Dick Tracy, Warren Beatty, and Copyright Weirdness
The other man in the yellow hat
Hollywood has a history of setting the tone of creative control. “Who owns what,” is big money for entertainment lawyers.
It’s Hollywood that’s pushed back the hardest on public domain — something that Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy should almost fall into. The yellow-clad, hardboiled comic detective was born in 1931.
You might think that Gould owns the rights to Dick Tracy. Or maybe Tribune Media, the original publisher.
You’d be wrong.
No, it belongs to the guy who periodically shows up dressed as Dick Tracy in interviews — Warren Beatty. He did it this year in Tracy Zooms In, a…purported interview with TCM’s Leonard Maltin and Ben Mankiewicz. You can catch the full thing below:
In reality it’s a strange performance art piece, with Beatty in a one-man show in yellow trench coat and fedora, effectively interviewing himself.
Why? Copyright.
