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The writer and podcaster Will Sloan returns for a show about Warren Beatty and his now-decades long relationship to Chester Gould’s classic thirties comic strip detective Dick Tracy.

We discuss what we can now call The Dick Tracy trilogy: the gorgeously crafted 1990 blockbuster he starred in and directed, and two curious no-budget followups he has made for Turner Classic Movies in the ensuing decades: 2010’s Dick Tracy Special, which aired only once and became a cult object for the true Beatty heads, and the surprise followup that dropped without warning this week, Dick Tracy Special: Tracy Zooms In. In both these specials Beatty gives an interview as the “real” Dick Tracy where he airs long-held grievances with how Beatty messed up the movie about “my life”.

So what’s going on here? Is the 85-year-old Beatty just doing this to hang on to the screen rights to maintain his artistic control of the property? Is he using the property to make avant-garde comedy where half the joke is the lack of energy being put into them? Is Beatty commenting on the state of modern cinema (and his own screen legacy) in his twilight years?

Will and I are obsessed with Late Style Beatty and his latest instalment of “the franchise” snaps this entire project into perspective for us: we discuss all three works in detail.

Follow Will Sloan on Twitter and subscribe to his wonderful podcasts The Important Cinema Club and Michael and Us.

Trailer for Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty, 1990)