Decoder Ring: Calling Dick Tracy! It’s Warren Beatty Again

Summary

Slow Burn: Decoder Ring Special on Warren Beatty and Dick Tracy

Host: Willa Paskin
Episode Title: Decoder Ring: Calling Dick Tracy! It’s Warren Beatty Again
Release Date: October 30, 2024

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Introduction: The Mysterious Dick Tracy Specials

On a seemingly ordinary evening in July 2012, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) premiered an unexpected half-hour Dick Tracy special featuring none other than the Oscar-winning actor and director, Warren Beatty. This unheralded broadcast left viewers baffled and sparked widespread curiosity across social media and Hollywood forums.

Willa Paskin [00:56]: "Warren Beatty, one of the most famous movie stars of the 20th century, is spending the twilight of his career playing a comic strip detective of dwindling renown."

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Unveiling the Specials: 2012 and 2023

The initial special aired unannounced alongside a Dick Tracy marathon, featuring Beatty embodying the titular character in a bizarre and self-referential performance. Eleven years later, in July 2023, TCM released a second special titled "Dick Tracy Zooms In," further deepening the mystery surrounding Beatty's dedication to the role.

Ryan Estrada [01:28]: "Everyone on social media is like the weirdest frigging thing just aired."

Audience Reactions and Speculations

The internet buzzed with confusion and speculation about the nature and intent behind these specials. Fans and critics alike questioned whether these broadcasts were performance art, sincere attempts to revive interest in Dick Tracy, or something else entirely.

Ryan Estrada [05:07]: "This is so awful, but I love it so much."

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Warren Beatty: A Hollywood Titan

Willa Paskin delves into Warren Beatty's illustrious career, highlighting his transition from a charismatic actor in classics like Bonnie and Clyde to a multifaceted filmmaker renowned for his perfectionism and control.

Beatty [10:24]: "I've read that I was a pain in the neck. This may probably have something to do with the fact that I'm a pain in the neck."

Kim Masters, a seasoned journalist covering Hollywood, provides insights into Beatty's reputation as a demanding perfectionist who would go to great lengths to achieve his creative vision.

Kim Masters [08:02]: "Everything is this elliptical answer. And I actually had this rule, which is never call Warren Beatty without going to the bathroom first because you could literally sit on the phone with that guy for hours."

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The Genesis of the Dick Tracy Projects

The character of Dick Tracy, created in 1931 by Chester Gould, was a groundbreaking figure in comic strips, standing out with his distinctive acid yellow trench coat and fedora. Beatty's fascination with Tracy led him to secure the rights in 1985, aiming to breathe new life into the character through a high-profile film adaptation.

Beatty [16:22]: "Dick Tracy is a great old American comic strip. I thought, I gotta make a movie of this. This could be fun."

The 1990 film, despite its initial success and seven Oscar nominations, struggled to compete with contemporaries like Tim Burton's Batman, ultimately resulting in financial disappointments and stifling Beatty's momentum in Hollywood.

Beatty [19:34]: "Warren Beatty is Dick Tracy."

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Legal Maneuvering: Retaining the Rights

A pivotal element in understanding Beatty's recurring Dick Tracy specials lies in the contractual agreement he made with Tribune Media. The contract allowed Beatty to hold the rights indefinitely, provided he actively used the character within specified timeframes. Failure to produce content within five years would grant Tribune Media the ability to reclaim the rights unless Beatty initiated a new Dick Tracy project within an additional two-year window.

Aaron Michnowski [25:14]: "Warren Beatty can theoretically hold on to Dick Tracy until the day he dies."

In 2012 and 2023, Beatty released the enigmatic specials to comply with these contractual obligations, ensuring he maintained control over the beloved character.

Aaron Michnowski [28:36]: "The judge says... the Dick Tracy character could show up in a Disney on Ice performance with Nancy Kerrigan and that that counted as a special. So this has to count as a special too."

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Psychological Insights: Beatty's Obsession with Dick Tracy

While legal explanations provide a framework for Beatty's actions, deeper psychological motivations emerge. Interviews with former assistants like Aaron Michnowski reveal a man driven by an unwavering attachment to the character, potentially mirroring his own personal struggles and desire for control.

Ryan Estrada [30:19]: "My thing was just that these specials are the pettiest thing anyone in Hollywood has ever done in public."

Willa Paskin posits that Beatty's continued investment in Dick Tracy is less about fostering the character's legacy and more about maintaining personal control and addressing his own sense of stagnation in a rapidly evolving industry.

Willa Paskin [31:08]: "Warren Beatty is frittering away the end of his career, not because of some grudge or some artistic vision, but because of a long term attachment to a character and an obsessive way of working."

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The Inevitable Transition: Public Domain and Beyond

With Dick Tracy set to enter the public domain in 2027, Beatty's efforts to retain the rights are rendered futile in the long term. This impending transition underscores the poignancy of Beatty's enduring yet ultimately unsustainable commitment to the character.

Willa Paskin [42:48]: "Dick Tracy is going into the public domain in 2027, and that means all this effort to keep the rights, it's for nothing."

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Conclusion: A Legacy in Flux

Willa Paskin concludes that Warren Beatty's persistence with Dick Tracy reflects a complex interplay of legal obligations, personal attachment, and an inability to relinquish control. As both Beatty and Dick Tracy age, their intertwined legacies face an uncertain future, marked by dedication that borders on obsession.

Willa Paskin [43:47]: "Dick Tracy is like Warren Beatty's interior monologue. It's someone who used to be younger and more famous and more powerful and more productive, talking to himself about whether time has passed him by or if he can still do the extraordinary so long as he holds on to the rights."

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Key Takeaways

• Warren Beatty's Involvement: Beatty's acquisition of Dick Tracy rights and his subsequent productions are driven by a combination of contractual necessity and personal obsession.

• Legal Constraints: The unique contract with Tribune Media compelled Beatty to produce content to retain control over Dick Tracy, leading to the enigmatic TCM specials.

• Psychological Factors: Beatty's deep-seated attachment to Dick Tracy may reflect his own struggles with aging, fame, and creative control.

• Legacy and Future: As Dick Tracy enters the public domain, Beatty's efforts symbolize the challenges of maintaining relevance and control in an ever-changing entertainment landscape.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Willa Paskin [40:17]: "What struck me about this guy, this guy Dick Tracy had been around for a billion years, was that he just kept never getting married."

• Ryan Estrada [31:08]: "He's just, like, making sure, like, I don't want to turn on Disney and have a Chris Pratt Dick Tracy show on. I'm the only one."

• Willa Paskin [43:05]: "It's impossible to tell their voices apart. But that's the point. It's like it's Warren Beatty's interior monologue."

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This detailed exploration provides listeners with an in-depth understanding of Warren Beatty's enduring and enigmatic relationship with Dick Tracy, shedding light on the intricate blend of legal strategies and personal motivations that drive this longstanding Hollywood saga.

Transcript

[Willa Paskin]

Want to shop Walmart? Black Friday deals first. Walmart plus members get early access to our hottest deals. Join now and get 50% off a one year annual membership. Shop Black Friday deals first with Walmart + see [e-mail] On a seemingly normal Friday evening in July of 2012, Turner Classic Movies, the cable channel that plays old films all day, was airing a seemingly normal Dick Tracy marathon.

[Warren Beatty]

Calling all cars. Mobilize every truck.

[Willa Paskin]

Dick Tracy is a comic strip character, a square jawed detective who's been around for nearly 100 years. You can recognize him by his outfit. He always wears an acid yellow trench coat and fedora. He used to be a household name, appearing in daily newspapers and on the radio and in black and white detective films and serials. Hello?

[Warren Beatty]

Hello, operator? Dick Tracy speaking. Get me the police hairdrome. Hurry it up.

[Willa Paskin]

In 1990, the character got the full Hollywood treatment when the Oscar winning movie star Warren Beatty directed, produced, co wrote and starred in a high profile adaptation.

[Warren Beatty]

Hey, tough guy, you want to try that on somebody your own size?

[Willa Paskin]

That movie and some of the old black and white pictures were all part of the TCM marathon, as you'd expect. But then five minutes before, before 10pm TCM ran something unexpected.

[Ryan Estrada]

Everyone on social media is like the weirdest frigging thing just aired.

[Willa Paskin]

Ryan Estrada writes and draws comics all over the world. When he woke up on the Saturday morning after TCM's Marathon played, he learned he'd missed something bizarre, something called Dick Tracy Special.

[Ryan Estrada]

I guess like if you were really obsessed with like I need to know what's on Turner Classic Movies, you might have known something called Dick Tracy Special was coming. But this was completely unannounced.

[Willa Paskin]

When Ryan went to check out Dick Tracy's special for himself, intrigued by the Internet's confusion, he was not disappointed.

[Ryan Estrada]

Yeah, it is very, very weird.

[Warren Beatty]

How are you, Detective Tracy? I'm fine. Call me Dick, huh? You look just wonderful. Pomegranates, Pomegranates. Pomegranates, Pomegranates, Pomegranates. Pretty good for my age, huh?

[Willa Paskin]

That's Warren Beatty talking about the anti aging powers of pomegranates in character as Dick Tracy. It's the open opening minutes of the special and we've just seen him drive onto a studio lot and walk into a nondescript soundstage. He's now sitting at a round table across from the film critic Leonard Malton. Who is the guy complimenting his good looks?

[Warren Beatty]

Can we take your hat and coat? I don't take off My hat and coat. Do you mind if I ask what your age is? I'm gonna be 107 in July. Yes. No. Yeah, 107. 107. Do you have some secret you can share with everybody? Small portions. Small portions. And exercise. And of course, pomegranate. Once in a while, you know, I'll have a blueberry.

[Willa Paskin]

Ryan was immediately fascinated, or maybe baffled is a better word.

[Ryan Estrada]

It feels like they're trying to make a comedy sketch, but nothing was written and they're not comedians. So the rest of it is Leonard Moulton playing clips to fill the rest of the 30 minutes.

[Willa Paskin]

Some of those clips are from Warren Beatty's own Dick Tracy movie. So things get very self referential.

[Warren Beatty]

The Warren Beatty movie. To tell you the truth, I think that the scenery is a little phony.

[Willa Paskin]

It goes on like this for nearly 30 minutes and then Dick Tracy gets an urgent call on his wrist radio.

[Ryan Estrada]

I think you should get over here, Tracy.

[Willa Paskin]

And abruptly walks off set.

[Warren Beatty]

I'm just gonna be on my way.

[Willa Paskin]

Ryan and others intrigued by the special online had so many questions. What was this? Why was this? Was it performance art? Was it serious? Had they even wanted people to see it?

[Ryan Estrada]

This is purposely bad. This is the most fascinating thing in the world.

[Willa Paskin]

Still, there was only so much wondering they could do about a one time 30 minute special, even when it's confounding as this. So Ryan went on with his life. And then in July of 2023.

[Warren Beatty]

Hello?

[Kim Masters]

Hello?

[Warren Beatty]

Hello? Hello?

[Willa Paskin]

Are you there, sir?

[Warren Beatty]

I'm here. Who is it?

[Willa Paskin]

11 years after Dick Tracy's special aired, Turner Classic Movies dropped another half hour special. It's called Dick Tracy Zooms In. It takes place on Zoom and it's even more self referential than the first.

[Warren Beatty]

Detective Tracy, how are you? I'm fine, Mr. Beatty, how are you? I'm fine, thank you. Long time no see.

[Ryan Estrada]

Leonard Malton has Warren Beatty join the Zoom. And now it is Dick Tracy and Warren Beatty who are the same 85 year old man in a different coat.

[Warren Beatty]

I don't get it. What's going on here? I didn't place the call.

[Ryan Estrada]

It's so awful, but I love it so much.

[Willa Paskin]

Seeing the second Oddball special rekindled Ryan's curiosity. He'd already been intrigued. Now he needed to know more. Why did these exist? Coming 11 years apart and more than 30 years after the Dick Tracy movie came out, what the hell was Warren.

[Ryan Estrada]

Beatty doing when the second one happened? I was like, I have no idea why this was made and I want to know everything. About it.

[Willa Paskin]

This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin. Decades ago, before comic book characters ruled Hollywood, Warren Beatty procured the rights to Dick Tracy and never let go. Beatty is now 87 and still playing Dick Tracy in these unheralded one time only specials airing on cable. Why is Warren Beatty, one of the most famous movie stars of the 20th century, spending the twilight of his career, to say nothing of his life, playing a comic strip detective of dwindling renown? The answer includes pettiness, contract law, the fickleness of fame, and the most bedrock reality of all. One day, we all get old. So today on Decodering, grab your popcorn. What's going on between Warren Beatty and Dick Tracy?

[Celia Mueller]

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[Willa Paskin]

So why is Warren Beatty popping up as Dick Tracy on late night TV every decade or so? You'd think the easiest way to find out would be to ask him directly. But he didn't respond to our interview request. And honestly, it probably wouldn't have helped.

[Kim Masters]

The thing about Warren, from my point of view, is that he can never say a simple declarative sentence.

[Willa Paskin]

The journalist Kim Masters has been covering Hollywood for decades.

[Kim Masters]

Everything is this elliptical answer. And I actually had this rule, which is never call Warren Beatty without going to the bathroom first because you could literally sit on the phone with that guy for hours.

[Willa Paskin]

Kim had this experience a number of times because for decades, Warren Beatty was right there at the center of Hollywood. Beatty was born in 1937 and got famous in the early 60s with his very first movie. But it was only at the end of the decade that he really found his groove.

[Warren Beatty]

This year's Miss Bonnie Parker. Lady Me, I'm Clyde Barrett. We rob banks.

[Willa Paskin]

Bonnie and Clyde, which co starred Faye Dunaway. And Beatty, is widely regarded as the starter pistol for the new Hollywood era, when American filmmaking became fresh, gritty, urgent, unpredictable. Seemingly overnight, Beatty not only starred in that film, he produced it. Long before actor producers were commonplace. Over the course of the 1970s, he began shouldering more and more responsibility on a Handful of commercial and critical hits. The Parallax View, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait until. By the end of the decade, he was a quadruple threat. An actor, writer, producer and director. But just as important to his public Persona was what he was up to off screen.

[Kim Masters]

Warren could be very seductive, as we know, because God knows how many women he was involved with.

[Willa Paskin]

Son of a gun. Beatty was, in the language of the time, a womanizer, a skirt chaser, a pussy hound. His sexual conquests were legion, notorious and often high profile, including but absolutely not limited to Natalie Wood, Julie Christie, Diane Keaton, Cher and Carly Simon, whose smash 1971 hit, you're so vain has long been rumored to be about Beatty.

[Warren Beatty]

And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner, they'd be your partner.

[Willa Paskin]

And you're so vain. All of this lent itself to Beatty's overall aura. Everyone wanted to be connected to him. Women directors, studio executives. He was sexual, political, charming, erudite, talented, and the insouciant cherry on top. Also notoriously difficult.

[Warren Beatty]

I've read that I was a pain in the neck. This may probably have something to do with the fact that I'm a pain in the neck.

[Willa Paskin]

Beatty was a self described control freak. He didn't have a temper, he didn't lose his cool, but he had a well earned reputation as a slow, obsessive perfectionist.

[Kim Masters]

I mean, this is a Warren Beatty thing. In movie after movie where he wants take after take after take. Sometimes these became kind of legendary, like.

[Willa Paskin]

With the 1981 movie Reds, his passion project and a three hour historical epic about American leftism.

[Warren Beatty]

If you refuse to support the capitalist war machine, they will follow your example. And if the workers of the world stand together, the war can be stopped.

[Willa Paskin]

Beatty directed, wrote, produced and starred in the movie. Its shooting schedule, the allotted editing time and the budget all ballooned. Beatty would have actors do 50, 60, 70, even 80 takes. And when the movie was released, Beatty refused to do press for it, saying the film should speak for itself. But if the production was tortured, the results were not.

[Celia Mueller]

For best achievement in directing, the winner is Warren Beatty.

[Willa Paskin]

After winning the Oscar for best director, Beatty was seemingly on top of the world, an all powerful Hollywood legend, and he followed it up by walking away. He waited six years to appear in another movie and when he returned, it didn't go great.

[Warren Beatty]

Hello, adventure.

[Willa Paskin]

Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to begin the descent into Ishtar.

[Kim Masters]

Ishtar, you know, was the infamous bomb that everybody had heard of in that era.

[Willa Paskin]

Ishtar was a comedy written and directed by Elaine May and co starring Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. It's actually not bad. But that didn't matter. Its box office failure was a national news story and Warren Beatty took much of the blame. The backroom Hollywood whispers started. He was a pain in the ass. He was distracted by women. He hadn't had a hit in a decade. Did the kids even know who Warren Beatty was? Was it a risk to let him direct again?

[Kim Masters]

He didn't want to be known as difficult. He could get really angry. If you asked him about that for one story or another he would get really mad. But the truth is everybody knew he wouldn't do an interview without going over his lighting. He was just extremely particular about many things. And so here in Hollywood I think there was a flashing yellow light.

[Willa Paskin]

Beatty needed a comeback and it was at this point that he turned to another middle aged character who also had a lot of name recognition but nowhere near the juice he once did.

[Warren Beatty]

Dick Tracy.

[Willa Paskin]

He's got a bulldog jowl Dick Tracy.

[Warren Beatty]

Why he's the arm of Dick Tracy.

[Willa Paskin]

Dick Tracy debuted in the funny pages of the Detroit Mirror in 1931. In an era when newspaper comic strips tended to be funny. He immediately stood out at the time.

[Celia Mueller]

There'S nothing actually talking about crime.

[Willa Paskin]

Matlive Co owns a nonprofit comic book store and educational space in Florida and is a longtime Dick Tracy fan.

[Celia Mueller]

Really up until Dick Tracy the only crime stopper that you had was like Zorro Green Hornet went come out. Till later the phantom hadn't even come out and there weren't superheroes yet.

[Willa Paskin]

But Dick Tracy was a proto superhero. He was created by the cartoonist Chester Gould who found inspiration in the city where he lived. Prohibition era Chicago.

[Warren Beatty]

Gang lords move freely here. Al Capone enters Chicago court at height of his career and leaves still king of bootleggers. His reign of terror still to take its toll of dead in an underworld at war.

[Celia Mueller]

And that was the thing Chester Gold wanted to do.

[Willa Paskin]

Is he.

[Celia Mueller]

He was so mad about the mob running Chicago right in like the late 20s and early 30s that he wanted to create a good cop who actually wasn't getting paid off by the mob who wasn't being bribed. Somebody who could come in and clean up the streets.

[Willa Paskin]

So Gould dreamed up a clean cut paragon of decency. An Elliot Ness type with a powerful punch and a cool two way radio wristwatch. Motivated by his love for the pure Tess True heart. He was a cop who always got his man. And he was named Plain Clothes Tracy.

[Celia Mueller]

You know Plain Clothes Like a plain clothes detective.

[Willa Paskin]

Gould quickly sold the concept to the Tribune Company, who loved it, but had a suggestion.

[Celia Mueller]

Don't call him Plain Clothes Tracy. Call it Dick Tracy. It'll jump off the page more. And Dick is another name for a detective.

[Willa Paskin]

Dick Tracy was born. Every day he would appear in the newspaper just four boxes at a time in serialized storylines that stretched on for weeks. His escapades involved gruesome plot turns and vivid villains like Flattop, whose head was flat, and BB Eyes, whose eyes were small, and Prune Face, who was exorbitantly wrinkled. Tracy and his rogues gallery became so successful they ran in 680 newspapers with an estimated readership of 25 million. There was a radio serial, B movies, a TV show, and Dick Tracy paper airplanes, tin cars and decoder rings. And when comic strip superheroes finally did come along, Tracy was their obvious competition.

[Celia Mueller]

You may have heard that Batman is the world's greatest detective. That's 1939. Honestly, that's a dig at Dick Tracy because the popularity of the character was so large.

[Willa Paskin]

But as the 20th century wore on, Dick Tracy and Batman's paths started to diverge. While Batman star rose as he appeared in a goofy and beloved TV show in the late 1960s, plans for a Dick Tracy series fizzled out. In the 1980s, Tracy was still famous, but he was on the decline, which is when he caught the eye of a man in a similar situation.

[Warren Beatty]

Dick Tracy is a great old American comic strip. I thought, I gotta make a movie of this. This could be fun.

[Willa Paskin]

Warren Beatty had grown up reading Dick Tracy. In 1985, he signed a contract with Tribune Media, the company that's owned Dick Tracy since the beginning, giving him the televisual rights to the character. The newspaper strip is a separate thing, and it would and has continued. After Ishtar flopped, Beatty committed to the project. In 1988, Disney greenlit a Dick Tracy movie, an expensive and flashy tentpole production that Beatty would produce, direct, co write and star in.

[Warren Beatty]

Take the Bad Men Away. They scare me.

[Willa Paskin]

If you've never seen the film, the last 20 years of comic adaptations will have taught you to expect something dark and gritty. But that's not the movie Warren Beatty made.

[Warren Beatty]

It's a naive kind of subject. So I'm going to make a picture that was dealt in primary emotions and primary colors. And there's a kind of a sweetness to Dick Tracy that I know I was kind of liked.

[Willa Paskin]

And it is sweet and a little snoozy. It looks fantastic, though, like a comic strip. Come to life. Beatty used painted backdrops and the simple, bright colors that were used in the Sunday papers in the late 1930s. So the action seems to be popping off a printed page. It's a neon noir that's creatively faithful to the comic right down to its villains.

[Warren Beatty]

I want them dead. Both of them. I want this no Face dead. And I want Tracy dead. What's the matter? Your bums forgot how to kill people?

[Willa Paskin]

That's Al Pacino. As the main antagonist, Big boy Caprice Beatty used his Rolodex to further flesh the film out. Dustin Hoffman and James Caan played lesser bad guys. Stephen Sondheim, who'd worked with Beatty on Reds, composed five original songs. Two were performed by the nightclub singer Breathless Mahoney, who in the film's flashiest bit of casting, was played by Madonna, who Beatty immediately started dating in real life. During the shoot, Beatty was up to his same perfectionistic, controlling ways. Kim Masters again.

[Kim Masters]

It became a real thing in Hollywood that the filming of Dick Tracy was going on and on. Though there are delays, there are budget overruns.

[Willa Paskin]

Still, Disney was betting big on the film. As the movie's release date approached, they put another $50 million into promoting it.

[Warren Beatty]

You won a thousand dollars. How I Helped Dick Tracy Catch a thief lay McDonald's. $40 million Dick Tracy crime Stopper Game. Every card's a potential winner with.

[Willa Paskin]

There were Happy Meal tie ins and Disney World attractions. There were Dick Tracy watches and two way radios and action figures. Before it even came out, Disney was already talking to Beatty about a sequel. The film was so well hyped that a week before its release, an industry tracking survey found 100% of potential moviegoers were aware it was coming out.

[Warren Beatty]

Warren Beatty is Dick Tracy.

[Willa Paskin]

The movie opened on June 15, 1990. It got decent reviews. It made $50 million in 10 days, more than any film in Disney's history. And it was ultimately nominated for seven Oscars. All of which makes it sound like a success. But that's not how it was received.

[Kim Masters]

It was clearly a disappointment. In the end, Dick Tracy had the.

[Willa Paskin]

Misfortune of coming out just a year after another big comic, Tim Burton's Batman. Starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. Batman made $400 million and half a billion more in merchandise. And Dick Tracy looked like a dud in comparison. In fact, it barely broke even because of how much the studio had spent promoting it. A Disney executive would even bemoan Dick Tracy in a widely leaked memo as being exactly the kind of overblown movie Disney shouldn't be making.

[Kim Masters]

The gist is, you know, we're spending too much and movies like Dick Tracy are bad and we gotta get everything under control. We're taking these huge swings and they're very dangerous.

[Willa Paskin]

Beatty was reportedly furious. He was proud of Dick Tracy. It had made $140 million. It even won three Academy Awards. But the film's reputation as a disappointment was cemented. Any talk of a sequel evaporated, and that seemed like that was that. The yellow trench coat might have been hanging in Beatty's closet, but he was working more slowly than ever on other things. He appeared in only four movies over the next 25 years. And Dick Tracy seemed to be on ice. Literally. The character popped up in a Disney TV special called Dreams on Ice, starring Nancy Kerrigan. In one segment, she plays Tess Trueheart, Dick Tracy's long suffering girlfriend, alongside a figure skater dressed as Dick Tracy. That was the only time Dick Tracy appeared in anything for two decades. And then in 2012, one night on TCM.

[Warren Beatty]

Pomegranates, Pomegranates, Pomeganates, Pomegranates, Pomegranates.

[Willa Paskin]

What the heck was going on? We investigate after the break. As the weather turns cooler, it's really nice to look forward to playoff baseball and curling up with the latest book and hot chocolate and ice skating and reaching for your favorite cozy sweater from Quince. I've honestly complimented so many other women on what they're wearing and they have told me that what they are wearing is quintessential. It's happened a number of times with dresses and sweaters. Quince is known for their Mongolian cashmere sweater actually from $50. And it's not just that all Quint Items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. That includes leather jackets, cotton cardigans, soft denim and so much more. They're able to do it by partnering directly with top factories and cutting out the cost of the middleman. What passes the savings onto customers. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices. And of course, premium fabrics and finishes. For a luxury feel in every piece. Get cozy in Quince's high quality wardrobe essentials. Go to quince.comdecoder for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com decoder the holiday season officially starts when you get that first card in the mail. Shutterfly makes it easy to add more meaning to the everyday with hundreds of holiday card Designs that can be personalized in seconds with your favorite photos from this year. Select your greeting, customize the color, and even add little extras like personalized foil to make a holiday card that really shines. Enjoy. 40% off with code. Smile [e-mail] and send something meaningful this year. See site for more details. So the first mysterious Dick Tracy special arrived as if out of nowhere in 2012. The second one, which tiptoed out 11 years later, also came with no notice or advance press. People on social media and gossipy Hollywood message boards immediately started trying to piece together why people like Ryan Estrada, who you heard from earlier and Ryan says that a theory emerged.

[Ryan Estrada]

As you like, look through it, people started talking about, apparently this was a rights grab.

[Willa Paskin]

The idea was that Warren Beatty was making these specials in order to hold onto the rights to Dick Tracy. And he could do that. It was suspected because the original contract granting him those rights must have some kind of a loophole.

[Ryan Estrada]

I'll bet that in the contract terms it said that the rights will reverse unless a Dick Tracy movie or Dick Tracy special is made. So he literally called it Dick Tracy Special, not even the Dick Tracy Special.

[Willa Paskin]

And you know what? Ryan's onto something. And to explain exactly what, we have to talk contract law.

[Aaron Michnowski]

If you have a film that is going to be based on a character or a set of characters that are in existing works, you have to get rights to those existing works.

[Willa Paskin]

Celia Mueller is a media lawyer and self described copyright nerd. And she took a look at the legal documents pertaining to how Warren Beatty got the rights to Dick Tracy in the first place.

[Aaron Michnowski]

So Warren Beattie, he enters a contract with Chicago Tribune Media in 1985. He secures the film and television rights.

[Willa Paskin]

This kind of agreement happens all the time in Hollywood.

[Aaron Michnowski]

The copyright owner is saying to the rights holder here, you can hold my stuff for a minute. You can hold my stuff for X amount of time under X conditions, and you can do this with it. It just so happens that this contract, that this contract said that you can hold this stuff forever.

[Willa Paskin]

There's no end date. Warren Beatty can theoretically hold on to Dick Tracy until the day he dies. But there is one complicated way the Tribune Media can wrest the rights back.

[Aaron Michnowski]

If Beatty has not done anything with the IP within five years, then Tribune Media can send a formal notice saying, we want our stuff back. And if he still doesn't do anything with with the rights within two years, then they get the rights back.

[Willa Paskin]

So to get real concrete, the contract says that if Warren Beatty hasn't Used the Dick Tracy IP or intellectual property for five or more years. Tribune Media can send him a letter that they want the character back. Then a two year timer starts. Beatty must begin shooting a new movie, TV series or television special before that two year timer goes off, or else the rights go back to Tribune Media. Now fast Forward to the mid 2000s. Beatty hasn't done anything with Tracy except for a Disney on Ice special for nearly two decades. Then a story appeared in the Hollywood trade papers. The Tribune Media was working on a potential new Dick Tracy TV series. Beatty was publicly miffed.

[Aaron Michnowski]

Part of me wonders whether Beatty just was ticked off by this and decided to push back.

[Willa Paskin]

He sued, saying Tribune Media hadn't given him proper notice to reclaim the rights. And the courts agreed with him. Dick Tracy was still his. But then Tribune Media tried again.

[Aaron Michnowski]

They sent him a very, very formal letter meeting all of the requirements of the contract that says, we want Dick Tracy back.

[Willa Paskin]

That's when the two year timer started. Make a movie, TV show or special with Dick Tracy or forever lose the rights. One year and 50 weeks later, Warren Beatty started shooting Dick Tracy special.

[Warren Beatty]

Once in a while, you know, I'll have a blueberry.

[Willa Paskin]

That could have been it. But there's a little more to the story. Because when Tribune Media learned of the special and its content, their response was, and I'm paraphrasing legal documents here, what the hell is this? How is this a TV special? This is a clip show. This doesn't count.

[Aaron Michnowski]

This was supposed to be a contract about making movies, not about Warren Beatty putting on the Dick Tracy costume and, you know, sitting down to ramble for half an hour.

[Willa Paskin]

Filings in suits and countersuits start to fly. One even contains a dictionary definition of the word special. They all ultimately wind up with a judge who issues a summary judgment on the whole thing in 2011.

[Aaron Michnowski]

The judge says, okay, look, we're really sorry, we're really sorry, Tribune Media, but you know, despite the fact that you're saying we don't think that this special was very special, you agreed that the Dick Tracy character could show up in a Disney on Ice performance with Nancy Kerrigan and that that counted as a special. So this has to count as a special too.

[Willa Paskin]

In other words, Warren Beatty held onto the rights to Dick Tracy because of a three minute escapades act from 1995. That, trust me, is very difficult to find a copy of. All of this contractual wrangling is why Warren Beatty started playing Dick Tracy again after nearly two decades of silence. He had to or he would Lose him, use him, or lose him. But there is something this contract does not accept. Why did Warren Beatty care so much about not losing Dick Tracy? He'd made a movie with a character already, decades ago. Why not move on? Why not let the character go? Why not take a payout or a credit on some new TV show? Why spend one's precious time on what feel like late night cable TV pranks? The legal documents cannot exclude explain this, but as Ryan Estrada read about these specials on the Internet, he thought maybe he could.

[Ryan Estrada]

So basically, my thing was just that these specials are the pettiest thing anyone in Hollywood has ever done in public.

[Willa Paskin]

Ryan has spent a lot of time thinking about these specials, and the only way he can understand their existence and quality is if Warren Beatty is holding a grudge. Beatty's a control freak who doesn't want to be told what he can and cannot do. And he remembers all the people who maligned his movie, refused to make a sequel, and tried to yank his rights away.

[Ryan Estrada]

I imagine, like, 40 years later he's, like, mad at some, like, bean counting whippersnapper that he's like, I am gonna spend the rest of my life making sure that if I don't get to make a Dick Tracy product, no one else ever will again.

[Willa Paskin]

Ryan thinks this is what Beatty cares about. Not only about getting to keep Dick Tracy, but keeping anyone else from having him.

[Ryan Estrada]

He's just, like, making sure, like, I don't want to turn on Disney and have a Chris Pratt Dick Tracy show on. I'm the only one.

[Willa Paskin]

And so Beatty is squatting on the character. Not trying to make something new or good, just trying to make something easy.

[Ryan Estrada]

Like, he's literally said, I'm gonna do this whole special without leaving my couch. We're doing it all on zoom. No cameras have to come to my house. Easiest thing in the world.

[Willa Paskin]

I have to admit, when I first heard this theory in a semi viral tweet of Ryan's, I found it juicy and fun and convincing. Not only does it explain the special's quality, it also makes sense of what Warren Beatty has allowed to happen on his watch. Total Dick Tracy neglect. The character is now barely known to Most anyone under 50. An intentional plan to strip Dick Tracy of his value could hardly have worked better. And yet I no longer think petty vindictiveness can explain what's going on here. And that's because I talked to someone who worked on these specials.

[Warren Beatty]

So you want to be a marketer?

[Willa Paskin]

It's easy. You just have to score a ton of leads and figure out a way to turn them all into customers. Plus manage a dozen channels, write a million blogs, and launch a hundred campaigns all at once. When that's done, simply make your socials go viral and bring in record profits. No sweat. Okay, fine, it's a lot of Sweat, but with HubSpot's AI powered marketing tools, launching benchmark breaking campaigns is easier than ever. Get [e-mail] marketers this episode is brought to you by SkinnyPop Popcorn. Perfectly popped, endlessly delicious. Oh so light and crunchy. SkinnyPop Original Popcorn is the snack you've been searching for. Made with just three simple ingredients. Ingredients Popcorn kernels, sunflower oil, and salt. Snacking never felt or tasted so good. Perfectly popped, endlessly delicious. Give yourself permission to snack and pick up Skinny Pop Original Popcorn today. Aaron Michnowski wasn't even a year old when the movie Dick Tracy arrived in theaters. But a couple decades later, fresh out of college, he wanted to work in show business. And so he went out to LA and answered an anonymous posting on a talent agency's job list for something along.

[Matlive Co]

The lines of a, I don't know, a list, quote, unquote. Writer, director seeks assistance.

[Willa Paskin]

He got a response telling him to meet at a Starbucks and then was.

[Matlive Co]

Told to like follow these like labyrinthine directions to go into a back hallway, up an elevator to a room.

[Willa Paskin]

He was told that in about an hour Warren Beatty would walk through the room. He was to stop him and ask about the assistant job when he came out.

[Matlive Co]

And I got a very nervous and kind of jumped up and was like, oh, you know Mr. Beatty, hi, my name is Aaron, et cetera. And he said, oh, you know, I think we both went to Northwestern, right? I was like, yeah, I did. He's like, yeah, I went there for a year before I left to go to New York to become a degenerate. And then he said, oh, I have this other meeting, can you wait here for a bit? And then I proceeded to wait for I think five or six hours until he came back out and was like, yeah, I tell you what, why don't you come back on Monday and let's give this a go.

[Willa Paskin]

So Aaron became Warren Beatty's assistant. This was after the first Dick Tracy Special, filmed in 2008, and Beatty's attention was squarely on his next film, Rules Don't Apply, which was to be his first movie in 15 years. Aaron started working closely with Beatty. He became a co producer on Rules Don't Apply, which came out in 2016 and flopped the Same year, Beatty mispresented the Best Picture Oscar to La La Land instead of Moonlight. Aaron says that Beatty turned his attention back to Dick Tracy in 2020, in the early days of the pandemic. It's not clear if it was prompted by a legal notification this time. Tribune Media has changed hands and fractured since the original lawsuits. But if keeping the rights was the motivation for a second special, Aaron says that swiftly slipped into the background.

[Matlive Co]

Maybe that was sort of the genesis of why we would start to think about this. But as anyone would tell you, I think that has worked with Warren. He doesn't do anything that is mailed in.

[Willa Paskin]

Aaron is not the only person I spoke with who worked with Beatty on these specials, but most of them didn't want to be quoted. And I get it. He's a legend. They like him. He's a good guy to know. Why risk maybe pissing him off by talking to a reporter? But what I gathered in those conversations echoes what Aaron said. Dick Tracy Special, the one that came out first in 2012, it filmed on the Disney lot. Beatty made sure the table he and Leonard Maltin sit at had the exact same proportions as Charlie Rose's table because it needed to be the best. And to shoot Dick Tracy Special, Beatty hired Emmanuel Lubezki, a cinematographer already acclaimed for shooting Children of Men, who's gone on to win three Oscars. And while the second special, Dick Tracy Zooms in, does not have an Oscar winning cinematographer, there were still no shortcuts.

[Matlive Co]

He's a very exacting writer, a very exacting creative. He is incredibly detail oriented and will agonize over, you know, the smallest of punctuation in a script.

[Willa Paskin]

Before writing a word, though, Beatty instructed Aaron to comb through all the old Dick Tracy movies and send him clips for inspiration, like 40 or 50 hours.

[Matlive Co]

Of dick Tracy that I sat watching to try to stimulate his creative juices.

[Willa Paskin]

And when Beatty landed on the idea of the special taking the form of a zoom call, it wasn't because zoom calls are easy to record.

[Matlive Co]

Dick Tracy is a character that's known for technology and using gadgets in his crime stopping escapades. And so he thought, well, here's zoom. That could be interesting.

[Willa Paskin]

And Beatty didn't just sign into zoom and hit record. He shot the special with the crew on real cameras over the course of multiple days, doing all his customary numerous takes with both Leonard Maltin and a new participant, TCM host Ben Mankiewicz. And then they edited the footage for five or six months.

[Matlive Co]

It's amazing how much time you can Spend editing a half hour of tv.

[Willa Paskin]

But there's any point in this process where you're like, this is so much work and it's gonna air in like the middle of the night on tca. Like, was there any part of you that was ever like, wow?

[Matlive Co]

Yeah. Well, I guess the obvious answer is like, yes, but less so in oof. I think what more impressed me was the level of dedication that Warren put into this project. It just seems like such a. It's like such a niche little piece of the Dick Tracy story. Like I said, he can't take anything lightly creatively that he is involved in.

[Willa Paskin]

Aaron is saying, look at it this way. Here's a guy who never half asses anything, who just doesn't know how. And I see that, but it doesn't account for this important thing, a thing that it would be more uplifting to forget. The specials are not good. They are fascinating, they are strange, they are semi watchable, but not good.

[Warren Beatty]

Uh, hello?

[Willa Paskin]

Uh, hello, Hello?

[Warren Beatty]

Hello?

[Willa Paskin]

Are you there, sir?

[Warren Beatty]

Uh, what? I. I'm, I'm here.

[Willa Paskin]

But this, to me is really why these specials are intriguing. Forget pettiness. What we have here is a window into a deeper psychology. Warren Beatty works slowly, but in this case, he was forced by illegal loophole and a deadline to spring into action. It's like he tricked himself into getting to work. But why did he want to work on this? What is yoking him to Dick Tracy? I think you could hear part of the answer in how Beatty talks about Dick Tracy in this interview from 1998, almost a decade after the movie came out.

[Warren Beatty]

What struck me about this guy, this guy Dick Tracy had been around for a billion years, was that he just kept never getting married. And I think that's the thing that fueled me on Dick Tracy, that he was a good guy, basically. And, you know, he really was a sort of a star detective. And he ran around in his yellow coat and hat, and he didn't really make much advance in his personal life.

[Willa Paskin]

What Warren Beatty found interesting about Dick Tracy in the first place, what he thought he could sink his teeth into, was that Tracy was this decent, professionally accomplished star whose personal life was a mess. And that that could have described Warren Beatty, too. Remember his reputation as a womanizer. When Dick Tracy came out, he didn't seem that troubled by it. He was dating Madonna. But on his very next movie, he went and found his own Tess Trueheart.

[Warren Beatty]

Too fast to put a ring on your finger.

[Willa Paskin]

Nothing's too fast that fits. In 1992, on the set of the movie Bugsy, he got together with his wife, Annette Bening. They have four kids and they've been together ever since. With Dick Tracy, Warren Beatty solved his personal life in fiction before he did it, in fact. And the two have other overlaps. They were born in the same decade, for goodness sakes. They grew up together. They were famous together. And that also means they're getting old and less famous together. So sure, Dick Tracy is a business proposition. He's a piece of IP at a moment when literally any IP is valuable. But it's also personal. And what's personal is not always rational. So Warren Beatty is frittering away the end of his career, not because of some grudge or some artistic vision, but because of a long term attachment to a character and an obsessive way of working. He just can't change. He's holding on. Even if Dick Tracy and Warren Beatty both might be better served were Beatty to just, just move on, which actually he's going to be forced to do one way or another soon. Dick Tracy is going into the public domain in 2027, and that means all this effort to keep the rights, it's for nothing. In three years, anyone can have the character, no matter what Warren Beatty does. It's all kind of poignant. And so when you start looking for it is the second special, like, take this exchange in which Dick Tracy, as played by Warren Beatty, tells Warren Beatty he thinks they should collaborate on a new Dick Tracy project.

[Warren Beatty]

You thinking about making a movie? I don't know what to think about making movies nowadays. Maybe, maybe another movie is a good idea. If you're thinking about making another movie about me, do you think you might just make it a little more real? Not with pink and blue streets. And would you think about maybe getting somebody a little younger than you to play me? But I don't know, I'm not sure. Maybe I should be played old by somebody who's able to do things old people can't ordinarily do. You've got the final set, you own the rights.

[Willa Paskin]

It's impossible to tell their voices apart. But that's the point. It's like it's Warren Beatty's interior monologue. It's someone who used to be younger and more famous and more powerful and more productive, talking to himself about whether time has passed him by or if he can still do the extraordinary so long as he holds on to the rights. This is decodering. I'm Willa Paskin. While we're on the subject of comic book characters, on tv. I wanted to tell you about a special decodering bonus episode for Slate plus members available right now. Maybe you've heard about the new HBO series the Penguin, about the Batman villain starring a barely recognizable Colin Farrell in the lead role as the waddling title character. To make that transformation happen, Farrell needed a lot of makeup, prosthetics and a fat suit. The man responsible for that is the veteran makeup artist Mike Marino. Senior producer Katie shepherd interviewed Marino for her recent episode on Fat Suits. It was a fascinating conversation conversation, but we couldn't squeeze it in. Now that the Penguin is streaming on max, we wanted to share it as a bonus episode just for Slate plus listeners. Here's a sneak peek. A penguin, as we know it, has a certain shape, and it wasn't so much like, hey, we need to make someone look overweight. It was more like, how do we get this person to look more like what everyone recognizes as a penguin, but in human form? If you aren't already a Slate plus member, you can subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking Try Free at the top of the Decoder Ring show page or visit slate.comdecoder to get access wherever you listen. We're going to be releasing more bonus episodes soon, including answers to your mailbag questions, so sign up now. And don't forget, Slate plus members also get to listen to our show and every other Slate Slate podcast without any ads, and they'll get unlimited access to Slate's website. Again, you can subscribe on Apple podcasts by clicking try free or visit slate.com decodering plus to sign up. This episode was written by me. It was edited by Lacey Roberts and Evan Chung. It was produced by Sophie Codner. I produced A Coatering with Evan, Katie Shepard and Max Friedman. Derek John is executive producer. Merrick Jacob is the your technical director. I'd like to thank Ed Catto, Stephanie Zachary, and Rachel Strom. Peter Biskin's biography of Warren Beatty star was also essential to our research, and we'll link to the various archival interviews we used on our show page. See you in two Former President Donald Trump rewrote the rules of how the American justice system treats our nation's most powerful people. Hello, it's Andrea Bernstein. I'm the host of the Law According to Trump, a special series from Slate Plus. Long before the Supreme Court granted presidential immunity, Donald Trump created a blueprint for shielding himself from legal accountability on everything from taxes to fraud to discrimination. Listen as we explore Trump's history of bending the law to his will.

[Aaron Michnowski]

Check out the law, according to Trump. Wherever you get your podcasts.