[HWBL]

Originally Posted by kris

AH! It just hit me! And you touched on it with Ishtar. It's his ego that pisses me off. And yes, he's been in some good films like Bugsy (a favorite), Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait, Reds, and McCabe and Mrs. Miller. And while he does have longevity, he doesn't have consistency. Look at Clint Eastwood and the films he's done from 2003-2007, such as Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, and Letters from Iwo Jima. I mean, the old man has made consistent films that have made $100+ million and scored Oscars and/or nominations. That's what I mean by being in touch with the public's interest. Warren Beatty seems to make films for himself and to please Rupert Murdoch and the conservative Right. Beatty's lucky to get a film out every 15 years!

Boy, oh boy, you keep missing the point.
The LAST thing Beatty wants to do is to please the conservative
Right. Really, just the suggestion of that is too silly for words.
It's true that Beatty is a reluctant actor. Like playwright (and a
friend of his) Robert Towne has said:

In the case of working with Warren on Shampoo, obviously there's
an effect there. I definitely take him into account when I am writing scenes
for him, because I feel that I know what he does well. I feel that Warren
always has to be tougher than he thinks. He presents a peculiar problem
as an actor because he is a man who is deeply embarrassed by acting.
Unlike Jack [Nicholson], Warren is a very talented man, but he's so
embarrassed by his acting that you have to constantly force him, one way
or another, to use himself, whereas Jack doesn't have that reluctance…
Warren has the instincts of a character actor.

Or the late director Robert Altman, anything but a friend of Beatty's:

Warren and I don’t like each other very much. I think he’s
certainly a good actor. He was great in 'McCabe.' But I wouldn’t
go through that again. It’s no fun. Warren will never do the first
take. He has to be hands-on and doesn’t trust people. He’s very
insecure and suspicious of everybody.

That doesn't mean he's a bad actor, though. The fact that he
has chosen to live a full life and not be totally dependend on
an existence "in front of the cameras" or in the media (remember
his famous quote about Madonna in "Truth or Dare"?
She doesn't want to live off-camera, much less talk. There's
nothing to say off-camera. Why would you say something if it's
off-camera? What point is there existing?)
He's always been a full rounded human being first, then an
artist (actor, director, writer, producer). He has a broad range
of interests and yes, that meant - especially as far as his
own productions were concerned - that he only made a movie
when he was good and ready to make it, which in most cases
meant that he'd done all the research and often much of the
writing, too. It's funny to see that most of his "lesser" movies,
are the ones in which he was nothing more than a hired actor.

Eastwood has grown, slowly but surely, into becoming a
significant moviemaker. But he, too, has worked his way through
mediocre movies and genres. The "Any which way but..."
movies with the Orang Utan (sp) Clyde come to mind, and
there's more of such high class drama on his resume.
But, much like Beatty, he made the more popular movies to
be able to get a base to make movies with the stories he
personally wanted to tell. Beatty, himself, is the first to acknowledge
that his contemporaries are more productive than he is (he
did so in his fantastically hilarious, self depreciating speech at
the last Golden Globes). But it's a well known and acknowledged
fact that no man works harder on a movie (own production)
than he does, because of his very detailed manner of working.

Last, the quantity of movies is not what makes a person talented
or successful. Nor are box office numbers an indication of high
standards or high quality of a movie. I mean: many blockbusters
are brainless muscle movies with loads of special effects and not
much of an intelligent, let alone plausible, story - and don't even
get me started on the level of "acting" in such movies.

Beatty's lucky to get a film out every 15 years!
^The whole point is that Beatty does not, and has never
considered that to be the definition of luck or a desired
achievement, even. His definition of luck is what he has
at home: 4 kids that he almost thought he'd never have.