WHAT’s up with Peter Bogdanovich, the redhot director of “The Last Picture Show”? “What’s Up, Doc?”, for one thing. That’s the screwball comedy with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal which will he the Easter attraction at Radio City Music Hall.
But “What’s Up, Doc?” will by no means be Bogdanovich’s last picture show. In fact, the boys at Warner Brothers are so bowled over by it that they have signed him to direct three more films.
The first on the agenda will be a western, based on Bogdanovich’s own original screenplay. “I’m tentatively calling it ‘The Streets of Laredo,’” the 32‐year‐old director said the other day. “It takes place just after the Civil War and it centers on a group of adventurers who set out to steal horses to sell to the Indians. There’s a good deal of humor, even though their trek does end in tragedy. I intend the film to he an legy for the Old West and I’ve got a dream cast which hope will become reality. It includes John Wayne, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Ryan O’Neal, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson and the Clancy Brothers.”
BogdanovIch’s second film under the new Warner’s deal will be based on still another original screenplay by the versatile moviemaker. This one will focus on the career of a fictional movie director, tracing his progress from the very early film days through the thirties. And then Bogdanovich plans to film John Galsworthy’s “The Apple Tree,” which is concerned with the tragic affair between an Oxford student and a primitive country girl. “I’m changing the locale to the Maine woods,” Bogdanovich confided. “I feel more at home in an American setting.”
And if that turns out well, we’d like to see him try “The Brothers Karamazov” in Kokomo.
ATTABOY, ATUK!
Norman Jewison, whose “Fiddler on the Roof” is making such sweet music at the box office, is another director who likes to plan far, far ahead. He has not yet begun shooting on his next project—the movie version of “Jesus Christ Superstar”—and yet he’s already thinking about what comes after that. He’s purchased “Atuk,” Mordecai Richter’s novel which was published in 1963 under the title of “Stick Your Neck Out. Donald Harron has been set to do the adaptation and Jewison expects to produce and direct the film—for release by United Artists—some time next year in Canada.
What—or who—is “Atuk”? Atuk is an amiable Eskimo, a wheeler dealer who digs beat poetry and kosher cooking and who manufactures fake Eskimo artifacts in his basement in Toronto. Jewison has his sights set on Topol for the title role. In which case, maybe he should consider changing that title to “Fiddler in the Basement.”
HONK! HONK! HONK!
Ralph Bakshi says he’s “deep Into ‘Heavy Traffic.’” Bakshi, in case you didn’t know, is the 32‐year‐old animator from Brooklyn whose soon ‐to ‐be ‐released “Fritz the Cat” has the dis tinction of being the first Xrated cartoon. And “Heavy Traffic,” on which he is now hard at work, will be a cartoon version of “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” Hubert Selby’s 1964 novel that dealt, in graphic detail, with some exceptionally X‐rateable types.
Whatever happened to Mickey Mouse?
TEAM SPIRIT
Screenwriter Ernest Tidyman, producer Phil D’Antoni and agent Barry Weitz saw eye to eye to eye when they worked together on “The French Connection.” That’s why they’ve decided to get connected again, this time on a Tidyman thriller called “The Inspector.” Set in New Orleans, the movie will follow the efforts by persistent policemen to break up a gang of hijazkers. D’Antoni will direct, as well as co‐produce “The Inspector” with Tidyman.
SELECTED SHORTS
Peter Finch will play the Ronald Colman role in Ross Hunter’s musical version of “Lost Horizon”… Marlon Brando’s leading lady in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris” will be Maria Schneider, daughter of French actor Daniel Gelin. JeanPierre Leaud also stars… Alec Guinness will play Richard Wagner in Luchino Visconti’s “Ludwig.” The cast also includes Helmut Berger, Romy Schneider, Silvana Mangano and Helmut Greim… Rachel Roberts will co‐star with Malcolm McDowell in Lindsay Anderson’s “Oh Lucky Man”… Paul Ford, Kevin McCarthy and Vivian Blaine will join Mickey Rooney, John Carradine and Richard M. Dixon in “Richard,” the story of a man who becomes President…. Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto and Tony Franciosa will star in Barry Shear’s “Across 110th Street”…. Gene Hackman will star in “Badge 373,” based on the experiences of Eddie “Popeye” Egan, the former New York City detective whose real‐life adventures also inspired “The French Connection”…. Ben Johnson will join Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Getaway”… Actor Robert Vaughn’s book “Only Victims,” a study of show business blacklisting, will be published next month by G. P. Putnam’s Sons. The foreward has been written by Senator McGovern.
HELP WANTED
Those who anguish over the contemporary problem of domestic help—and those who, fortunately, know not of the matter—could be joined in common laughter in the spring. Surely that’s the intention of Carl Reiner who has chosen to return to the theater as the director of “Tough to Get Help” by Steve Gordon, a playwright not yet known on Broadway.
Reiner, among whose own laugh‐provoking creations was his autobiography, “Enter Laughing,” converted by Joseph Stein to the stage (thereby giving Alan Arkin his boost to fame), thinks “Tough to Get Help” has elements of farce and touches all bases—the social, racial and political situations today. Specifically, the comedy centers around the home life of an advertising man, his family and the family of their black household help. The two‐act affair, to be offered by Sandy Farber and Stanley Barnett, needs a company of 13.
ROUNDUP
Jean ‐Claude Carriere’s French hit, “The Diary,” starring Richard Benjamin and Delphine Scyrig, will open here April 20 in an English version by Jerome Kilty. The Czech film director, Milos Forman, will stage it… Robert Whitehead has put off Arthur Miller’s “The Creation of the World and Other Bus iness” until next season because of casting. problems. The difficult role: God…. “The Web and the Rock,” dramatized by Dolores Sutton from Thomas Wolfe’s novel, is heading for the Theater de Lys in mid‐March under Jose Ferrer’s direction. Miss Sutton and Michael Moriarity will head the cast. “Hubba Hubba,” a musical satire of the 1940’s by a team of brothers, Jan and Gene Casey, will be an Off Broadway entrant in May. Janie Sell will star, as she did when the production was tried out at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut last summer… Stax, Inc., one of three to dispensers of “soul” records, has become a major investor in the upcoming musical, The Selling of the President.” The company, which is managed by blacks, has committed a total of $176.000. The Round about Theater’s production of Shaw’s “Misalliance,” starring Ruth Warrick and Hugh Franklin, begins previews March 8, opening officially on March 19…. The revival of “Rain,” with Madeleine le Roux as Sadie Thompson, will commence previews at the Astor Place Theater on March 11 and have its premiere March 23…. Ellen Stewart’s La Mama Theater will have a second public repertory season from March 23 through May 14…. John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous will offer three productions: “Persia” by Vaccaro and Bernard Roth, “Elegy to a Down Queen” by Leslie Lee, and “Satyricon” by Paul Foster…. “That’s Entertainment,” the revue by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, goes into rehearsal March 5 with Paul Aaron as director and Larry Fuller as choreographer.
By A. H. Weiler
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