St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 83

ST. LOUS POST-DISPATCH SECTION FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1992 yi, JERRY BERGER I 1 1 ifTTTTv rfi) VX ill 1 1 MOT A new movie presents Stephen Hawking's theories in an understandable way. By John Horn Of the Associated Press PASADENA, Calif. AFTER SELLING 5 million books about collapsing stars, Stephen Hawking is entering a new orbit. The celebrated British physicist is the subject and star of a new documentary film, which, like his best-selling book, is called "A Brief History of Time." Unlike the book, this isn't a dense document about such abstract concepts as black holes, event horizons, singularities and the unified theory.

Instead, it's a dynamic story of a remarkable life. Diagnosed with amytrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease) and given 22 years to live 29 years ago, choices about what material to include, what material to exclude," Morris said. "In every movie that I've made, I'm always struck by the amount of material that is discarded. "There are certain aspects of Stephen's life that are not treated in great detail. I also felt that I had to end up with a movie that Stephen Hawking would like.

I like Stephen Hawking, pure and simple. I wanted to make a movie that he would respect and he would like." Even though his brain works with unimpaired speed, Hawking communicates slowly. In 1985, he underwent an emergency tracheotomy in which he lost his voice, and he now speaks through a computerized voice synthesizer. He says his health these days is stable. Using the middle and index fingers on his right hand, he selects words on a computer clicker one at a time.

It takes several minutes for him to compose See HAWKING, Page 5 Schoemehl Rumored To Be D.C.-Bound RUMOR MILLING: Word is already out that Vlnce Schoemehl Jr. may be heading for Washington, D.C., under the Clinton-Gore administration. Some say he might be just the man to be chief of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, replacing Gene McNary. The appointment for that office is made at the president's pleasure.

BROADCAST NEWS: Call it the Wheel of Misfortune for program director Mark Todd, who's been fired by WKBQ-FM. Todd ran afoul of his employers when morning drive-time jocks Steve and D.C. featured a telephone conversation with a married couple making love in the restroom of a Shell Station on Hampton Avenue. Steve and D.C. called it the "Wheel of Whoopie." The wheel included 10 public locations where volunteer married couples could couple.

WKBQ general manager Richard Gray said the stunt was not only in bad taste but old hat. "It's done weekly over WBBM-FM" in Chicago, he said. D.C. doesn't understand all the fuss. "I wish this city would calm down a bit," he said.

"Sex, for some reason, is so taboo here. People are too tense. Sex to us is funny, and we have fun with it." An FCC inquiry about the incident may be looming, according to a source at a trade paper. BIZ BITS: John MacEnulty had an urge for chocolate chip cookies some 16 months ago, but what he found was not what he liked. With a little research and a lot of experimentation, he developed Ambrosia Cookies, a walnut-chocolate chip cookie in a shortbread-style dough that now is available at Protzel's Deli and the Ladue Market, with more outlets to come Bombay Indian Cuisine has stuck out its shingle at 8601 Delmar Boulevard for an imminent bow Webster Groves Subaru has bought Lou Fusz's Isuzu and Suzuki dealerships.

The purchase includes all existing automobile and parts inventory at Fusz's shop at Manchester Road and Lindbergh Boulevard, according to Ted Biewend, owner of Webster Groves Subaru. TOWNTALK: A field of 26 golfers played more than 100 holes of golf each at the second annual Visitation Academy Golf Marathon the other day at Norwood Hills C.C. Tourney director was J. Kim Tucci, with an assist from Mike Tuckey serving as chairman and Jack Brennan serving as honorary chairman. Each golfer's goal was to raise at least $2,000 to help underwrite the school's SAFARI Auction on March 6.

More than $25,500 was raised. Charlie Gitto Jr. still managed a smile after missing an eagle putt. The quote of the day came from Brennan, who clucked that he was wordsmithing a new book, "Shanking for Distance." MOREOVER: Happy 70th natal day to "the egg man," Theo Faberge, who will blow out the candles on his cake Wednesday at Famous-Barr's Galleria store. Grandson of Carl Faberge, the legendary jeweler to the Russian Imperial Court, Faberge makes those fancy-shmancy ornamental eggs, one of which will be incorporated into his birthday cake by local pastry-maker Tim Brennan.

Faberge will intro five new eggs to his St. Petersburg collection Sister Carol Anne O'Marie of San Francisco will speak Wednesday at the Press Club's noon luncheon forum series, after which she'll autograph copies of her latest, "Murder in Ordinary Time." It's the good sister's fourth book in which her fictional sleuth, Sister Carol Ann, solves a murder. For reservations, calI241-NEWS. JERRY'S KIDS: Lawyer Donald P. Gallop has been elected chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Missouri Historical Society Good neighbor award to optometrist Tom Bell, who graciously moved his office next door from his present location on Watson Road to make way for the neighboring LaRusso's Cucina to expand On her return here from a tour of Japan, Kathleen Higley, exec director of the St.

Louis Alzheimer's Association, reported that AL. eimer's is as much a problem there as it is in Ameriia. Higley addressed an assembly of researchers for Aged Peoples Health Science Hosannas to Keds Shoe Co. for having sent an early Christmas present: 240 pairs of children's shoes to the Lutheran Family and Children's Services, confirmed its CEO, the Rev. Alan Erdman Scribe Wm.

(never William) Stage is hobnobbing these days with our town's pre-eminent casting director, Carrie Houk, in such places as the Border Grill and Cafe Zoe Ringed at the 94th Aero Squadron the other night were Terry Taryle, general sales manager of Harry Gelb Frozen Foods, and Debbie Stein, an English teacher at Ladue High Ryan Mitchell Torrence arrived the other day at St. John's Mercy Medical Center, where he weighed in at 7 pounds, 15 ounces. Mom is Pattie Torrence, director of cake merchandising at Continental; pop is Mike Torrence, a Clayton attorney Keeping mom from the polls, Carlssa Noel Laugh- lin weighed in Nov. 2 at 7 pounds, 3 ounces. Parents are Christine and James Laughlin (he's a special agent with Guardian Life).

Physicist Stephen Hawking comes to Hawking transformed himself from an indifferent student into a top theoretician on the origins of the imivprsp. the screen in zss in Vatican City, he remarks on meeting the pope: "I was glad he did not know the subject of the talk I had just given: the possibility that the universe had no beginning, no moment of creation." Weaving together a series of interviews from family, colleagues and friends, "A Brief History of Time" depicts Hawking and his disability as a rare collision of misfortune and luck, obstacles and triumph. Says Hawking's mother, Isobel, perhaps the film's best discovery: "We have survived our disasters." Gently but consistently, the film presents this irony: Hawking the scientist is dazzled by universal explorations of mortality and time, while Hawking the person is very much the prey of the same two notions. "If you like, it's like some horrible Edgar Allan Poe story, like the premature burial of a man slowly trapped inside of his own body, cut off from the outside world," said Morris, whose best-known documentary is "The Thin Blue Line." "And what is the central object of Stephen's inquiry? This astrophysical object, the black hole, which is a collapsing star that produces this region cut off from the rest of the universe, a region created by a star imploding on itself. "He is diagnosed with this illness.

What does he prove? His first major result is that the universe has a beginning." Morris said he didn't want to make "this exact connection between Hawking's life and his science. But I think there is a loose metaphorical connection, a loose parallel between the two stories, that I think is fascinating." Hawking found it far less than fascinating at first. He worried that the documentary would spend too little time on his science and be diminished by details of his personal life. He said some parts of the movie, one about the time a taxi struck his wheelchair, made him squirm. The movie features a variety of trademark Morris touches, most notably composer Philip Glass' eerie score.

There is also a shot of Hawking's wheelchair, traveling through the heavens. "My original idea was for a film that was entirely science," said Hawking. "But I don't think that would have attracted a large audience, which is what I want for the science. "I signed a contract for what I thought would be a mainly scientific film. It was shown to me when we started shooting that I realized it would be half biography, but now I think that might be a good thing." One subject not covered in the movie is Hawking's leaving his wife of 25 years for his nurse.

"Of course, in making any movie, you make the story of his remarkable life condition withered, his agile mind blossomed, relentlessly probing the secrets of the yr 2 cosmos. "It's amazing not only that someone in Stephen Hawking's condition can ask these profound questions and expect answers. It's amazing that anybody in any condition can ask these questions and expect answers," said Errol Morris, the film's director. For the many who purchased "A Brief History of Time" and never quite hoisted it from the coffee table, the film version presents Hawking's theories in an understandable way. And if the book was distinguished by Hawking's ideas, it is Hawking's personality that makes the movie stand out.

The film, which opens today, portrays Hawking as an affable genius, propelled by an insatiable sense of wonder. At one point in the documentary, he talks of pondering black holes one night while climbing into bed. "My disability makes this rather a slow process, so I had plenty of time," he jokes. On giving a speech Hawking and Errol Morris, director of "A Brief History of Time." Jeremy Irons: For Real of your job and I might feel the same way about i i '4 By Hillel Italie Of the Associated Press NEW YORK IT'S THE PERFECT image of the "real" Jeremy Irons, the very picture of refinement: reclining in an overstuffed chair, pouring himself a glass of bottled water, holding a cigarette at a 45-degree angle. "Would you like something to drink?" he asked amiably in that rich, cultured voice, one that hardly suggests the sinister Claus von Bulow of "Reversal of Fortune" but rather an English gentleman enjoying a weekend at his country estate.

This was Irons giving another award-winning performance: the interview subject on his best behavior. The tape was on and so was the actor, dressed comfortably in corduroys and a giving interviews. But I not giving you that and you're not giving me that." Instead, he offered thoughtful, articulate answers, discussing the musicals he saw as a child and how painful it was to watch himself in his first film, "Nijinsky." Slim and long-legged, with dark brown eyes and a thin mouth that always carries a trace of a smile, Irons, 44, enjoys playing real people forced to become actors, cleverly or not so cleverly hiding their multiple lives. As the obsessed geologist in "The French Lieutenant's Woman," he was torn between his very proper fiancee and the femme fatale played by Meryl Streep. In "Dead Ringers," he starred as twin brothers who exchange identities.

As von Bulow, a role for which he won an Academy Award, he was the ft 7 Is too. late to. send in a unique, exciting and publishable name for the Post-Dispatch's new page aimed at teen-age readers, send your suggestions by Saturday, November 14 to ItlGIltity CriSISj Blen Firman, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 900 North Tucker Boulevard, St. Louis, Mo.

63101. The winner will receive tickets to a luxury box for a Cardinals game during the 1993 season. Look for the mexxpaige mmimtw title Aba 23. socialite accused of trying to murder his wife. "Claus was, in a way, the apex of that sort of character, of what one thinks of as an enigma, as I think all people are.

Even his friends don't i "1 dont think acting is faking. Faking is what we do in life." Jeremy Irons know if he's guilty or innocent," Irons said. "Claus was an actor. Someone said at the time, 'Remember, Claus is rather a bad I said, 'I can't use and I sort of put it to one side. Then, in one of the reviews, the critic said I played him like a bad actor, and I thought that was good." In his latest film, "Waterland," opening today, See IRONS, Page 5 denim shirt, all charm and self-effacement as he ponders the difference between acting and real life.

"I don't think acting is faking. Faking is what we do in life," he said. "I sit here with you in life, and you sit here with me. For all I know, you might find interviewing actors one of the most tedious parts Jeremy Irons with his wife, Sinead Cusack, who stars with him in "Waterland.".