The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 19

I Maurice Gibb ri'-'J 4 auarded after tkk death threat VvTV-fir PageB-9 MONTREAL, MONDAY, AUGUST 20, 1984 MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL V4 Hemingway not impressed but Montrealer Ted Allan has made his writing mark IS it 4 iivriV (fit? 4rxrJ fw? A a a 12 4 Fa By BILL BROWNSTEIN Special to The Gazette It's been almost six hours since the wildly enthusiastic response to the first Montreal World Film Festival showing of Choose Me, and the movie's star and hometown heroine Genevieve Bujold is elated. Many are already suggesting this is the best thing she's done since Kamouraska, Anne of The Thousand Days (for which she won an Oscar nomination), or King of Hearts. It's been a long time between films for Bujold three years in fact since her Monsignor, a picture soundly thrashed by one an all. It's been even a longer time between a memorable movie performance. Kamouraska was made in '74, Anne in '70, and King of Hearts in '67.

Now, in the last three days, she has had two major films showcased at this festival one, Tightrope, a surefire winner at the gate with the world's number one box office attraction, Clint Eastwood, and the other, Choose Me, a weird and wonderful little piece that has won the hearts of just about all who've seen it. Shows up in Malibu "I can't believe it. It's so fantastic coming home and now all this on top of it," says a tanned, relaxed and spunky-looking Bujold, holding court in a quaint St. Laurent Blvd. bistro.

"You know, I haven't seen Choose Me yet. Frankly, I'm scared." Pause as she lights up a cigaret. "This guy," she says, playfully poking director Alan Rudolph at her side, "shows up to my place in Malibu with a bottle of wine and the script. We spend two or three hours talking about it; but it just wasn't me. That's what I told him but he persisted." "The part called for a sophisticated city woman; I'm a beach bum I mean I live on the beach.

My ego would have to take a beating to do it and I'd also have to cut my hair. Nonetheless, I agreed and wouldn't you know it was the first film I ever worked on where I just wasn't prepared on the first day." Consequently, Bujold didn't show up on the set for the first day of shooting. Director Rudolph wasn't initially amused. "I went to her place and found her with her around her son watching Sesame Street on TV. How could I get mad? After that day, she did show up and everything went smoothly," recounts the beaming, bearded Rudolph.

"Besides," he adds, "I've always wanted to work with her. She's one of the great actresses. She's smart, sexy, and although she doesn't genuinely believe it, she's also a real star." To which the flustered Bujold shrugs and retorts: "No, I'm not. You should see my home the couch is filthy, cat hair all over the place, banana peels, you name it. That's not the way a star "I will say this however.

I do love acting. I went three years without work after Monsignor and I missed it. I'm 42 now, and while I think I'm good. I also know I could be so much better if given the opportunity. The acting is harder now, but it's also much more fun too." "Fun not in the ha-ha-ha sense.

There were times in the shooting of Choose Me where I'd be crying in the corner I was so drained. No, fun in the sense cf a challenge," she says softly. The questioning turns to Tightrope in which she eagerly worked upon completion of Choose Me. And yes, she loved working with Clint Eastwood and so on; but she reminds those present that we're here to discuss Choose Me. As fcr future projects, Bujold claims not to have anything in mind, although Rudolph has mentioned he's offered her the lead in his next project.

Trouble in Mind, with Kris Kristofferson. Loves every minute "Yes, but you know how these L.A. guys are. Talk, talk; but we'll see, won't she teases, relentlessly needling Rudolph, who appears to love every minute of it. "Would you believe she's the most wonderful actress I've ever worked with," claims Rudolph.

"It's true." "Yeah, responds slight-embarrassed though nonetheless appreciative Bujold. But still after three years cf mostly listening to the waves come crashing down on the beach behind her home, Rudolph's gracious assessment must be music to her ears. Reviews of Choose Me and other festival films are on Page B-10. PS GIOACCHINO ROSSINI Score disappeared Long-lost Rossini opera is a smash PESARO, Italy (Reuter) -Gioacchino Rossini's long-lost opera The Journey to Reims received a rapturous reception when it was performed for the first time in 159 years in Pesaro, his home town on Italy's east coast. Rossini wrote the opera for the coronation of King Charles of France in Reims in 1825.

It was performed only four times and the score was given to his doctor after his death in 1868, after which it disappeared. American scholar Janet Johnson reconstructed the opera after parts of the score, some of it adapted for other works, turned up in the Bib-liotheque nationale in Paris and Santa Cecilia library in Rome in the late 1970s. The sumptuous opera, to a libretto by Luigi Balocchi, tells how a group of noblemen from various countries, trying to attend the coronation, meet at a hotel in the eastern French spa of Plombieres. Unable to reach Reims for lack of horses, they improvise their own celebration with performances by each. Montreal's puppets go stringless BERLIN (AP) Giant marionettes from Montreal will dance without strings this week and bird puppets from New York will fly during an international conference of little wooden people and their manipulators.

The International Puppet Festival, featuring Pinnochios and their ilk from 21 countries, opened Saturday in Dresden in conjunction with the 14th Congress of the International Federation of held every four years. The Theatre sans fil of Montreal has promised that giant marionettes will move without strings but it won't say how. But there are no secrets in the performance by the Puppet Man from Pasadena, Calif. He'll do the traditional Punch and Judy. New York's Theatre for the Birds will present Line of Flight.

The conference, which ends Friday, has drawn 1,500 puppeteers from 50 countries. But they will not all perform. Ray Charles returns to Newport fest NEWPORT, R.I. (UPI) Ray Charles made a triumphant return to the Newport Jazz Festival, highlighting the 30th anniversary opening of the musical event. The blind pianist and singer, dressed in a scarlet and gold brocade jacket, drew his first ovation from the crowd of more than 5,000 when he was led on stage.

It was his first appearance in the festival birthplace since 1960. The two-day event, which concluded yesterday, brought jazz greats and the next generation of stars to a crowd picnicking in the sun at Fort Adams State Park. Headliners besides Charles included jazz veterans Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck. 1 yT4 By BRUCE BAILEY Gazette Film Critic Montreal-born Ted Allan has come a long way since he showed a copy of his short stories to Ernest Hemingway back when they were both caught up in the Spanish Civil War. Papa H.

was not impressed. "Doesn't look like I have much to worry about," Hemingway remarked as he handed the manuscripts back to the would-be competitor. Since then, however, Allan has gone on to write numerous plays for the radio and stage, TV shows, novels for adults and children, a couple of biographies of Norman Bethune, the Canadian doctor who became a legend in China, and several screenplays. One of those movie scripts Lies My Father Told Me garnered an Oscar nomination for the year's best screenplay while it also won a Golden Globe Award as the Best Foreign Film of 1975. Leading roles His latest triumph in movieland is his script for Love Streams winner of the top prize at the last Berlin Film Festival as well as other awards in Houston and Italy.

Based on one of Allan's own plays, it was co-written by John Cassavetes, who also directed himself and his wife Gena Rowlands in the leading roles. Want to have a look at it? It's being screened as part of the World Film Festival at the Cinema Imperial today at 9 a.m. and at the Parisien this evening at 7 p.m. and tomorrow at 3 p.m. You may even catch a glimpse Allan himself wandering around or taking notes in the glow of the silver screens at the Parisien.

He'll be there in his capacity as one of the seven jurors of the festival's Official Competition. Sitting in judgment is something of an awkward role for a man who holds some pretty negative opinions about criticism. "At age 68, I'd like to be able to tell you that criticism rolls off my back, that I have an elderly attitude of great wisdom," he says wistfully just before he heats up. "But I hate every critic that criticizes me: He's stupid, he's insensitive, he's a lout." 'Gut reaction' "But," he adds with a certain air of self-parody, "those who like my work are sensitive and intelligent. The only importance of critics is that they help make something box-office or not.

Most of them have never written anything (creative) in their lives. But one is at their mercy." As a juror, Allan figures he'll just go with his "gut reaction." "I'm not an academic, I'm rather primitive," he explains. "I couldn't review books for that reason. I identify too much with the writer; I know the agony, what the man has gone through." When it comes to his own work, Allan says that when he's "writing of painful memories, that's painful." A case in point is Love Streams, a semi-autobiographical story "about a brother and a sister who love each other very much. It's an exploration of my own experiences in life with family love." Lest we read too much into what we see on screen, Allan warns that "the character in the film is not my sister exactly.

She's based on a play which is based on my sister. Gena is playing a woman created by Cassvetes and myself. As for what's supposed to be me, it's something like me. But sometimes it's so far away it's liilarious. He lives with five or six women in the house.

I don't think I've ever even had that Rod Ste By JOHN GRIFFIN Gazette Pop Music Critic With all the cunning you'd expect from a 20-year vet of rock 'n' roll campaigns, Rod Stewart very nearly hid the truth from some 15,000 worshippers at the Forum on Saturday night. Oh, there were a few hints early on, like when Stewart left the stage to give his harp player and the rest of his 10-piece band a chance to blow some undistinguished "California" blues. And throughout, given the beauty of a set design that ran right round Gazette. Jean Pierre Rivest Ted Allan: He can't stand Allan's feelings on the subject of his sister run particularly high and understandably so. For one thing, he feels that his father who spent much of his time in psychiatric institutions was largely responsible for tripping off her mental illness.

Though Allan has had a love-hate relationship with this man who almost beat him to death once, he reports, "I have protected my father in most things I've written. My father was actually a very sick man. I had to wait until he died to really deal with him completely openly in my work." Still, as far as Allan's father was concerned, he was always dragging too much of the family history into his writing. In that connection, Allan recalls that when he returned from a long absence in England, he was met with his father's criticism the moment he walked through the door. Instead of greeting our wayfaring writer.

Dad opened with, "Don't you know anyone else!" But Allan's latest project has the critics who knock him. nothing to do with his family. With Canadian director Ted Kotcheff (First Blood), he's putting together an $18 million film about Bethune based on a book of personal recollections which Allan published in 1942. The money for Bethune: The Making of a Hero looks like it's about to fall in place after at least five years of struggle to get the film's structure in shape while various studios picked up and dropped their options on the property. It just might begin shooting next year in China and Spain.

And who knows? It just might make Allan as famous as he wanted to be when he was young. He says he hasn't yet achieved the ambition he had when he "went to England in '54 to be one of the world's great playwrights." When he arrived, he recalls, he immediately phoned up one of London's leading theatrical agents. "I've come to take George Bernard Shaw's place," he announced with youthful bravado. "Oh dear," the agent shot back, "I'm afraid it's already been let." avoiding most of the material from his most recent and lamest LP, Camouflage. Instead, he concentrated on a a commercially viable period that ran from Tonight's the Night, released in '76, through more recent hits like Tonight I'm Yours and Passion.

The songs went over like crazy with a Forum crowd that hailed Stewart as a rock hero and sex symbol. Girls screamed, many stood and sang along during songs like Final Acclaim (You re In My Heart) and bolder fans deposited flowers and phone numbers at his feet. Genevieve Bujold in 'Choose Me': It's a festival hit. wart's casnou to his 'n' roots. "A long time ago when I was a young man I used to listen to the soul brothers," said Rod.

"People like Otis and Wilson Pickett, these were my idols." Then with his horn section steaming into Jr. Walker's Shotgun, Stewart disappeared for a costume change, leaving the band holding one mighty soggy bag. Like the light bulb flashing in a cartoon frame, the truth hit home. Rod Stewart doesn't care anymore. He's simply going through the mo-! tions of the music that was once his life.

How sad he must feel at nielit. to the back of the stage, Stewart consistently ignored those in the cheap seats behind him. Admittedly, he and the band trooped back during songs like Baby Jane, but the exercise was pure reflex. Still and all, the sly old ex-London rocker laid a very effective smoke screen. For someone who'll never see age 38 again, Roddie moved pretty well, made good use of the wonderful side-stage wing projections, and dressed to maim in variations of green, yellow, blue, red.

fusia and black. He further covered his trail by If only he hadn't attempted a little honesty, Stewart would have survived the scam. But the cracks showed as he tied up the first set. He attempted Otis Redding's Dock Cf The Bay, a song Stewart cut his teeth on, and failed to convey the depth of that immortal piece. Then he bravely (or opportunistically) donned acoustic guitar a la Bruce Springsteen for a version of the Boss's Hungry Heart, and fell flat on his emotional face.

The fatal flaw to open the floodgates of defeat was revealed in the second half when Stewart 'fessed up.