Times Colonist from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada • 29

Times Colonist Tuesday, April 18, 2000 A A. Arts Editor: Gavin Fletcher 380-5347 E-MAIL: featured vkrariatimescolonisuom fin 7 v-1 i I 1 7 r. I i tW I. i V. 1 Ij Rock star Jon Bon Jovi isn't putting his music on the back burner.

He's just putting it to one side in order to accommodate an increasingly busy acting career. With his unruly head of hair, black silk suit and black T-shirt, Bon Jovi conveys a mixture of boyish ingenuousness and studied sophistication. And as he talks, two sides do emerge. There's what he concedes is the "control freak" side of him the musical celebrity who has total power over every aspect of Bon Jovi's image. "I've been the person behind every record we've done throughout our careers, and every single aspect of it has been solely my decision.

That's even better than being a movie director because with a record you're director, producer and star." There's no tinge of arrogance when he explains this rather it's a flat, matter-of-fact statement explaining why he's where he is today in the world of music. The other side of him emerges when he worldwide and a history of sell-out tours. But at 38, he admits he gets bored easily, and that he's constantly on the watch for new fields to conquer. He's long been inspired by the example of Frank Sinatra, a guy who also came from Bon Jovi's home state of New Jersey: "Frank Sinatra to me is a guy who really had the best of both worlds. He was able to tour until he was 80 and he made 60 movies." talks about acting and the fact that he's in his ninth year working with a coach.

"It's humbling Bon Jovi had no acting ambitions until he was asked to write a song for the film Young Guns. It was then that he and exciting and new. It a way of starting over again after all the oth- oecame interested in the moviemaking process. He went to an acting coach who told er life experiences him to start reading Tennessee Williams and other good playwrights. I le started to appreciate the rewards of acting the printed word, and began studying seriously.

In I've had. I can bring those to any film project, and yet acting is also a humbling way of being 21 again of being 1993, he went to audi tion for director Nor By Jamie Portman Southam Newspapers BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. Last year, Jon Bon Jovi was quiverlng with cold in a small boat off the Mediterranean island of Malta. He was drenched and miserable from a mixture of rain and turbulent waves that were spilling over the side of the boat, and he was thinking fondly of home back in the United States. "I was wet to the bone and it was salt water! I was out in that rowboat thinking to myself: I'm already rich and famous.

What the hell am I doing here rowing this boat?" The specific answer to that question is that he was doing a crucial scene from the new Second War thriller, U-571, in which he plays an American submarine lieutenant involved in an attempt to capture a disabled German U-boat and its crew. The broader, more encompassing answer is that he was there because he wanted to be there that despite the hardship he was having a wonderful time making this movie. "Besides," he adds, "I always need a new challenge." That was his motivation in starting his own wildly successful rock group. It was also his reason for branching out as a film actor. And, once he'd successfully asserted his acting credentials in movies like Tlie Leading Man and No Looking Back, he decided it was time to take on a further challenge and subject himself to the rigours of a full-fledged action picture.

But he is sorry that audiences won't be seeing his actual death scene when U-571 arrives in cinemas April 24. "It's unfortunate, but they had to compromise in order to avoid a restricted rating in the States," Bon Jovi says sounding comically rueful about the whole thing. "There was this great slow-motion shot of my head being blown off by a piece of shrapnel. But when the ratings board saw it, they said it's gotta go!" Written and directed by Jonathan Mostow, U-571 is a fictional story about a daring U.S. naval mission to capture a top-secret Nazi coding device from a German submarine.

An unexpect man Jewison, but panicked at the last moment, and fled the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and the first one on the set." He has no intention of packing in his music career. "I really enjoy the process of Arts in Brief Rising star Omar Epps has high career hopes Times Colonist news services NEW YORK Denzel Washington and Will Smith, look out Omar Epps is breathing down your necks. "I look at Denzel and Wesley (Snipes), Cuba (Gooding) and Will, and figure it must be lonely at the top for those guys right now," the rising star told Time magazine in its April 24 issue. Epps, 26, has starred in hits including The Wood and last year's bomb The Mod Squad. "I'm looking for opportunities across the board, not just as a young black actor but as an actor," says Epps.

"Sure, I want to be respected like Denzel, but I also want to show I have the range of a Robin Williams or Tom Hanks." Polite police recognize Oprah's good manners ABILENE, Texas The good manner guys really like Oprah. Glen Dromgoole and Alan Gibson, the two-man civility patrol also known as Americans for More Civility, have awarded Oprah Winfrey with one of their 1999 National Civility Awards. Winfrey joined former president Gerald Ford, the late cartoonist Charles Schulz and baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron to win "Civies." They gave Un-Civies to Bobby Knight, the Indiana University basketball coach; TV personalities Judge Judy and Jerry Springer; radio psychologist Dr. Laura Schlessinger; and the World Wrestling Federation. The men said Knight's obscenity-laced press conferences dishonour his school, Springer puts the worst behaviour on public display, Judge Judy and Dr.

Laura are mean to guests, and the wrestlers represent the bottom of the cultural barrel. Dromgoole, a former editor of the Abilene Reporter-News, said he and Gibson, a writer from Jasper, are trying to discourage foul behaviour. Taylor gets award for work with homosexuals LOS ANGELES Elizabeth Taylor has nabbed an award, but not for her acting. The Academy Award-winning actress, who has worked to raise money and awareness about AIDS in the past 15 years, won the Vanguard Award from the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. GLAAD said the award recognizes "a member of the entertainment community who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people." building "in a bundle of nerves." Two years later, he conquered his anxieties enough to read for a part in Moonlight And Valentino.

He won the role. "Acting eventually became a passion for me no, more than a songwriting. I need to express myself in those ways, but I don't need to spend 16 months on the road supporting new records any more." BONJOVI'DII 4 I ed turn of events rinds nine of the Americans trapped in the enemy's vessel in the hostile waters of the North Atlantic after their own submarine is destroyed. Bill Paxton plays the commander of the doomed American vessel. Matthew McConaughey is his executive officer, a young lieutenant forced to conquer his own fears and uncertainties when he abruptly finds himself in command of the hazardous operation.

Harvey Keitel is the submarine chief and Bon Jovi is the doomed young lieutenant entrusted with a crucial role in 'Y i Si i S. 9 1 lift the mission. Bon Jovi has been winning good reviews for his acting since his first movie, Moonlight And Valentino, in 1995, but ever since he started pursuing this parallel career people have been asking him why? After all, he's the founder and lead singer of Bon Jovi, a phenomenally successful recording act with sales of more than 80 million kii Jon Bon Jovi: Actor and musician Power Fiddle i OF THE Frank Leahy's instrument once belonged to the legendary Don Messer I 1 Taylor received the honour from actress Carrie Fisher the daughter of one of Taylor's ex-husbands, Eddie Fisher over the weekend at GLAAD's annual media awards. Also at the ceremony, actress Anne Heche received the Stephen F. Kolzak Award.

That award is given to a homosexual, bisexual or transgender member of the entertainment or media community for combating homophobia. Chicks say song about killing hubby is a joke kind of RADNOR, Pa. The Dixie Chicks say their new country song about two women who kill an abusive husband is partly a joke but also a serious comment on domestic abuse. Goodbye Earl, in which the wife poisons her abusive husband's black-eyed peas, has stirred debate about whether it condones a murder by the abused victim. "But we didn't write it," Natalie Maincs told TV Guide for its April 22 issue.

"I think initially when we heard it, we just thought it was so funny." The lead singer added, "We're not saying kill your husband if he touches you. It was more, 'This is a bad character, and these girls are going to do something really bad to him, but don't take it too Fellow band member Emily Kohison said some radio stations have used the song to send a message. "Some stations will play the song und then (cite) the statistics about domestic abuse. And I think that's great," Robison said. To commemorate his mentor's legacy, and to give voice again to that treasured fiddle, Leahy first set about recreating some of Mcsscr's best-remembered music.

A year ago, with Paul Mills and Bill Garrett, both CBC Records producers and folk music enthusiasts, he started recording Don Messer's Violin, a collection of 17 pieces spanning the master's entire career repertoire, from the 1920s through the '50s, from kitchen party music and barn dances to swing, jazz, orchestral work, folk ballads, waltzes, jigs and reels, even bits of samba and rockabilly. The first piece, Barn Dance Medley, fades in over Messer's original version, complete with vinyl pops and radio crackle, with the unique sound of that fiddle making a perfect and seamless sonic segue from the 1940s to now. Don Messer's Violin is in record stores this week. "I don't know what gives that violin such a special sound," Leahy said. "I've tested it in concert halls and arenas, against my own (an Italian Rinaldi about 200 years old) and others.

It's a rare French fiddle, made in the late 18(Xh by Pierre Boisin, who only made one oilier like it." By Greg Quill The Canadian Press In ancient times, the powers of an elder warrior or wizard were conferred on the most deserving youngsters in the form of a gift, usually a personal weapon or a treasured trophy. Frank Leahy was endowed in the same, almost mystical, way three years ago when he answered the phone to one Dawn Attis, who said she wanted to give the Canadian champion fiddle player her father's violin. "My mind went blank," said Leahy, 39, from Waterloo, where he lives with his wife, Linda, and their five children. "I couldn't think of a musician with that name. 'Then she told mc her maiden name is Messer, and that 25 years after her dad's death, the family had decided it was time to pass his famous instrument along." The folk icon, the violin whose sweet, soprano tones Canadians everywhere recognize as the sound of their collective past, couldn't have found better hands to caress it than those of Leahy, a classically trained traditional fiddler steeped in the musical style established by Messer, who hosted ''Don Mi'sscr's Jubilee, a staple oh CANADIAN PUf tf A year ago, Frank Leahy, shown In an undated photo, along with CBC Records producers and folk music enthusiasts Paul Mills and Bill Garrett, started recording Don Hewer's Violin, a collection of 1 7 pieces spanning the master's entire career repertoire.

CBC-TV for 17 consecutive seasons. A national champion from the early 1980s his cousins make up the renowned Celtic band bearing the family name Leahy was chosen by the Messer family from among several other worthy fiddlers. "llicy asked me some personal questions," he said. "They seemed to know everything about my musical life, my degree in classical music, my interest in jaz and my affection for Don's music and the 'Down Last' fiddling tradition, Mine is the Messer style.".