European Stars and Stripes
Hollywood Shoptalk
Dirty Harry as an old dinosaur? He likes the idea
July 1, 1990
Clint Eastwood is no spring .chicken – he’s 60. He’s got a thoughtful, serious film, White Hunter, Black Heart, due out in mid-September from Warrier Bros. So why is the graying filmmaker’ jumping back into action with The Rookie? Now shooting around San Jose, Calif., The Rookie, due from Warner Bros, in December, teams a blue-collar cop (Eastwood) with a youthful yuppie cop (Charlie Sheen) in an Los Angeles Police Department grand theft auto unit. The film’s publicist, Marco Barla, says Clint will “be as active as ever,” including plenty of chases and shootouts, with stunt doubles used for only the most hazardous stuff.
The Rookie will reportedly have a Lethal Weapon feel, in part due to a number of complex special effects-stunt sequences. One, now shooting on a stretch of freeway outside San Jose, has Eastwood in pursuit of an 18-wheeter transporting luxury cars – with Clint driving his own car atop the rig prior to a fiery crash.
Another chase blasts through the San Jose airport, featuring a collision with a jet. Already filmed in Los Angeles, where most of the film takes place: a sequence in which Eastwood and Sheen drive a Mercedes 500SL out of a high-rise
window onto the roof of an adjacent building, plunging through a skylight.
Hero Biz
Heroes from the comics have been filling theaters lately, but three Marvel comics super-guys are languishing very unheroically without production or distribution dates.
Ӣ Already used in a TV movie. Spider-Man was announced for feature filming two years ago but is still in development at 21st Century Film Corp. Neil Ruttenberg is writing a script.
”¢ The already-filmed Captain America –also from 21st Century, for release through Columbia – sits on the shelf, possibly to be released in late summer or early fall. But a Columbia source was less optimistic, calling the picture amateurish and “unreleasable.”.
Ӣ The Punisher, based on the Marvel comic about a one-man anti-criminal death squad, was originally due in the spring of 1989. Starring Dolph Lundgren as the leather-clad iitle character, the picture is owned by I.V.E., which plans an upcoming video release and will premiere the film this week during the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention.
Scenes’ steater
Director Paul Mazursky may have lined up Woody Allen and Bette Midler as the leads in Scenes From a Mall, which just finished its second week of shooting in Connecticut. But it sounds like the Stamford Town Center, where most of the filming will take place, is the real star.
The dramatic comedy, revolving around the 16th anniversary of a lawyer and his psychologist wife, takes place in one day at the mall, Filming is being done during the day, and hundreds of shoppers have been jostling for vantage
points “People have been hanging off balconies to get a look,” says an insider on the set. “When Bette finished a take today, the shoppers applauded and she gave them a wave,”
Movies under way
”¢ Will Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder do it again? We’re told that there are discussions at Tri-Star about a fourth Pryor-Wilder comedy teaming, :titled Another You, and that Peter Bogdanovich is a possibility to direct. The actors teamed for last year’s See No Evil, Hear No Evil, as well as Stir Crazy (1980) and Silver Streak (1976).
”¢ Ever wonder who would win a battle between the monster from Alien and the title nasty from Predator? Look for this answer in Predator II: Body Count, due at Christmas, which features the predator’s trophy case– filled with the skulls
of his human and inhuman victims, including one that’s unmistakably that of the Alien.
”¢ Jennifer Jason Leigh plays the girlfriend of Billy Baldwin and Scott Glenn plays a veteran fireman in Backdraft, Imagine Films’ thriller about an arson investigation in Chicago, which also stars Kurt Russell. Ron Howard will direct.
”¢ Donald Sutherland will star opposite Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh in Paramount’s Dead Again, which Branagh will also direct: The drama, written by Scott Frank, concerns a woman suffering from amnesia and will take place in present-day Los Angeles and the late ’40s.
”¢ Gary Busey will play Keanu Reeves’ partner and Lori Petty has the female lead in Largo Entertainment’s Riders on the Storm, a thriller about two FBI men who infiltrate the surfing scene to solve a series of bank robberies. Patrick Swayze plays one of the suspect surfers.
”¢ Chris Lemmon, Felicity Waterman, Nick Mancuso, Pat Morita, Susan Anton, Michael Sarrazin, Bill Dana, Liz Torres and Meg Register (the model seen on the Italian Boys jeans billboards) star in Crown International’s Lena’s Holiday. The
romantic comedy concerns a female tourist from newly liberated East Germany, who comes to Los Angeles and gets involved fn a caper that leads to murder. Michael Keusch directs.
”¢ Morton Downey Jr., intent on establishing an acting career, joins Tanya Roberts and Robert Davi in Amritraj Entertainment’s Down and Dirty, playing a flamboyant CEO of a troubled S&L Production gets under way locally June 28 under Jag Mundhra’s direction.
”¢ Finally, Raphael, Michaelangelo, Donatellonand Leonardo – aka the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – are back in action The sequel to New Line Cinema’s big hit {domestic gross: more than $121 million) is set to go before the cameras in
October for Golden Harvest. This time out, the budgets $20 million – up from the $12 million for Turtles I. “We want to give the film bigger production values and better sets,” says producer David Chan. “And we’d like a little more time to
shoot.” The first film was shot in nine weeks.
