WHENEVER AN ARGUMENT about filmmaking broke out in his office, Jack L. Warner , the fabled studio czar, would hold up his hand and say, "Wait a minute -- writers are supposed to write, actors are supposed to act and directors are supposed to direct." Though people tended to scoff at old Jack, several recent events reminded me that there was more than a kernel of truth in his admonition.
Take actors, for example: Much as I was moved by Tom Hanks' acceptance speech at the Oscars, about halfway into his remarks it became painfully clear why actors need a script. Like a true star, Hanks instinctively grasped the emotion he wished to convey but had no idea how to mobilize the words -- hence, he rambled off into patriotic slogans and arcane references to angels.
The same thing happened a couple of weeks earlier when Jack Nicholson accepted his lifetime tribute from the American Film Institute. Nicholson had one advantage over Hanks: He has mastered that art of word-garbling, so when he runs out of ideas no one can understand him anyway.
ACTORS AREN'T ALONE in this affliction. Last week Spike Lee took part in a panel discussion in New York entitled "Whose Black Cinema Is It, Anyway?" at which several people argued that blacks alone should direct films about blacks. Outspoken as always, Spike recalled how he had forcefully persuaded Norman Jewison to bow out of "Malcolm X" because "this was not his film," and then took things a step further. "Look at Al Pacino," he said, according to the New York Times. "First it was 'Scarface,' then 'Carlito's Way' and now he's going to play Noriega. He's making a career out of playing Hispanics."
If old man Warner were alive, I could imagine him saying, "Spike, baby, let actors act and directors direct -- and forget panel discussions." If there's one other performer in need of a writer, it's Barbra Streisand, whose tour is a $ 45 million sellout even before it begins. I was at Streisand's "tryout" in Las Vegas three months ago, when she admitted to writing most of her material, and I would urge her, too, to listen to Jack Warner.
MIND YOU, THE STREISAND phenomenon is positively amazing. It's hard to recall any previous instance where a performer's decision to return to the "live" stage stirred more genuine excitement. Her public is hungry to celebrate both her durability and her gift.
But in her Las Vegas script, Streisand asked her audience to pay homage, not to her career, but to her neuroses. We heard successive offstage voices of various shrinks giving her bad advice on how to deal with her problems; finally Streisand assured her audience that she was never as good at choosing either her shrinks or her men as she was at singing her songs.
Her earnest recitation was rather touching at first, but it soon became old, especially since most of the crowd could see her straight-from-the-heart admissions dancing across the huge monitors that seemed to be attached to every possible post and balcony in the huge auditorium.
So Barbra, when you start your tour, think of Jack Warner. Sing your songs and talk about your music, but we don't need a two-hour documentation of the fact that you're just as neurotic now as you were 30 years ago. With your kind of talent, you're entitled.
Contact Peter Bart at
peter.bart@variety.com