The Leadership Style of Warren Beatty

As one of Hollywood’s most indulged auteurs, Warren Beatty has enjoyed the luxury of ignoring budgets, going over schedule and taking as long as he darn well pleases to make a single decision on a movie set.

Yet lately it seems he’s receiving more media attention as a would-be presidential candidate than he ever did as a high-profile actor and director.

On Wednesday night, in his first public political speech since rumors began swirling about his possible entry into the presidential race, Beatty attracted more reporters from around the world than any other leading candidate.

So far, the 63-year-old Hollywood icon--known for his vanity and insecurity about press coverage--hasn’t even declared himself a candidate, and some of his biggest fans doubt he ever will.

Critics attribute his political dabbling to a self-important need to call attention to himself. Friends and supporters believe he is motivated solely by his sincere conviction that important social issues are being ignored, rather than by serious aspirations to become the next president of the United States.

Still, it’s worth looking at his track record as a filmmaker for clues about how he might fare as a politician.

Of course, overseeing a movie production isn’t comparable to being commander in chief and leader of the free world. Nonetheless, effectively managing a movie production is a huge undertaking, not unlike running a political campaign, which involves pulling together a large group of talented people on a particular short-term project.

Beatty’s early work as the star of such ‘60s screen classics as “Splendor in the Grass” and “Bonnie and Clyde” (his first film as a producer) earned him a reputation as one of Hollywood’s hottest heartthrobs and off-screen loverboys.

His behind-the-scenes work on many of his more recent movies--including those he didn’t personally direct, such as the forthcoming “Town and Country” and the 1987 bomb “Ishtar”--earned him a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most controlling, difficult and self-indulgent filmmakers.

Those who’ve worked with him say he can take forever to make decisions and often second-guesses everyone from directors and producers to marketing executives and publicists, all in the name of being a perfectionist.

He’s so concerned about his image and touchy about what’s written about him that for a good chunk of his career he refused any interviews. (Could Beatty become the first American president never to hold a news conference?)

He’s notorious for taking over direction of movies he stars in, often demanding extensive rewrites and countless takes of a single scene.

And although he earned high marks in Hollywood for passionately committing to such projects as “Reds,” for which he won a best director Oscar in 1981, none of his subsequent films, including last year’s political comedy-drama “Bulworth,” has achieved that level of acclaim. Nor have many been financially successful.

His 1990 screen version of “Dick Tracy,” which he directed and starred in with Madonna, became newsworthy when it was identified by Jeffrey Katzenberg in his famous “internal memo” as the kind of overbloated production that studios like Disney should avoid.

“Bulworth,” which cost $40 million, was a money loser for 20th Century Fox, grossing about $25 million in the U.S.

The production cost of Beatty’s most recent project, “Town and Country,” in which he stars with Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn, is close to $80 million and could still grow pending more potential reshoots.

The original budget was $55 million. But the shoot schedule nearly doubled because of continual script rewrites during production. Beatty shared script approval with the film’s financial backer, New Line Cinema.

Executives at New Line, which now plans to release the picture in late February, after several delays, privately express doubt that the movie company will make its money back unless “Town and Country” hits it as big with baby boomers as Paramount Pictures’ “The First Wives Club” did a few years ago.

Although he has many critics, Beatty is revered by many Hollywood executives who have worked with him as incredibly smart, charming and doggedly passionate about his work.

“He does have the ability and talent to make you feel like the entire room has fallen away and you are the most important thing in it,” says one studio executive who has worked with him. “He’s charming and seductive.”

Says another highly placed executive: “He’s no walk in the park, but I like him. He’s a bigger-than-life character. A genius. I’d work with him again any day.”

And one source who just finished working with him on “Town and Country” remarked, “When he speaks, we listen.”

When all is said and done, Beatty might well have the ego, charisma, mystique and seductive powers of persuasion to qualify him as Washington’s leading man.

It’s another question entirely whether he has the executive skills to successfully manage a campaign and a government.

But even detractors might agree that President Beatty would be in a unique position to reduce bloodshed in the world.

Instead of threatening to release cruise missiles, he could keep foreign dictators in check by threatening to re-release “Ishtar.”