The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 160

20 Vitil tnUa, Hwemtvr I. I'M on0o'f i dulges in a bit of role reversal, subjecting him to the sexual harassment she suffers daih. and ToinUn. envisioning herself as Snow White in a Disney fairy tale and aided by her little cartoon creature pals, poisons the coffee she's so tired of prepanng for him The next day at the office fantasy threatens to become reality "9 to 5" resembles "Silver Streak," which Higgins wrote tbut Arthur Hiller directed in that it's amusing and entertaining but stretched too thin This instance is different because it's trying to make a case for women's liberation along with Us comedy. Instead of piling on the increasingly slapstick improbabilities, "9 to 5" might have made better use of its time to suggest or merely hint that not all men in the office are automatically male chauvinist pigs any more than women, once in positions of power, are automatically free of the failings of the men they've displaced.

Elizabeth Wilson is wonderfully hateful as the office snitch, a pathetically comic creature who gets ahead at the expense of other women, and Sterling Hayden is the corporation's often absent but colorful chairman of the board. Marian Mercer is Coleman's hilariously obtuse rich wife, and Henry Jones is the corporation's glib president. Sleekly produced, "9 to 5" PG is the kind of film that leaves you with the feeling that it could have been even more fun than it is. SCORING POINTS IN THE '9 TO GAME H. Kl IN 1HO.MAS I'uno Stit( ntct The nouon of Jane FonJd.

Lu Tomlin and Doily Parton casi as secretaries ho declare war on their "sewst. egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" of a boss is pretty funny in uself, and in "9 to 5" (opening today at the I' A West wood and Egyptian) they deliver the goods in high comic style, scoring some points for women's equality in the office Directed by "Harold and Maude's" Colin Higgins and written by him with Patricia Resnick from her story. "9 to 5" appears to be an audience pleaser that never misses an intended laugh. How ever, it strays so far from reality for so long that it threatens to become mired in overly complicated silliness and to lose sight of the serious satirical points it wants to make. Happily, it does pull together for a finish that's as strong as it is funny.

In short, its stars are more satisfying than their material, as good as it so often is. Indeed, even if "9 to 5" isn't entirely cohesive in itself, Higgins and Resnick have served their stars very well and tailored their parts precisely to their personalities. What's more, Fonda, who originated the project with producer Bruce Gilbert, her partner in IPC Films, allows Tomlin and Parton, in a smash film debut, the greater share of the spotlight. Tomlin's subtle comedy range has probably never been better served on film, and Parton proves a natural actress, every bit as assured and endearing as she is as a country-and-western performer. (She doesn't sing on camera but is heard singing the film's driving, witty title tune, which she wrote.) Fonda, having just lost her husband (Lawrence Pressman) to his secretary, finds she is not qualified to Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda ponder their office-worker lives in the film "9 to 5 '9 to 5' A 20th Century -Fox presentation of an IPC Films production Producer Bruce Gilbert.

Director Colin Higgins. Screenplay Higgins, Patricia Resnick: from a story by Resnick. Camera Reynaldo Villalobos. Music Charles Fox. Title song written and performed by Dolly Parton.

Production designer Dean Mitzner. Costumes Ann Roth. Art director Jack Gammon Taylor Jr. Stunt coordinator Jim Arnett. Animation supervisor Nicholas Eliopoulos.

Film editor Pembroke J. Herring. Featuring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, Dabney Coleman, Elizabeth Wilson, Sterling Hayden, Henry Jones, Lawrence Pressman, Marian Mercer. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes. MPAA-rated: PG (some parental guidance advised).

because he is a man. Parton is Coleman's sweet, patient private secretary whose voluptuous charms not merely turn him on but also inspire him to spread the rumor he's having an affair with her when he isn't. Under the influence of a little pot, the three women fantasize their revenge against the awful Coleman. Appalled at the deer head mounted on Coleman's wall, Fonda stalks him like a big game hunter. Parton in do anything but become a secretary herself.

Prim and shy, she is taken under wing by Tomlin, a tart, capable but exceedingly frustrated senior supervisor. She is in line for a promotion to management and therefore must grit her teeth and serve with a smile a pompous, no-good boss Dabney Coleman, who can hold his own with his co-stars when it comes to comedy). She had trained him only to see him quickly promoted over her merely Hybrid Strl Academy JC0RRECTI0NC WOMEN AND FILM: 'YOU GO OUT AND DO IT' Bv SONDRA LOWELL PINOCCHIO Christmas Advsnturs Chlldfsn Musical Fantasy Jack Manning Thaatar 1747 VsMes at DCC. IS, 14, a TkM 11X1 or illi Oonsx CNUm IS, MUtt 00 '11 tell you how I think about the studios," said 'I LOS ANGELES BALLET THE NUTCRACKER Adv. on Fri, Dec.

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Culver City (213) 641 0689 or Send a Gift or Donation To: The Grass Roots Foundation 0. Bo 67887 LA, Ca. 90067 Gilt It Tlx Driictikli mlGibbbbbbbbbbbIbbb independent film maker Penelope Spheeris. "I think of them like a fort, with a big wall around Make the most of your world with The Times. Kong then decided she wanted Martin Landau to be her star and, knowing he interviewed prospective students for his acting class, she set up an interview, saying she wanted to study with him.

At the interview, "after about five minutes, I pulled out my script. I think what impressed him most was that I walked in and lied. I think he liked the spirit better than anything else." After reading the script. Landau agreed to appear in the film and enlisted other name actors but not financing. Kong's first call for money, to an Arab in St.

Moritz, failed, but she got it all "about $4 million" on her next try: "I knew someone that had a lot of money." Director -producer Spheeris graduated from UCLA film school "a long time ago" with a master's degree, and "I've never shown anybody but my mother the master's degree." She started out filming musicians for record companies, and her current feature-length documentary on punk rock, "The Decline," is an extension of that early work, although she calls it "a film about a social movement." Made for $500,000, it required a crew sensitive to the movement, and Spheeris found people so sensitive that one dyed his hair blue and another got so involved that "I've got footage of this guy in a crowd fighting and it was the gaffer." Besides directing, Spheeris produced Albert Brooks' film, "Real Life." "I was the killer producer firing people left and right. Albert was the good guy, and it's the producer's job to be the bad guy. It feels horrible. I mean, I got sick. It's not good for you to do that." Her distrust of the studio world hasn't kept her from sitting down and figuring out how to get in.

"When I first got out of school, the way to do it was to write a script and have a few films made and then hold out and not give them another script unless you direct. Now, as I can see, one has to go out and make a film." But she and the other women who spoke are not about to be kept down by the rules. Said Kong, "I stopped making judgments a long time ago. Any way you can get into this business is OK." Said Spheeris, "It just comes down to if you are serious about being a film director. A lot of people walk through their whole life being disappointed." them.

Inside there are these people really untalented, like, gross people, and they're out there telling these guys with guns to keep away the talented people. And they're doing very well at it." The audience at a recent Sherwood Oaks Women Filmmakers Conference had a good laugh over that, each appearing to feel that she and here and there a he was being locked out of the big, bad power structure that can produce a $36-million flop like "Heaven's Gate." (Only producer Renee Valente cautioned that director Michael Cimino's disaster is equally a disaster for everyone who wants to make movies: "That means there's $36 million less for all of us to do movies with." Yet, while many of the women who spoke at the two-day conference did not come from the major studios and some may not be headed there, it became clear that women are working in movies, whether it be at smaller structures like Tony Bill Productions and Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Studios where "Francis is a figurehead," according to Zoetrope story editor Susan Ingleby and the company is run by vice president Lucy Fisher), or whether they simply decide to make films on their own, and then do. The two women on the directors panel have jumped in on their own and made movies. Said Jackie Kong, now in post-production on her first feature, a suspense film called "Easter Sunday," "I went to Beverly Hills High School and then I decided I wanted to make a film and not go through Film She got together $1500 and a free crew to make a 16mm short and finally enrolled in Film I at Cal State Northridge "so I could use their editing equipment." Not pausing to wait around for a big break, Kong wrote the script for "Easter Sunday" and asked some established actor-friends to be in it. Her friends' reply? "They laughed at me.

It really hurt because they didn't have any faith in me whatsoever. They said, 'Well, maybe later on, when you've made it, I'll be in your 4 Incredible and amazing acts, from ABC-TV's "That's Incredible!" and "Those Amazing Come see the Puny Weightlifter. He lifts ten The incredible Texas Rattlesnake times his actual weight -over 1,000 pounds WWVW Handler. He angers a venomous in all' rattlesnake to the point of attack, JrSf 'hen grabs it with his bare hands as it strikes. John Clifford, Artistic Director "A child's Dream of Christmas" Clive Barnes, N.

Y. Post 2nd Annual Presentation of the lavish, full length Lv See incredible martial arts demonstrations The amazing Mathematical BE such as this blindfolded swordsman who 1 Jf Horse. You II see her do IjSL slices a watermelon as it rests on his I 1 actual mathematical BtiSr assistant's stomach. I equations and tap out the the NUTCRACKER Company of 190 dancers, chorus orchestra SHRINE AUDITORIUM i i i ii jt i ii s-rs December 24 2:00 p.m. Jk I a n.nn a nn Mrf i uetemucr a p.m.

Tickets $15.00, $12.50, $10.00, $8.00 Tickets ALL Mutual Ticket Agencies CRITIC AT LARGE Continued from First Page graphed by James Crabe and including an awesomely long tracking shot through the corridors and down the stairs of the Hall of Justice. The production design by Herman A. Blumenthal is what you could call Hollywood Belle Epoque. The urgent music is by Bill Conti. Brando continues to be one of the most watchable actors in the history of the movies and while he and Scott, another of the watchable, spend all too little time together, they are doubly interesting to see.

"The Formula" is probably too heavy rhetorically to be entirely successful as the action thriller whose form it inhabits. But it is a film with a point of view, and in the dispute between writer-producer and director, the writer for once has won, preserving with the studio (MGM) backing the statement he wanted to make in the way he wanted to make it. That's something. It is also a film of impressive scale and flashes of excitement. Rated for its violence and possibly for its language, "The Formula" opens at selected theaters today.

Info: (213) 627-1 248Groups: 986-29081 JU I TB6 WY It Ir. 'TONIGHT AT 8:30 TOMORROW AT 2:30 A 8:30 "INCREDIBLE ACTING A TOUR DE Nehemiah Persoff's i i I i ivr. i SHOLEM ALEICIir CHARGE BY PHONE VISA, MASTERCHARQE HlW FOfl RESERVATIONS And a chance for you to get in the act. (V A all I INFORMATION CALL: 659-3134 Wad. Thura.

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A Sun. at 2:30 SS GROUP SALES: ROSALIE LAZARUS-986-2908 TICKETS AVAILABLE AT ALL MUTUAL AGENCIES CORONET THEATRE 3Sa NORTH LA CIINIQA, LOS ANGELES, CA S004S mo 'THE FORMULA' An MGM release. Written and produced by Steve Shagan, from his novel. Director John G. Avildsen.

Editor David Bretherton, Avildsen, John Carter. Photography James Crabe. Production design Herman A. Blumenthal. Music Bill Conti.

Featuring Marlon Brando. George C. Scott, Marthe Keller. John Gielgud, G. D.

Smad-lin, Beatrice Straight, Richard Lynch, John Van Dreelen, Robin Clarke, Ike Eisenmann, Marshall Thompson, Dieter Schidor, Werner Kreindl, Jan Niklas, Wolfgang Preiss, Calvin Jung, Alan North, David Byrd. Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes. MPAA rated: R. Claude Akins "Lobo" Bill Bixby "The Incredible Hulk" Greg Evigan BJ and the Bear" Barbara Eden "Harper Valley" Lou Ferngno Gil Gerard "The Incredible Hulk" "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century TONIGHT DAVE DEC. 19 20, 21 MASON Wayne Rogers "House Calls" Tom Selleck "Magnum.

Lynn Redgrave "House Calls" Jack Klugman "Quincy. EV RITA DEC. 26,27 Erin Gray "Buck Rogers in the 25th Cenlury" 28 COOLIDGE wnimdrfcmt BOOKER T. JONES holiday excitement from December 20-January 4 at the world's biggest and busiest movie studio. Catch us in the act this holiday season.

Here's your lucky chance to transform yourself from a stargazer into a star! Come to Universal Studios Tour, fill out a casting slip at our information booth, DEC. 29,30 JOHN STEWART Drawing closes January 4, 1 981 No purchase necessary. Ill cEsef VST and you might be the lucky one to appear in a TV series now in production at Universal It's a full day of special DEC. 31 NEW YEAR'S PARTY WITH RICK NELSON Hollywood Fwy al Lankershim Tours run continuously everyday Not open Christmas Day For information call (213) 877 1311 groups 2131 508 3771 1980 Universal City Studios Inc That Incredible Those Amamq Animals 1980 Alan Landsburq Productions Inc Pj I AM MCA COMPANY FABULOUS STIAKt SEAFOOD TttUM. TALENT NTO MOT LankarsMm N.

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