European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 7, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                The race toward Warner Bros. Glenn close left As the scheming Marquise Deverteuil John Malkovich As the aristocratic rogue the Viconte de valmont and Michelle Pfeif Feras the virtuous Madame de tour Vel in dangerous  by Robert Lindsey new York timezone morning As London Savoured a rare Indian summer Stephen Frears boarded a Jet in London for los Angeles. With him were three cardboard boxes containing 12 reels of film. They were evidence that the British film director had won or so it seemed a race to turn a 200-year-old French novel of sex love corruption of innocence and other diversions of the Ancien regime into Hollywood Gold. Asked what the title of the movie would be Frears said it was still a mystery. The mystery was solved by Warner Brothers when he landed. The movie based on a stage version of Les liaisons danger uses a novel written in 1782 by a French military officer Chod Erlos de la Clos would be called dangerous liaisons a marketing Concession to fears that american moviegoers might be scared off by a foreign language title. A few hours after arriving in Hollywood Frears showed his work in Progress to a sneak preview audience. The next Day he was in new York showing the film to critics. The following Day he was Back in London for final editing and soundtrack dubbing. Stormy history by John Horn associated press Dustin Hoffman shuddered. The screening room projector flickered with rushes of his first Day s work in rain Man. Fighting of nausea Hoffman knew his portrayal of a autistic Man stank. It was death Hoffman recalled in an interview. It was the worst work i had Ever done. I said i can t do it " Defeated the Academy award winning actor suggested the producers try Richard Dreyfuss instead. Hoffman whose past triumphs include playing a woman in Tootsie was stumped by the part of Raymond Babbitt a Middle aged autistic savant. In rain Man which just opened in the United states end of december the Long institutionalized Raymond is largely incapable of Basic human emotions and speech but gifted with Superior mathematical and memorization skills. It s not an easy part. Having researched autism so intensively he was buried in documents and videocassettes Hoffman 51, had to dump his notes and observations in his dressing room and Well act. No plot contrivances offered shelter. As Hoffman tells it All he could manage at first was a Mish Mash of his past work mixing bits of the timid near sighted prisoner Louis in 1973 s papillon and the sickly ratio Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy from 1969. Then three weeks into filming Hoffman and co Star Tom cruise were driving Down a Bleak Highway near tiny Cogar okla. The temperature Over 100 degrees was matched by the humidity. In a sweat laced improvisation Hoffman started talking about How much Raymond missed his Hanes underwear. And he just would t Stop. With those Cotton briefs Hoffman figured it All out. It looked like to me that you could have talked about your underwear forever Hoffman said director Barry Levinson told him. And i suddenly realized that yes this character is in the now and he is nowhere if he s not in the now. And i suddenly realized that i was playing off myself because i know something about obsession and i m comfortable being obsessive. The rest of it just took care of  rain Man tracks Raymond s brother Charlie played by cruise cold hearted schemer whose father Dies leaving him none of the riches he so desperately wishes to inherit. Instead the $3 million Falls into a mysterious Trust account which Charlie discovers benefits a brother he never knew he had. In an attempt to filch the inheritance and save his bankruptcy bound car business Charlie abducts his newfound brother and the two set out Cross country top Down in a 1949 Buick Road master convertible their father s car. In a series of minor incidents along the Way the Brothers reach a Remote though improved understanding of kinship. There Are no triumphant scenes of Blissful revelation. Rain Man whose title comes from Charlie s earliest dreamy recollections of a shared childhood with Raymond ends quietly. Some might say indifferently. Rain Man survived not Only Hoffman s panic but also a year of screenplay revisions the replacement of three directors the scriptwriters strike and the meddling of various entertainment Industry know it alls. It emerges As a modest exploration of greed communication and familial understanding. I did t think an easy ending was the right Way to go said Levinson the movie s fourth and final director. There had been a Bunch of endings where the Brothers were going to live happily Ever after but it did t seem to  added producer Mark Johnson what we ended up with was much More simple than anything else that existed in the scripts  it was precisely that intended Lack of ornament that proved so elusive. Martin Brest Midnight run Steven Spielberg . The extra terrestrial and Sydney Pollack Tootsie All were in line to direct rain Man at one Point or another. For a variety of reasons some personal some professional the three came and went. But All wanted to dress the Story up. One script called for gangsters and Fri agents. Another suggested a big snowstorm. The role of Charlie s Girlfriend played by Valeria Golino was either too big or not big enough. Raymond should be More  or maybe not retarded at All. Perhaps Raymond and Charlie could become really close at the end said some. Perhaps not responded others. They the assorted kibitzer Felt that there had to be a jeopardy in the Story Hoffman said. In other words what s going to hold an audience if there s just two schmucks in a car " Levinson the director of Good morning Vietnam and diner suspected the audience could be held by just letting the schmucks be schmucks. The final script turned in by Ronald Bass just As the five month writers Guild of America strike began Cut most of what Levinson considered superfluous. I basically wanted to get it Down to a conflict Between two people on the Road Levinson said. More and More of what we see in the movies Are mechanical plots. We pump them up instead of saying let s just Deal with the people " Levinson s previous films have been marked by loosely organized stories and in rain Man he predictably chose to let the characters carry the narrative rather than the other Way around. It would be Boring Frears said during a break in scoring the picture to spend years making a movie. It s amazing what you can do when you be got an Oscar winning director staring Over your shoulder. Frears was referring to Milos Forman the czechoslovak born director who won Academy awards for amadeus and one flew Over the cuckoo s nest. For More than a year Forman has been working on a movie based on the same novel. By late summer it was Clear that Frears and his cast headed by Glenn close John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer would win the race. Frears would even bring his 10-week shoot to a close within its $15 million budget. Forman after falling behind on his schedule is not expected to finish valmont a More lavish production that will Cost about twice As much before late Spring or Early summer. Frears had a second deadline dangerous liaisons would have to open in the United states by december in order to qualify for the Academy awards in March. He finished the editing with three weeks to spare. He beat his better known rival to the finish by applying lessons Learned while churning out Well regarded Low budget films for British television. Thanks in part to this training he chose to Tell the classic French Story not As an opulent period piece like amadeus but As an intimate collision of personalities. A Stocky and dishevelled Man Frears at 47, has just begun to experience the kind of Success that Many in England predicted for him 20 years ago. He is Best known in the United states As the director of the 1985 film my Beautiful Laundrette about London s pakistani Community. He pursued some of the same themes two years later in Sammy and Rosie get Laid. By tacitly deploring the excesses of the ruling class dangerous liaisons emerges with a Remote kinship to Laundrette and Sammy and  yet this new film with its be wigged cast roaming through French Chateaux is a Long leap from working class Britain. The Story centers on an act of sexual revenge plotted by a Beautiful promiscuous French woman the Marquise Deverteuil portrayed by close. Angered when a Lover spurns her for a 15-year-old Virgin she offers herself to a former Lover the Viconte de valmont played by Malkovich if he in Exchange will deprive the girl of her virginity. Valmont succeeds. But during a byzantine sequence of plot twists in route to the Conquest he Falls in love with a married woman portrayed by Pfeiffer breaking the code he shared with the Marquise not to mix love with sex. Ultimately the Story turns to tragedy. More than by anything else interest in the Story was rekindled by the recent stage version of Les liaisons danger uses. Written by Christopher Hampton and first produced by the Royal Shakespeare company in 1985, the play is still running in London and has been staged in Paris Tokyo and new York. Almost two years ago Lorimar film entertainment corporation agreed to pay about $400,000 for the film rights to the play. But soon after a tentative Deal was struck with Hampton agreeing to write the screenplay Lorimar executives discovered that Forman was planning his own movie. They invited him to direct their film but Forman declined preferring to use a script he was co authoring with the French screenwriter Jean Claude Carriere. He reportedly selected Colin Firth Meg Tilly and Annette Bening for the Lead roles and forged ahead. Rebuffed Lorimar executives approached other directors. We spoke to everyone All the obvious people you d think of for this kind of a movie and they All turned us Down says Bernie Brillstein Lorimar s chairman. They ran for the Hills they said they did t want to go head to head with Milos  Lorimar had other problems. It was in less than robust financial shape would soon agree to be taken Over by Warner Brothers and could t afford the kind of Large budget that Hollywood is wont to throw at an event movie. But Brillstein had become obsessed with the project and was convinced he could get to the screen ahead of Forman if he could find the right director. Hampton suggested Frears who had directed one of his plays for television. Frears had t read the Book or seen the play when Hampton showed him the screenplay. I think he was not in any sense overawed by the material says Hampton. The Lorimar executives initial response to Frears was Chilly. His reputation was As a filmmaker of subversive English films Hampton says and people were sort of nervous to entrust this to  moreover the $15 million budgeted Cost was about five times what Frears had Ever spent on a movie. But it was Clear to them that Frears was capable of telling a Story superbly. Shooting began on May 30, much of it on location at Chateaux near Paris and was completed 10 weeks later. Frears acknowledges a certain irony in the fact that after spending much of his career making what he Calls socially concerned films about the working class his first Hollywood movie is about the French aristocracy. The idea that Many British directors driven by a Lack of work at Home have migrated to Hollywood suddenly strikes him As funny. Real men he says go to Hollywood. Real men have swimming  he laughs loudly then adds what i really need next is some Good  United artists Dustin Hoffman left Tom cruise in rain  up from Punk ethnic everyman by Stephanie Mansfield Washington Post the Young actor in Black leather slides into the Booth at a japanese restaurant i Washington. Is this going to be one of those articles where you like say and he ordered octopus Eric Bogosian former wild Man and cosmic Wise Guy lets out a guttural Lee Marvin laugh. He s embarking on a 20-City press tour for Oliver Stone s latest film talk radio a night in the life of a manic and Nasty disc jockey partly based on the life of a Denver talk show Host murdered by White supremacists in 1984 and can think of nothing he d rather do than talk Bogosian. We re talking Star. A talking Star. Unlike his Peers whose reticence is sometimes taken for artistic integrity Bogosian at 35, is a serious actor and writer who struggled Long enough with obscurity in new York to Welcome the current hoopla. On the strength of his startling portrayal of Neo Nasty Dallas disc jockey Barry Champlain there s nothing More Boring than people who love you Bogosian May Herald the Dawn of the ethnic everyman a hot blooded highly combustible up from Punk heartthrob. Bogosian s Nappy headed terminally stumbled Barry Champlain is the pit Bull of broadcasting. But today Bogosian is rather subdued sipping Green Tea and taking about his life and work his wife and baby son and House in new Jersey. He does t say to or engage in any. Confrontation with the waitress or flick his cigarette ashes on his lunch plate. There was a time i was trying to become a legend in my own mind he says. And i was very consciously doing things thinking this will make a Good Story someday and when i finally stopped doing All those things i realized How silly All that was Eric Bogosian is a likable Paradox of self Confidence and vulnerability smart intense self deprecating with a sly wit and bulging Green eyes that bore across the table. There was a time i tried to be the same Guy offstage As on Stag but it was hard to keep going and it was really obnoxious and a lot of people really did t like me. And also i m  he sips his Tea. But it was very hard for me to come to terms with the fact that i m Happy being a kind of Mushy Guy on a Day to Day basis. The Only thing that keeps me from being entirely Mushy is that i have kind of a temper sometimes. I know what i want and i go after it. There s no Point in romanticizing that. It s not always a Good  it is this primal hair trigger anger that makes Bogosian s performance in talk radio so unsettling. To his faithful flotilla of listeners psychos druggies pin headed rednecks and other devotees of slime time radio Barry Champlain becomes some sort of Martyr to the toxic truth about americans and their country the film is a 90-minute assault on the senses with the actor in nearly every Frame. Stone fresh from Wall Street co wrote the script with Bogosian drawing on talked to death the Book about the slain Denver disc jockey Alan Berg As Well As on an off Broadway play written by Bogosian. Before shooting talk radio to get myself psyched up i took out two of my favorite movies Midnight Cowboy and taxi Driver and i watched them. And i saw what those Guys did and i thought remember what they do. They re not afraid to do anything it s hard to remember that. You get scared and Start worrying about the Way you  five years ago Bogosian nearly gave up acting. Broke in debt famous for outrageous behaviour and not much else he faced a crisis. But it was t As if he had a Choice he says now. It was impossible to conceive of doing anything else. He had married his soul mate the australian graphics designer Joanne Bonney in 1980, and they were living in a tiny studio. She was instrumental in getting Bogosian s life and work into focus. It was like starting up some engine that was hard to Start but i knew that eventually it was going to kick Over. That s what the last five years have  several one Man shows men inside voices of America and fun House the last directed by his wife earned him critical acclaim. Then came National recognition with his drinking in America which won him drama desk and obie award followed by talk radio Cine Lex Odeon films Eric Bogosian in Oliver Stone s talk  a play jointly conceived with an Oregon artist named Tad Savinar at the Public theatre. Barry Champlain was born. Woburn mass., is one of the toxic waste capitals of America. Not surprisingly it is also Eric Bogosian s Hometown. I was t a very Happy kid. I had a real hard time he says. I was the first born son the firstborn grandson and i think for the first five years of my life before i went to school i was made to believe i was god s gift. I was this wonderful Little precocious smart thing. There just was t Ayone in the world More perfect than Little Eric. Then i went off to kindergarten and they beat the living expletive out of me for being that  the older of two children Eric grew up in a Middle class household. His father Henry is an accountant now retired and his Mother Edwina a Hairdresser. Of armenian background Bogosian says his town was heavily populated by working class Irish catholics. He was smaller than the other children and could often be found with his rather Large nose in a Book. I had these eyes that you could see everything in immediately. And the kids would come Over and go hey you and i d go Yii ii this was the kid they wanted. The one they could see it All in. I could t keep my eyes  he started acting when he was 14, and everything  the thrill he says was definitely the attention. I loved it it was something i could do that was t Creepy. It was something people liked and wanted to see me do More of. Overnight i went from being the oddball to like everybody wanting to be my  Page 14 the stars and stripes saturday january 7,1989 the stars and stripes if if if Page 15