This page contains 2 magazine articles, "Life" and "People" published 1987.
Life Magazine
This article appeared in the May 1987 issue of Life Magazine.
Talk about talent, this is some high-powered pair. Both have oscars and million., like five or six per picture. Both have played hard to get with reporters and photographers. It would be remarkable to have one such star in a movie. Ishtar, this month's comedy extravaganza about notalent songwriters on the road to Morocco, has two. Goodbye, Bing and Bob, hello Chuck and Lyle. These neo-buddies don,t just act, they duet on video and album and they invite Life along.
Dustin Hoffman: (Stops singing)
You missed a ya-ya.
Warren Beatty: Oh, please, with all the ya-yas you've missed.
DH: (Stops dancing) Do it good.
WB (Moonwalking across the set) This is as good as i can do.
They worry about the risks.
DH: (Missing a step) Agh! I've had such a distinguished career till now! (Midnight cowboy, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, etc.)
WB : (Also the movie's producer, he has more to worry about than a misstep.) It's easier than producing, directing, writing, acting and starring, which i've done twice. (Heaven can wait, Reds.)
But they are not two of a kind. One is hollywood, tall (six feet two), handsome and quiet. One is New York, short (five foot six), um, appealing and brash. Their off screen dialogue can be the sound of one voice talking.
DH: He has this reputation with women, but I have never met anyone who blushes as much as Warren. He is puritanical, shy, the opposite of his public image.
WB: If a woman says I made a pass at her, I didn't. If she says I didn't, I did. (More than passing fancies included Natalie Wood, Julie Christie and Diane Keaton.)
DH: Everyone wants to know what Warren Beatty is doing at four in the morning. He is in bed watching reruns of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. Alone. He is interested in dining out, having conversations-social intercourse, not sexual intercourse. He loves to schmooze, meet people. I don,t do that. I'm with my family.
(He seldom stirs without wife Lisa, Max, two, Rebecca, four, Jake, six, and, from a first marriage, Karina,21 and Jenna,16.)
WB: Dustin is always with his family. I never see him for more than 10 minutes.
DH: I've been a star for 20 years and a human being for 30 years before that. I feel good that I've been a human being longer. The trouble with Warren is he's always been a star. The first time I met him, 20 years ago in a New York shoe store, he asked mew to go for ice cream. I thought he was kidding, He was a big star. I wasd nothing (That year Hoffman got an oscar nomination for The Graduate, and Beatty got one for Bonnie and Clyde.)
WB: We met again in the 70's in a restaurant on the strip in L.A. I was struck by one thing. He had on a plain Timex watch. No dates or gadgets. The next day I got one. Two years ago Dustin saw my watch and said, "What a nice idea." The next day he showed up with a Timex. I wasd stunned. I said, "I got the idea from you!" (Beatty stills wears one.)
DH: (In jeans and running shoes) The biggest surprise about Warren is that he is the worst dressed human being I ever saw in my life.
WB: (Models his tweed pants etc.)
DH: We have nothing in common.
WB: We have wanted to do a movie together for a long time.
DH: Elaine May, the director, thought we'd be funny together.
Plus Warren used to play the piano bar, and I was going to be a classical pianist. She knew this. (May suggested the teaming to Beatty, suggesting the teaming to Beatty, who, as producer,
O.K.'d everything from budget to casting.) Warren and I talked on the phone fpr three to four hours. He lives on the phone. We felt we spoke the same language. Then I studied reds. If Warren had not been a movie star, he would have been heralded as the best new director.
WB: (Unmoved. He got the oscar for direction.)
DH: I get a kick out of him, and he gets a kick out of me. But the only way I'll work with Warren again is if he has no power. He does best when totally subservient to me. The way I see it,
warren......if the film fails, there's no reason why we can't do a series together. Hoffman is loathe to break up the act. I love this guy.
People Magazine
This article appeared in "People" Magazine on May 25th, 1987.
They are Hollywood's lanky romantic Mutt and Jug-size Jeff, the lone Lothario and the bigbeaked paterfamilies of the movies-pals ,professionals,buddies in badinage, and it's no wonder Dustin Hoffman knows just how to get WarrenBeatty's goat. Hoffman, with obvious relish, merely discusses--in public and in his presense--Beatty's vaunted reputation for bedding beautiful women. Discussing the Morocco Filming of Ishtar, the just released megamillion comedy that teams the two stars for the first time, Hoffman often connives to work the conversation around to Beatty's erotic exploits. The movie is long wrapped, but Dustin's needling is still sharp. Right now, for instance, at a crowded lunch in L.A. hotel, Beatty attempts to parry Dustin's jovial thrusts by musing airily about a paper doily. "I suspect we can date the collapse of Western civilation from the invention of the paper doily," he says with mock earnestness. "You won't believe this," counters Hoffman, "But this is Warren's approach to girls. That doily line, man, they get so hot. "Take me! they plead. Take me now, I'm yours!"
Deep down, despite his fame, his millions and his genuis, could the 5,6" Hoffman be imagining that such a line just might work for the 6'1" Beatty? Warren just looks embarrased, but how can he get annoyed at such a brazen, truth-telling buddy? They met more than a decade ago, but until fairly recently their encounters had been brief. "We hardly knew each other before Ishtar came along," says Hoffman. "After I read the script, Warren and I talked on the phone and thrashed everything out. We found a commonality of taste, and we've just gone on from there. Mind you, we don't hang out. I'm married with kids, he's not. I go to bed early, he doesn't. We really can see each other only between about 4 and 7 p.m. He starts cookin at about the time I collapse." Hoffman gives his friends a playful poke. "Are you listening,Warren? I'm talking about your sex life.
As the banter continues, the strain of the last few month starts to show through. "I feel like I'm at the Last Supper," Hoffman bursts out. He's only half kidding. Hoffman and Beatty have brought along 10 people to the lunch today, most of them Columbia executives. The studio has a heavy investment in Ishtar - to be exact $40 million (including $5.5 million saleries for each star, an additional $500,000 to Beatty for producing) plus $10 million for promotion. Ishtar is the most expensive comedy in history. Repeatedly dalayed since last fall and afterwards widely regarded as a potential disaster, the film must gross $100 million just to break even. The luncheon's main course should be Maalox.
A columbia flack sits at a reporter's right elbow, commanding an unimpeded view of his notepad. The rest of the studio protection squad sits close enough to horn in on everything that is said. Beatty clearly wants the discussion kept "light", offering a Warren and Dustin pony show designed to amuse rather than inform. When pressed, Hoffman admits that the risks on Ishtar are indeed "Very high". Beatty grimaces as Hoffman jokes that the movie is "a chance for the audience to come and see the end of two careers."
At stake is audience acceptance of Ishtar's oddball casting of Hoffman as the Romeo and Beatty as the nerd sidekick. In another daring move, the two non-singers have chosen to warble all or part of the movie's 26 songs in their roles as failed singer-songwriters forced to do gigs in Morocco.
Early reviews have ranged from cruel ("colossally dunderheaded"-- Hollywood Reporter) to Conciliatory ("reasonably genial"--Time). Newsweek found the movie fun but asked, "Does the $40 million really show in Ishtar? and then answered, "You have to say no."
Reviewing the budget instead of the movie leaves Hoffman livid. "Warren doesn't want me to talk about money but, man, there's just been to much death-wishing about the picture. My unconscious can't take it. I mean, don't they realize that you can't make a movie with two big stars for under $35 million today--and that's without Morocco. If Ishtar does business, who cares about the..."
"DUSTIIINNN!" Beatty yowis, swinging around and clamping a large sinewy hand over the mouth of his costar, who continues his tirade in an incomprehensible splutter. The Columbia execs appear nonplussed. Maalox all around for desssert.
As the lunch group breaks, Beatty eases over to a young woman executive and kisses her gently, first on one cheek, then on the other. She looks dazed, as if she had been sprinkled with holy water by the Pope. Then, floating out like mist, he is gone.
Two day later Hoffman and Beatty arrive on schedule and sans entourage for a less public interview. Ishtar's close-ups perhaps do injustice to Beatty's famous face. Age has certainly not yet wrung the withers of Hollywood's most celebrated stallion. The romantic mane is flecked with grey, and parenthesis around the mouth are cut deeper, and time has done its calligraphy at the corners of the eyes. But the eyes still glow like bedside lamps, and the mouth has lost nothing of its virility and humor. He looks, in short, like a gracefully aging prince in a fairy tale.
Taking publicity about his private self, he is forceful, earnest and agonized. For Beatty, celebrity is a rhinestone overcoat with a lining of nettles. "Maybe in time privacy will not be so important, but right now I haven't evolved to that place," he says. As for his relationships with current lady and Ishtar co-star Isabelle Adjani,31, Beatty thinks that's none of your business. But since he has made films with many of the key women in his life, audiences have and will continue to experience Beatty's love affairs vicariously. Besides Adjani in Ishtar, there was Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass, Leslie Caron in Promise her Anything, Julie Christie in Heaven can Wait and Diane Keaton in Reds. We could go on, but Warren won't.
Beatty traces his indifference to fame back to an exact moment at the start of his career in the early 60's "I stepped out of a hotel room in Paris and looked down at a newspaper on the floor that had a large picture of me on the front page. I was startled because I wasen't doing and publicity. That instant it hit me. Whether the article sais something good or bad about me, it was the same. The same! So rarely read anything written about me. Ir's hard to take fame seriously when you've been famous since you were a kid..."
"He's beem famous longer that he's been alive," snorts Hoffman. In marked contrast to his reticent friend, Hoffman, small as life, seems even more explosively energetic than he does on scree. At an age when most Hollywood careers start to fade (Beatty was 50 in March, Hoffman hits the half century mark in August) both seem at the peak of their porers--if not confidence. On the subject of age, Hoffman yelps, "Interviews over!". Beatty counters with a "Hey, 50's just a number. I ignore it."
Utterly unlike, these brilliant and prickly men seem infinitely at ease in each other presence. It doesn't figure: Hoffman, the short Jewish kid from L.A. who "grew up skinny with acne so bad my face looked like a rifle range," hanging out with the handsome football hero from Richmond Va. Or perhaps the combination does make sense. Both Hoffman and Beatty dropped out of college after one year to pursue actingf. Both worked in New York theater before Hollywood beckoning. And both made enemies by taking strong control of their careers.
Yet from all reports there was little temperament on the Ishtar set (eight weeks in Morocco, nine weeks in New York). Part of the reason was the devotion of Beatty and Hoffman to Ishtar's quirky writer-director Eilaine May,55. She took two years to edit her last film, 1976's Mickey and Nicky, and hadn't worked as a director since. A source on the production claims that Beatty has thumped the tub for Ishtar mostly for May's sake. If the picture's a gargantuan flop, it could be her last.
Hoffman admires Beatty's fierce loyalty to May. He admits he'd like to build a similar relationship with Beatty. "Lasting friendships are rare in this business. Because they're work related, they tend to be short and intense. But I hope my friendship with Warren will keep going. To me a real friend is someone I know who really loves me but is hard on me because he wants me to be and to do my very best. And thats Warren."
In Morocco, Beatty broke the ice by baby-sitting for Dustin's three younger kids. The two pals were seen in local restaurants and bars together; on other nights Hoffman and his wife, Lisa, dined with Warren and Isabelle. But Hoffman says all he remembers now of Morocco is "work and diarrhea."
There is also a problem with camels. "This is one area where Warren failed as a producer," says Hoffman. "When a camel cushes (gets up and sits down), it moves firward suddenly and then back. If you're not wearing a camel-adapted athletic supporter, your gonads go forward and then tuck under. I found that extremely painful, but Warren did not. He has famous gonads and people have been throwing darts at them for years."
Enough nonsense. What have these two men found in each other to sustasin a friendship? Beatty sees his own "tenacity" in Hoffman. "Maybe I should have sain ferocity," he corrects. "Dustin's is not an accidental career." But the appreciation goes deeper. Hoffman speaks of Warren several flights to Virginia to visit his ailing father during production (Beatty's father died four months ago). "I've never seen Warren cry, says Hoffman but if i were ill, he'd work until his fingers bled until I got help." Beatty says, I've learned a tremendous amount from the way Dustin combines his family and his profession. His first priority is definitely his family, and that gives his work a foundation.
Few things are harder to imagine than the domestication of loverboy Beatty. Years ago Beatty's sister, Shirley Maclaine, recalled Warren's first meeting with her daughter, Sachi. "He examined her quietly, as though, she were just a specimanof human life instead of a neice." Obviously things have changed. "I adore Dustin's kids," Warren says, and Hoffman reports that Beatty's fans would have been ashtonished to see him at the Hoffman home in Manhatten taking meals with Dustin, Lisa and their Children. "My kids get so excited when they know he's coming," says Hoffman. "I think it's that he treats them exactly as he would treat adults." There's another reason. "They also enjoy the fact that Warren is big, in contrast to me. One day I was carrying my son Jake, who is 6, on my shoulders, and he said: "I know why you like to carry me on your sahoulders, Dad. It makes you taller than your friend Warren." "I can't imagine my life without my kids," says Hoffman, a father of five (the eldest girls Karina, 21 and Jenna 17, are from hir marriage to dancer-actress Anne Byrne, who seperated from Hoffman in 1978). Since Hoffman married Lisa Gottsegen in 1980, he's added Jacob, Becky, 4 and Max, 2-1\2 to the brood. Lisa is expecting another this fall. "one day," says the doting father, "I picked up Becky at the nursery school, and she gave me a picture she had drawn. "here,' she said, 'I made this for you and your friend, Mommy.'"
As Dustin tells his family stories, Beatty roars with delight. Then Hoffman turns to Beatty, who is watching him thoughtfully, and adds: "i keep telling Warren to get into this. I say, "Don't be a shmuck--you've got to make some little Warrens.'" Later Dustin confides, "You know what? I think Warren has an extraordinarily delayed reaction to life. He thinks, "Well, maybe I should get married." He poses the question and then he muls over it--for decades! And by the time he makes up his mind the girl is gone."
As for Warren and women, Hoffman continues, "I've only seen him with Isabelle. But I'll tell you this: There's nothing trivial or cheap about his relationships. It's very important to him that he has strong freindships with the mom\nen he's had love affairs with. He's not the playboy the public thinks he is. Part of him wants to have kids. But then, Warren does have a family."
"I think there's some truth to that," Beatty says. He is aware that Hoffman is referring to his habit of adopting the extended family he works with on movies. Dustin makes no secret that he'd like himself and his family to stay on Beatty's adoption list. "Lisa and I both like him, but he makes us sad, and we don't know quite why," says Hoffman. "There's an essential lonliness in him. I'm not suprised that he's interested in Howard Hughes and plans to make a picture about him. There's something about Warren that reminds me of Hughes. I mean, I can see him dying alone with nobody there to love him or hold his hand. It hurts to think about that. "Beatty, ever eager to keep his personal feelings at bay, has come up with only one effective way so far to keep his friendship with Hoffman flourishing. "Dustin and I are talking about another movie about the two characters we play in Ishtar, " he says. Beyond that, says Hoffman, "Only time will tell. But, I'm hoping and, you know, I think he is too.