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Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America
In this compulsively readable and constantly surprising book, Peter Biskind, the author of the film classics Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Down and Dirty Pictures, writes the most intimate, revealing, and balanced biography ever of Hollywood legend Warren Beatty.
Famously a playboy, Beatty has also been one of the most ambitious and successful stars in Hollywood. Several Be
...moreHardcover, 640 pages
Published
January 12th 2010
by Simon & Schuster
(first published 1969)
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"Madonna turned thirty-two on August 16. She picked up Tony Ward, age twenty-seven, on the beach at Malibu during a party thrown for her by friends. Recalls Jeremy Pikser, who had been hired by both Beatty and Madonna to write scripts, 'He tried to stay friends with her but she was mad at him. ' There was some backing and forthing about which script Pikser would write first. "
Is this a new stream-of-consciousness style of writing biographies? Who writes like this? In o...more
Is this a new stream-of-consciousness style of writing biographies? Who writes like this? In o...more
Warren Beatty has lived an interesting life, and has crammed more experiences into his seventy years than most people could do in seven hundred. But I don't know if I like him. Then again, that's not really the point: this is a warts-and-all biography that not only got me to learn more about the person behind the celebrity, but also got me interested in watching and re-watching his movies. It's a long book, but generally worth the time and investment. I have a few minor points I could nitpic...more
In his refreshing biography, Biskind (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls) examines Beatty's dual—and often dueling—status as Hollywood legend and notorious womanizer without letting either subsume the other. Beatty's film career began with a starring role in director Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass opposite Natalie Wood, the first of his co-stars with whom he had relationships (the list includes Leslie Caron, Julie Christie, Diane Keaton, and Annette Bening, whom he married). As producer and star of 1...more
You can tell this is an authorized bio. Why else would Biskind say something like "Bugsy was far and away the best picture that year". Really, better than Silence of the Lambs, that ended up winning the Oscar? Maybe you think so Peter, but it's certainly debatable.
There's also a section where he talks about "how many defining motion pictures does a filmmaker have to make to be considered great?" He gives Beatty three as a director: Heaven Can Wait, Reds and Bul...more
There's also a section where he talks about "how many defining motion pictures does a filmmaker have to make to be considered great?" He gives Beatty three as a director: Heaven Can Wait, Reds and Bul...more
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This review ran, in an edited version, in the Washington Post.
STAR: How Warren Beatty Seduced America
By Peter Biskind
Simon & Schuster, 627 pp., $30
It's bad to get a sinking feeling at the start of a book, but Peter Biskind gives the reader just that in the introduction to his new book.
“Why Warren Beatty?” Biskind asks. “It's distressing to have to make a case for his importance just because no one under forty (maybe fifty?) knows who he is.”...more
STAR: How Warren Beatty Seduced America
By Peter Biskind
Simon & Schuster, 627 pp., $30
It's bad to get a sinking feeling at the start of a book, but Peter Biskind gives the reader just that in the introduction to his new book.
“Why Warren Beatty?” Biskind asks. “It's distressing to have to make a case for his importance just because no one under forty (maybe fifty?) knows who he is.”...more
Though Biskind has done his best to appraise the aging star, his inexplicable indifference to Beatty's early life and his overt refusal to explore Beatty's marriage to Annette Bening leave gaping holes in this biography. Of Beatty's sexual escapades, there is "plenty here to satisfy the most prurient readers," but "once all the anxious throat clearing is out of the way, Biskind settles down to a genuine investigation of Beatty's enigmatic personality" (San Francisco Chronicle...more
This is an interesting book, one with enough details that it will be used by future biographers of Beatty. And Biskind’s up-front about his status as a Beatty sycophant: he thinks that Beatty rates as one of the top producers on the basis of his Oscar nominations alone. He’s honest enough to say, “I decided that anything of a personal nature that occurred after he and Annette Bening married was off limits, because I didn’t want to be in the position of writing anything that might embarrass the...more
Like Oliver Stone, Peter Biskind is often attacked for his accuracy but like Stone he puts on one hell of a show. Biskind wrote Easy Riders and Raging Bulls as well as Down and Dirty Pictures, both of which I highly reccomend. Warren Beatty is famously vague, evasive and contradictory which makes this the perfect marriage of author and subject. Biskind spares us the tedium of Beatty's childhood and starts when he comes to Hollywood at about 20. What follows is a fascinating history of Hollywood ...more
OK, you have to be over a certain age to even really know who Warren Beatty is/was. And even though he was never one of my personal favorites, I admit to a weird fascination with his promiscuity, which is legend. I believe this fascination the reader may have for the sheer numbers of his "love life" is the drawing power of this extensively researched autobiography. I especially enjoyed the first half of the book when Warren exhibits all of his friskiness and the reader is awed/repulsed...more
Betsy
rated it
3.5 stars for the record. This is an odd book mostly because Beatty is a very odd subject (it turns out). Most people Biskind interviews seem to have a lot of negative things to say about Beatty and yet the bio is authorized and so Biskind also has to suck up to him. You end up with a weird mix of hearing a bunch of stories about how obsessive he is or how difficult to work with and then sweeping and incorrect comments from Biskind to wrap up the stories and make it better (like stating that Bug...more
I almost don't care what the subject is, I'll grind a Peter Biskind book up into a fine powder and do massive rails of it off my coffee table. His writing is always entertaining as shit and he never ceases to dig up some serious dirt. One kinda awkward stylistic thing, though: I noticed several pop culture references that could best be described as "a couple of years ago." Case in point: I noticed two references to HBO's Big Love and one apiece to Borat, Paris Hilton, and Amy Winehous...more
An in-depth, engrossing look at Beatty, one of the last surviving Movie Stars (note capitals, hence the book's title)and his films, good and lousy. It's full of insider tidbits, like the conversation reported by Dustin Hoffman on page 357, wherein Beatty answers Hoffman's rhetorical question by saying that "there's no woman on the planet that (I) wouldn't fuck.". Disbelieving, Hoffman asks if he's serious, and why? Beatty replies "because...you never know."
Mus...more
Mus...more
This is my favorite type of bio, one that concentrates on the subjects work and career rather than their childhood, personal life and flat-out gossip.
Going film by film, this book offers a fascinating look behind the scenes at what went into the planning, shooting and marketing of every movie Beatty's made. Toward the end, there's also a detour detailing Beatty's close relationship with politics and his close encounters with entering the ring himself.
Going film by film, this book offers a fascinating look behind the scenes at what went into the planning, shooting and marketing of every movie Beatty's made. Toward the end, there's also a detour detailing Beatty's close relationship with politics and his close encounters with entering the ring himself.
I went back and forth about this one. I liked the behind the scenes look at the making of some interesting films, but sometimes felt the author played up the womanizing aspects of Beatty's personality for effect. On the other hand, as the author states, how could you not make that a major theme of a book on a man whose reputation was so much a part of his story? Very readable, all things considered and certainly glad I picked it up.
Narcissim redefined. I would love to read about the man now to see if marriage/children really has changed him from a vain, self-centered movie star. On one hand I did enjoy reading the behind the scenes of filmmaking; on the other, I was just angry at the waste. Especially when divas lack self control and those who have control don't know how to exert it.
As to the women? Tiger Woods could take lessons.
As to the women? Tiger Woods could take lessons.
If you want a lot of inside Hollywood dirt read with many grains of salt, you'll enjoy this. But the overall evidence does paint a picture of a truly unique, unsympathetic person. I enjoyed the historical references, movies analysis, and peeping tom feel into the lives of celebrities I have generally liked.
I'm a big fan of Biskind's work. And while this isn't "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" or even "Down and Dirty Pictures," it's still very entertaining. I've always thought Beatty was one of the more overrated actors in Hollywood. I love that he cooperated with this book but Biskind is pretty darn hard on him (that's what she said). It didn't change my opinion of Beatty, but does explain why he hasn't done a movie since "Town & Country."
This book was so long that any interest in Warren Beatty I may have had was slowly ground out of me. I have come away with the belief that, while Beatty may be a talented filmmaker, he is not an effective one, due to ego, compulsive rewriting and living too long in the Hollywood bubble. I think I'm done with fawning authorized biographies for a good long while.
"How many women were there? Easier to count the stars in the sky," Biskind writes in what he claims is an authorized biography. "Using simple arithmetic, 12,775 women, give or take, a figure that does not include daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on."
The author overpraises Beatty's work while revealing him to be a self-centered, stingy, indecisive, obsessive man who made those he worked with miserable and took credit for their good work and blamed them for all his failures.
Beatty only shines as a Don Juan since it seems he fucked everybody back then. But even that aspect of his life leaves a bad taste as it seems the man is so narcissistic that even as an old man he still thinks he's gods gift to women--pathetic.
Beatty only shines as a Don Juan since it seems he fucked everybody back then. But even that aspect of his life leaves a bad taste as it seems the man is so narcissistic that even as an old man he still thinks he's gods gift to women--pathetic.
I actually gave up on this book. I had been told to read this by an author I enjoy, but soon realized ... I just don't care about Warren Beatty. Not in a bad way, but also not in a good way. He just happens to exist in the same universe I do, and I want to spend my reading time on other things. So I won't choose a star rating, as this book and I simply don't have anything in common together.
This is a juicy read. Warren Beatty does not come off very well in the book, but it's fun reading about what a terrible human being he is (at least according to the author).
More about how he took complete creative control and how he can be such a d-bag to the people he works with. But really good.
A fun read that pulls its punches when it comes to certain areas of its subject's life and times.
very enteraining read about a guy who just wasn't quite the superstar he should've been
lots of gossip, but that can't be avoided given the subject. interesting bio.
Interesting book, very readable, but +500 pages is way to much Warren Beatty.
Got this for $1--hope it's worth it.;)
not enough about his current life.
Dire book about a vain man.
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