European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - February 20, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse So what s so neat about Tom Selleck by Stephen Hunter Baltimore Sun lots of time movie stars do not look like movie stars they just look like people an you think of what is so great about this Guy a million Bucks but the Guy getting up across the room looks like a movie Star and a million Bucks. He is wide where you Are supposed to be wide the shoulders and thin where you Are supposed to be thin the hips and belly. He has one of those mustaches reminiscent of a Delta winged stealth fighter and one of those flawlessly rugged faces that reminds you of the grand tetons. How can hair be that thick it in t fair somehow. And when he smiles you think who forgot to close the door on the nuclear reactor but what is neatest about Tom Selleck and yes he is a very neat Guy is that somewhere behind those crinkly Macho baby blues he manages to project the sense that it embarrasses him to look so Good and that his life has turned out so pleasantly. Call it a Lack of vanity you cannot imagine this Guy standing for 3 hours in front of a Mirror and trying to get his Collar to rumple just so and then Barking snit fully to his Dresser of dammit Bruce you fix it and now he not Only looks like a movie Star but he has become one. This was not a guaranteed shot. Selleck enjoyed television celebrity for most of the decade because of his magnum . Series. But his Early films fizzled foundering on bad scripts and Zero chemistry Between Star and co Star and the Star s own inability to find a big screen Persona As attractive As his Small screen Persona. Then came three men and a baby one of the most successful comedies of the last few years. And he Hopes to follow it up with hit movie no. 2 in the same vein her Alibi which he is now Selling All Over the air up Selleck stars in the romantic comedy her and print Waves like a Salesman closing in on the million Dollar round table. In fact on the tube it is raining Selleck you can Brush your Teeth to him on the today show and eat dinner with him on entertainment tonight and go to sleep to him on the tonight show. What brought Selleck to her Alibi was his love of romantic comedy. I just like romantic comedies he said in a recent interview in Baltimore and i think there s a Good Market for them. I be been looking for a Good romantic comedy for years. And i did t get any during magnum either because they did t fit into my time Frame or because the studios just did t think of in her Alibi Selleck plays a neurotic thriller writer whose Muse has All but dried up. In a search for inspiration he goes to court and sees a Beautiful Young woman Paulina Pori Kova Sci Zuj booked for murder. She has t an Alibi quickly to Rio am 1 the two begin an affair which is complicated by the fad that she May be the killer and May now need so kill him. In one of the film s Best scenes to is shot by an Arrow that Pori Kova has fired is it real or is it accidental moreover As she endeavours to pull the Shaft out Selleck is on the phone with a policeman and the film becomes an adventure in sustained double Lentendre. I laughed hysterically when i read the Arrow scene but i knew that it depended on How it was interpreted visually. It s not just dialogue Selleck said. Then there s a scene where i m pushed up against the Windshield and water and soap Are squirted on me. It was one of those scenes where you think of i know How this is going to work. It s going to work if i m Good in it that s How it s going to work but the Point is i have to play those scenes for real. If i get cute or play it As if i know it s funny i Don t think those scenes despite her performance in the film Anna Pori Kova for the past few years one of the world s top models has had few acting jobs. But As it turned out Selleck said Paulina is almost As enigmatic As the character she plays. She has very Good instincts. Most new actors do too much. She has a simplicity in her work that keeps her in focus. I think she s As Well cast As anybody could Willem Dafoe stays Cool amid controversy by Bob Thomas associated press for an actor who starred in the two most controversial movies in the past years Wille Dafoe remains remarkably s career exploded two years ago with platoon which won him an Academy nomination and elevated him from a Little known character actor to full fledged Star. Last year he found himself at the Center of a firestorm of protest Over the last temptation of Christ in which he portrayed Jesus Christ. Now Dafoe is starring with Gene Hackman As two Fri agents of differing styles in Mississippi burning a fictional account of the investigation of the murders of three civil rights workers in the turbulent 1960s. Black leaders have assailed the film for overlooking Black participation in the civil rights struggle and others who took part in or reported the events have decried the alleged distortion of history and the glorification of the Fri. Director Alan Parker and others associated with the Orion pictures movie have emphasized its fictional nature. During a recent visit to los Angeles Dafoe who lives in new York declined to be drawn into the controversy. But he did reflect on his participation in two headlined movies. F there s no Clever anecdote about Mississippi burning i just read the script and responded to it he said. I was aware of the civil rights struggle in 1964, when i was 9 years old. I Don t remember the actual event but i do remember a lot of trouble in the South. Then in 1968,1 remember being very conscious even by Reading the newspapers at 13 and growing up very comfortably of the feeling that the world was coming apart. That was the time of Richard speck and the murder of those nurses in Chicago and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. So it s an Era that i Don t really know first hand because i was t an adult. But i think it Points to things that we re concerned with Mississippi burning was filmed in the same general area where the events took place. We got a surprising amount of support from the Orion pictures actor Dafoe has become a full fledged Star. People Down there said Dafoe. I think some people particularly in our locations in Mississippi were eager to cooperate with us kind of As a gesture to let people know that things had in fact changed. But certainly there were people who commonly said Why do you want to bring these things up again it s Over " Why indeed bring these things up again i Don t know. I m not so Good at lessons. But i think the Bottom line is sure we can remember things by having this presented to us again. Remember it is fiction but it is based on the Shelby county volunteers from around the country were invited to take part in the Freedom summer to help Register Black voters in segregated Mississippi. One was 20-year-old Andrew Goodman a student at Queens College. On sunday june 21, Goodman and two members of Core Congress of racial Equality Michael Schwerner and monday february 20, 1989 James Chaney were driving to the town of Lawndale where a Black Church had been burned. They were stopped for speeding near Philadelphia and jailed for several hours. After being released that night the workers disappeared. Their bodies were discovered aug. 4 on a farm outside of Philadelphia. Dafoe s engagement for the last temptation of Christ seems equally As casual As his appearance in Mississippi burning. Returning from the Thailand locations for off limits he was summoned to a meeting with Martin Scorsese. After talking to the director and Reading the script i knew pretty much right then and there that we were going to do this the actor realized the perils of portraying Jesus on the screen and that it was a work that was bound to arouse the Wrath of fundamentalists. But a Man s gotta do what he s gotta do Dafoe said with a chuckle. I Felt like i was the right person to do that role. Sure i knew that the. Book was controversial and i knew there had been a rough history of trying to get this film done. I must say i was surprised by How the protest manifested itself. I did t think the controversy was really going to happen. Maybe i was just putting it out of my mind because i had some work to do and that was the important Dafoe was born in Appleton wis., and had an Early ambition to act in films. That May have started when he sat through three screenings of gone with the wind from morning to night. He dropped out of High school to join Milwaukee s Avant Garde theater a then settled in new York to work with the Wooster group with which he is still associated. His Early films streets of fire to live and die in . Usually cast him As a delinquent or killer. But Oliver Stone saw something benign in the Young actor and cast him As the almost saintly sgt. Elias in platoon he has since starred in three films but he says that the Pace has t been too fast. Nothing s Ever too fast he laughed. I be been working a Long time actually. I be been a theater actor since i was 18 years old still am. I be been making pictures since 1980. Sure things change life is different. More things Are available to me. Certainly i have a higher profile. But so far it has t bitten Back. It s Only been Good the stars and stripes Page 17
