ENTERTAINMENT FATHER KNOWS BEST MELINDA GREENBERG Special to The Jewish News E ven stints as a vi- cious killer in a television movie and a transvestite on Broadway could not tarnish Michael Gross' image as a dad for all seasons. For seven years, he was the quintessential television father — loving, sensitive, some- times stern — on the show "Fam- ily Ties." Now he is trying his hand at parenting on the big screen in his new film, Alan and Naomi. One of the so-called "little films" which tend to get buried by the competition and the pomp and circumstance surrounding holiday blockbusters, Alan and Naomi is a sweet film about friendship, parenthood and trust in the shadow of World War II. The film also stars Lukas Haas. Mr. Gross, 44, plays Sol Sil- verman, a Jewish man living with his wife and 14-year-old son, Alan, in a mixed neighborhood in Brooklyn in 1944. He is a man of average means and looks who charts Hitler's movement on a large map in his apartment. Then Naomi Kirschenbaum, a young Jewish girl from France, who is catatonic after witnessing the murder of her father by the Nazis, moves into the Silvermans' building. Sol volunteers his son to help Naomi adjust to her new life and come out of her shell. After days of sitting together The close in total silence, relationship Naomi begins between to respond to father Alan and the and son two develop a Sol and close friendshi p. Alan Silverman It was Alan and is part of Naomi's rela what attracted tionship and Michael Gross the bond be to Alan and tween Sol Sil- Naomi verman and his - - son that first attracted Mr. Gross to this movie. "I love a story about people and human relationships, well told," he said during a recent inter- view. "Everybody responds. to those little ads they see in the paper about the pet that's going to be put to death in the pound if no one comes to get it. And I feel like Naomi was this little, lost, forlorn soul who needed someone to take care of her. Here was someone who was wounded, the lost pet, the innocent, who, through no fault of her own, had been damaged and needed care." Ironically, Mr. Gross made his Broadway debut in a Holocaust drama. He played a female im- personator named Greta oppo- site Richard Gere in Bent. Listening to Mr. Gross describe his new film, it was hard not to make comparisons between the actor and the beloved paterfa- milias he played on the situation comedy "Family Ties." He was even dressed in clothing that would have suited the pas- sionate, '60s activist Steven Keaton — pleated jeans, plaid shirt, knit tie, plaid blazer and leather moccasins. His gray hair was neatly combed. He wore little jewelry — a silver stud earring, watch and wedding ring on his pinkie. While his role on the television show introduced him — and co- star Michael J. Fox — to Ameri- can audiences, Mr. Gross eschews comparisons between fathers Steven Keaton and Sol Silverman. In fact, he intention- ally added flaws to Sol to break the mold of the sitcom "superfa- then" "I didn't want to make him an- other television father, perhaps as I was, sort of fit and trim, wearing the right clothes," said Mr. Gross, who por- trayed a cold- blooded killer in the 1988 TV movie, "In The Line Of Duty: The FBI Murders." He suggested that his tall, lanky frame be padded for the movie, to give Sol more "girth." He also had his hair shaved back to show more fore- head. "He was a clerk, faceless, anonymous in a sense — never go- ing to have a great job," he said. "And he sat and dreamed. As a result, I wanted to make him a little bigger around the mid-sec- tion." Mr. Gross also had his ears built out so he resembled the ac- tor who played his son. "I said, `Look, I'm this child's father so give me some of those things,' " he said, gesturing to his ears. "It worked into my concept of his being a very plain man. He was no great catch physi- cally, but I wanted the feeling that in terms of his soul, his psyche, no wom- an could do better than a man like this. And ultimately, no child could do better It than this for a fa- ther." While \-- trained in theater — he earned a master's degree in theater from the Yale School of Drama —Mr. Gross said he learned a great deal about playing a father from his two stepchildren, who are in their ear- ly 20s. "I think what I've learned from my own children was to listen a little more carefully to them, in- stead of merely giving orders," he said. "I sort of came on like gang- busters in the first years of my marriage ... a mix of Captain Von Trapp, Charles Dickens and Joan Crawford, all rolled up into one. I've learned over the years that maybe there's a reason we have two ears and only one mouth — that we should spend twice as much time listening as we do speaking." Indeed, in the film, it is Sol Sil- verman who listens to Alan's complaints about being chosen to help the troubled Naomi instead of playing his usual game of stick- ball after school. Sol's wife, Ruth, played by actress Amy Aquino, expects Alan to do as he is told. "It was like a good cop/bad cop thing. She was more like. There's a job to be done, do it. I've given an order,' " he said. "Sol would say, Wait.' He is, in his own way, wonderfully manipulative be- cause he wants the same thing she does but he's going to finesse it." In one of the movie's most mov- ing scenes, Alan asks his father why he has to help the girl his friends call "crazy kat." Sol re- sponds, "Maybe because you're one of the lucky ones." While the film centers on Jew- ish characters and the Holocaust, and Yiddish terms are used freely, Mr. Gross, who is not Jew- ish, believes Alan and Naomi touches on universal themes. "They talk about God in this movie. They talk about moral im- perative," he said, leaning for- ward for emphasis. "This is a story, you can call it talmudic. It's perfect New Testament. It's perfect Old Testament. Reach out." 0 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 65 ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT Michael Gross of "Family Ties" is playing Dad again, this time in a poignant new film with a Holocaust theme.