- The Michigan Daily - Friday, May 15, 1987 - Page 13
New sitcom explores Detroit
By Brian Bonet
Hamtramck seems like an
unlikely setting for a televised
situation comedy. You certainly
won't find the glitter of Hollywood
in this east side suburb of Detroit.
There are no bright lights, no
million dollar mansions, and no
film studios. Hamtramck is the
midwestern working class in action,
a community whose economic
status is dictated by the highs and
lows of the auto industry.
Life is slow and change is
infrequent.
But to Tom DeLisle,
Hamtramck means more than
General Motors and blue collar
workers. The community has
presented DeLisle with the ideal
scenario for his locally based
sitcom, Hamtramck.
"Just because of the look and
feel of the town we picked
Hamtramck over say, Sterling
Heights," said co-producer and
writer DeLisle, who grew up in
Detroit's east side. "For a while we
just called it generically, 'East
Side."'
Hamtramck possesses an aura of
permanency that attracted DeLisle.
"If the show is successful, one
of the future shows we want to do
would be a flashback to the fifties,
about growing up in Detroit in the
fifties," said DeLisle. "Hamtramck
still looks like it did in the fifties.
It's retained many of the same
businesses and things...which is
not true of other parts of the city,"
added DeLisle. "Like Sterling
Heights, I think just popped up in
1983. Everyone went to bed one
night in Warren and when they
woke up there was Sterling
Heights."
For four months, DeLisle and
company shot the sitcom on
location in Hamtramck. "We shot
all on location in Hamtramck, in
homes in Hamtramck, at
restaurants...Nothing here in the
studio," said DeLisle.
And for awhile, Hamtramck was
transformed into Hollywood. "They
(the people of Hamtramck) seemed
to really like it," DeLisle said,
"they got all excited."
Hamtramck was derived from a
selection of humor columns
DeLisle wrote forThe Detroit News
in 1985 about life in the City's
east side. Detroit television station
WDIV recognized the columns
potential to be adapted into
teleplays and Hamtramck was born.
A pilot of Hamtramck debuted
Thursday night. The show was aired
only in Detroit and is distinctly for
those who are familiar with the
Detroit area, according to DeLisle.
"It is a vehicle by which we use
local people and do local jokes in a
sitcom setting which has never
been attempted before," DeLisle
explained. "Its meant only for the
city. There's no other market for it.
Its all local jokes and references."
Hamtramck's local line up in-
cludes Detroit radio personalities
Tom Ryan and Peter Carey, Tiger
manager Sparky Anderson, and
former Tiger Pitcher Dave Rozema.
So what can a viewer expect
from Hamtramck? "Hopefully
you'll smile," said DeLisle. "You
might even laugh."
Exhibits welcome break
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By Cathy Jolliffe
Spring term- a time to hang out
on the Diag, scoping out
undulating collegiate bodies and
observing the passage of the
seasons. If you find yourself tiring
of this annual tradition, the
Museum of Art is currently offering
two exhibitions that fulfill this
need, while sparing you the hazards
of overexposure to the sun and
harassment from skateboarders.
The first exhibition, The Modern
Figure in Motion, was assembled
by Angela Adams, an MFA
candidate. The collection, a study of
moving bodies, encorporates
various media, ranging from the
scientific, photographic studies of
Muybridge to the lithographs of
Toulouse-Lautrec, all conveying the
range of artistic approaches to this
modern theme.
Especially intriguing are the ten
drawings by Abraham Walkowitz of
Isadora Duncan, a small portion of
the estimated five thousand studies
he produced of her dances
throughout his career. Walkowitz's
work takes on a cinematic aspect
when viewing the Duncan sketches
as an ensemble. Since Duncan did
not permit her dances to be recorded
on film, Walkowitz's sketches
provide the most accurate record
availabe of Duncan's dance
movements.
Mino Rosso's bronze sculpture
is also noteworthy in that a sense
of both plasticity and motion is
conveyed through his use of
shadow, while the evocation of
forward motion is accomplished
through smooth curves.
The second exhibition, From
Seed - time to Harvest, was
assembled by a group of ten to
twelve University students. It
encorporates many diverse cultures
over a period ranging from the first
century A.D. to the present,
focusing upon the natural cycle of
production in each culture. Objects
for this exhibit were borrowed from
various University museums as
well as from Henry Ford Museum
and Greenfield Village in Dearborn.
The earliest objects on display
are ancient Egyptian wooden farm
implements, resembling modern
day tools. Etchings and color
lithographs from different countries
are used, as well as early nineteenth
century American pitchforks and
scythes. The great variety in
objects, ranging from a Japanese
workhat to an American
butterchurn, are all linked
thematically and esthetically.
The two exhibitions will run
through the end of May, and are
well worth a half an hour
investment on a sunny afternoon.
Art break tours, given by students
who organized the shows, are on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, from
12:10 to 12:30, while Sunday tours
run from 2:00 to 2:45. Surrender
your spot on that Diag bench, wipe
the zinc oxide off your nose, and
absorb some culture along with the
spring rays.
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'Girls' a low budget success
I
I
By Seth Flicker
Lizzie Bordon provides more
proof that small (almost nothing)
budgets can go a long, long way.
Her new film Working Girls,
depicting one day in a brothel, is a
small, slightly rough, gem with
more shine, beauty and subtlety
than most bigger jewels.
Ninety-five percent of Working
Girls takes place in a beautiful,
clean, window-less loft which
serves as a landing strip for part-
time prostitutes and their clients.
However, these are not the
prostitutes that we see on trashy
TV movies. The "girls" are merely
women "buying time"; making just
as much money in two days of
prostituting as they would in a
nine-to-five full time job.
Most of them need this bought
time to achieve other goals such as
Molly (Louise Smith), a Yale
graduate who, it seems, someday
wants to become a photogragher.
She has only been working at the
brothel for two months but already
has a stream of "regulars" who
seem to need her intelligence and
sensitivity as much as her body.
Dawn (Amanda Goodwin), a 20-
year-old college student, April
(Janne Peters), a 43-year-old
prostitute who is getting a little old
for her job, Mary (Helen Nicholas),
who answered an ad in The Voice
advertising jobs for "hostesses, and
Gina (Marusia Zach), a brothel
veteran, make up the other workers.
Lucy (Ellen Mc Elduff) is the
yuppie madam who answer greets
all the clients with, "So, what's
new and different?" Except for a few
awkward scenes, the cast is all
together excellent.
Made at less than $300,000,
Working Girls packs it in. The
characterizations and camera work
are so well detailed that it is hard to
get bored. Good things do come is
small packages.
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ALL GORTEX
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