Robert De Niro,
Edward Norton
and Marlon
Brando in "The
Score," directed
by Frank Oz,
who began his
-
career as a
puppeteer to
please his Jewish
father, Isidore.
he was working Muppets for Sesame
Street. The characters served as Oz's alter
egos. "Bert was the boring part of my
personality," he says by way of example.
"Miss Piggy was the neurotic part."
Eventually, Oz animated and voiced
the Jedi troll Yoda in The Empire
Strikes Back and directed Henson films
such as The Muppets Take. Manhattan
(1984). Directing What About Bob? six
years later helped Oz curb the grief he
felt over Henson's death in 1990.
Before The Score, Oz had directed A-
list actors such as Eddie Murphy and
Richard Dreyfuss. But the Brando/De
Niro/Norton trilogy kicked the stakes
up a notch. The trick was not getting
psyched out by all the expectations.
"Everybody was saying, 'You've got the
greatest actors in the world, this had bet-
ter be great,"" Oz says. "But the minute
you start buying into that, you're dead."
Nevertheless, the .moot turned into
one of the prickliest of his career. The
problem was the notoriously difficult
Brando, who played a homosexual char-
acter, the jewel thief's fence. The 77-
year-old actor wanted his character to
wear makeup and to act campy. Oz
thought that approach was wrong for his
gritty, realistic film. Verbal fisticuffs
ensued (example: Brando kept calling
Oz "Miss Piggy"). The director takes
some blame for the tension: "I chose the
wrong moment to be strong, and we got
confrontational," he says.
The fun part of the shoot was learning
how to crack a safe by pumping it full of
water. But the most important part of a
heist isn't the mechanics, he insists. "It's
having the chutzpah to do it." ❑
al f
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Appearing Sat., Aug.4
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"The Princess Diaries"
stars Anne Hathaway,
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princess. Julie Andrews,
as her grandmother
the queen, and Hector
Elizondo, as the queen s
loyal attendant, attempt
to transform her into
lady of grace and elegance.
she hung out with $5,000-an-hour
hookers, buying them champagne and
expensive dinners ("I felt like such a
guy," she says).
She learned how they spent their
days (shopping at Prada, getting $300
haircuts) and nights.
The writer won't pass judgement on
her Extreme characters, who'll possess
the same moral outlook as the real call
girls. "They view women who marry
rich men they don't love as the 'real
whores,'" Wendkos says." El
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where often "it was just me and a
stranger talking about loneliness at 4
a.m.," she says.
The writer is still intrigued by the
arena of the sex worker, which returns
often in her work. "It's the only place
where women have more power and
make more money than men," she
says.
Some critics deplored the strut-your-
stuff sexuality in Coyote Ugly," but
Wendkos calls it "stiletto feminism"
"using sexuality for the power it is."
She's now developing a dramatic 1 V
series, Extreme Behavior, about high-
priced call girls (the Jewish one, Liz, is
a former medical student). As research,
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Original location: 29215 5 Mile Rd. at Middlebelt-Livonia
The Princess Diaries, rated G,
opens today in area theaters.
8/3
2001
67