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Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 39

Publication:
Chicago Tribunei
Location:
Chicago, Illinois
Issue Date:
Page:
39
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

(Ehirago (Tribune Friday, June 15, 1973 Weetehd Section 2 CLASSIFIED ADS Movie' review 1 i I 4 He's lust mad about Addie z-- IN. LOVE with a nine-year-old I'M girl. TRIBUNE MINIREVIEW Ryon'f daughter "PAPER MOON" Product iH ImcM br tolar BoxKiKWick, tcrwn-lay Afvin tamnt bast i novti by Jo David-. Brown, abotasraahM' by LmiIo Kovact, proluciion euaa by Polly Plattj Paramount, ratoast at Ida Slata Lake Tbaaltr. Rate R.

mi THE CAST Hernamet is. Tatum O'Neal; she's Ryan's daughter by his first wife actress Joanna Moorel; and she is the beguiling star of Peter Bogdanovich's most enjoyable fourth feature film, "Paper The first thing that strikes you about "Paperl Moon" is that, like Bogdano vich's "fThe Last Picture Show," it has been filmed in black and white. For a film set literally on the highways and biways' of the Middle West during the tail nd of, the Depression, it is a natural and sensible choice. Few visual effects- in film are as chilling and strangely stirring as a broad expanse of grayrcolored flatland that meets, a whiter shade of cloud-streaked Bubbling under; the- somber skies of "Paper Moon" is a tender comedy, the Mom Pray AOdio Logfini Triala Dalitnr Dapury Hirdm Jctt Hardin Imogona Dtik Clark Ryan CNtjl -TatiMD O'Naal Madallnt Katn John Hilltrman John merman P. J.

Johnion Burton Gilliam story of a Bible hustler Ryan O'Neal soon outhustled by a brassy, parentless little girl Tatum O'Neal. After form-" ing an uneasy partnership based on his car and her wits, Moses and little Ad- Tribuna photoOM Cartar Micki. Grant, who prescribes "Cope" for temporary relief of tension. People-' a-- ties coping oniourrronts 'die run a cross-country string of scams from five-dollar bill-changing swindles to $500 theft of i bootleg whisky. But their success as a bunko team, ulti-v mately is secondary to their growing affection for each other, and the pic- ture hangs on whether their vrelation-' ship will last.

1 THE FILM Is pockmarked with small mistakes period detail continually is thrust in our faces, Miss O'Neal occa-sjonally is given arch, melodramatic dialog, which undercuts her passionate spontaneity but they cannot dim Miss O'Neal's performance or is it, her essence? She. is more than role is something special in the well-established tradition of children on film. Children in better "American movies 1 "Shane" and "The Last Picture Show," for example usually are presented as confused little people hungering for an ideal father figure. And to the degree that members of the audience 'are themselves still searching for a spiritu- al father, an ideal code of conduct, the child becomes the locus of their identi- fication with the movie. Children in European films typically' serve a different function.

In Italian. films De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief" is a prime example the child, more often than not, is an innocent, not' yet corrupted by the world, standing as a moral reminder of the purity an adult should seek to regain. THE CHARACTER of Addie in "Pa-per Moon" is a hardy mixture of both these traditions. She is a swindler, no doubt about it and therein lies her perverse, contemporary charm but she also is more moral than her adopt-; ed father, forever demanding that he act with compassion, that he differentiate between their marks' need for money. In way she is -more like an adult bottled up inside a children's size 10 dress.

If that analysis leaves you with the impression that "Paper Moon" is a somber, message picture, I apologize. It's just that it is distinguished by its moral tone, and it is the tone that lifts it above the average flim-flam comedy. TWO OTHER performances deserve comment One is that of Ryan O'Neal, whose presence continually reminds us that "Paper Moon" is just a movie, and a Hollywood production at that. Part of the problem is an Improbable, mustache. More damaging: in a picture filled with unfamiliar, for-' lorn faces, O'Neal's fan-magazine kisser breaks the period realism that Bog-.

danovich tries so hard to evoke. And then there's a young lady I don't recall having seen in a movie. Her name is P. J. Johnson, and as the hand-maiden slave to a carnival stripper she brings a brashness to the screen that frequently eclipses that of even Tatum O'Neal.

Credit for the performances of the Misses Johnson and O'Neal must be shared with director Bogdanovich, who displays as in "The Last Picture Show" a talent for revitalizing the morality and visual style of films long Best of all, in "Paper Moon" he does that while making us smile. -N Gene Siskel if I 'I ti --v h. 4 ago because "I quite. rightly believed I couldn't become a professional here." In 1967, she returned to the Happy Medium at least long enough to sing some of her own songs in a revue called "Bon Voyage on the street still recognize her from five years ago as Peggy Nolan, the first black on the TV soaper Another World "They didn't kill me off when I left, just sent Peggy home for a while. I was kind of glad.

It used to be just awful to pick up a script and find out somebody was lying there dead." "Can't Cope" billed as a "new musical entertainment" because it has no revue skits developed out of the brain of Vinnette Carroll. That accomplished director, also founder of a black and Puerto Rican art showcase called Urban Arts Corps, stumbled on Micki's writing thru a mutual friend and conceived of putting the songs together into a show. The result was an assemblage of 26 song and dance numbers, all performed by an all-black cast "I'm for integrated theater," she said, "but a white person simply couldn't fit in all parts of this show." It mixes easy-listening jazz, rock, and gospel with messages on how "It Takes a Whole Lot of Human Feeling to Be a Human Being" and how blacks have "Gotta Keep Movin'." ON WEDNESDAY, the cast played for a house of black high school students who clamored around her after- wards, one saying "thank you for writing such a beautiful play." Much of the Happy Medium crowd has been black, but the box office reports that white audiences have begun to discover its color-crossing existence. Blacks tell 'about their lives, but humanity's 'humanity. Linda Winer LITTLE Micki Grant of Chicago's Voodlawn used to wait 'til everyone had gone to bed before turning on her light to write songs.

She's a good deep sleep-, er now. "Little" Micki grew upi moved to New York, and wrote the words and music to "Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope" the black musical that won one Outer Circle Critics award, two Drama Desk awards, one Grammy, and a pair of Tony nominations. Now she goes to sleep knowing "I won't wake up to find somebody's takeri it all away from me I'll wake up being exactly what I've always wanted to be. That took some getting used to." Micki brought all that well-being to the Happy Medium Wednesday afternoon to make a quality-control check on Chicago's "Can't Cope" edition, now in its eighth month but with a virtually new cast. She opened another one in Toronto last night, runs one in absentia in.

Los Angeles, and performs' herself in the New York in its 16th month. Coping gets easier and easier, to handle. BUT THEN, Micki appears to be one of your, more copable types. Her show named for the shouted warning of a woman driver who'd just had a fen-derful of another motorist makes upbeat fun frOm rats in ghetto hallways, cabs that refuse to transport blacks, and, for starters, Mississippi. "All God's children gotta cope," the song says, as clenched fists split into peace signs.

I figured she must get her share of flak from more radical blacks, now that the era of "celebrations" and similar spiritual paeans has turned saccharine with the surveillanced '70s. You don't hear a lot about "new worlds a-borning" anymore. "People forget," she smiled, cherub face curving like a delighted grapefruit. "People forget that sometimes, black people can get headaches from just feeling bitter and beating their breasts. One black reviewer, before we opened in New York, said I should be ashamed to waste our time with entertainment in days like' these! "But I believe you have to keep doors open if you want people to hear what you have to say.

The ironies exist in my lyrics, but the audience still walks out feeling good. One woman wrote me a letter that really said it she said the show made her bleed, but the incision was so clean. "BOTH RACES sit in the audience and share the spirit. Maybe they lose it the next day again, but at least they feel better momentarily about reaching a peace together. You'd be surprised how many see this show more than once." The woman who sat next to me at the Wednesday matinee has seen it "10 or 12 times, at least." She also brought 100 friends with her one Sunday.

Micki calls her "mama." Micki's mom, immortalized in such Grant lyrics as "Mother taught me to turn the other cheek and think before I speak," remembers finding her daughter scribbling songs at 2 a. m. and writing a lot of poems as a child. "I didn't pay much attention until her grade-school teacher told me Micki was writing all the material for the school shows." Her mother clapped Wednesday with the church revival part of "Can't Cope" and clasped hands with the cast members as they bounced thru the' cabaret meeting strangers'. She recalled the first time Micki heard gospel, in the WoocQawn Baptist Church.

MICKI WENT TO New York 10 years' Tatum O'Neal, something special in "Paper Moon." A walk (A) 1 Mums on Michigan Michigan Avenue is going European to the, extent of selling flowers on the street, anyway. Starting today, Amlings Flower-land, 625 N. Michigan, will sell fresh flowers, in season, from an old English flower For kids Special for kids in a couple of spots this weekend. In Des Plaines, a one-ring European-style circus with 18 acts from lions and tigers to clowns. Show times: 2 and 8 today and tomorrow; Sunday, 2 and 6.

A benefit at Holy Name Hospital, 100 North River Rd. In Winnetka, a children's fair on the Village Green at Maple and Elm Sts. Today, II 'til tomorrow, 10 'til 5. Back to nature Weekend after weekend, it becomes more evident that the city folks want to get away from it all and gefbaclt to the land, whatever open spaces they can find of it. Wilderness Shack in La Grange is one place that can tell you here to go and set you up to get there.

Sunday they've planned a I -day beginner climbing school Devils Lake, Wis. Fea 's $10 is person. Reserve 482-8210. After his -trip, you just might like to sign up for their trips to the- "big" Walking tours are a spa-' cialty in Chicago, and why not our "toddlin town" is brimming famous architecture. Sun- day at 2, the Glessner House people invite you 1 to take a walk on Wacker at Michigan Ave- tue.

They'll point ojut the "biggies'" along the way, from, Marina City to the 'Sears Tower and some oldies in between. Campus jazzmen Vido wheels Such a -jazzy what with Ella, Count Basie, and Stan Kenton around, not vto. forget Ramsey And more jazzmen are coming in this weekend the 7th Annual American College Jazz Festival starts today at McCormick Place. The best jazz musicians from colleges across the country. Tonight at tomorrow, 3 end Sunday at 4.

Elkhart Lake; starts with hrvd that rhymes with and that stands tof'VROOM. Formula Vae, sedans, Can-Am type cars are'among the June Sprints entries racing on the Road America course. Tomorrow, Sunday, $5. Can't make the trip? Then watch Indy driver Bud Tingelstad's "Astro Spiral Car" act he makes a roll 360 degrees in flight. Tonight at 8:30, Santa Fe Speedway.

Adults, kids. $1.50. Mastering the Chinese brushstroke The. Chinese ertist paints with a speed that amazes most Westernersthe cardinal rule is "a clean brush and a quick stroke." That's the tenet of l-chen Wu, a San Francisco artist-teacher who's in town to exhibit 100 paintings and calligraphy. Today thru Sunday, 10 'til the Chinese Benevolent Association of Chicirfgo, 250 W.

22d PI. He'll also give daily demonstrations of Chinese brush techniques'. Fretting iff, -set n.i,, 'i-iiwi Take a class or two One way to beat the summer heat: ignore it and take a class. There are dance courses starting to- -day at the Central Y. 222-8300.

Indoor plants, ceramics, and weaving, photogra- ohy at the Old Town Triangle Center start June 18. Ml 2- 4262. These and oth-sr interesting classes at Beverly Art Center start June 25. 445-3838. Guitar banjo lessons at Old Town School of Folk Music start June 18.

525-7472. Crafts for sale An Artisans Fair happens tomorrow end Sunday at Rogers Park Jewish Community Center, 7101 N. Greenview Av. Other fairs ebout town: antique dealers, and artists, in Harper Court tomorrow and Sunday. Same days for the Chicago Lawn Art Fair, 63d Street Si Kediie Avenue.

More than 100 artists and craftsmen at the Bolingbrook Commons Act Fair, T-55 and HI. Hwy. 53, Sunday. An art fair in Evergreen Plaza tomorrow and Sunday, another at Grove Shopping Center, Elk Grove Village. Another of those delightful concerts at the Museum of Contemporary Art tonight -at 8:15.

Alice Artzt plays the classic guitar to thel tune of three sonatas by' Scarlatti, a fugue by and a Catalan folk song by Duarte. $3.50. Music of an-' sther variety: "Broadway in Beverly" tonight and to-; morrow, Sunday, Music from "Lullaby Broadway," "Camelot," "West Side Story." $3. Hire a skipper, sail the lake Imagine yourself floating serenely on Lake Michigan, dining on fresh Dungeness crab from Burhop's, a cool French salad and luscious dessert from La Cordon Bleu. Hire a skipper for eh evening or afternoon, invite some friends or make it a romantic twosome.

Two places" for nonskippers to make it happen: City Sailors (935-6145) and American Youth Hostels EA 7-8114). Both have moonlight and sunrise cruises aboard 19-foot sailboats. AYH also has a 3 1 -foot sloop and City Sailors a 27-footer. Pricls vary according to the time, clay, Made in America "An Evening with Indians" is tha. name of the show, end what that means is an evening to see traditional American Indian costumes from all parts of the country, as, well as contemporary designs by Indians.

You'll also see the 4Devil and an exhibit of Indian handicrafts. Sponsored by the American Indian Center at Uptown Center-Hull House, .4520 N. Beacon St. Tonight and tomorrow at 8. $5.

7 if A.

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Years Available:
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