PRIYA At The Movies INDIAN CUISINE ****Detroit Free Press "I can't wait to go back!" -Molly Abraham, Oakland Press From mild to hot, enjoy India's Southern, Northern and Tandoori Cuisines NOW IN TWO LOCATIONS! `The Score' In his latest film, director Frank Oz faced a triumvirate of great actors. PRIYA IN FARMINGTON HILLS 36600 Grand River (West of Drake) r MEETING & BANQUET FACILITIES NAOMI PFEFFERMAN 248 615 7700 ORIGINAL PRIYA IN TROY 72 West Maple (at Livernois Rd.) OPEN DAILY FOR LUNCH & DINNER Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles I Coupon good at either PRIYA restaurant through 08/15/01 $10 OFF DINNER FOR TWO I Lunch buffet & take-out excluded Bangkok Sala Cafe THAI CUISINE Buy One Lunch or Dinner & Get a Second for rank Oz, the Muppeteer and comedy director, isn't a funny guy. Duriner b an interview, he sounds more like an English professor than the man who falsettoed the voice of Miss Piggy. It's tough to imagine him directing Bill Murray as an insuf- ferable nudnik in What About Bob? or Steve Martin as a sleaze in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. It's tougher to imagine him animating and voicing Muppets such as Bert, Animal and Fozzie Bear. But Oz (nee Oznowicz), the son of Holocaust refugees, insists he never meant to direct comedies in the first place. Nor did he intend to work in the movies. "It's all been an accident," he says. The lanky, owlish director started puppeteering to please his Jewish father, Isidore, an avid amateur pup- peteer; then Muppet master Jim , Henson discovered him, and the come- dies kept coming. But after directing Bowfinger in 1999, Oz told his agents, "I have to do something else." He got his chance when he received the script of a high-tech crime caper called The Score, now a hit summer movie starring Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando and Edward Norton. The film tells of a cautious jewel thief (De Niro) cajoled by a cheeky young punk (Norton) to attempt one last heist. The movie has received rave reviews, but Oz, 56,. is annoyed when people are surprised he can elicit something other than laughs at the cineplex. "I grew up with dramatic family stories, so I've always wanted to direct drama," he says. One of his favorite family yarns is a caper as thrilling as any scene from The Score. It took place a couple years before he was born, when his father furtively dug a hole in Nazi-occupied Antwerp to bury a marionette he'd secretly carved of Adolf Hitler. 50% OFF `The Princess Diaries' One per customer • Expires 12/31/01 ir 27903 Orchard Lake Rd. (NW corner of 12 Mile) Farmington Hills (248) 553-4220 Open 7 days a week Mon-Sat 11 am - 10 pm Sunday 4 pm - 9:30 pm Gina Wendkos grew up as a poor, bohemian Jewish girl — but wrote a screenplay about being royal. NAOMI PFEFFERMAN Jezvish Journal of Greater Los Angeles A Creat Horne-Cooked Dining Tradition Since the 20's ANN SAYLES DINING ROOM Classic .Nnu.Nrican I loine-Cooked Cuisine at Very Reasonable Prices Nome-Cooked Food Like Grandma Used to Make! • Sauteed Chicken livers • Broiled Whitefish • Lake Perch • Meat Loaf • Broiled Salmon • Grilled Beef Liver And So Much More! PRES1-1 ROASTED TURKEY CUT FROM THE BIRD! Lunch & Dinner Entrees Include: Appetizer or Soup, potato, vegetable, dessert & beverage. Open 6 Days • Closed Mon. • Carry-Out & Group Parties 8/3 2001 88 4313 W. 13 Mile Rd. 2 Blocks East of Greenfield • Royal Oak (248) 288-6020 • Fax (248) 288-6020 I feel like the princess living the fairy tale," says Gina Wendkos, screenwriter of the Disney film The Princess Diaries, which opens today in Detroit. Wendkos' second produced screen- play, based on Meg Cabot's novel, tells of an awkward teenager rescued from obscurity when she learns she's a princess. Five years ago, Wendkos was sorely in need of rescuing. The 40-something writer had just been fired from a CBS show ("I'd made, like, a zillion mis- takes," she says), and her self-esteem was at "a real cockroachy level." So she quit writing for two years. "I was going to go to law school, and I hated lawyers," confides the former painter, playwright and performance artist. "How self-loathing was that?" Enter her knight in shining armor, who proved to be mega-producer and former Detroiter Jerry Bruckheimer. He needed a screenwriter to adapt an article written by a female bar- tender at the rowdy New York club Coyote Ugly. He figured Wendkos was perfect because in her 20s she'd worked every kind of bar job except stripping. The petite, black-haired scribe promptly flew off to Manhattar. to hang out at the real club, where sexy female bartenders triumphantly danced atop the bar each night. The film Coyote Ugly helped her land The Princess Diaries gig, which Wendkos found square but charming. "I totally identified with the main character," she says. "In high school, I was also unpopular. I wished I was invisible." The puppet-caricature, which had a hinny moustache and a uniform sewed by Oz's lapsed Catholic mother, Frances, was too dangerous to carry on the road. So Oznowicz carefully covered it with spadefuls of earth before he and Frances fled south (she was sometimes disguised as a boy) to catch a boat to England. After the war, Oznowicz returned to Antwerp to dig up his puppet, which later occupied a place of honor in Oz's childhood home in Oakland, Calif. "I still have it on display in my apart- ment in Manhattan," says the director, who uses "Oz" as a stage name but whose legal surname is Oznowicz. "His clothes are in shreds now, but there's a photo next to him of when he was new. It's a crucial part of my heritage." Oz's first memory is traveling by boat to the United States in the mid- dle of a hurricane at age 5. "I vividly recall tables and chairs flying through the air," he says. After he started puppeteering at age 11, his classmates called him the Puppet Man — but Oz didn't mind. "Puppetry was a good way for me to express myself without really putting myself on the line," he says. "It was safe because I was gawky, skinny, shy with pimples and low self-esteem." By the age of 19, Oz had followed Henson to New York and, six years later, Instead, her poor, bohemian Jewish family stuck out like a sore thumb in her rich Jewish neighborhood in Miami. All the other kids' fathers were doctors and bankers; hers eked out a living painting portraits of guests at a luxurious hotel. The other kids got to have a bar or bat mitzvah; Wendkos' Jewish mom suggested she check out the free church services next door. "I used to beg my parents not to drive me to school," she recalls. "One 3, year they had, like, a hearse. In her early 20s, Wendkos still felt like a misfit, especially while waitress- ing at a mob bar where she was expected to dance with customers at S10 a pop. She hardly felt as empow- ered as her characters from Coyote Ugly. "All the customers tried CO get fresh," she recalls. "I felt like chattel." Wendkos got fired when her boyfriend unexpectedly arrived at the club, saw her dancing and threw a fit. It wasn't until she was 27 that she landed her first writing job — pen- ning blurbs for a phone sex line — and discovered she had a talent for dialogue. Wendkos graduated to work- ing the graveyard phone sex shift,