Lou Diamond Phillips wants audiences to know just what they`re getting with his ”Dakota” feature that hits theaters Dec. 2.
”This is not a followup to `Stand and Deliver` or `Young Guns,` ” he says. ”It was a very low-budget movie made almost two years ago, before `La Bamba` was released. It`s not an extravaganza, and I don`t expect it to be a box office smash.”
What it is, he points out, ”is a low-key, very sweet story about a young boy who`s running from something in his past and, eventually, has to come to terms with his past. It`ll leave audiences with a smile on their faces.”
Phillips made ”Dakota” because ”I was also the associate producer on the film. It allowed me to flex some of my behind-the-camera muscles without a lot of risk. Eventually I`d like to do more producing, and this was a good start-there`s no way this film can lose money.”
Phillips, in Canada filming Universal`s ”Renegades” with Keifer Sutherland, hopes to get producing credits on his next features. Though he`s committed to some projects-and there`s a possibility one of his original screenplays will be made into a feature-”none are at the go stage yet. I`d like three or four months off, actually. I`ve been working back-to-back projects for two years.”
– Gene Hackman reveals he was warned not to try to contact the character he plays in ”Mississippi Burning.”
Hackman and Willem Dafoe portray FBI agents investigating the murders of three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Miss., in the feature based on a true 1964 incident.
”I guess the film production company was afraid of lawsuits,” he says, and adds, ”They wanted us to stay away from the FBI, because they didn`t have any signed releases from anyone. The film was done without input from the real characters.”
The upcoming ”Mississippi,” which is expected to make Hackman a strong Oscar contender, is just one of five fall films featuring the ”French Connection” actor. The others: ”Full Moon on Blue Water” with Teri Garr,
”Bat 21” with Danny Glover, ”Split Decisions” with Craig Scheffer, and Woody Allen`s ”Another Woman.” Hackman thinks ”it`s a shame they`re all coming out at the same time. Some of those films I did almost two years ago.” The work hasn`t stopped-he just completed ”The Von Metz Incident” with Dan Aykroyd and Dom DeLuise, which ”was fun because I don`t get to do much comedy.” And he reports that although he leaves at the end of the month for West Germany to shoot the Orion thriller ”The Package,” so far a costar has not been cast.
Hackman hopes to make his directing debut with Orion`s ”The Silence of the Lambs” once he has completed his ”Package” work, but says, ”right now, that project`s on the back burner. I`ve always wanted to direct. After hanging around sets for the last 25 years, I felt it might be interesting to be more involved in a film.”
– Topol appears to be a shoo-in to reprise the role of Tevye in ”Fiddler on the Roof” for the musical`s upcoming 25th anniversary revival run on Broadway. Jackie Mason reportedly was contacted about taking on the part, but told producers Fran and Barry Weissler he couldn`t see himself doing a play on the heels of his one-man show. The comedian has just taken time off from his Broadway stand to join the roster of entertainers in a London performance honoring the Queen Mother`s 88th birthday. And, after his show closes, he`ll head to the Concord resort in the Catskills for a New Year`s weekend headline stint.
– After making 58 movies, veteran character actor M. Emmett Walsh says he finally gets to play a romantic part in ”Chattahoochee,” but that ”it`s not what I would have chosen for myself. I play a convict who`s romantically involved with another male convict-who happens to like dresses. Now that the industry is acknowledging my sexuality, they just have to get the sex right.” ”Chattahoochee,” set in the prisoners` ward of a mental institution in the American South, stars Gary Oldman as a Korean veteran who fights an eight- year battle for freedom from incarceration, and Dennis Hopper ”as a convict loony like me,” Walsh says. He adds that the story is based on fact and found its way to screen after the lead character found freedom and made his way to Hollywood, where he gained employment as a studio driver. ”He kept telling everyone, `I`ve got a story that would make a great movie.` And eventually someone listened.”
– Beverly D`Angelo says her Tri-Star ”High Spirits” release, the ghostly love story that also stars Peter O`Toole, Darryl Hannah and Steve Guttenberg, is not the film it started out to be.
”I loved this project, the whole cast did, and we watched it being turned into something else,” D`Angelo says. ”The inexperience of the producers urged the film into a direction that I`m quite sure wasn`t
(director) Neil Jordan`s intention. The producers tried to second guess the audience. They thought an audience wouldn`t get the full density of the story, so they seemed to always be urging that the lowest common denominator be discovered. The battle between integrity and the perceived requirements of the marketplace was a big one.”
D`Angelo has taken off for Vancouver to join Martin Sheen in ”Cold Front.” ”The CIA calls Vancouver the Cold Front because various exchanges from government agencies take place there. I play a lounge singer in a club where all the spies go.”
– Though Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Bill Murray and other principals on
”Ghostbusters II” are working for a fraction of the salaries they received for the original (in exchange for healthy hunks of the profits) the picture is still expected to cost a bundle. For instance, literally thousands of extras are being hired for a grand-slam spectacle scene showing the Statue of Liberty being towed up 5th Avenue.
– Frank Sinatra and Robert Mitchum will team before the big-screen cameras as brothers next May-if all goes according to cop-turned-producer Sonny Grosso`s tentative plans for his ”Out of Retirement” Cannon release.
Grosso, best known as the real-life detective played by Roy Scheider in
”The French Connection,” reports that the two actors are eager to work together in the drama, based on a true story about two retired cops who set out to track down their parents` killers.
”I went to Sinatra myself and gave him the script-and he likes it very much and wants to do it,” Grosso says. But he stresses that he doesn`t have final confirmation-yet.
”You know the movie business. It`s kind of like making arrests. You start your day knowing you`re going to get Tough Tony and Louie-the-Ice, but sometimes it doesn`t work out that way.”
– No matter how ”Daddy`s Little Girl” turns out, Catherine Hicks, who recently wrapped the Weintraub film with Tony Danza, will look back on the comedy as ”a really welcome change.”
