ARTS
The Michigan Daily Tuesday, January 15, 1985 Page 7
AE. Hawn'5 latest a crowd pleaser
By Joshua Bilmes
G oldie Hawn's Protocol is a crowd-
pleaser. In and of itself, I have
nothing against a crowd-pleaser and
Protocol is a good one. The basic flaw
with the movie is that it goes a little too
far along the path to making the
audience happy, and the ending which
results is not so much pleasing as it is
sappy, and sapping.
Hawn did not direct the movie, or
write it, but it is most definitely hers.
She produced it, and had a pronounced
hand in the making of it. She hired Buck
Henry to do the screenplay. Henry is
perhaps best known for being a
frequent guest-host on Saturday Night
Live even though no one knew who he
was. He has also scripted quite a few
movies (The Graduate with Calder
Willingham and First Family, among
others) and was a creator of Get Smart.
If we were to compare works, this
screenplay is somewhere between The
Graduate and First Family.
It tells the story of Sunny Davis
(Hawn). As the name would indicate,
she is an all-American kind of gal, a
perfect specimem of humanity. She
tolerates gays and lives with two of
them. She drives a beat-up old car that
gets her into trouble when it stalls in
front of an official motorcade and
causes her to be late to work. She works
at the Safari Club, where the waitresses
dress up as African animals. Sunny
always gets stuck with the emu outfit.
She lets the audience know that being a
bit dumb is okay. As a TV announcer
says after her catapult to fame, she
graduated in the top 75% of her high-
school class. She is bubbly, outgoing,
attractive, and a real crowd-pleaser.
She gets catapulted to fame when she
stops the attempted assination of the
Emir, or Arab chieftan, of an obscure
Persian Gulf nation. In the process, she
gets a bullet in the butt, and Henry's
screenplay does a wonderful job of
depicting the cascade of media people
who fall upon the hospital where she
recuperates. The nation sends her get-
well cards and flowers. She appears at
a live press conference where the
President himself calls. The Emir, you
see, heads a very strategic obscure
Gulf nation, and the US hopes to sign an
agreement for a military base.
Most importantly, the Emir falls in
love with her, and he makes an
agreement with some State Depar-
tment underlings (Ed Begley, Jr.,
among others). If he can get Sunny as
one of his many wives, the U.S. can get
the military base. The State Depar-
tment connivers send the Vice-
president to visit Sunny in her home-
town, where she is recupterating from
her gunshot wound, and he offers her a
job in the protocol department, which
sends Sunny running back inside the
house to look in her dictionary. Once
Sunny finds out what protocol , she
eagerly accepts the job.
What Sunny does not know is that the
job is just an excuse for her to even-
tually get sent back to the Emir's coun-
try for a shotgun wedding. She takes the
job very seriously and diligently reads
all the manuals on proper protocol and
tries her best, which is oftentimes not
good enough. She really is such a great
person though. In over her head, she
still tries mightily to succeed.
Eventually, the Emir returns to
Washington on what is an officially
unofficial visit, and Goldie is instructed
to show him a good time, which she
does, taking him to a wild party at the
Safari Club. Everyone Goldie knows is
on hand: her roomies, a motorcycle
gang, her former co-workers,
everyone. When the State finds out,
they decide she is showing the Emir too
much of a good time and they arrive to
try to break things up. What ensues is a
wild melee. In the aftermath, she gets
sent to Arabia with the Emir, and is
blessed when her shotgun wedding is
disrupted by a coup. Back in the US,
word gets out of the underhanded
dealings, and Congress sets out to in-
vestigate. The movie skis. downhill to a
bad ending.
Up until the wedding scene, the movie
is a nearly perfect crowd-pleaser, and
one I would very much recommend.
When the end comes around, Sunny
Davis begins to tell the world what the
Declaration of Independence means.
The political comment is too heavily
stated, and Sunny's perfection begins to
grate on one's nerves.
The decent performances, the good
script, and the many good laughs come
before all dissolve. Goldie Hawn
decides to cash in too much of her ac-
cumulated good will just so she can
make her point. The audience has to
cash in all of its chips, and leaves with
far too few. Protocol seems to violate
some kind of protocol. If you have yet to
see the movie, go if you have the time,
money and inclination. But do keep a
good eye on your enjoyment, or the
angel of too much pleasure will come
down and take it all away.
SAT. & SUN. FIRST MATINEE ONLY $2.00
HE'S NOT JUST ANOTHER
OUT-OF-TOWNER!
JOHN SAYLES BEST FILM YET!
DAILY 8:30 P.M.
DIRECTED BY JONATHAN DEMME
THE TALKING HEADS
Goldie Hawn works yet another variation on her dizzy blonde formula in
'Protocol.'
DSO, Gutierrez are in fine form
By Neil Galanter
Saturday evening at the Detroit Sym-
phony Orchestra was an evening
musically varied, providing the concer-
tgoer with a well balanced menu. Guest
conductor David Zinman opened the
program with American music by
Christopher Rouse, continued with
British music of Sir Edward Elgar, and
9fter intermission came a truly
Russian fireworks display with music
of Tchaikovsky featuring guest soloist
pianist Horacio Gutierrez.
Zinman, who has recently taken over
the podium of the Baltimore Symphony
Orchestra, has been the conductor of
the Rochester (N.Y.) Philharmonic Or-
chestra for the past ten years. Saturday
night he evidenced the fact that he can
be a conductor of great emotive
qualities and at the same time not
eschew the role of power and heavy
dominance either. These qualities were
$een in both the music for orchestra
alone and in his role as accompanist to
Gutierrez.
i Christopher Rouse's "The Infernal
Machine" which incidentally recieved
its first performance in 1981 by the U-M
Symphony Orchestra under Gustav
Meier, is a celeritous yet highly effec-
tive musical showpiece which
Mnanifests instantly that the orchestra
lecords
Jlhe Who - Who's Last
(MCA)
.The Who are easily the most
problematic band in rock history. They
were likely the fiercest, most brilliant
band we'll likely ever see, yet their
legacy is one of only sporadic,
:rustratingly inconsistent genius. This
Js made all the more aggravating by
£their own seemingly inherent need to
:destroy themselves through egotism
'hnd self idolizing. Despite their early
jingles, Who's Next, and moments of
Quadrophenia, their recorded work
speaks more for their wasted potential
than their actual accomplishments.
'Their legendary stage performances of
the late sixties and early seventies are
obscured now by the major role they
subsequently played in setting a
precedent for the stadium concert
fiascos of today.
Who's Last is a two disc collection of
-material culled from the band's 1982
:farewell tour through North America.
its an effectively accurate (if
* depressing) elegy of why the band
should have broken up years ago. The
performances while not sloppy, lack
any spark or enthusiasm. This is the
sound of a band grown calcified and
;disinterested with what they're doing,
etwho feel a need (in the Who's case, a
pompously holy crusade to go through
,the motions for the sake of posterity
and their fans.
The selections are essentially the
*,same old "best of" repetoire the Who
have trotted out on stage for years now;
with few surpises and a conspicuous
absence of any of their recent material
(which Warner Brothers owns the
rights to).Hearing the band trudge
,ponderously through material as old
and ill suited for them now as "My
"Generation" and "Can't Explain" is
like watching a group of graying,
Rbloated old soldiers try to squeeze back
into their now antique uniforms and
parade about in mock revelry. And
is in charge. Diabolical, demonic and
satanic in every instance, it proves in a
brief few minutes that the performers
mean business and there's no kidding
around: The title comes from the Jean
Cocteau play and throughout one enjoys
the constant rustling, crackling effer-
vescence which sets the stage for an
evening of exciting music.
After the Rouse piece came pure
British humor and wit with a power-
fully dominant performance of Sir Ed-
ward Elgar's tone poem "Falstaff"
Opus 68. Stylistically, the orchestra
played very well, outlining the different
moods of the piece formidably. The
melodrama came through, as well as
the mellow and droll portions of the
music. The wind section, combined
with the percussion provided the real
strength in the piece although the
strings were on top of things too. Par-
ticularly effective were sections of the
score which featured an oboe and drum
duet. A deft artful combination, this
piece shows what an original and vir-
tuous composer Elgar was.
The grand finale came after inter-
-mission. Cuban born pianist Horacio
Gutierrez played the always popular
Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto. It's
hard to imagine that such an effective
crowd pleaser like the Tchaikovsky
piece could have been termed a failure,
but when Tchaikovsky first brought it
to the great Russian pianist Nicholas
Rubinstein, that's what he called it.
Tchaikovsky would not accept Rubin-
stein's condescending remarks and he
promplty removed the dedication from
Rubinstein and took the piece to the
great German pianist and conductor
Hans von Bulow. Von Bulow carried the
new concerto on his next American
tour, and gave the world premiere of it
in Boston, where it was met with great
success. It has been a success ever sin-
ce.
Gutierrez played the Concerto stun-
mingly, worth generous amounts of flair
and voluptuousness. He projected such
intensity and excitement from his
Steinway, that it was hard not to walk
away from the performance in a
euphoric state of mind, such as I did.
The nice thing about his performance is
that he underlined some of the more
subtle qualities of the music, which so
many pianists pass over. This kept his
performance from sounding too for-
mulaic or routine as performances of
the Tchaikovsky concerto sometimes
do. Everything about his playing was
healthy, robust and ruddy, so I couldn't
have cared "peanuts" about the frigid
bitter cold that waited me outside after
the concert was over. It was a small
price to pay for such euphony!
TUES. 5:00, 6:50,10:30
WED. 6:50, 10:30
TOGETHER THEY MAY FIND
THE STRENGTH TO KEEP THEIR
WAY OF LIFE ALIVE!
A UDITIOAIS
FOR
"H. M. S. PINAFORE"
WITH
U of M Gilbert & Sullivan Society
MONDAY - THURSDAY
(JAN. 14 - JAN. 17)
call for appointment 761-7855
MICHIGAN LEAGUE
MEL GIBSON
SISSY SPACEK
(PG-13)
From the Director of'"On Golden Pond "
DOLBY STEREO
TUES. 5:00, 7:30, 9:45
W4E D. 7:30, 9:45
kind of tawdy burlesque they always
feared the material had the potential
for.
There are a few nice moments, such
as a version of "Love Reign O'er Me"
that suggests some of the majestic
power of that neglected classic.
Likewise the encore cover of "Twist
And Shout" has the spunk and vitality
they can't seem to summon up on their.
own songs. And there's something
powerfully touching when, in the mid-
dle of "Baba O'Riley" you hear
thousands of kids in the audience
screaming the chorus with Townshend,
something that the rest of this merely
exploitative would-be-tribute to the
band fails to otherwise conjure up.
They might have more aptly entitled
this set "Who Cares?".
-Byron Bull
nz
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Finance
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Cilub
UNDERCLASSMEN 1985
HOPWOOD AWARDS
Academy of American Poets Prize
Bain-Swiggett Prize
Michael R. Gutterman Award
Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship
Poetry Reading by
DONALD HALL
Author of
The Alligator Bride
Tr+L.-- ta Te~ r
presents
Stephen Frank
Vice President - Treasurer
GTE Corporation
Come join club members. Meet Stephen Frank and
learn more about GTE Corporation. Mr. Frank will be
joined by managers from finance and marketing who
can discuss career opportunities.
Date: January 17, 1985
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Place: Wolverine Room
(Business School)
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