Give Beatty a Break

I didn't watch "The Academy Awards/Oscar" program and can't remember the last time I did.  But, I did catch the coverage on Warren Beatty having the incorrect envelope, which led to the incorrect awarding of best picture to the wrong entity.

ANYWAY - yeah, I know Beatty is an Uber Lib. But I don't allow the political views of any type of artist to interfere with my appreciation of their work.  And Beatty, at his best, starred and directed some darn good films. "Heaven Can Wait", "Reds" and "Dick Tracy" immediately come to mind.

Contrary to this overly analytic view of what happened to Beatty Sunday night, I think it's just a matter of him being 80 years old:

“You can see he’s flummoxed, but she thought it was Warren being Warren, which it wasn’t.”

Some of you ageists think Beatty should simply have said, “There seems to be a problem.” But improvisation is not his strong suit and he is not one to blurt out anything publicly, especially this publicly. In the best of circumstances, Biskind says, “Warren is not exactly Demosthenes when it comes to public speaking.”

Faye Dunaway and a confused Warren Beatty

Look, Beatty is 80 years old.  Rather, he will be at the end of March.

No one who is 80 years old has the same mental acuity that they had at 60. Or 40. Or 25.

Yes, he was confused. But it is more that nothing 'clicked-on' in his head as to how to handle it, or to simply say, "there's seems to be a mistake here." He blanked out.

Also, (I saw various clips of the Awards on the news), when he walked onto the stage with Faye Dunaway, he was holding her arm not in what looked like a "date" type hold, or a hold that would be common as a man and woman wanting to appear formal. To me, it appeared that he was leaning on her, using her to support himself and walk. He seemed frail. And with him looking at the floor, it made me wonder if he had some balance or issue with walking.

Give the guy a break. He's 80. We should all be so lucky.