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Calgary Herald from Calgary, Alberta, Canada • 59

Publication:
Calgary Heraldi
Location:
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Issue Date:
Page:
59
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

mm River Phoenix (left) and Wil Wheaton discover a special friendship Kiefer Sutherland (right) leads Bradley Gregg (left) and Jason Oliver Tears fell freely around Stand By Me production Water Music. The youth of the cast drove the budget up to about $8 million, said Gideon, because of child labor laws in California, where the project originated. "We could only use the kids six hours a day and we couldn't shoot after 9 p.m." The title Stand By Me taken from the 1961 ballad sung by Ben E. King was suggested at the last moment by Reiner and was adopted as the "least disliked" alternative." "It grows on you," Gideon said. "There were three dangers in using the original title.

The Body suggests body building, sex or horror, all of which are misleading." The actual "body" in the film, which belongs to a boy who has gone missing in the woods, is only a gimmick to give Gordie and his friends a reason to go off on an expedition, he said the "Maguffin," as Alfred Hitchcock used to term it. "There are two kinds of movies, as we see it: the 'fabricated' movie, like Starman, which is more fantastical, and the 'real' movie, which is about ordinary people." "Most of the studios are looking for the fabricated movie, like Starman or Top Gun," Evans most faithful adaptation of his work. "Stephen saw the rough cut and he cried," Gideon said. "He loved it and he thanked us for reviving his movie career. 'I haven't helped myself lately with Maximum he said." "He's really excited about it he has been going to theatres in New York to see how it plays for real people." All the elements Reiner wanted were already in King's novella, Evans said.

"All we did was magnify it." Most of the new material is in a subplot involving a gang of older teenagers led by Ace, the bleach-blond juvenile delinquent played by Kiefer Sutherland. Gil Wheaton, cast as the future writer Gordie, was one of the first actors who tried out for the part. The toughest role to fill, said Evans, was that of Teddy, the self-destructive daredevil; it eventually went to Corey Feldman, a veteran of The Goonies. River Phoenix, considered for awhile as a possible Teddy, ended up playing Chris, the natural leader of the group. time he read for the part, I cried," said Gideon.) Jerry O'Connell, who plays the clumsy fat boy Vern, was located in New York, where he had appeared in the off-Broadway kind of picture that will probably win a bunch of awards and make no money." Evans and Gideon, who earlier collaborated on the screenplay of Starman, needed an "element" to awaken the interest of the studio moneymen someone or something with a proven ability to make a profit.

Andrew Scheinman joined Evans and Gideon as a third co-producer, and the necessary "element" was found in the person of director Adrian Lyne, who numbers among his credits the smash hit Flashdance. Lyne eventually found himself tied up with 9'2 Weeks, but in the meantime Rob Reiner (director of last summer's hit romantic comedy The Sure Thing) had also expressed interest. Columbia Pictures became involved and by June 1985, shooting was actually under way on location in Oregon. "Rob called Stephen King because he assumed the story was partly autobiographical," Evans said. "Rob asked Stephen how much of it actually happened and Stephen said, 'Well, to be honest with you, I'm a pathological liar and I don't know what is and what isn't true, but if it isn't true, it should King later told Reiner Stand By Me was the By Fred Haeseker (Herald staff writer) MONTREAL When screenwriter Bruce Evans first read the Stephen King novella that became the source for Stand By Me, he recognized its potential at once.

"This will make a great movie and earn us millions of dollars," he told his partner Raynold Gideon, only half-jokingly. That was three years ago; Gideon agreed right away, but it took a little longer to convince a studio. Stand By Me, which follows four 12-year-old boys through a weekend adventure that will be an important step in their growing up, has turned out to be one of the summer's critical and commercial successes. It is not, however, the kind of property that makes the powers in Hollywood sit up instantly and take notice. "If The Body had been more like other Stephen King stories, it would have been easier to make the movie," Gideon said at the World Film Festival, where Stand By Me was screened just before its general release.

"But a coming-of-age movie with four kids, no stars and no Goonies special effects is seen as the British film takes pot-shots at the American way the bubble-gum set," he said. "This is not a safe film." He denies that The American Way represents a "time warp," though he describes it as very much a film of the '60s. "It's more about the war in Nicaragua than the war in Vietnam," said actor William Armstrong, who appears in the film in drag as Sen. Westinghouse. "The lead characters themselves are the time warp they represent attitudes that have been put on ice in the United States since the '60s." pearances on TV evangelists' shows and unscheduled footage showing atrocities of the Vietnam war and Jimi Hendrix playing fiery, free-spirited guitar lines.

Maurice Phillips, 38, directed the film as his first feature after a career devoted mostly to TV commercials and rock videos. "I lived in America for 11 years and was drafted," he said. "As a British subject, I had the right to leave, so I left. "I think the film's objectivity was born out of the fact that we were 3,000 miles away. I think we would have had trouble making it in the United States it's very much an anti-war film." Dr.

Strangelove and MASH, he said, were "reference points" for The American Way, and the attitudes of the Dennis Hopper character and his associates are similar to those of the lead characters in MASH. "One of the troubles in Hollywood is that everyone is trying to play it safe and to appeal to date by a computer that has determined that the majority of the American people want a female hard-liner as their chief executive. The American Way develops as a fight to the finish between two ultimate media strategists the Dennis Hopper character who commands the brilliant but unstable crew of war-scarred outlaw propagandists and an actress-politician who uses television to act out the image of what the people appear to want. It's a battle between bland guest ap electronic gear to broadcast their anti-war message. TV, as the vets dub their pirate network, operates by interrupting regular programming at opportune times with appropriate rock videos and other material they hope has mind-altering properties.

Their principal target is a presidential hopeful running on a platform to bomb the Communists out of Central America. Senator Willa Westinghouse has been chosen as the perfect candi By Fred Haeseker (Herald staff writer) MONTREAL The single British entry in official competition at the World Film Festival this year is an anti-war satire with a decidedly trans-Atlantic counter-cultural flavor. The American Way numbers among its largely American cast Dennis Hopper and Michael J. Pollard as two members of a crew of seven Vietnam veterans who have taken over an ancient B-29 bomber called Uncle Slam and equipped it with the latest Huey Lewis and The News are rollin' in clover Its fourth album, has just been released along with its debut single Stuck With You. It is a light pop album that hardly finds the heart of rock 'n' roll beating very strong, but the group's following has already made it a best seller.

Lewis, however, feels the album is a good one. "The main thing is a song has to be true. If you sing: 'I'm going to Kansas City, they got some pretty little women there and I'm going to get me well, you believe those words. It's rock because it's true," says Lewis. Lewis admits his sudden fame is a little hard to take at times.

"Fame is nice but it can be a joke, like me being considered sexy. It's fame that's sexy. You can be a leper and it doesn't matter as long as you're famous," says Lewis. "I'm even getting all these offers for major film roles. I appeared for seven seconds in Back to the Future and I played a tree in Grade Seven.

There's all these good actors out of work in Hollywood and they're offering me roles. "The key is I take the music we do seriously, but I don't take myself seriously and I'm certainly not afraid of being silly. Our new video for Stuck With You is silly. "Videos are a dangerous thing but, having said that, they are now as important as the record and if you're going to do it you might as well have fun. I think light-hearted videos work best because the medium doesn't exactly lend itself of England's pub rock scene was based on American bands like Commander Cody, Eggs Over Easy and Clover," says Lewis in a telephone interview.

"Anyway, they wanted to bring us to England and thought we could take that country by storm. By the time we got over there, though, punk had hit. The day we landed Johnny Rotten (of the Sex Pistols) spit in the face of a reporter for New Musical Express and there we were without pedal steel and long hair." However, Clover did manage to back Elvis Costello (now known as Declan MacManus) on his debut disc, My Aim is True. Lewis missed out again. "Elvis asked me to play on the record but I said the hell with it.

I decided to take a two-week vacation instead. But I learned my Zen lesson from the time in England if you stop trying to be commercial you will be." Returning to the U.S. after the break up of Clover, Lewis began jamming with some of its members as well as other San Francisco musicians. The result was the formation of Huey Lewis and The News whose 1980 debut was new wave rock. "I know we got that record contract because we had skinny ties and not because we could play," says Lewis.

It wasn't until their third album, Sports, which was more of a bluesy pop rock, that the group hit it big with such songs as The Heart of Rock Roll and Want a New Drug. By James Muretich (Herald staff writer) Huey Lewis and The News are a band in the right place at the right time. Few people would argue that their brand of pop-rock is of lasting consequence even if the group has gone from bars to playing arenas, such as the Olympic Saddledome where it performs this Tuesday evening. And yet the band can do no wrong since it released Sports in 1983. That album yielded five top-10 singles and the group also scored the title track to last summer's movie smash Back to the Future.

Things are going so well that the sun even shone on them in Montreal this past week where, after two nights of rain cancellations at a large outdoor music festival, the weather broke just in time for Iewis and The News to perform before 20,000 fans. However, Lewis remembers well being in the wrong place at the wrong time for most of his music career. Lewis and The News actually grew out of the ashes of the San Francisco band Clover, whic journeyed to England at the invitation of Jake Riviera, one of the founders of Stiff Records (the influential British new wave label formed in the late '70s). "Jake and Nick Iowe (the act Riviera managed) were big fans of Clover, which we couldn't believe since the group's two albums hadn't done well. But a lot i mm Huey Lewis (third from right) brings The News to Calgary to Gone With The Wind." even came out a winner in his legal battle with Columbia Pictures for deliberately stealing Want a New Drug for its Ghvstbusters theme.

"We settled out of court very handsomely," says Lewis. It's just one of many things that have gone his way since his rock has been on a roll. Berton revists Vimy Circus life for Lancaster Expo draining PNE F7 F4.

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