Dick Tracy, Warren Beatty, and the Hollyweird of Copyright | Opinion

Photo byJeremy BishoponUnsplash

Hollywood has a history of setting the tone of creative control. “Who owns what,” is big money for entertainment lawyers.

It’s Hollywood that’s pushed back the hardest on public domain — something that Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy should almost fall into. The yellow-clad, hardboiled comic detective was born in 1931.

You might think that Gould owns the rights to Dick Tracy. Or maybe Tribune Media, the original publisher.

You’d be wrong.

No, it belongs to the guy who periodically shows up dressed as Dick Tracy in interviews — Warren Beatty. He did it this year in Tracy Zooms In, a…purported interview with TCM’s Leonard Maltin and Ben Mankiewicz. You can catch the full thing below:

In reality it’s a strange performance art piece, with Beatty in a one-man show in yellow trench coat and fedora, effectively interviewing himself.

Why? Copyright.

Film nerds (it’s me. I’m film nerds) who loved the 1990 Dick Tracy flick might think the story begins in a strange, magical place called, “The 1990s.”

We’d be wrong.

It really begins in a stranger time of disco balls and Ford Grand Torinos. The 1970s.

Beatty had a concept for a Dick Tracy movie in 1975, coming off his sophomore effort, Shampoo (Carrie Fisher’s film debut).

Director Michael Laughlin owned the rights to Dick Tracy at the time. Laughlin tried pitching the concept to the studios, but found no takers. He’d optioned the rights (meaning, he borrowed the rights, in case he could make a movie) from Tribune Media Services, and gave them up in 1975.

Director/producer combo Floyd Mutrux and Art Linson (the latter would go on to Sons of Anarchy fame) bought the rights from Tribune in 1977, and held onto them until 1980. It was United Artists that got interested in financing and producing something involving the titular detective.

“Something,” is more apt than you might think. There were a ton of concepts. Including, of all things, a musical.

Yeah, a musical, and it gets better — it was pitched as starring an even more iconic pair than Beatty and Madonna. If you guessed “Sonny and Cher,” you’d be right.

As it was, Steven Sondheim (yeah, old ‘Sweeney Todd’ Sondheim himself) wrote music for the film that would be—netting him an Oscar for best original song. The song, ‘Sooner or Later,’ was performed in the movie not by Cher—but by Madonna.

A short time later, Tom Mankiewicz (of the Superman: The Movie duet, and cousin of TCM’s Ben) was tapped for screenwriting — until Chester Gould himself vetoed that idea. Gould demanded strict artistic and financial control, and United Artists didn’t like that.

Paramount picked it up, and Stephen Spielberg got Universal in on financing, and the production trouble started in earnest. Multiple scripts were written, staffing was a revolving door; and at long last, Warren Beatty himself optioned the rights for $3 million in 1985.

Michael Eisner and Jeff Katzenberg were at Paramount at the time, and left for Disney, where the project finally resurfaced in the form we got. Directed, produced, and starring Warren Beatty, using a script written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps (that the comic’s then-writer hated, calling it “uncomfortably campy).

Beatty retained the rights to Dick Tracy ever since — and has repeatedly insisted on making a sequel.

There was just one problem: Tribune Media.

In 2005, there began a series of lawsuits between Beatty and Tribune. He won the first, claiming Tribune was making it “financially impossible,” to make a sequel. This was right as Tribune was considering a new Dick Tracy series.

Both sides figured the case would only last a few months.

They were wrong.

It dragged on until 2009 — as Tribune declared bankruptcy, and was forced to bow out.

The terms of the original agreement were that Beatty had to produce or else.

He was allowed to hold onto the rights — as long as something was produced featuring Dick Tracy.

Every few years, he finds a way to make a special involving the character, and gets to retain the copyright.

Beatty, uh…finds a way?

The story behind the story of Dick Tracy is a look at how strange and arcane the copyright system in the U.S. can be. And it’s led by Hollywood.

Part of the rationale for this was to get around having to pay residuals (royalties for writers, actors, and everyone else who isn’t the studio), by ensuring rights are given specifically to the studio (or producers, in Beatty’s case), to monetize how they see fit.

This has been an ongoing issue in Hollywood since the 1920s, when Louis B. Mayer formed the Academy as a union-busting measure. Even today, residuals are a touchy subject — and a key reason behind the writers and actors’ strike.

Maybe one day we’ll get to see another outing from Dick Tracy.

But until then, we can at least get a geriatric Warren Beatty in a trench coat.

Like this piece? You'd probably also like Drive-In Radio, where I talk about film and music.