near-bid for the White House. Finstad constructs the definitive, myth-shattering account of Beatty’s evolution from Hollywood’s enfant terrible to producer of the revolutionary Bonnie and Clyde, launching him as the premier actor/director/writer/producer of his generation, the only person to twice earn Oscar nominations in all five major categories.
Here also is the truth about Beatty the lover, setting the record straight on his storied relationships with such iconic actresses and beauties as Jane Fonda, Joan Collins, Natalie Wood, Leslie Caron, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Michelle Phillips, Diane Keaton, Isabelle Adjani, and Madonna. Finstad’s astute insights illuminate Beatty’s private struggle to attain happiness, his complicated bond with his sister, Shirley, and the deeper reasons why, at fifty-four, the archetypal bachelor married actress Annette Bening.
Stunningly researched, engrossing, and exquisitely detailed, Warren Beatty: A Private Man gives us a new understanding of the enigmatic, fiercely intelligent star who embodies the American dream.
Customer Reviews:
Warren Beatty: A Private Man.......2006-10-17
Is an objective look, at the man who captivated audiences around the world. Beautifully written, honest and poignant, the book takes the reader deep into the lives and backgrounds of a family that spawned not only one star-but Two. Suzanne Finstad's "A Private Man" gives the reader perspective as it takes you through the inner workings of a boy's life as he grows up to be one of Hollywood's most charismatic and influential leading men. Gracefully structured and truly the definitive Warren Beatty biography...A Must Read! J.J. Gillock (Easy Company Productions)
Smells like Honey.......2006-04-24
It took me days to finish this book, and I'd say you get your money's worth by halfway through, and the rest is gravy. Oddly enough, however, the book feels a bit topheavy, so that the bulk of it is spent on Beatty's difficult period between meeting William Inge and making LILITH about four years later, and then all of a sudden the last 40 years are rushed through at a clippety clop.
WB isn't quite as entertaining as Suzanne Finstad's previous biorgaphy, the sublime NATASHA, which really did bring Natalie Wood alive again for her fans; and it's likely that the parts of the present book with the most emotional resonance are the years Beatty spent with Natalie, trying to cheer her up after Wagner betrayed her. Finstad does an admirable job of showing us the psychological underpinnings of Beatty's affairs with Joan Collins (almost persuading us that Collins is a real person, not just a glitzy British sex bomb--almost, but not quite), Natalie Wood, Leslie Caron, and Julie Christie. But when she gets down the list to Michelle Phillips, her pretense at analysis ends. She doesn't even try. I wonder if the book wasn't originally twice as long, and she was asked to curtail the later years into a series of briefer chapters. I mean, she could have written 100s of pages on Mary Tyler Moore and Isabelle Adjani, but instead they're reduced to ciphers.
As a boy, Beatty was enraptured by the original cast album of OKLAHOMA! by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Finstad successfully shows us that, subconsciously or not, Beatty succeeded again and again in replicating the Curly-Laurie romance in his own adult life.
It does seem as though Beatty was propelled to stardom by a clutch of gay visionaries including Inge and Tennessee Williams, and crypto gay figures like Joshua Logan, who signed Beatty to a personal contract and had him screen tested kissing Jane Fonda from morning to night. Inge wrote not only SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, but A LOSS OF ROSES and ALL FALL DOWN for Beatty, and apparently never asked him for a thing in return. The stage production of A LOSS OF ROSES turned out to be a true nightmare of conflicted egos and desperate desires, what with Barbara Baxley threatening to jump off the cliffs of Malibu if replaced by Carol Haney, and Shirley Booth quitting on opening night. Joey Heatherton, the one and only, was also fired, thus setting the scene for a long and poignant second act that never quite came.
Would Joan Collins have been effective in the movie version of DH Lawrence's SONS AND LOVERS? Would Warren have succeeded playing Tony in WEST SIDE STORY? The book gives us crazy dreams of movies that might have been. Afdera Fonda, the former wife of Henry Fonda who dallied with Beatty briefly in 1963, said that he was "naughty, charming and playful. He smelled like honey, and he came and went like a shadow in the night."
"A biography reader".......2006-02-03
I love and collect biographical books. This book was totally disappointing. The entire book was an effort to "elect" Warren to some future office. I had hoped to gain some insight to his personal life and was left entirely with mindless minutiae. A total disappointment for such a large book...little or no new information of any value.
Say It Again!.......2006-01-05
Finstad's exhaustively researched book (average: one footnote per sentence!) is repetitious, repetitious, repetitious. Oh, and did I say she repeats herself? Beatty is a fascinating and complex subject. He deserves a cogent, readable, examination of his life and work. This isn't it.
Further, Finstad's absorption in Freudian constructs to explain ALL behavior is facile and annoying. Does she mention that Beatty is a control freak and pleasure junkie because his father drank? Oh, yeah, just every page or so. Does she discuss the "fact" that Beatty did not want to achieve fame through the agency of his sister, Shirley MacLaine? About every other page, I'd imagine. Was Warren a "Virginia gentleman" conflicted by the temptations of Hollywood in conflict with his "strict Baptist upbringing"? Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.
Ironically, Finstad acknowledges her "editor." Too bad no attention was paid to editing. Read it if you have a high tolerance for aggravation and little else to do.
An incredible read!.......2005-10-29
I read this book while wearing two hats. The first hat was my "settle down with a good book" hat, worn when I am just looking for a good story that I can pick up and put down and won't make me think too hard. But once I started with "Warren Beatty, A Private Man," I didn't want to put it down! I was absolutely fascinated by his beginnings -- the mix of Canadians and Virginians, the artistic bent that ran through the family, the disappointment of his father, etc. The author layered it so beautifully and painted such a clear picture of Beatty's childhood, I really felt I knew all of them personally. Warren and Shirley were kids I could easily have grown up with. And, ironically, I had a rather close (though non-romantic) friendship with Warren when we were both working on "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis." Unfortunately, there were times when I found it difficult to recognize the charming, amusing and polite young man I knew - and who Ms. Finstad captures so well --in the man who went on to become a Hollywood heartthrob and seemingly ruthless heartbreaker. All the pick-ups, the orgies, the conniving.... . And the difficult side of him when he started getting jobs, all the takes, mumbling, etc. Why would anyone hire him a second time? But I have to say he knew exactly how to deal with people who could help him advance. Although I admire people who work their way to the top (rather than having it handed to them), I found this particular side of Warren very unlikable.
My second hat, my writer's hat, was paying attention to the boundless research Ms. Finstad did, and was awed by the very real picture she painted of such a complicated man. I am familiar with research; my book, "The Tsar's Woman," required 15 years of poking through books, traveling to Russia, watching documentaries, etc. in order to get a handle on Russia's first tsar, Ivan IV, who became known as "Ivan The Terrible." I think she did an absolutely spectacular job, both in finding the man and explaining him to the reader in an easy, page-turning way.
Product Description
Recorded on 20 cds for 24 hours.
Average customer rating:
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WARREN BEATTY: A PRIVATE MAN
SUZANNE FINSTAD
Manufacturer: AURUM PRESS LTD
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 Actors & Actresses
| Arts & Literature
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 1845131312 |
Download Description
“Whatever you have read or heard about me through articles or gossip, forget it. I am nothing like that Warren Beatty. I am nothing like what you have read.” —Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty guarded his privacy even before he became a movie star, when he burst onto the screen in 1961 as the earnestly handsome all-American boy in Splendor in the Grass. When he started acting, Beatty kept secret the fact that actress Shirley MacLaine, already a star, was his older sister. Over time, he has cultivated a mystique, giving few interviews and instructing others not to talk about him. Until now.
Through years of groundbreaking research, lauded biographer Suzanne Finstad gained unprecedented access to Beatty’s family, close friends, and film colleagues, including such luminaries in the arts and politics as Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn, Leslie Caron, Robert Towne, Mike Nichols, and Senators John McCain, George McGovern, and Gary Hart. Weaving hundreds of these candid interviews, photographs from private albums, personal letters, diaries, and the previously unpublished papers of the late Natalie Wood and mentors such as directors Elia Kazan and George Stevens, playwrights Clifford Odets and William Inge, and agent Charles Feldman, Warren Beatty unveils the real Beatty—a complex, sensitive visionary torn between the “fairly puritanical, football-playing boy” from Virginia and his Hollywood playboy image.
Finstad paints a rich, fascinating portrait of the secretive film legend, taking us back to the “unrealized genius” parents who molded arguably the most famous brother and sister in Hollywood history, tracing the family influences and events in Beatty’s past that directly inspired McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait, Reds, Ishtar, Dick Tracy, Bugsy, Love Affair, and Bulworth, and led to his political activism, culminating in a near-bid for the White House. Finstad constructs the definitive, myth-shattering account of Beatty’s evolution from Hollywood’s enfant terrible to producer of the revolutionary Bonnie and Clyde, launching him as the premier actor/director/writer/producer of his generation, the only person to twice earn Oscar nominations in all five major categories.
Here also is the truth about Beatty the lover, setting the record straight on his storied relationships with such iconic actresses and beauties as Jane Fonda, Joan Collins, Natalie Wood, Leslie Caron, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Michelle Phillips, Diane Keaton, Isabelle Adjani, and Madonna. Finstad’s astute insights illuminate Beatty’s private struggle to attain happiness, his complicated bond with his sister, Shirley, and the deeper reasons why, at fifty-four, the archetypal bachelor married actress Annette Bening.
Stunningly researched, engrossing, and exquisitely detailed, Warren Beatty: A Private Man gives us a new understanding of the enigmatic, fiercely intelligent star who embodies the American dream.
From the Hardcover edition.
Book Description
In Echoes from Dharamsala, Keila Diehl uses music to understand the experiences of Tibetans living in Dharamsala, a town in the Indian Himalayas that for more than forty years has been home to Tibet's government-in-exile. The Dalai Lama's presence lends Dharamsala's Tibetans a feeling of being "in place," but at the same time they have physically and psychologically constructed Dharamsala as "not Tibet," as a temporary resting place to which many are unable or unwilling to become attached. Not surprisingly, this community struggles with notions of home, displacement, ethnic identity, and assimilation. Diehl's ethnography explores the contradictory realities of cultural homogenization, hybridity, and concern about ethnic purity as they are negotiated in the everyday lives of individuals. In this way, she complicates explanations of culture change provided by the popular idea of "global flow."
Diehl's accessible, absorbing narrative argues that the exiles' focus on cultural preservation, while crucial, has contributed to the development of essentialist ideas of what is truly "Tibetan." As a result, "foreign" or "modern" practices that have gained deep relevance for Tibetan refugees have been devalued. Diehl scrutinizes this tension in her discussion of the refugees' enthusiasm for songs from blockbuster Hindi films, the popularity of Western rock and roll among Tibetan youth, and the emergence of a new genre of modern Tibetan music. Diehl's insight into the soundscape of Dharamsala is enriched by her own experiences as the keyboard player for a Tibetan refugee rock group called the Yak Band. Her groundbreaking study reveals the importance of music as a site where official and personal, old and new representations of Tibetan culture meet and where different notions of "Tibetan-ness" are being imagined, performed, and debated.
Customer Reviews:
Great Reading!.......2002-05-24
This is a wonderful book about modern life in Dharamsala, exile home of the Dalai Lama in India. Dr. Diehl, an anthropologist, actually became a member of a local rock and roll band, the Yak band. Her story is about the day-to-day struggles of Tibetans to maintain their sense of identity while adjusting to the modernizing forces of global culture. The book is well-written and produced, with lots of sharp photos that give the reader a clear view of what life is like in the 'capital' of the Tibetan world in exile. Refreshingly, there is little anthropological jargon in this substantial and important book. I highly recommend it.
Book Description
Inside the pockets of this protective folder, you’ll find a full set of
D&D character record sheets -- and more.
Formatted in a new folio-style layout, each record has plenty of room to keep track of everything that makes each of your characters unique, including extra space for adding new class features and abilities for your multiclass characters.
Includes:
* 11 four-page character record sheets, one for each of the character classes in the Player’s Handbook.
* A four-page generic
D&D character record sheet.
* Quick-reference spell lists for all spellcasting classes in the Player’s Handbook and spellcasting prestige classes in the
Dungeon Master’s Guide.
* A bonus, four-page
d20 Modern character record sheet.
Every character record sheet and spell list is designed to be easy to photocopy, so you’ll always have a fresh sheet on hand when you need one.
Customer Reviews:
Helpful.......2007-04-03
Helpful for individual classes, but need to photocopy as only one copy of each included.
Fun fun fun. I like it....But it coulda used a bit of work........2005-04-29
These are great. I thought for some reason they'd fold over on the top...But they don't. Instead, it's the normal character sheet, modified a bit(Like having a rage area for the barbarian:Nifty), and made to take 4 pages. It's usefull, fun, but nowhere near worth 15 bucks.
I like it anyway.
I can't see them getting much better........2005-04-20
Well, I've been playing D&D for over 18 years and these are some of the best character sheets I've seen. I used to have some great ones for 2nd edition that I'd rank as high as these, but that was a long time ago. Sure, I could nit-pick about a few things. But over all I really couldn't ask for anything better. I say they're worth the price.
Cool, but..........2004-06-15
Ok, these are VERY well done, and in a dandy portfolio- with a few handy tables, to boot! But do you need to spend $15 on something you can just copy or make yourself? Well- in my case I saved near $5 by getting it here, and throwing it in with another item got me the "Super-saver" free shipping- so I'd say yes.
Buit just buying it retail? I'd have to say save your dollars and get something else.
Deluxe characters rule!.......2004-03-13
wow, i bought this ...and it's great, although it doesn't support epic elvels it's still awesome, it's a 4 oage character shee for every class, and it comes with a nice hard folder for your character sheets , it's awesome
Book Description
Character sheets created especially for the Eberron Campaign Setting.
Encased in a handy pocket folder featuring a beautiful piece of Eberron artwork (never before seen in its full glory), these character sheets contain all the information from the D&D® Deluxe Player Character Sheets, with modifications and additional material appropriate for game elements unique to the Eberron setting. In addition to the standard D&D classes, a sheet is included for new class introduced in Eberron-the artificer. Each character folio is four pages long and includes not only extensive space for a character record, but space for roleplaying information and campaign progress as well. Spell sheets for spellcasters are also included.
Average customer rating:
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Broadcast/Cable Programming: Strategies and Practices
Susan Tyler Eastman , and
Douglas A. Ferguson
Manufacturer: Wadsworth Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0534507441 |
Book Description
This course discusses the electronic media programming process and the kinds of issues and strategies that are prominent in the field today.
Customer Reviews:
Very Informative!.......2003-11-11
This textbook provides a thorough overview of the field of broadcast/cable programming. Industry terms are clearly defined and incorporated into the description of the various topics covered. The book is divided into easily identifiable cataegories, which assists in digesting the material.
It's appropriate that a book of this nature start with a discussion of the central theme, in this case programming. That is done quite well in the first chapter. The constraints unique to the broadcasting industry are at the core of the industry and are addressed in that manner.
Audience research is essential to professional program executives doing their work well. That's the topic of the second chapter. Again, industry terminology is explained.
Numerous broadcast experts had their insight to the various issues throughout the book. There is a diversity of perspectives presented. Various organizational structures are included. Radio, television, cable, national, local, and non-profit are all part of the mix. This book is an excellent overview for readers seeking to be introduced to the subject matter.
Average customer rating:
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Broadcast Cable Programming: Strategies and Practices
Susan Tyler Eastman , and
Douglas A. Ferguson
Manufacturer: Wadsworth Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
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| Entertainment
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ASIN: 0534512976 |
Book Description
In this revision of the market-leading text, Susan Eastman and Douglas Ferguson, two noted scholars and experts in the area of broadcast programming, provide students with the most accurate and current information on the techniques and strategies used in the programming industry. The text has helped professors teach this course with clear current illustrations and examples, and just right approach of student friendly writing. Comprehensive, accurate and up- to- date, the text covers all aspects of programming for broadcast, cable, radio, and the Web.
Books:
- What Is Cinema? (Vol 1) (What is Cinema?)
- Woody Allen on Woody Allen: In Conversation With Stig Bjorkman
- Zen and the Art of Screenwriting: Insights and Interviews
- A History of the French New Wave Cinema (Wisconsin Studies in Film)
- A Knight at the Movies: Medieval History on Film
- A New History of Japanese Cinema: A Century Of Narrative Film
- A Short Guide to Writing about Film (Short Guides Series)
- A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960
- Quotable Star Trek
- Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho
Books Index
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