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September 26, 1997 - Image 10

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Publication:
The Michigan Daily, 1997-09-26

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fIt £diiwDat

Catch "National Lampoon's Animal House" on the big screen.
Launching the careers of John Belushi, Tim Matheson and many oth-
ers, the raucous comedy classic is being presented on Saturday night
by M-Flicks. Be there for all of the Delta House antics. Angell Aud. A
7 and 9 p.m. Saturday. $2 at the door.

Friday
September 26, 1997

10-

Hollywood legend Wise to visit 'U'

By Joshua Rich
Daily Arts Writer
Now in the twilight of his career, Hollywood veter-
an Robert Wise can look back with tremendous pride
on a life in movies that has spanned six decades and
more than 50 films. Today, Wise speaks nonchalantly
about his remarkable life, an 83-year span studded
with diverse motion pictures that have brought him
numerous accolades.
Speaking to him, one would scarce believe that this
is the man responsible for the smooth pacing and styl-
ized cutting of "Citizen Kane," for the beautiful epic
images in "The Sound of
Music," or for the renaissance of
the "Star Trek" phenomenon on P i
the silver screen. Behind-the-T
camera cinema giants like him
are few and far between, and,in F
shockingly, their celebrity often presented
comes with a touch of modesty.
Wise will be in Ann Arbor this
afternoon to present a screening of his 1963 horror
classic, "The Haunting," which, among other things, is
reported to be a favorite of fright master Stephen
King. "'The Haunting' is very different from horror
films that came 10 years later, because there is noth-
ing violent in it," said Prof. William Paul of the
University's Program in Film and Video Studies.
Indeed, in a recent interview with The Michigan
Daily, Wise discussed the popularity of the film that
he adapted from a story by "The Lottery"'s Shirley
Jackson. "People always come up to me and say,
'You've made one of the scariest films I've ever seen.'
It is also one of my own 10 or 12 favorites."
That's an especially high honor for one movie in a
career that includes stints as an editor, producer, direc-
tor and, most recently, as President of the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences during the 1980s.

Anj

Born in Indiana, Wise abandoned a career in jour-
nalism to work as a messenger in the editing depart-
ment of RKO studios. Success struck quickly: He got
his first credited editing job at age 21, and went on to
work in that capacity on 19 films, including "The
Hunchback of Notre Dame," and Orson Welles' "The
Magnificent Ambersons" and "Citizen Kane."
Wise received his first of many Oscar nominations
for the latter, a movie that most film enthusiasts con-
sider the greatest of all time. "Working with Orson
Welles was always up and down, never level," Wise
recalled. "Sometimes he'd get so crazy that I'd want to
tell him to shove it, and then he
did something totally brilliant.
E V I E W So I never left the production.
ie Haunting "In his early days, Orson
Today at 3ngm Welles was as close to ingenious
gelI Hall Auditorium A; as anyone I've ever seen."
director Robert Wis As his career progressed, Wise
took a more crucial role in pro-
duction, working as the director
and occasional producer of 39 more motion pictures.
He began with B-type flicks like 1944's "The Curse of
the Cat People" - which he directed as a replacement
in just 10 days - and continued with dramas such as
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) and "I Want to
Live!" (1958). In the 1970s, Wise experimented with
more contemporary forms, namely the disaster flick
and science fiction movie, most notably "Star Trek:
The Motion Picture" in 1979.
But perhaps his greatest onscreen achievements
arrived in the early-1960s when he won a total of four
Oscars for his work on 1961's "West Side Story" and
1965's "The Sound of Music." "It was a great thrill to
win the Academy Awards," Wise said of his repeated
reception of his industry's highest honors for Best
Director and Best Picture.
In fact, his directoral win for "West Side Story"

offered one of the more unique circumstances in
Oscar history: the only time that two people have
shared a Best Director prize for the same movie. "It is
an odd situation directing a film with someone else"
Wise noted. "I worked with Jerome Robbins who was
the Broadway director, and he took care of the musi-
cal parts while I did the book part."
To be sure, it was a strained relationship. According
to legend, neither director thanked the other in his
Academy Award acceptance speech.
However, Wise must give a great deal of thanks to
the legion of legendary actors whom he has directed
over the years. The names read like a Hollywood Hall
of Fame: Julie Andrews, James Cagney, Clark Gable,
William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Shirley MacLaine,
Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and dozens of others.
It is surprising, then, that Wise chose to cast
unknowns in some of his later projects, including an
adaptation of Michael Crichton's landmark novel
"The Andromeda Strain," in 1971. "We decided that if
the actors had big names, seeing what they were doing
on screen wouldn't seem as real," he said.
Luckily, the philosophy worked for the most part,
and he followed that success with five more films,
most recently "Rooftops" in 1988.
Of late, he has devoted his life to guest lecturing to
young film students, and heading numerous motion
picture organizations, including the American Film
Institute's Center for Advanced Film Studies. His
work culminated in 1992, when President Bush
awarded him the National Medal of Arts.
But, as Wise remarks, his work in filmmaking is not
yet finished: "At this point I've directed 39 films.
When I was on No. 35, 1 thought it would be nice to
stop at 40. So I have a few plans going for one more
movie that I hope to make very soon."
As it has been for the last 62 years, the world is
waiting.

At age 83, director Robert Wise, the creator of silver screen classics like "The
Day the Earth Stood Still" and "The Sound of Music," is still going strong. He
visits Ann Arbor this afternoon to present a screening of his film "The Haunting."
Hoarse whinnies home

Son Volt, Farrar to
whirl into Detroit

By Anders Smith-Undall
Daily Arts Writer
"No feel-good scenes to bring it back
/ Just falling brick and broken glass,"
sings Son Volt's Jay Farrar on "Way
Down Watson," from the band's latest
r e c o r d,
"Straightaways." P1
The song details
the destruction of
the Coral Court
Motel in Farrar's
native St. Louis, a
historic site razed
to make way for retail development.
"In 'Way Down Watson,' Jay is just
saying, 'Man, there's a beautiful old
building and now it's nothing but a
future strip mall,"' said Son Volt drum-
mer Mike Heidorn in a recent interview
with The Michigan Daily.
But Farrar is doing much more than
that. "Way Down Watson" speaks vol-
umes not only about this specific inci-

dent but about Farrar himself, and like-
wise about his band. The reverence for
the past shown in the song's lyrics is
equally present in the sounds he and his
bandmates put forth. The five - Farrar
on guitar and harmonica, Jim Boquist

REVIEW

Son Volt
Friday at 8 p.m.
The Majestic, Detroit
with Apples In Stereo

on bass, Dave
Boquist on guitar,
banjo and fiddle,
Heidorn on drums
and Eric Heywood
on steel - exca-
vate the musics of
America's past

Son Volt will play Detroit's Majestic tonight at 8 p.m.

and resurrect the spirits of Ernest Tubb
and Gram Parsons, filtering them
through latter-day influences like Bob
Dylan, John Fogerty and Neil Young.
"We're just extending what has been
there for years," Heidorn said, "from
Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams.
We're big fans of the traditional instru-
ments - fiddles, banjoes, harmonicas,
acoustic guitars - because it's just

good-sounding wood."
"Way Down Watson" is a textbook
example of this ethic in practice, a spare
meditation featuring only Farrar's gui-
tar, harmonica and droning baritone
vocal.
"He's commenting on what's been
lost, our lost ways, and what used to
be," Heidorn said. "His sense of com-
munity has been heightened lately, see-
ing things like this around where we
live. When things get torn down, you
lose a little bit of your heritage."'
"Way Down Watson" laments not
only the loss of one building but some-
thing more profound - the song is
Farrar's commentary on a society he

feels has turned away from its past in
the blind pursuit of economic profit. "A
man in a tie will bum your dime 'fore
he'll break his 20 dollar bill," Farrar
sang in 1991; on the same album, the
seminal debut of Farrar and Heidorn's
former band, Uncle Tupelo, he sang of
"the sound of people chasing money
and money getting away."
Uncle Tupelo's third record, "March
16-20, 1992;" featured several songs
that voiced similar sentiments, includ-
ing this verse from "Criminals":
"We've got shackles to keep the laws /
Made by men who bought and sold
themselves / Not a prayer to keep their
See SON VOLT, Page 11.

By Colin Bartos
Daily Arts Writer
Hoarse has come to rock. No gim-
micks, straight up, no chaser. Motor
City rock 'n' roll is here - and it's'
about time.
Hoarse, the power trio of
guitarist/vocalist John Speck, bassist
Robby Graham, and drummer Jimmy
Paluzzi, formed its
current lineup in
our beloved PR
Detroit in 1994.
Paluzzi joined
the band after
leaving Sponge, call (248
and the band cut a
tape of demos, one
of which ("Diamond") found its way
into heavy rotation on Detroit radio sta-
tions.
Speck explained how the band came
to sign with RCA soon after in a phone
interview with The Michigan Daily.
"With all the airplay that we got,"
Speck said, "people started to try and
contact us. We settled with what we
thought was the best and most oppor-
tune label for what we wanted to do."
Now one of several hot new Detroit
bands to be signed to a national label in
the last year, Hoarse seems to be in the
middle of Detroit's resurgence into the
music world. "Detroit's got a lot of
potential and it's just a matter of what's
the goal gonna be, you know," Speck
said. "I think the reason that Detroit's
got so many great bands is because no
one's reallytrying to do anything in par-
ticular - they're just doin' it."
If variety is the case for Detroit's
musical scene, the same cannot be said
about Detroit's, let's say, unique selec-
tion of radio stations. Anyone who
knows Detroit radio knows Ozzy, Kiss,
Ted Nugent, hair rock and Bush rule.
Speck commented on the general
time warp Detroit seems to be in when

.1
t$)f

it comes to music. "You know what
funny? I've had a couple people come
in from out of town and they listened to
the radio here in Detroit, and they were
amazed and happy," Speck said. "Like
'Oh my God! I haven't heard this song
in forever."
Hoarse decidedly is not one of those,
bands that gets Detroit airplay. They
blend intelligent
songwriting,'Ito-
E V I E W ries people calO
Hoarse relate to, and
quick, melodic
Saturday at 4 p.m. rock 'n' roll into a
645.6666 for tickets nice, clean little
package.
The band's
debut, "Happens Twice," is an emotion-
al and steady blast, with catchy hooks
and a clear, rock sound. Songs like the
tale of the girl who gets around,
"Tuesday Morning;" and the relation*
ship gone wrong, "Long Gone," are
straight rockers, while the more sub-.
dued "Issue" and "On Deck" show a
slower side of the band. Overall,
though, the band likes to keep it fast
and keep it loud.
It's hard to rise above and carve out a
place for yourself in a business so satu-
rated with imitators and blandness, but
Speck seems confident Hoarse can do
it, just like other Michigan bands like
The Verve Pipe, Sponge and the*
Suicide Machines.
The band has seen a steady fan base
grow and is just waiting to break
through.
"It seems like mostly kids get it in
Michigan pretty good and like in the
Midwest and this' area," Speck
explained. "It'd be great if we could get
out on the West Coast and hopefully
turn some people on that way and dam
some more East Coast stuff.
"I would never want to compare us to
other bands and say we're better than
any other band," Speck said. "We really,
really enjoy what we do and its all about
volume and energy and melody."
"It's rock 'n' roll. We're fuckin'
hyper, but yeah, it's clean, well-played,
sped up rock 'n' roll."

t - _ - - - - - - - - -

The University of Michigan
School of Music

III

Monday, September 29 -
Faculty Recital: Margo Halsted, University Carillonist
* Confucian Ceremonial Music (Ming Dynasty version)
Burton Memorial Tower, 10 a.m. and S p.m.
Lurie Carillon (North Campus), 1 p.m.
Tuesday, September 30
University Symphony Orchestra
Kenneth Kiesler, conductor
* Music by Beethoven and Copland
Hill Auditorium, 8 p.m.
All events are free and wheelchair accessible
unless specified otherwise.

.--

Professional nail care
Airbrushing available -
Walk-Ins Welcome
Mon-Wed Full Set $25/Fill-Ins $13
Students $20/$12
Thurs-Sat Full Set $25/Fill-Ins $15
Students $22/$13
Manicure & Pedicure $30

TEL: (313)434-8953
Hours: Mon-Sat 9:30-7:30/Sun. Closed
Fountain Square Shopping Center (Next to Builders Square)

2878 Washtenaw Ave.
Ypsilanti, Ml 48197

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