Annabella Sciorra

 

"I ALWAYS FEEL THAT MY CHARACTERS are more interesting than I am," muses Annabella Sciorra somewhat modestly. "I am shy but I always feel that my characters can express themselves. They are a part of me, you know, but for some reason I feel more comfortable expressing myself through a character than as me. " The characters that the second-generation Italian actress normally portrays are, of course, the nice trusting Woman type, capitalizing on her darkly appealing, traditionally unglamorous – some would call them "normal" – looks. Small roles in The Hard Way, Reversal Of Fortune and Internal Affairs led to her playing a naive office temp who becomes sexually involved with angry young architect Wesley Snipes in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever; the yuppie mother who almost loses her life, limbs, family and inhaler (though not necessarily in that order) to straitjacket case Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand that Rocks The Cradle; a standard Hollywood psychiatrist who gets to involved with patients and may be in love with a killer in Whispers In The Dark; and now, in The Night We Never Met, released this month, a bored suburban housewife with an unfulfilled and burning ambition – paint. 

"I think Annabella's look is unusual, attractive, not glamorous in the same way," offers Whispers director-screenwriter Christopher Crowe. "What's good about her is that she's a very instinctual actress," adds actor Anthony LaPaglia, who co-stars with her as a hard-drinking cop in the film. "When she works with you you're not sure what's going to happen. She has great eyes. When I look at her eyes there's always something going on, even if she's not saying anything. It's a gift for other actors to have that because it all gets very connected. The belief level of the scene goes way up." 

Sciorra, personally, is something of an enigma - at times she's quite personable, rambling on about her close bond with her parents (dad is a veterinarian, mum a fashion stylist) and three brothers ("I talk to them two or three times a day"); at others she becomes decidedly Garboesque in her aloofness ("I do not discuss by personal life," she retorts when asked, quite simply, if she is married). Born in Connecticut, Annabella studied acting with Dennis Moore. She lets on that she lives in New York City and says she's proud of her Italian heritage. She's unsure about how she selects roles – "It depends on the writing, maybe; on how the meeting goes" – and denies that there was any friction with Spike Lee, as the press claimed in its many accounts of Jungle Fever. 

"Spike allowed me to express myself completely. Not only on the set but in the dining room. He gave me my moments. He really gave it to me. He didn't Cut anything. When I saw that movie 1 thought, 'Wow, it's all there. Everything I wanted to be there, everything I wanted to communicate, it was all there.' I'm proud of being a part of that movie."

Her next adventure in innocence, Mr. Wonderful, will find her sleeping with William Hurt while still in love with ex-husband Matt Dillon. "It's a very romantic story," she claims. And for Sciorra it will be another chance to do what she's happiest doing. "I've always wanted to act – always, always, always," she gushes. "I love to act."

EMPIRE, August 1992

Cartoons

When MGM/UA senior vice president and general manager George Feltenstein decided last year that he wanted to reissue old "Looney Tunes" cartoons in a deluxe laserdisc collection, his colleagues laughed. "No one thought there was any value to them," he says. The company laughed all the way to the bank, however, when sales for the $100 five-disc set went through the roof: "When we put out the first set, I would have been happy if we sold 3,000," he notes. "We sold 14,000."

And that's not all, folks.

Long considered kid stuff, animation has become the art form for just about everyone. How else to explain the theatrical gold uncovered by Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, even The Jetsons (which earned $5 million its opening weekend)? Or the new 24-hour Cartoon Network on cable TV? And what about the proliferation of cartoon memorabilia, from the Fantasia animation "eel" Sotheby's recently sold for $93,500 to the Mickey Mouse watches, Popeye mugs and Bugs Bunny designer jackets that permeate suburban malls?
Cartoons are hot - but they're absolutely sizzling on videocassette and laserdisc, their new and well-deserved homes. From Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse to Wild Japanese animation like Akira, there are so many current titles, it takes 97 pages of the Whole Toon Catalog (plus regular supplements) to keep up with the releases. MGMIUA has issued four $100 "Looney Tunes" laser disc boxed sets, as well as similar packages like The Compleat Tex Avery and The Art of Tom and Jerry Part I and Part II. Disney's Beauty and the Beast has sold 25 million copies, making it the most popular home video ever, followed by the 53-year-old Fantasia, which has clocked in at 14.2 million videos sold.

The variety of animation titles currently on video is astonishing. There are environmentally conscious tapes like Picture Start's Greentoons; sophisticated antiwar dramas such as Central Park Media's Grave of the Fireflies; weird experimental collages like those
presented on Lumivision's Animation Celebration Laserdisc Collection; such wacky sci-fi comedies as U.S. Magna's Project A-Ko; and even violent, NC-17-rated cartoons like the controversial Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend, from Anime 18. Whatever your tastes, there's now an animated title at the local video store with your name on it.

Animation has been popular ever since film's earliest days, when newspaper cartoonist Winsor McCay's Little Nemo wowed audiences in 1911. But it took Walt Disney and a rambunctious mouse named Mickey to bring cartoons to the fore with Steamboat Willie (1928). "[Walt Disney] did not invent the mediurn," observes film historian Leonard Maltin in his book Of Mice and Magic, "but one could say that he defined it."

Disney institutionalized the form, building a creative factory that scripted and storyboarded cartoons as no one had done before. He added sound and then Technicolor when none of his competitors saw the need. He created the first full-length animated feature - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs despite widespread skepticism from the film industry, which dubbed the project "Disney's Folly." And throughout his career, he developed new processes that enhanced perspective and added to the believability and fluidity of his company's cartoons.

Walt Disney Home Video has also been among the first to realize the tape and laserdisc potential of its huge cartoon library. In the early '80s, the studio released many of its classic short cartoons on "Limited Gold Edition" tapes, cleverly marketing them as collectors' items that would only be sold for a limited time. Since then, Disney has perfected the "buy now or miss it later" hype, limiting availability on such popular titles as The Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmatians and Pinocchio.

Pinocchio provides a good example of Disney's marketing approach: Though the company denied it would ever be released on video - a claim now being made for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, despite rumors of a 1994 video release - the tape hit the shelves for a short time in 1985 and quickly went on "moratorium." This meant that stores could sell off remaining stock but could not reorder after a specified date, thus inflating demand for the title. Seven years later, Disney trumpeted a new, restored version of Pinocchio on tape and disc, again warning that it would be pulled and "not available again in this century."

Despite their tremendous success on video, these good-natured, sentimental Disney pictures are primarily aimed at children. It took Warner Bros.' "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" cartoons of the late '30, '40s and '50s to add an adult sensibility to Disney's techniques. The six-minute Warner shorts use jazz, be-bop and classical music as the backdrop for wacky tales full of chases, literate gags, reality-breaking humor, slapstick violence and outrageous puns.

Unlike the Disney material, however, the Warner library has had a scattershot history on tape and disc, partly because of a tangled ownership situation, Most of the cartoons from 1931 to 1948 were sold in the 1950s and are now distributed by MGM/UA; post-'48 shorts are still controlled by Warner.

Until George Feltenstein took over at MGMIUA, most of that company's releases were packaged under the "Viddy-Oh! for kids" label, and were often poorly edited. Feltenstein noted the success of Warner's 1985 "Golden Jubilee 24-Karat Collection" series (still available at $12.95 apiece), which compiled eight-cartoon collections centering on individual characters like Porky Pig's Screwball Comedies and Elmer Fudd's Comedy Capers, and included notes by film historian Leonard Maltin.

Feltenstein soon put together the "Cartoon Movie Star" series of tapes that included Warner characters and also such MGM stars as Tom and Jerry and United Artists' Pink Panther. That, in turn, led to The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, which Feltestein initially planned as a disc-only series. (MGM/UA began releasing tape versions in 1993. The  first ten tapes, available at $12.95 each, duplicate the material on the initial laserdisc set; more are promised.)

Warner Home Video has taken a different tack: in addition to the "24 Karat" series, its cassette releases include such theatrical compilation movies as The Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie ($14.95), For laserdisc, the company shunned MGM's boxed-set approach in favor of six single-platter releases, grouped by character or subject. Daffy Duck in Duck Victory ($34.98) is a typical 14-cartoon Warner laser set, and features Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century, an inspiration of sorts for Star Wars.

That success has led to other tape and disc releases which reflect animation's less-than-golden years, the 1950s..With rising costs and competition from television, theatrical shorts moved to the cheaper venue of TV, but suffered from inferior scripts and less fluid or "limited" animation.

The big exception was Jay Ward. He used the limited animation to its best advantage by relying not on action but talk: witty parodies of films, television, and society itslef. His "Crusader Rabbit," "Rocky and Bullwinkle," and "Fractured Fairy Tales"cartoons were designed for adults as well as kids. Adults could appreciate the satire, while kids saw the stories as fanciful tales. Spoofing was the name of the game. "Fractured Fairy Tales," for instance, featured a Prince Charming who looks like Walt Disney and who decides not to wake Sleeping Beauty with a kiss but instead turns a profit by displaying her in a theme park dubbed "Sleeping Beauty Land."

Ironically enough, Disney's Buena Vista label acquired the Bullwinkle series in 1990 and released six tapes in 1991 at $12.99 apiece; six more followed last year. The company restored the 30-year-old cartoons enhancing both color and sound, but purists were dismayed to find the series' rambling storylines had been severely edited to fit one complete story onto each tape. Image Entertainment has released four double-length Rocky and Bullwinkle laserdiscs at $39.39 each. Few other cartoons from the period are worth noting, as the form deteriorated into "hour-long commercials for toy companies," according to Doug Ranney, publisher of the Whole Toon Catalog

TOON REVIVAL
Two turning points helped revive animation's reputation after its low point in the '50s and '60s, and eventually led to the current boom on tape and disc. The first was the huge theatrical success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), which combined human and cartoon characters in a huge box-office smash. "Suddenly the word 'toon' became apopular part of the vocabulary," says MGMIUA's Feltenstein (Ironically, because Rabbit was distributed by Disney, the video editions have disappeared from store shelves.)

The second key event in the cartoon renaissance was the arrival of adult-oriented Japanese animation in theaters and on video. Violent, witty, sexually explicit and often very bizarre,. it brought the mythos of adult comic books into the video world. Japanimation, or Anime, runs the gamut from action-adventure and action;comedy to erotic sci-fi violence and intimate human drama. It is largely based on Japanese comic books, which account for 60 percent of the magazines sold in that country.

Extremely popular among adults in Japan - where 100 animated titles are released on video each month - these' cartoons rework old movie and story themes, sometimes in original and disturbing ways. Central Park Media's Project A-Ko ($29.95), a sci-fi thriller set in a girls' school, has a lesbian subtext and an incomprehensible plot, while Urotsukidoji: The Legend of the Overfiend ($39.95) couples disturbing erotic images with graphic violence. The animation itself has a stylized - if not terribly fluid - punch.

Overfiend set house records at one New York City theater, selling out 24 , weekends in a row as a midnight movie. By the time the cartoon came to video, it had been shown theatrically in 48 other cities and had been chosen as one of the lead titles at the Montreal Film Festival in October '93. Project A-Ko, was premiered at the Dallas Museum of Art, while Akira became the ,first and only animated film to find a place in Voyager's hallowed Criterion Collection laserdisc series

Such respectability for cartoons has opened many doors and given, a wider outlet to independent animation. The Tune, Bill Plympton's bizarre feature about a songwriter in search of a' song, has just been released on tape by Tribobo Entertainment. Plymptoons ($34.95), a compilation of the animator's shorter works is out on laserdisc from Lumivision. It features his award-winning shorts, TV commercials and even a failed sitcom.

Lumivision has released a wide variety of disc-only independant animation titles, generally priced at $34.95. Included are the Japanese-made Twilight of the Cockroaches, a surreal composite of live action and animation that tells the saga of life in a cockroach 'family;" Ardman Animatians, five shorts from England, including the Academy Award-winning Creature Comforts, about a philosophical puma and his friends; and Brnno Bozzetto Animator, featuring the work of an Italian animator dubbed the "Walt Disney of Europe."     ,
"A lot of the populadty has to do with accessibility," says Jamie White, president of Lumivision. "Laserdiscs and tapes are creating more of a demand for animation. The more people see, the more they want to know about it. Seeing it often piques one's interest in classic animation, too. They're all replayable. Even some of the stuff from the '20s is fascinating."    

Yet there is more to animation's popularity than history, accessibility or even collectability. "As the baby boomers progress demographically into a higher age group, the stuff they've always liked enters the mainstream," observes Whole Toon Catalog's Ranney. "Our generation grew up watching cartoons," adds John O'Donnell, managing director at Central Park Media, which distributes much of the Japanimation. "I read Marvel Comics, which are more adult-oriented than Archie or Casper. The baby boomers have the attitude that comics and, cartoons are fun."

There's an even simpler reason for the new popularity of animation, however. Beyond the anarchy, the color and the music, cartoons appeal to the rebellious Everyman in all of us, to the little boy or girl who wants to have the last word. "They are mirrors of what we do," observes animator Chuck Jones in his autobiography Chuck Amuck. "Or, in the case of the comic hero, what we would like to be able to do. We are all Daffy Ducks inside:"

Tha - tha - that's all, folks!

 VIDEO NOVEMBER 1993
 

Class Acts

New York is a living classroom comprised of motivated students of all ages. Driven by curiosity about the world they inhabit, a desire to be creative, or a yen to make more money, Manhattan’s continuing ed students are taking advantage of both degree and non-degree programs that promise to expand their knowledge years after college.

Returning students, generally in their 30s and 40s (and increasingly in their 50s and 60s), are electing to take a range of classes, from creative writing, internet skills, and wine tasting to public speaking, graphics, and interior design.

So, if you're looking to master a new skill, enhance your job peiformance, or re-charge your creative batteries; read on.

Lee Seham was a lawyer who wanted to make people laugh. James Rottner was a social services employee who wanted to sharpen his job skills. And Miriam Sirota was an actress who wanted to avoid waiting tables to pay the rent. What did they all have in common? They went back to school.

Seham, 34, studied stand-up comedy at The New School and honed an act that nearly got him an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show(the taping was canceled because of a monster Chicago snowstorm). Rottner, 44, spent every Saturday for two years at Baruch College earning a degree in public administration. And Sirota, 26, bypassed the waitress route by becoming a real estate salesperson through New York University School of Continuing Education's accelerated New York Real Estate Salesperson's Course. She closed over $1 million dollars in sales last year.

"I was trying to find something that would work with my acting career," recalls Sirota. "I didn't want to wait tables, and it was always difficult at office jobs to get away for auditions. I needed flexibility but also wanted something creative."

Some students desire to experiment with an artistic outlet or hobby. "I wanted to do something creative after hours," says Seham about his stand-up stint. "I was forced to expend creative juices that normally would expire by coming home and watching TV"

Many enroll for professional reasons. Rottner, an operations manager in the AIDS services division of the Visit1ng Nurse Service of New York, earned a master's degree through Baruch's accelerated weekend program, and gained the tools to increase his job productivity.

For others, the love of learning is an ongoing commitment to personal development-from learning to whip up a perfect souffle to mastering a foreign language, to earning a professional degree. What follows are popular courses in the top four areas:

 

Performing Arts

Have you ever wondered: Am I funnier than Jerry Seinfeld? A better actor than Meryl Streep? A more spirited dancer tha Mikhail Baryshnikov? If you've always harbored a secret desire to perform, you can test your artistic ambitions in a friendly forum: a classroom. New York is a mecca for starving artists of all disciplines. Here, you will find superior classes in acting, comedy, improvisation, music, dance, and other performance fields. The Lucy Moses School for Music and Dance, a division of Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center, is one of many venues that offer a testing ground for would-be-stars. "Kaufman Kabaret," for example, allows students to put on their own cabaret show of Beatles tunes, while the Drama Group features public performances of scenes from great dramas and comedies.

"It's a big thing for people who did creative work in grade school or high school and don't have a career in it," explains Sean Hartley, acting director of education at Lucy Moses. "These individuals like to sing or perform but don't have an outlet. Here they get a little coaching, a little focus, and then they can invite their friends to see them perform."

 

Fine Arts

Courses in interior design and computer graphics are among today's more practical fine arts offerings. The New York School of Interior Design is one of many institutions offering degree and non-degree courses for the professional hoping to expand his or her knowledge. "CAD Level" is typical: an introduction to the use of the computer as a design and drafting tool for interior design.

"There is a wide range of applications for interior design work," saysInge Heckel, president of the school. "Interior design is not just about doing a living room. There is a whole gamut of careers possible designing hospitals, schools, even space stations."

Fashion design is also in vogue, with professionals signing up to gain new skills and amateurs carving out new careers. The Fashion Institute of Technology has 8,000 part-time students who study tailoring, jewelry design, menswear, photography, textiles, and pattern-making. "There are a lot of people coming back for refresher courses and others who come for personal development," says Stayton Wood, vice president for student affairs at FIT.

Computer graphics courses are also on the upswing. Parsons' "Exploring the Digital Canvas," for instance, offers lessons in drawing, painting, and special effects on the Photoshop software program to experienced professional artists. "No two people's work looks the same," says instructor Mark Kaplan. "The glory of it is you're not looking at scanned images. This is a good course for experienced fine artists who are looking to make the transition to computers."

Pratt Institute has an array of contemporary computer graphics and design programs, too, including the popular "Multimedia," a course that shows students how to work with text, graphics, animation, and sound to create cutting-edge two-dimensional presentations.

Those who want to try their skills with a camera often end up at the School of Visual Arts. Award-winning photographer Jay Manis teaches "Basic Photography," a popular introductory course in which novice students learn the difference between an F-stop and

an F train, as well as the ins and outs of dodging, burning, bleaching, and archival processing. Say Cheese!

 

Culinary Courses

Many budding chefs or gourmands enjoy cooking and wine, but feel a need to learn more before dining at Lutece, Nobu, or many exalted Manhattan eateries. Luckily, excellent courses about food and wine abound.

"We teach mostly young consumers," notes instructor Harriet Lembeck about "Wine for Dummies," a course offered by The New School. "Our courses try to take the mystery out of choosing a wine."

Hands~on culinary courses, including those at Peter Kump's School of Culinary Arts and The French Culinary Institute, provide practical skills such as knife-handling, pastry-making and advanced culinary arts. The New School's culinary curriculum includes the ethnic offerings, "Introduction to Sushi" and "The Cooking of Malta" as well as "Low-Fat Spa-Style Cooking" and "Culinary Walking Tours."

The walking tours feature food history and, in the words of instructor Annie Hauck-Lawson, "help students look for the relationship between food and culture. When I do a walking tour of Polish Greenpoint in Brooklyn, I talk about how the neighborhood developed both historically and in terms of food. We talk about food symbols in the Polish-American community and how they are manifested in homes, churches, and stores."

 

Job Skills

Courses that impact career advancement are experiencing increased attendance. The "Media Management Program" at Audrey Cohen College is the first MBA program to focus exclusively on entertainment and media management. It is designed to prepare students for a foray into film, broadcasting, music, and multimedia through the planning, production, and promotion of a new media venture.

Those seeking certification ski1ls often turn to Pace University. According to Bill Clutter, executive director of adult outreach programs, Pace's courses "help people who are sitting down for certification exams." Good at accounting? Try the CPA certification course. Need to learn the latest payroll procedures? Pace offers a certification class from the American Payroll Association. "For years, Pace trained the majority of accountants in New York," notes Clutter, who adds that many in other professions return for refresher courses.

 

Public speaking is the No. 1 phobia for most Americans. No wonder TalkPower's 19-hour weekend "Stress Seminars for Public Speaking" have found a growing adult audience. "We offer a series of sequential exercises that develop neural patterns in the brain," notes Natalie H. Rogers, TalkPower president. "This helps people to focus on themselves rather than on their fear of the audience. This process was developed over 20 years, and will transform a nervous, uncomfortable speaker into a fluent, confident presenter. It works for speeches, meetings, job interviews, even parties where you don't know anyone. It really can transform you."

Which is appropriate since, in the end, transformation is what most continuing education is all about, isn't it?

New York Magazine, January 13, 1997   

Credit Report

 

FRONT DESK 

Credit Where It's Due 

Modesty, the old pal's act or simply owing someone a favor - what's the beef on the unbilled cameo?

WHO'S THAT MYSTERY BLOKE IN ALIVE,BURBLING on about how he found God on the' mountain but then kind of lost him again? Blimey, if it's not old John Malkovich. And what about the TV station chief doling out the big reward in Accidental Hero? Blow me if it isn't Chevy Chase. But hang on a minute, they're not in those films _ both released this month - are they? At least, it doesn't say anywhere that they are, especially not in the credits. So what is it that possessed those hardly publicity-shy types to give of their services for bugger all acclaim? 

Whether done as a favor to a friend, owing someone a few bob or blind terror that said movie will turn out to be a bit of a bummer - "He just thought it'd be fun, I guess," trills Chase's enthusiastic L.A. publicity person - it would seem that unheralded appearances are as old as Hollywood itself, as Tom Soter and Jeff Dawson discover ... 

Laurel & Hardy in Pick A Star (1937) The studio Stuck in "unacknowledged" Laurel and Hardy between scenes of this Hal Roach production to beef up a rather lame comedy about a smallt own girl (Rosina Lawrence) and her rise to Hollywood stardom ... 

Gene Kelly, Milton Berle, and Bing Crosby  in Let's Make Love (1960) Multi-millionaire Yves Montand, fed up with women chasing him just for his wad, tries to impress showgirI Marilyn Monroe by hiring an uncredited Gene Kelly, Bing Crosby and Milton BerIe to teach him how to dance, sing and" make people laugh." Her heart, how. ever, belongs to daddy ... 

Glenda Jackson in The Boy Friend (1971)  "Be so good I'll hate you," blubs the Member For Hampstead, star of Ken Russell's jazz musical, twisting an ankle and missing her stab at stardom when a vIsiting Hollywood director selects understudy Twiggy for the big picture instead. There's no 'cialism like so-cialism ... 

Robert Duvall in The Conversation (1974) Duvall shows his face as "The Director," hiring ace wire-tapper Gene Hackman to get information on his unfaithful wife. Like most of the people in Coppola's story, he's a mysterious cipher: tense, menacing and, quite possibly, planning a murder ... 

Gene Hackman in Young Frankenstein (1974)  Hackman is Harold the blind hermit who prays for a "friend" and ends up with big bolted Peter Boyle instead in that spoof of The Bride Of Frankenstein. "You see how heaven plans? Me a blind man and you a mute, " yells Hackman, pouring soup in the lap of the Doc Martened brute. "An incredibly big mute" 

Elizabeth Taylor in Winter Kills (1979)  Years before cameoing as Michael Jackson's besl mate on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Liz was honing her "guesting" skills in this Kennedy conspiracy comedy. In a voice-over sequence, Taylor is the Washington hostess supplying bedmates for the bullet-friendly Premier ... 

Jenny Agutter in Darkman (1990)  Twenty years on from flagging down the 5.20 from York with her bright red bloomers, "doctor" Jen pops her head round the door at the burns unit where Liam Neeson is first brought in, probably having worked her way up from "nurse" in An American Werewolf In London ... 

F. Murray Abraham in The Bonfire Of The Vanities (1991)  "F" plays the disgruntled D.A. who - some say fortuitously - takes his moniker off the credits when a namecheck reveals that he's way down the pecking order when it comes to the billing ... 

Sean Connery in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (1991)  Kept in anonymity to preserve a surprise finale to Costner's" swashbuckler," King Sean, as Richard The Lionheart, steals the show by donating his $300,000 fee to his pet charity, the Scottish Educational Trust ... 

Robin Williams in Dead Again (1992 The funny man goes all noble, not wishing his stature to dwarf this Branagh/Thompson noir homage. The discredited shrink, dispensing advice from the supermarket refrigerator, is thus struck off the register ... 

EMPIRE, 1993

Film Therapists (1)

Unllkely shrink: Dr. Fred Astaire analyzes Ginger Rogers in Carefree.

NOTE: Editors often rewrite stories, and I occasionally found myself rewritten. Sometimes, it was necessary - I might not have hit the mark – other times it was silly (adding the word "living" to the phrase "everyone in the world knows James Bond"), and then there were instances where it was done to catch a different idiom. That was usually the case with EMPIRE, a British film magazine that printed my work in the early 1990s. I recently came across an original draft of a story that was rewritten by EMPIRE (adding British slang). Here's a chance to see what was done and to choose whose prose you prefer. Tom Soter, July 3, 2011.

 

SHRINK-WRAPPED

PSYCHIATRY AND FILM: A GUIDE

By TOM SOTER from EMPIRE, 1993 (Original version)

Looking for a good shrink? Don't go to Hollywood. If recent flicks like Basic Instinct, Final Analysis, The Prince of Tides, and The Silence of the Lambs are any clue, most screenwriters must go to therapists who are either sex-crazed narcissists or hot-headed loony-toons ready to shoot, stab, or eat them if they don't give out the right answers. Surprising? Not really. As long as there have been movies, there have been movies about psychiatrists. Good, bad, or indifferent shrinks, audiences have seen them all, from the bonkers analyst in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) to the seductive New Yawker with the six-inch fingernails in The Prince of Tides (1991). "There's not much subtlety from a psychiatric point of view," Dr. Harvey R. Greenberg, a New York psychiatrist told the New York Times when they asked him about Streisand's portrayal of Dr. Susan Lowenstein in Prince. "Her techniques are largely reassurance and ventilation. This movie rests largely on the dramatic idea that unburdening yourself about the past will cure everything from neurotic alienation to schizophrenia." Well, maybe, but we think it all depends on what shrink you rap with. Since 1906, when Dr. Dippy's Sanitarium offered a lighthearted view of a madhouse, there have been over 300 movies with analysts of some sort or another, and sometimes it's hard to tell the doctor without a scorecard. Tom Soter provides some help with an Empire guide to movie therapists you may (or may not) want to avoid...

BASIC INSTINCT (1992) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY Love Thy Patient FIRST SESSION Dr. Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), sex kitten as shrink, ends a session with her patient (Michael Douglas), by saying, "I still miss you." SHRINK RAP "Fuck off, Martin." GET OFF THE COUCH - OR ELSE After violently attacking her patient because he has sexually insulted her, she pulls herself together and says, "I'm sorry. I don't usually act like that." SEPARATION ANXIETY - NOT After the patient violently makes love to the therapist, she says, "You've never been like that before; why?" To which he replies, "You're the shrink. You tell me." She throws him out.

FINAL ANALYSIS(1992) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY Aren't I Handsome? FIRST SESSION Dr. Isaac Barr (Richard Gere) is aloof loner absorbed by work – except when he meets steamy potential patients with long blond hair, sensuous mouths, and voluptuous figures (Kim Basinger) SHRINK RAP "People stop surprising you." GET OFF THE COUCH – OR ELSE Dr. Barr wears Armani suits and sleeps with accused murderers. SEPARATION ANXIETY – NOT The therapist never saw Double Indemnity or Body Heat, and is much top passionate and trusting.

PRINCE OF TIDES (1991) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY Long Fingernails Help Get to the Point FIRST SESSION Dr. Lowenstein (Barbra Streisand) can help others, but is unable to help herself: her marriage is sterile, her son is bitter and uncommunicative, and her husband likes to insult jocks SHRINK RAP "Face the pain." (Subtext: sleep with me.) GET OFF THE COUCH – OR ELSE She holds sessions with her patient's brother, but never seems to charge him – and then pays him to teach her nerdy son football. SEPARATION ANXIETY – NOT She apparently cures her suicidal patient by sleeping with the patient's brother (Nick Nolte).

WHAT ABOUT BOB? (1991) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY I Me Mine FIRST SESSION Dr. Leo Marvin (Richard Dreyfuss) is a neurotic narcissist who knows a lot of theory but seems to cares more about his Vacation, reputation, and fees than the problems of his seriously disturbed, yet charming patient (Bill Murray), who later becomes a therapist himself. SHRINK RAP "I don't get angry," he says seething with anger. "I don't get upset. I don't see patients on vacation." GET OFF THE COUCH - OR ELSE The doctor talks to his children via hand©puppets. SEPARATION ANXIETY – NOT The shrink attempts to strangle and then dynamite his patient, and ends up in an asylum. His patient becomes a therapist.

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1990) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY To know me is to eat you FIRST SESSION Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lektor (Anthony Hopkins) is every analysand's nightmare doctor, able to destroy you with a word, to enter your mind, even to eat you if you let down your guard. SHRINK RAP "All good things to those who wait." GET OFF THE COUCH - OR ELSE The therapist rarely moves except when hungry; likes to stand under spotlights and stare directly into the camera. SEPARATION ANXIETY – NOT Dr. Lektor is on the loose at the end. Moral: Evil is still out there, waiting to strike, and therapy is a constant, ongoing battle.

HOUSE OF GAMES (1987) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY It takes one to know one. FIRST SESSION Dr. Margaret (Lindsay Crouse), pop psychologist, the author of a best©selling book on compulsive behavior, is herself a compulsive thief and obsessive personality, sexually drawn to a con man and thief (Montegna) who threatens the life of her patient and cons her out of thousands. SHRINK RAP Thief sums up therapist's strongest personality trait: "You're like a dog coming back to its own vomit." GET OFF THE COUCH - OR ELSE Doctor has close-cropped, mannish haircut and is so busy taking notes during her sessions that she often misses the point of what people are saying. SEPARATION ANXIETY – NOT She shoots her lover, which seems to relieve her guilt complex. By managing to evade capture, she also has time to write another best©selling book.

THE HOWLING(1981) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY Hairy Problems Must Be Confronted FIRST SESSION A smooth-talking werewolf shrink (Patrick Macnee), argues that the modern werewolf must repress his base instincts (and fangs) if he is to survive in modern times SHRINK RAP "We must never deny the animal within us." (He should know.) GET OFF THE COUCH - OR ELSE One of the therapist's patients is horror movie icon John Carradine, who says, "You can't tame what's meant to be wild, doc. It ain't natural." SEPARATION ANXIETY – NOT Macnee says, "Times have changed. We can fit in," moments before the heroes trap all the werewolves in a burning barn

HALLOWEEN (1980) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY Speak manically and carry a big gun FIRST SESSION Dr. Sam Loomis (named after the dumbell hero of Psycho) has a glint in his eye and a noble purpose in his heart: confine psycho Michael Meyers or blow him away with a .44 magnum. SHRINK RAP "I spent eight years trying to reach [murderer Michael Myers] and then another seven trying to keep him locked up...[He is] purely and simply Evil." GET OFF THE COUCH - OR ELSE Loomis has a moralistic fervor and a dedication to the job that are laudable; he gets to the point quickly; however, he seems to have no other patients and difficulty with small talk SEPARATION ANXIETY – NOT He shoots his patient – but is unable to completely separate (see Halloween II and V)

DRESSED TO KILL (1980) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY Norman Bates School of Double Identity FIRST SESSION Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine) is calm, cockney, dedicated, and keeps referring to a wife no one ever sees. He also "keeps his nights open for returning phone calls or in case a patient needs extra help" – a sure sign that he's nutty. SHRINK RAP Elliott's insight: "There are all kinds of ways to get killed in this city if you're looking for it." GET OFF THE COUCH - OR ELSE He has professional ethics unusual for a Hollywood therapist, refusing to make love with a patient who strips to her undies in front of him. His reason: "I'm a doctor." SEPARATION ANXIETY – NOT He kills his patient.

BEDTIME FOR BONZO (1951) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY You Make a Monkey Out of Me, I'll Become President FIRST SESSION Psychology professor (Ronald Reagan) attempts to prove a monkey named Bonzo can act like a man (which he proved years later in another context) SHRINK RAP "I'm trying inverted psychological domination." GET OFF THE COUCH - OR ELSE Professor Ron tries to explain his housekeeper's affection for Bonzo: "It's a sublimation of transferrance." SEPARATION ANXIETY – NOT The professor marries his housekeeper and takes the monkey with them on their honeymoon.

SPELLBOUND (1945) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY Love Will Keep You Out of Jail FIRST SESSION Frigid therapist (Ingrid Bergman), who wears glasses and grey suits, proves she is all-woman when she falls in love with an amnesiac murder suspect who looks like Gregory Peck. SHRINK RAP Therapist to her patient: "Darling, you musn't be frightened. We're making progress. GET OFF THE COUCH - OR ELSE The shrink explains why her amnesiac, constantly fainting patient is innocent: "I could not fall in love with a murderer." SEPARATION ANXIETY – NOT She solves a murder, causes a suicide, and marries her patient, even after she discovers he can't ski very well.

THE LOCKET (1945) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY Marry Your Patient Before You Learn Too Much About Her FIRST SESSION Shrink (Brian Aherene) marries mysterious woman (Laraine Day) who turns out to be a kleptomanic widow who marries men and then drives them to insanity and/or death SHRINK RAP Therapist offers piercing advice: "Doubt is a symptom. When we are prone to doubt, it indicates that we are unsure of ourselves" GET OFF THE COUCH - OR ELSE Therapist is prone to sappy speeches: "Nancy never got her locket as a child and because it meant so much to her, she paid a terrible price. But bracelets are only symbols. It was love she needed. It's love she needs now. Pity won't help." SEPARATION ANXIETY – NOT Therapist ends up in an insane asylum when he learns too much about his wife.

CAREFREE (1938) THERAPIST'S PHILOSOPHY I Won't Dance (Don't Ask Me) FIRST SESSION Hoofer-turned-therapist Fred Astaire (convinced by analysis that he should give up dancing) talks of his patients scornfully as silly women who have nothing better to do with their money then spend it on sessions with Mr. Foggy Day in London Town SHRINK RAP "I used to be color blind (until I met you)" – sung to patient in her dream GET OFF THE COUCH - OR ELSE Doctor can hypnotize patient into loving, hating, or shooting him SEPARATION ANXIETY – NOT Therapist marries his patient, after punching her in the eye and singing, "Change Partners."

Film Therapists (2)

 

NOTE: Editors often rewrite stories, and I occasionally found myself rewritten. Sometimes, it was necessary - I might not have hit the mark – other times it was silly (adding the word "living" to the phrase "everyone in the world knows James Bond"), and then there were instances when it was done to catch a different idiom. That was usually the case with EMPIRE, a British film magazine that printed my work in the early 1990s. I recently came across an original draft of a story that was rewritten by EMPIRE (adding British slang). Here's a chance to see what was done and to choose whose prose you prefer. Tom Soter, July 3, 2011.

 

SHRINK TO FIT

The revenge of the Hollywood therapist

LOOKING FOR A GOOD THERAPIST? AVOID HOLLYWOOD. IF RECENT FLICKS LIKE Basic Instinct, Final Analysis, The Prince Of Tides,and The Silence Of The Lambs are anything to go by, Hollywood shrinks are either sex-crazed narcissists with the serious hots for the patient's sister, or major league nutters prepared to shoot,

stab, or even eat their patients if they give out the wrong answers.

Surprising? Not really. As long as there have been movies, there have been movies about psychiatrists - more than 300 in fact - with filmmakers just unable to resist those good old plot twists such as amnesia, mad twins and mind control. From the weirdo-analyst in silent screen classic The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1919), to the helpful doc who pops up at the end of Psycho (1960) to explain quite calmly just why it is that Norman Bates has kept his dead mother in the basement, there’s just no stopping them.

With child psychologist John Lihgow continuing he psycho-fruitcake tradition in Brian De Palma’s Raising Cain, released next month, Tom Soter reclines on the psychiatrist couch to provide the Empire guide to therapists in the movies…

 

FILM   BASIC INSTINCT (1992)

IN THE WHITE COAT Jeanne Tripplehorn

FIRST SESSION  Dr. Jeanne ends the session with patient Michael Douglas by rather unethically informing him, “I still miss you.”         

SHRINK RAP  “Fuck off, Martin!” she yells as “Shooter” squares up for some barroom fisticuffs with our Marty.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD  “I’m sorry, I don’t usually act like that,” she tells Douglas, pulling herself together after beating him up.

STRUCK OFF  “You’ve never been like this before/ Why?” she asks Douglas nakes violent love to her. “You’re the shrink,” he retorts. “You tell me.”

 

FILM  FINAL ANALYSIS (1992)

IN THE WHITE COAT  Richard Gere

FIRST SESSION   Dr. Dick is a loner absorbed by work, until, that is, he meets a patient’s steamy sister who’s eager to get her kit off.

SHRINK RAP “People stop surprising you.”

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD  Dr. Gere wears Armani suits and sleeps with accused murderers. Oh dear.

STRUCK OFF  The trusting therapist has spent too much time preening himself in front of the mirror to have seen Double Indemnity or Body Heat.

 

FILM  THE PRINCE OF TIDES (1991)

IN THE WHITE COAT Barbra Streisand

FIRST SESSION Dr. Babs can help others, but not herself: her marriage is sterile, her son is uncommunicative, and her husband is an arrogant shit.

SHRINK RAP  “Face the pain. Let I go…”

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD Babs counsels Nick Nolte, but instead of charging the usual hourly rate, she pays him to teach her weedy son football.

STRUCK OFF  She miraculously cures her suicidal patient by bedding the patient’s brother…

FILM  WHAT ABOUT BOB? (1991)

IN THE WHITE COAT  Richard Dreyfuss

FIRST SESSION  Dr. Dreyfuss is a neurotic narcissist who cares more about his vacation than the problems of the marble-free Bill Murray.

SHRINK RAP  “I don’t get angry,” he seethes. “I don’t get upset. I don’t see paients on vacation,”

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD  This doctor talks with his kids via hand-puppets.

STRUCK OFF  The good nut-doctor attempts to strangle and then dynamite his patient, ending up in an asylum himself…

 

FILM  THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)

IN THE WHITE COAT  Anthony Hopkins

FIRST SESSION Mess up on your word associations and this doctor and it’s fava beans and Chianti time…

SHRINK RAP  “All good things to those who wait.”

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD “You want the lambs to stop screaming, don’t you, Clarice?”

STRUCK OFF  Where do you start?

 

FILM  HOUSE OF GAMES (1987)

IN THE WHITE COAT  Lindsay Crouse

FIRST SESSION  The Good Doctor, pop psychologist, and bestselling author, is an obsessive personality, sexually drawn to con man Joe Mantega.

SHRINK RAP  “You’re like a dog coming back to its own vomit,” she is rather unflatteringly informed by the object of her desire.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD  The Doc is so busy taking notes during her sessions that she misses the point of what people are saying.

STRUCK OFF  She shoots her lover, relieving her guilt complex. By managing to evade capture, she also has time to write another bestseller. Hurrah!

 

FILM  HALLOWEEN (1980)

IN THE WHITE COAT  Donald Pleasence

FIRST SESSION  Dr. Don has a noble purpose in his heart: confine loony Michael Meyers or blow him away with a .44 Magnum

SHRINK RAP  “I spent eight years trying to reach Meyers and then another seven trying to keep him locked up. He is purely and simply Evil.”

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD  Pleasence has a laudable moralistic fervor and a dedication to the job. He does, however, seem to have, er, no other patients.

STRUCK OFF  Shooting your patient is an unusual form of therapy.

 

FILM  DRESSED TO KILL (1980)

IN THE WHITE COAT  Michael Caine

FIRST SESSION  Caine is calm, cockney, dedicated, and constantly refers to a wife no one ever sees – a sure sign he’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

SHRINK RAP  “There are all knds of ways to get killed in this city if you’re looking for it.”

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD  His ethics are unusual for a Hollywood shrink, refusing he advances of a patient who strips to her undies. His reason: “I’m a doctor.”

STRUCK OFF  Slashing your patient’s throat is an unusual from of therapy.

 

FILM  SPELLBOUND (1945)

IN THE WHITE COAT  Ingrid Bergman

FIRST SESSION  Frigid therapist Bergman wears sensible glasses and grey suits and falls in love with amnesiac murder suspect Gregory Peck.

SHRINK RAP  “Darling, you mustn’t be frightened,” she reassures him. “We’re making progress.”

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD  “I could not fall in love with a murderer,” she explains. Conclusive proof that her amnesiac, constantly fainting patient is, indeed, innocent.”

STRUCK OFF She solves a murder, causes a suicide, and marries her patient.

 

FILM  CAREFREE (1938)

IN THE WHITE COAT  Fred Astaire

FIRST SESSION  Hoofer-turned-therapist Dr. Fred talks of his patients scornfully as silly women who have nothing better to do with their money.

SHRINK RAP  “I used to be colour blind (until I met you)” ­– sung to patient in her dream.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD  This quack can hypnotise patients into loving, hating, or shooting him.

STRUCK OFF  Therapist marries patient after singing, “Change Partners” and punching her in the eye.

EMPIRE, December 1992

Kathleen Turner

 

KATHLEEN TURNER

 

" IT'S AMAZING. A MAN GOES AND GAINS weight or changes anything, and people say, 'God, what a commitment as an actor.' A woman does it and it's, 'Ah. She's losin' it...' It's not fair."

Kathleen Turner, for it is she, is clearly unhappy with Tinseltown's inability to grasp the fact that, for the part of a dowdy housewife in House Of Cards, as yet unreleased in the UK, she piled on the pounds deliberately. She can rest assured, however, that in the comedy Undercover Blues, released in the UK this month, in which she plays one half of a renowned secret agent team (with Dennis Quaid) that has semi-retired to bring up a baby, she looks fighting fit - making it hard to believe that it's now 12 years since a 27-year-old Turner slinked her way through her film debut Body Heat as the sultry siren luring dumb lawyer William Hurt to his doom, and bagging herself a Golden Globe and BAn A award for her trouble.

Since then this fidgety bundle of manic energy - constantly gesturing, crossing and uncrossing her legs and shifting in her seat - has played a collection of memorable femmes in a string of hit movies, including three with Michael Douglas: Romancing The Stone, its sequel, The Jewel Of The Nile, and The War Of The Roses. In fact, Danny De Vito, who co-starred in those first two and directed her in Roses, has been trying to reunite the threesome for a third Romancing movie.

"He's been calling a lot lately," she giggles. "Michael thinks that maybe he's just tired of directing and wants an easy job. But I love those guys and, you know, we're good together. We had a script about two-thirds done that Warren Skaaren wrote but then he died.

"You know, all of the Romancing writers die, don't they?" ,she continues, lowering her voice. "It's weird. Diane Thomas died, too. Spooky thought. But there's a premise there we can work on and it takes place in Hong Kong. I thought, 'God, I'm not going back to any country with an M in it - that's the kiss of death. I'm not going to Morocco, I'm not going to Mexico. Not again'."

After her Body Heat debut, Turner continued to gain attention by playing bad girls to perfection in John Huston's Prizzi's Honour (which won her a second Golden Globe), with Jack Nicholson; The Accidental Tourist, once again with William Hurt; The Man With Two Brains, with Steve Martin; and as. the sultry, uncredited voice of sexpot Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. She has played good girls too, of couroe - in Francis Ford Coppola's sentimental Peggy Sue Got Married which earned her an Oscar nomination and Switching Channels, but then came V.L Warshawski. Turner should have secured herself a role for life as the eponymous tough detective in a film that, had it been any good, would have spawned a whole series.

"1 was so disappointed," she confesses.

"But I think that's a rather grandiose world view if I were to assume responsibility for its failure. I wish I could have fixed it. It's not a question of just the script - the script was all right. It's a question of all the other elements as well. I don't think we had a strong enough central vision. Perhaps the director, God bless him, couldn't protect it from the other pressrtes that are imposed upon a film. I've always had some fantastic directors - Coppola, Ross, Zemeckis, Kasdan, Huston, and that's where I went wrong. I've got to have a strong director."

As well· as her maternal role in the aforementioned House Of Cards, Turner will next be seen in saucemeister John Waters' comedy Serial Mom. "I'm a mother in all my movies now (she is, in real life, the mother of a five-year-old daughter). I think it's just where I am in society's ranking of women. I'm 39, so I must be a mother. " She gasps in mock exasperation. "But in Undercover Blues I made sure my legs were out," she guffaws. "I think they're my best part. Good gams ... "

EMPIRE, February 1994

Kevin Kline

KEVIN KLINE

"IRONICALLY, I WAS A GREAT BUSH SUPPORTER and mourned the loss of our great conservative administration. I don't endorse the politics of the movie at all," intones Kevin Kline somberly - and rather disappointingly - pausing just long enough to cause consternation before a huge grin breaks across his chops. "Of course I endorsed the movie's politics! How could I do the movie if I were a Republican? Hahahahaha! "

Kevin Kline. What a card.

A card and, of course, a man of many parts, although none of Kline's roles have been as bizarrely demanding as the lead in Dave, the political comedy that arrives in Blighty this month having scored remarkable sleeper success in the US. It's the story of an innocent dogooder and part-time Presidential impersonator who gets duped into replacing the Pres - yep, that old movie staple - when the real McCoy inadvertently croaks en sac with his secretary, and Kline plays both parts. It's not the first time an actor has been in the White House, of course, or indeed in politics generally but, warm-hearted and honest, good old Dave Kovic from Baltimore, the kind of bloke who likes to wrestle with his dog on the White House lawn, displays so much enthusiasm for the job that he soon has America falling at his feet.

Despite the fact that he will probably stick in most people's minds for his Oscar-winning turn in A Fish Called Wanda, Kline - trimmer at 46 than many 20 years his junior - has only recently made a foray into the world of comedy.

"1 had done comedy on the stage for years but because I made my film debut in Sophie's Choice, studio people thought that the potential audience would not see me as a comedian," he explains. "You know, 'Oh, Kevin Kline, whom you saw play in Sophie's Choice, is now doing this rollicking comedy,' and you'd go, 'I don't want to see him - I want to see Bill Murray in a comedy. I want to see Eddie Murphy.' "

The versatile actor, performing with consummate ease - with or without a moustache - is, of course, neither comedian nor tragedian, 'but a strange mixture of both, having run the gamut of emotions in such dramas as Cry Freedom, Consenting Adults, Grand Canyon and The Big Chill, bringing his dramatic intensity to comedies like Soapdish and, er, I Love You To Death and combining all to perfection for his seemingly tailor-made performance as Douglas Fairbanks in Chaplin. But it was his doppelganger performance in Dave that really tested his mettle.

"I play two men who were at once identical and yet strikingly different was intriguing," smirks the man who's married to actress Phoebe Cates. "I also loved the interplay between the comic and the dramatic elements. It was different from other roles I had played. Rather than sort of an outrageous character, which is what I had in A Fish Called Wanda and Soapdish, this was an ordinary guy in an outrageous situation and so the comedy came out of that. 1 had to keep him life-like to be attractive."

Kline, in fact, as the old showbiz legend goes, fell into acting by accident, leaving his home in St. Louis, the heart of middle America, for the prestigious Indiana University School of Music where he studied the piano. He stumbled upon the joys of thespianship by way of hamming it up in the school theatre, ultimately moving to New York to study drama, and making his Broadway debut in 1978,

Then Hollywood beckoned - 1982's Sophie's Choice earned him a BAFTA and a Golden Globe - and so the two disciplines of stage and screen coexisted, Kline returning to Broadway despite the success of his next movie, The Big Chill, and appearances in Silverado (1985) and Cry Freedom (1987). The scales finally tilted firmly back in the direction of comedy with A Fish Called Wanda though few of his films since - The January Man, I Love You To Death, Consenting Adults - have had the same impact, it could have been worse, given that he very nearly took the Bruce Willis part in Death Becomes Her. And while Kline is currently working with Cleese and company on a follow-up to Wanda - "Not a sequel. It's the same actors in a different movie, with different characters but the same wacky humour" - he hopes that Dave will finally put previous glitches behind him.

"The movie is disarming and I think it does touch in you the idea that, 'Hey, democracy can work if we can get through all that political machinery,' " he declares. "The movie dares to not be cynical. It dares to not be hip. It dares to say that if you have a president who genuinely wants to do something, you can get a lot of work done. And I think with Clinton we're closer to that now than we have been in a long time. Finally, we have a man in the White House who can string dozens of words together at one go - a verb, noun, even a full sentence. It's been years since we've had a president who can do that .. ."

EMPIRE, December 1993

Steven Soderbergh

from EMPIRE, 1992

"THEY DID OVERPRAISE ME FOR my first movie, and I didn't ask for that," says Steven Soderbergh quietly. "They went too far in that direction with that movie, and too far in the other direction on the second."

Indeed, the Golden Boy of Cannes, 1989, would seem to have lost a touch of his sheen of late. Feted on the Croisette as the new Boy Wonder, and awarded the Palme D'Or as Best Director, the 26-year-old Steven Soderbergh burst on the scene in no small manner with sex lies and videotape, the intimate exploration of the lies people tell. He was The Man Of The Moment, The One To Watch and - more to the point - The One To Sign Up As Director Of Your Next Production, just like Quentin Tarantino is this very minute.

Meeting Soderbergh three years later, after the US run of his second film, Kafka, earned exactly $576,431 and very few critical Brownie points, he seems an entirely relaxed - if slightly exhausted - individual, taking the beating as calmly as he took the adulation four years ago.

"It was just weird," he says of the vicious attacks by many US critics (Kafka is yet to be released in the UK). "You see article after article about how tired people are of studio movies, and then here is an independent movie that is going to live or die on its reviews and it gets flayed. I'm not saying you should say this is a good film because it was made independently, I'm saying that it should be like diving, where you get points for difficulty whether or not you accomplish the dive. A lot of the comments were vitriolic. "

    Indeed, boring," "tedious," "pretentious," and other epithets were liberally flung in Kafka's direction, but Soderbergh himself complains that no one seemed to understand what he wanted to do after sex lies and videotape. "It's not a film without flaws," he admits. ''I'm just saying that obviously my agenda for making the film was somewhat different from what people thought my agenda was going to be."

The criticism, in fact, was just one of the trials Soderbergh experienced in completing his epic, with appalling weather, Czech bureaucracy (it was largely shot in Prague), recalcitrant writers and unhelpful stars, particularly Jeremy Irons, all contributing to the nightmare. "I remember reading that Jeremy thought that Kafka was a man who wasn't sure what to do, and he equated me with being as lost as Kafka, which is possible," he chuckles. "He also admitted that he had no idea what we were doing."

Despite the spectacular failure of his Difficult Second Movie, Soderbergh does not seem to be in danger of being hounded out of the filmmaking world just yet, being hard at work on no fewer than three new projects. "Regardless of what people may have thought of Kafka, even the most negative reviews respected the filmmaking," he insists. "I think many people were waiting to find out if I was completely inept and had flown through sex lies on somebody else's back or something. The funny thing is since it wasn't Hollywood money, it didn't count. If it had been Fox's money, it would have been an issue. It just didn't count because it had been labelled an art movie."

So, in fact] the quality and popularity of sex lies and videotape will stand Soderbergh in good stead for some years yet, notwithstanding the odd Kafka?

''I'm lucky and I'll tell you why," confides Steven Soderbergh. "Some amount of genuine respect is still currency in Hollywood. If people really think you're a good filmmaker then you can still get things to happen. It still means that there will be producers who will want to work with you and there will be actors who want to work with you. And if the worst comes to the worst I can go home and write something along the lines of sex lies and videotape and direct that. I know I can raise a million dollars somewhere."

Corrupt Managers

GUMSHOES CAN
HELP HOMEOWNERS
(Investigating your managing agent)
By TOM SOTER
from NEWSDAY, NOVEMBER 1995

From the files of your worst nightmare department: You’re on the board of a co-op, condo, or homeowners association and keep hearing about the Manhattan district attorney’s ongoing investigation into managing agents. You worry that your regional D.A. may start similar probes and uncover corruption in your backyard. The anxiety is bad but only gets worse when you suddenly discover that your agent has a criminal record. Then you find out that he is currently being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud.

Sound terrible? For tenants at 3 Hanover Square, that was no nightmare, that was reality. According to a self-appointed “Committee of Concerned Shareholders” in the 205-unit lower Manhattan building, their manager was convicted of selling counterfeit $100 bills and cocaine trafficking in October 1985.

“These federal criminal felony convictions were not disclosed when he was hired in 1988,” said one member of the group, a former board director. “We have his court records. He was fined $15,000, so this was not considered a light thing. The judge found him guilty and gave him three years probation. The board failed to do a basic background check.”

Such criminal breaches are not confined to New York City: This past September, the office of Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Piro announced the investigation of Westchester manager Joseph Resnick, president of RMI Management for “misappropriation of funds.” The case is pending.

Such scandals, capping a year in which the real estate management industry was rocked by charges of kickbacks, are leading many owners of co-ops, condos, and homeowner associations to wonder what they can do to protect themselves from hiring a crooked manager.

One approach is to hire a licensed private investigator. For example, one board employed a detective, who quickly discovered that their manager had spent 15 years in prison for kidnapping his employee’s son and holding him for $100,000 ransom. When applying for his current job, he had omitted his criminal record and lied about his length of time in the business.

“This is a situation where you really have to call in a professional,” said Michael Kessler, an investigator with Manhattan-based Michael Kessler & Associates. “There are a lot of data bases out there that might lead us on the trail. We look at where he worked previously, we make pretext phone calls to gain information into a man’s background, we check out previous addresses, see why he left, that sort of thing. It might take a couple of days. Everything is electronic now.”

Investigators are helped by a wide range of computerized information services. Kessler said that he spends thousands of dollars a month paying for specialized data bases. “We’re tied into the criminal history records, public documents, credit information headers,” he noted. “It’s illegal to pull a credit history report without the subject’s release, but you pull header info, such as his name address, previous addresses, sometimes his social security number and previous employers. That can be important. If he says he’s with a company for 15 years, but hasn’t been, you can start an in-depth investigation.”

Kessler said it is a good idea to research the management company itself as well as the employee who will be running the building. “We frequently check out business credit ratings, public filings against companies, that sort of thing,” Kessler said. “Many do not pay withholding taxes on time, they get liens and tax warrants. Some say they are bonded, but really aren’t. We check out the principals, and see what else they’re involved in.”

A recent investigation uncovered that the principal of a management company also owned a perfume importing business and a pool hall. “There’s nothing illegal about that,” Kessler said, “but you just might want to know how those businesses affect his management. You have to wonder where he’s spending his time and effort. Is he taking on more than he can handle? Is he involved in management because he gets a liquid cash flow?”

According to Kessler, a basic report can run from $250 to $300. “If you have to do more than that in the investigation, why are you looking twice at the guy?” he said. “If you can find something that makes the board uncomfortable, it can affect their decision whether to go forward with the person. It’s called a ‘due diligence’ check. At least you’re forewarned that there could be a problem.”

Elevators

THE BOX THAT OTIS BUILT

By TOM SOTER
from CITY LEGACY, 1996

He was an unlikely visionary, a man who tinkered and toiled with various inventions in his lifetime. And although he died long before the first skyscraper was built, Elisha Graves Otis is the spiritual architect of modern New York. In fact, the city as we know it, owes its existence to the little box that Otis built.

We’re talking about elevators, the world’s most frequently used and perhaps most underappreciated mechanical mode of transportation. There are large elevators and small ones, ornate elevators and mundane ones. There are hydraulic and electric, glass and wood. In Manhattan alone, there are about 56,000 cabs, with the fastest (in the Met Life building) traveling at 1600 feet a minute (the fastest in the world is in Tokyo, operating at 2,000 feet per minute), and the slowest -- well, who knows?

"Elevators are the safest mode of transportation per capita per mile," notes one elevator repair technician. "They're safer than walking, than running, than using the stairs." The Buildings Department reports few deaths in elevators, and those are ususlly caused by human error, not mechanical failure.

Elisha Graves Otis didn't invent the elevator -- there had been horse-drawn hoisting devices as far back as the pyramids in 2600 B.C. -- but he did make it workable by creating the first "safety elevator." No wonder, too: Otis was a natural tinkerer. Born in 1811 as the youngest of six children, he abandoned his father's farm to become a master builder in Albany. Between 1834 and 1850, he went through a succession of jobs that were all tied together by a single thread: the need to invent.

"He possessed no ordinary genius as an inventor," his son Charles wrote in 1911. "He could invent, design, and construct a perfect working machine or improve anything to which he gave his mind, without recourse to any of the modern drafting room methods. He needed no assistance, asked no advice, consulted with no one, and never made much use of pen or pencil in designing his various machines...the desired result was reached by him more as an inspiration than by a process of slow, laborious reasoning and experiment."Elisha Graves Otis

Otis built a grist mill run by water power and worked at a carriage manufacturing plant and then a sawmill. He was hired as a master mechanic and soon devised a number of labor-saving machines. In 1850, he invented a set of safety brakes for a train company and that led him to the safety elevator. In 1852, Otis was asked to build a freight elevator for his employer, the Bedstead Manufacturing Company. Previous elevators all had a fatal flaw: when the rope broke, the cab fell. That created a widespread fear of the lifts that was hard to overcome. Even in the 1890s, when elevators were more common, many people still considered them unsafe, and some insurance policies even excluded coverage for elevator deaths.

Otis's innovations changed that. Accompanied by the motto, "Safe Enough for Grandma to Ride In," the new Otis elevator employed a brake. The inventor put a wagon spring on top of the hoist bar and ratchet bars attached to the guide rails on both sides of the hoistway. According to an account by the Otis Elevator Company, "the lifting rope was attached to the wagon spring in such a way that the weight of the hoist platform alone exerted enough tension on the spring to keep it from touching the ratchet bars. But, if the cable snapped, the tension would be released from the wagon spring, and each end would immediately engage the ratchet bars, securely locking the hoist platform in place and preventing it from falling."

The safety device was a success and the forerunner of present-day devices. Further development saw a speed governor in the control room, connected to the elevator by a rope. If the elevator goes too fast, the governor pulls on the rope, which slows or stops the elevator by released the spring-loaded wedges under the cab. These shoot out, grab onto rails in the shaft and stop the cab from falling.

The method is so surefire, in fact, that its most noteworthy failure is also its most extraordinary. In 1945, a low-flying airplane crashed into the side of the Empire State Building and sheared the elevator's cable and the safety rope. When the cab fell, the saftey wedges were not activated.

By 1854, Otis was exhibiting a working model of his invention at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in New York. When his rising platform, reached the top, 40 feet above the assembled crowds below, he had an assistant dramatically cut the hoist rope and, like a good showman, bow to the gasps of the onlookers when the elevator did not fall. The New York Tribune called the demonstration "sensational" (labeling Otis, "Mr. Safety Elevator Man"). In 1856, Otis erected what many consider the nation’s first regularly used passenger elevator in the new five-story E.V. Haughwought & Co. store at the northeast corner of Broome Street and Broadway. By 1861, when he died of diphtheria, Otis was doing a brisk business creating elevators for manufacturing companies. (And his legend was beginning to grow, as well, with his son claiming that his father was, improbably, a Civil War veteran and “without doubt a lineal descendant of the most distinguished family known to history, Adam and Eve.” )

The evolution of the elevator might have stalled there, restricted to manufacturing uses, had it not been for steel-frame building construction. In 1885, W.L. Jenney designed the 10-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago. At the time, making buildings higher than six storys was impractical because of the huge brick foundations necessary. Jenney's "skyscraper" employed an iron frame to support the weight of the structure. The elevator allowed the hi-rise to be conceived. Soon, skyscrapers began rising with rapidity: the 22-story World Building in 1890; the 20-story Flatiron Building in 1903; the 41-story Singer Building in 1906; the 52-story Metropolitan Life Building in 1908; the 60-story Woolworth Building in 1912. Out of 800,000 buildings in New York, the buildings department reports that roughly 8,400 have elevators, mostly concentrated in Manhattan.

By 1929, as the Depression came down, more hi-rises seemed to be going up. Between 1929 and 1931, four of the tallest buildings in the world arose: the 71-story Bank of Manhattan (927 feet); the 66-story Wall Tower (950 feet); the 77-story Chrysler Building (1,046 feet); and the 102-story Empire State Building (1,250 feet).

As they were created, so were new laws governing the manufacture and safety of elevators. By the 1920s, there were two types of elevator in operation. The older models were generally either plunger or roped hydraulic elevators. The plunger style featured a cab built directly on a hollow piston that was moved in and out of a large cylinder by varying fluid pressures. In a roped model, ropes were linked to the elevator car and powered by a separate hydraulic piston and cylinder. Water from the water main and later under high pressure pumped by steam forced the plunger up and carried the elevator up. The relaxation of pressure allowed the plunger to sink, carrying the elevator down. (Modern hydraulic elevators use oil pumped by electricity.)

A quarter of the elevators currently in the city are hydraulic, usually found in such low-rise buildings as lofts. Hydraulic elevators were prominent at the turn-of-the-century, but controlling them was a little tricky: the water pressure could fluctuate and the elevator would bounce at the floor landing.

Traction elevators, employing electricity and counter weights, were introduced in 1889. They allowed for more precision in stopping and starting the cab, and also, eventually, greater speeds. According to the Otis Elevator Company: "The principle is similar to the operation of a locomotive pulling a train as the result of traction between the steel wheels of the locomotive and the rails. With an elevator, six to eight lengths of wire cable are attached to the top of the elevator and wrapped around the drive sheave in special grooves. The other end of the cables is attached to a counterweight that slides up and down in the shaftway on its own guide rails. The result of this arrangement is that with the weight of the elevator car on one end of the cable, and the total mass of the counterweight on the other, it presses the cables down on the grooves of the drive sheave. When the motor turns the sheave, it moves the cables with almost no slippage. The weight of the car and about half its passenger load is balanced out by the counterweight, which is [traveling] down as the car is going up. It supplies the necessary traction."

Electricity brought further modifications: the elevator relays were programmed to make multiple decisions, doors with interlocks were mandated, and door operation refined to provide safe automatic opening and closing. The last two were the biggest steps towards complete automation of elevators. In the 1890s, a number of residential buildings had self-service passenger cabs. These featured a shaftway door, and, in the elevator, a gate that the passenger would open and close himself. Locks were devised to prevent the hoistway doors from being opened if the elevator wasn't there or preventing the elevator from running if the door wasn't locked. When the inner gate was transformed into an automatic inner door in the early 20th century, safety edges were developed and added to reopen the door if anyone was in its path.

By the 1920s and '30s, fancy hi-rise apartment buildings started turning up – and with them, elevators. "American architecture as an independent school began its existence with the invention and adaptation of the elevator," observed one 19th century writer. "The architectural features of New York City are passing through a transitional period because of the demand for every possible square foot of enclosed space that can be had anywhere on Manhattan Island. The amount of business to be transacted will steadily increase, and with it the demand for more room in which to transact that business."

Since then, elevators have essentially remained the same – except for becoming sleeker, faster, and computerized. Every major elevator manufacturing company has introduced microprocessor technology for elevator buildings with large and complex traffic patterns. Computers, Westinghouse Elevator noted in a sales brochure, have become so sophisticated that "every potential corridor call in the building is preassigned to an elevator before the call is actually entered. These preassignments are reevaluated and redefined twice a second. In effect, the system is predicting, every half second, which car will be in the best position to answer any call that may be entered in the next half second, minimizing the response time of the elevator system when a call has been registered. Registered calls are instantly assigned and the system is scanned 10 times a second for new calls being entered."

As for the future, the only major difference in the box that Otis built will probably be aesthetics: glass or gold-plated, chrome or wood, plastic or formica. But the basic concept will not change much: a box hooked to a cable running over a pulley. And why should it? Simple yet brilliant, Otis’ “Magnificent Moving Machine” has helped New York City grow and prosper. Mr. Elevator Safety Man would be pleased.

How to Avoid Dismissal

TEN WAYS TO AVOID
GETTING FIRED

By TOM SOTER
from MEN'S LIVING

There is one constant in the world. “In good times or bad, downsizing is here to stay,” says Mitchell Lee Marks, an organizational psychologist who has advised MCA, the parent company of Universal Studios, and Chase Bank. “The difference is that in good times, management uses a scalpel, not an axe.”

Those who have prepared properly, however, can avoid being “downsized.” Among the steps:

(1) Volunteer. “Step up to the plate and take on extra work,” advises Don Blohowiak, a management specialist who has advised United Airlines. “When budgets get tight, management will ask, ‘Who’s essential here?’ And they’ll remember the person who was willing to do a bit more over those who only do what was required. Sticks in the mud get fired first.”

(2) Be upbeat. Those with a positive attitude have an in. “If you’re a cantankerous complainer, you may become a target,” warns Blohowiak.

(3) Don’t be a Yes-Man. Optimism is one thing; being a yes-man is another. Companies look for employees who can offer constructive criticism. “Candor is the highest compliment,” Blohowiak says. “It means, ‘I value you enough to tell you the truth.’ When the boss can count on you for an honest take, that adds value.”

(4) Make sure your superiors know what you’ve accomplished. “If you’ve done a job well, make sure people know,” advises Marks. Have your supervisor periodically blow your horn to the higher-ups, or at the end of the year write a letter sharing your accomplishments. But don’t overdo it. No one likes a braggart.

(5) Earn your paycheck. With benefits packages and salary increases, you may be costing more than you’re worth. Blohowiak advises candor: “Ask the boss, ‘Are you getting your money’s worth from me?’” One way to increase your value is to adapt to new work techniques quickly and without complaint, even training yourself on your own time if necessary.

(6) Go where the action is. If another division is growing and yours is flat, Marks says, “you might want to transfer into that division.”

(7) Prioritize. Determine what needs to be done first and do whatever it takes to complete it on time “Don’t be a 9 to 5er,” says Stephen Viscusi, host of the radio show Career Talk. “Get a sense of what’s urgent for your company. If your boss has a pet project, work on that. If it’s a busy time of year, don’t take a vacation even if your heart is set on it.”

(8) Control personal problems. In general, you should keep personal difficulties out of the workplace. But if you are facing something like a major illness in the family, be sure to tell your superior. Says Marks: “If you communicate in a crisis, they’ll be more understanding.”

(9) Listen to the office grapevine. Find out if the company is going to undergo downsizing. “You should be in tune with what’s going on,” Viscusi notes.

(10) Beware of paranoia. “Don’t go overboard and become paranoid,” says Marks. “Anxiety can work against productivity. The odds are if you’re doing the job well and meeting expectations, they’ll keep you.”

Movie Previews 1999

PREVIEWS
By TOM SOTER
from MOVIE TIMES, 1999

THE INSIDER
With: Al Pacino , Russell Crowe, Diane Venora, Rip Torn, Philip Baker Hall, Lindsay Crouse, and Christopher Plummer (Touchstone)

To Lowell Bergman (Oscar winner Al Pacino), the truth is always out there. And as an investigative reporter and producer for TV’s legendary 60 Minutes, Bergman thought he had nailed the story of the year, if not the decade: Jeffrey Wigand, a scientist for a major tobacco company, had agreed to blow the whistle on Big Tobacco. His taped testimony was devastating, his story vivid television. Only one problem: CBS wouldn’t air it. And then, Bergman’s and Wigand’s worlds come crashing down. Director Michael Mann offers a remarkable true story about two ordinary people fighting extraordinary circumstances.

AMERICAN BEAUTY
With: Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Peter Gallagher (DreamWorks)
Suburbanite Lester Burnham (The Usual Suspects’ Kevin Spacey) has problems. Oh yeah. His wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) hates him. His daughter despises him. And his boss is getting set to give him the boot. Well, as they say, when you’ve got nothing to lose, you might as well go for your dreams. Provoked by forbidden passions, Lester makes life changes that are less mid-life crisis and more reborn adolescence. But it’s not all fun and games, as Lester learns that the ultimate freedom may come with the ultimate price.

LOST SOULS
With Winona Ryder, Ben Chaplin, John Hurt, Elias Koteas, John Diehl (NLC: New Line Cinema?)
Supernatural Thriller – A young woman (Ryder) joins forces with a cynical New York crime journalist (Chaplin) to defeat a devil-worshiping conspiracy that has made the reporter their target. Co-produced by Meg Ryan, this thriller marks the directorial debut of Academy Award-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski.

BODY SHOTS
With Sean Patrick Flanery, Amanda Peet (New Line Cinema? - NLC)
Drama – Follow eight 20-something men and women as they learn about life, love, and Los Angeles night life as they set off on a journey that takes them into the turbulent world of sex and dating in the ‘90s. The ensemble piece was co-written and directed by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright Michael Cristofer.

DOUBLE JEOPARDY
With: Tommy Lee Jones, Ashley Judd, Annabeth Gish, Bruce Greenwood. (Paramount)
Drama – Framed for the murder of her husband, Libby Preston (Judd) survives the long years in prison thanks to two burning desires: finding her son and locating the real killer. Standing between her and her goals is the cynical parole officer (Jones) who has plans of his own.

SUPERSTAR
With: Molly Shannon, Will Ferrell, Elaine Hendrix, Glynis Johns.
Romantic Comedy – All teenager Mary Katherine Gallagher (Shannon) wants is a hold-your-breath-till-you-think-you’re-going-to-faint, Hollywood-style kiss. And then she realizes that the only way to get a Hollywood kiss is to go Hollywood. Big time. And when a national magazine sponsors a contest that could send her to Tinsel Town, Mary sees her chance.

BRINGING OUT THE DEAD
With: Nicolas Cage, Patricia Arquette, John Goodman. (Paramount)
Drama – A story with black comedy undertones, this drama depicts 48 hours in the life of a New York City paramedic (Academy Award-winner Cage) who finds himself falling prey to urban shell shock after too many years on the graveyard shift.

SLEEPY HOLLOW
With: Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Casper Van Dien. (Paramount)
Fantasy – Director Tim Burton (Batman, Beetlejuice) and Johnny Depp reunite on their third film following their work on Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood, this time putting their darkly comic stamp on Washington Irving’s classic story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman.

JAKOB THE LIAR
With: Robin Williams, Alan Arkin, Bob Balaban, Michael Jeter (Sony/Columbia)
Drama – In Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II, poor Jewish cafe owner Jakob (Academy Award-winner Williams) battles the Nazis by offering fictitious news bulletins about Allied advances. Spirits are lifted, but soon, the Nazis begin a search for the pirate radio station.

ELMO IN GROUCHLAND
With: Kevin Clash, Mandy Patinkin, Vanessa Williams. (Sony/Columbia/Jim Henson Pictures)
Family Comedy – When Elmo (Clash) loses his beloved blue blanket, he goes on an extraordinary quest to recover it. Plunging into Grouchland – a place full of grouchy creatures, stinky garbage, and the villainous Huxley (Patinkin) – he has many wild adventures and learns an important lesson about life.

RANDOM HEARTS
With: Harrison Ford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Charles S. Dutton, Paul Guilfoyle. (Columbia/Sony)
Crime Drama – Tough internal affairs cop Dutch Van Den Broeck (Ford), involved in a major corruption case, develops an unusual bond with Kay Chandler (Thomas) a high-profile congressman embroiled in a bitter reelection campaign as the pair face a secret that threatens to destroy them.

CRAZY IN ALABAMA
With: Melanie Griffith, David Morse, Cathy Moriarty, Lucas Black, Rod Steiger.
Comedy-Drama – It’s the summer of 1965 and backwoods Alabama boy Peejo (Black) gets an education in freedom for his glamorous, eccentric Aunt Lucille (Griffith), who escapes from an abusive husband and takes the boy to Hollywood to pursue dreams of TV stardom.

JOAN OF ARC
With: Milla Jovovich, John Malkovich, Timothy West, Desmond Harrington, Faye Dunaway. (Sony/Columbia)
Historical Drama – In 1429, a 16-year-old girl from a remote village announced that she would defeat the world’s greatest army. From internationally acclaimed director Luc Besson comes the story of Joan of Arc (Jovovich), the woman who followed her own path and changed the course of history.

I DREAMED OF AFRICA
With: Kim Basinger, Vincent Perez, Eva Marie Saint, Liam Aiken, Robert Loggia (Sony/Columbia)
Epic Drama – Director Hugh Hudson (Chariots of Fire) offers a story based on the saga of Kuki Gallman (Basinger), who sought a new life in Africa with her husband (Perez) and son (Aiken). What she found was pain, passion, joy, and hardship, as her love for her adopted homeland enabled her to overcome overwhelming personal tragedy.

NEXT TO YOU
With: Melissa Joan Hart, Adrian Grenier (Fox)
Comedy – Sunny Nicole and moody Chase live next door to each other– and that’s about all they have in common. Then circumstances force them to team up in the least likely partnership of the year. But sparks – and romance – fly in this lively comedy based on the popular novel, Girl Gives Birth to Own Prom Date.

ANYWHERE BUT HERE
With: Susan Sarandon, Natalie Portman, Bonnie Bedelia. (Fox)
Drama – Fleeing small-town boredom, a restless mother (Sarandon) drags her reluctant teenage daughter (Portman) to Beverly Hills and a new, sometimes difficult life. Directed by Wayne Wang.

SUNSET STRIP
With: Anna Friel, Simon-Baker Denny, Nick Stahl, Rory Cochrane, Adam Goldberg. (Fox)
Drama – It is August 1972. And the lives of a group of young people are changed forever during a momentous 24 hours on Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip. Directed by Adam Collis.

LIGHT IT UP
With: Usher, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa L. Williams, Forest Whitaker (Fox).
Drama – Following an accidental shooting in a battered inner-city high school, a disparate group of students hold a wounded police officer hostage. With media and public interest intensifying, the drama comes to an unexpected climax.

THE BEACH
With: Leonardo DiCaprio. (Fox)
Drama – Teen heartthrob DiCapiro (Titanic) returns to the big screen as an American traveler who embarks on an exotic adventure in Thailand, searching for a legendary tropical paradise known only as The Beach. But when he discovers the modern-day Eden, he also uncovers its disturbing secrets.

FOR LOVE OF THE GAME
With: Kevin Costner, Kelly Preston (Universal)
Romantic Drama – Oscar-winner Kevin Costner stars as Billy Chapel, a legendary baseball pitcher nearing the end of his career who must reexamine his priorities when he faces a double dilemma: he is about to be traded after 20 years with the same team and his long-time lover (Preston) has decided to leave him. Directed by Sam Raimi (A Simple Plan).

THE BONE COLLECTOR
With: Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, Queen Latifah, Ed O’Neill, Michael Rooker (Universal)
Suspense Thriller – When a gruesomely mutilated corpse is found buried near the railroad tracks in Spanish Harlem, a street-smart cop (Jolie) teams up with brilliant but bed-bound forensic experts Lincoln Rhymes (Academy Award-winner Washington) in a race-against the clock to find the murderer before he strikes again.

THE STORY OF US
With: Bruce Willis, Michelle Pfeiffer (Universal)
Comedy: Director Rob Reiner returns to romantic comedy with a film that asks the question: can a marriage survive 15 years of marriage? While their kids are away at summer camp, Ben (Willis) and Katie (Pfeiffer) Jordon decide to separate because the qualities which made them fall in love are pulling them apart.

THE BEST MAN
With: Taye Diggs, Nia Long, Morris Chestnut, Harold Perrineau Jr., Monica Calhoun (Universal)
Comedy Drama – This tale of commitment, love, and marriage finds a group of successful college friends reunited at the wedding of one of their buddies. But more than marriage is on everyone’s mind, as the groom’s best man (Diggs) worries that his friend (Chestnut) will soon find out he once had an affair with the bride-to-be (Calhoun).

MORE PREVIEWS

By TOM SOTER

THE CHILL FACTOR
With: Cuba Gooding Jr., Skeet Ulrich, Peter Firth (Warner)
Thriller – Two men (Gooding, Ulrich) accidentally obtain a highly explosive substance that will ignite if its temperature goes above 50 degrees. Pursued by several different groups, the duo rush through increasingly warmer terrain in a desperate struggle to survive.

MAN ON THE MOON
With: Jim Carrey, Danny DeVito, Courtney Love, Paul Giamatti (Universal)
Comedy-Drama – Funnyman Carrey stars as another wild comedian, the late Andy Kaufman, who puzzled and delighted audiences of TV’s Saturday Night Live and has often been considered one of the most innovative, eccentric, and enigmatic comics of his time. Directed by Academy Award-winning director Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).

THE BIG TEASE
With: Craig Ferguson, Frances Fisher, Mary McCormack, Donal Logue (Warner)
Comedy – A Rocky-with-curlers, this comedy finds Scottish hairdresser Crawford McKenzie (Ferguson, a co-star of TV’s Drew Carey Show) competing for the Platinum Scissor Award at The World Freestyle Hairdressing Championship. He vows to succeed, or go down moussing!

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
With: Geoffrey Rush, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Peter Gallagher (Warner)
Horror – To win one million dollars each, five strangers agree to spend a night in a house with a hideous past. Soon, they find death is their companion, as a mysterious murderer begins stalking them. Based on the 1958 cult classic from director William Castle.

THE YARDS
With: Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Faye Dunaway, Ellen Burstyn, James Caan (Miramax?)
Thriller – When Leo Handler wanted to get his life back on track, he returned to the New York City subway yards. But instead of peace of mind, he finds a world of sabotage, high-stakes payoffs, and murder. And what the secret he discovers makes him the target of the most ruthless family in the city: his own.

DREAMING OF JOSEPH LEES
With: Samanatha Morton, Rupert Graves, Lee Ross, Miriam Margoyles, Frank Finlay (Fox Searchlight)
Drama – Eva (Morton) lusts after the adventurous geologist Joseph Lees (Graves). But she is also involved with the volatile, unpredictable, and very jealous Harry (Ross). When the two men connect, the love triangle careens out of control.

Movie Reviews: Mixer

REVIEWS: MIXER
July 1998

By TOM SOTER

SLAM

The winner of the 1998 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and a Directors’ Fortnight selection at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, Slam offers the affecting story of Raymond Joshua (Saul Williams), a rapper/poet in Washington, D.C. Arrested on a petty drug charge, Ray is caught in the wheels of a system that cares little for justice and more for repression. In prison, Joshua hooks up witgh Lauren Bell (Sonja John), a writing teacher who sees in the young poet a true talent. One could say the same thing about co-writer/director Marc Levin, who with his use of hand-held cameras, naturalistic acting, and funky street dialect, gives his story a documentary feel. But at times he also uses a colorful impressionistic style to capture how Joshua reflects on his experiences and translates them into poetry. Inspired by the real experiences of a 17-year-old imprisoned gradditi artists Bonz Malone, Levin’s movie is a passionate plea for understanding, showing how a cruel system turns a blind eye to those who could be its most committed, constructive, and insightful citizens if given a chance. As Ray Joshua, Williams is affecting and believable as both a poet and a leader and he makes the whole constrfuction work. There have been movies about oppression and the black experience before, but none quite as unusual as this one.

REVIEWS: MIXER
January 1999

SPANISH FLY
(Miramax)
Rating: 5
This lightweight comedy, written by and starring Daphna Kastner, is about a woman coming to terms with love and sexuality in oh-so-macho Spain. Kastner plays a youngish intellectual, unlucky in love and sex, who suffers from what might be termed “parental abandonment syndrome.” More specifically, she blames her missing father for her anger towards men and her inability to sustain and consummate a relationship. The problem faced by Zoe (Kastner) is that she always picks the wrong guys: intellectual snobs (Martin Donovan), semi-fey momma’s boys (Danny Huston), or sexually crude studs (Antonio Castro). Naturally, the true love of her life must be the macho but sensitive Antonio (Toni Canto) because, in true romantic comedy style, she bickers with him at their first meeting. The plot-line and much of the writing in Spanish Fly are perfunctory, but the beautiful Spanish scenery and the sweet performances by Canto and Kastner ultimately overcome any weaknesses in the script. And, of course, it’s always nice when true love wins out.

WAKING NED DEVINE
(Fox Searchlight)
Rating: 5
Irish blarney at its best, with a delightful cast of old codgers out to pull off the scam of a lifetime. An inveterate lottery player, senior citizen Jackie O'Shea (Ian Bannen) discovers that one of the 52 residents of his tiny Irish village has won a gigantic lottery. He quickly uncovers the lucky man: Ned Devine, an elderly fellow who lives alone and who also happens to be dead, killed by the shock of winning (“They say money changes you,” observes Jackie’s practical wife, adding that it has certainly changed Ned). The farcical funnies follow, as Jackie and his pal Michael Sullivan (David Kelly) attempt to pass Michael off as Ned. The thin story is played out like an Irish tall tale, with a good number of twists and turns (will the lottery man discover the truth? will the townspeople join in the lie?) and amusing visuals (ever seen a naked septuagenarian on a motorcycle?) Although Waking Ned Devine is lightweight stuff, it is charmingly brought off by Bannen and Kelly, an Irish Laurel and Hardy.

ENEMY OF THE STATE
(Touchstone)
Rating: 5
The early 1970s was the last big era of paranoia in movies: The Conversation, The Parallax View, and Three Days of the Condor all posited grim worlds in which Big Brother was not only watching, but was out to get you – and did. Flash-forward to the 1990s: paranoia is in vogue again, thanks to TV's X-Files. The latest evidence of the retro trend is Enemy of the State, a paranoid thriller about a government using cameras, satellites, and recording devices to both pry into and destroy people’s lives. Will Smith plays a labor lawyer who is inadvertently drawn into an electronic web of deceit and murder, while Gene Hackman (the electronic spymaster of The Conversation) is the man who can save him. The story, fast-paced and complicated, is filled with fancy visuals, breakneck chases – and all the cliches of the genre, albeit jazzed up with fancy imagery and pump-up-the-volume energy. Smith and Hackman are an engaging team, and the ending – unlike the downbeat finales of this movie’s ‘70s predecessors – is unbelievably happy.

CENTRAL STATION
(Sony Pictures Classics)
Rating: 8
Central Station is a wonderfully acted Brazilian fairy tale about how an orphaned boy, Jose (Vincinius de Oliveira), touches and then transforms a nasty old woman (Fernanda Montenegro) into a near-saint. Set in Rio and the surrounding countryside, the movie charts as unlikely a partnership as you’re ever going to see. Dora is a bitter woman who writes letters for illiterates. Although she promises to mail the finished work immediately, she instead keeps the postage money and destroys the letters. Jose is a sharp-tongued boy whose mother hires Dora to write a note to her reclaim her estranged husband. When the woman is killed by a bus, however, a series of believable plot contrivances find Dora and Jose setting off on a bittersweet, funny, and heartfelt quest for the boy's father. Avoiding cliches and emphasizing realistic characters, Central Station is a brilliantly depicted journey of spiritual awakening as Dora realizes that she needs Jose as much he needs a father – and that the old woman and child are more alike than either realized. Not to be missed.

REVIEWS: MIXER
February 1999

RUSHMORE
(Touchstone)
Rating: 7
Rushmore is a quirky comedy about a 15-year-old go-getter named Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman). The teenager loves extracurricular school activities: he is the editor of the Rushmore school newspaper and yearbook; founder of the debate team, the dodge ball society, and the Max Fischer Players; and president of the French club, German club, chess club, and almost everything else. He also finds time to write and stage oddball plays about the Vietnam War, police informants, and gangsters. Problem is, Max has no time left for studying. played Schwartzman’s would-be-genius is a fast-talking con artist: an adult salesman in a teenaged nerd’s body. When he is kicked out of Rushmore, however, Max applies his skills on a sweet kindergarten teacher (Olivia Williams) who is more interested in Max's millionaire patron and gopher Herman Blume (Bill Murray), than Max. And so the battle begins. Director/writer Wes Anderson’s oddball movie amusingly depicts the birth of a hustler, dreamer, and all-around smarmy guy. With any luck, he’ll probably be working in Hollywood in a few years.

MIGHTY PEKING MAN
(Cowboy International)
Rating: 6
How’s this for a story? Some intrepid explorers head for the jungles of India (!) to trap the Mighty Peking Man (PM, for short), an ugly-as-sin giant gorilla who turns up after an earthquake. The leader of the expedition is well-known adventurer Johnny Feng (Danny Lee), who is distraught because he just discovered his girlfriend in bed with his brother (“It’s not what you think!” cries out the naked girlfriend). Feng and his pals have no idea how to capture the PM except “to use our intelligence” – but once a tiger has ripped off the leg of a porter, and one of the expedition leaders slips and fatally falls off a mountain, everyone deserts Johnny in the night. His doom seems to be sealed when he comes up against the PM. He is rescued by Samantha (Evelyne Kraft), a platinum blonde white woman who wears an animal-skin bra that covers only one of her breasts. This lady Tarzan speaks pigeon English and has the power to control the PM. With her help, Johnny takes the ape back to civilization, where he hopes to make millions exhibiting the PM. Instead (surprise!) the monster goes on a rampage. There have been bad movies, but none quite in the league of the Hong Kong import Mighty Peking Man (why the ape is called “Man” let alone named after a city in China is never explained). Don’t miss it.

VARSITY BLUES
(Paramount)
Rating: 7
Cross Rocky with Hoosiers, toss in one of the sexy hunks from TV’s Dawson’s Creek, and what do you have? A surprisingly affecting drama about coming-of-age in a small town in Texas. For 22 years. the West Canaan High School football team has won the district championship. That’s thanks to the no-holds-barred, win-at-all-costs approach of the tough-as-nails coach Bud Kilmer (Jon Voight), a man who’d make a Nazi look good. His antagonist in the quest for the 23rd championship is Jon Moxon (James Van Der Beek), who prefers reading Kurt Vonnegut to tackling people. Nonetheless, “Mox” also happens to have a good throwing arm, a good mind, and plenty of moxie. Of course, he ends up as a star quarterback. He is then faced with a series of dilemmas that come with the turf – does he cheat on his girlfriend with the school’s sexpot? does he quarterback his own way or the coach’s? – culminating in the big question: should he stand up to the unethical Kilmer and prove that it’s not whether you win but how you play the game? Varsity Blues is no Last Picture Show, but it is still a well-done drama that offers a message not often heard these days: integrity counts.

Managing Money

CASH CONCERNS
By TOM SOTER
from MEN'S FITNESS

Normally, Andy doesn’t think a lot about money. “I’m penny wise and pound foolish,” he observes. “You know, I’ll use a coupon that will save me 20 cents to buy cat litter but then I’ll spend 100 dollars on computer software that I don’t need.”

But Andy is worrying more and more about money these days. He’s about to be married and fears spending may become an issue with his future wife. “I’ve read stories about people fighting over it,” he says. “So I think I have to be more measured. I mean, we’ve talked about money. It’s much more of an emotional issue with her. She’s more careful, probably because her parents argued a lot about money. She’s always worried about not having enough.”

Andy’s situation is not unique. New York City psychoanalyst Austin Galvin points to one couple he counsels. Things were so good that they began living together. After a while, however, they began fighting – about money. “She would ask him why the utility bill was so high,” Galvin recalls. “He’d say he liked to take long, hot showers and shave. She’d say, ‘You spend too much money.’ He said she was too miserly.”

The best things in life may be free, but for many couples, you can keep them for the birds and bees. Money is what many people want – and fight over. “Money issues are becoming more and important than they once were,” observes Allen Elkin, a New York-based psychologist and director of the Stress Management Counseling Center. “With downsizing and mergers, there is more of a sense of financial insecurity in the air. In the old days, grandfather kept his job for 20 years. Now there’s more uncertainty. With that comes a lot of anxiety.”

But how much of that is a legitimate concern over a tough economy – and how much a symbolic battle over power, control, and other psychological issues?

Dollars and Sense of Worth
When men and women begin dating, money is the topic no one discusses but everyone thinks about – at least unconsciously. “We are often attracted to another person because we perceive – perhaps not consciously – that the other person has an attribute we lack to make ourselves whole,” explains Elayne Savage, a psychologist in Berkeley, California. The differing styles may complement each other since one person spends freely, while the other is frugal. But these same qualities can become points of contention when tensions rise about other things.

There are legitimate issues of finance, of course. If you are not balancing your books, there should be discussions. But what are the real issues in a budgeting mess? “When money comes up, find out what you’re really talking about,” suggests Brigitte Lifschitz, a New York City social worker. “In general, the problem usually goes beyond just money.”

For most, cash concerns are defined in childhood. Those who grew up without a lot often have a different perspective than those who did, which can create tension. “Some people have the philosophy that you don’t spend on yourself, that money should be saved or spent on important things,” Elkin says. “As opposed to the idea that you can’t take it with you, so spend it while you can.”

“Our belief system is developed when we’re growing up. It’s important to look at the original context,” adds Savage. “Maybe a major wage earner in the family lost money suddenly and everything changed: they never had enough food or clothing. I have one client who, no matter how much money she makes, has to have $1,000 in a drawer. It’s for psychological security.”

Money often represents control. Lifschitz cites a couple in its mid-30s: “If she doesn’t earn a living, she feels she has less power in the relationship. She feels like a child who has to ask permission to buy things. And even though he’s earning a very good living, he has had large debts from his own schooling, so he feels they must be careful. They come into conflict when she wants to buy clothing he thinks is extravagant. They fight; she might back down and resent it, or she might go out and buy it anyway.”

Money can also be a symbol of something lacking in the relationship. For example, if one person is tight-fisted financially, Savage notes, “it could mean they are a withholding person. So they might withhold other things, like emotions.”

Spending can be used as a way to avoid confronting difficult issues. “Often money is a way to sidestep emotional problems a couple may have,” says Galvin. “When people get to troubled times, rather than communicate, they go out and talk over a good meal and have some wine, and soon there seems to be no problem. But they really haven’t addressed anything. Spending the money has just made them feel good. The problems will return.”

If spending makes one feel good, so does having: dollars are often mixed up with a person’s sense of self-worth. “If a man feels like he’s going to lose his job, he feels like his self-esteem is at stake,” observes Rebecca Abramson, a psychologist in Hartsdale, New York. “For men especially, how much they earn is very much a part of who they are. That can lead to competition between couples over money, especially when the woman works.”

Spending can also be used as a cry for attention. If the man is being ignored in the relationship and doesn’t know how to ask for what he wants, he may make a big purchase. That could then precipitate a fight which leads to a reconciliation and affection, which is what the man wanted to begin with. “He just didn’t know how to ask for it in an upfront way,” Savage notes. “Spending money is a way to fill a hole, to ask for something you’re not getting. You’re usually filling a need for nurturing in the same way those who overeat do. In this case, the spending allows for the argument which leads to the intimacy. That could have been avoided if he knew what he really wanted. ”

Core Solutions
Once you’ve identified the core issues – not an easy task – experts suggest these steps:

Negotiate. When you discuss money issues, don’t make it an opportunity for a blaming session. Elkin suggests a “quid pro quo approach. Ask, ‘What do you want me to give up and what will you give up?’ She may say, ‘I’d like you not to spend so much on computer software,’ and then he says, ‘Okay, but you don’t spend so much on shoes.’ ”

Elkin says setting a dollar amount and value system is crucial in the process. “You have to measure how important it is to you. On a 10-point scale, how important is this purchase? Are Friday night hockey games integral to happiness? If so, it is not negotiable, so go to the next on the list, restaurants for lunch every day. Be willing to trade on that. But don’t impose your spending styles or values on your spouse; if she wants to spend money on shoes, don’t ridicule that.”

Budget. Most people don’ have – or if they do, don’t stick to – budgets. Making one up will give you a practical guide to where your money goes. “You will suddenly realize you’re spending $500 a week on lunches,” says Elkin. “That can help you in deciding, ‘Do I really need a new laptop?’ ”
Such a budget can also give you the basis for a discussion with your partner before spending becomes a major issue. Meet regularly and talk cash flow. You may even want to set limits: both parties have to consent to expenditures over a certain amount.

Communicate. As a couple, you should look at yourselves as a committee of two. “Work together,” says Elkin. “Make a collaborative effort on trying to solve the problem rather than making it into an adversarial attack.”

“The question of money is a great opportunity for couples to work out other conflicts because money is so symbolic,” Abramson observes. “If couples can work out these issues, they can work out anything.”

Take Dora and her husband Nick, a San Francisco couple who both have very different ideas about money. “He feels if you’ve got money, you should spend it,” she notes. “I’m more for putting it away and saving it. He says, ‘Let’s use the credit card for trip and worry later. Money will come.’ I think it’s because he grew up with an expectation that money would come. I grew up with the expectation that money will die. So that placed us in two different places. In the beginning, there wasn’t even a conversation; we were just talking at each other, not listening.

“But then we had to deal with monies coming in and where and how bills got paid. I ’m very much the budgeter and Nick sits there and listens and says, ‘Right.’ He has sort of a passive-aggressive stance, saying, ‘You set it up and I’ll comply.’ When we come to conflict, money and emotions are tied up. If I'm feeling anxious, I’ll focus on the budget. I’ll say, ‘These are the essentials we’ll need.’ He’ll sit with me through that and calm me down and we’ll manage.’ And over the years, I’ve learned to appreciate his lifestyle more. And to some extent, he’s learned to appreciate mine.”

Florida Commercials

You're traveling to another dimension...
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THE EMPOWERMENT ZONE

By TOM SOTER
from SHOOT MAGAZINE
Florida: a magical empowerment zone.

To some, the area seemed like a ghost town - rundown factory buildings and hotels from the 1920s, some abandoned, all in disrepair - but to Eugene Rodriguez, president and owner of Miami's Big Time Productions, it seemed like a golden opportunity.
And why not? Just a five-minute car ride across the causeway from the bustling South Beach area, the location was Rodriguez's ticket to expansion. Big Time was growing beyond what its South Beach facility could reasonably handle and no new property was available. So, eleven months ago, the entrepreneur bought a 100,000-square foot former ice-packing plant, as well as various other properties across the causeway, and transformed them all into working studio and stage spaces.

"It just made a lot of sense," he recalls. "South Beach become very, very expensive, and there was no room for that kind of horizontal studio. We were lucky to find what we needed right across the bridge. It has a great style and the feel of South Beach in the '20s and '30s."

Rodriguez is not alone, however. If the Miami-Dade film office has its way, he will be soon be joined by many neighbors, who will also service the film and television business. Indeed, if all goes as planned, the area may well be the next production hotspot, thanks to its recent designation as an "economic empowerment zone."

An empowerment zone sounds almost magical. And to those existing within its borders, the designation does create a kind of financial enchantment, with various federal loans and subsidies becoming available to companies who open businesses in and hire people from the area.

Specifically, explains Jeff Peel, director of the Miami-Dade Mayor's Office of Film and Entertainment, an empowerment zone is a designation that the community is deemed in need of economic development assistance. "The zone is geographically specific," he says. "It's not the entire community but the most economically challenged parts of the community."

He cites Times Square in New York City as an example of an area that became an empowerment zone about three years ago. "It was formerly a very vibrant part of Manhattan but it had fallen into a bad state," he observes. "With the designation, and the attraction of the incentives and resources, it once again became a focal point of Manhattan. The same thing can happen here."

Once a neighborhood is designated, different categories of financial incentives become available. The first comes from the federal government. That involves tax credits for employing people within the zone and for rehabbing an environmentally raw land or building. Besides credits, low-interest loans become available for the development of properties within the zone.

In Miami's case, the federal portion of the funding comes to $100 million over ten years. That is matched by local and state funding, also about $100 million, depending on the appropriations. "The local match can go to various programs," explains Peel, although not all of which are entertainment-based. The funds' uses include day care centers and transportation alternatives for people traveling to work.

The designation has its roots in a 1996 study by Cornell University and Florida International University. Designed to determine the best use of the downtown section for long-range strategic planning, the study found that the film and entertainment industry was fast becoming the mainstay of much of the Miami-Dade economy.

The local chamber of commerce also set up a task force called One Community One Goal, to follow up on the report's findings. "It became apparent to me that one of the things we needed to grow was the local infrastructure that supports the entertainment business," recalls Bill Randall, who served for over a year on the task force and is also the president of AFI/Filmworks in South Miami. "The empowerment zone seems to be a natural part of that."

Randall speaks from experience, since he has worked in South Miami for over 30 years. "When we started this business, Miami had been a busy production place," he recalls. "There was lots of infrastructure. More had been happening. That was the time of Flipper [, the TV series,] and the Ivan Tors Studios. Since then, except for the Miami Vice [TV series] period, it's been a boom or bust situation. Our challenge right now is going to be to encourage and help indigenous companies to grow and to get producers to come and produce product from a local base. I won't kid anyone. It's not an easy thing to do."

The designated area has many advantages, however. Only a short distance from South Beach, it features a great deal of low-rent warehouse space, abandoned property, and raw land. "Some parts of it are like the old downtown, dating back to the '20s," Peel notes. "A lot is in disrepair. But the big attraction is that it's just north of the downtown core. And we hear time and again that South Beach is where people want be. It is an international hot spot, and also an interesting place architecturally, with a great look that film people love. [For after hours,] it also has a great night life, like Santa Monica, Manhattan, or London's Soho."

In addition, the neighborhood will soon gain a new veneer of culture when the city completes its planned performing arts center, also located in the zone, in the year 2002. The complex will feature the Florida Opera and the New World School of Performing Arts, among other buildings. "This center will provide a real synergy for those in the industry," predicts Peel. "The singers, dancers, and musicians who are performing in the arts center are the same people who will provide talent for the stages."

Big Time Productions is already feeling the effects of the changing environment. The facility has been used for print and film campaigns by Burdines Department Store, Versaci, Pier 1 Imports, Slimfast, American Banana chips, and Italian Vogue. For six months, director Oliver Stone used some of the space to construct sets for a new feature he was shooting

To handle such jobs, the company purchased seven properties. One, now dubbed The Ice Palace, was a 100,000-square-foot ice packing plant from the 1920s and two others were a 40,000-square-foot hotel and a 14,000-square-foot bank. The seven-story hotel has been turned into a series of stages/studios, but some of it was also kept intact to use as, in Rodriguez's words, a "funky" location.

"Some of it looks like a set," he explains, "with a gorgeous lobby with skylights. The second floor looks like an industrial New York loft. And the third floor has cracked paint, some of it peeling. It looks like a deconstructionist set. A lot of creative people like the environment and the texture."

Other Miami companies are also looking to expand across the bridge into the new zone. For instance, Bill Randall, of AFI/Filmworks, says he is seriously interested in the area because it could attract more homegrown business.

"Our base has always been on the outside," he says. "We don't have that many agencies or large industrial companies located here. We are sort of an international production center for commercials. We get a lot of Europeans, a lot from Latin America. There is great strength in the looks we have to offer: palm trees and beaches but also New England neighborhoods. We have a few blocks downtown which could pass for New York. So we have almost everything for locations, from big city to rural farms to suburbs."

"This is an international city," agrees Peel. "Multi-national companies come here to work because they have proximity to the Latin America and the U.S. Miami is the third largest production center in the United States and we have all the components required to do virtually any kind of production: the crews, the talent, and the vendors. With the zone, we are interested in providing expansion opportunities for companies that already exist here and get companies to relocate here from out of state."

For the moment, everything is in its earliest stages. The local government is actively promoting the news that the incentives exist and is currently conducting focus groups with industry representatives - both locally and nationally - to determine the best way that dollars can be allocated to attract more entertainment companies to work and/or set up shop there. For this fiscal year, the state has pledged $3 million and the local government $3 million. A board is being set up to determine the most efficient way to use future money to spur development in the zone.

"We are asking industry people what sorts of incentives are attractive to them, what is required within the zone," Peel notes. "We want to know, what can the local community do to enhance the zone? We are looking to the industry as a growth engine for job creation in the next ten years or so."

"South Beach used to be called this area's sheekest slum," adds Rodriguez. "Now, this new area will probably get that title. It's changing so quickly. It was a dead place, but once the opera and ballet go up, things will change rapidly. You know, it's one extreme or another. The fact that it's been made an empowerment zone can only help."

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