ARTS
The Michigan Daily
Tuesday, November 3, 1987
Page 7
Cryer tries to shed
teen star's
shadow
By John Shea
Jon Cryer recently attended a U2
concert in Chicago, the city where
Ferris Bueller's Day Off was filmed.
A group of girls saw Cryer and
thought he was Matthew Broderick;
they approached him as if he was
God. They asked Him for
autographs, and Cryer had to tell
them that he was not God - that he
was not Broderick - but just Ducky
from Pretty in Pink. Just Jon Cryer.
At first the girls were not convinced,
but Cryer ran his hands through his
hair, and they believed him. They
settled for his signature.
Cryer sits back and laughs about
this story. He was in Southfield last
week to promote his new film
Hiding Out. He talked about what it
is like to be constantly mistaken for
Matthew Broderick. "I feel like
yelling, I AM NOT MATTHEW
BRODERICK."
He laughed at this, but certainly
there is a part of him that cannot
think this is very funny. How ironic
it must be that Cryer's first acting
job was on Broadway, in Torch
Song Trilogy - as an understudy
for Broderick.
Seven weeks later, Cryer was
fired because he wasn't a "big
enough name."
And how frustrating it must be
that Cryer, a 22 year-old actor with
seven feature films under his belt,
including the enormously popular
Pretty in Pink, is still unable to
emerge from the long, dark shadow
of Broderick and other
contemporaries; still lost in a sea of
young actors with prettier faces and
bigger titles to their credit.
The beauty of Jon Cryer is that
he takes all of this in stride. He does
not spend his mornings, afternoons,
and evenings staring into a mirror.
Casually dressed in an oxford shirt,
blue jeans, and black shoes with
pointed tips, he is the very picture of
youth.
Now. If you were to paint a
picture entitled "Youth," wouldn't
you draw features similar to Cryer's?
How could you not fill an entire
canvass with those apple-cheeks,
wide eyes, and boyish-grin?
And when the picture comes to
life - when you meet Cryer in
person - the image is a most
pleasant surprise. Cryer is not loud
and obnoxious, as some would
believe. He has a warm sense of
humor; he preludes every answer to
every question with a joke.
What is the most important thing
to him as an actor right now?
He flashed a smile from ear to
ear. "Money and lots of it."
Well. Maybe only half-kidding.
Cryer feels the main reason why
his career has not skyrocketed is not
because of the scripts he has chosen,
but what the editors and producers
have done to his projects. He says he
has been burned in the past by poor
editing decisions. Cryer cites last
year's Morgan Stewart's Coming
Home as one such example.
"I got the script for Morgan
Stewart and it was really good," he
said. "Except for this one little dumb
problem at the end. I was sure the
producers were going to cut it out.
Instead, they reworked the whole
picture around this one problem.
They fired the director and I was
stuck working on a project I
absolutely despised. You couldn't
pay me enough to talk about it."
Another film that leaves a
particularly bad taste in Cryer's
mouth is Superman IV. "I walked
off the set thinking this was going
to be great. I took my grand: na to
see it and she said, 'Oh, Jon, t. is is
just terrible."' He sighed and let out
a little laugh. "I couldn't even get it
by grandma."
Maybe she'll likeHiding Out
better. Cryer plays Andrew
Morenski, a young Boston
stockbroker who escapes the wrath
of the mafia by "hiding out" as a
high school student. It is part
suspense, part action-adventure, part
romantic-comedy. And Cryer is
pleased with the final product.
"I'm real excited about it," he
said. "I was attracted to the project
because I thought the script was
funny."
But what Jon Cryer really wants
more than anything right now is
more creative control. "The most
important thing to me as an actor
right now is getting to a place where
I can make the movies I want to
make."
Cryer is confident about the
future. But what about the past?
"We've all had big boffo sequels
that haven't done so well. You take
a chance. Most good movies are just
happy accidents. I just hope to make
one or two in my career."
As his press conference in
Southfield wound down to the end,
Cryer was asked one last question
before he was to hop on a plane and
go home.
"Do I have you confused," one
reporter asked, "with another actor
who was briefly on a series called
Hard Copy ?"
Cryer scratched his chin. "Yeah.
You do. I don't know, uh..."
"Did you do an L.A. Law ?"
"Nooo. There's another actor
(who looks like me) who played a
gay lover with AIDS (on L.A. Law )
"No," the reporter said, "this guy
was selling cocaine out of the law
office."
"Oh, Okay. I wasn't in either one
of them."
He looked relieved.
Actor Jon Cryer has had a hard time finding success on his own terms after
his portrayal of Ducky in 'Pretty in Pink.'
Malpede to read from her plays
F .y
Let Them Know
How You Feel!!
DAILY PERSONALS 764-0557
By Marie Wesaw
"You can't help your voice,"
Karen Malpede states when
explaining her choice to write
dreamlike lyrical drama. "The
writer's voice just' comes to the
writer... The only choice you have is
whether or not to honor that voice."
Classical drama, Malpede's favored
style, releases "primal physical tones
and energy to speak poetic."
"In the American theater, (you)
don't have enough beautiful
language," says Malpede. She
attributes this lack from the fact that
plays often get "works hopped";
beginning playwrights are
encouraged to work on standard
;methods, but are not encouraged to
have their ownvoices.
Malpede, a New York based
avant-garde playwright is the founder
of the New Cycle Theater and the
,New York Women's Salon for
Literature, two literary innovations
on the 1970's.
Two of the three plays in her
collection A Monster Has Stolen
The Sun, "Sappho and Aphrodite,"
and "A Monster Has Stolen The
Sun," take place in distant times to
demonstrate Malpede's respect of
classical thought. The other, "The
End of War," has a more modern
setting, the Ukraine during the
,Russian Revolution, yet also breaks
from the realism mode by rejectingj
the establishing of one hero in the
play.
Malpede rejects using a sole
heroic figure because she believes
that women experience the world in
a collective fashion through their
relationships. "The important
function of women in my plays is
that they tend to survive. The
importance of women survival is
crucial." Malpede emphasizes that in
'many plays, women had little social
:function or importance, and they
usually experienced a tragic end.
"The way men have defined dramaE
is by emphasizing death and murder
as the great heroic events,"
comments Malpede. "The End of!
War" is an anti-war drama that
illustrates that through the collective
thoughts of the community, there
are other heroic actions. Also,
Malpede believes, "The greatest
sufferers from war are the very
young. The younger you are, the
more life is stolen from you." She
along with the progress of the war.
The woman's child is still-born.
Along with the selections from A
Monster Has Stolen The Sun and
Other Plays, Malpede will read
selections from "Us," her most
recent play that opens on December
17 at the Theater for the New City
in New York. Although the play
contains ethnic tensions and many
heavy sexual situations including
incest and sexual abuse, Malpede
considers the play not to be realistic
because it deals not just with the
social issues, but on a larger scale
with the connection between the
classical concept of eros and the
social world.
Karen Malpede will read
selections from her collection A
MONSTER HAS STOLEN THE
SUN AND OTHER PLAYS , as
well as her play "Us" today at 4
p.m. in the Kuenzel Room in the
Michigan Union. The dramatic
reading is sponsored by the
Department of Theater and Drama,
the Women's Studies Program, The
Women's Project, and the Visiting
Writer's Series.
- I
ROGER BOISJOLY
Ethical Decision-Making
Morton-Thiokol, and the
Space Shuttle Challenger
THURSDAY
NOV. 5
RAYMOND B. CARROLL AUDITORIUM
CHRYSLER CENTER, NORTH CAMPUS
8:00 P.M. FREE
" Flexible evening hours
- $4.50 - $6.50/hour
plus bonuses
- Build your communication
skills and resume
" 763-7420. Z
.611 Church St.
3rd floor
C)
Sponsored by: Collegiate Institute for Values and Science
Student Pugwash at Michigan (517)
764-1810
339-0096
" ELECTIONS * ELECTIONS ELECTIONS ELECTIONS ELECTIONS "
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LA
e Appropriates money to student organizations 1
I , Appoints students to student-faculty committees
S Monitors the school from a student's viewpoint
i "Montos te chol roma sudnt' vewpin
Nw 3. j4