Dick Tracy (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dick Tracy

Dick Tracy poster
Directed by Warren Beatty
Produced by Warren Beatty
Written by Chester Gould (characters)
Jim Cash
Jack Epps Jr.
Starring Warren Beatty
Madonna
Al Pacino
Dustin Hoffman
Charlie Korsmo
Glenne Headly
and Dick Van Dyke
Music by Danny Elfman
Distributed by Touchstone Pictures
Release date(s) June 15, 1990
Running time 105 min.
Language English
Budget $47,000,000 US (est.)
IMDb profile

Dick Tracy is a 1990 film based upon the Dick Tracy comic strip character created by Chester Gould. The film was directed by Warren Beatty, and originally released in cinemas by Touchstone Pictures. Beatty also starred as the iconic square-jawed detective. Co-stars included Madonna, Charlie Korsmo, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, and Glenne Headly as well as numerous cameo appearances by famous actors and actresses (including Mandy Patinkin as pianist 88 Keys, Colm Meaney as a beat cop, and TV legend Dick Van Dyke in an unusual role as the corrupt District Attorney Fletcher).

The film won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction, Best Makeup and Best Music, Original Song (Stephen Sondheim) for "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)". It was also nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Al Pacino), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Sound.

Contents

[edit] Plot

The main storyline of the film is Dick Tracy's efforts to bring down Big Boy Caprice's (Pacino) gangster empire and the search for a mystery assassin known as The Blank. A secondary storyline follows Tracy's romances with Tess Trueheart (Headly) and Breathless Mahoney (Madonna). The third sub-plot is Tracy's rescuing a young orphan boy, The Kid (Korsmo), who looks up to Tracy as a father figure. All this becomes quickly tangled when Tracy finds himself framed for the murder of Chicago's beloved (although corrupt) District Attorney (Van Dyke), and Caprice's empire begins to take over the city itself.

[edit] DA Fletcher

DA (or District Attorney) Fletcher was played by TV legend Dick Van Dyke, but differed from Van Dyke's previous roles in which he was usually the hero. The DA he played in the film was shady and worked for crime boss Big Boy. He is ordered by Big Boy to keep Tracy off his case, but soon Big Boy tries to get rid of Tracy in a non-murdering way. He hires the famous faceless crook we see in the film along with his pianist 88 Keys to lure Fletcher into a trap where they murder him and frame Tracy for the murder. Although Van Dyke's role in the film was small, Beatty thought a lot of him when he needed somebody for the district attorney. In a 2001 interview, Van Dyke said that when Beatty started casting for the role, he wanted a district attorney that people would trust.

[edit] Filming

The film has a distinctive look due to its use of only six colors; red, blue, yellow, green, orange and purple, plus black and white. These were the original six colors used in the comic strip and were used to create a "cartoon" look. The cinematography by Vittorio Storaro gives the film a captivating atmosphere, aided by Danny Elfman's score.

Oddly enough, Beatty is one of the few who does not drastically alter his appearance to give him cartoonish-caricature facial-features. Originally, he was going to have prosthetic makeup to achieve the slightly-hooked hawk nose and square-jaw that Tracy was known for, but Beatty was such a star, the studio didn't want his face to be obscured.

The look of the city used sets, animation, rotoscoping and super-imposing.

Costing $35 million to make, with an additional $12 million in advertising, it made over $100,000,000 at the U.S. box office and spawned a large marketing and merchandising campaign.

[edit] Cast

Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice
Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice

[edit] Merchandising

The film stirred an expansive production of Dick Tracy merchandising. Several pieces of merchandise and memorabilia were released in 1990, including apparel, lunchboxes, glassware, Colorforms, Topps trading cards, Ertl die-cast and micro sized vehicles, PVC figures, and dolls featuring cloth apparel.

In August 1990, Bandai America, Inc. made Dick Tracy into an NES game loosely based on Beatty's film. It was also released in 1991 on the Game Boy. Sega also made a Dick Tracy video game for the Sega Genesis and Master System in 1991 as a side-scrolling arcade action adventure game.

[edit] Action figures

Playmates released a line of action figures in 1990. Each featured five points of articulation, accessories, and cartoon-like body designs similar to other Playmates lines like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The line also included Dick Tracy's Police Squad Car and Big Boy's Getaway Car.

While fourteen figures were produced, The Blank was never released in America, despite appearing in a commercial and advertised with the others. It was released on an extremely limited basis in Canada, making it one of the rarest mass-produced figures in the world. This could be because it was possible to "unmask" the Blank, thereby letting out a major spoiler for the movie. Steve the Tramp's figure also met with some controversy due to packaging that stated his crime was "stinking up the city sewers". Reverend Donald Wildmon protested on grounds of insensitivity towards the homeless and the figure was eventually recalled.

[edit] Theme park ride

Disney had designed a ride for their Disney MGM Studios theme park in Orlando, Fl. called Dick Tracy's Crimestoppers, which would have introduced the interactive dark ride technology used in Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin and Men in Black: Alien Attack!. The ride was killed by several factors: one being the financial disappointment of the movie's run in theaters and the second being that Eisner was not keen to the idea of tourists "shooting up" bad guys.

[edit] Recent events

Media outlets reported that there is a legal battle being waged over just who owns the rights to the Dick Tracy character. Warren Beatty announced plans to make a sequel to his 1990 movie. At the same time, television producers have announced plans for a new Dick Tracy TV series. Both sides claim that they are the legal owners of the rights to Dick Tracy. In May 2005, Beatty sued the Tribune Company, claming he has owned the rights to the Dick Tracy character since 1985. The lawsuit is ongoing.[1]

[edit] Trivia

This article contains a trivia section.
Content in this section should be integrated into other appropriate areas of the article or removed, and the trivia section removed.
  • Al Pacino actually designed Big Boy Caprice's make-up himself and completely re-imagined the character, who was originally big and fat in the comics with a little nose. Caprice's resulting film counterpart is of average height with enlarged hands, nose, and cheekbones, hence his street name.
  • In Tom Mankiewicz's original script, the main, and only, villain of the film was to be the Blank, with Flattop Jones as the supporting villain in a side-plot. It opens with a policeman dying as a sketch artist draws a sketch of his killer: a figure with no face. The cop says "That's him!" and dies. Chester Gould loved the idea and tried to get the project started with MGM in 1983, but he died shortly after, which caused the film to be shelved.
  • James Caan, an actor friend of Warren Beatty, appears in the film as mobster Spud Spaldoni. Dustin Hoffman made a cameo as Mumbles as a favor for Beatty.
  • Tim Burton was offered a chance to direct, but he chose to direct Edward Scissorhands instead. His longtime collaborator Danny Elfman was called back from vacation in Hawaii to provide the film with an emergency score. Elfman described working with director Warren Beatty as "insane".[2]
  • Dick Van Dyke, who only worked on the film for three days, broke his shoulder when he was shooting the scene where his character is murdered by The Blank. That take was the one that was eventually used in the film.
  • When Beatty came on board the project as a producer, he only agreed to direct if he could play the title role, which the studio was having difficulties casting. He got his wish, as Bob Fosse had refused to direct and nobody wanted to play Tracy.
  • Martin Scorsese was also a fan of the comics and considered directing at one point, but he lost interest and chose to helm Goodfellas.
  • Of all the villains, "Numbers" Norton (played by James Tolkan) was the only one created for the film. The following are villains that appear in the film. Warren Beatty wanted as many as possible included as a measure in case the movie did not get a sequel:
    • William "The Rodent" Wilson [3] (originally Rhodent)
    • Shoulders
    • "Stooge" Villers (originally Viller)
    • The Brow
    • "Littleface" Finny
    • "Lips" Manlis (originally Manlus)
    • Jake "Itchy" Rossi [4] (originally Itchell Oliver)
    • "Flattop" Jones
    • Mumbles
    • Al "Big Boy" Caprice
    • Steve the Tramp
    • The Blank (has a different identity in the comic)
    • Patricia "Breathless" Mahoney [5]
    • Lorenzo "Pruneface" Prunesti [6]
    • Influence (originally The Influence)
    • Johnny Ramm (The movie and its credits never specify which of a group of anonymous mob bosses is him, but it is clearly stated that he is one of them and thus he appears on screen, even if not clearly identified.)
    • Texie Garcia
    • Ribs Mocca (originally Mocco)
    • Ben "Spud" Spaldoni
    • 88 Keys (originally Keyes)

It is also worth noting that the villains have an infrastructure in this film (i.e. Big Boy is the boss of Flattop and Itchy, Lips Manlis is the boss of the five card-playing villains in the beginning), unlike in the comic where villains each arose and fought Tracy one-by-one in a fashion largely independent of each other with no hierarchy.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Comics Reporter Spurgeon, Tom (2005). "Dick Tracy and the Attached Sub-Rider". The Comics Reporter. Accessed 2006-11-17.
  2. ^ November, 1993 Movieline
  3. ^ Dick Tracy Action Figure Card, Playmates, 1990.
  4. ^ ibid
  5. ^ Dick Tracy True Hearts & Tommy Guns Comic Series, AW Publishing, 1990.
  6. ^ ibid

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../d/i/c/Dick_Tracy_%28film%29_a2b9.html"
In other languages