The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 10

10 THE AGE, Monday 30 June 1980 .7 "I JU I 111.1 i I ii i editecftyKSOLLETTvl CINEMA Writer who New guitar work fails to impress majored MUSIC in millions INTERVIEW A Judith Krantz: Romance and work are equally essential for happiness'. Colin Bennett without wincing flTEMORIES of Shirley Tem-ItA pie and Gloria Jean sobbing over a sick horse come flooding back with 'Casey's Shadow' (Mayfair). But this is a Martin Ritt film, and its horse owner and father-figure is a shambling Walter Mat-thau, who has the C. Fields approach to children. So we can rest assured that the equine brand of mush won't be given, er, free rein.

True, Matthau, like Fred Mac-Murray before him, is crustily raising three winsome sons. They live, motherless, in the typical conditions of a Matthau slob, on a ranch down Louisiana way. True, there's an obstreperous youngest boy who has his hide tanned for racingthe quarter-horse too early. And a rich temptress (welcome back, Alexis Smith) who wants to buy the colt for a billion dollars. And a nasty (Robert Webber) who tries to poison him And a birth-and-death scene in the stables.

And a grand finale at a New Mexican racetrack, where Casey's Shadow will either unite or divide the Matthau family, depending on whether he breaks down in the stretch Yet Ritt Matthau and scenarist Carol Sobieski have managed to create a homespun "family film" that doesn't stick in the throat of adults. A kids' horse picture of the kind their elders enjoy. mitted and talk to the writers about them "Most beginners must be moved on as rapidly as possible from one bad play to the next until they either give up and stop submitting, or else discover what it is they wish to say and develop the skills they need to say it well" The letter continues: "The Guild is determined that each new script submitted by one of its members to a management will be acknowledged and, that unless dealt with within a period of four months, if the member so wishes, the management will be approached by the Guild for an explanation." It goes on to point out that the Australia Council has the power to assist the guild's campaign. Winning A1 an ABC concert, last- minute alterations to the programme generally comprise minor changes only; a Paisiello is substituted for a Cimarosa, or the Beethoven Violin Concerto replaces the Tchaikov sky. At last Saturday night's Town Hall concert, featuring guitarist John Williams, the moves and countermoves required close attention and a willingness to accept more of Williams's playing than was programmed a bonus that few people in the full house would have rejected.

At the start, a gentleman appeared on stage and announced that the final work, Falla's Three-Cornered Hat Suite', would not be played. Then conductor Ezra Rachlin led the Melbourne orchestra through what was essentially the Second Suite from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet' ballet This set of dances was handled rather well; the low brass were very prominent from my seat but accurate; and apart from a coarse cello melodic line in the central excerpt, the players' work resulted in a good' realisation of this instrumentally dazzling score; After this (35 minutes of music) came interval. Williams then gave us Andre Previn's Guitar Concerto, a work with no serious philosophical envelope, several i pleasant arpeggio-based thematic ideas, unfortunate but inevitable suggestions of film-music, and a harmonic language no more demanding than middle-period Copland. In the third, final movement Previn mixes media in having an amplified "jazz" trio punctuate the soloorchestral meanderings REPORT Rita Erlich The problem, according to Mr Kenna's letter, is that: "Some companies are holding scripts for a year or longer and then sending them back to the writers without comment. This appears to be the norm rather than the exception." He points out that this practice is particularly dispiriting to beginner-playwrights and generally discouraging to the development of Australian drama.

"Because most people do not begin by turning out immediately produceable work they are crushed and their potential left unexplored," the letter says. Clive OTonnell to little effect; while such outbursts can be effective, as in the music of Ives and Grainger, here the dynamic of amplified guitars drowned out too much of the opposition. Williams returned immediately to play two Albeniz maxi-minia-tures, the second being 'Asturias', one of the more difficult display pieces for right-hand technique the repertoire. As expected, Williams negotiated the piece's demands, including its long cres-cendos, neatly and effectively. Without interruption, we were given the last work, Rodrigo's 'Gentilhombre Fantasia', that lucid, striking reworking of Sanz dances, one of the handful of masterworks for the guitar, the Previn concerto notwithstanding.

Here was splendid playing from all concerned, despite initial metrical uncertainty, and Williams's following in the irritating tradition of guitarists by highlighting every entry of the subject in the Ricercare; underlining the music in red, so to speak. The playing of Williams is as masterful and enjoyable as it was in 1974 and 1977, and he has the splendid gift of being able to keep to a minimum that "surface noise" occasioned when fingers unglue and slide along the fret-board in search of the new Chord. Saturday night's audience was quite prepared to listen attentively to the Previn concerto, but, as the ABC well knows, nothing succeeds quite as well as an old favorite. It goes on to mention the "long history of buying overseas hits and expecting the untried local product to match them in skill and polish. "It never seems to occure to managements that the culture they are borrowing from has had to nurture the 'hit' writers through a period of learning." The Australian Writers' Guild wants scripts to be acknowledged by the theatre companies to which they are' sent and then to be "processed quickly, mercifully and with authority." That could be done of "part of a theatre company's Australia Council subsidy (was) earmarked to employ a person with the appropriate ability whose first job would be to read the scripts sub Judith Krantz, whose fictional women are aggressively independy ent, active, and eventually powerful, sees her writing as a 'vicarious-' entertaining expert-' ence" rather-than as an attempt to put over a message.

"If I can amuse myself, then I always" feel that perhaps I can amuse others," she explained. "But-1 suppose that if there is a message then it is that romance and work are equally essential for happiness. That a woman can never be really happy without work what ever that work is." Walter Matthau: the W. C. Fields approach For a start, the tobacco-chewing father is as bristly as his five-o'clock shadow: a gambler blindly willing to risk the animal and his boys' loyalty in order to win-at-all-costs.

And there's a sensible moral in that which tempers the thrills of the so-called sport of kings. The picture also reads us "a few lessons about the dubious practices of two-year-old racing. Martin Ritt, an old hand at warm, humanist storytelling ('Sounder', 'Conrack. 'A Man is 10 Feet Tall'), can also put grit and bite into a film ('Norma The The sketch of romantic rural America and its racing lore is mellow at times, thanks to photographer John Alonso, and sharp at others. The father-son relationship never grows- mawkish.

Even such a well-worn device as slow motion is used to fresh effect in the quarter-mile climax. Altogether, "Casey's Shadow' is winning enough, whatever the race result ALL POP STARS, apparently, have, enjoyed the same life story, from rags to road tours to record flogging to riches to drugs to breakdown. The Coal Miner's Daughter' (Russell) repeats it, telling how A Star Is Born to the Grand Ole Opry. She is one Loretta Lynn (little Sissy Spacek puts her heart and her own voice into the character), known as the first lady of country music In the first part when this child of the long-suffering poor is timidly married at 13 and has umpteen' kids by sandpaper-faced Tommy Lee Jones, director Michael Apted sketches a watch-able portrait of hillbilly Kentucky. Then it's on to the showbiz-grooming, the sequence in which Tommy Lee is in danger of becoming Mr Loretta Lynn, the adulation, the pills and the embarrassing public collapse before a tacked-on happy ending.

BRIEFLY A SELECTION of work by New Zealand printmakers and potters opens at the Caulfield Arts Centre on 3 July and will be on display until 13 July. The exhibition is sponsored by the New Zealand consulate and will tour major cities in Australia. Brian Courtis the back of my mind. Then writing for magazines, even the very complicated kind of article I used to do for 'Cosmo', lost its charm for me. "I was very secure in my craft and knew that come what may, no matter what the assignment was, I could handle it There was no challenge left in it for me.

"Finally, there was the conquering of a lear that took place exactly before I started on "For the six months before I started to write I took flying lessons. I learned how to fly and conquered my fear of flying which was very strong. After that -I started to write I knew I wanted to." In those days Judith Krantz would drive four times a week to that most exclusive of Los Angeles shopping strips, Rodeo Drive. As she crossed it to visit her beauty salon or gym, she couldn't help noticing the enormous amount of costly reconstruction that was going on for now luxury boutiques. From that came the idea on which she began "Scrap-les' on 15 June 1976.

She considers the family's move from New York as one of the essential factors in her work. As a New Yorker, she says, she has never felt part of-the West Coast "leisure never the kind of woman who plans her day around her tennis lessons. "It was very important, that move to California," she said "When you live in Beverly Hills you can stay indoors all day long writing and when you come out at the end of the year nothing really has happened. "But if you live in New York City and stay in for a year, you feel you've missed a great deal. You've missed a million art exhibitions, you've missed the theatre, the ballet, you've missed lots and lots of things." If Judith Krantz's heroes are of the Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann mould, her love for detail, and for the trivia-of-the-rich that fascinates her paperback fans, goes beyond the ordinary.

Playwrights seek speedier deal She puts it down to a good, memory, the necessity to learning" the fashion business for Good and from understanding movies through her own experience as a film producer's wife, Mrs Krantz is "fairly with what television has done to 'Scruples though admits to being a little puzzled about the introduction of a blackmail plot didn't exist in the book. It jarred a little, she. felt. There are parallels hi the book in the lives of her characters and those of her reality. Like Billy Ikehorn Orsini, for example, she spent a year in Paris and, of coarse, eventually married a filmmaker.

Is she Billy? "No, we were different Billy went to Paris in a sad shape; she was overweight; miserable, and had never had any fun with the opposite sex. "I was just the opposite of Billy. I'm very slender, very small and had a wonderful time. I was 14 when I started dating, 16 when I went to college, and 20 when I graduated, and I had the most wonderful time you can possibly imagine. "I went to Wellesley to study English literature and have fun.

Those were my two majors! I got my English degree, but I really in fun. "One year I became the record-holder in Wellesley for dates; I had 13 dates on 13 consecutive -nights. That was my outstanding contribution. So, you see, it's not quite the same as Billy." rpHE Australian Writers A Guild has begun a campaign to ensure that playwrights' scripts are processed quickly by the theatre companies to which they are sent. Peter ('A Hard God') Kenna, a member of the stage committee of the Australian Writers' Guild, has written a three-page tetter to the chairman of the Literature Board of the Australia Council, detailing the problems of unacknowledged and long-held scripts, and suggesting a solution.

His letter is supported by a letter from playwright David Williamson, who is president of the Australian Writers' Guild. Copies of both letters have also been sent to the chairman of the Theatre Board of the Australia Council. SOMEONE has told author Judith Krantz that her writing is now worth at least a page. She doesn't know where the figure came from, but is eager to forget it. "If I sat down to write and -thought Oh gee, this is a $16,000 page', I don't think I would ever be satisfied," she says.

"I would have to rewrite it so many times -the book would never see the Jight of day." Mrs Krantz, a blonde and bubbly publishing phenomenon made a multi-millionaire by her books 'Scruples and Princess -Daisy, turned to writing novels in her late 40s. She's now 52. Her first book, 'Scruples', which has sold about 1.3 million in hard and 4.5 million in paperback, and which was made into jl television series now being shown here by Channel 10, began as almost a need for challenge. Certainly it wasn't, a case of needing the money. She is married to Hollywood film producer Steve Krantz (of "Fritz the Caf) and, the parents of two sons in their 20s, they live comfortably enough in a quasi-French manor house on more than a verdant acre of the most expensive real estate in Beverly Hills.

Judith herself Is the daughter of a well-to-do New York advertising agency owner and his lawyer wife. From Beverly Hills she told me what had finally nudged her from magazines 'Good Housekeeping in the 1950s, then 'Ladies Home Journal, McCaIls', and, finally, about 10 years ago Cosmopolitan into that first novel. "When I look back I realise there were several things that led to Scruples', because I was completely convinced that the magazine article was the only form of writing I could be good at," Mrs Krantz said. "Onei was my husband's encouragement For about 10 years before I started writing fiction, he had been convinced that this what I should do. I used to get very angry with him.

I would say, I have a perfect life: I have enough work to keep me happy, I have children growing up, I have friends, I entertain, I go to the gym why do I need to write a novel? So that was always there in GTY17D7 by Wimbledon This player five Channel ip OK! Bjom Borg did the impossible in 1979 winning his fourth consecutive title. year, watch the worlds greatest as he battles for an unbelievable straight. live and exclusive to Nine. The 1980 VJImbledon Tennis Championship. Monday to Saturday at 11 pm.

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