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123: The Dick Tracy Trilogy (with Will Sloan) (Patreon)

Published:
2023-02-19 02:53:05
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2026-06
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Content

The writer and podcaster Will Sloan returns for a show about Warren Beatty and his now-decades long relationship to Chester Gould’s classic thirties comic strip detective Dick Tracy.

We discuss what we can now call The Dick Tracy trilogy: the gorgeously crafted 1990 blockbuster he starred in and directed, and two curious no-budget followups he has made for Turner Classic Movies in the ensuing decades: 2010’s Dick Tracy Special, which aired only once and became a cult object for the true Beatty heads, and the surprise followup that dropped without warning this week, Dick Tracy Special: Tracy Zooms In. In both these specials Beatty gives an interview as the “real” Dick Tracy where he airs long-held grievances with how Beatty messed up the movie about “my life”.

So what’s going on here? Is the 85-year-old Beatty just doing this to hang on to the screen rights to maintain his artistic control of the property? Is he using the property to make avant-garde comedy where half the joke is the lack of energy being put into them? Is Beatty commenting on the state of modern cinema (and his own screen legacy) in his twilight years?

Will and I are obsessed with Late Style Beatty and his latest instalment of “the franchise” snaps this entire project into perspective for us: we discuss all three works in detail.

Follow Will Sloan on Twitter and subscribe to his wonderful podcasts The Important Cinema Club and Michael and Us.

Trailer for Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty, 1990)

Dick Tracy Special (Warren Beatty and Chris Merrill, 2010)

Dick Tracy Special: Tracy Zooms In (Warren Beatty and Chris Merrill, 2023)

“Vittorio Storaro Reveals The Origin Of “The Storaro Selection” In Dick Tracy”, by Joel Svendsen, from the Rosco Spectrum blog, June 11, 2020


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Comments

Jesper Ohlsson

I think the pomegranates bit is due to the influence of Lynda and Stewart Resnick, a billionaire-couple that owns an insane amount of California water, and future guillotine-recipients. One of their more eccentric ideas is that the pomegranate is an antioxidant-miracle fruit you can cheat death with (or whatever). Consequently, they're behind the company POM Wonderful, and at its peak they insinuated themselves with product-placement in a ton of entertainment; most notably the Oprah Show, and pomegranate-juice was part of the Oscar-swag-bag for some time. Basically, the point is that what sounds like a plucked-from-nowhere senior-moment about a fruit is probably just Warren Beatty drawing from marketing that was specifically tailored to him and his ilk (high-profile celebrities), by two insane people who, in a more just society, would be pushed off the coast of California on an (imported) ice-sheet. //Edit: There's probably a fair share of overlap here, but in case there are listeners who haven't heard it, "The Dollop" did a good episode on the Resnicks, that you can listen to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T-4kdLtWWE&t=656s

Aden Jordan

Peter Biskind wrote in his biography of Beatty that he was drawn to making the Dick Tracy film because he read the comic growing up.

Shane

I'm between both of you in age, but I also basically saw this film in parts...at the drive in one full time, when I was 7...never seen it since...memories are Mumbles... So I paused this episode to rewatch. I'm very excited because I've known for years I need to revisit this. Batman, seen 20 times. I can confirm everything about the marketing follow up for Tracy, et al (the 30s era camp films to follow). Especially the fast food tie ins. Its all i rememember! The insights Will is bringing about Beatty are astounding. I offer a single rebuttal before circling back to the film itself. Isn't Cameron the exception? Didn't irony drive the box office for, at least, the 2nd avatar? (The humans are the villains! What a concept?) It can't just be the visual spectacle, bc Tracy's yellow zoot suit should also have that appeal, thus equalizing the turf.