The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 44

E-4 The Orlando Sentinel, Wednesday, November 1 1 989 r-r Salkind and Jane Chaplin, his companion of 4 years. The producer now has a house in Orlando. SALKIND From E-1 Albertsons 2 A I avUs 3 i I' PMT0 SPICiM, 12 EXP. ROLL tfMEVP TO IkI: 1 1 THINK IMS HI PRINTS THINK then Salkind has become the creative arm of a producing team that has turned out one winner after another. The Three Musketeers in 1974 and its sequel put him and his father into the big leagues.

The three Superman movies sealed their reputation. Superman: The Movie, which grossed $85 million, took two laborious years to produce. The Sal-kinds were treading new ground. To put the deal together, Ilya went to Los Angeles, where the trade press dubbed him a wunderkind. Warner which was to release the film, wanted Salkind to put a star in the role of the Man of Steel, although Salkind lobbied for an unknown actor.

Before Christopher Reeve took the role, the lead was offered to Robert Redford, who turned it down. ative control of his projects. It is he who approves the final cut, not the director. He says he will relinquish Superboy when he senses it can follow the path he has laid out for it. That direction is something he changed radically in the show's second season.

The characters in the lead parts have been altered and new actors have been cast. While this was a bold move, Gerber says Viacom readily agreed. "He has a very strong sense of story line and character." Each day, Salkind juggles what amounts to four or five mini-films. There's a script or two in preparation, a script being written, a script being shot and a show being cut in the editing room. Salkind pulls every string.

"I am not delegating one inch, negotiating one frame," he says. "It's to the point that they call me from the set if they change one line." This degree of responsibility means he alone takes the heat from film and television critics. Salkind concedes he was a difficult man to live with the few weeks before the new season of Superboy premiered in early October. Bad reviews he cannot ignore. Now that the reviews are good, he has never been more encouraged or enthusiastic about his career, especially the return to filmmaking.

Right now he wants to do actionadventure movies. Maybe later, he says, he will do more serious films. think I had a late adolescence," he jokes.) Columbus will be a step in that direction. In Central Florida he will be a pioneer in establishing a filmmaking tradition. He is exploring new territory, a little like his Christopher Columbus.

The notion is not lost on him. "I think I have never functioned so well by being here," he says. "I feel at home. I feel good." I am not delegating one inch in producing 'Superboy', negotiating one frame. It's to the point that they call me from the set if they change one line.

Ilya Salkind Superboy was his re-entry into the production business after a year of taking time to rest and reflect on his goals. He liked television, but he had never produced it. "I felt I had to go back through a different door," he says jn his Universal Studios office, decorated with a wall of mirrors and overstuffed furniture. "That's where television came up. It was a very interesting challenge for me to start literally from nothing.

I think it was a way of finding myself through a trial period." Coming to America was also a chance for Salkind to escape the long shadow of his father and prove, mostly to himself, that he could go the rough road alone, says Michael Gerber, president of acquisitions and first-run programming for Viacom Enterprises, which syndicates Superboy. (The show airs at 6:30 p.m. Saturdays on WOFL-Channel 35.) Ilya was born in Mexico City, the first and only son of his Mexican mother, a writer and painter, and his Russian-born father. He grew up in a dozen countries, led by his parents to whatever place they had found work. It was not an easy life, he recalls.

It was lonely and insecure. His father had his ups and downs, as most filmmakers do. Salkind remembers that once, when he was very young, his soup was taken away because the hotel bill where the family was staying had not been paid. "What it brought was a tremendous sense of improvisation, of suryival, of fighting," Salkind says. "I don't want it to happen again.

I don't want it to happen to my children." (He has four from three relationships.) As an adolescent and a teen-ager, Salkind says, he was "an angry young man." While initially he had not intended to follow his father in filmmaking, he never found his direction in school. When he was 20 or 21, his father called him home from school in London and told him he had to either come to work for him or start out on his own. He had lost bundles on his two most recent films and there was no money for school. Salkind stayed in the business. He started at the bottom as a runner, but he liked it.

Suddenly the movies he had been savoring for so many years meant something. "All these references started to be useful. I knew so much," he says. He was 21 when he first saw Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and wept. It finally clicked that he would make a career of movies, and this was the kind of movie he would aspire to make.

(He still keeps a videotape of the film in his office.) In 1971, he persuaded his father to produce Jules Verne's Light at the Edge of the World, starring Kirk Douglas, and earned his first credit as associate producer. Since ii 3" PRINTS God," Salkind says now.) Not until Marlon Brando accepted the role of Superman's father did the project begin to come together. Following Superman III, Salkind produced Supergirl in 1984 and in 1985 Santa Claus: The Movie. Both were financially successful but somehow left him unfulfilled. The films were too commercial, he says, based a little too much on a formula.

"I wasn't an easy or happy man." That's when he met Jane Chaplin, his companion now of four years and the mother of his 2-year-old son, Orson. He and Chaplin, the sixth daughter of Charlie Chaplin, retreated to Spain for a year. He returned to London to develop the Superboy series, now in its second season and still enjoying healthy ratings. He has been producing the show in Orlando since August 1988, and the trick now is learning when to let it go. Salkind, unlike some other executive producers, maintains absolute ere-it Theatre Downtown extends Toe run Theatre Downtown has extended its run of the Stephen Most drama Poe, a play about the last few days in the life of author Edgar Allan Poe.

Performances of the play will continue at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday at the theater, 2113 N. Orange Orlando. Tickets are $5 and $10. For reservations, call (407) 841-0083.

mm Welcomes HALLOWEEN FILM DEVELOPING SPECIAL DOUBLE 3" PRINTS or BIG 4" PRINTS 1 Oh EXP. ROLL '(REG. $6.99) i EXP. ROLL $407 14 (REG. $3.29) 9 1 5,1 IE EXP.

DISC $017 10 (REG. $4.99) yU 1 Qfi EXP. ROLL 6" i till '(REG. $9.99) Get 2 sets of standard size 3" prints or 1 set of 30 larger 4" prints from 35mm, disc 110 or 126 I color print film (C-41 process). I Not valid with any other coupon.COUPON MUST BE ATTACHED TO OUTSIDE OF ORDER I ENVELOPE BEFORE PROCESSING TO RECEIVE DISCOUNT.

Offer good 11189 thru 11889. I mmm 1236 i WED. THUR. FRI. SAT, SUN.

MON. TUE. I WEO, N0V.1 NOV. 2 NOV. 3 N0V4 NOV.

8 I NOV. 6 I NOV. 7 NOV. 8 Orange Seminnta Hnimtu tnaut Summer Special Mark Charles Hotel Suite $7R (sleep 6) '3 fri. or sat.

Stnrpc flnlu Ticked: at the Orlando Arena Box Office, and all area lickefmaster Outlets including Maison Blanche Prices: 19 50 to S37 00 (plus convenience charge for phone outlet soles) Tonight-Sat, at 8pm, Matinees Ihur Sat Sun ot 2pm For 24-Hour information on the Orlando Broadway Series call the 74" Radio Broadway Hotline: 897-4200 (Ext 0074) Copyright Itlt by Albcrtton't, Ine, All Right RtMnwd Good thru Nov. 20, 1 989 Must present ad at eheck-ln fyv3' PnPfop La tor discount 1401 S.Atlantic (at 3rd St. Romp) 1-800-432-7773 8 904.436-0030 ONE BEDROOM SUITE.