Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 28, 1992 TAG: 9202280157
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Chris Gladden
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
DIRECTORS SHOW THEIR AUDACITY
To film the unfilmable seems to be the mandate these days for directors David Cronenberg and Steven Soderbergh.Both have tackled literary material that seems to defy translation to the screen.
Cronenberg - the director responsible for "Scanners," "The Fly" and "Dead Ringers" - is bringing "Naked Lunch" our way. It opens today at the Grandin.
William Burroughs' underground, drug-drenched classic has enjoyed a devoted cult following but has eluded filmmakers until now. In filming it, Cronenberg shows an admirable audacity.
So does Soderbergh. He became a hot director on the heels of the low-budget "sex, lies and videotape." But instead of following it with something overtly commercial, Soderbergh picked Franz Kafka as the subject for his next film, logically titled "Kafka." Like Burroughs, Kafka had a fondness for bugs in his fiction.
Apparently Cronenberg and Soderbergh are focusing more on the writers than on their works, but neither movie is a screen biography. Rather, the writers emerge as characters in material that largely is shaped by the directors. The result, in both cases, should be interesting.
The sounds of hammers, saws and truck engines are interrupting the quiet air of the George Washington National Forest in Bath County.
Work on the set of "Sommersby," the antebellum movie starring Richard Gere and Jodie Foster, is in full swing.
Store buildings are framed up, haystacks are being put together, and the crew is looking for, among other things, a church bell for a church that will be built. All this is taking place around Warwickton, the mansion that will be at the movie's center. Meanwhile, down the road at Hot Springs, production offices have been installed deep in the interior of the Homestead.
An environmental group has asked the National Forest to stop the production, but forest officials have refused.
If the people I talked to in Bath County over the weekend are representative, residents are glad that the project is going ahead. The largest industry in the area is the mountain resort, the Homestead. While skiers flock there on weekends to take advantage of special packages, the posh resort gets kind of lonely during the week in the off-season.
Bath County residents are looking forward to the kind of economic boost a location shoot brings to an area. It has been estimated that this production will spend $10 million locally.