Word: waits
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This week fortune is ready to smile on Beatty yet another time. Heaven Can Wait, his new film, opens at 625 theaters nationwide and is almost sure to be the most popular entertainment of the summer. A remake of a classic Hollywood comedy called Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Heaven Can Wait is a light, screwball fantasy about a Los Angeles Rams quarterback (Beatty) who dies and comes back to life as an eccentric millionaire. The movie has everything going for it: big laughs, populist politics, billowy sequences set in heaven, a murder plot, a climactic Super Bowl game...
Beatty is not only the star of Heaven Can Wait but the co-writer (with Elaine May), co-director (with Buck Henry) and producer. Having already produced two smash hits in his only previous tries, Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Shampoo (1975), Beatty must now be regarded as a major film maker as well as a star. "He is really a perfect producer," says Arthur Penn, who directed Bonnie and Clyde. "He makes everyone demand the best of themselves. Warren stays with a picture through editing, mixing and scoring; he plain works harder than anyone else I have ever seen...
...producing Heaven Can Wait began over a year ago. Beatty was gearing up for two massive pet projects, film biographies of Billionaire Howard Hughes and John Reed, the messianic leftist author (Ten Days That Shook the World). Then Beatty decided to make a simpler movie first. "I thought I better do a nice yarn with a strong narrative," he says, "and Heaven Can Wait is all plot." Since the hero of Here Comes Mr. Jordan is a boxer, Beatty considered the film a good vehicle for Muhammad Ali, a friend whom he regards as a potential movie star...
There is unlikely to be much blame in the case of Heaven Can Wait. Besides contributing a likable and funny performance as the movie's hero, Beatty has brought out the best in lis collaborators. May's work on the script is her wittiest since A New Leaf: she has spiked a sentimental story with misanthropic jokes about money, marriage and adultery that are not in the old film. Grodin and Cannon, who have May's sharpest lines, give impeccable, dry comic performances. Some of the humor?involving batty butlers and rough football players?is knockabout, but the gags never...
...crust pizza topped with (mmm) walnuts and broccoli? Nowhere! Seriously, though, Bel Canto's offers an interesting, tasty and rather expensive variation on the all-American dish. Definitely worth a try but be forewarned--the place is tiny, the service is slow, and at peak times you have to wait a while before you can even order. It's worth...