Happy Birthday, Warren Beatty!

Today is Warren Beatty's 71st birthday.

I've been a Warren Beatty fan about as long as I've been a movie fan. I was even one of the rare people who went to see Ishtar in the theater, and I still thing that's an underrated movie. In fact, it was one of the highlights of the Doctors K's wedding reception when our pal Mike sang "Wardrobe of Love" from that movie.

I also remember going to see the Oscars on the big screen at the Fargo Theatre the year Bugsy was up for a bunch of awards. Mike and I had gone to see the movie several times while it was playing at the buck theater, and we could pretty much quote huge sections of it verbatim. During the Oscar ceremony, we obnoxiously stood up and clapped every time Beatty appeared on the screen.


Seriously, though, Bonnie and Clyde and McCabe and Mrs. Miller are two of my all-time favorite movies. Beatty--who is called "Pro" by friends like Jack Nicholson--has been bold but selective in his career choices, which have often had a huge impact on American filmmaking. I should probably do a longer post on Warren Beatty some time, perhaps even running a Warren Week.

Here's the trailer for The Parallax View, one of the great, bleak, paranoid political thrillers to come out of the Watergate era.

I need to devote a whole post to this film, especially the great subliminal montage sequence.