Usually, the news that someone is about to write, direct, produce and star in some film of no clear description for Paramount wouldn’t seem particularly worthy of notice until the parties involved release a few more details.
But when the “someone” in question is 74 year-old Warren Beatty, the one-time Hollywood monarch whose name hasn’t appeared on screen since 2001 (as an ensemble member of all-star embarrassment “Town and Country”), it’s hard not to get curious.
With Beatty not having steered a film of his own since 1998’s “Bulworth” — the fascinating but frustratingly scattershot political satire that never found a place in the popular imagination, despite netting him a writing Oscar nod and arguably featuring Halle Berry’s strongest performance — there’s likely a generation or two with little concept of what an industry force the man was across four decades. (Perhaps more enduring, on the pop-culture scale, is his reputation as Hollywood’s most storied lothario, though Annette Bening put a stop that 20 years ago.)
Granted, this is pretty LA-centric, but beginning tonight, 
Interviewing Warren Beatty a few years ago in Toronto, I was struck at once by his intellect, which is laser sharp. The man misses nothing. He speaks slowly, taking long pauses before he speaks, and avoids personal questions, which I dislike and refuse to ask anyway.