The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 313

(TAT FNTIAIR 1A A A N-L--X. 1- i-j, jL LOS ANGELES TIMES FEBRUARY 18, 1979 THE KABUKI FAMILY TREE: 400-YEAR-OLD LIVING TREASURE Originally written by Chikamatsu Monzae-mon (1653-1724) for the Japanese puppet theater, the play was later adapted for the Kabuki stage. The drama depicts an old priest's sacrifice of himself to permanent exile and death on a distant island after a courageous fight against Sen-o, "the most evil of samurai." In a final scene, we see the old priest alone on his island surrounded by the sea, and we sense the peculiar pathos of this Japanese play and marvel at its special Kabuki effects. Tomijuro will play the priest Shunkan and also dance the role of the father lion in "Renjishi," the part of the young lion being Continued from Page 70 through Saturday. It is only the third time the Grand Kabuki ever has appeared in Los Angeles (the first time was in 1960).

The troupe will be concluding a national tour that included performances in New York and at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington. The company also performed at opening ceremonies of the Terrace Theater, the Kennedy Center's fourth theater, which was built with funds largely donated by the Japanese government. In addition to the dance "Renjishi," the 60-member company of actor-dancers, musicians and specially skilled Kabuki stage crew will present the classic jidaimono or heroic period play known as "Shunkan." BY DAVID OYAMA NEW YORK In the Kabuki dance "Renjishi," a young lion is pushed over the edge of a ravine by its father in order to teach it a lesson in survival. The young lion tumbles far down the ravine, the dancer enacting the role whirling and skipping the length of the Kabuki theater runway known as the hanamichi, his steps punctuated by the traditional clatter and stamping of the Kabuki stage. The fall ends with the dancer leaping straight up and then suddenly crashing elegantly and precisely onto the runway in a bemused lotus position kimono, skirtlike hakama and all.

This is but a glimpse of the 400-year-old popular theater of Japan which the Grand Kabuki, led by Tomijuro Nakamura will bring to the Shrine Auditorium Wednesday JIB mm. I -v 7 I'll flil Ifei J(ij l' Kankuro Nakamura in scene from" Renjishi," in which a son and a father Nakamura' father, Tomijuro Nakamura V) perform an ancient drama of the samurai. WESTWARD THEY COME, BIG BUCKS FOR BIG BOOKS ney-agent George Diskant instigated the largest-ever sale for a piece of new fiction. Author Paul Erdman of is guaranteed $1.2 million for a novel to be called "Atlantic City." The buyers are Simon Schuster and Pocket Books. The film version also was concocted at the lunch: It will be a joint venture including Erdman, director Sydney Pollack and producer George Eng-lund.

Its genesis was somewhat simple, reminiscent almost of the Warner era. (Details on Erdman and his deal next week in Calendar,) Englund, well-versed in the workings of Las Vegas, wanted to do a picture about a gaming town. Erdman, adept at inventing financially themed fiction, was a natural choice, and so was agent Diskant, whose powerB of attorney are not taken lightly in Hollywood's complicated deal making today. This particular barter Is a breakthrough Please Turn to Nge 32 before, however. That balmy time is long gone when the late Jack Warner could be sold a manuscript in a Palm Springs sauna.

Warner was notorious for buying fast, and for flat fees-sometimes prudently and sometimes not Today's negotiations are not so simple: Authors' contracts often exceed 40 pages and include such terms as rolling breakeven and cross-col-lateralization. The phraseology makes today's negotiations seem wholly impersonal. Is the traditional "smallncss" of publishing the cultivated onc-on-one relationships-an anachronism? "Quite the contrary," claims Evarts Zieglcr, long the acknowledged dean of L.A. literary agents. "Today's dealing is more straightforward.

And there are more gentlemen involved." There's also more money. Much more. Last fall, over a Polo lounge lunch, attor BY PAUL ROSENFIELD Todays authors who deliver fUmable mater-al are in the midst of their own inflationary spiral. This three-part series deals with cur-ent hot properties the books, the star writers, the bucks. Rosenfield interviewed more han 40 sources in New York, San Francisco md Los Angeles.

Today's segment covers the movie deals and deal makers. NEW YORK-At Elaine's, a famed writers' watering hole, and all along Publishers Row, the indications are that one trend is now overlapping another. The Big Book era one true phenomenon of the 70s-has begun a shift to California. Finding a major publisher in Manhattan last week wasn't simple: Simon Schuster's editor-in-chief Michael Korda was returning from Los Angeles just as De-lacorte boss Ross Claiborne was arriving. In September, Random House's David Obst will relocate in Hollywood.

At a trendy Madison Avenue bookshop, one customer suggested subtitling the best-seller section "California," The fact is that Los Angclcs-in terms of per capita sales-is now America's biggest book market, and Southern California now has the largest number of library checkouts in the world. Deal making, too, is emanating more and more from the West Coast. It's different than.