Democrat and Chronicle from Rochester, New York • Page 62

ROYAL PUDPLE Prince comes to Buffalo tomorrow. Read last-minute details in Sound Judgment on page 2D. SUNDAY DECEMBER 16, 1984 ROCHESTER NEW YORK SECTION 5D STYLE 14D SENIORS 19D BOOKS 20D WHAT'S DOING 23D MOVIES 25D TRAVEL Democrat ant) Chronicle NAHEDnOPPING I r-l I JffM I 1 run illlill category, but said both views seem to co-exist within the Jane Austen Society. "I'm a member of the society be Fans, devotees, 'Janeites' whatever you call them, they adore more than her writing, they adore Jane Austen herself By Andy Smith Democrat and Chronicle Call it a fan club, call it a literary society, call it a cult. Whatever you call it, the Jane Austen Society of North America is going strong and, as far as it is concerned, today is the most important day of the year.

That isn't because today is Beethoven's birthday. And it cause of their work maintaining the Austen homestead in England and because I want to keep up with the literature, Riede said. "I don't especially want to go to tea parties and talk about how much I love Jane. Many members of the society do attend meetings, though, and at a recent gathering in Toronto Austen descendant Joan Austen- isn't because today is the anniversary of the Boston I ea WINNING A STATE RACE ON $300 Former Rochester interior decorator Helen Cranston Burley retired to New Hampshire 20 years ago but you can forget about the rockin chair. Burley was sworn in last week to the General Court, which is what New Hampshire calls its state assembly.

"I didn't like the way they were running it," Burley says, so she made a run as the Republican candidate against a union-supported lawyer. "I spent $300 on my campaign and I won. He was a poor loser and demanded a recount. Then I won with even more votes." Burley and her husband, Alfred J. Burley, live in Chesterfield, a town in the southwest corner of the state, with a view of the mountains of Vermont.

"We picked the site because it's only a six-hour drive back to Rochester, where we have a host of old friends." Burley operated her own decorating firm for many years on Park Avenue. Her husband worked at Sibley's. The Burleys have remained active in the antique business in New Hampshire, but Helen says her husband doesn't share her enthusiasm for politics. "He wants no part of it." FAIRPORT NATIVE 'WRAPS' A MOVIE ROLE Richard La Fica, 26, a native of Rochester and graduate of Monroe Party. No, it's because on Dec.

16, 1775, English novelist Jane Austen was born in Steventon, England. Austen fans known by some as the Janeites will celebrate in Rochester by gathering at 2 this afternoon in the Emmanuel Baptist Church, 815 Park to talk about Austen and perhaps to raise a decorous toast in her memory if someone can be found to organize the re Leigh suggested that Austen and her fans would have gotten along famously. Rochester housewife Jane Sylvester was at the Toronto meeting, and heard Austen-Leigh exclaim: "There are so many charming and delightful people here Jane would have loved it so." Sylvester said that she had loved Austen's works since she was a teen-ager and that she was almost happier when the Austen bandwagon was less crowded. "I've loved her for a long time," Sylvester said. "Somehow she's an island, a reassuring oasis in the middle of a freshments.

About 30 people showed up on Jane Austen's birthday last year, said Edith Lank, a Rochester real estate columnist syndicated in 100 newspapers including the Sunday Democrat and Chronicle. Afterward, Lank said, no one got around to actually organizing an official local group. Community College, has just finished a major portrayal in American Vacation, a $15 million American-Italian co-production in New York. La Fica plays a young Italian immigrant who makes it big in the United States. The film is sched- bleak existence.

When you read her, there's a certain sense of security. She's really a sociologist, in a sense, writing about her middle-class, genteel world." AUSTEN'S NOVELS are Sense "I'm not an organizer," she said. "If we ever turn up someone who likes to' organize, we could start a group." The zeal Lank lacks as an organizer, she makes up as an admirer of Jane Austen. Lank is on the board of directors of the Jane Austen Society of North America and is a life member of a similar society in England. "If you happen to like her at all, it's marvelous to have someone to talk to about it," Lank said.

Lank has been to Austen's cottage in Chawton, England, to her grave in Winchester Cathedral, and she even managed to talk her way into the rare book room of the Morgan Library in New York City and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey (1818) and Persuasion (1818). (Austen died in 1817.) Vide and Prejudice, about a family try Richard La Fica uled to be released in the summer or fall of 1985. La Fica has worked for several years in New York City in a variety of off-Broadway projects, commercials and voice-overs. He also is working on original material for a forthcoming rec ing to marry off its daughters to eligible bachelors, is probably her most famous book. ord album.

Austen fans all seem to be able to quote the opening sentence as an example of Austen's dry to look at some of Austen letters. She owns a sweatshirt imprinted with the slogan "I'd Rather Be Reading Jane Austen," and she pinned a poster of Austen on a bulletin board next to the IBM PC word processor on which she comDOses her weekly advice col wit: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in umn. "There's a certain witty clarity about her, a sense of intelligence and order," said Lank. "I VS. want of a wife." "I think her novels are absolutely wonderful," said George Ford, retired professor of English at the University of Rochester.

"I used to read Emma every year, and I never got tired of it. She has a superb understanding of people and of human relationships. But it's a mistake to regard her as 'sweet Jane' she was actually very sharp, very satirical." J.W. Johnson, Ford's colleague at the university, is another Austen fan. "I just adore her," he said.

"She's the ultimate realist about people. She took to task the cruel, the selfish, the hypocritical, and did it with a great deal of wit, humor and understanding." But desite his admiration of Austen's work, Johnson said he has not joined the Jane Austen Society. "Well, I thought about joining," he said. "But then I decided I'd rather keep Jane Austen to myself." Austen's buuks sell well in Rochester. Story un 4D.

remember how horrified I was to find out there were only six novels. "After they read her novels people usually read her letters, then her brothers' letters, then her mother's. Then they start gossiping about the family IT MAY SEEM STRANGE that all this devotion is for a woman who wrote novels of manners, largely set in Austen's upper-middle-class English country environment. But Austen's literary reputation, book sales, and number lergyman, hardly filled her novels with slam-bang accounts of derring-do. She wrote about such everyday subjects as marrying off daughters and family snobbery with a sharp wit and a keen eye for social foibles.

"Some people would be afraid to go to a dinner party with Jane Austen, because they'd be afraid what she would think about them," said Natalie Riede, a graduate student at the University of Rochester and a member of the Jane Austen Society. Riede said that she doesn't like being called a Janeite "I find it too cute and patronizing and condescending" and said Austen admirers seem to be divided into two schools of thought. One school, she said, regards Austen as a comfortable, cozy and very English observer of social mores; the other regards Austen as a penetrating social critic and satirist. Riede, whose 8-year-old son was born on Dec. 16 and was named Austin after Jane Austen, places herself in the latter ON FILM TV PREVIEW fv iij maim inn niMM.iMi 1 11 I A 1 '1 jl 1 Jeremy Irons Jeremy Irons is using his box-office appeal He relishes the opportunity to select choicest film roles Don Potter NEW DIRECTIONS FOR DON POTTER You may be wondering what's new in the life of singer-guitarist Don Potter, one of Rochester's favorite musicians.

Pot- ter, who surfaced a few months ago as part of Chuck Mangione's sesquicentennial con- now lives in Nashville, and has two important new elements in his life: an influential role with a top country music act and a personal renewal of Christian faith that has altered the nature of his music. Potter is working as musical director and lead guitarist on record and concert for The Judds, the duo of singing sisters currently responsible for the No. 1 country single in the nation, Why Not Me? Naomi and Wynonna Judd. write on the back of their new album: "We would like to especially acknowledge Don Potter for his musical influ- ence and contribution to the sound of our records." As for his own music, Potter has released a new album called Free Your- self. It's on Myrrh Records, a subsidiary of Word Records, one of the leading national labels of contemporary Christian music.

HE'S GOING FOR BAROQUE Laurence Tallman, Wheatland-Chili High School senior, has won the New York state grand prize for student composition, award--d by the Music Teachers National Association. His winner is Bagatelle for Five Saxo-'phones, a six-minute piece written in baroque style. Tallman is a student of Sebastian Calabro, Wheatland-Chili band director, and Donna Terepka, private piano teacher. He plays enough instruments to fill a pickup truck: flute, bassoon, E-flat clarinet, baritone piano and French 'horn. A DIZZYING SPIN OF THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE Namedropping last week told you of a Fairport teacher, Jim Slusarski, and his $4,000 victory on the syndicated TV show The Wheel of Fortune.

His appearance will be broadcast at 7 p.m. Christmas Eve on WHEC-TV, Channel 10. W-E-L-L, it seems we just scraped the surface. At 7 p.m. the very next night Christmas night viewers will witness an $18,000 victory by another area resident She's Esther Weaver of 90 North Ridge Circle, Greece.

Like Slusarski, she audi- tioned last year at the Rochester Plaza hotel here and her appearance also was taped iiov. 11 in Burbank, Calif. Weaver won three of the four rounds of puzzles on the show. Her winners were "Dinner Reserva- tions "The Patter of Little Feet" and "Sea of Galilee." The last puzzle garnered the winner an Oldsmobile Calais. Unfortunately, she's going to have to sell or trade her new car it has a manual transmission, and she doesn't drive a stick.

"You have to take the prizes exactly as they are," she says. By Jack Garner Sean Young, left, and Kyle MacLachlan in Dune. Scott's Scrooge is a new portrait By Joan Hanauer United Press International Charles Dickens did not write A Christmas, Carol with George C. Scott in mind, but that's hard to remember after seeing Scott in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. Scott brings new life to the old Christmas favorite (8 p.m.

tomorrow on WHEC-TV, Channel 10). He is fun to watch, full of vitality, which is lucky since he is in almost every scene. His robust Scooge owes more to John D. Rockefeller than to Uriah Heep. He may sneer, but he never snivels.

One reason for discarding the hand -wringing, money-grubbing image of Scrooge was the vision of Give Donner, who directed the show. "I hadn't read the book for a very long time," Donner said, "and I realized there were an enormous number of perceived ideas about Scrooge, about the Cratchits, about Tiny Tim, about the ghosts, about Marley. "All those perceived notions were laid on by the generations since the mid-Victorians. What was written in 1843 and published in 1844 was very different, but it became covered by these very sugary layers of sentimentality." Most importantly, he found the character of Scrooge had become distorted. "Not once does Dickens ever refer to him as a miser," Donner said.

"He is a hard-nosed, non-philanthropic tough businessman. What he cares about is the deal. He's not a spidery old miser going hee-hee-hee over a box of gold. He's not interested in money, he's interested in business. "And I don't think we have to look very far to find people just like that in this world today." Donner said his own role model for Scrooge was J.

Paul Getty, in his day called the richest man in the world. "His whole life was business he didn't even know how much money he had," Donner said. Because Donner tried to strip away the sentimentality from A Christmas Carol, the result is a show with a riveting central character and some lovely spooky effects. The Ghost of Christmas Past is a woman, a new twist Christmas Present at one point draws back his robe to reveal two starving children, want and ignorance and Donner said he had a hard time finding two kids skinny enough for the role. The ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a wraith with bony hand and pointing fingers.

In the long run, though, the success of the new A Christmas Carol lies with George C. Scott and he does the dickens of a job as Scrooge. 'Dune' is visually unique but emotionally hollow It looks like no other futuristic film but lacks humor and humanity By Jack Garner Democrat and Chronicle film critic TORONTO Jeremy Irons is an actor of uncommon good looks who has carefully chosen such interesting and literate projects as Brideshead Revisited, The French Lieutenant's Woman and Broadway's The Real Thing. His looks and taste, in fact, have earned him the label as "the thinking woman's sex symbol." Irons was in Toronto recently to promote his latest film, Swann in Love, which nnens here Wednes 0 Democrat and Chronicle tilm critic Dune, the most eagerly awaited and intensely hyped film of 1984, has arrived in all its unique visual splendor. Based on Frank Herbert's phenomenally popular science-fiction fantasy novel.

Dune has been brought to the screen through $45 million of Dino De Laurentiis and the strange and wonderful visual genius of director David Lynch. There's no denying the presence on the screen of every cent of the money spent on this most elaborate epic. Dune features utterly original sets, special effects and visual concepts. This is a science-fiction film that definitely doesn't look like any other science-fiction film. The hardware and settings are truly alien.

Lynch, who created the surreal nightmare landscape of day. He answered questions about 'rons in Swann his career and his growing reputation as a matinee idol. "If you're going to be as wide as this room on the screen for two hours with people in the dark, it's just better if they enjoy watching you," he says. "So I don't fight it. The movies are an industry.

If you're making a motor car, the dashboard has to look nice. There is no point in saying it's the best engine and the best gear box, but the outside looks horrible." As he talks with a graceful and ingratiating British accent. Irons concentrates intently. He stares at the TURN TO PAGE 21D TURN TO PAGE 22D.