After Bad ‘Town and Country’ Press, Beatty’s Troops Swing Into Action

Warren Beatty hasn’t been taking the bad advance press on “Town and Country” lying down. When New Line chief Bob Shaye blamed Beatty for some of the film’s problems in a Los Angeles Times piece in November 1999, Beatty lawyer Bert Fields sent a cease-and-desist letter to Shaye, saying there was no truth to his remarks.

Now, in response to more of what the Beatty camp calls “inaccurate” column items about the movie’s budget excesses, uber-publicist Pat Kingsley has sent a “preemptive” letter to about 30 newspaper and magazine columnists and entertainment TV outlets to set the record straight. Kingsley says the letter was prompted by inaccurate Internet and newspaper column items, most notably a Jan. 11 Liz Smith column that floated a $120-million budget figure for the film and quoted an unnamed skeptic as saying: “Just send this bomb straight to video and forget it!”

At Kingsley and Fields’ request, Smith ran an apology a week later saying she “didn’t mean to wound or defame Beatty.” To quiet the hubbub, Kingsley’s letter came with copies of two trade stories absolving Beatty of blame for the film’s troubles. “I just wanted to nip this in the bud,” says Kingsley. “I know there’s going to be a lot of speculation boiling up, and I thought maybe this might curtail it before tabloid and Internet stuff becomes fodder for the mainstream press.”