4
Friday, May 7, 1976
University Daily Kansan
Arts & Entertainment
TOMS
Newman, Altman a happy team
BvCHUCKSACK
NEW YORK—"Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull's History Lesson" pairs for the first time nontraditional film director Robert Altman and director Jesse de la surre decides a superstar; in the grandest Hollywood custom. Both men were in New York last week at a press gathering to promote their only collaboration. It was evident that each admired the other's work.
Because Altman hasn't worked with major stars very well, he wasn't the presence as "Buffalo Bill" Cody was regarded as a departure from the director's practice of focusing on never, Altman doesn't think so.
"Buffalo Bill was really the first star. His reputation was based on publicity and false, manufactured legends more than on actual facts. He wrote about 15 autobiographies. None of them say the same thing. They say he left behind and he'd sign it. He's very much like our presidents and movie stars." Altman explained.
PAUL NEWMAN agreed.
Newman is very much aware of his own mythos, and he consciously utilized it in doing the background work to create his character in "Buffalo Bill."
Describing the role as it appears onscreen, Newman said, "He's a combination of
Custer, Gable, Redord and me, in that order."
The project that brought Newman and Alman together was almost bypassed. Alman said he received a phone call asking about another script that Suskind had sent to Alman. Alman said that he wasn't interested, and that he already had a pretty full schedule. Then Suskind offered him Arthur Kwok play, "Indiana," for which Suskind held the movie rights.
Altman said that at that time he wasn't familiar with the play, but that he knew about it through Steace Kaych, the actor who had played Buffalo Bill on Broadway.
"We made a deal, and then I decided we needed a movie star to play Buffalo Bill, because that's what it was really about." Alton塘记 "We talked to Paul, and he was interested."
Altman has a reputation for encouraging his actors to improvise. Newman was clearly impressed with the freedom that Altman's approach had allowed him.
"It was very interesting for me to work this way," Newman said. "I was a tutor, a train number of improvisations, but they were never filmed as improvisations. By the time we were very well locked in."
though. When Geraldine Chaplin, who plays Annie Oakley in the picture, broke her arm altnArm kept her in the film through. The movie and no attempt is made to explain Anne's mysterious sling.
"I didn't feel that I should penalize Geraldine because she broke her arm training to shoot her in the back with a picture," Altman said. "Then it occurred to me that Annie Oakley broken her arm, she probably would have gone out and shot left-handed for a
"I think it's marvelous because there's a sense of community effort." The newman sometimes made terrible suggestions. Mr. Altman would say, "That's really awful. So let it do just the opposite. You do exactly the opposite and it's."
Newman noted that Altman encouraged all the cast to incorporate their own ideas into their performances as he had adapted to the circumstances of Annie Oakley's broken arm.
Altman laughed with him, and then affirmed this version of his approach to filming.
"We researched this very, very thoroughly," Altman said. "It occurs to me that by the time a culture is willing to look at its past and find out the truths of its origins, the tracks have been so covered up it's impossible to find them."
NEWMAN ADMITTED
he thought "Buffalo Bill and the Indians" made close comparisons to today's show but that there were some timeless truths to the film as well.
"There's something completely contemporary about the film," the actor stated. "It's a very complex story, and a completely primitive, honest, direct mentality of Sitting Bull in confrontation with Cody's manufactured personality, and they simply cannot com-
Altman, too, emphasized the fantasy aspects in the movie.
"Nothing on the screen is a fact itself," he said. "That place did not exist, because the show was a traveling show. The characters are only based on real characters. The history is correct philosophically, but not actually. The president never got the job." Sitting Bull was always trying to get an audience with him.
IN THE FILM, Sitting Bull does perform before President Cleveland and his wife. But he doesn't, the biography is in Sioux, Indian dialect.
Altman interrupted
"There's no blue in the movie, Paul."
Newman grinned at hearing this reminder, then pointed to his director.
"He told me when we started the film, 'Paul,' he said, 'we are simply going to eliminate blue in the picture. The colors are all going to be warm tans and reds and everything."
"I said, 'Well, I don't know. I guess I'll have to play it blind.'" The two men looked at each other and laughed.
"BUFFALO BILL and the Indians" will be released nationally July 4th. Both Robert Altman and Paul Newman have gone their separate ways since his team completed last November.
Newman had driven up from Johnston, Pa., where he is currently shooting "Slapshot," a hockey movie with George Roy Hill. Aliman has been busy producing one film and another in celebration of Champions" which will star Burt Linger.
But he momentarily wavered when asked if he would consider making another movie with Allman.
Newman has announced that he is going to take some time off, possibly an entire year, after he finishes "Slanehot."
Newman said wistfully, "I would love to do another film with as long as he's making films, I'll be around."
Robert Altman and Paul Newman
'Buffalo Bill' show biz eloquent
RV CHUCK SACK
NEW YORK—The final sequence in "Brewster McCloud," one of Robert Altman's earlier films, featured a circus whose performers were the actors from the movie dressed up as sidewheel freaks. "Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull's History Lesson," Altman wrote, explains this circet mascara, not for one sequence, but for an enthralling hour-and-a-half.
The titles announce that the film is "AN ABSOLUTE ORIGINAL & HEROIC ENTERPRISE OF INIMITABLE LUSTRE, STARRING PAUL EWMAN, this exaggerated style of the movie, which is best interpreted as a vaudeville revue.
All the action takes place in Mayflower, a temporary stage in Cincinnati's Bulls Wild West Show. Here, William "Buffalo Bill" Cody (Paul Newman) oversees the tours of his theatrical production.
CODY RUNS THE GROUP
with a tight hand, noting of his
troops. "I've watched 'em all
before," he said in unforgettable personages."
In addition to his own act, Cody has accumulated an entourage of supporting attractions, including trick riders, a stagecoach melodiarem complete with Indians and cavalry, and the sharp-shooting horseman Annie Oakley (Geraldine Chaplin) and Frank Butler (John Considine).
However, Buffalo Bill 's satisfied with his life. He tries to lift himself out of the mockery he 's made of his exploits by frequenting the company of various women, all of whom are
legitimate stage singers. Cody long for cultural approval, but despite his bedroom exploits, he seems to loose series of horse operas.
The search for greater spectacle leads him to arrange for the release of Sitting Bull from the Standing Rock County Jail, so the aging chieftain can take part in the production (Fraudt Productions) that arrives with an educated Indian interpreter named Halsey (Will Sampson), and the rest of the movie consists of Cody's attempts to convince Sitting Bull to perform the enactment of Little Bighorn. CURIOSLY, SITTING BULL never speaks except in
Consequently, Cody is left to maneuver with Halsey, constantly aware that he is being upstaged. He struggles with his public persona as Sitting Bull tries to use his own appearance to reach the Great White Father from Washington.
ACUTELY PROTECTIVE of his public image, he is emerald-eyed and possesses priSES him while he's not wearing his wig of golden curls, and he's incapable of tracking aliens when they leave the show.
The other historical figures don't fare much better. Annie Oakley accidentally wounded a golfer in the early performance before the President.
President Grover Cleveland is played by the nightclub comedian Pat McCormick, a man who uses straightforward clue to what Altman is attempting in this revue. Turning the nation's figurehead into a performer is perfectly in keeping with this Buffalo Bill as our country's showbusiness personality.
Cody has been trapped by the publicity he given himself. Paul Newman, one of the few sure-fire box-office draws left in the 2013 series, performed in the last ten years as the pioneer who traded his freedom for the security of the circus.
NEWMAN HAS THE AURA of stardom necessary to carry the role, but he also has the ability to lay bare Cody's inner thoughts masked by the light comic delivery Newman gives to his lines, but he carefully shreds that mask in the dream sequence at the end, where he must demonstrate the deported Sitting Bull.
When he's not bickering with "Bull" and Halsey, Cody finds himself caught in the behind-the-scenes power struggle between Grey and Ned Buntline (Burt Lancaster), the press agent who
Buntline never strays very far from the bar, but he watches Cody with mounting disgust. "I'm not sure if any more," he warns Bill. As the star is transformed into a showman's monster, Buntline says contemptuously, "I'll忍耐忘得 the day I invent you."
wrote the first accounts of Buffalo Bill's exploits.
OBJVIUSLY, ALTMAN and screenwriter Alan Rudolph are attempting to depict America's dangerously complacent, yet worshipping attitude towards its leaders and heroes, who, in an earlier speech by the people on whom they depend for their adulation.
Hilariously it often is, "Buffalo Bill and the Indians" never fails to point out the dangers of following showmen who always at one point, "Truth is what gets the most applause."
It will be interesting to see what the public response to the film will be when it is released this summer. This bitter anti-bincentenial bombshell is scheduled to open on the Fourth Day. Producers may meet in beet, Cotton's greeting: "Welcome to the Show Business. It ain't that much different than real life."
"The Come Aes a Time" Evans' new album, continues his exploration into the use of the instruments in a big-band setting. The present Gil Evans Orchestra is clearly no conventional big band, though; the album jacket lists several band players and four percussionists.
Today—26 years after he contributed arrangements for the famous "Birth of the Cool" sessions, and almost two decades since his stunning series of orchestral sketches for Miles Davis-Gill Evans, Robert Wheeler, and future has the possibility of equaling his near-legendary past.
The album opens with "King Porter Stomp," an old Jelly Roll Morton classic featuring the alto saxophonist, in one of his
Sanborn solos again on a classic of more recent vintage, Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing," a mini-sequel to the entire album of Hendrix compositions that he performed in orchestra has progressed far since then, and "Little Wing" is its most obvious beneficiary.
Evans' time has come
In 1961 Gil Evans told a writer for Metronome magazine, "Well, I'm not very bold or experimental, and I don't know a lot." Whatever the value of modesty, Evans' remark has made him one of the historians and critics who rank him as one of the great orchestral writers in the history of jazz.
"The Meaning of the Blues" is a showcase for the work of George Adams, who files easily into the upper ranges of his tenor sax above a slow-moving background.
As the background thins and trumpeter Hannibal Marvin Peterson takes the synthesizer chords slide in from nowhere only to veer off with uninterested objection and the string synthesizer is just one
example of the intelligent and effective uses he finds for electronic instruments that can be used in a gnukmicky by other musicians.
(Noon to 5 p.m. Monday in the University Theatre)
The focal point of "There Comes a Time" is the title track, a tone poem that rides the edge of disaster for 16 minutes. Joe Gallian presents the riff on drum synthesizer. It is then taken over at various times by electric bass, timpani, bass clarinet and finally low, roaring instrumentation on the bass line always reflecting the character of the piece at that moment.
Layer after layer of synthesizers, brassers and throbbing percussion swirl around the bass line. Above it all, solo guitar is played in broad-toned tenor sax, Peterson's trumpet and vocals and Kawasaki's screaming guitar complete the frantic groove that usually recite to recite the melody near the end, but is soon swallowed.
CLASSICAL FOUR
HANDED PIANO: A program
by JACK Winerock and Richard
This album lacks the fine control and elegance that distinguishes Evans' arrangements of 'Rate '50s, arrangements in an elegant age, and in an average age. These are the times of "There Comes a Time."
By STEVE FRAZIER
This Week's
Highlights
ROMERO CLASSICAL
Pepe Romero, a member of the Los Romeros family of footballers, class. A native of Malaga, Spain, he is known for his improvisations and flamenco
UNIVERSITY CHORUS AND ORCHESTRA CONCERT: 300 singers from the combined University Symphony will be accompanied by the University Symphony in an all-American program of works by ten composers, including Hanson and Leonard Bernstein. Burt Allen, James Ralston and George Lawner will conduct. Sunday in Hoch Auditorium.
TAU SIGNA DANCE CONCERT:
A variety of dance forms, including modern, ballet, jazz and even
Concerts
(Tuesday through May 24 in the Kansas Union Gallery)
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
LARRY SCHWARM; Schwar-
m, Larry.
department of design, will
display photographs he has
preclassical dances such as the galliard and the gavotte, will be performed for the ensemble's 9th annual spring concert.
(8tonight and tomorrow night in the University Theatre)
OUTSTANDING DESIGN
VARIETY OF WORKS
varies of works by outstanding
seniors in the department of
design, chosen by the faculty in
Satire, drama in '76-'77 season
Reber, assistant professors of piano.
Exhibits
(8 p.m. May 17 at Off-the-Wall Hall)
In decided contrast to the national emphasis on American plays and playwrights in this country, the University Theatre will reflect the breadth and variety of international theater in its 1976-77
Theater
POOR RICHARD: A dental nurse with the philosophy of Benjamin Franklin in his own words, Developed the Division of Education in the Division of One-man show with Cliff Rakerd, Olmsted Beach, Ohio, junior.
(8 tonight at the Lawrence Arts Center)
taken during the past several years as part of his graduate exhibit.
Entertainment Co-Editor
By EVIE RAPPORT
(Sunday through May 27 at the Lawrence Arts Center)
Works from Great Britain, Russia, Japan, Germany and Iran will be performed on the main stage in Murphy Hall in four standard productions and two children's theater shows.
THE THIRD IN A SERIES of summer seasons highlighted by productions of American plays and films, past summers, the plays will be coordinated with lectures, movies and exhibits presented by members of the University of Chicago faculty and visiting lecturers.
The 1976 "Landmarks of the American Theater Festival" includes three plays by American authors. The first play, "The Maze," was written in 1970 by Jules Feiffer. In the same mordant vein as his earlier "Little Murders," the play describes the efforts of the president and artistic director of the First Lady by a sign-wielding demonstrator. Rufus Cadigan,
assistant instructor of speech and drama, will direct the play.
the second offering of the summer is Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Gold?" which in the 14 years that followed was a classic American drama, an intense and virulent study of shattered ideals and wasted human potential. A master professor will direct it.
FRANK LOESER'S "GUYS AND DOLLS," a 1960 musical adaptation of Damon Runyon's short stories about low life along Broadway, will be the final summer product for Rea, an instructor of professor, who directs the show, which features gamblers, Salvation Army lasses, chorus girls and Mafia toughs.
"RASHOMON," a 1959 adaptation by Michael and Fay Kann, will be KU's American College Theater Festival entry.
The 1976 productions lead off with another musical, Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley's "The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crow." First produced in 1968, it's a musical study of games-playing and the efforts of Sir to teach his fool, Leslie Bricusse, to animate imagination, Jack Wight, now a member of the University of Oklahoma theater faculty, will direct.
Andrew Tsubaki, associate professor of theater, will direct the stage interpretation of Akira Kurosawa's 1950 movie "The Name" the film won a Cannes Film Festival Award.
The play recounts a medieval trite
truly unfortunate tale. Four versions are presented
each of which appears to be true
from the viewpoint of the person
"Ioot," by Joe Orton, will be the first production of the 1977 film "Catherine." Keeleer assistant professor of theater, will direct this 1966 satire on British police, the system and the Catholic Church.
reputation as a dramatist, it's the story of an elderly pedant, his young wife, and the emotional havoc they wreak on the quiet lives of the pedant's manager and his daughter.
ANTON CHEKHOW'S "Uclem
Yanton" will be the final play of
the season, and Wright is the
player that assures Chekov's
The two children's theater
theatre, *Butterfly* by Bian Mifod, and
*The Marvelous Adventures of Tyl*, an adaptation of a Ger-
man play.
Jed Davis, professor of theater, will direct "The Butterfly," a fable with political overtones. Roger Bedard, assistant instructor of speech and drama, will direct the play. The movie tells how a rogue and nonconformist outwits a hangman.
Neither the opera, usually the last University Theatre produced of the year, nor the huge Theatre series has been selected.
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