Just a Few Tweaks!

Beatty's still building his bomb.

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Posted Friday, October 15, 1999

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        Reason #63 why Warren Beatty is unlikely to run for president: He'll still be shooting scenes for his troubled movie, Town and Country! This comedy about a man in a mid-life philandering crisis stars Beatty, Diane Keaton, Garry Shandling, Goldie Hawn, Jenna Elfman and Andie MacDowell. It has terrible word-of-mouth. In fact, for a year and a half, Hollywood has been amusing itself with tales of the movie's interminable production schedule and budget overruns. There have been squabbles, revisions, and extra shooting. Some film was actually stolen. Then the movie sat, awaiting a release date. The film's cost is said to have escalated into the $80 million range, and its release is scheduled for February. But now, kausfiles.com has learned, at least one screenwriter -- Gary Ross, who wrote Big, Dave and Pleasantville, which he also directed -- has been called in to write yet more additional scenes. Contacted by phone, Ross minimized his role: "They asked me to look at it. ... I wrote a couple of scenes for them. .. Literally two." When did he do this? "A month ago." Ross says his work makes up "under 3 percent of the movie -- somewhere between 1 and 2 ½ percent" of the movie. It's "just the kind of tweaks that are always done at the end of the movie." Maybe. But this movie was supposed to be finished a long time ago. If President Beatty had waged the Persian Gulf War, they'd still be calling in consultants to polish up Gen. Schwarzkopf's battle plan ...

        [That's two Beatty-themed items in a row. Are you obsessed with him? -- ed. The previous item was really about welfare policy. Beatty was just a cheap peg. Three in a row and you can worry. Won't Beatty be pissed at Ross for confirming the story?-- ed. I doubt Ross was comfortable doing it, but give him credit for not bullshitting the way Miramax's chief disinformation officer, Andrew Stengel, did on that Tina Brown-Talk sitcom story. By the way, the Miramax edifice of falsehood surrounding that tv project is starting to collapse. See this Jeannette Walls column. Guess Harvey Weinstein won't get my Honda.]

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