The Toronto Star from Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 49

'm JjHAJIAVA TCJH THE TORONTO STAR Tuesday April 9 1991 D5 Spring film series examines early Truffaut Movies family life in The 400 Blows are Landon i Theatre i Miss Saigon star poised for opening know in Manila there are I was wary when I heard they 7 V' Craig Maclnnis Eye on Entertainment Geoff Chapman Sid Adilman What it takes to beMrs onz 5 RADNOR Pa (AP) What does the onz look for in a of course says HenryWinkler i Winkler in a TV magazine interview said he was drawn to Stacey Weizman now the owner of a public relations firm she not a was feisty She was beautiful She looked said Winkler who was the coolhood onzie in Winkler has been directing and producing since the ABC senes ended in 1984 He returned to 'acting in Absolute Strangers a CBS movie airing April 14 and said his wife of 13 years helpedpersuade him to return to the screen Gearing up for Gear Daddies i Tickets go on sale today for a May 9 Music Hall performance of and special guest i the Gear Daddies promoter Concert ProductionsInternational has announced Tickets arc $22 plus service charge at selected Ticketmaster OAAA AJ David Allan who has predictable difficulty coming to terms with the situation was sometimes emotionally fuzzy playing the rage versus family ties debate somehow out of sync though his speech at the dying bedside was most effective Amanda Stepto as his girlfriend has little chance to make her role count and this pair did not help its cause with some indistinct die tion 1 borne as Ralph is full of life changing moods at will andcompletelyimmersed in his role 1 i at the start of his career' That was the Truffaut of such rench New Wave classics as dent in early The 400 Blows (his largely auto says Quandt scenes of biographical account of an un family life in The 400 Blows are happy childhood and the begin almost painfully real also a As Jim living' with frail health declines Rob Os aiuo wnue uemg a iainer iig ure to brother Allan 17 Mark Saunders gives a sympathetic believable performance as his Pryor fired up Jby the riars NEW YORK (AP) The 187 year old New York riarsClub will make history again1when it honors actor Richard Pryor their first black roastee at next annual Celebrity Luncheon And to ensure the rib roastingwill be of the highest qualitycomedian Robin Williams willserve as the eminent roastmaster at the Sept 27 event Long a popular stand up comic Pryor made nis movie debut with Sid Caesar in The Busy Body He 'won critical acclaim in LadySings The Blues opposite Diana Ross the riars Entertainer of the Year in 1990 ning of his important of films with actor Jean Pierre Leaud) Jules And Jim and Shoot The Piano Player Quandt who has program med a series of early work for Cinematheque Ontario (The 400 Blows screens tomor row night 7 pm at the Back stage Cinema) acknowledges the importance in shattering the moldy icons of Graham Greene iburied in SwitzerlandI CORSEAUX Switzerland (Reuter) British novelist rGraham Greene was buried in aSwiss village yesterday in aRoman Catholic ceremony atwhich his priest called him a gertiuS" a friend and a believer was a loyal friend ready tcrisk his life for truth and iisaid ather Leopoldo Duran a 'Spanish Roman Catholic priest i who had known Greene for 30'years A 5 Duran told the 60 friends and 1 members in the Church of tStJean in Cofsier a village overlooking Lake Geneva and thetown of Vevey that Greene was but man ofmodesty and simplicity a real tCatholic i Greene died in Vevey of a blood disease last week aged 86 85 year old widow "Vivian from whom he was separated for many years came from Oxfordshire'for the funeral His English biographer NormanSherry and rench publisherRobert Laffont also attended lesh And Blood Written by Colin Thomas Directed by JoAnn McIntyre Set and' lighting by Graeme Thomson Presented by Thea tre Direct until April 27 at Canadian Stage Company 26 Berkeley St 944 1688 him when he passed away at aop so snaiieiuiK me inuiuy ivu The latter assessment would the old vanguard Manacennlv avrlitria CMOh tirnri JlUVUdJCUHY VAU4WUV JWVU VTVU Chabrol Jean Luc Godard Eric 923 3456 mein aiiu xric uuvrv xji so Quandt and I respectfully other pisian of agree to disagree on the matter te began writing criticismot when the downshde began and making movies based on was best Quandt their auteur theory insists think that like ellini it was a reasoned yet passion Truffaut made his greatest films ate call for a rougher more per at the start of his career" sonal kind of cinema a riskiness evi Michael Landon diagnosed with cancer LOS ANGELES (AP) Television actor and producer Michael Landon who rose to fame in Bonanza and went on to create and star in Little House On The Prairie and Highway To Heaven has inoperable cancer of the liver and pancreas but vows going to beat his spokesman said yesterday is serious ooviousiy out le aoctor nas not saia it is a total loss or said publicist Harry lynn said he is going to beat Landon 54 began tohave serious stomach pains about six waoItc offn Vlvnn said The actor returned early from a Utah ski trip and entered Gedars Sinai Medical Centre on Thursday for tests The actor secluded at his 10 acre Malibu estate learned of the results on riday Landon was recently informed that his fourth TV senes US in which he plays a travelling columnist had been selected by CBS for its fall lineup 77 Landon who has nine childrenand his third wife Cindy 34 livewith their younger children onthe Malibu ranch To much of the movie going world rancois Truffaut will forever be known as that odd little rench fellow who ap peared as a scientist in Steven Close Encounters Of Tne Third Kind Indeed by the time of his death to brain cancer in 1984 si Truffaut direc torial career had become decided Iv erratic veer ing from mo ments of gl trademark bril liance to periods of inadvertent Truffaut seit paroay my ap praisal anyway 4 Others including Toronto film archivist and programmer James Quandt are even more to the point They will tell you that Truffaut's best work was al ready a good 20 years behind I had heard about Les Miz and said Salonga sitting backstage a few days before the opening wearing jeans a simple shirt and a cap to cover her long unkempt hair then they said Cats I 11 years old when I saw Cats in London so I thought to myself still running this guy Mackintosh has to be But Salonga had no idea what was up even after Mackintosh and director Nicholas Hynter flew her to London for further auditions 7 had gotten auto graph and I thought that was like a big Salonga got the starring role the Dart or a naive prostitute Kim in the modern re tellinff of the Maaama mittertly opera in wnom iwnian nas cast in rne rou Miss Saigon Kim falls in love ing production of Unidentifie Human Remains yopening sop Please see SAIGONpage D7 at Ottawa's National Cepth i ENTERTAINMENT POWERUL PERORMANCES: Marks Saunders gives a sympathetic believable performance as Jim who has AIDS and Rob Osborne as his lover Ralph Is completely immersed In his role says critic Geoff Chapman NEW YORK (Reuter) Broad Alain Boublil and Claude Michel way is anxiously awaiting its big Schonberg gest musical in years but 19 year know in Manila there are old Lea Salonga of the Philip these so called producers who np pines poised for stardom in three off a lot of young Salonga countries reels no anxiety aoout saiu in an interview wnn neuters her role was wary when I heard they Miss Saigon opens Thursday were in with the biggest advance sale of She was embarrassed too af any production in Broadway his ter she found out who they were lory i ne musiciai nas aiso sparked spirited protests over its casting of a non Asian in a key role and there could be picket lines on opening night no one has complained about Salonga who has been a star in her own country since age 10 and who starred in Miss Sai gon in the successful London production Salonga born as the Vietnam war was winding down savs she was unaware of the Indochinese conflict until Miss Saigon pro ducer Cameron Mackintosh came to Manila to cast the lead in the musical that updates the opera Madatna Butterfly by transfer ring the story to Saigon I know who Cameron Mackintosh was or who tne composers were tner RtuitHPHcio Mackintosh is the mastermind BE OKAY: Lea Salonga cuddles Brian Baldomero' behind the musicals Les Miscra in scene from Hulnnn Which nnnnc Thurerlntr urlt i 8000) biggest advance sale in Broadway history 7 i K'fThe Opera the composers are AIDS play pulls no punches Jim has AIDS His disease free lover Ralph knows (and so does his mother whose solution is to quote the Book of Revela tions at him) younger brother Allan know On this spare structure Thea tre Direct and Vancouver au thor Colin Thomas have built a potent playlet that tackles head on an issue beset with intoler ance ignorance and prejudice despite the best intentions of some governments health au thorities and educators Where it succeeds is in the clarity with which Thomas pre sents the facts aided by frank realistic language description of symptoms and acting out of suffering and a pair of perfor mances that struck chords with a mostly vouthful audience It is a well paced production with only a few false notes di rected at young people and acted by young performers and powerful prose probably counts for nfore than subtle suggestion The visual messages also are intended to pull no punches though the messages such as 'and that float I like surtitles over the set inter I fere rather than enlighten And 1 there are displays of affection and foreplay male with male i male with female I Thomas' script deals easily with the argument that AIDS is punishment for lifestyle and makes a connection between being gay and being teenage in the sense that they are not part I of mainstream and each group uses sexual behav ior in the fight against authority and custom Whether that dec laration is persuasive for all is not put to the test here no blaming the victim sexual behavior is treated positively and the over all approach is to tally unapologetic yet at the same time sprinkled with a little 7 humor lesh And Blood deals with grief and needs and relation ships While not managing to totally avoid some hectoring ad vice passages it does empha size what should be emphasized about AIDS and a most poignant climax film like other films of the New Wave very much in love with Paris not the romantic notion of Paris but a Paris seen differently which eventually be came romantic in its own The Truffaut series running as part of mas sive spring lineup includes a screening of the rare Stolen Kisses riday at 7 pm and Shoot The Piano Plaver Anril 1 7 at 7 Truffaut alone with Claude or more information call Rohmer Jacques Rivette and Trailers: Winter are usually anything but? adventurous stitched together from stock footage and leaden sequences The Logan Run which has its Canadian de but April 15 at the Euclid Thea tre is a kinetically refreshing exception It follows three men and 24 dogs as they retrace the historic 1925 expedition up highest mountain CITY boss Znaimer it finds funS in takeoffs How closely does CITY Much Music' boss Moses Znaimer fe semble the main character of The Prince a one act part of Tryptyoh that Cow Theatre is now present ing at the Poor Alex Let me count the ways 3 The character known? as Prince and played by swarthy looking lony Nardi runs alter native broadcast outlets for which he personally ere ates personalities out of striking looking women with1 no previous broadcast experi Znaimer ence He talks about creating living environments rather than abciut programs and he has somewhat shaped his authority as the title of the play refers by the outline laid out in The Prince by Machia velli Znaimer keeps a well thumbed copy of that book on his desk 1 The character as Znaimen wears a black Italian blouse shirt and has a long rectangular ddslt in a somewhat darkened officer partially dominated by a bank'd TV monitors He has what the play describes as an actress "wife who lives in Los Angeles Znaimer longtqpp lady is actress Marilyn Light stone who lives much of the yar in Los Angeles 5 He accepts a program idea about originals who include him On the corporate ladder he fe ports to a media mogul whpse company owns the broadcast out lets he runs (in case CHUM Allan Waters): The play by Jim Millan beyond impersonating Znanpei and concocts a scenario in whibh he accepts a secret offer from the Tories to take over the CBC chairmanship from Patrick Wat son and wreck the CBC by selling all its stations What for audiences to discover What does Znaimer think about about being depicted for the first time and in such detail on stage? He and Lightstone attended the Sunday afternoon performance are obviously very brighf people talented and media savj Znaimer said enjoyed mg performance and took it in tog spirit with which it was doneJ guess Jim and the gang wffira preparing for me to hate it know a work of fiction dm exaggeration And there are of laughs in it not their fault especially not After all hi says he grew up watching CITY? ir: Millan said Znaimer cam! backstage after the show met tha cast he was entirely gppfl natured about it and he was yeri charming wjndered why we dQntuse the (TV) monitors (onstage) and we told him they didnf work they were just for shovft 'And he said should hqvg called me I would have got yoy 'real Then said Millan Znaimet asked I misS something? via you worKrorreplied Millan? The play Millan' told start out and still is piece about him a pidCU about ambitious media types TM been meeting since (directing Unidentified Human Remain Toronto stage success last yearfe A 1 And with the aboiit The Prince Millan insists is a play about power and But he admits deals more jot less with the myth of Moses five been collectingarticles abditt 4 him quite public and I go't sense of how he speaks instead of quoting from The Prince I used Laotzu (thfe Chinese philosopher) who wrotU aboiit the use and danger of pow er and how to I Using the recorded voices df Znaimer and a barely recogni able Patrick Watson he said was director Blake Millan did not meet Znairiffit until performance (M says really know any thing beyond And Millan says that during his writing he did not talk about Znaimer tOjMiich Music veejay Erica Ehm a Znaimer in tne toui UnidentirieH Human Remoinsopening sph A Er'i' 1 1 1 7 hl 1 'V A' A I A "a 1 'i I' I I JI tfMMk 4 "7 rl 1 1 1 aw ''M 1 fl 1 I uv fl 4 fl si fl.