CHAPTER FOUR

In the summer of 1995, when I first was drawn into the strange and surreal world of Warren Beatty, my plate was already full. To be specific, three important things were happening in my life: I was in summer school at UCLA studying the Bible as literature and taking a class on Scandinavian cinema; I was editing an episode of a television anthology series called Perversions of Science that I had just directed; and most important of all, Christine was pregnant with our first child. While I was always open to new creative and business opportunities, I didn’t need any more anxiety or responsibility. I knew I’d have to find a practical way to support my growing family and my various interests, so whenever the phone rang and a reasonably dignified acting offer was presented, I listened.

A call from Warren Beatty, of course, holds the promise for much more than a paycheck. We’re talking about a man who is larger than life, a true Hollywood icon whose body of work is so substantial that it demands to be taken seriously. No amount of tawdry tabloid gossip or even the occasional Ishtar (which I actually liked) can diminish or overshadow his accomplishments. Warren is an artist, actor, businessman, director, producer, writer. He is a filmmaker in the most complete sense of the word. His acting credits alone are enough to merit a lifetime achievement award: Bonnie and Clyde, Shampoo, Reds, Heaven Can Wait, Bugsy, just to name a few. But he’s often the driving creative and entrepreneurial force behind these films as well, which places him in a very different category. As with Woody Allen, Steven Spielberg, and a handful of other filmmakers, Warren’s is a meeting you show up for, regardless of the circumstances in your own life. The opportunity to work with him or for him is something no actor (no smart actor, anyway) would summarily dismiss. To her credit, my then William Morris agent, Samantha Crisp, recognized that fact, and so she set it up.

That’s how I came to find myself in a big suite at Warren’s Beverly Glenn offices, sitting on a sofa, hands folded, calmly but eagerly waiting to meet the man and discuss his latest project, a movie about an offbeat politician called Bulworth. I knew almost nothing about the project; as is typical with Warren’s films, it was shrouded in secrecy. I’d been told that he was interested in having me play the part of a character named Gary C-Span, who was some sort of roving journalist assigned to document the travels of Warren’s titular character. I hadn’t seen a word of the script, didn’t even know if there was a script. I knew only that Warren had supposedly expressed an interest in having me sign on. Why? I wasn’t sure. Because of my work in Encino Man? Unlikely. Rudy? A better guess was that he was at least marginally impressed that my short film had been nominated for an Academy Award. I’m sure that represented a type of validation in the eyes of someone like Warren; at the very least, it might have momentarily prodded him into looking in my direction with a sense of curiosity.

In just about every way imaginable, Warren met my expectations, which is not to say that working on Bulworth was a wholly positive experience. It was, however, an experience I’m proud to have endured, one that meets the standard for Hollywood extremism. Our first meeting was, in my mind, one of those classic Hollywood introductions. Warren entered the room wearing sweatpants and a fanny pack, and despite the casual look, the disheveled hair, the stubble on his chin, he carried himself with a decidedly regal air, like a princely pauperish genius—like a man who knows he’s a megalomaniac and sees nothing wrong with that description. In other words, exactly what you’d expect of Warren Beatty.

My goal was to harness whatever nervousness I felt and project an image of an honest, earnest, open-faced ideologue, which wasn’t hard to do since that’s pretty much the way I am. And he loved it; he just soaked me in, told me right away that he could use that persona in his movie, which I found genuinely exciting. Toward the end of the meeting, though, he really piqued my interest.

“I’m going to want you to do some writing,” Warren said.

“What kind of writing?”

He smiled. “You know … things.”

Cryptic as that was, I was intrigued. Would I be contributing to the script? Working on future projects? No matter. I wanted in. But there was one thing that concerned me.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” I said, “but I have to be honest. I can’t sign on without reading the script.”

Warren shrugged. “Fine. You can go in the other room there and read the script, but you should know that there’s really no part for you yet. And you should do the movie anyway.”

He paused, waited for a reaction. I offered none. Then Warren smiled, in the way that only a person who is supremely confident can smile. “Just come along … see what happens. It’ll be worth it.”

I should have been wary, but I remember feeling something akin to awe. I loved this guy, and I loved the fact that he was, in some small way, courting me. I sat there knowing full well that I was going to be able to add my name to the long and illustrious list of people who got seduced by Warren Beatty, and instead of being conflicted by that recognition, I was excited by it. Even now, nearly a decade later, I remain curiously ambivalent about the experience. My name is proudly on that list somewhere (near the bottom, no doubt), but instead of feeling resentment, I’m grateful that Warren was able to get creatively aroused over me for a minute or two, that he recognized who I was and thus invited me into his inner circle, if only for a brief time, on the simple premise that something interesting could happen. The reason that something interesting ultimately did not happen was my limitation, not his.

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll look at the script.”

“Good.”

I got up, left Warren to his business, and went off to read the script. Indeed, just as he had promised, there was no role for me, no Gary C-Span to be found anywhere. Nevertheless, I shook Warren’s hand and agreed to be part of his movie. I rationalized the decision on any number of levels. We were running out of money, the baby was coming, we had the fall semester of college to look forward to, and I was trying to figure out how to balance it all—how to pay for the house, be a new father, and keep Christine happy while we ran our production company together. I looked at the script, thought to myself, The part is not on the page; this could be trouble, and accepted the job anyway. I figured that I’d have only ten or twelve days of work during a four-month shoot, I’d learn something from working with one of the masters of cinema, and the rest of the time I’d be free to concentrate on school and family and entrepreneurial ventures.

That proved to be an enormous miscalculation.

“Great,” Warren said as his hand enveloped mine. “Now remember, Sean, I want to hear your ideas. I want you to be writing. All the time.”

I looked him in the eye and, with only a trace of irony, said, “Thank you, Warren. I look forward to writing and handing you pages and having you turn them down.”

It was almost like something buried deep in my consciousness was saying it, the thing that I knew I needed to say in order to get the job. Not to be irreverent, not to be disrespectful or funny, but to let him know that I understood my place in his world, a world in which it is perfectly acceptable for the director and star to torture and humiliate his writers on a daily basis. That’s what it was like on Bulworth. Amiri Baraka, a poet and scholar and sometime actor who played the part of a character known as Rastaman, had been given the same instructions and encouragement that I’d received, and he took them to heart. Amiri showed up almost nightly on the movie with reams of paper, detailed notes on his character and how it fit into the story, only to have them dismissed out of hand. And he kept coming back for more!

No one experienced more anguish than Jeremy Pikser, the credited cowriter (along with Warren) of the screenplay. (Little known fact: Aaron Sorkin, the creator of The West Wing, is one uncredited writer on Bulworth. Exactly what that means, I’m not sure. Did Aaron write the original draft? Did he rewrite Jeremy’s work? Who knows? I’d be the last person to try to explain how Warren Beatty concocted the idea for this strange and brilliant movie, or how he captured the imagination of somebody like Aaron Sorkin—a genius in his own right—the contract that was written between them, or why Aaron had his name taken off the film. I’m going to understand or explain that? No way.) I watched Jeremy suffer, day in and day out, at the hands of Warren Beatty. Jeremy tried to help Warren create a counterculture figure in the character of Bulworth, while trying to create a career for himself, and toward the end the poor guy seemed like an emotional wreck.

I think of all of this now as I remember that first conversation with Warren at his office, when I stood in the doorway and told him I’d be honored to experience his firm editorial hand, to have him reject every idea, every written word and thought, that I threw his way.

And his response was a single simple word, spoken with a smile: “Good.”

*   *   *

The next day I visited the set of Bulworth, primarily to soak up some atmosphere and meet a few of my coworkers, including Oliver Platt. Oliver is a big hulking behemoth of a brilliant actor, and a man who has, shall we say, a presence. He entered the stage like a summer thunderstorm and thrust out a meaty hand.

“Sean, nice to meet you! Man, I loved you in Rudy. What a great movie!”

“Uh, thanks, Oliver. Nice to meet you, too.”

“Yeah, this is going to be special. Gary C-Span is so cool, the way he doesn’t do anything the whole movie, and then he gives a speech at the end? That’s brilliant, man. Fucking brilliant!”

Whoaaaaa …

I didn’t agree with him, but I didn’t want to disagree either, because the truth was I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Oliver had more information about my character than I did, and it occurred to me that somehow he’d gotten deep inside Warren’s head (in much the same way that Ian McKellen would burrow into Peter Jackson’s head during the filming of The Lord of the Rings). He was so far inside Warren’s head, in fact, that there was almost no way to separate them. Oliver, I suspected—and later this was demonstrated to be true—had suggested to Warren that the character of Gary be mute throughout the film, and then spring eloquently to life at the climax; Warren had liked the idea, and so they had moved forward believing it. My heart began to race. A day earlier I had met with Warren, had heard him say, “Come along with me, and we’ll see what evolves.” And now I was standing on the set, having my hair blown back by Oliver Platt as he dissected the character I had been assigned the task of not merely playing, but interpreting—even, to a degree, creating—a dissection I found baffling, but that apparently made sense dramatically to the director. I hadn’t even signed a contract yet, and already I felt trapped. The only way to get out of the trap was by advocating for myself, quickly and aggressively. Why I didn’t want to do that is … well, it’s the imp of the perverse, isn’t it? That little node of self-destruction that people allow in themselves, and that always leads to trouble.

Bulworth proved to be an unbelievable four-month apprenticeship that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world, because I learned so much not only about the art of filmmaking and cinema culture, but also about what it means to use and abuse power. It was in some ways the most important four months of my professional life, although I’m not sure I’d want to live through it again. Before accepting the job, I had sought the advice of a friend and mentor, and his response was thoroughly negative.

“Don’t do it. You’ll hate it.”

He was right—and he was wrong. I accepted the job not only because it would allow me to be in the Los Angeles area when my daughter was born (in November 1996), and because it was, I thought, a small amount of work for reasonable remuneration, but also because I wanted to test myself, to see if I could acquit myself admirably while working alongside one of the most inspired and notorious taskmasters in Hollywood. Whatever else might transpire, I figured I’d at least learn a lot from Warren so I made the decision to do it. I don’t blame Warren for anything that happened. I think he was exactly as I thought he would be, but I did suffer on that production. And the suffering was mostly of my own doing.

If you watch Bulworth, you’ll notice that I’m barely in the movie, which doesn’t really bother me; I understand the reason. I don’t think Warren respected my capacity as an actor or an artist, and the fact that he didn’t, coupled with my own hurt feelings, created a kind of sour mixture on the set. The responsibility for inspiration was on both of us; the implied understanding when I agreed to do the picture was that we would both be inspired. So it was disappointing in terms of output. In a sense, merely by watching him, I was inspired every day, but what I was writing and what he was capturing on screen were all overshadowed by Warren and his megalomania.

Of course, it was his movie. He was the writer, director, producer, and star; I was contractually merely a piece of casting. It was Warren’s prerogative to use my acting talents as much or as little as he saw fit. The contribution of any writing on my part was a private understanding between Warren and me. This dynamic exists a lot and shouldn’t be condemned by the Writer’s Guild or its arbitrators. It goes to the notion that a healthy creative environment should allow for inspiration from all quarters to the betterment of the film. Credit and remuneration can impede creativity, and the balance is rightfully left to the development of trust between artists. To that end, I went willingly into Warren’s world to see what the sky looked like.

There was one particular day when I watched with what can only be termed immense fascination as Warren staged a close-up of himself. Vittorio Storaro, one of the most brilliant and accomplished cinematographers ever to light a scene (his credits include Last Tango in Paris, Apocalypse Now, and Reds), was shooting it, and I remember being fascinated with Warren’s capacity for introspection in the middle of this huge multimillion-dollar movie. Afterward, I quizzed him about it. I had seen Dick Tracy and loved it, and so I asked him about how he had put that movie together and how it had led to Bulworth. Everything on Dick Tracy, he explained, was planned to the inch—it was the exact opposite of Bulworth. Dick Tracy was an artistic endeavor, to be sure, but it was intended to be a big-budget, mainstream popular success. Bulworth was different, almost experimental in nature. Here Warren was using his stardom in service of the promotion of certain liberal ideas; to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how he even got the studio (Fox) to pay for it. I believe it had something to do with Warren forgoing bonus money on an earlier film in exchange for the right to make a smaller, more personal film. Or agreeing not to sue the studio and forcing it to incur big legal costs. Only Warren and the studio really know. Either way, the movie was smart and in some ways courageous, and it spoke volumes about Warren’s commitment to his craft and to his personal ideology. He is a formidable man and artist.

As far as my acting and writing and how I was perceived by Warren, however … well, that was a different story. For example, when it came to the letter of the contract, Warren was utterly unforgiving. The production owned me; Warren owned me, and he wanted me in close proximity—on the set, in the green room, or in my dressing room—all day, every day, no matter what. I was one of the colors on his palette; he wanted to have the freedom to go to that color whenever the mood struck him, and frankly I resented it. On a purely human and interpersonal level, I thought it was rude and inconsiderate, mainly because I didn’t think he had any intention of using whatever talent I could supposedly bring to bear. Warren abused the privilege of having me at his disposal. I had signed a contract giving him power over where my physical body would be, on the premise that he would be respectful of it, and he was not respectful.

Over time, as it became apparent that I would play no major part in the construction of Bulworth, my frustration grew. As did my body. Warren had a very small dressing room by movie-star standards, but it was substantial compared to the tiny cubicles assigned to some of the actors, myself included. These were painfully small, private changing stations in which you couldn’t spend more than a few seconds without suffering bouts of embarrassment. Whether this was by design (to discourage performers from hiding out in their dressing rooms) or simply a prudent cost-saving measure, I don’t know; I do know that I, like most of the actors, tended to gravitate toward the motor home that served as the cast’s green room.

The green room was a fairly lavish setup, with satellite television, gourmet food prepared by a cadre of chefs, and an assortment of newspapers and magazines. The green room was where Warren spent most of his off-set time, too, and it was indeed a place where interesting things happened. He invited all kinds of movers and shakers and people of cultural, artistic, and political influence. I saw them come and go, because I basically sat my widening ass in a chair not far from him, and said to myself, If Warren is going to have me here, he’s going to have to see me every time he walks in and out of this room. I was determined not to be out of his sight. He’d developed a pattern of telling his assistant directors to find particular actors and bring them to the set, and I didn’t want to make it convenient for him not to need me. (One of the assistant directors, by the way, was Frank Capra III, grandson of the idealistic director of countless Hollywood classics, including It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It would be absolutely awesome when Warren would shout, “Frank Capra!” People would stop in their tracks, and you’d find yourself thinking. I’m a part of Hollywood history—this is so cool!)

But those were small and fleeting moments of joy, of legitimate creative wonder. By and large, for me Bulworth was a bizarre and discouraging experience, a marathon of boredom punctuated by strange and humbling interactions with the director and star.

“You should be writing your speech,” Warren would admonish me from time to time, when he’d see me sitting in the green room, reading a book for some class I was taking at UCLA. “Remember, what’s in here” (he’d tap me on the chest, over my heart) “is more important than what’s in here” (then he’d tap me on the forehead).

“I know, I know. I’m working on it.”

But I wasn’t. Not really. I remember thinking, You know, Warren, if I had even an iota of faith that you would honor my thoughts or contributions, I’d allow myself to go there. I’d plumb the depths of my soul. But you basically just want me to clean up a mess so you don’t have to look at it. That’s how frustrated and angry I’d become. One day, though, for reasons I still don’t quite understand (perhaps out of some pathetic need for approval, or maybe just to prove I was right), I surrendered to Warren’s will and went off with my laptop. And I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. In a single, frantic, cathartic session I produced a seven-page, single-spaced treatise on the character of Gary C-Span, his importance to the film Bulworth, and what I believed Warren Beatty was trying to accomplish. These weren’t pages from a script, but more of an intellectual diatribe—an attempt to demonstrate my passion for art and ideas.

Did it work? Of course not.

On the day I presented the pages to Warren, we were sitting together in the makeup room. Warren had just finished eating lunch and was expressing an interest in returning to the buffet table for a refill. With a wry smile he turned to me, held up his plate, and said comedically, for he isn’t really a tyrant or a bully, “Sean, do you suppose there is a minion about?”

Now, I believe this was Warren’s way of jokingly pointing out that on movie sets there are always people milling about, people whose job descriptions can never quite be pinned down. He wasn’t really asking for a minion because he felt he was entitled to it—in fact, he wasn’t asking for a minion at all—but he was enjoying the kind of self-awareness that comes from knowing that he is a man who does indeed have minions. When push comes to shove, I believe Warren Beatty is as in touch with the common man as any multimillionaire actor/director/mogul could be. And yet, he did say, “Is there a minion about?” Which I find rather amusing.

“I’ll tell you what, Warren,” I said, taking the plate from his hands. “I’ll go get you some more food, on the condition that you let me read my pages to you when I get back.”

“No, no, you don’t have to get me food, Sean,” he said at first. But I interrupted him.

“That’s all right. I want to.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

So I retrieved a heaping plate of food and placed it in front of Warren, and began performing my rambling diatribe. I was nervous, so I stumbled and stammered a bit, but I got through it quickly enough, and I was pleased that he actually seemed to be paying attention, maybe even taking me and my words seriously. In all candor, I thought it was not only pretty well written, but also reasonably astute; it was a celebration of Warren and his idiosyncrasies, as well as an indictment of some of those things. I thought I’d found a way to make my point and comment on the character and the story, even though I hadn’t found a way to integrate it seamlessly into the story. Never mind that none of us had been issued a script! Basically, this was performance art, a weird combination of improvisation and detailed speech reading, which was precisely the way Warren seemed to like to work. By the time I finished, I was sweating and breathing hard; my heart was racing. I looked at him and waited for some type of reaction.

“Well?”

He paused, poked at his food, and said nonchalantly, “Not bad. Why don’t you try another version where you focus more on the girls?”

The “girls” were two African American women who, like Gary C-Span, were part of Bulworth’s ever-expanding entourage. The point, I later discovered as the movie came into focus, was that Warren was thinking about trading on a kind of hippie sexuality, something reminiscent of the spirit of the sixties. You could see him looking for it, looking for something, but apparently I’d missed the mark in my presentation.

As I’ve reflected on it over the years, I’ve come to think Warren might have had in mind a sort of comedic trio. Perhaps if there had been more of a spark between my personality and the personality of the “girls,” Warren might have seen some value in cutting to us as a kind of miscegenation or menàge comic-relief element. But I didn’t allow myself to go there, and I don’t think my personality had evolved enough to “play” in an improvisational way with them. One of the highlights of the shoot for me was making friends with some of the other actors. Notably, Josh Malina did just the kind of sketch or character comedy that Warren was looking for, and his stuff is rightfully all over the movie.

But let’s get back to me standing in front of Warren, having presented him with my outpouring of creative writing. I was demonstrably hurt by his reaction, almost as though I expected him to jump out of his chair and offer to relinquish his credit to me.

“Try another version?” I asked incredulously.

I didn’t bother. Instead, I just sat there all day long, every day, feeling undervalued and underappreciated, eating myself into a stupor, getting fat and angry and depressed, much as I had during the filming of Encino Man. The funny thing was, eventually I came to understand my character. There wasn’t much written for him, but that was typical of Warren. He wanted his actors to be totally naturalistic and comfortable, to allow performances and stories to grow organically. The weird thing about my situation, though, is that Gary C-Span is a pivotal, if largely observant character; he’s there, hanging around, the entire movie. He’s following, videotaping, watching. But in terms of interpreting what’s going on, he does nothing; so I ended up in this odd position where I was there and present on the set, but not really focused on the movie. The result was a kind of amused reconciliation: while trying to be ready for the possibility that Warren might want to shoot a close-up with me, I had to accept the notion that my role would be reduced to a cameo.

It was a unique Hollywood experience, trying to not just endure, but to also honor, the opportunity that had been presented to me. I fully accept responsibility for the way it turned out. I know that if I had been working out every day, if I had factored into the equation some cardiovascular exercise and had been disciplined about how I ate and transformed myself into the good-looking guy that’s (sometimes) within me, not only would my attitude have been better, and not only would I have felt more creative, but Warren might have used that energy in a way that would have yielded something more valuable in terms of the final product. So, to a certain extent, I’m culpable for my own frustration, as well as the fact that Gary is little more than a shadow in the movie Bulworth.

Power, I’ve discovered, is an interesting thing, and sometimes the biggest challenge is knowing whether you have any control over a situation. Warren Beatty is like a Hollywood supernova: you can get burned right out of existence being anywhere near him. If you don’t know how to protect yourself from guys like him, or how to work with guys like him, or how to survive despite guys like him, you’ll have a short, forgettable career.

Bulworth was not an experience I’d want to relive, but I’m proud to have it on my résumé. Simply by showing up for work each day, by being in Warren’s proximity, I heard stories I couldn’t have heard anywhere else. That was worth it to me, and Warren knew it was worth it to me.

One could argue that I got exactly what I wanted, and just what I deserved.