Hollywood superstar Warren Beatty made a rare appearance on Reddit yesterday answering fans’ questions. And we learned a lot about the director-writer-star of the upcoming “Rules Don’t Apply.” For one thing, Beatty said he will write an autobiography– and that should be something since there was a salacious unauthorized one a few years ago that claimed the Oscar winning ladies’ man has bedded 12,775 women! (I like Beatty’s answer to that in AARP magazine this month. Check it out.)
My favorite answer in the Reddit session was when someone queried if he preferred the Marx Brothers or Three Stooges? Warren’s witty reply: “Groucho was a friend of mine. I have to go with that. I was never close to Karl (Marx.) ”
Warren was asked who should play him in a movie about his own life. His answer? “Ronald Reagan. Or maybe Barack Obama. I might add that Ronald Reagan, who was a friend of mine, once said to me (not joking) that he did not know how anyone could be President now without being an actor.”
He talked politics of course: “I’ve spent a lot of my life in political activism. I campaigned for Jack Kennedy, I campaigned with Bobby Kennedy and quit movies for a while to work with George McGovern and help him try to get us out of Vietnam. I’ve remained a lifelong Democrat although I have as many friends who are Republicans. What concerns me most at the moment is that the commercialization of the use of technology may be creating a cacophony of opinions that obliterates voices of wisdom.”
Warren also declared that his favorite leading lady is his wife, Annette Bening, of course! He said his favorite memory of making “Bugsy” was: “how I lost interest in the garlic chicken I was eating two seconds after I met Annette Bening for the first time.”
Beatty said his favorite Woody Allen movie is “Annie Hall” (which makes sense since he was with Diane Keaton when the film was released). He praised directors Robert Altman and Hal Ashby, with whom he made, respectively “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” and “Shampoo.” He also gave a rare personal recollection of making “Bonnie and Clyde”:
“…my mother and father visited me on the set for the first time since it was the first movie I produced. My mother was a smoker. She and my father sat in and witnessed a production meeting. I saw her smoking and I asked her in front of the group if she loved me. There was an embarrassing silence. She said to me, ‘Of course, I love you. Why would you ask a question like that?’ I then said, ‘Well if you love me, will you put that cigarette out and never smoke another one?’ She stared down at the cigarette in her hand for a while and then she put it out. She never smoked another cigarette.”
“Rules” opens November 23rd. In the meantime, I urge you to watch “Reds,” “Shampoo,” “Heaven Can Wait” and “Bonnie and Clyde”– the best homework assignment in the world!
