Dick Tracy: Filming the Comics Legend
The scoop on Warren Beatty’s cinematic ode to the world’s most famous dick.
By Sheldon Teitelbaum
John Caglione and Doug Drexler are makeup men with an enormous sense of responsibility. Take the matter of Madonna's breasts in DICK TRACY, which Walt Disney opens nationwide June 16. Madonna plays temptress Breathless Mahoney in the film, produced, starring and directed by Warren Beatty, appearing at the beginning performing a Stephen Sondheim number at the Club Ritz. At the end of her routine, the sultry songstress takes a deep bow, revealing an impressive amount of cleavage. So impressive, in fact, that during rehearsals, her breasts sprang free—repeatedly.
Word of this primordial spectacle spread with photonic speed on the set. Prosthetic makeup experts, Caglione and Drexler, who were hard at work within their Winnebago, were among the first to be informed of events. Drexler looked at Caglione and said, “You know, within three minutes, [producer] Barrie [Osborne] is going tostormin here demanding we do something about Madonna’s boobs.” He was right—Osborne asked that they glue Madonna’ breasts to her dress.
They refused. “My contract doesn't say anything about gluing Madonna's tits to her dress,” said Caglionce. “Yeah,” added Drexler, whose wife Donna worked alongside him as his “foam fatale.”
“That's a job for wardrobe,” he said.
Are these two guys nuts or what?! “You two are probably the only straight guys on the planet who would turn down such an opportunity,” Osborne told them. “In God's name, why?”
“Look,” said Caglione, “Madonna must have the most valuable bust in the business. I'll bet each one of those honeys is worth $6, maybe $7 million. What if she has an allergic reaction to the glue? What if we discolora breast, or inflict some kind of permanent damage? Not only will we be sued—we'll become known as the two schmucks who destroyeda national treasure. People will tear us to pieces in the street.”
If only all the production stories behind DICK TRACY were this lighthearted. Disney/ Touchstone’s longawaited funny papers epic is a film many wanted to make but no one wished to pay for. Consequently, the project languished in various guises—the most recent of which involved actor/ director Beatty—for more than 15 years. According to Dick Sylbert, the distinguished production designer who has been a friend and collaborator of Beatty's for more than 30 years, the actor/director’s lengthy association with the project in one facet or another ought not to come as a major surprise. “Warren takes a long time to make up his mind,” said Sylbert. “It took us five years to get around to doing SHAMPOO [1975] and nine years for REDS [1981]. That's just Warren.”
Hollywood's bashfulness about DICK TRACY isattributable to the property's inordinately high projected costs. Although initially envisioned as a pedestrian live-action detective thriller, no one believed the picture could be done for less than $50 million. Even before Beatty's ill-fated ISHTAR (1987)—when it seemed as if the Oscar-winning and numerously nominated actor/producer could do no wrong—that was far more than any studio was willing to risk on a comic strip character. Especially one who, unlike Batman or Superman, could not count upon instant name recognition among young movie-goers. Although the Dick Tracy comic strip is still syndicated, the last time a Dick Tracy craze engulfed the country was in 1932.
Older Americans probably recall Chester Gould’s original strip, which began syndicated publication in 1931 as “Plainclothes Tracy.” They may have listened to the radio serials that ensued during the "30s or seen the films produced during the mid-‘40s. Their children, however, had grown up on anentirely different pantheon of comic strip stalwarts. Tracy did not have super powers, he lacked the fancy props of a Batman or the adolescent neuroses of Spiderman, When you came down to it, he was just a $60-a-month gumshoe witha yellow hat and raincoat and an abiding passion for law and order, For color or personality, however, one was possibly better off with the likes of DRAGNET's Joe Friday.
For that matter, it has been almost as long—over a dozen years anyway—since Beatty himself has been a household word. Just as there are generations of Americans alive today who may never have heard of Dick Tracy, at least one generation of Americans would be hard put to recall the actor/ director’s last broad-based commercial hit— 1978's utterly charming fantasy HEAVEN CAN WAIT, a remake of 194135 HERE COMES MR. JORDAN. Beatty's Oscarwinning REDS, though deservedly much acclaimed —not least for Beatty's courage in devoting a film to the life of the founder of the American Communist Party—did not make money and did not boost Beatty’s recognizability where it could be counted: at the boxoffice.
Beatty may well be partly to blame for this. He refused todo publicity for REDS and, according to Sylbert, threw a writer for Premiere off the hermetically sealed set of DICK TRACY as well (this intrepid writer, however, finally got Beatty to talk about his movie—possibly a first). I tracked down Beatty’s home number, only to be told by the clearly recognizable voice of the actor on the other end of the line that I must surely have the wrong number. Calls to Beatty froma close friend imploring him to agree to an interview with Cinefantastique were greeted with “Aha, yeah, what else is going on?”
ylbert’s earliest recollection of DICK TRA- CY as a property gocs back 16 years, when director Floyd Mutrux and producer Art Linson wrote a script which they and producer) director Michael Laughlin pitched at Paramount. DICK TRACY later went to Universal when Thom Mount ran the studio during the mid-'70s. The project began bouncing from studio to studio, piquing the interests, at various times, of directors like Walter Hill, Richard Benjamin, and John Landis. Beatty’s involvement with DICK TRACY, said Sylbert, dates back about five or six years, when heand Hillbegana five-month collaboration to adaptascreenplay by Jim Cash and Jack (TOP GUN) Epps. Although Beatty was initially interested merely in playing Tracy, he eventually became Hill's co-producer, working with him to develop the concept, which essentially pitted Tracy against his various nemeses in gangland Chicago during the ‘20s.
Their efforts were for naught, however—according to Sylbert because of the film's allegedly prohibitive costs and when Hill went on to other things, the project reverted to Paramount where, under Barry Diller’s regime, it lay about, generally inert but intermittently kicking, the butt of terminal skepticism within Paramount of Beatty's ability to turn a profit or come in on budget (the man will spend what he needs if a movie needs it—REDS went from $17 million to $34 million). Paramount was allegedly incensed at Beatty's perfectionism, especially in light of what Sylbert characterized as his extreme sluggishness when it came to decision making.
About four years ago, however, Diller went to 20th Century-ry-Fox and took with him firstrefusal rights to the property. “That was 1985,” recalled Sylbert, “and it was the first time Warren mentioned the project to me. He said, “I'm cither going to do DICK TRACY or ISHTAR.”
Fatefully, Sylbert had already signed up as productiondesigner onan abortive carly attempt to film THE TWO JAKES. Beatty, who had counted on Sylbert’s assistance in making DICK TRACY, as he had on SHAMPOO and REDS, put the film on ice. Beatty's interest in the project variably ran hot and cold, but within the film industry DICK TRACY became widely regarded as Beatty's baby. What few could fathom, however, was wiry Beatty was so intent on delivering it.
To hear Beatty talk back then, DICK TRACY wasjusta pleasant diversion—a lark he would direct in between two more seriously intended films: one about the “man on the left” John Reed in REDS—and his antithesis on the right, Howard Hughes. Beatty has been contemplating a film about the late billionaire recluse—whom in some sense he has come to resemble—for 10 years.
ISHTAR was then to have been that bit of puffery that Beatty first considered DICK TRACY—a fun movie to make. But ISHTAR bombed to a degree that shocked and dismayed Beatty. He coped with despondency by playing one of the mind games for which he is famous. He pretended to himself that ISH- TAR was merely an aberrant mishap as he continued to consider both the Hughes picture and DICK TRACY~—as his next project. Characteristically, Beatty waffled between the two. “At one point,” recalled Sylbert, “he called me up and said, ‘Nah, I'm not going to do DICK TRACY.™ In the end, however, the constellations aligned themselves in such a way that he would have to.
There had been talk, incarly 1987, of doing DICK TRACY at Fox, but in the Summer of 1988, Beatty got the go-ahead from Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg at Disney, provided he make the filmfora flat $25 million. For that money, Katzenberg is said to be expecting “the movie of the Summer of 1990." Beatty undoubtedly poured his own salary back into the picture
even with $25 million (or $23 million, according to producer Barrie Osborne) Beatty was probably hard-pressed to complete the film on budget. Disney sources said both amounts were very improbable—some speculated that, like REDS, the film will mount (if it hasn't already) to more than $30 million during post-production. Beatty is nothing if nota perfectionist reportedly he insisted Madonna redo one take on DICK TRACY 25 times (Beatty apparently believes he gets his best, least guarded performances by wearing his actors down.) It is entirely probable, however, that at whatever the price, Katzenberg and Eisner will be getting the year’s best bargain trust Disney to squeeze DICK TRACY for what it’s worth, and then some
“Disney is making this movie for one reason,” said Sylbert, “merchandising.”
During the Summer of 88, Beatty had sought to secure Sylbert’s presence at his side prior to receiving the go-ahead for DICK TRACY by signing him to an as-yet-undctermined project for two years. Sylbert had agreed—if Beatty could conclude a deal within 24 hours—but before the leisurely Beatty got around to finalizing matters, the production designer had signed to do the production design of TEQUILA SUNRISE. Beatty, somewhat upset with his friend, assembled two other long-time associates—director of photography Vittorio Storaro and costume desinger Milena Canoncro as well as another production designer to replace the now-unavailable Sylbert. They began to brainstorm DICK TRACY in Beatty's kitchen at his home on Mulholland Drive
Some six months later, toward the end of Sylbert’s involvement with TEQUILA SUNRISE, Beatty and Storaro showed up on the set in Santa Monica, Beatty had been having problems with his production designer—would Sylbert agree to take over after concluding the picture? Yes, said Sylbert—after a much needed three-week vacation.
To fathom Beatty’s actual attraction to the character of Dick Tracy one needs to look at the Cash and Epps script subsequently reworked by Bo (MELVIN AND HOWARD) Goldman and Beatty himself. DICK TRACY, as envisioned by Beatty, is the story of a 39 year-old man (Beatty is in his early 50s) who is not married. He has a girlfriend of many years—Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly, replacing Sean Young), to whom he once tried proposing. He has no children.
On the night in which the film opens, however, Tracy and Trucheart attend the opera, where they meet up with Junior (Charle Korsmo, who appeared with Jessica Langein MEN DON’T LEAVE), an orphan boy who inspires deep yearnings of fatherhood in Tracy. The detective is called away on his trademark wristradio in mid-performance, however, to raid a gangland nightclub called the Club Ritz. There, Tracy encounters Breathless Mahoney (Madonna), the glamorous moll of gangland leader Big Boy (Al Pacino). A singer armed with lyrics written for her by the acclaimed Stephen Sondheim (an old friend of Beatty's who contributed three numbers to the film), she becomes Tracy's temptress
In one evening, this resolute bachelor not only runsafoul of Big Boy’s plans to bring the city’s criminal elements under his leadership, butalso becomes completely confounded emotionally. Within the first 38 | pages of the script, he emerges | with two women in his life, and a child as well. That, Beatty's friends maintain, is Warren Beatty. The man has never been married, has no children, has a lot of women in his life and is always emotionally conflicted. “Warren knows that conflict makes drama,” said Sylbert. “At the emotional level, he knows exactly what | Tracy's story is.” The hard part was making it into something special. A movie about a guy ina yellow raincoat walking around Chicago just wasn't going to cut it. “We realized we were dealing with an American icon,” said Barrie Osborne, who came aboard as producer in September 1988 after Disney gave Beatty the green light. “Tracyis a larger than life hero. We had to put him in an envirionment that was both striking and derivative of comics.” Preproduction for DICK TRACY had begun in June 1988, with shooting scheduled to begin February 2, 1989. The shoot lasted three months, concluded just two days over schedule, and was followed by several months of post-production, Beatty and company began by establishing Tracy in time. The Cash and Epps script had st tne story in 1928. Milena Canonero, who had just worked with Sylbert on THE COT- TON CLUB, insisted that the period be changed. “Warren, we just did this movie,” Sylbert said he told Beatty, “THE COTTON CLUB was a movie about a gangland nightclub and a gangster’s moll who sings. We dont want to do it again.” They decided, instead, to set the film in 1938. This way, said Sylbert, they could achieve a generic “3s look without rubbing up against wartime realities of Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland,
Canonero, who had worked on Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and won an Oscar for her costumes on BARRY LYNDON, soon found herself at variance with Sylbert, who insisted that one should not recreate 1938 so muchas filter it through the prism of 1990 sensibilities. Canonero had no intention of mimicking Gould’s comic fashions verbatim—they were too one dimensional for that. But neither was she prepared to render a present-day interpretation of 1938 fashions, believing that to be a cheat. Working in her favor was the fact that in 1938, fashions were shifting. Hemlines were creeping up, shoulders were broadening out, and hairstyles were transforming. Locating her staff in the drawing rooms of the Western Costume Company in Hollywood, she set about creating her hybrid look.
After scouting actual locations in Chicago, Beatty, Sy!- bert, Storaro, and Canoncro hit upon the idea behind the picture's stylized production design. What eventually occurred to the filmmakers was that Dick Tracy was decidedly not of this universe. Any attempts at draping him in reality would be ludicrous because the whole concept of Tracy, as perceived by Gould, was ludicrous. This was a man of heroic stature who kept order in a dank and corrupt city whose criminal inhabitants were physically disfigured by their own criminal natures. This was not, to mention another dick ina raincoat, COLUMBO. To make their hero come alive, the filmmakers needed to create an alternate reality—one half-removed from our own—within which to stage the full comic strip spectacle of Gould's Tracy.
To do this, Sylbert realized, he and his colleagues would have to unlearn everything they had ever learned about making a movie. “We gave up everything we knewexcept our taste,” said Sylbert. “It was horrendous. When you let go of one trapeze bar and you haven't got to the other one that space can be terrifying.”
Sylbert’s increasingly stripped-down brand of comic book reality also demanded set detailing be kept to a bare minimum. Walls would not have paintings, furniture would not be adorned with what Sylbert called ‘clotchkes'— knickknacks.
“I had done this once before, in CARNAL KNOWLEDGE,” he recalled. “That movie was about memory during three periods, and | knew that you remembered a room, nota picture. In DICK TRACY you can’ have props that are personal. You can't focus on the scenery. You could have a switchbox on the wall because that isa permanent fixture. But nothing else.”
Taking a stylized approach meant that Gould’s bizarre cast of supporting characters with names like Pruneface and Flattop—could be rendered in all their prosthetic glory Makeup artists Caglione and Drexler, both of them from New York, had been hearing about DICK TRACY for years, mostly from costume designer Canonero, with whom they had worked for seven months on THE COTTON CLUB. The two of them were flown in to meet Beatty, who purportedly emerged from a shower and, still dripping, asked them what they thought
“About what,” asked Drexler. “You mean makeupwise?”
No, said Beatty—about the script.
Caglione and Drexler both of whom had been up half the night going over the script and contemplating a prosthetics budget (they ultimately agreed to do the job for $750,000 and said theycame in considerably under budget), were flabbergasted. No director had ever asked them what they thought ofa script before Apparently, Beatty liked what they had to say, because they got the job ata time, they said, when their careers had taken somewhat of a turn for the worse. “It’s always feast or famine in this business,” said Drexler. “Yeah, added Caglione, “we try and stay away from the real gory stuff, but sometimes it isn't that easy.”
With stylization the key to realizing DICK TRACY, Sylbert now knew that the only way to recreate Gould's world within the limits of Beatty's budget was to film it on a studio backlot. For Sylbert, who never liked the backlot look, this was heady and frightening—stuff. Neither Sylbert nor his colleagues had ever created a fantasy world from scratch. Sylbert wanted a generic industrial American city of the pre-war period, he said, in which Gould's Tracy could leave his footprints. Beatty's film needed an architectural scheme that clearly delinecated a comic strip battle between good and evil, and that lacked any ambiguity Sylbert accompanied Beatty to Universal, one of the last remaining bastions of Hollywood’s legendary backlots and drove home the fact that none of them really had anychoice in the matter, Universal's backlot posed problems of its own, notably the urban exteriors, like the New York Street, weren't terribly high or imposing. Sylbert called them “half-sized worlds.” In keeping with his quest for a generic look, Sylbert realized that he'd have to work with mattes far more extensively than Tim Burton had on BATMAN. Rather than affording the film withthe look of reality, they would become the look of the film. Unfortunately, Sylbert had rarely worked with mattes before. “My experience with mattes in 44 years in pictures was one. Warren's was two on ISHTAR. Vittorio’s was two, We ended up doing 64.” Sylbert was forced to involve himself in the actual design of mattes far more than was typical for most set designers “Normally a company like Boss Films contracts to make the mattes,” said Sylbert. “I couldn't do that, though, because of the extent of my involvement in set design.”
Sylbert started by designing about a dozen carly sketches in charcoal and ink. These were delivered to a production illustrator, whose job was to produce layouts ready for blueprint design. These layouts, said Sylbert, had to be especially daring because of the extent to which the mattes would dominate the external shots, most of which took place at night. A good number of these mattes would be only 20% live action—the lower right-hand corner might be real—everything else in the shot was bogus.
Unfortunately, the Disney artists Sylbert said he was saddled with werent up to snuff. “I remember the first three or four colored renderings that had come in, and | said ‘Warren, my original sketch and Leon's [production illustrator Leon Harris, an old colleague] is better than these mattes. This matte should be 10 times better than my original.” Warren got angry and said, *Yeah but this little part is better.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but that’s just a little part of it, What about the rest?”
“This production required the same courage among the matte people that went into directing, designing and lighting DICK TRACY,” said Sylbert. “It required people who are the best there are. But that’s not what we had in mattes. On REDS, we hada vehicle of four wheels—costumes, director, sets and photography. On DICK TRACY we had a fifth wheel that was flat. | had never been in the position where something so important wasso poorly done, Then the fights started about moncy. But Warren is wonderful with these problems because he’s tough. In the end, Disney had to cat the cookie.”
After prolonged negotiations, visual effects for DICK TRACY had been farmed out—or rather, in—to Michael Lloyd's Buena Vista Visual Effects Group, Disney's in-house effects ensemble. For Beatty's Mulholland Productions, which co-produced the film, it made eminent sense to render Disney answerable for the film’s visuals rather than turn to independent contractors. Effects houses, these days, are only slightly more popular in this country than deposed Panamanian dictator Manucl Noriega—producers gripe endlessly that they charge outlandish rates, produce mediocre work, and rarely surpass the expectations of a by-now jaded film-going audience more prone to “ooh and aah” strong writing than impressive visuals.
Buena Vista, which under Lloyd had done the visual effects for OURTRAGEOUS FORTUNE and SPLASH, was—by virtue of its niche within the Disney organization—beholden to Disney's, and therefore to Mulholland’s bottom line. “We took Disney,” said Sylbert, “because it was the cheapest deal, We gave them drawings, and they could bid on each matte. Every one We talked to everyone, and they gave us the cheapest price around.”
Moreover, it became possible to impose upon Lloyd and his crew a work regimen other independent effects houses might not have accepted. Beatty wanted approval for very nearly every brush stroke and every shade of virtually every matte paintingand visual at every stage of the creative process. And if there weren't enough such stages, he added some of his own for good measure.
Indeed, the reason it took so long to negotiate a deal between Mulholland and Buena Vista—and why competingeffects artists like Harrison Ellenshaw, who had painted mattes on THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, TRON, and CAP- TAIN EO, were rejected when they bid onthe show—was that Beatty demanded greater depth of input, and a greater degree of control over the effects process, than was the norm even among the most exacting directors.
“George [Lucas] was no less a perfectionist,” said Ellenshaw, who eventually got to work with Beatty on DICK TRACY, “but once you had been given an assignment he let you run with it.”
To his credit, Beatty also demanded more input from Lloyd into the overall filmmaking process than he or most effects people were used to giving. The director sought Lloyd’s advice on a broad palette of issues not normally the domain of visual effects personnel. “Michael [Lloyd] interacted with design,” said Ellenshaw. “He had a lot of design input with Sylbert. In preproduction and production, it’s my understanding he went way beyond the normal capacity of a visual effects supervisor.” But the net effect of this apparent aesthetic largess was to create an effects bottleneck of major proportions. “It backfired on us,” said Sylbert.
Late in 1988, some 16 weeks before the coming year’s “dropdead” date of February 2, when all 70 effects shots incorporating some 55 extraordinarily detailed matte paintings were supposed to be in the can (the studio promised to pull the plug if this deadline was not met), virtually none of the final effects or even first trials shots composited with all the elements that would be required for a final shot—had been shipped to Mulholland. In fact, only 30 to 40% of the temps—rough paintings and live-action plates—had been completed.
Enter Ellenshaw, who had regarded DICK TRACY asa plum from the start because of the prominence his work would achieve no matter what kind of a film it turned out to be. DICK TRACY wasa production, he knew, which did not attempt to hide the scams between live actionand mattes, between makeup prosthetics and human flesh, between film and reality. Rather, it celebrated each of these clements with an aplomb seldomadopted by filmmakers. Whether the firm proved to be the peacock many envisioned or the turkey some feared, Ellenshaw knew DICK TRACY would provide a measure of exposure seldom afforded matte artists.
Ellenshaw was called in to assist Lloyd 20 weeks before the drop-dead date assigned by Disney. His budget, he learned, was $2 million. “That's pretty much the best bargain in town,” he said. His first job, however, was not to spend money, but to ascertain whether the date was bogus or whether Disney would indeed pull the plug.
“False deadlines are pretty deadly, so the first thing I did was find out if it would stick,” said Ellenshaw. “I had only once before worked on a show with a real false deadline. It's hard to convince people its not bullshit. But I had to take it seriously. If Disney felt this could go on forever, they might have been inclined to cut in the stuff they had in hand and call it quits, That was my biggest fear, and it motivated me to get everybody's best shot.”
Ellenshaw’s first move was to relieve Lloyd of much of his administrative burden, “Michael’s creativity,” he explained, “was needed far more at this stage.” Ellenshaw began, he recounted, by rearranging the overly ambitious schedule Lloyd had instituted, Instead of making shots due on Friday, for instance, he designated Monday as the weekly deadline, thereby carning three extra days—the weekend —of shooting time.
Mostly, however, Ellenshaw saw to it that the effects effort was focused. “I've had to deal with shows witha great number of effects,” he explained. “SUPERMAN IV, whatever you might want to say about the movie, had 600 effects shots. TRON had over 1,000. You can't dig at the mountain with a spoon blindly. Everybody has to dig in more or less the same hole.”
Perhaps the biggest challenge, said Ellenshaw, was finding a way to work within the confines of the production organization Beatty had instituted. “This whole approval thing was the most difficult aspect I had to deal with,” he said. “We often wondered if Michelangelo had to wait for the Pope to give permission for every brush stroke while painting the Sistine Chapel. It's sort of like writing an article and having it sent back for incessant rewrites. In Hollywood, of course, that’s normal. Here, however, they would ask foran outline after you had written the script. So you'd say, ‘Idon't write using outlines,’ and they'd say, ‘well, we need youto do one.’
“At one point before | came on, they took illustrations and inserted them with live action and called ita ‘color tempcomposite.’ Who ever heard of such a thing? I'm surprised there wasn't an approval sheet for what paint colors would be used.”
At other times, said Ellenshaw, he would send effects to editor Richard Marks because Beatty was too busy to get to them. Marks might approve them, only to have Beatty later overturn his approval, or insist on changes which, again, Beatty might or might not like. Consequently, it became nearly impossible to work up a momentum within the effects department. Nothing ever got finished.
“Whether such a system works to everyone's advantage is debatable,” said Ellenshaw “We were always stuck in the middle. I don’ particularly like it. [Idontthink that’s the wayto work. At a certain point you lose a little of the flow.”
For the comic book setting Sylbert had created, lighting became a crucial factor. It wasnt enough to use a smattering of comic book colors—these would have to be souped up by the interplay of light and shadow. Especially since Beatty was not known as a fancy director, He did not like to make his presence felt through his camera work, and in DICK TRACY, because of the matte work, the camera would have to remain stationary during most scenes. The job of enhancing them fell to director of photography Vittorio Storaro, a long-time Beatty associate who had been mulling over the business of lighting this film, recalled Sylbert, for years Storaro had begun his foray into the universe of Chester Gould ina roundabout fashion Beatty had suggested, at the outset, that Storaro take his cues from Bertold Brecht's Threepenny Opera. Eager to achieve a suitable Post-Expressionistic look, he then studied the painters of the’30s. Storaro became especially enamored of painters Otto Dix, Conrad Muller, and George Grosz. Their work seemed to suggest the sense of madness and corruption, of confrontation and divisiveness of the period. Eventually, Storaro realized that all of these qualities were already present in Gould's renderings. DICK TRACY was quintessentially Post-Expressionist in its externalization of humandepravity
Sometimes—although this may be lost on casual viewers—the film's colors are used to symbolic effect. Big Boy Caprice, according to producer Osborne, was conceived as a cross between Adolph Hitler and Groucho Marx —“a poetry-spouting Nazi Knuck- Iehead” is how he described him. His conference room was consequently painted red and black—the colors of the Third Reich's flag and emblems, A gearhouse, meanwhile, became a German Post-Expressionist torture chamber.
Storaro, who had won an Academy Award for REDS, achieved, by all accounts, notably striking effects lighting the already colorful sets of DICK TRACY. For one thing, Storaro did not feel himself bound by conventional sources of light. Some streets might be bathed in milky whites. Colored gels afforded building windows with their own unique translucence. Violet streets might contain pink rain puddies.
At first, Storaro insisted on shooting Caglione and Drexler’s prosthetically-enhanced actors in harsh lights which would not bring out the warm tones the painted latex needed to be convincing. The blue light Storaro wanted would have undermined attempts by the makeup designers to make the prosthetics look like natural skin, But Storaro, who had been contemplating the lighting of DICK TRACY for years, held to his intent stubbornly until, Caglione recalled, “at one meeting you could scea light pop on in his head
“We said. this is a camera trick,” recalled Caglione. “We are tricking the camera to believe this is skin. The lighting has to help. The camera department has to get into the act.” “We had to shoot these people like a centerfold.” added Drexler. In the end, Storaro made the makeup artists look good,
Eventually, however, Storaro drove everyone crazy with his elaborate ideological peregrinations regarding the use and meaning of colors and shadows. DICK TRACY became a battle between warm and cold colors. Tracy became the sun. Big Boy Caprice, who wore blue, was the moon. Junior was swathed in an emotional red. Tess, the mother provider, was orange. The District Attorney, Fletcher, was green, symbolizing an inner struggle between good and yellow. Breathless Mahoney was bathed in violet, according to Storaro, the color of blood and moonlight. The film's various grotesques were shot through indigo gels, to suggest their link with night. The Blank—a man with no face at all—became the embodiment of black; a moral and emotional sinkhole threatening to swallow the universe.
“Storaro does this kind of thing all the time,” recalled Sylbert. “I once told him *Storaro—you're just trying to make what you do look more difficult and intellectual because you are an Italian. This is all bullshit. This stuff you come up with—I've seen in every movie.”
“It’s horrendous garbage, philosophical drivel, because the same color showed up witha new meaning every time we talked about it,” said Sylbert “Storaro docs what every DP does. He takes gelatins and lights streets, backgrounds, and large panels. He does an extraordinary job too, no doubt about it. But the bullshit about the philosophy is total nonsense.”
Ellenshaw, too, while championing the results Storaro has achieved on DICK TRACY, also took exception to the constant philosophizing. “I cant deny he does great work, but sometimes | think he’s more interested in the explanation for why green is green than in getting it on the screen,” said Elienshaw, who worked with Storaro previously on his filming of CAPTAIN EO
“Storaro gets an interesting image on this show, but I think it might have been more interesting if he'd been less concerned with rationalizing his intentions than just going out and doing it,” said Ellenshaw “I saw a lot of that and it bothered me, The intentions and rationalizations are so other people will understand why the sidewalk is lavender and not orange. But does it matter that we understand? Why not just do it and enjoy?”
Ellenshaw said that the saving grace, for him, was that by the time he came on the show, most matters of lighting and design had already been decided. “The size and color of the moon, for instance, had already been settled,” he said. “I would have been crazy by now if | had been here from the beginning.”
Despite any qualms Ellenshaw may have had working on DICK TRACY, he had few regarding the premium placed on style as opposed to story “By now we are all used to hearing the usual warning signs,” he said, “When they say a movie ‘looks terrific,’ its like describing a blind dateas being “very interesting.’ We are realizing—maybe we have for a long time —that the key is writing. But if people bought BAT- MAN, they will see DICK TRACY four times. I'm 44and remember Dick Tracy on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. Vd take my chances with DICK TRACY more than with a lot of things I've worked on
“Why? It rarely happens you get a strong script ina film like this. It ends up like BRAZIL, and Hollywood doesn't know what to do with movies like BRAZIL. Sure this is a $40 million comic book. But I'd rather see them do a $40 million comic than most other things because studios dont take these chances—they get burned every time. I'm thrilled someone said let’s do DICK TRACY and put red on streets and use primary colors and take chances,
“I really think this picture will be a hit. I've seen it and | liked it. It was two hours of entertainment, and | had a good timeand I liked the songs. It’s better than any effects film I've worked on since THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. I bullshitted about TRON when in my heart of hearts I knew it was boring. I'm betting DICK TRACY won't bomb. But if it does, let's face it. Everybody's going to see our [matte] work and like it.”
According to Sylbert, it will not be mattes or lighting or prosthetics that make DICK TRACY, although each of these ciements is absolutely vital. Ultimately, the picture will sink or swim, he believes, on its ability to charm audiences. Indeed Sylbert believes that it is charmas much as craft that will distinguish the film from the most recent comic book extravaganza—BATMAN. Sylbert admitted that Tim Burton's blockbuster—one he regards as “not much”—gave him and Beatty pause. It seemed highly unlikely to both of them thatit would be possible to recreate the BATMAN craze that engulfed the country last year Therefore, unlike Burton's picture, theirs would have to be innately charming and entertaining
Recalled Sylbert, “The difference between DICK TRACY and BATMAN,’ I said to Warren, ‘is that BATMAN has a score by Prince, where as we have Stevie Sondheim,” who did our music on REDS. The difference between Prince and Sondheim is the difference between BATMAN and DICK TRACY.”
It is Sylbert’s belief, in fact, that DICK TRACY is the only movie in his, Storaro and Canonero'’s careers about which theycanfeelany genuine sense of accomplishment. “We created this together,” he said “It was about everyone being as smart as they can be. And boy, were we smart!!” Oo
Madonna belts out a Stephen Sondheim number as Breathless Mahoney, a scene requiring several retakes when her dress showed more than Disney would allow.
Warren Beatty as Chester Gould’s gangbusting detective Dick Tracy, taking aim with his Tommy gun at Club Ritz, the night spot where he meets singer Breathless Mahoney. Below left: Dining the last supper, gangland style, as hood Big Boy convenes his mob shortly before Tracy swoops down on them: (l to r) Johnny Ramm, Numbers, Flattop, Pruneface, Big Boy, Texie Garcia, Itchy, Influence and Ribbs Mocca. Below right: Al Pacino as Big Boy, in makeup by John Caglione and Doug Drexler, fighting Tracy with Madonna as the alluring prize.
Warren Beatty as Tracy, fulfilling a childhood fantasy. Right Tracy leads a raid on a mob hideout in Gould's comic strip which Beatty read as a kid.
Beatty, who also served as the film's producer, director and co-writer, lines up a shot on the Universal backlot as cinematographer Vittorio Storaro checks the light.
Madonna as Breathless Mahoney, the bad girl who comes into Tracy's life. Left The blonde bombshell as she appeared in the Chester Gould comics.
Righteousness vs. the siren call of sex, Beatty as Tracy tries to keep his mind on business when Breathless pays a call in his office, seeking an out from mob lite.
Production designer Richard Sylbert (r), producer Barrie Osbome (I) and editor Richard Marks, conterring on creating the film's stylized comic book ambience.
Glenne Headly as Tess, Trueheart, the home and hearth vertex of the film's love triangle, tacing Tracy, her true love: Left: Gould's comic strip couple.
Richard Syibert's production design for a “Tracy Town” matte shot.
Tony Epper as skid row bum Steve the Tramp, one of the elaborate prosthetic makeups by Caglione and Drexler.
Nine year-old Charlie Korsmo as Junior, the street kid that the paternal Tracy takes under his wing. Right: The character as drawn by Chester Gould.
On his way to meet Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly), Tracy bumps into Junior, (Chartie Korsmo), called simply The Kid in the film, caught stealing a man's watch.
Al Pacino as Big Boy reacts with gice to a pile of illicit cash dumped on his desk by Numbers (James Totkin). Left: Big Boy in Gould's first Tracy strip.
Tracy is taken for @ ride to see Big Boy, flanked by Fiattop (Bili Forsythe) and Numbers. Beatty sought to make the film an archetypal parable of good and evil.
Madonna as Breathless Mahoney offers Beatty's Tracy what Tess Trueheart cannot. Pre-release publicity has focused on Beatty's off-screen romance with Madonna.
Chartes Durning as Chief of Police Brandon, bull horn in hand, calls for the mob to come out with their hands up. Left: The Brandon of Gould's strip.
Big Boy's mob, (I to r) Henry Silva as Intiuence, Bill Forsythe as Flattop, James Totkin as Numbers and Chuck Hicks as the Brow, Gould's colorful gangsters.
PRODUCTION DESIGN
In a design tour de force, the film literally transfers the comics medium to the big screen on an unprecedented scale.
By Sheldon Teitelbaum
Finding a real-world setting for DICK TRACY would have been difficult, but producer/director/ star Warren Beatty and production designer Richard Sylbert ultimately decided to head in the opposite direction: extreme stylization was the key to realizing Tracy's world.
“You can't take a man with a yellow raincoat being chased by a man witha flat top and a prune face and set them in Chicago,explained Sylbert, “It’sajoke.” Infact, Sylbert, Beatty, costume designer Milena Canoneroand cinematographer Vittorio Storaro travelled to Chicago carly on to scout locations, Sylbert said they found marvelous places to shoot the movie. “And it would have been stunning. But it wouldn't have been DICK TRACY.”
Instead Beatty and Sylbert decided to shoot the movie entirely on the backlot of Universal to create a colorfully stylized comic book look ona grand scale. In keeping with their pursuit of generic simplicity, they decided to restrict themselves—to the extent possible—to a limited palette of comic book colors; notably orange, blue, green, red, plum, fuchsia, cyan, and, of course, black and white.
After viewing rushes of test footage, Sylbert—like one of the Queen's playing cards in Alice in Wonderland—began painting the cinematic roses red. Nothing on the backlot sets escaped his paint brush not even the asphalt roads or the cars parked on them—big ones for the good guys, bigger ones for the villains, and a magenta speedster for Madonna.
The search for generic cars posed a challenge of its own. A national search turned up a fleet of "36 Fords for police cars. Tracy’s was a five-door Ford coupe. The criminals were given flashy Chevys and Chryslers. Al Pacino, who played Big Boy, drove a ‘38 Cadillac Limo. Many of these cars were virtually rebuilt, with the stunt cars given new engines, and others provided with grilles, windshields, and other accouterments
Along the way, Sylbert and Canonero found themselves pushing color coordination even farther by basing the costume colors on the same color scheme as well—especially if one of the characters dominated the scene. For instance, if Dick Tracy were in the room, his brand of yellow would wander about the set, appearing in a flower pot or wall color or countertop. To coordinate this restrictive yet allegedly invigorating use of colors, Sylbert and his crew resorted tocarrying around pieces of colored fabric that would be used in the various costumes. These became “Tracy colors.”
The end result is a tour de force of production design; whereas last season’s BAT- MAN spruced up a noir setting with a few baroque matte paintings, DICK TRACY literally transfers the comics medium to the screen on an unprecedented scale. oO
Designer Richard Syibert used seven “Tracy colors” to give the film a comics look.
The effect, Beatty and Charlie Korsmo as The Kid, flimed on the Universal lot.
The Blank, a dark, mysterious figure without a face; comics design realized in sets, costumes and cinematography.
MAKEUP DESIGN
Dick Smith proteges John Caglione and Doug Drexler designed the prosthetic villams.
By Sheldon Teitelbaum
New York-based makeup supervisors John Caglione and Doug Drexler were hired by Warren Beatty to transfer Chester Gould’s grotesque comic characters from the printed page to the screen. Caglione and Drexler—both of them Dick Smith proteges (Drexler assisted Smith in aging David Bowie as a vampire in THE HUNGER)—cut their prosthetic teeth on such films as ALTERED STATES, FX, MAKING MR. RIGHT, ZELIG, and, most recently, THE COTTON CLUB. To this day, neither can quite believe their good fortune at landing what, in more ways than one, was a makeupartist’s dream.
“There were a lot of people bidding on this job,” recounted Drexler. And no wonder, With the exception of Beatty as Tracy, and his sidekicks, Madonna as Breathless Mahoney, and Glenne Headly as Tess Trueheart— Beatty called them the “feeling” characters—almost everyone in the production wore some kind of prosthetic makeup. At first Beatty himself was said to be intent upon wearing makeup appliances that would afford him the hawk-nosed, squarejawed Tracy that cartoonist Gould had drawn. Caglione and Drexler thought that wasa bad idea for several reasons.
“For one thing,” said Drexler, “if Warren wore prosthetics, then everybody in the picture would have to wear them, and the budget would go through the roof. Also, Warren had enough to do as producer, director, and actor. He didnt need to go through a couple of hours in the chair every morning.”
“And anyway,” added Caglione, “we felt there was a good story reason to have him that way—he was the actor, the one normal element in the story.”
Unlike the bulbous rubber nose they affixed to Dutch Schultz in THE COTTON CLUB, there were no ordinary prosthetics called for in DICK TRACY. Often, the only physical attribute of the original actors still visible on the screen were their eyes. This was the case, for instance, with Tony Epper, who played Steve the Tramp, replete with deeply wrinkled face and forehead, an enormous, jutting jaw, huge lips and cauliflower cars. Epper’s mouth was encased in so much rubber, in fact, that eating chicken, which he was called on to do in one scene, became a serious problem. Epper was forced tocontorthis face grotesquely in order to animate his facial prosthetics.
Caglione and Drexler were called on to bring alive characters like Little Face, Stooge and Shoulders, cach one more grotesque than the next. In the case of “The Blank,” a character who appeared in the original comics with a featureless mask but who, in this film, possesses a completely blank countenance, not even the eyes remained.
The makeup artists were working on a TV film in Montreal when they learned from DICK TRA- CY production manager John Landau that Beatty had chosen them over virtually every makeup effects house in the country. Neitheris entirely sure why. “Beatty knew we'd both be so grateful for the opportunity that we'd be the first to shoot off warning flares if there were a problem,” said Drexler.
The partners flew out to Los Angeles “with the shirts on our back,” said Caglione, and began drawing fuller, more detailed characters than Gould had ever inked in his comic book. Some 80% of the characters in the film, said Caglione, were culled directly from the comic strip. Even when they invented their own characters, they were careful, they said, to stay true to the spirit of Gould’s work.
“I think we were more devoted to Gould’s vision, in fact,” said Drexler, “than any other department. The idea was to devise characters who were half a turn of the screw off of reality. We wanted characters who, if they went out inthe street, would not stop traffic. People would look atthem, but they wouldnt gawk.”
“We had a scale of weird for the prosthetics,” said Caglione, “with Al Pacino’s Big Boy on one hand and Pruneface on the other.” Unlike the matte artists, who didn't mind if people knew right off that they were looking at mattes, Caglione and Drexler wanted their work to be as seamless as possibie. “We wanted to defy the imagination of the audience,” said Drexler. “People would be changed and you couldn't place it.”
The makeup artists became involved in casting the film's villains mainly because of the extent of the makeupthey were expected to apply to them. They attended a casting call at a church in Hollywood, where they shot scores of polaroids in their search for the appropriate faces. They claim they chose actors who had some feature which suggested the characters they would become. Ed O’Ross, for instance, struck them asthe ideal Itchy the moment they laid eyes on him. Neil Summers—the Rodent—had the requisite rodent-like look, and R.G. Armstrong struck them as a natural to play Pruneface.
“This was our first taste of real power,” recalled Caglione. “It was very heady.”
Different people reacted with varying degrees of distaste to the ordeal they were put through each day while having makeup applied. Actor Bill Forsythe, for instance, greeted the prospect of spending hours each day having 14 separate appliances glued to his head and face with the aplomb of someone having their thumbnails snatched out. He went through this for 50 days of shooting, and by the end of the production, quipped Drexler, “there were maybe 50 dents in our Winnebago.”
Al Pacino, on the other hand, had a grand time of it. Pacino did not want, recalled Drexler, to look like Chester Gould’s Big Boy. In fact, he demanded a hand in designing his look. “He started mixing and matching different generic appliances we had on hand like he was Mr. Potatohead,” said Drexler. “John and I looked at each other and said, ‘Jeez—he loves it!™
The makeup, itsoon became apparent, helped Pacino get into character, He'd doze offin his chair as they worked their transformation, and when he awoke, said Caglione, “he'd be Big Boy. I mean, you'd see him playing chess with people on the set and he was Big Boy. And he'd stay in character all day, until we took the prosthetics off of him. It was really weird.”
Although they came from New York, the two makeup artists were newcomers to Hollywood, and sometimes felt like hicks, particularly when it came to working with the stars. For instance, they were called upon to make over the likes of Dustin Hoffman and James Caan, “I mean, God,”exclaimed Caglione, “these people were giants.” Hoffman had come to the set of DICK TRACY the day after winning an Academy award for his performance in RAIN MAN, and they were nervous because they had not had time to test the makeup that would be used in a shot that day.
Hoffman, who plays Mumbles, was fitted with lips that twisted to the side of his mouth, brow covers, a bald cap and tufts of blond hair. Hoffman liked what he saw. He told them, in fact, that had they been given more time to work on him, they might not have done such a good job.
Caglione and Drexler were largely spared the bottlenecks experienced by the visual effects crew on DICK TRACY. They claim they were always encouraged by Beatty to take chances. Storaro, however, was another matter. There were blowouts over lighting attributable, recalled Drexler (who would not call them “blowouts”) to Storaro’s lack of experience shooting prosthetics.
Storaro apparently caught on, because Drexler and Caglione attended dailies of a scene involving card players at the beginning of the film and they were astounded at the quality of the shots. The masks were rich and warmandalive. “John got up and said [to Storaro], “Can I hug you?” recounted Drexler. “And he did, in front of everyone.” oO
New York makeup artists Caglione (I) and Drexler.
R. G. Armstrong as Pruneface in a prosthetic makeup design by Caglione and Drexler. Left: The character in Gould’s Sunday newspaper comic strip.
Dustin Hoffman as Mumbles, made-up by Caglione and Drexler the morning after winning an Oscar for RAIN MAN.
Bill Forsythe as Flattop (left) and the Gould comic strip inspiration (below). The flim's makeups bear the greatest fidelity to Gould's original characters.
SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
Matte painter Harrison Ellenshaw on devising the optical tricks necessary to realize Beatty’s Tracy Town on the screen.
By Sheldon Teitelbaum —__
DICK TRACY features only 70 special visual effects shots, but each was far more complex and contained a greater number of elements than most visuals. The matte paintings provided by visual effects co-supervisor Harrison Ellenshaw had to be highly detailed, because the camera would linger on them.
“The compositing is more difficult,” said Ellenshaw, who shared the responsibility for DICK TRACY Seffects work with Michael Lloyd. “Because this is a high-profile show, you want every matte to be perfect.”
There would be nodoubting that these were matte paintings—the idea was to recreate the comic book ambiance of Chester Gould's universe. The first matte, for instance, which was called “M-1,” showed Tracy’s city in the last moments of dayin wild splashes of color, putting the viewer smack into the film's comic book look. But gaffes would surely be noticed.
“That's really one of the things that appealed to me,” said Ellenshaw about the assignment. “There is no attempt to make this seamless, but rather grand and glorious, very stylized. Everyeffects shot had a matte painting—even the traveling matte shots, With one exception, they are all exteriors.”
Mattes were used so extensively because the film wasshot on the Universal backlot. There was simply no city in existence that could afford the film the correct comic book look. The backlot building facades enabled the effects crew to blow up the city into skyscrapers and other post-cxpressionist urban features. Ellenshaw and crew took to calling the city they had devised “Tracy Town”—a reference to Robert Zemeckis’ “Toon Town” in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?
For the film’s traveling mattes, of which there were more than about twenty-five, Elienshaw and Lloyd resorted to an old Disney standby—the sodium screen process. Used extensively in the ‘SOs, 60s,and early 70s, the technique had fallen out of use because of advances in blue screen technology. The process uses sodium vapor lamps which illuminate a yellow screen. For DICK TRACY, the process had some clear advantages, notably the ability to permit the use of virtually any color costume or lighting. Thus, ina shot of Tracy and his stalwart girlfriend Tess Trueheart attending the operaatthestart of the film, it was possible to depict Tracy, in his yellow hat and raincoat, against the backdrop of the blue-lit opera stage.
“In the finished product, said Ellenshaw, “blue screen and sodium are indistinguishable. Whereas the sodium process makes the holdout matte inside the camera—it runs two pieces of film, in blue screen you make the holdout matte on an optical printer. Sodium, however, can matte out very fine hairs better than blue screen.”
Although Beatty insisted that so-called “Tracy colors” be used in all interior and exterior shots, Ellenshaw said that he and fellow matte artists Paul Lasaine, Tom Gilleon, Michelle Moen, and Lucy Tanashian were forced, on occasion, to take their share of liberties.
“The philosophy was if there is a red in a shot, all the reds should be the same,” said Ellenshaw. “But you'll notice that Madonna drivesa lavender magenta speedster—this is not technically a Tracy color. We weren't always limited toa certain palette. We tried, rather, to get saturated colors into the matte painting. The same is true, for that matter, of nonmatte exteriors. There are places where the road is lit with red light without a source.”
DICK TRACY effects also involved a number of miniatures—notably a miniature train, boat, gearhouse, and drawbridge. The train, Ellenshaw recalled, wasn't so miniature. “That was one bigsucker,” he said. In fact, it was a steam train obtained by modelmaker Mark Stetson (of Stetson Vis
Effects co-supervisor Ellenshaw.
Beatty's Tracy in his element, a sodium screen matte supervised by Elienshaw and Michael Lioyd.