The Courier from Waterloo, Iowa • 56

PAGE F6 WATERLOO-CEDAR FALLS COURIER SUNDAY, MARCH 8, 1998 Entertainment Actress works to come back from 'Showgirls' -ft at" -fix yqf talks now about what happened then likely has been discussed in depth with savvy consultants. Indeed, a personal press agent sits in on her interviews and doesn't hesitate to correct the course of the conversation if she feels the need. prefer this not be a 'Showgirls' piece," she says at one juncture. "I mean, that was so two years But Berkley seems genuine, too, in her refusal to be a victim "I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry for me" and the proof that she actually has some of the self-conviction she claims "I stopped reading the reviews and I knew I wouldn't let them stop me" is that, hey, she's still working. "Really, the next day I was back at auditions, because I knew I would turn it around." She takes it a bit far, though, in asserting that "Showgirls" was a good career move, "because how many girls would kill to have their name around the world?" If Berkley was devastated, she's not admitting it.

And good for her. With two independent fdms in the can "The Taxman" and "The Last Call" as well as two featured roles in major-studio releases, she has obviously survived Verhoeven and Eszterhas' gross miscalculation by refusing to let the notoriety stick. Now that's a show, girl. New York Daily News NEW YORK The formerly notorious Elizabeth Berkley sees that her spilling cleavage is inviting attention. "Now, now, Elizabeth," she says laughing as she closes her sweater for cover, "you've done that already." It must have been a nightmare.

Elizabeth Berkley took off her clothes and stood naked before America, And America told her to get dressed and go home. She was the showgirl of "Showgirls." There were others, too Gina Gershon was the arch-rival showgirl but Berkley was naked the most, so much so that it amounted to a clear instruction to moviegoers that she was now to be regarded as a star. Didn't work that way. Before the film's release, director Paul Vcrho-even and writer Joe Eszterhas (they previously teamed on "Basic went around sneering that "Showgirls" might be too much for the sexual rubes of America to handle. Actually, the sexual rubes liked it.

Everyone else hated it. It was an aggressively nasty movie, exploitive of women and demeaning, too. Verhoeven and Eszterhas really deserved rough treatment though not any kind they might actually like but as we typically do in this country, we got mad at the girl. The critics claimed she couldn't even lap-dance, and particularly the lead in the much-anticipated new movie from the writingdirecting team that had just made Stone an international star with just a crotch shot. Berkley gave them her all.

And sum after left the country. "1 went to Europe," she says, explaining how she effected a strategy that allowed her to pick herself up and carry on. "I decided this movie got me world known and I was going to go to every major territory MGM sent me to so that when I was getting ready to do another film, financiers would back me." Today she is promoting "The Real Blonde," an urban romantic comedy from Tom DiCillo in in which she has a small role as a girl who doubles for Madonna in videos. The opening shot of a so-vcry-blond Berkley prepares you for the fact that she has been cast as a bimbo again she was the actress who couldn't act in "The First Wives Club" but she's likeable in the role. As she is in life.

Berkley is the one to introduce the subject "The 'Showgirls' experience was pretty rough, as you can imagine" and urges questions into the open. "You can ask me about it," she insists. "In fact, you can ask me about anything." Berkley got herself new management after "Showgirls" (Sandra Bullock's team, in fact), and how she fill 1 Elizabeth Berkley picked on her delivery of the frequently repeated line: "I am not a whore." It was reported she'd had an affair with Verhoeven; expected star treatment from her agent; and instead of being properly modest while being called to strut the set nude daily, had actually improvised some sexy bits of business on her own. But Janet Maslin in The New York Times delivered the cruel truth. Elizabeth Berkley, she wrote, is no Sharon Stone.

That, after all, was so much the point. Berkley was 22 and a former series regular in a television show by the aimed at the afterschool audience when she won 'Bug Juice' takes up-close look at summer camp 1 Knight Ridder Newspapers What is it about summer camp? On one hand, it's a teen experience defined by crude cabins, narrow bunk beds, swarms of mosquitoes and homesickness. On the other, it's celebrated as a fun, uplifting experience that delivers lifelong memories and friendships. Camp veterans usually come away with both points of view. The Disney Channel takes an up- ation.

Creator and executive producer Douglas Ross said the show needed such kids. "Because 'Bug Juice' has no narrator, it was important that the kids be strong thinkers and articulate speakers," he says. No matter, says Doig. She was a camper at age 10, and the experience last year at Camp Waziyatah, except for the cameras, was typical: It was wonderful. After watching "Bug Juice," the kid in all of us will want to sign up for this summer.

BUG JUICE 4 p.m. Sundays The Disney Channel (cable) AP PHOTO Singer Michael Crawford appears in "Michael Crawford in Concert," his first TV special, which will be shown as part of PBS' March pledge drive. Singer begins tour with PBS TV special close view of what life is like at a typ ical eight-week summer camp in a good because I can't act," Doig says. "What you see on the show is completely me." She says that the presence of a film crew did little to inhibit any of the counselors or campers. "When the cameras were first around us, it was a little awkward," Doig says.

"But you really do forget that they are there. What they got was the real summer camp experience." That experience runs the gamut, from rallies around nighttime camp-fires, the telling of spooky stories, to the horseplay that erupts spontaneously when you get more than three teens together. In one scene, counselors teach sportsmanship and teamwork through inter-camp basketball games. In another, a camper cooks up a midnight mudslide contest in the midst of a raging thunderstorm an activity quickly shut down by an angry counselor who pointed out the possibility of deadly lightning strikes. The cameras don't blink on the personal moments, either.

One homesick girl is filmed making a tearful call to beg her parents to come get her. irig in the lake and took in a little too much water. le thought he was going to throw up, and his friends asked them to stop shooting." Doig, who says the only time she winced was when the cameras caught her waking up at 7:30 a.m. not her best time of day, she says is still amazed that the experience wound up on TV. "I look back on the summer and I can't even imagine what they are going to put on," she says.

"My friends tease me about being a celebrity." What the producers stitched together from hundreds of hours of tape is a show that reinforces our best beliefs about the fun and personal exploration that should be a part of growing up. In a hunt for criticism, the only obvious one is that the kids in "Bug Juice" seem just a bit too fresh-scrubbed, a bit too Disney-ish to be taken as representative of a modern teenager. It's a multicultural group from city and suburban homes, but for the most part these kids are likely to be the overachievers of their gener new documentary series called "Bug Juice," airing Sundays on the cable service. The 18-episode scries, which start ed this month, follows the lives of several dozen girls and boys, ages 12- Exercise and earn money by delivering a Courier route. 15, during their stay last summer at Camp Waziyatah near Waterford, News and Views.

We deliver. They told us that you ever feel uncomfortable, they would stop filming," Doig says. "I only know one time that happened. A boy was play- Maine. It's an unscripted, unvarnished look at these kids, the expectations and trepidations they brought to the Maine wilderness, the friendships they formed, the fun and frustrations that played out over two months.

The concept at first seems hokey and boring, but the producers captured a solid snapshot of what it's like to be young and far from home. It's entertaining and at times educational for both children and parents. Annie Doig, a 20-year-old William Mary college student, is one of the camp counselors in "Bug Juice," named for the red fruit-flavored drink always on tap at Camp Waziyatah. She, like the young campers, has no TV or acting experience, and was plucked by the producers from the more than 300 campers and counselors who attended the camp last summer. "They said, be yourself.

That was t-J $3.50 for shows that start before 6 p.m. Daily JAMhU adam sandier drew barrymore UiSSSSISm AT 7:15 9:15 THE BIG LEBOWSKIr, Andrew Lloyd Webber," he told only one story. But now, at 56, Crawford offers personal history to help people relate to his show. His recap is brief: Married, two daughters, then divorced. "There is music about the beginnings of romance and breaking up of a relationship.

It applies to us all," Crawford says. "I did liken it to some of my own relationship." He also, he says, remains friends with his ex-wife and even includes her father in dedications on "On Eagle's Wings," his newest CD. Before the concert for TV, before "Phantom," Crawford starred in "Bar-num" in London and trained with Ian Adam, his voice coach for almost a quarter-century. "It's like being an athlete to sing," he says. "You have to work every day." Yet Crawford's floating falsetto tones in the televised concert were not mastered for either New York City's Broadway or London's West End.

Listen to him as Cornelius Hackl in the 1969 movie, "Hello, Dolly!" "Maybe falsetto is all I had," he muses. "I developed the lower register, a stronger voice, for For "Wings," recorded with Atlantic Records, Crawford chose inspirational songs, including a few that he first sang as a choir boy. "I'm not a preacher," he insists, "but I believe the words I sing." Yet Crawford's TV special closes on a note of inspiration. "May all your hopes and dreams forever be carried on eagle's wings," he says. And, as an afterthought, only a pinch of promotion: "It's all right if people don't know it's a recording title.

I didn't want it to be too blatant a plug." MM Sun. 1:30, 4:35, 7:15, 9:45 MUST END THURSDAY AT: 3:30 9:30 ONLY 4:35, 7:15,9:45 6:50 ONLY NOMINATED FOR 9 ACADEMY AWARDS LA. Confidential Kevin Spacey THE FULL MONTY R) Sun. 9:30 Only 9:30 Only SPHERE nim iaut DUSTIN HOFFMAN FTiT I iilLlun I (R) Sun. 12:25, 2:30, 4:45, 7:00, 9:10 4:45.

7:00, 9:10 i VICIT mAA'C NOW SHOWING! 20 20 NEW YORK (AP) Michael Crawford, best known for his title role in "The Phantom of the Opera," has moved from musical theater to live concerts and TV. "Michael Crawford in Concert," his first special for television, opens the singer's second world tour and airs as part of PBS' pledge drive for March. Check local listings for date and time. In the concert taped last month, Crawford performs as a storyteller as well as a singer. And, he says, his stories are true, and sometimes funny.

"I don't pretend to be anyone but myself," he concedes during an interview. "I want to go out there, and hopefully I can make people laugh and maybe move them as well." During Crawford's TV special, many of his jokes come at his own expense. For a year, he says, he thought that composer Andrew Lloyd Webber wanted him to sing the young romantic lead in "Phantom," not that of the old scar face. "I thought I was going to get this part," he recounts. "How absurd thinking of myself as the heroic lead.

I obviously was not right for it at all." And Crawford adds, "We don't recognize the truth at the time, and we feel unhappy. We talk about them later and laugh." But not all of his stories are humorous. During the concert, he sings two Irish favorites, "Galway Bay" and "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen," and talks about his Irish grandmother. And the more he talks about Edith Kathleen O'Keefe, he chokes. "Yes, I did, thinking about her.

I always do. She was my dearest friend," he says afterwards, conceding the tears. "I've never sung about her in this There's not a day goes by that I don't think about her. I lost my mother at an early age and we became closer. We were looking after each other, Nan and me, against the world.

The more special people are and the more we love them, the harder it is to deal with losing them, even when they're old. I think a lot of people can relate to that." This year, as he tours, Crawford intends to expand his concert with four or five Irish songs, add more stories about his grandmother, and sing with more of her accent. He calls his new strategy of storytelling "the bravest I've ever been." While ori his only other concert tour, "Michael Crawford Performs Coll.g. Squ.r. Mall I phon.

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