Beauty Break: Warren Beatty & Julie Christie

I have to take a break from reading Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America by Peter Biskind. I recommend it, particularly if you're interested in 1960s/70s Hollywood, but it's disheartening, too. Warren Beatty comes off as extremely talented (knew that) but quite insufferable (didn't imagine that, for someone so charming) and the tales of movie-making within force you to marvel that any movie gets made ever, it's all so touch and go with contracts, creative differences, scheduling conflicts, personal pettiness, financial complications and those lusty personal lives that we as moviegoers sometimes live through vicariously for better or for worse.


Most curious to me is that the book has reignited the Julie Christie obsessing I was doing when Away From Her was around rather than renewing my lifelong Beatty drooling. Beatty has been out of the big picture for a decade now. I wanted to fall back in love since I haven't seen him in so long, apart from occassional red carpet trips to escort The Bening. Instead, I keep waiting for Julie Christie -- a supporting player -- to return to steal more scenes. She's so fascinating. It's almost like she's the 60s/70s version of Garbo. But instead of running away from stardom, she drifts in and out of it like some indifferent hippie muse.


Beatty & Christie made three films together, making her his most common screen partner (Gene Hackman equals that record but he was a supporting player). All three Beatty/Christie films were in the 1970s (McCabe and Mrs Miller and Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait) and are well worth watching. Between them those films have 14 Oscar nominations and two statues. Even after their last film together, Christie remains a spectral presence. Beatty dedicated his Oscar winning classic Reds (1981) to her.

Curiously, Beatty don't seem to have anything like affection for McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971) and it reads like neither star was happy on set. I have an admittedly limited working knowledge of the western genre (not my favorite) but McCabe is in my top ten for sure [editors note: other favs... using "western" loosely I suppose are Red River (1948), Giant (1956), Hud (1963) and Brokeback Mountain (2005)]. It's yet another reminder that actors don't always know what's best for them. McCabe is a total classic. Whether or not the stars understood what Altman was after, they're both terrific in it.

poll by twiigs.com

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You're So Vain. You Probably Think These Links Are About You

Jim Hill remembers effects man Stan Winston (RIP)
<--- MSN asks both Michelle Pfeiffer & Julianne Moore to eat donuts. It always freaks me out when I see my two ruling movie goddesses pictured together, in articles not written by... myself.
MNPP Guillermo Del Toro woos his already drooling fanboy legions with this "quote of the day"
Zombie Daily Rob Sacchetto draws a new zombie every day!
Accidental Sexiness Pedro, Penelope, and Blanca Portillo hit Madrid to promote Broken Embraces
Topless Robot Barbie as Tippi Hedren in The Birds? I LOVE IT.
Cinephilia the quotable Arden has unkind words for DDL in There Will Be Blood
Twitch Tony Jaa is finally on his way back to cinemas (what has he been doing?)
Bright Lights After Dark raves out on the career of Vera Farmiga. Maybe I should stick in this Never Forever DVD I have sitting here
Evening Class on TCM's "Asian Images in Film" series
The Guardian There's always someone. A defense of The Happening. Although when a defense starts with "it's not that bad" hasn't the debate already been lost?
Star East Hugh Grant and Zhang Ziyi to co-star in a romantic comedy?

And just in case you think I forgot about my love for them, I haven't. Here's a photo of The Bening, her sister in law Shirley Maclaine, her hubbie (and Shirley's kid brother) Warren Beatty who were all at the AFI tribute to [drum roll please].... WARREN BEATTY Congratulations your awesomeness! I love you.


If you haven't seen and worshipped his contributions to the cinema such as Reds, Shampoo, Bugsy, Bulworth, Bonnie & Clyde and Splendor in the Grass among others, than frankly, your loss. Get on that, will you?
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Great Moments: Shampoo (1975)

I've got Warren Beatty on the brain since that tribute on Monday night at the Golden Globes. So, here's a moment I love from Hal Ashby's Shampoo (1975) written by The Bening's husband and Robert Towne. This scene always gets to me because Carrie Fisher seems like she's a hundred years-old. She was actually somewheres around 18 and this was her debut. There's a split second late in the scene when the teenager peeks through as she glances quickly back and forth, too aware that she's playing a naughty adult game. Great cameo-ish performance.

Warren Beatty plays George, a womanizing hairdresser. He's been invited into Lorna's kitchen for a snack.


Lorna: Want some lox?

George: No, thanks.

Lorna: You're my mother's hairdresser.

George: I do hair, yeah.

Lorna: Chopped liver?

George: No, thanks.

Lorna: Are you gay? Want a baked apple? They're cold, but good.

George: No, thanks.

Lorna: Did you hear me?

George: Yeah.

Lorna: Well, are you? Are you queer?

George: Sure.

Lorna: Come on. Are you or aren't you?

George: [chewing on celery] This is great, huh.

Lorna: Come on, tell me. Don't be afraid.

George: Why do you want to know so bad?

Lorna: See if you're making it with my mother.

George: Why would my being a faggot have anything to do with that?

Lorna: Nothing, I guess. Have you ever made it with a guy?

George: You ever make it with a girl?

Lorna: Are you?

George: Am I what -- what are you talking about?

Lorna: Making it with my mother?

George: I'd love to do your hair sometime.

Lorna: Do you have a thing about older women? Because that's sort of faggoty, isn't it?

I never get my hair done. In fact, I don't think I've ever been to a beauty salon in my whole life. You think that's funny, don't you?

George: Yeah.

Lorna: Beverly Hills hairdresser. You might as well be a faggot. You think that's funny, too?


George: No.

Lorna: Then what do you think?

George: You know, I think you got exactly the same eyes as your mother. And your chin's a little bit like hers, too.

Lorna: No, it isn't. No.

Goerge: I think it is.

Lorna: No, no... and my eyes aren't like hers either.

George: They are. Because they...

Lorna: No, they're not.

George: They really are.

Lorna: [suddenly angry] No, they're not, they're not. I'm nothing like my mother!

George: I'm not trying to insult you, you know. Can't we just be friends?

Lorna: Okay.

You want to fuck?

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And... Scene

My Boy Beatty

Happy 69th birthday to my idol Warren Beatty! I worship the ground that he walks on. It isn't just that he slept with three different women from my "10 people I'd switch teams for" list (Natalie Wood, Madonna, and Annette Bening being the delicious trinity for the unduly curious among you). It's that he's a ridiculously handsome man, an intelligent director, and a smashingly good actor (that's the part that people forget). People are always so busy worshipping Eastwood, Nicholson, and whoever... but for this movie buff Old Hollywood IS Warren Beatty.

If you've never understood the fuss, rent yourself Bonnie & Clyde, Shampoo, Splendor in the Grass, McCabe & Mrs. Miller or Reds and be converted.