Today's column seems to be designated for correcting mistakes and misconceptions, starting with a response to last week's item on "Roger & I" . . . er, that is, "Roger & Me."
You may recall that a Newsweek "Perspectives" quote had a laugh on Salt Lake City by pointing out a theater marquee that had mistakenly replaced the correct title of the film "Roger & Me" with "Roger & I."Cineplex Odeon folks, whose Trolley Square location is the only theater playing the film, denied the mistake. But since some 35 to 40 people called and wrote this past week to say they saw the error early in the film's run at Trolley Square, it's hard to ignore. (Especially since one of those people was KALL Radio's midday personality Peter B., Salt Lake's most honest deejay!)
Newsweek was obviously correct. My apologies for suggesting the magazine might have printed a piece of false information. Also, my thanks to the many readers who contacted me on this subject.
And a "jeer," as TV Guide might say, to Trolley Square's manager and/or employees for covering up the mistake. Several callers and letter-writers said they told theater employees of the error on Saturday, Feb. 10, the second day of the run, and no one seemed to care. These same moviegoers noticed that the marquee didn't change until later the next week. So somebody changed it back - right?
All of this makes me wonder what other marquee errors we can look forward to: "Driving Miss Daffodil"? "My Left Elbow"? "Hard to Hurt"? "Madresidence"? "Stanley & Rosebud"? "Born on the Third of June"? "The Hunt for Blue November"?
Oh, where will it end?
- SOME OF YOU MAY be thinking this is pretty petty material on which to spend two columns.
And you're right. But sometimes this is about as controversial as the movie beat gets.
So, onward and upward!
Well, onward.
If you thought "Roger & I" was a small deal, read on:
- SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE suggested that our stories about "My Left Foot" used Daniel Day Lewis' name incorrectly because the ads for the film list his name as "Daniel Day-Lewis," with a hyphen.
But if you see "My Left Foot" you will notice that when his name shows up in the credits there is no hyphen.
So when I spoke with director Jim Sheridan by phone from Dublin, Ireland, recently I put it to him. He affirmed that there is no hyphen.
Perhaps someone should tell Miramax, the distributor of "My Left Foot," that they are misspelling their star's name.
- THERE'S A NEW ENTERTAINMENT magazine on the market titled, appropriately enough, Entertainment Weekly. It's an interesting effort, though perhaps redundant since there are so many similar publications already on the market.
But this one is trying to be the "Entertainment Tonight" of the print media, covering as it does every facet of entertainment from rock music to movies to television to books to other magazines. And it's a weekly rather than a monthly publication.
That's one of the weaknesses, however - it tries a bit too hard to do a bit too much. And occasionally a mistake slips in that suggests the experts who put the magazine together should brush up on their expertise.
For example, in the issue dated Feb. 23 there is an item in the movies "News & Notes" section that says:
Time Warp, Again: At long last, a sequel to the 1975 transvestite rock & roll cult classic "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" is in the works. British composer-director Richard O'Brien is behind the musical encore, provisionally titled "Revenge of the Old Queen."
What's wrong is the "at long last, a sequel" treatment of the item. "Revenge" will be the second sequel to "Rocky Horror." O'Brien's first sequel was "Shock Treatment" in 1981, which was released exclusively as a midnight show and flopped.
Entertainment Weekly is really just a more glossy, less informative version of weekly Variety for the masses. But it has potential.
After all, Premiere took awhile to find its niche among the huge cache of movie magazines on the market and now it's considered one of the best.
- SPEAKING OF SEQUELS, do you suppose the impending followup to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" will change its locale now that Circle K stores have filed bankruptcy?
- QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Sean Connery, star of "The Hunt for Red October," offering his views to Iain Blair for Video Orbit magazine about typecasting with respect to his most famous role:
"People started thinking I was (James) Bond, and I got stuck in a lot of situations because of that. People expected me to act like him in everyday life, and they forgot I was just acting out this superspy, sex-symbol fantasy."
- QUOTE OF THE WEEK II: John McTiernan, director of "Die Hard" and "Predator," talking with William H. Honan for the New York Times News Service about his latest film, "The Hunt for Red October":
"There's a little bit of `Indiana Jones' in this movie."
- QUOTE OF THE WEEK III: Kenneth Branagh, Oscar-nominated for directing and starring in "Henry V," interviewed by Robert Seidenberg for American Film magazine:
"I don't kid myself that we'll do the same business as `Batman,' but I want people to feel that `Henry V' is of the same world as `Batman' - that it, too, is 1989."