Dayton Daily News from Dayton, Ohio • 29

I nil; iii i i i i Dec. 6, 1987 Dayton Dally New and Journal Herald OOliS: 500,000 Jewish-Christian marriages find handy solutions in 'Mixed Blessings' 7 EimiieirtoiiiMiciieirDit i' 'A -J ,1 MR. 0 jVSS Queen City provides right flavor for the filming of 'Fresh Horses' 1 By Terry Lawton FILM CRITIC LAURA SHAGORYSTAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Above, cameraman Rob Carlson focuses on local extras while shooting a scene for 'Fresh Horses' in Newport, below, co-star Andrew McCarthy (seated) and director David Anspaugh (far right) take a break on the set (5 INCINNATI It's a dank, overcast Monday, the kind of day that makes even a brick and column campus like the University of through the Ohio autumn haze, once again disappears behind the clouds. The man In the Bearcats cap silently motions to the kid in the leather coat, who tries to re-muster his mad demeanor, and looking around to see that everything Is In place, finally yells the word "camera." The crowd moves, the angry kid grabs the other kid, the sun reappears. "Cut! Cut!" "Crap," says a member of the crowd.

"I'm gonna miss my speech class if I don't get outta here now." "What?" says her pal. "And quit show business?" Cincinnati's look like a 1984 factory complex. I speaks, he looks anxiously at the parking lot a few yards away, silently overseeing the time-consuming set-up of the next shot, which everyone hopes to get completed before daylight-savings time darkness begins to fall. "Anyway, my wife is from Cincinnati, so I thought of here. And the more we thought about it, the more dramatically appropriate it seemed." That's because Fresh Horses is yet another variation on a time-tested theme that was probably around long before Shakespeare went sentimental with Romeo and Juliet.

Andrew McCarthy, the hot young actor who only a few minutes before was waxing angry in front of the student union, plays a UC engineering student named Matt Larkln, whose future is as cut and dried as a tasteful flower arrangement in an upper-middle class home when he is somehow coerced into spending a raucous evening on the other side of the Ohio River, that is. There, in a funky party house, he meets a Kentucky girl named Jewel, played by Ringwald. They have nothing in common, which naturally means they will fall madly in love. But Fresh Horses is not, cautions Marcil, Pretty in Pink in the sticks. "We're after something different with this," he says.

"Larry Ketron, who wrote the play, adapted the script himself for the film and he did a really terrific job. We were out to retain the idiosyncratic language of the script, and the elements that made it so special and real. Obviously, that was another reason we wanted David Anspaugh, who had done such a terrific job directing young people in Hoosiers, As lunch time nears, the area surrounding the student union becomes congested with girls in Guess and boys in Boss, but the dreary din of the degree drones is sharply interrupted by an old-fashioned, heart-thumping altercation. "You sunnuva says a good-looking and very angry kid In a leather coat, grabbing another student by the collar of his jacket. "What the hell do you think "CUT." Another man in a leather coat and a Bearcats gimme cap walks in front of the scufflers to approach a man with bottle-black hair and an ankle-length trashbin overcoat who is leaning against an iron railing and taking in the action.

The aggression magically leaves the students and enters the body of the man. "Are you being paid? You beln' paid by us?" asks the gimme cap of the observer. "Because if you are, get In the shot! We're paying you to move, not to watch." "OK," says the cap, addressing the throng, all of whom have frozen in position. "Everybody back to position The hundred or so UCers then move back to the area opposite the student union, where they speak in low tones and shuffle their feet for another 10 minutes or so until the sun, which has been sporadically peeking rWan Marcil, like all the other male members I of the Fresh Horses crew, wears a baseball cap, but his sits just a little higher on his head. Marcil is the co-producer of Fresh Horses, and while In today's Hollywood, the word producer can mean anything from the boss' wife to the man who writes the checks, he's taking the job seriously in the old-fashioned way, taking responsibility for the day-today location shooting, overseeing everything from location inspection to camera set-ups.

It was Marcil and his partner Dick Berg who brought a little known off-Broadway play called Fresh Horses to the attention of Weintraub Entertainment Group, and it was he and Berg who got teen movie box office titans Molly Ring-wald and Andrew McCarthy to co-star in it, and it was he who brought the whole $12 million shebang to the Queen City and its nether regions. "The play," he says, "wasn't set in any particular place, but it had a certain flavor that indicated you were somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line." As he J' 1 feW-W" si i gSa SEE 'HORSES72 Channel 16 to acquire global link by-80-foot TV studio. The move downtown is crucial to the plan to split up programming on the two stations. "We are not technically capable of handling the additional volume of programming now, but we'll update our capability when we go into our new building," interim program manager Rick Bloomingdale said. Since Channel 16 was born as WOET in 1972, Channel 14 has operated mainly as a satellite station to provide a signal where Channel 16 could not reach.

Nearly all programs on the two stations have been simulcast. In the past year, fewer than 10 programs have not been broadcast by both stations. Simulcasting made sense when the signals overlapped, but Channel 16 installed a taller tower SEE CHANNEL 163 Both stations are operated by Greater Dayton Public Television Inc. "We hope to be able to separate the programming in the next year or so," says Wareham, president and general manager of the two stations. "We've got more good programs than we can put on a single channel, and we perceive more needs in the community than we can serve." Channel 16 currently is scattered all over the county, with administrative offices at 3440 Office Park Dr.

in Kettering and an operations center and transmitter in Jefferson Twp. Facilities will be consolidated in a new building on the ground floor of the Transportation Center. Construction began in November and completion is anticipated April 15. The new building at Fourth and Jefferson streets will provide 24,400 square feet of space for 35 full-time employees and will include a 50- By Tom Hopkins TELEVISION EDITOR Channel 16 boss Jerry Wareham envisions the station's move into new downtown studios next year as a way to link Dayton to "a global village." That's because the public television station will be connected to the Dayton Convention Center a block away, providing a link between local teleconferences and other sites around the world. But the best news for local viewers may be that the move to the Dayton Transportation Center will enable Wareham's crew to create, in effect, a second public TV station here.

That will be accomplished by developing separate program schedules for Dayton's WPTD (Channel 16) and Oxford's WPTO (Channel 14). Dayton Ballet creates 'truly American9 show 'Night Before Christmas' to premiere By Terry Morris STAFF FEATURE WRITER Were this the night before Christmas, Dayton Ballet director-choreographer Stuart Sebastian would not be dreaming of his own Nutcracker as he drifted off to sleep. He would have other visions dancing in his head. Christmas hasn't quite arrived yet, but Sebastian has once again put those visions together to form an original holiday ballet called The Night Before Christmas The full-length story production will be given its premiere Thursday night at the Victory Theatre. Eleven additional performances will follow.

Sebastian says he could tailor a Nutcracker for the Dayton Ballet and knowing him, he might just do it sometime in the future if enough people tell him it isn't practical but he'd rather not at this point In time. One reason is that, as unbelievably popular as they are, Nutcrackers are a dime a dozen. Tens of other dance companies do them every year, there is always one on television still the Gelsey Klrkland-Mikhail Baryshnikov pairing for American Ballet Theatre from several years ago and last year's film version featuring the Pacific Northwest Ballet is currently airing on cable channels. Another is that the Dayton Ballet would probably suffer in comparison. Bigger companies have tons of money to spend on building a spectacle that, whoever choreographs it, is by far the best-known dance production in the United States.

For a dance company, Christmas ballets help to pay the bills. "Even though we are non-profit corporations, these productions are commercial ventures that are staged to sell tickets," Sebastian says. "Most companies' budgets are based on the Nutcracker. Up until a few years ago, for example, Ballet Metropolitan in Columbus was accounting for 80 percent of Its revenues with ticket sales to The Nutcracker. "I want a title that will sell, but I've been given the leeway here to do something different.

I don't look at that as an artistic compromise." SEE BALLET2 Ola Ti" I-1 i i J1, I Tt- El TWWyaM.Illll- 1 him "milium i. Center Artist rendering of Channel 1 6's new downtown home in the Transportation CONNIE SELLECCA TAKES A STAND IN NEW TV FILM See Story3 OTHER CONDUCTORS JUGGLE JUST AS MANY JOBS AS ISAIAH JACKSON See Story3 BETTY DIETZKREBS3 TV UPDATES4 RADIO HIGHLIGHTS4 RADIO LOG4 THINGS TO DO TODAY5 AT THE MOVIES6 ACES ON BRIDGE6 NICHOLS ON STAMPS8 ljl ljl i-fj ir -f iiff JltAtrf if i- lit- I-jH ii rir" 1.