The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 699

4: -r" 1 ywwm'w yn npi THURSDAY JULY 29 1993 INTERNATIONAL EDITION THE MIAMI HERALD 11B For listeners of a certain age a PITTS FROM 12B Prince Jay enjoys this If his smile was any wider it would lop off his ears A light burnished and mellow suffuses his eyes Hearing this music makes him happy Seems to have that effect on people of a certain age They tell us exactly what that age is but less reticent about the music a musical archive is what it says Leonard Davidson a retiree from Chicago music was just the best for says New Yorker Mary Lou Jensen part of a second group that has gathered at a Pembroke Pines retirement community They smile They lean their heads back and sing along Memories flood their features Years roll away and old age seems just a fanciful conceit a glorious sight to see Tha regional semifinals in the fourth annual Tanqueray Rocks Talent Contest will be held Sept 28 at the Steven Talk-house (6 1 6 Collins Ave Miami Beach) The Talkhouse joins clubs in LA Boston San Francisco and Chicago in hosting the regionals In each city three bands chosen from audio cassette entries will play for a $500 performance fee while competing for a $1000 semifinals prize and the grand prize of $10000 and a national tour To enter send the following information by Sept 3 to Tanqueray Rocks Talent Contest co Bragman Nyman Cafarelli 9171 Wilshire Blvd Penthouse Suite Beverly Hills Calif 90210-5530: an entry form (available at the Talkhouse) a black-and-white photo proof of age for all band members (must be over 21) and an audio cassette (20 minutes or less) of original music TIMES CHANGED: think the turning point was the Vietnam says Ruth Attas right At left is Mary Lou Jensen Whatever the turning point was it changed the day and the music too A GIRL John Harris remembered the pleasures of the dance floor with four magic words: Once upon a time before Malcolm Martin Bobby and John died in a fusillade of bullets before civil rights rights and gay rights changed the landscape of society before AIDS turned sex into a game of Russian roulette once upon a time you could get into the Paramount Theater in New York for a quarter You could pack a sandwich and spend the whole day there see a first-run Hollywood film and enjoy some of the biggest musical acts the day: Glenn Miller Tommy Dorsey you name it And if you were lucky enough to find yourself sitting next to a girl you might engineer it so your elbow just happened to press against her breast across the armrest Such a brave and foolish feat made you King Stud with all the fellas Cheap dates I know these things because Jay Barouch tells me this is the way it was high school he says used to get up at 7 in the morning to hop on the train to go to the Paramount That was a good place to pick up girls You stand in line and these girls would walk by and say can come in come in and have a girl from 8 till 10 at night And without paying a a floodgate and suddenly talking over everyone else but it matter because all saying the same thing Respect missing what tost Once upon a time divorce your says Bemie Lacey from New York remember when the church used to run the says Nora Weiner also from New York would be close to our boyfriends the priest would walk in everybody would stand straight Everybody became a saint That was is what this music means to adds Prince Jay for not only your parents but also the policeman the A better time? Were we better people once upon a time? Did we live better lives in the days when our highest aspiration was to find a paper doll that we could call our own? You can argue it till Frank Sinatra learns to break dance and never reach consensus Did we have better musical taste once upon a time? Again no consensus lyrics in heavy metal are complains Gene Boston keep repeating the same line 40 father told me the same MUSHUtOT Got new for ya if you want it but first of all I'd like to salute Bemie Lacey and Nora Weiner who respectively arranged for me to meet with members of the Majorca Towers condo association in North Miami and the Foxy Ladies dance troupe in Pembroke Pines in connection with this column You might not want to invite Aerosmith and Megadeth to the same party for a while The Aero-fellows dumped Dave Mustaine and crew as opening act three shows into the second leg of their double-bill tour Mustaine complains that Aerosmith treated his platinum-selling band like nobodies and Joe Perry sort of confirms that: "Dave Mustaine just happy and we want to tour with anyone who having a good Aerosmith's lead mouth Steven Tyler reportedly told Mustaine: like to help you out Which way did you come in?" thing when I used to listen to Benny says Prince Jay says not music all Like we tell our kids now our stuff was better It goes on and on Their kids will tell their right of course normal for each generation to demand the right to make its own way independent of the fogies who came before But is it just my imagination or is the gulf between this generation and their Boomer children wider than earlier chasms? Then came Vietnam think the turning point was the Vietnam says Ruth Attas lived in Manhattan at that time and I saw the horror of the treatment of the young people who were marching against the war The hard-hats who were up in buildings would throw rocks These kids would walk with the Red Communist flag because they were so much against the war that they turned over into that And in the end they were right But who knew it at the Maybe Vietnam was the turning point Or maybe it was Ken- redeem MOVIE REVIEW ROBIN HOOD: MEN IN TIGHTS (PG-13) irk Cast: Cary Elwes Richard Lewis Roger Rees Amy Yasbeck Dave Chappelle Isaac Hayes Tracey Ullman Director: Mel Brooks Producer: Mel Brooks Screenwriters: Mel Brooks Evan Chandler David Shapiro Cinematographer Michael Music: Hummie Mann A 20th Century-Fox release Running time: 90 minutes Mild vulgar language sexual Innuendo snaggletoothed old crone with a crush on the Sheriff Cary Elwes makes a good prissy Robin rolling his eyes and wincing at each new Brooksian offense And the director himself turns up in the role that in lore is occupied by Friar Tuck Brooks plays him as an itinerant rabbi hauling a load of sacramental wine and offering the entire band a discount briss But most of the gags are much tamer The movie is not nearly as bawdy as it needs to be Or as smart either There is for example a character named Achoo You do not have to know anything more about this film to be able to write your own dialogue for him idea for next acting turn thinking of an insane movie for me called Amazing Colossal Mel where by mistake I drink a solution supposed to make disappointments will Hood Robin Hood When it it works but usually death Maybe it was words or march or incendiary pelvis Whatever it was it seized the moment and changed the day Changed the music too But not just the music Rather its very purpose changed Suddenly music was no longer just for romance and relaxation Suddenly it also aimed to incite and ignite Whenever that turning point was it changed the time so irrevocably that a Sentimental Journey will always be just that Will always be a nice place to visit but you live there But oh the visit is good for a smile Features soften and eyes shine and you help but envy them their joy If lucky Aerosmith or Arrested Development or Gladys Knight will have that effect on me one day will take me back to the best days of my life pull up a chair and call the kids close say me tell you how it was once upon a time before Leonard Pitts column appears in Living Arts on Wednesdays Brooks? works it yes yes and yes: God bless you Of course Mel Brooks has never been a finesse comic and no one expects him to hit with every gag But this film reminds you how far his films have slipped behind the shotgun comedies of the Zucker brothers (David and Jerry) and Jim Abrahams collectively and singly who have built on Airplane! to a broad-gag frenzy Brooks works more slowly He stuffs his situations with references to the entire culture Dom DeLuise turns up at one point as Marlon Brando doing the Godfather and then slips into the Brando of On the Waterfront and after a while you wonder whether anyone involved knows where going with it But the gag speed is lower and the joke count is too And many of jokes still have the reek of the Catskills on them you can figure their entire provenance going back a half-century or so in the time it takes to get the punchline Still when this works it WORKS an uninspired running gag about Blmkin the one of the Merry Men who is blind that finally builds to a single brilliant joke (too good to spoil it) Here again you can look down a long line of stand-up routines at this gag which Brooks has aged like a fine wine But a small treasure I wish Robin Hood: Men in Tights had more of them vegetables bigger and I become this 50-foot he reports then I try to get back to normal but when I do life is so dull I drink the stuff quarter! Maybe you bought popcorn Maybe" Once upon a time before mini-malls and multiplexes back when Frankie and Mel and Bing made the music you danced with a partner says John Harris a retired lawyer from New York City our day it was a pleasure to hold a girl close to you rather than having her jumping all over the place and you have to chase after her with a Once upon a time says Helen Fox another New York retiree fear was virtually unknown were never frightened of the night It was a calm period of time It was met my husband in a cellar recalls Anne Broder from Brooklyn Several other women nod: They too met their mates in brownstone basements dancing to the music collected on Sentimental Journey was says Prince Jay all this baloney with the dope and the AIDS It was an easier He sounds wistful And angry Once upon a time says Buddy Dressner from Trenton NJ your father talked to you you listened There was more respect You knew you had a family You knew where you Respect The word strikes a chord Like a magic key it opens never read bad he cracks depress me and then spoil my lunch The fact is for all the bad reviews Space-balls did rather well It grossed nearly $40 million which is a lot of money for any movie and strangely enough still my greatest source of revenue thanks to video rentals and Too much business Talk of grosses and profits prompts Brooks to note how much filmmaking has changed over the years used to be show business with the emphasis on show Now the emphasis is all on he says I was a kid they used to measure success in terms of a intrinsic artistic and emotional worth You talked about whether a movie was good or bad not whether it was a With this philosophy in mind Brooks says his company is working on several projects unique and interesting not because potential blockbusters One is called My Heart based on a book about South Africa while another is a little old-fashioned picture a sort of sci-fi horror film called Not Human Finding memories Because sometimes pop music is archaeology You dig through it and it gives you back the smells the sounds the feelings of a time long gone hard to hear Crosby Stills Nash and Young for example without seeing headlines about Kent State and Watergate Hard to hear Duke Ellington without thinking of flappers and flagpole sitters and bathtub gin And impossible to listen to Doris Day or Johnny Mathis without being swept back to a time when everyone pulled together in support of fighting overseas a time when those boys returned to a grateful nation and set about creating the Baby Boom suburbia and the backyard barbecue Rock whatl Gangsta who If that kind of music after in the wrong daydream pal Definitely in the wrong CD collection Because as its title implies Sentimental Journey is a passage to a gentler day a fairy tale of a better America that may or may not have existed outside the misty confines of rose-colored glasses But we want to believe it existed and maybe enough Like any fairy tale it begins After two BROOKS FROM 12B tume romantic The final piece of the puzzle fell into place thanks to Kevin Costner went to see him as Robin Hood and I thought guy talking with no English accent He sounds like from Brooks says the whole inspiration for doing a comedy version all came together at that precise moment I thank Kevin Costner enough for reawakening the Robin Hood Brooks says Costner has been a good sport visited the set and he told everyone he was vaguely worried about it but that be the first in line to see it Now a great The Men in Tights shoot was a blast Brooks says for the fox We had a beautiful fox and when we were shooting his scene the trainer brought it out and I said you have a And she said need one well So we set up the shot I said the trainer let the fox go it ran straight into the forest and we never saw it Formula for good spoof Sound like a scene Brooks might have included in a spoof of movie-making? He says the successful spoof relies on a familiar set-up that unravels into chaos or slapstick lot has to do with expectation and Brooks says instance the audience knows that when the sheriffs men enter a scene there should be this big trumpet fanfare So I just had the soldiers make their own trumpet noises The best spoof touches a range of emotions Brooks says has to be nonstop riotously funny But it also has to be touching compelling and veiy emotional why Blazing Saddles works We all want that young black man to be accepted as the sheriff We want the white rednecks and racists in town to realize that a decent guy So not just the humor the emotion of the Brooks is well aware that for most fans Blazing Saddles is his funniest work is a sort of comedy pinnacle but I think achieved the same heights with this Blazing Sherwood" he says know if as good time will tell but all the early screenings have been very successful and very pleased with Recent disappointments He is equally aware that his last few films have been critical and commercial disappointments Life Stinks was a disappoint- BEHIND THE SCENES: Mel Brooks directs Robin Hood: Men in Tights his second oust at the legend His first was a short-lived TV series When Things Were Rotten By BILLCOSFORD Herald Movie Critic The legend of Robin Hood and his Merry Men ought to have been right up Mel Brooks weird alley Rough primitives loose in the woods stealing from the rich and giving to whomever an evil lawman ruling Sherwood Forest and a ruthless pretender squatting on the English throne? An entire gang of men wearing feathered caps and but a single woman the carefully belted Maid Marion? You would call it Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Brooks would do the rest filling the thing with bawdy gags overblown production numbers and comics from across the spectrum threatening at any moment to get down on their knees and beg for the laughs Well they did call it Robin Hood: Men in Tights But if you remember with a fine nostalgia and no small embarrassment your enjoyment of Brooks spoofs such as History of the World Part I or Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein likely to wonder as I did just what has happened to this guy Has he lost a step? Gone PG? Brooks does find some laughs he always does He has Richard Lewis as the morose pretender Prince John so a man with a mole that wanders about his face from scene to scene And he has Tracey Ullman as Latrine the about a beautiful young woman who transmogrifies into one creature after another weird and crazy about The latter project inspired an ment because I was trying to do something that just come he explains was trying to wed Brooksfilms his production company with Mel Brooks Brooksfilms has made films like The Fly The Elephant Man and Frances very serious dark films So for the first time I tried to do the same thing with something I was in I thought it was time I let the audience know that I am a serious filmmaker and there is a serious condition called I set out to make a bizarre Preston Sturges-like comedy but based on a very real Brooks says I feel I made a very good movie Strangely enough it grossed over $20 million in Europe but it get started here Why? I begged MGM to open it small and let it develop but they opened wide and it was gone in two weeks It was a hopeless way to distribute it and they know what they had They thought they had a crazy Mel Brooks comedy but they It was a far more textured and profound Despite such disappointments enthusiasm remains undimmed because I Our distributor in Mexico Gty is Promotora de Ediciones Intemacionales SA de CV Narciso Mendoza 62 Colonia Avila Camacho Mexico DF Mexico SljcilTmmiHcmli) International Edition What's new in international trade? Read the Trade Shippins Report Monday through Friday Ill'll 589-0065 589-0185 INTERNATIONAL EDITION Eljcdlfiami Herald i I.