Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 28

REPUBLIC FINAL cm The Arizona Republic Thursday, May 7, 1987 Hardy Price F2 I Calendar F3 James E.Cook F3 1 Cinemafare F4 Television F8 Comics F9 1 Ufe Imm Heating things up In Yuma Charles Barnett, Chamber of Commerce chief for one of the nation's hottest areas, wants to attract summer as well as winter tourist business. F3. Short takes Mews briefs 1 1 $70 million can buy mountains of burgers for maxilottery winner MATT FREWER, who plays Max Headroom as well as journalist Edison Carter on the Headroom series, says television is the perfect vehicle for Max because the show is a multilevel satire. "He's a product of television on a television screen in a TV series about TV," Frewer says. "It's also, from my point of view, a very cheap way to justify making a lot of money." Frewer says Max didn't have a well-defined personality when he went to audition for the part.

"The thing I had in mind when I started doing Max was to have the professional slickness of somebody like Johnny Carson but with the goofy charm of Ted Baxter (the vapid anchorman from The Mary Tyler Moore Show)." diamonds for them. No Dom Perignon or Baccarat crystal goblets. They'll settle for the food processor and the fake fingernails they've always -wanted, thank you. That's what they tell the 'y newspapers. How it actually turns out is another story, one that we often never know.

Lottery winners have a way of burrowing out of sight like moles as soon as they pick up the check. All we can do is sit here in the wild West and lick our chops over how the winners might spend the $70 million jackpot that the 10 states expect to raise. Nobody knows where the money really will go. Let's consider what an unchanged life would be like. Let's consider what $70 million could buy.

It could buy: White bread: 210 million Whole wheat bread: 78 million loaves. Bowling balls: 1.4 million, without bags. High-quality rhinestone earrings: 4,666,666 pairs, plus one spare earring. Nineteen-inch portable color television sets: 350,000. Small bags of popcorn, unpopped: 14,285,714.

Fast-food hamburgers: 118,644,060. No change left. Unisex haircuts: 11,666,666. By HOLLY D. REMY The Arizona Republic SPRINGFIELD, 111.

OK, so The Arizona Republic did not really shell out big bucks to send a reporter to Springfield, 111., to gauge the public's excitement about the 10-state lottery that is planned for October. So what? So what if potential winners in the biggest game in the history of the United States maybe in the history of the universe are walking this minute down a sidewalk in the capital of the game's headquarters state, waiting to be asked how they would spend the money? The bosses say no Springfield, and that's that. They say that the only difference between an ordinary person and a lottery winner is that the winner can afford more ordinariness. The 10 states Missouri, Iowa, Connecticut, Oregon, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, West Virginia, New York, Washington and Illinois hope to raise a jackpot larger than the winners' wildest dreams. Big deal.

If you gave a dime for every lottery winner who said his or her life would not change much, except for the number of zeros at the bottom of the bank statement, you'd be in the poorhouse. No Piaget watches and Tiffany Joe Willie SmithRepublic STARLIGHT BOX OFFICE BOFFO Starlight Express, the $8 million Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that fizzled with the New York critics, is an unqualified hit with audiences. In fact, its promoters recently took out a full-page ad in Variety, stating that the musical earned $606,081 for the week ended April 19, giving the show "the all-time highest weekly gross in Broadway history." PITHY PEABODYS Modesty and quips were on the menu at Wednesday's luncheon in New York for winners of the Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. David Brinkley, who won for ABC's This Week With David Brinkley, said his executive producer should have accepted the award. "The truth is, my contribution to this program is about equal to, or inferior to, Vanna White's on Wheel of Fortune.

She turns letters," Brinkley said. Other winners: CBS' Charles Osgood, Muppets creator Jim Henson and NBC's The Cosby Show. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, IRVING Irving Berlh turns 99 Monday, but don't expect a big party. The great American composer lives reclusively in New York. "He doesn't see very well, and things have to be read to him," musical historian Stanley Green says.

"He always says, 'My health is wonderful from the neck I haven't seen him in some time, but we chatted about a year ago and he recalled details of a musical he had written in his teens." 46,000, give or take a few. Danielle Steele paperback romance novels: 17,721,518. To all the above, add $4,690,000 for sales tax if the money is spent in Phoenix. Check with the local tax collector elsewhere. Permanent waves done by salon: 1,891,891, with 80 cents left for the stylist's tip.

Movie tickets: 14 million or 46.6 million if bought before 5 p.m. weekdays. Used Cadillacs, mid-'70s models: Chillers spill from playwright's pen Theater Preview MURDER BY NATURAL CAUSES Phoenix Little Theatre, 25 E. Coro-nado Road. Today through May 23.

Performances: 8 p.m. daily, except for a matinee at 2:30 p.m. Sunday; dark other Sundays and all Mondays. Tickets: $8 and $10, at the theater box office. Phone: WILLARD SCOTT wants to get on the road.

The weatherman says he told his bosses at NBC's Today that they should get a professional meteorologist so he can travel around the nation. "People like what I do. Everywhere I go, it's a hit. It's got to annoy some weather fans when they see me up there screwing around." starred Hal Holbrook and Katharine Ross. "I've written for television and films, but the theater, particularly the small stage, has always been my first love," he said.

"In the beginning, there were times when I thought of doing something else, but little scenes, bits of dialogue were always running around in my head, and eventually I'd have to put them down to escape from them. "I'd say an idea would be in the think stage for about two years and then take about six weeks to get it in shape to present to a producer. The last weeks are sweat labor." Kelly received his bachelor's and master's degrees in drama from Emerson College in Boston. For 10 years, he was a child actor in New York companies. He was on his way to San Francisco in 1958 when he stopped in Phoenix for a three-week stay.

Sold on the sunshine By JOY COOLIDGE The Arizona Republic In the late 1950s and early '60s, original productions of Tim Kelly's plays were bobbing up on Valley stages like corks in a barrel. When one ended at Phoenix Little Theatre, another would surface at the Stagebrush Theatre or pop up on the boards at Glendale Little Theatre. Hindsight says that Kelly's prolific penmanship was a clue to career credits that name him as America's most published playwright in the first Trivial Pursuit game. "There are about 170 of my workfi in print: children's plays, melodramas, comedies and thrillers," he said in a phone interview from his studio in California. "Friends called me from New York to tell me I was a statistic in the trivia game.

I thought I could look it over in the store, but it was wrapped in cellophane, and I had to pay $30 and sort through all of those cards to check it out. I still don't know if being in Trivial Pursuit is good or bad." Murder By Natural Causes, the Mainstage production at Phoenix Little Theatre, which opens tonight, was adapted for the stage by Kelly from a 1979 television murder mystery by Richard Levinson and William Link. It Scott certainly went over well this week in Rockford, 111. Residents turned out in droves to watch his remote telecast at 5:30 a.m. Some then followed him to a local restaurant, where he had biscuits and gravy.

Tim Kelly His writing career is no trivial pursuit. Burt Reynolds is headin' for higher ground Our daily quote "I did it because the city of Phoenix told me to get it out of my yard and it seemed like a good place to put it." Artist Shane Paul, who also said that he left his construction-style sculpture on the grounds of the Phoenix Art Museum from Thursday until Monday as as "ongoing protest against the art museum's lack of support for contemporary, unknown artists." ries Movies Review -A ML Compiled from Associated Press, United Press Interna-tionaland Tribune Media Services by Hardy Price. MALONE An Orion release directed by Harley Cokliss, screenplay by Christopher Frank from the novel Shotgun by William Wingate. Cast: Burt Reynolds, Kenneth McMillan, Cynthia Gibb, Lauren Hutton, Cliff Robertson. Rated R.

purpose. The relationship among the friendly mechanic, his overly curious daughter and the strong, silent stranger has genuinely touching moments. Later, Lauren Hutton, as a CIA agent and ex-colleague of Reynolds, drops by. She, too, might have formed an intriguing relationship with Reynolds had she stuck around longer. There are plot holes and a climactic battle that is silly but fun.

In his next few movies, Reynolds might consider getting off the beaten path. That acting energy cries out for brighter projects. For now, Malone points him in the right direction. SECOND OPINIONS Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune: "The amazing career evolution of Burt Reynolds continues with Malone, a melancholy, twilight thriller. Reynolds has emerged as an actor of considerable moral force and an appealingly weary reflectiveness.

He has become a battered icon, very much in the tradition of the late film appearances of John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and James Stewart." Carrie Rickey, Knight-Ridder: "Will someone please, please, write a good screenplay for Burt Reynolds? This simplified, contemporary version of Shane is unusually well-made. But its characters have no resonance and its moral no impact. Reynolds gives a very touching performance. He restrains himself from the glib, wiseacre style and in Malone, is dryly soft-spoken." i Nielsen ratings The top 10 and bottom five television programs for the week of April 27-May 3 as compiled by the A.C. Nielsen Co.

Season to date rankings are in parentheses; an in parentheses denotes a one-time-only presenta tion; in parentheses denotes a new show. 1. (1) The Cosby Show, NBC. 2. (2) Family Ties, NBC.

3. (3) Cheers, NBC. 4. (5) Golden Girls, NBC. 5.

Tie: (18) Desperado (NBC Monday Night Movies) and (16) Murder Ordained, Part 1 (CBS Sunday Movie). 7. (12) Nothing in Common, NBC. 6. (U) Dallas, CBS.

9. (X) Growing Pains Special, ABC. 10. (20) Police Story: The Freeway Killer (NBC Sunday Night Movie) and (9) Moonlighting, ABC. The bottom five: Outlaws, CBS.

Thompson's Last Run (CBS Saturday Movie). Mike, ABC, Wizard, CBS. Our World, ABC. By KIRK HONEYCUTT Los Angeles Dally News Burt Reynolds is getting serious again about his acting. No more winks at the camera, no more lazy manner, no more good-ole-boy humor.

In Malone, he approaches his role with a lean and mean intensity. The character is a character, not a personal appearance. Obviously, Reynolds lacks the confidence to give such a performance outside a genre movie. The sometimes-corny story line has him as an ex-CIA agent, trying to find peace and quiet, running afoul of right-wing survi-valists and a crooked police force in an isolated rural county in the Pacific Northwest. As an action-suspense piece, Malone is only so-so.

The villains are sneering, salivating baddies.A thudding, crashing Kenneth McMillan, at the wrong end corrupt sheriff of a deteriorating town of Burt Reynolds' pistol, plays the in Malone. volved when his car conks out, leaving him stranded at a gas station-garage run by a crippled Vietnam veteran (Scott Wilson) and his cute teen-age daughter (Cynthia Gibbs). They're fighting off a determined effort by a millionaire (Cliff Robertson) to buy up everyone's property for some mysterious bore of a musical score is always telling you what to think and feel. But the action and suspense are by director Harley Cokliss, who's pretty good at that sort of thing. It's familiar, but slickly done.

What refreshes are some of the and performances. Reynolds 7 i.