A few days ago we reported that screen legend Warren Beatty has finally gotten back to work, signing with Paramount to write, direct, produce, and star in an untitled comedy. Plot details were kept under wraps, but Deadline offered a very intriguing update last night.
Though the film is not exactly a biopic, Warren Beatty will play Howard Hughes, the obsessive-compulsive movie mogul, aviator and industrialist depicted by Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. Beatty’s film will feature an affair Hughes had with a young woman in the later years of his life as part of the plot. It will be interesting to see how the comedy materializes from this story. Anyone who has seen The Aviator knows things turn pretty bleak in the latter years of Hughes’ life.
Beatty is meeting with Andrew Garfield, Alec Baldwin, Annette Bening (big surprise), Shia LaBeouf, Jack Nicholson, Evan Rachel Wood and Rooney Mara for various roles in the film, so it’s possible the Hughes storyline is just a small part of a massive ensemble piece. Nicholson and Baldwin are two of the more interesting names, as Nicholson had a memorable Oscar-nominated supporting role in Beatty’s Reds in 1981 and Baldwin played Hughes’ rival, Pan Am World Airways founder Juan Trippe, in The Aviator.
Christopher Nolan must be having deja vu reading this news since a Howard Hughes biopic has long been a passion project of his. He originally planned to make the film starring Jim Carrey following the release of Insomnia (2002). When it became clear Martin Scorsese would beat him to the punch, he shelved the project and made Batman Begins instead. Still, he has called the script “one of the best things I’ve written.”
Back in February, Vulture reported Nolan wanted to return to the Hughes biopic after The Dark Knight Rises and shoot the film in late 2012 for a 2014 release. While The Aviator focused largely on Hughes’ early years up to 1947, the Nolan film would embrace his OCD-addled later years only hinted at in the closing scenes of The Aviator. The primary source for Nolan’s script is said to be the 1985 book “Citizen Hughes: The Power, the Money and the Madness” by former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Drosinin. Drosnin’s book leans heavily on over three thousand pages of Hughes’ own handwritten notes, which leaked after his office was burglarized in 1975, just one year before his death.
The material Nolan could pull from ranges from wacky to wackier. Hughes once bought every franchise restaurant in the home state of Texas out of his fear for food safety. He was so concerned about air quality that he installed an aircraft filtration system in the trunk of his 1954 Chrysler New Yorker. He cut his hair and fingernails just once a year and only considered Mormans trustworthy enough to let into his inner circle. To top it off, he was addicted to codeine injections and Baskin Robbins Banana Ripple ice cream. I can actually relate to the latter, though I prefer Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Butter Cup.
Nolan has reached the point of his career where he has enough clout to make damn near any film he wants, especially after Inception. I can’t imagine anyone saying they don’t want to see Nolan’s version of the Howard Hughes story. And honestly, those crazy “way of the future” scenes were the most memorable parts of The Aviator anyway.
Knowing Beatty’s work rate, I suppose it’s also possible Nolan could finish The Dark Knight Rises and his Howard Hughes movie before Beatty releases his. No doubt Hughes is a fascinating figure, I’m just not sure how many times we need to see him depicted on screen. As Achilles might ask, “is there no one else?”
Additional information for this article was taken from Christopher Nolan’s trivia page on IMDb.
