20:00

The film was so well hyped that

20:02

a week before its release, an industry

20:05

tracking survey found a hundred percent of

20:07

potential movie goers were aware it was

20:09

coming out. One baby is

20:13

Dick Tracy. The

20:16

movie opened on June 15th, 1990. It

20:19

got decent reviews. It made

20:21

$50 million in 10 days, more

20:24

than any film in Disney's history.

20:27

And it was ultimately nominated for

20:29

seven Oscars, all of which

20:31

makes it sound like a success. But

20:34

that's not how it was received. It was clearly

20:36

a disappointment in the end. Dick

20:39

Tracy had the misfortune of coming

20:41

out just a year after another

20:43

big comic adaptation, Tim Burton's Batman

20:45

starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson.

20:48

Batman made $400 million and

20:51

half a billion more in merchandise. Dick

20:54

Tracy looked like a dud in comparison. In

20:56

fact, it barely broke even because of how

20:58

much the studio had spent promoting it. A

21:01

Disney executive would even bemoan Dick Tracy

21:04

in a widely leaked memo is being

21:06

exactly the kind of overblown movie Disney

21:08

shouldn't be making. The gist is, you

21:10

know, we're spending too much and movies

21:13

like Dick Tracy are bad and we

21:15

got to get everything under control. We're

21:17

taking these huge swings and they're very

21:20

dangerous. Beatty

21:22

was reportedly furious. He was proud of

21:24

Dick Tracy. It had made $140 million.

21:29

It even won three Academy

21:31

Awards. But the film's

21:33

reputation as a disappointment was cemented.

21:36

Any talk of a sequel evaporated.

21:39

And that seemed like that

21:41

was that. The yellow trench coat

21:43

might've been hanging in Beatty's closet, but

21:46

he was working more slowly than ever

21:48

on other things. He appeared

21:50

in only four movies over the next 25

21:52

years and Dick Tracy

21:55

seemed to be on ice. Literally,

21:57

the character popped up in a Disney

21:59

movie. TV special called Dreams

22:01

on Ice starring Nancy Kerrigan.

22:04

In one segment she plays

22:06

Tess Trueheart, Dick Tracy's long-suffering

22:08

girlfriend alongside a figure skater

22:10

dressed as Dick Tracy. That

22:12

was the only time Dick

22:14

Tracy appeared in anything for

22:16

two decades. And

22:19

then in 2012, one night on TCM. Pomegranates.

22:25

Pomegranates. Pomegranates. Pomegranates.

22:27

Pomegranates. What

22:30

the heck was going on? We

22:32

investigate after the break. This

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26:00

She took a look at the legal documents

26:02

pertaining to how Warren Beatty got the rights to

26:04

Dick Tracy in the first place. So

26:06

Warren Beatty, he enters a contract with Chicago

26:09

Tribune Media in 1985. He

26:11

secures the film and

26:13

television rights. This kind of

26:15

agreement happens all the time in Hollywood. The

26:18

copyright owner is saying to the

26:20

rights holder, here, you can hold my stuff for a

26:22

minute. You can hold my stuff

26:24

for X amount of time under X conditions, and

26:27

you can do this with it. It

26:29

also happens that this

26:32

contract said that you can hold

26:34

this stuff forever. There's

26:37

no end date. Warren Beatty can

26:39

theoretically hold on to Dick Tracy until the

26:41

day he dies. But there

26:43

is one complicated way the

26:46

Tribune Media can rest the

26:48

rights back. If Beatty has

26:50

not done anything with the

26:52

IP within five years, then

26:54

Tribune Media can send a formal notice

26:57

saying we want our stuff back. And

26:59

if he still doesn't do anything with the rights

27:02

within two years, then they get the rights back.

27:05

So to get real concrete, the

27:07

contract says that if Warren Beatty

27:10

hasn't used the Dick Tracy IP,

27:12

or intellectual property, for five or

27:14

more years, Tribune Media can

27:17

send him a letter that they want

27:19

the character back. Then

27:21

a two-year timer starts. Beatty

27:24

must begin shooting a new movie,

27:26

TV series, or television special before

27:29

that two-year timer goes off, or

27:32

else the rights go back to Tribune

27:34

Media. Now fast forward

27:36

to the mid-2000s. Beatty

27:38

hasn't done anything with Tracy except for

27:40

a Disney on Ice special for nearly

27:43

two decades. Then a story

27:45

appeared in the Hollywood trade papers. The

27:47

Tribune Media was working on a potential

27:49

new Dick Tracy TV series. Beatty

27:52

was publicly miffed. Part of

27:55

me wonders whether Beatty just was ticked

27:57

off by this and decided to push

27:59

back. He sued,

28:01

saying Tribune Media hadn't given him proper

28:03

notice to reclaim the rights. And

28:05

the courts agreed with him. Dick Tracy

28:07

was still his. But then,

28:10

Tribune Media tried again. They

28:12

sent him a very, very formal letter meeting

28:14

all of the requirements of the contract that

28:17

says we want Dick Tracy back. That's

28:19

when the two-year timer started. Make

28:21

a movie, TV show, or special with

28:24

Dick Tracy, or forever lose

28:26

the rights. One

28:28

year and 50 weeks later, Warren

28:32

Beatty started shooting Dick Tracy special.

28:35

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

28:39

could have been it, but there's a little more to the

28:41

story. Because when Tribune Media

28:43

learned of the special and its

28:45

content, their response was — and

28:48

I'm paraphrasing legal documents here —

28:51

what the hell is this? How is

28:53

this a TV special? This is a

28:55

clip show. This doesn't count.

28:57

This was supposed to be a contract about

28:59

making movies, not about Warren Beatty putting on

29:02

the Dick Tracy costume and, you know, sitting

29:04

down to ramble for half an hour. Violings

29:07

and suits and countersuits start to

29:09

fly. One even contains a dictionary

29:11

definition of the word special. They

29:14

all ultimately wind up with a judge who issues

29:16

a summary judgment on the whole thing in 2011.

29:20

The judge says, okay, look,

29:22

we're really sorry. We're really

29:25

sorry, Tribune Media. But, you

29:27

know, despite the fact that you're saying we don't

29:29

think that the special was very special, you

29:32

agreed that the Dick Tracy character

29:34

could show up in a Disney

29:36

on Ice performance with Nancy Kerrigan

29:39

and that that counted as a special. So

29:41

this has to count as a special, too. In

29:44

other words, Warren Beatty held onto the rights

29:46

to Dick Tracy because of a three-minute ice

29:48

capades act from 1995 that, trust me, is

29:50

very difficult to find a copy of. All

29:58

of this contractual wrangling is

30:00

why Warren Beatty started playing Dick

30:03

Tracy again, after nearly two

30:05

decades of silence. He

30:07

had to, or he would lose him. Use

30:10

him or lose him. But

30:14

there is something this contract does

30:16

not explain. Why

30:18

did Warren Beatty care so much about

30:20

not losing Dick Tracy?

30:24

He'd made a movie with a character

30:26

already decades ago. Why not

30:28

move on? Why not let

30:30

the character go? Why not take a

30:32

payout or a credit on some new

30:34

TV show? Why spend one's precious time

30:37

on what feel like late night cable

30:39

TV pranks? The legal

30:41

documents cannot explain this. But

30:44

as Ryan Estrada read about these specials on

30:47

the internet, he thought maybe

30:49

he could. So basically my

30:51

thing was just that these

30:53

specials are the pettiest thing

30:56

anyone in Hollywood has ever done in

30:58

public. Ryan has

31:00

spent a lot of time thinking

31:02

about these specials. And the only

31:05

way he can understand their existence

31:07

and quality is if Warren Beatty

31:09

is holding a grudge. Beatty's

31:11

a control freak who doesn't want to be

31:13

told what he can and cannot do. And

31:16

he remembers all the people who

31:18

maligned his movie, refused to make

31:20

a sequel, and tried to yank

31:22

his rights away. I imagine like

31:24

40 years later, he's like mad

31:26

at some like bean counting

31:28

whippersnapper that he's like, I

31:31

am gonna spend the rest of my life making

31:33

sure that if I don't get to make a

31:35

Dick Tracy product, no one else

31:37

ever will again. Ryan

31:39

thinks this is what Beatty cares about,

31:42

not only about getting to keep Dick

31:44

Tracy, but keeping anyone

31:46

else from having him. He's

31:49

just like making sure like, I don't want to

31:51

turn on Disney Plus and have a Chris Pratt

31:53

Dick Tracy show on. I'm

31:55

the only one. And so Beatty

31:57

is squatting on the character. trying

32:00

to make something new or good, just

32:03

trying to make something easy. Like

32:06

he's literally said, I'm gonna do

32:08

this whole special without leaving my couch. We're doing it all

32:10

in Zoom. No cameras have to come

32:12

to my house. Easiest thing in the world. I

32:15

have to admit, when I first heard

32:17

this theory in a semi-viral tweet of

32:19

Ryan's, I found it juicy and fun

32:21

and convincing. Not only does

32:23

it explain the specials quality, it

32:26

also makes sense of what Warren Beatty

32:28

has allowed to happen on his watch.

32:31

Total Dick Tracy neglect.

32:34

The character is now barely known to most anyone

32:36

under 50. An

32:38

intentional plan to strip Dick Tracy

32:41

of his value could hardly

32:43

have worked better. And

32:46

yet I no longer think petty vindictiveness

32:48

can explain what's going on here. And

32:52

that's because I talked to someone who worked

32:54

on these specials. Just

32:59

try and figure out how these

33:01

things work. That's

33:04

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33:07

think I can

33:09

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card. Aaron

34:40

Michnowski wasn't even a year old when

34:42

the movie Dick Tracy arrived in theaters.

34:45

But a couple decades later, fresh out of college,

34:47

he wanted to work in show business. And

34:50

so he went out to LA and

34:52

answered an anonymous posting on a talent

34:54

agency's job list. For something along the

34:56

lines of a, I don't

34:58

know, A-list, quote unquote, writer-director

35:01

seeks assistance. He

35:03

got a response telling him to meet at a

35:05

Starbucks. And then was told to follow

35:08

these labyrinthine directions to go

35:10

into a back hallway, up an elevator,

35:13

to a room. He was told that

35:15

in about an hour, Warren Beatty would

35:18

walk through the room. He was to

35:20

stop him and ask about the assistant

35:22

job. When he came out

35:24

and I was kind of very nervous and kind

35:26

of jumped up and was like, oh, you know,

35:28

Mr. Beatty, hi, my name is Aaron, et cetera.

35:31

And he said, oh, you know, I think we

35:33

both went to Northwestern, right?

35:36

I was like, yeah, I did. He's like, yeah,

35:38

I went there for a year before I left

35:40

to go to New York to become a degenerate.

35:44

And then he said, oh, I have

35:47

this other meeting. Can you wait here for a

35:49

bit? And then I proceeded to wait

35:51

for, I think, five or six

35:53

hours until he came back out and was

35:55

like, yeah, I'll tell you what, why don't you come back on Monday

35:58

and let's give this a go. So

36:01

Aaron became Warren Beatty's assistant. This was

36:03

after the first Dick Tracy special filmed

36:05

in 2008, and Beatty's attention was squarely

36:07

on his next film, Rules Don't Apply,

36:09

which was to be his first movie

36:11

in 15 years. Aaron

36:14

started working closely with Beatty. He became a

36:16

co-producer on Rules Don't Apply, which came out

36:18

in 2016 and flopped. The

36:22

same year Beatty misrepresented the Best Picture Oscar

36:24

to La La Land instead of Moonlight. Aaron

36:27

says that Beatty turned his attention back to Dick Tracy

36:29

in 2020, in the early days of

36:32

the pandemic. It's not clear if

36:34

it was prompted by a legal notification

36:36

this time. Tribune media has changed hands

36:38

and fractured since the original lawsuits. But

36:41

if keeping the rights was the motivation

36:43

for a second special, Aaron says that

36:45

swiftly slipped into the background. Maybe

36:48

that was sort of the genesis of why we

36:50

would start to think about this. But

36:53

as anyone would tell you,

36:55

I think that has worked

36:58

with Warren. He doesn't do

37:00

anything that is mailed in. Aaron

37:06

is not the only person I spoke with who

37:08

worked with Beatty on these specials. But most of

37:11

them didn't want to be quoted. And

37:13

I get it. He's a legend. They like

37:15

him. He's a good guy to know. Why

37:18

risk maybe pissing him off by talking to

37:20

a reporter? But what I

37:22

gathered in those conversations echoes what

37:25

Aaron said. Dick Tracy

37:27

special, the one that came out first in 2012,

37:30

it filmed on the Disney lot. Beatty

37:33

made sure the table he and Leonard

37:35

Maltin sit at had the exact same

37:38

proportions as Charlie Rose's table because it

37:40

needed to be the best. And

37:43

to shoot Dick Tracy special,

37:45

Beatty hired Emmanuelle Lubesky, a

37:48

cinematographer already acclaimed for shooting

37:50

children of men who has

37:52

gone on to win three Oscars.

37:56

And while the second special, Dick Tracy zooms

37:58

in, does not have an Oscar winner. Aaron

40:00

is saying, look at it this way.

40:03

Here's a guy who never

40:05

half-asses anything, who just doesn't

40:07

know how. And I see that.

40:10

But it doesn't account for this important thing.

40:12

A thing that it would

40:15

be more uplifting to forget. The

40:18

specials are not good. They

40:21

are fascinating. They are

40:23

strange. They are

40:25

semi-watchable. But

40:27

not good. Hello?

40:31

Hello. Hello. Hello.

40:34

Are you there, sir? I'm here.

40:39

But this to me is really why

40:41

these specials are intriguing. Forget

40:43

pettiness. What we have here

40:46

is a window into a

40:48

deeper psychology. Orrin

40:50

Beatty works slowly. But

40:52

in this case he was forced by illegal

40:54

loophole and a deadline to spring into action.

40:58

It's like he tricked himself into getting to

41:00

work. But why did he want

41:02

to work on this? What

41:05

is yoking him to Dick Tracy?

41:08

I think you could hear part of the

41:10

answer in how Beatty talks about Dick Tracy

41:12

in this interview from 1998, almost

41:16

a decade after the movie came out. What struck

41:18

me about this guy, this guy Dick Tracy, had

41:20

been around for a billion years, was that he

41:22

just kept never getting married. And

41:25

I think that's the thing that

41:27

fueled me on Dick Tracy, that

41:29

he was a good guy, basically. And

41:32

he really was sort of a

41:34

star detective. And he

41:37

ran around in his yellow coat and hat, and he

41:40

didn't really make much advance in his

41:42

personal life. What

41:44

Warren Beatty found interesting about Dick Tracy

41:46

in the first place, what he thought

41:48

he could sink his teeth into, was

41:51

that Tracy was this

41:53

decent, professionally accomplished star

41:56

whose personal life was a mess. And

41:59

that... That could have described Warren

42:01

Beatty, too. Remember his

42:03

reputation as a womanizer? When

42:05

Dick Tracy came out, he didn't seem that troubled

42:08

by it. He was dating Madonna. But

42:10

on his very next movie, he

42:12

went and found his own Tess

42:14

Trueheart. Too fast to put a ring on

42:17

your finger? Nothing's too fast.

42:19

It fits. In

42:21

1992, on the set of the movie Bugsy,

42:23

he got together with his wife Annette Benning.

42:25

They have four kids, and they've been together

42:27

ever since. With Dick Tracy,

42:30

Warren Beatty solved his personal life in

42:32

fiction before he did it in fact.

42:35

And the two have other overlaps.

42:37

They were born in the same

42:39

decade, for goodness sakes. They grew

42:41

up together. They were famous together.

42:43

And that also means they're getting

42:45

old and less

42:47

famous together. So

42:50

sure, Dick Tracy is

42:52

a business proposition. He's a piece

42:54

of IP at a moment when

42:56

literally any IP is valuable. But

42:59

it's also personal. And

43:01

what's personal is not always rational.

43:04

So Warren Beatty is frittering away the

43:06

end of his career, not

43:08

because of some grudge or some

43:10

artistic vision, but because

43:13

of a long-term attachment to a

43:15

character and an obsessive way of

43:17

working he just can't change.

43:20

He's holding on. Even if Dick

43:22

Tracy and Warren Beatty both might

43:24

be better served, he's

43:27

waiting for Beatty to just move on, which

43:30

actually he's going to be forced to do one

43:33

way or another soon. Dick

43:35

Tracy is going into the public domain in 2027. And

43:40

that means all this effort to keep the rights, it's

43:44

for nothing. In three years, anyone can

43:46

have the character no

43:49

matter what Warren Beatty does. It's all

43:51

kind of poignant. And he's waiting for

43:54

it is the second special. Like,

43:57

take this exchange in which Dick Tracy by

44:00

Warren Beatty, tells Warren Beatty he

44:02

thinks they should collaborate on a

44:04

new Dick Tracy project. You

44:07

thinking about making a movie?

44:10

I don't know what to think about making movies nowadays.

44:13

Maybe another movie is a good idea. If

44:17

you're thinking about making another movie about me,

44:19

do you think you might just make it

44:21

a little more real? Not

44:23

with pink and blue streets. And

44:26

would you think about maybe getting somebody

44:28

a little younger than you to play

44:30

me? But

44:33

I don't know. I'm not sure.

44:35

Maybe I should be played old by

44:37

somebody who's able to do things old

44:39

people can't ordinarily do. You've

44:43

got the final say. You own

44:45

the rights. It's

44:48

impossible to tell their voices apart,

44:50

but that's the point. It's like

44:52

it's Warren Beatty's interior monologue. Someone

44:55

who used to be younger and more

44:57

famous and more powerful and more productive

45:00

talking to himself about

45:02

whether time has passed him by or

45:04

if he can still do the extraordinary

45:08

so long as he holds on to the rights.

45:22

This is Decoder Ring. I'm Willa Paskin.

45:24

While we're on the subject of comic

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47:05

This episode was written by me. It was

47:07

edited by Lacey Roberts and Evan Chung. It

47:09

was produced by Sophie Codner. I produced a

47:11

coder ring with Evan, Katie Shepherd and Max

47:13

Friedman. Derek John is executive

47:16

producer. Merit Jacob is senior technical

47:18

director. I'd like to thank

47:20

Ed Caddow, Stephanie Zacharach and Rachel Strom.

47:22

Peter Biskin's biography of Warren Beatty, Star,

47:24

was also essential to our research. And

47:27

we'll link to the various archival interviews

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we used on our show page. See

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you in two weeks. ["The Star-Spangled

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Banner"] Hey

47:45

everyone, it's Mary Harris, host of Slate's

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daily news podcast, What Next? Believe

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it or not, we are in the final

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stretch of election season. But these

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last few weeks are gonna be a little rough. Between

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new candidates, late debates and...

48:00

assassination attempts, plural? There's

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a lot going on. That's why we're

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launching The Surge. Every Friday, I'm gonna sit down

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with Slate's Jim Newell and go through the wild

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week in politics. Who's up, who's

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down, and who is off the charts? Here's

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the thing. These episodes are

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