The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 40

ETIIE MOVIES SECTION NTERTAINMENT PAGE C14 Editors: Don Butler, Jane Wilson, 596-3728 Ti ie Ottawa Citizen Friday, May 17, 1996 INSIDE fa: is When Fried Green Tomatoes hit the big screen, the women's relationship became a friendship (ft f() n'Jl SJ vUy Cn -in i im0jlr Li nl LaJI mm hmmt I inJ f1S iyJ of he Celluloid Closet Movie reviews pageC12 What's playing pageC13 Steve Mazey on video page C12 TV listings pageC9 BRIEFLY Canadian painting nets $140,000 at Sotheby's TORONTO A. J. Casson's The Blue Heron, evaluated at close to $90,000, sold for $140,000 at the semiannual Sotheby's auction of Canadian art the highest amount ever paid for one of his paintings. The event grossed $1.9 million from the sale of 276 works. Tom Thomson's Nocturne, listed between $180,000 and $200,000, was the subject of much pre-auction speculation but was bought for $175,000.

"I can truly say this is the best Canadian art sale we've had in six or seven years," Christina Orobetz, president of Sotheby's Canada, said of the auction. "I saw people responding to quality" Anthony Hopkins receives Tracy award LOS ANGELES Anthony Hopkins has received the Spencer Tracy Award for outstanding screen performances and professional achievement in drama. The award, established in 1988 by the University of California at Los Angeles and Tracy's daughters, was presented to the Silence of the Lambs star this week. Previous recipients include William Hurt, James Stewart, Michael Douglas, Jodie Foster, Anjelica Huston, Den-zel Washington, Harrison Ford and Tom Hanks. Former ballet director sues company for salary WINNIPEG William Whiten-er, former artistic director of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, is suing for breach of contract.

In a statement of claim, Whitener says he was making $100,000 a year when he left in November 1995 over "creative differences," after two years with the ballet, and that his contract called for his salary to be paid for 12 more months. Whitener, who now lives in Kansas City was replaced by Hull native Andre Lewis, associate artistic director and former dancer. Ballet officials refused to comment. Film documents how Hollywood treats gays A I I The Celluloid Closet Written by: Armistead Maupin Directed by: Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman Rating: AA Playing at: ByTowne Cinema, through May 23 By Steven Mazey Citizen entertainment writer the opening scenes of The Celluloid Closet, the funny, sad and perceptive documentary that traces the way Hollywood has portrayed gays and lesbians, there are some eye-popping film clips from the ear I I I ii I i I 'i If Despite being a big-budget feature with a gay lead, Philapelphia left some critics wondering when a gay hero would actually live to the closing credits The documentary sees Longtime Companion, left, as a more mature approach liest days of movies. From a flickering silent film, we see a fastidiously groomed man described as "Clarence the clerk one of nature's mistakes in a land where men are men." In Wonder Bar, a 1934 Al Jolson musical, a well-dressed man interrupts a waltzing couple and asks if he can cut in.

When the woman agrees, he grabs her partner and the two men happily dance off together. "Ooooh! Boys will be boys!" squeals Jolson as he grins at the camera. The Celluloid Closet shows audiences that although gay characters have not been seen widely in mainstream movies, there have been references to homosexuality since the earliest days of cinema even if they were almost always one-dimensional jokes. Film-makers Rob Epstein and Jef RADIO Jazz at the Glenn Gould Studio: CBC Stereo (103.3 FM) at 7:30 p.m. The Renee Rosnes Quartet.

Citizen staff and news services A clip of The Maltese Falcon shows the first meeting between Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) and the effeminate Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre). Cairo introduces himself with a gardenia-scented business card, prompting a look of disgust from Spade. In Caged, a 1950 drama set in a women's prison, a decidedly butch older prisoner (Hope Emerson) drools over a new young inmate. "Let's you and me get acquainted, honey," she says with a leer. "You may be a number to the others but not to me." Movie makers weren't always so negative, and The Celluloid Closet shows how they sometimes included between-the-lines references.

Stewart Stern, who wrote the screenplay for Rebel Without a Cause, talks about Plato (Sal Mineo), the sensitive teen who worships James Dean's character, is shunned by other boys and eventually killed. i Although Stern couldn't be explicit about the character in 1955, he says, "any film is at the same time an ex trayals had on the audience. These issues are important, the film makes clear, because Hollywood movies are not just entertainment, but a way of absorbing views of the world, of learning how to see people. Novelist Armistead Maupin, who wrote the narration, sums it up: "(Homosexuality) was there as something to laugh at, or something to pity, or even something to fear. These were fleeting images, but they were unforgettable, and they left a lasting legacy.

Hollywood, that great maker of myths, taught straight people what to think about gay people, and gay people what to think about themselves." The Celluloid Closet traces Hollywood images from the mid-1980s through the late 1950s, when studios were bound by the Production Code, a rigid set of rules about what could and couldn't be portrayed on screen. Yet film-makers managed to sneak subtle references to homosexuality into their works, often in a sneering way and often to make villains more unsavory pression of a writer, and it's an offering to an audience to create their own film. If I were writing the film today I'd be much more specific." Novelist Gore Vidal, who wroteev-eral screenplays in the 1950s, says: "You got very good at projecting subtext without saying a word about what you were doing." Vidal provides a hilarious example from the 1959 Ben Eur, for which he wrote the script. To spice up the "gorgeously junky" movie, he and director William Wyler told actor Stephen Boyd, who played Ben Hur's rival Mes-sala, to imagine that he and Ben Hur had been teenage lovers and that Mes-sala longs to revive the affair. Vidal adds that they were careful not to mention the idea to the notoriously right-wing Heston.

When Boyd meets Heston in the film, he gives him the kind of looks Mae West gave Cary Grant. "There are looks he gives that are just so clear," Vidal says with a satisfied smile. CELLULOID continued on page C13 THE OTTAWA frey Friedman have done a remarkable job of tracing Hollywood history and following the way things have changed in the movies since those early days. Inspired by Vito Russo's book of the same name, they use dozens of film Entertainment guide Movies: Capsule reviews of current releases Restaurants: Citizen Dining Guide Events: Going Out listings http:www.ottawacitizen.com clips and interviews with directors, writers and actors to look not only at the history of gay and lesbian characters but also at the effects such por- (Gatineau cinemas designed to bring out best in films um. But Farre wanted a complex that would show movies, such as the art films he distributed, to best advantage.

"The best screens are usually for the big American movies that teenagers like," he notes. "That's not right. Why should (art films) always be in the small theatres? All of the theatres here have the same comfort, the stereo and the digital sound." While Farre owns the theatre, Cine-plex Odeon handles the programming. (The current four-screen complex in Gatineau, Les Promenades, is owned and run by Famous Players.) Cinema 9 will run both French- and English-language movies. The opening week program includes The Truth About Cats And Dogs, Flipper, Richard Barb Wire, The Substitute and Dead Man Walking in English and Tornade, Nelly et Mr.

Arnaud, and Flipper in French. Farre hopes to draw patrons from both sides of the river his ads stress that the theatre is only seven minutes from downtown Ottawa and that parking is free. Cinema 9 is the first movie theatre to open in the area since the World Exchange expanded to seven auditoriums last year The Elgin and the Place de Ville theatres have both been closed by Famous Players in downtown Ottawa, although that chain has announced plans to expand its suburban Britannia cinemas. Nine screens offer latest technology, comfortable seating By Jay Stone Citizen movies writer The largest movie theatre complex in the capital region a nine-screen giant with a total seating capacity of 1,900 opens today in a new building in Gatineau. Cinema 9 in Gatineau is the brainchild of Didier Farre, a Quebec film veteran who works in movie distribution and wanted to open the kind of theatres where films could be shown to best advantage.

The theatres at Cinema 9 all come with screens that are curved so the edges are the same distance from the projector as the centre. This eliminates the out-of-focus frames sometimes seen at the sides of flat screens. The cinemas, which range in size from 138 seats to 470 seats, also have high-backed seats with extra leg room. The Cinema 9 projectors are all the latest thing as welL the cinemas have Surround Sound, DTS, Dolby A and Digital sound systems, complete with a subwoofer that should be able to rock you in your seat when the occasion calls for it In the smallest theatre, Far re pointed out no fewer than 12 speakers, including three on each side wall and four behind the screen. Cinema 9 sits in a building at the corner of Maloney and l'Hopital in Gatineau, right next door to the city hall.and a block from the Promenades del'Outaouais shopping centre.

The building, which has being under construction for a year, includes elevator access for disabled patrons. Workers were still installing seats and paving the parking lot late this week, but Farre was confident the theatre would be ready for the Thursday night preview opening and tonight's public premiere. Still unfinished is a ground-level space in which three restaurants will open next month. Farre once owned 33 theatres across Quebec but he moved out of that business in 1975 and got into film distribution and co-production. He said he travelled through Europe and the U.S.

for a year before beginning Cinema 9, picking up the latest ideas in theatre design. Cinema 9 combines the U.S. candy-counter set-up (one big concession stand in the second-floor lobby) with the European system of high-backed seats and curved screens. Curved screens were popular in North America in the 1940s, Farre says, but were dropped because they took up too much room in the auditori 'ill Wayne Cudtfngton, Citizen IN FOCUS: idier Farre shows off one of nine curved screens.