Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 43

Chicago Tribune, Monday, February 5, 2001 Section 5 Tempo Tips from The Maid are made in earnest Unlikely partners Character actors play it to the hilt in simple story of 'Spring Forward' Dear Ann Landers: This morning, I was fed up with my teenage children and wrote them this letter. Please print it for all the other children in your reading audience who need to see it: Dear Sweet Children: I'm sorry our maid (that's me) has decided to take a vacation. Here is how you can help out: When you are through using something, put it back f' 1 1 i 1 V'S i -W 1 i Ann Landers Ned Beatty (left) and Liev Schreiber drew from memory to understand their characters' relationship in "Spring Forward." 4 By Gary Dretzka Tribune Staff Writer HOLLYWOOD In "Spring Forward," Tom Gilroy's closely observed cinematic portrait of two men at opposite ends of the generation gap, Ned Beatty and Liev Schreiber demonstrate exactly what can happen when great character actors are allowed plenty of space in which to practice their craft. Beatty may have been put on Earth just to play Murph, a career municipal worker whose final year on the job is enlivened by the arrival of Paul, a hotheaded ex-con who becomes his partner. Schreiber's Paul is the kind of benign hometown mope who napped his way through high school, and then, instead of joining the army, sought momentary prosperity by robbing a doughnut shop.

Over the course of a year and seven real-time vignettes, featuring cameos by Ian Hart, Campbell Scott, Peri Gilpin and Catherine Kellner the characters become fast friends. That's it; no somersault kicks in the air, no drug overdoses, no references to Quentin Tarantino movies. The men simply talk, bond and learn from each other, splendidly. If the roles of Murph and Paul feel thoroughly lived in, most of the credit goes to Beatty and Schreiber, naturally But without Gilroy's patient direction and appreciation of complete sentences, his intelligent script probably would have been relegated to the stage. In the year it took to shoot "Spring Forward," Connecticut's four distinct seasons changed naturally, the actors' beards grew and relationships blossomed among the cast and crew.

Spend time with Beatty and Schreiber, now, and it's easy to see how closely they resemble the men they portray on screen. Recently, Schreiber found the time for afternoon tea on the patio of the Four Seasons Hotel. He had flown out the night before from New York, on his day off from the Broadway pro duction of "Betrayal." Tall and athletically built, Schreiber, 33, recalled how much he has enjoyed being a character actor, and being allowed to hone his craft alongside such estimable talents as Beatty, Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Diane Lane and Juliette Binoche, his co-star in "Betrayal." He has appeared in 30 movies and television productions in the past six years, in addition to doing a dozen or so plays since graduating from the Yale School of Drama in 1992and spending a year at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. At this pace, he's likely to catch to Beatty who has needed 29 years to log nearly 120 substantial screen and television credits by the time he turns 50. It wouldn't surprise the 63-year-old Louisville native if Schreiber does it sooner than that, however.

"Liev has a quality that I never really had," said Beatty the next day over a huge bowl of soup. "He's a high-achiever. In sports, he was aggressive he was a good player, whether it was basketball or football, and he's still like that. "You'll be around him for any length of time, and you can't really spend any time in conversation, because his phone will ring and he'll be making deals." When Beatty wasn't shooting "Spring Forward," he could mostly be found at his mountain home, near Sequoia National Park. He concedes that he's slowed down since leaving the TV show "Homicide" but says playing Murph was too good a gig to pass up.

In developing their characters in "Spring Forward," both actors were able to draw from memory. After his parents separated when he was 4, Schreiber looked to his grandfather as a surrogate father. While at Hampshire College, he also befriended another older gentleman, a maintenance worker in the athletic department. "It was very easy for me to relate to Paul's desire to be understood and accepted by an older man," Schreiber later would translate into the lengthy conversations between Murph and Paul, as they went about the menial tasks assigned them by the Parks Department. If Schreiber still is able to find older actors who can teach him a new trick or two, Beatty finds the entertainment industry sadly devoid of peers and mentors.

"It's a tradition that we're losing," Beatty said. "On the movies I work on, not only aren't there any actors older than me, there's no one even close to my age. There used to be guys in their 70s and 80s who were wonderful, like Ronald Neame, who was in his 80s when I worked with him. "He should be teaching younger people how to direct. How many guys are out there directing who don't have a clue?" Of course, longevity can be a mixed blessing.

"When you have a long, beautiful body of work, like I do, you never know what people are going to come up with when they start a conversation with you," Beatty said. "My favorites are a woman came up to me once, and said, 'Do you bowl in Another time, I noticed a guy on my mountain staring at me, and he asked if I sold him a car once." said. "I very much wanted my grandfather's acceptance, his love and respect. That desire is functioning full on in Paul." Beatty was also about 4 years old when his family moved inland from a section of Louisville. He found his mentor working inside the school across the street from his new home.

"My dad was out on the road all the time, trying to sell fire hydrants, of all things I can't even imagine how difficult that must have been," Beatty said. "I started wandering over to the schoolyard across the street from where we lived, and I got to know the school's custodian James Payne and he'd let me hang out with him. After a while, he'd let me help him empty the wastebaskets and things like that. "This man had five jobs. He'd leave his job at the school and go down to Sears, to clean up down there." Gilroy has said that he came up with the deceptively simple premise for "Spring Forward" after his mother fell into a post-surgery coma, and he and his father took turns at her bedside.

During the time they spent together at the hospital, the two men opened up to each other in unexpected ways. This delayed-bonding experience where it belongs. And even if you aren't the last one who used it, put it back anyway. If you wore it, sat in it or slept in it, please wash it, fold it and put it away. Don't borrow anything without asking.

Don't expect others to do your job because you are irresponsible or lazy. If you leave bread crumbs on the counter, spill jelly on the floor or drip ice cream on the table, take a cloth or a sponge and wipe it up. It will take only a minute and will be greatly appreciated. Do something that you don't have to do and do it without being told. For example, wipe a mirror, mop the kitchen floor, vacuum the hallway or wash a load of towels.

This is a big house, and a lot of people live in it. If everyone does his or her small part, tilings will run smoother, your life will be a lot easier, and so will mine. Your Mother, The Maid, in Raleigh, N.C. Dear Mother: You spoke for a great many moms today. Your suggestions are merely expressions of consideration for others.

If each one of us does just a little more than our part, the rewards in terms of peace and harmony will be enormous. Give it a shot, and you will see that Mom is right. As usual. Dear Ann Landers: Our 20-year-old daughter is serious about her boyfriend, "Dexter." They have been dating exclusively for two years and plan to marry. We don't know him very well, but we would like to.

We have invited Dexter over repeatedly, and he always finds some excuse not to come. We have asked him to come for family dinners and holiday celebrations, yet he always turns us down. He used to stop by the house briefly before their dates, but he hasn't been in the house for over three months. Our daughter meets him somewhere or she picks him up at his house. This odd behavior is upsetting to us, and it causes us to wonder what kind of person our daughter is involved with.

She defends him by saying we don't like him anyway, so why should he visit? She sees no reason for him to get to know us better. If she marries this boy, I see nothing but grief for the family Is there anything I can do before it's too late? No Joy in Kansas Dear No Joy: Where did your daughter get the idea that you do not like her boyfriend? Apparently, you have somehow given her this notion. Now that you sense Dexter is going to be part of the family, I suggest you begin a major fence-mending effort to change your daughter's mind. Find something to admire about this young man if it kills you. Flan a foursome dinner call it "Project Acceptance" and make it work.

Dear Ann Landers: Behavioral scientists have discovered that 22 out of 25 people put on the right shoe first, but they didn't tell us why. Do you have a guess? Chicago Reader Dear Chicago: I don't have a clue. But I do wonder why those "behavioral scientists" don't have anything more important to work on. That first kiss, that first embrace. Remember all those things that brought you and your loved one together? "How We Met" is a collection of sentimental love stories will make a terrific gift for that special someone.

For a copy, please send a self-addressed, long, business-size envelope and a check or money order for $5.50 (this includes postage and handling) to: How We Met, co Ann Landers, P.O. Box 11562, Chicago, LL 60611-0562 (in Canada, To find out more about Ann Landers and read her past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. 'Dome' rises to the occasion to profile an architectural geniui liKUNUU.SCHI'.S. By Michael D. Schaffer Knight Ridder Newspapers Book review BRUNELLESCHI'S DOME: great dome is a stunning architectural oxymoron, a masonry bubble whose airiness belies the weight of the thousands of A i How a Renaissance tons of brick and stone of which Genius Reinvented Architecture By Ross King Walker, 194 pages, $24 huge, 143 feet 6 inches in diameter.

Unlike other domes, it would not be a hemisphere, but an octagon, rising in good Gothic fashion to a point. And it would be built without the flying buttresses that supported other great Gothic churches. The problem for the Florentines, ambitious to make their edifice one of the world's grandest, was that nobody really knew how to build so big a dome. And of more than a dozen plans submitted to the Opera, King writes, "only one a model that offered a magnificently daring and unorthodox solution to the problem of vaulting such a large space appeared to show much promise." That one plan was Brunelleschi's. Brunelleschi boldly proposed constructing the dome without relying on a centering wooden framework, which builders ordinarily used "to support the masonry of the dome while the mortar cured." Jaws dropped all over Florence.

"So astonishing was the plan that many of Filippo's contemporaries considered him a lunatic," King writes! But the lunatic was an innovator. H4 devised a chainwork system of stone; iron and wood that would gird the dohie to create a system of "invisible but! tressing" to achieve the balance neces; sary to keep the dome from collapsing! He further strengthened the dome witH "complex and inventive The project would take more than a dec! ade and a half to complete. The dome Brunelleschi built was the marvel of its age and it remains a marvel King brings a novelist's touch to his characterizations of Bru nelleschi and Brunelleschi's principal rival, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghibertl; King is weakest when he is describing the technical aspects of the dome's construction. It's as if King had painted a portrait of Brunelleschi standing in front of his dome and drawn the archi' tect in detail while leaving the dome it self slightly shadowed and blurred. it is made.

The dome of St. Peter's, seen from a nearby hill in Rome, looks like nothing so much as a giant, elegant balloon straining to soar free of the basilica below it. The dome of the Pantheon in Rome, seen from inside, soars away with a dizzying grandeur. But if you seek the most magnificent of all domes, look to Florence, Italy, and the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. Ross King, a British novelist venturing into non-fiction, tells the fascinating story of the Florence cupola's construction in "Brunelleschi's Dome." Unlike the dome of which he writes, King's book is not a work of genius, but it has significant strengths that make it worth reading.

The dome of Santa Maria del Fiore was the work of Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446), an irascible, secretive, utterly brilliant artisan who was trained as a goldsmith. The cathedral had been under construction for more than a century when the Opera delDuomo, the agency overseeing the project, advertised in 1418 for a plan to build the dome that would crown the building. The dome of Santa Maria del Fiore would be 'American Life' subject is getting her life back 'Vampire' director Merhige no longer a fringe player Update I rr 71 nrii 1rl -iy-r --MTrtri nrWf M-f fctfc. By Robert K. Elder Tribune Staff Writer Dorothy Gaines, a woman sentenced to 19 years for a first-time drug offense and a subject of a profile on WBEZ's "This American Life," was released from prison in December after being granted a pardon by president Bill Clinton.

Before her release, when we interviewed are my, cal organizing that got that woman out of prison," he said. "We and th4 other people who wrote about herr feel like we really can't claim much credit." Stories on Gaines also ran ort PBS' "Frontline" and as features hi Essence and Marie Claire. But when talk Elias Merhige directs Willem Dafoe In "Shadow of the Vampire." ing to Eric. Sterling, presi; dentoftheCrinv inal Justice Policy Foundation one of thi agencies advt 'It's been a thing that gnawed at me for a Ira Glass questions, Dec. 14, 2000) host Ira Glass for the fifth anniversary of "This American Life," extreme, turning Murnau into this despotic totalitarian who feels that art is more important than life itself.

That the flesh and blood rots, but art lives forever." It's not hard to imagine Merhige, a gracious but intense Brooklyn native and State University of New York film school graduate, crossing into that territory himself. The 36-year-old director displays a great deal of passion in discussing his film. Did he ever find himself acting out the fictional obsession of his main character? "It was very intense," he says. "I had such an expansive vision of what the film was to be the camera choreography, the visual style, the lighting, everything I had story-boarded and fought for in a year-and-a-half-and didn't want to compromise. Nothing else seemed to exist." Smiling, he adds that only once did he resemble his Murnau.

"It was during a stunt we were shooting at 4 a.m. An air bag had to be refilled for another take, and I became concerned that the sun would rise before we could get the shot. I caught myself, though." Merhige's conversation Is peppered with references to art and theater history, and topics ranging from the 13th Century Knights Templar to Nietzsche to Gnostic texts. He acknowledges he had more Ideas than could be explored in the film's 35-day shooting schedule or packed Into its 93-minute running time. "I had to choose what was essential," he says.

"At times I felt more By Michael Vari Special to the Tribune If you were ready to close the lid on the vampire genre, think again. Director E. Elias Mer-hige's new film, "Shadow of the Vampire," adds an lntrigu-ingly warped chapter to the tradition. "I wanted to explore the levels of vampirism, particularly the director as vampire, the Method actor as vampire and especially, the motion picture camera as vampire," Merhige explains. "The idea that the motion picture camera, as it fixes its gaze on the subject, drains the flesh and blood of that subject and reduces it to a shadow.

It's creepy." Starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe, Merhige's film returns to one of the earliest vampire films, F.W. Murnau's silent masterpiece "Nosferatu" (1922). Murnau's hallucinatory film featured a terrifying vampire with a snakelike body, grotesquely pointed head and ears, and hideously elongated fingers, played by Max Schreck. His uncannily realistic performance led to "Shadow of the Vampire's" Juicy central conceit: What if Schreck was really a vampire? Merhige points out he is "using history as a metaphor, to tell a story of obsession taken to the extreme. Our Murnau Malkovich is definitely one of our own making.

The thing I really focused on is the monstrosity of the creative act itself. "When we are truly inspired, we become puppets to something greater than ourselves. I took that to the like a military strategist than a director or artist." Still, Merhige Isn't complaining. Nearly a decade had passed since he made a critical splash with his experimental film, "Begotten," which garnered some heady attention, including from Time magazine, which placed the film on Its 1991 top-10 list. Since then, he had kept busy, teaching and directing theater, as well as doing videos such as Marilyn Manson's Anti-Christ Superstar, but he remained on Hollywood's fringes.

"Begotten," a cryptic, grotesquely beautiful film, is told through mottled black-and-white images and without dialogue hardly your standard Hollywood fare. But actorproducer Nicolas Cage received "Begotten" on vldeocas-sette as a gift and was excited by what he saw. He eventually paired up Merhige with Stephen Katz's witty script, which had been passed to him some years earlier. Merhige recalls his first reading of the script. "The bleeding from color to black-and-white, the iris fades I saw It all after the first reading.

I told Nic, 'If there was a 10-watt bulb In my head, I could project the movie right "Shadow of the Vampire" Is faithful to the details and atmospheric creepiness of Murnau's film, blending black-and-white recreations seamlessly with Murnau's originals. Merhige even used the actual camera Murnau used (on loan from a Munich motion picture museum) in a pivotal scene. He says, "Murnau's camera was like a magic device for resurrecting the past." There may be no greater Irony in the film than the immortal Schreck, played by Dafoe, being seduced and undone by the cinema, our own technological form of Immortality. "Schreck is a 'sad, romantic figure for me," Merhige says. "He was once a noble knight, but has degenerated Into this immortal ratlike fiend.

He's seen the entire spectrum of human sorrow and triumph and failure, and Is now trying to find that heartbeat within himself, that part that was once human." i eating Gaines' pardon credits Glass with much more influence on her eventual pardon. America Life' played a very important cumulative role u) this effort. It confirmed after th)9 'Frontline' broadcast of January '99 that Dorothy Gaines' story was ah important one that would touch people," Sterling said. "We then put her name and address at the top of our Web site and wrote a letter oti our Web site that people could elet? tronically send to the president that was our response to the 'Thl American Life' broadcast. It helped galvanize us on her case.

y' "The "This American Life' broadcast, because it was so early in this effort, established a kind of legitimacy to the story. For us, broadcast helped crystallize ournp-tlon on behalf of Dorothy Glass expressed guilt that he had been unable to do more for Gaines, whose profile ran in the "Sentencing" show (Oct. He said: "I feel like we could have done more, but she's still in prison on a 19-year sentence more than the people who actually admitted they were running a drug ring. They all got reduced sentences because they fingered her, and she didn't have anyone to finger I think because she was innocent. That bothers me." When news of Gaines' release hit the WBEZ offices recently, Glass said, "We're thrilled.

It's been a thing that gnawed at me for a year, since we put that story on the air." However, Glass wasn't convinced the show had any influence on Gaines presidential pardon. "It was just old fashioned 1 m.Mi tmi it in' ju 1. 1.