Movie Review: The Last Tycoon, starring Robert De Niro, directed by Elia Kazan, based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1976)

Some of the cast of The Last Tycoon. From left to right: Tony Curtis, Leslie Curtis (Tony's real-life wife playing his movie wife), Ray Milland, Robert De Niro, Jeanne Moreau, Robert Mitchum, and Theresa Russell.

Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson size each other up in The Last Tycoon, 1976. This is before they play ping pong.

Robert De Niro, generating zero chemistry with co-star Ingrid Boulting in The Last Tycoon, 1976.

Director Elia Kazan’s last movie was his 1976 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel The Last Tycoon, starring Robert De Niro, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. The movie is proof that all the talent in the world can still produce a bad movie.

There are so many things wrong with The Last Tycoon that it’s hard to know where to start. Perhaps making a movie of an unfinished novel was not a good idea. I haven’t read Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, also known as The Love of the Last Tycoon, so I don’t know how faithful the movie is to his writing, but it sure feels like it was based on an unfinished novel. The Last Tycoon is set in Hollywood in the late 1930’s, and the titular character is Monroe Stahr, who is the head of a film studio. (Stahr was loosely based on real-life movie mogul Irving Thalberg.) The film follows him as he works on movies and seeks out a beautiful young woman who reminds him of his dead movie star wife. 

Unfortunately, Robert De Niro is miscast as Stahr. Monroe Stahr is a boring character, and it’s a disservice to cast one of the silver screen’s most exciting performers in that role. Stahr was too much of a blank slate for me to ever feel invested in his emotions. There’s no dramatic tension to the movie, and whatever lingering tension there was comes to a screeching halt during the way too long love scenes between De Niro and Ingrid Boulting, as the girl who reminds Stahr of his dead wife. The scenes between Boulting and De Niro are just not that interesting, and they don’t have any chemistry together. Theresa Russell plays the other main female character, and while Boulting and Russell are both very beautiful to look at, they are not very good actresses. On a positive note, I did love Stahr's beautiful red Packard convertible.

Kazan seemed determined to include every famous person he could find in the cast, which makes watching The Last Tycoon slightly more interesting. The supporting cast includes Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Ray Milland, Dana Andrews, Jeanne Moreau, Donald Pleasence, John Carradine, Jeff Corey, Anjelica Huston, Peter Strauss, and, oh yeah, Jack Nicholson. Yes, Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro made a movie together in 1976. Unfortunately, it was this turkey.

I couldn’t figure out the tone that The Last Tycoon was going for. There are times when it seems to want to be a comedy. On their first date, Stahr takes Boulting’s character to see a trained seal at a restaurant. Am I supposed to laugh at De Niro’s interactions with the seal and his trainer? Is the scene where a movie editor dies during a screening supposed to be humorously ironic? I have no idea. I blame Harold Pinter for this. 

Another weird moment is when we see the movie-within-a-movie that Tony Curtis and Jeanne Moreau have been working on. It’s very obviously a pastiche of Casablanca, as Curtis plays the piano and bids Moreau adieu. She even sings part of the song he’s playing. It’s almost high camp, but not quite. I really think it’s supposed to be serious. Also, Casablanca wasn’t released until 1942, which is several years after the time period of The Last Tycoon. Curtis also has a scene where he confides to Stahr that he can’t get it up anymore, but he knows that Stahr will have a solution for his problem. I don’t remember what the hell Stahr tells him, but it works for Curtis. Of the random celebrity cameos, Robert Mitchum gets the most to do as another powerful producer at the studio. It is fun to watch Mitchum and De Niro together, as they both played the same role in the two different versions of Cape Fear. Hell, it’s always fun to watch Robert Mitchum. Ray Milland doesn’t have much to do other than hang out with Robert Mitchum and look like a more bald version of Jimmy Stewart. Dana Andrews has a couple of scenes as a beleaguered director whom Stahr releases from a movie. Despite his real-life battle with alcoholism, which he overcame in the late 1960’s, Andrews looks super handsome and not much different from his heyday as a leading man in the 1940’s. 

So, what about Jack Nicholson? Does he swoop in to save the movie from terminal boredom? Does he demand to order toast from the studio commissary? Isn’t it super exciting that The Last Tycoon pairs up two of the greatest actors of the 1970’s? Well, even the scenes between De Niro and Nicholson are dull. Their characters are adversaries, as Nicholson plays a Communist who wants to unionize the screenwriters at De Niro’s studio. Both Nicholson and De Niro seem to be operating at half-speed during their first scene together. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is super boring. And I don’t know if Nicholson is trying to do an accent or what-his character is from Tennessee-but he doesn’t have his usual Jack Nicholson vocal cadences. It’s terribly frustrating to watch two exciting, dynamic actors play boring people. In their other two scenes together De Niro totally overacts Stahr’s drunkenness, as he challenges Nicholson’s character to a game of ping pong. Yep, De Niro and Nicholson face off in a movie over a fucking game of ping pong. Opportunity wasted!

The last scene of The Last Tycoon, where De Niro/Stahr breaks the fourth wall and looks directly at the camera as he tells a story about watching a girl burn a pair of gloves-a story we’ve already heard once before in the movie-is a real “what the fuck?” moment. 

The Last Tycoon was an unfortunate waste of talent, and a sad ending to the great directing career of Elia Kazan.

Movie Review: Two Weeks in Another Town starring Kirk Douglas (1962)

Movie poster for Two Weeks in Another Town, 1962. If only the movie was as cool as this poster.

Kirk Douglas and Cyd Charisse in Two Weeks in Another Town, 1962.

Irwin Shaw, author of the novel Two Weeks in Another Town.

Two Weeks in Another Town was the third movie to pair actor Kirk Douglas with director Vincente Minnelli and producer John Houseman. Unfortunately, it is also the worst of the three movies. Admittedly, the completion is steep, since the first two were The Bad and the Beautiful, and Lust for Life, both of which feature Oscar-nominated performances from Douglas. Two Weeks in Another Town, released in 1962, was based on Irwin Shaw’s 1960 novel of the same name. The novel is about a former actor who rejoins the movie world at the behest of a director for whom he did his best acting work. Shaw, a successful playwright, short-story writer, novelist, and screenwriter, knew a lot about Hollywood and those who inhabited it, so he was well-qualified to write such a book. I’m a big fan of Shaw’s writing, but Two Weeks in Another Town pales in comparison to his great works, like the novel The Young Lions, or his short stories. Too many years have passed since I read Two Weeks in Another Town for me to give it a full review, but some of the shortcomings of the novel also become shortcomings of the film. It’s a flawed book and also a flawed movie. 

Kirk Douglas plays the lead role of former actor Jack Andrus. In the book, Andrus has moved to France and stopped acting because of an accident that damaged his face. In the movie, Douglas has an inconsistent scar on the side of his face, but the reason he hasn’t acted in years is because of a nervous breakdown. He’s been playing shuffleboard at a mental hospital. Andrus gets a telegram from Maurice Kruger, played by Edward G. Robinson, asking him to come to Rome and take a small part in a film. Kruger is an alcoholic, skirt-chasing director for whom Andrus made several of his most famous movies. In a clever in-joke, when Kruger shows an old movie that he and Andrus made together, we see clips from The Bad and the Beautiful. So Andrus, against his better judgment, goes to Rome. When he gets to Rome, everyone is an asshole to him. And overacts terribly. From Kruger and his harpy of a wife to the moody leading man, played by a young George Hamilton, (before he got his tan) to Andrus’s ex-wife, crazily played by Cyd Charisse, everyone is out to get Jack Andrus. Andrus might not be the most likable guy, but you end up rooting for him just because everyone else is so nasty to him. Kirk Douglas does the best he can with the part, and he looks super handsome in his early 1960’s suits and tuxedo, but he can’t carry the picture all by himself. And while Douglas was no stranger to chewing the scenery, everyone else’s acting is so histrionic and over the top that they seem to be making a totally different movie than the one Douglas is acting in. 

Part of the problem with both the novel and the movie is that there’s no dramatic tension. Will Andrus be able to successfully oversee the dubbing of the dialogue to Kruger’s movie? We don’t really care, because the stakes feel so low. Andrus doesn’t care about getting back into the movie business, so we’re not really invested in whether Kruger’s movie comes in under budget or not. 

Thankfully, Irwin Shaw didn’t have anything to do with the writing of the screenplay, because there are some super klunky lines. My favorite might have been Edward G. Robinson saying to Kirk Douglas, “You and I made some good ones, yes, and a couple of great ones. Looked like there was a federal law prohibiting us from doing anything wrong.” Oof. Another winner is Robinson saying “All women are just pure monster.” Lots of subtlety there.

In his autobiography The Ragman’s Son, Kirk Douglas tells us part of the reason why Two Weeks didn’t work. As Two Weeks entered post-production, a new studio head took over MGM, Joseph Vogel. Vogel decided that MGM would only make family pictures. “He decided that the film would be edited differently-he was determined to make a family picture out of what we had shot….When I saw them emasculate the film, I wrote to Vogel, even though I was just an actor in it. I implored him, argued with him, told him that if he had wanted to make a family picture, he never should have made Two Weeks in Another Town.” (The Ragman’s Son, by Kirk Douglas, p.315) I don’t know if keeping the more explicit footage would have helped the movie, but it sure couldn’t have hurt. 

For me the best part of the movie was when it finally spilled over into full-blown camp at the climax of the movie, as Douglas and Cyd Charisse wail at the top of their lungs as Douglas drunkenly drives his convertible at high speeds.  Of course, it’s all done with rear projection shots, which just makes the whole scene even more ridiculous. 

If you’re a fan of ridiculous old movies about the making of old movies, then Two Weeks in Another Town might be just the movie for you. I’d advise everyone else to stay away.

The Films of Warren Beatty-"Town & Country," starring Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Garry Shandling (2001)

The cast of "Town & Country": Goldie Hawn, Garry Shandling, Diane Keaton, Warren Beatty. There's a reason Garry Shandling is hiding.

Garry Shandling and Warren Beatty in "Town & Country." Yes, this movie really is as bad as this still makes it look.

Warren Beatty’s most recent film, “Town & Country,” made mostly in 1998-99 but not released until 2001, is one of his worst movies, if not his very worst. “Town & Country” is Beatty’s Woody Allen movie. Minus the funny parts. On paper, it might look like a good movie, as it reunites Beatty with two of his former co-stars, Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn. Keaton made “Reds” with Beatty, and Hawn appeared in “$” also known as “Dollars” and “Shampoo” with Beatty. Co-star Garry Shandling had also appeared with Beatty in “Love Affair.” So, you’ve got a great cast, with supporting turns from Andie MacDowell, Charlton Heston, Nastassja Kinski, and Jenna Elfman. It’s Warren Beatty in a romantic comedy, what could go wrong?

Everything went wrong. The script wasn’t finished at the time filming began, Keaton eventually had to leave to make her movie “Hanging Up,” at which point the movie still wasn’t done, even though production had been going on for about 9 months! When “Town & Country” tested poorly in April of 1999, they re-shot, but the cast couldn’t be reassembled for another 8 months. Because of all the overages and the re-shooting, the budget skyrocketed, going from a relatively modest $35-$40 million to a disastrous $90 million. For a 104-minute romantic comedy! By the time “Town & Country” was finally released in April of 2001, stories had been swirling for years about what an utter fiasco it was, and it opened to bad reviews and indifferent audiences. “Town & Country” grossed $6.7 million domestically, and added a paltry $3.6 million internationally for a grand total of $10.3 million. Against a budget of $90 million. The director, Peter Chelsom, was clearly overmatched by all his actors, especially Beatty. Chelsom never put his foot down with Beatty. So Beatty did his usual thing, the script kept getting revised, and they got way behind schedule. By all accounts, Beatty and Chelsom were like oil and water on the set. All accounts also stress how much time and money Beatty wasted on the set, by insisting that the script be re-written, and by just delaying things endlessly. Beatty knew that he would be the fall guy if anything went wrong with the movie, so why did he act the way he did on the set? Why cause problems? Why not just shut up and play your part and take the money? There’s no easy answer for that. One problem is that “Town & Country” was the first movie Beatty had acted in without also being a producer, director, or screenwriter since 1975’s “The Fortune.” Beatty was used to getting his own way and having final say on a production. You could be charitable to Beatty and say that he was just trying to make the movie as good as possible. And it could well be that Beatty really thought that everything he did was improving “Town & Country.” But Beatty also should have learned from the debacle of making and marketing “Ishtar” that once a movie has a reputation for being a stinker, and once it misses too many release dates, it usually arrives in theaters dead in the water. 

The script for “Town & Country” is pretty awful. As the movie opens, Porter Stoddard (Beatty) is cheating on his wife (Diane Keaton) with an attractive cello player, portrayed by Nastassja Kinski. The audience is never given any reason or rationale for Beatty’s cheating. We don’t see his marriage to Diane Keaton falling apart and we don’t see Kinski seducing him. So there’s no audience sympathy for his character because there’s no explanation or rationale for his actions. Any kind of sympathy or understanding the audience is supposed to have for Beatty’s character is totally lost from the very beginning of the movie. The rest of the movie is basically Beatty trying to hide his cheating from Keaton, and then running into an attractive woman, so he keeps cheating. Hawn and Shandling play a married couple who are Beatty and Keaton’s best friends. During the course of the movie, Shandling discovers that he’s gay and leaves Hawn. Hawn then sleeps with Beatty. Beatty and Shandling have a “boy’s weekend” at a cabin in Aspen, where Beatty meets and seduces Jenna Elfman, who works as a clerk in a hardware store. Beatty also sleeps with Andie MacDowell, who he meets on a plane. At the end of the movie, Beatty pleads for Keaton to take him back, which she somehow does, and at the end of the movie they are back together and it’s clear that they are working things out. Keaton’s character is kind of a cipher, as we don’t get much information about how she sees the disintegration of her marriage to Beatty. And Keaton basically sleepwalks through the part, lending it her patented Annie Hall-like whimsy, but not much else. 

“Town & Country” would have made a little more sense had the film followed Keaton’s character more. And originally it was supposed to. Mike De Luca, an executive at New Line at the time, said of the original script: “they {Beatty and Keaton} come back to each other after they have both been unfaithful. They both have affairs-there’s a balance.” (“Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America,” by Peter Biskind, p. 516.) However, after the script was re-written De Luca says, “One of the biggest changes, and probably the most damaging change, was that we rewrote the script so that Diane’s character has no affairs, and therefore the sympathy for Warren’s character goes right out the window.” (Biskind, p. 517.) Yup! 

It’s really annoying how every single woman in the movie wants to sleep with Warren Beatty. Speaking as a man, a character like Beatty’s is not very sympathetic because most of us don’t have women throwing themselves at our feet everywhere we go. And also, this is not Warren Beatty at the height of his attractiveness in the 1960’s or 1970’s. It’s 60-year-old Warren Beatty in 1998-2001. He’s still a nice-looking older man, but it’s really unrealistic that someone Jenna Elfman’s age is going to pick him up after a couple minutes of flirting with him at a hardware store. Sure, in real life 60-year-old Warren Beatty could probably find lots of women to sleep with, but he’s Warren Beatty, rich, famous and a powerful movie star. The character he’s playing in “Town & Country” isn’t Warren Beatty. “Town & Country” is a very chauvinistic movie. It’s obvious that it was written by men who don’t care a lot about getting inside the heads of the female characters in the movie; they just want to get inside their pants. 

The failure of “Town & Country” and all the negative publicity surrounding it essentially ended Warren Beatty’s film career. As Peter Biskind writes, “Even if Beatty was not to blame, once again a movie in which he was involved left a trail of wreckage in its wake, as had “Dick Tracy,” “Ishtar,” “Bugsy,” “Love Affair,” and “Bulworth.”” (Biskind, p. 542.) The movies that Biskind lists are the 5 movies that Beatty had made prior to “Town & Country,” making it 6 movies in a row that had not ended well for Beatty. Even though “Dick Tracy” was a hit, Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg had penned a memo highly critical of Beatty’s directing style, and hinting that all the profits still didn’t make up for the headaches that Beatty caused. Lynn Harris, an executive at New Line who worked closely with Beatty on “Town & Country,” had this to say about Beatty’s personality: “He is at the same time brilliant and creative and amazing, and also oddly self-destructive.” (Biskind, p. 543.) Because Beatty is never able to make up his mind and commit to anything, it’s quite possible that he will never make another movie. There have been stories over the last year that he’s very close to finally making the Howard Hughes biopic that he has talked about for decades. Beatty certainly shares some traits with Howard Hughes-when Hughes was producing movies it took him years to finally finish them. Beatty has also said that he’s interested in revisiting “Dick Tracy.” Hopefully he’ll make another great movie. Beatty’s reputation suffers when compared to his contemporary Clint Eastwood, in part because Eastwood has been so prolific over the years. It helps that Eastwood has had an amazing run of terrific movies over the last decade, which have been big box-office hits and have been showered with awards. Eastwood is also well-known in Hollywood for bringing in all of his movies on time and under budget, which is the exact opposite of the way Beatty works. It also seems that at this time in his life Beatty is very content just being a family man and raising his children. Which is fine, it’s certainly his prerogative to live his life the way he wants to. But it would be great to have one more classic Warren Beatty movie.