Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 22

rmouies DETROIT FREE PRESSFrlday, Oct. 20, 1978 2B didn shower for days played the fool, drank 9 WWIWnHf IHII.U III 1 111111)1 1 1 -i ki. rv With "Jaws" in the can, Dreyfuss signed on to do a film called "Inserts." Not many people have seen this film. It was released, creamed by the critics and sank like a stone. While Dreyfuss was in London making "Inserts," "Jaws" was released and went through the roof, Spielberg, who had written "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," while he was making "Jaws" and who had wanted Jack Nicholson to play the part of Roy Neary, sent a script to Dreyfuss to read.

Dreyfuss read the script, loved it, and told Spielberg that he only wished he were 1 0 years older. He really wanted the part but never thought he would get it, although he did start hanging around Spielberg's office, sticking in his head, and asking him if he had made the part younger. Well, eventually Spielberg did, and Dreyfuss got the part. He finished "Close Encounters," then starred in a stage production in Los Angeles of "The Tenth Man" while simultaneously shooting "The Goodbye Girl." The day after he finished the film, he headed for the shrink. DREYFUSS, from Page 1B Drcyfuss returned to Los Angeles, (till suffering from a broken heart, did a play, "Aesop," in Central Park and then took the role of Baby Face Nelson in John Minus "Dillinger." "Again, I just wanted to get out of town, and I thought, 'Great, I'll play a After being a CO for two years, now I wanted to slaughter people." Then he read the script of "Duddy Kravltz." This was the ppart he wanted.

"I thhought, This is He headed for Montreal the week "American Graffiti" opened. He was glad to be leaving the country because he had seen a rough cut of the film and hated himself In it. "I told George in utter seriousness that he should cut me out of the film and that I had figured out a way he could do it. I was crazy." Dreyfuss left the country and then all the hoopla of "American Graffiti" happened. He was sitting in his hotel room in Montreal one night when Cindy Williams called.

"You want to be a movie star?" she asked Dreyfuss. "Yes," he laid. "Well," she said, "go to Joe Allen's In New York, and all the people will stand up and applaud. That's what they did to me tonight. Richard," she told him, "you have no idea what is going on.

People are going bananas for the film." DREYFUSS WAS ON HIS way to stardom without quite realizing it. "Duddy Kravitz was screened in Canada. I stood in the back of the balcony afterward yelling and screaming at my friends, who were telling me I was going to be a star. I was crying and yelling because I thought I had given the worst performance that anyone had ever given in the history of the motion picture Industry." It was at this moment that Steven Spielberg was after Dreyfuss to do "Jaws." He had turned it down three times. He didn't want to do a fish story.

"But when I saw I thought if I don't have a job when this film comes out, I'll never work again. "Now, I know that's irrational, says Dreyfuss, sitting back in his chair, "but that's what I was operating on. I met Steven in Boston and said yes." oil fit'" One sings, one cries a lot, but Varda film rejoices in womanliness "I FEEL STRANGE talking about this to the media because it is such a personal thing, but I had lived a very happy life as an actor for 15 years, and then suddenly the supplicant position an actor is in stopped for me and people started supplicating to me, and I had no training for this. I had enormous guilt feelings about how easily things had come to me, and I started to resist the position I was in by drinking a lot, doing drugs, eating too much, being childish, denigrating my talent and generally doing a lot of things that were getting in my way. "I was making money, had the ability to choose what I wanted to do, and I was personally secure.

But when it happened, when I stopped making 30, 40, $60,000 a year and they were talking two, three million dollars, immediately it shocked me. What it did was make me the only one of my friends that had any money. I was feeling guilty about having the money, and my friends were uncomfortable around me." He didn't know whom to trust anymore: Everyone, even his old friends, were nodding their heads In agreement with everything he said. The loss of anonymity also caught him off guard. Then there was the effect on Dreyfuss' family.

"My family's approval has always been important to me, and I took their support for granted. They helped to keep my feet on the ground. And then at a certain point, no one said a peep to me. They said good, good, yes, yes, you're right. My own family.

It drove me crazy." He drank (a bottle of cognac a day) and ate (ballooned to 180 pounds), drugged, and acted like a child. He would compensate for his success by playing the silly child, the fool, dressing like an idiot, not showering for days. MEANWHILE, he was making "The Goodbye Girl" "A truly wonderful experience, I could make that movie for the rest of my life" and starring in "The Tenth Man." It was an exhausting schedule: Dreyfuss was up each morning at 5:30, played racket ball for an hour, was on the set from 8:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m., went to the theater, grabbed a quick bite, and was on stage until 1 1:30. He would go home "and die." And along the way, Dreyfuss had developed a reputation as an arrogant SOB, as well as someone who Is difficult to work with.

He can understand why people think he is arrogant. He is smart, one of those people who admits he has the IQ of a genius; a voracious reader, 10 books in two weeks and a history freak. He knows a lot about a lot of things and has opinions on everything whether He walked, he says, because of several factors. He was worried about playing a 50-year-old man. "Elliot Garfield in 'The Goodbye Girl, other than being a little bit overweight, is the nicest guy in the world.

Suddenly I was going to be playing a real downer." Also, he was exhausted. But mostly the problem was the combination of Richard Dreyfuss and Bob Fosse. Bob Fosse is the director of "All That Jazz," and the film is about his life. The two personalities just didn't click. Dreyfuss walked out of the project 10 days before shooting was to begin.

Pre-production work had been completed. The cast was set. Dreyfuss' behavior not only caused severe mental anguish to all Involved but cost Columbia, the studio making the movie, $350,000. Dreyfuss will be held accountable for that sum. SO, YES, ROB REINER is right, almost.

Little Rickie Dreyfuss is staging a comeback. He is trying. He is coping. His therapy is intense. "The Big Fix," directed by Jeremy Paul Kagan, Is a wonderful little film, and Dreyfuss is terrific In It.

And It is the first time that Dreyfuss has appeared sexy. He plays Moses Wine, a dope-smoking activist of the '60s turned private eye, trying to get his life togther. Sound familiar? And Dreyfuss is already preparing for his next role, the sequel to "The Goodbye in which Elliot Garfield goes to Holly- wood, becomes a big star, freaks out, and learns to deal with his success. The movie doesn't shoot until next year, and at the moment he wants no other projects. Dreyfuss has discovered a certain common denominator in his roles that he finds disconcerting.

"I began to play one character with different lines; always coming off as a high, energetic, fast-metabolism, urban, verbal, fast-talking, slightly neurotic character. That's not the only kind of person out there. The thing that could happen to me right now is that I could rest on my laurels and not change and grow. "Do I have the courage to find out just how good I am? Yes. I want to play I have classical ambitions, and I am unprepared for them.

I want to go to New York and start taking Shakespeare classes, voice training, things I should have done 1 0 years ago to see if I have the ability to be great. Who knows? I am lazy. I might start with the classes and find after three times I'll pass on them. I'll quit. But the thing is, it's not like I'll go back to being a waiter or something.

I'll go back to making films at a million and a half dollars a crack." He shakes his head in bewilderment. Excerpted from the article "Richard Drevfusi Building Back" from the Oct. 10 issue of Esquire Fortnightly, copyright 1978 Esquire Magazine Inc. In "The Big Fix," Dreyfuss plays a dope-smoking 1960s activist turned private eye. As to the reputation of being difficult to work with, this seems to be based on two incidents.

One was when he was making the television pilot for "Catch 22." "I was terrible. I was difficult. I misbehaved, but I felt I had been lied to, cheated, and deceived." The other time had to do with "Jaws." He bad-mouthed the picture before he had even seen it. He felt that Steven Spielberg had been stabbed in the back by Universal and spoke out, "I didn't know what I was talking about," he now says, almost humble, "but I still think it is better to say what you think at the time and then retract it later if necessary than just to sit still and say nothing." THEN HE WON the Academy Award. He was 30 years old.

His own industry told him he was the best. He didn't expect to win, was not sure he deserved to win. Further confusion. He picked up his award, flew back to New York, stashed Oscar in a safe-deposit box, broke up with his longtime girlfriend, and then Richard Dreyfuss, the pro, walked out on "All That Jazz," a picture he was contractually obligated to do. 'All That well." He grows quiet.

He doesn't want to talk about it. iyl by, punctuated by the occasional postcards the women exchange, postcards that for them signify constant and loving thought. Ms. Varda cross-cuts between the two lives, linking Apple's far-out adventures to Suzanne's inch-by-inch struggle for self-respect and self-determination with a voice-over narrative. Finally, the two come together again when Apple decides to have her baby in the small town in southern France where Suzanne runs a clinic for women.

THE MOMENT OF their reunion, after so many years, is beautiful beyond words. Ms. Varda has them sitting outdoors at a table, engaged in flowing, rhythmic conversation, working together over a bowl of green beans. One has frizzy red hair; the other silky brown. One is outspoken and restless; the other is soft-spoken and sedentary.

One sings; the other doesn't. None of that matters. In Ms. Varda's world, an ideal yet to be realized, they are the same root and stock. They are women.

They not only have come to peace with their womanliness, they have come to rejoice in it. By SUSAN STARK Free Press Film Critic The Arts Institute's Detroit Film Theatre presents Agnes Varda's "One Sings, The Other Doesn't" Friday. Free Press Film Critic Susan Stark saw the film at the 1977 New York Film Festival. An excerpt from her review follows. "One Sings, The Other Doesn't" from Agnes Varda is a very contemporary piece with a wonderfully happy, if idyllic, ending.

It depicts the friendship of two women drawn together by tragedy when they were young. They move in separate directions through the '60s searching for fulfillment and find each other again, along with fulfillment, in the present. Suzanne, lovely as a madonna by an old master, falls in with a well-meaning but inept married man. By the time she is 22, she has two youngsters with a third on the way, but no husband, no means of support, nothing. She cries a lot.

Her lover, desperate about his failure to provide, hangs himself. SUZANNE'S ACQUAINTANCE, the feisty, 17-year-old Pauline, happens to The troupe: Woman glorified in music be the one who finds the corpse swinging. Soon after, Pauline, fed up with her parents' questions and rules, leaves home to pursue a career as a singer, taking the name "Apple" and taking her songs to a new generation ready to hear woman glorified in music. Suzanne, meanwhile, retreats with her children to her parents, accepting their wrath and scorn because she has no alternative. She finds a way to go to school.

Apple finds a lover. The years go he knows anything about them or not. "ONE OF ALTMAN'S BEST FILMS. ONE OF HIS FUNNIEST IF ANYONE IS AT THE CENTER OF A WEDDING IT'S CAROL BURNETT WHO BLENDS HER CLEAN, BULL5-EYE TECHNIQUE WITH HER NATURAL WARMTH AND APPEAL." 1ACKKW3U NWSWHK Don't miss "Fronticolly enjoyobli? 'Who Is Killing The Great Chefs of LIZ SMITH "A murder mystery that's just for laughs." "The movie event of the year." GEORGE ANTHONY, Toronto Sun NORMA McLAIN STOOP, Al ter Dark I 4 1 4,1 I 1 "A comedy thriller with more than a touch of class." DAVID ANSEN, Newsweek "This movie is good enough to eat." 4( If "A delight. Combining equal parts of mirth and mystery." RON A BARRETT "A funny, funny film thriller." DI ANE JUDGE.

New York Post RICHARD GRLMI Cosmupuliliiii Magd.ine c-t imf aw JACQUELINE GEORGE BISSET SEGAL A ROBERT ALTMAN FILM "A WEDDING" fill mmm 3d ran uro WMmH mp mom Lorimar Presents SEGAL JACQUELINE BISSET a TED K0TCIIE1F FILM GLORGE in DESI ARNAZJR. CAROL DURNETT 6ERALDINE CHAPLIN HOWARD DUFF MIA FARROW VITTORIO 6AS5MAN LILLIAN GISH LAUREN HUTTON VIVECALINDFORS PATMcCORMICK DINA MERRILL NINA VAN PALLANDT (AND 32 ASSORTED FRIENDS. RELATIVES. AND UNEXPECTED ARRIVALS) TOMMY THOMPSON ROBERT ALTMAN JOHN CONSIDINE PATRICIA RE5NICK ALLAN NICHOLLS ROBERT ALTMAN ING THE GRET CHEFS OF EL ROPE?" "Vi 110 IS Kill. Co-StarriiiR ROBLRT MORLEY Producer WILLIAM ALDRJCH Director TED Based on the novel "SOMEONE IS KII.I Executive Producers MERV ADELSON and LEE RICH KOTCHEFF Screenplay by PETER STONE Music HENRY M.VNCLNT THE GREAT CHEFS OF EL'ROPE" by NAN and IVVN LYONS Company-Lorimar Production PGpHfNii guidance siKESTTo An Akirich ROBERT ALTMAN JOHN CONSIDINE iml A LION'S GATE FILMS PRODUCTION ABBEY I AMERICANA I BEACON EAST I LIVONIA MALL I MACOMB MALL Milt Rd 1-75 GrtenfitldN.of 9Milt Vtrnitr 18 Milel 7 Milt Middlcbelt Gratiot at 13' Milt Rd.

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