The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 51

GU'-iiY ORiGiNAi IHEMOST mpcRim VOLVO DEA1EB IN EASTERN CANADA! (ID-town autnnmhil HA MONTREAL, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1987 mmit rassn em By JANICE KENNEDY Special to The Gazette SECTION "YT JLlllll T7 .1 I 'Afept 111 fSf i mm i JlitMi ii iUjLiilliJiij We're not in this to make pots full of money: Degrassi Junior High TV series producer Linda Schuyler Degrassi Junior High, which starts a new season Monday night at 8:30 on CBMT-6. ut honey," the man protested between cigar- chomps, "this is a real op- porfoomty." The way Degrassi Junior High producer Linda Schuyler tells it, ABC's man-on-the-phone from Los Angeles was more than a little nonplussed when she politely turned down his request that she send him, and his huge commercial U.S. network, tapes of the show. "We're not in this to make pots full of money," she explained in a recent interview. What she and partner Kit Hood are making, though, is an international name for themselves in children's television.

Playing With Time, the Toronto production company they founded in 1976, has already garnered numerous world-class awards, including an Emmy, for its first series, The Kids of Degrassi Street (currently seen in 47 countries around the world, including China). Even better Now Degrassi Junior High, their second series a no-holds-barred portrait of adolescence in a fictitious junior high school promises to do even better. With a first-season CBCPBS run of 13 episodes behind them, and a second-season CBC premiere set for next Monday at 8:30 p.m. (the PBS debut will follow a week later), the series has already copped a second International Emmy for Schuyler and Hood, as well as a couple of Silver Apples (from the San Francisco Festival) and two recent Geminis. It has been sold to 15 countries among them Malaysia, Greece and Israel we're talking to mainland China right now," says the show's distributor) and has become a hot item in places as diverse as Sweden and Atlanta, Ga.

(The Degrassi producers were invited to participate in a Swedish hotline show which had youngsters from all over the country calling in; and Toronto's Amanda Stepto who plays a 14-year-old and pregnant Spike in the series was in Atlanta recently for a similar program.) To prime time In Canada, CBC moved the series this fall to prime time, from what network Children's Television boss Angela Bruce calls "the dismal and very pre-emptable" Sunday-afternoon timeslot it occupied last spring. Airing at 8:30 p.m. Mondays, it now reaches an audience of over a million Canadians a week (up 400,000) and is, she says, "neck-and-neck with Kate Allie" which precedes it. Why prime time? "We wanted to make it more family-oriented." explains Bruce, "more available to parents and kids." "We feel that it's really hitting home, reaching its intended audience, judging from the mail and calls we've been receiving," adds Barbara Chernin, a CBC publicist who feels that "Degrassi Junior High is one of the best things that's ever happened to children's television." Ann Curran, communications director of Vermont-ETV, the Burlington PBS affiliate that also airs the series in prime time (7:30 p.m. Wednesdays), says that the timeslot is "a good accessible one for parents Forget EDDIE MURPHY Boi-ottict champ 111111 i A I-H 1 the actors yields ideas for the kid's-eye-view storylines.

Subsequent script analyses by them weeds out anything that might not ring true. Frequently, aspects of the youngsters' own lives are incorporated into the scripts. When Neil Hope in the series) started getting headaches and needed glasses, his character did the same. When the topic of alcoholic parents arose "and a couple of kids really shared a lot with that one," says Schuyler an episode called Bottled Up was born. Frank portrayal A frank portrayal of young teenagers, Degrassi Junior High's blend of light comedy and sensitive drama embraces issues ranging from the everyday to the controversial.

(Me-lanie got her first bra last season, Arthur and Yick longed for a growth spurt, Rick was beaten up by his father, Spike became pregnant.) Sometimes, breaking ground in the world of children's television inspires controversy. A few months ago in Great Britain, the BBC refused to air Rumour Has It, an episode dealing with a young girl's worries about her own sexuality and lesbianism. This season, Schuyler says, Degrassi Junior High will continue with more of the same. Viewers will see Spike and her boyfriend still wrestling with the problem of Spike's pregnancy. Ste- Parrot (Shane) in a scene Will Degrassi Junior High see a third season? According to producer Schuyler, 18 new episodes are already in the works.

But with a now-seasoned cast that continues to grow beyond junior-high age, decisions Cast of CBC's hit TV series and kids." She too is "really impressed" with the show. What's all the fuss about? There's the artistry and technical merit, certainly. For one thing, because the show is shot on film rather than videotape, the end product has a smoother, more finished look. Dialogue, so often second-fiddle to visual appeal in children's television, is another of the show's strong suits. Sometimes the lines are on-target serious (as when Spike, pregnant and miserable, tells her boyfriend that he only wants to help so that he can "stop feeling At other times, they can bring the viewer up short.

(Asks Joey, "Who ever heard of a rock star with glasses?" "What about John Len-non?" says his friend. Joey looks blank: But artistry and technique aside, Degrassfa appeal appears to stem from two main areas: its uniquely credible tone, and the range and content of its topics. Notable for its scrupulous avoidance of "Hollywoodization" the shiny gloss of glamorous characters and happy endings the series achieves its credibility in different ways. Schuyler, for instance, frequently draws on her experience as a former teacher in an Ontario junior high school. Schuyler and Hood rely too on direct consultation with their crew and 43-member repertory company.

An initial brainstorming session with VCRs By BILL BROWNSTEIN of The Gazette They're smiling In Tinseltown. More movies, more movie screens and higher movie ticket prices the latter two, thanks In large measure to Toronto's Cine-plex Odeon wundorkind Garth Drabinsky have added up to the most boffo year at the box office in Hollywood history. VCH Inroads or not, movie moguls have cause for cheer this year. As 1987 winds down, more than IS billion and counting In receipts have been rung up at North American box offices. That figure represents a 17-percnt increase from the 1986 tally.

It has also been a banner year for film releases as more than 500 have been distributed In North America, the must since the birth of the tut In the early 1950s. And North American have had more venuim to choose from as the number of movie screens now hovers around the 2S.000 mark -m Incrraie of cIomj to 50 prr rent fn five yw ago 4A 7- i 'K: Amanda Stepto (Spike), phanie will find herself contemplating suicide. Lucy will have to fend off the advances of a young male teacher. There will also be incidents dealing with epilepsy, censorship, joy-rides and sibling rivalry. positively chilling performance by Glenn Close as a most psycho New York City single.

More traditional warfare was played out on the big screen in '87, particularly In light of last year's Oscar-winning Platoon, based on director Oliver Stone's combat experiences In Vietnam. Vietnam has been the focus of four major films this year. One of them, Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, is great and could be a serious Oscar contender this spring; but the other three Hanoi Hilton, Hamburger Hill and, even, Francis Ford Coppola's Gardens of Stone merely grate. Childhood Second World War experiences have also made an Impact at the movies in '87. But while British director John Boorman's return to his roots In Hope and Glory Is filled with whimsy, French film-maker Louis Malle mostly recalls the anguish In Au revoir lei enfants, his fact-based account that looms as a likely choice for the best foreign film Oscar.

Steven Spielberg forever In scarrh of a father figure In his J. Bill Hollywood scores boffo box office from 2nd-season premiere. about the future will obviously have to be made. For the time being, the company isn't making any more plans. No matter how loudly opportunity comes knocking.

Or ringing. with Mia Farrow off the screen as well scurrying back to the ana lyst's couch. Talk about angst: Al len's valentine to the Radio Days of yore has ended up on a host of Top 10 lists, while his latest bleak ode to Ingmar Bergman, September, is on many of the same critics' Terrible 10 lists. The less prolific James Brooks has once again proved that pa tience is a virtue. The writ crdirector spent four years plan ning Broadcast News, his satirical probe of the TV broadcast bust ncss, and Is a heavy favorite to Lake another trip to the Oscar podi urn.

The Emmy Award-winning creator of Taxi and The Mary Tyler Moore Show also took four years to make his only other mo-vie, Terms of Endearment, which cleaned up on Oscar night In 84. This has also been a vintage year tor Brooks bombastic Taxi star, Danny iX'Vlto. The tiny terror hus tles aluminum siding with a vengeance In The Tin Men and, then, tries to murder his mom in the year's best-titled film, Throw (Continued on Paq E-4) films came down to earth to tackle the plight of a displaced child in a Japanese war internment camp In Empire of the Sun, but the experience wasn't personal and it shows. Stone, for his part, moved from the trenches of Vietnam to Wall Street, but proved to be equally adept at dealing with bloodshed in the boardroom as well as In battle. Movie warfare The year also saw some movie warfare take place off-screen as Columbia Pictures and Drabinsky's Cineplex Odeon theatre chain became entangled In a nasty corporate spat.

For reasons that boggle the mind, Columbia decided to limit the release of Its much-acclaimed The Last mperot to major markets, while Cineplex Odeon rctnlliited by yanking Kill Cosby's much-maligned Leonard Part VI a Columbia release from Its Christmas schedule in Canada and the U.S. If nothing else, 1987 could well succeed In sending new daddy Woody Allen who collaborates As if that weren't enough to have Hollywood's power barons hand out the cigars, It now appears that baby boomers sometimes referred to as yuppies, but always thought to represent the biggest chunk of potential customers are flocking to the films in droves. The boomers now account for 21 per cent of movie-ticket sales, up from per cent in 1986. And not even an increase In movie ticket prices from 6 to $6.50 (J7 in some New York City spots) -seems to have drterrcd them. Reprising role Just what have the yuppies and others bfn watching this record-breaking year? The clear-cut 1987 box office champ is Demly Hills Cop II with the Irascible Kddie Murphy reprising his hit role of three years bark.

While the sequel was short on critical acclaim, it has already grvsM-d more than million. The year's second most popular film, atal Attraction, has taken in more than $150 million and may well have sounded the death knell for marital Infidelity thanks to a 1.