Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 30, 1994 TAG: 9403290067
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Mike Mayo CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
No doubt, it began with his character Opie on the long- running "Andy Griffith Show," and then Richie Cunningham on "Happy Days." Add in his contribution to George Lucas's "American Graffiti" and you've got a contemporary Tom Sawyer, an aw-shucks All-American boy.
In the 1970s, Howard moved behind the camera, directing "Grand Theft Auto" and the made-for-TV sleeper "Cotton Candy" before he struck box-office gold with such hits as "Night Shift," "Splash" and "Cocoon."
These days, Howard has been making the rounds on a publicity tour for his newest film, "The Paper," which opened in Roanoke last week.
His last stop was in Washington. In person, there's little to contradict that popular image. His familiar voice and enthusiasm may seem boyish, but a receding hairline belies the youthful image. He still comes across as a nice guy - not flashy but solid and thoroughly knowledgeable about his craft. He doesn't even sound like he's name dropping when he talks about having dinner with George Lucas and Akira Kurosawa.
"The Paper" is a terrific, complicated comedy-drama about 24 hours in the life of a New York tabloid. Howard said that he'd been interested in doing a newspaper story for some time. When he learned that writer Dave Koepp ("Jurassic Park," "Carlito's Way") was working on one, he asked to be the first to see it. Then he read the script, liked it and decided to make the movie. Not many people in Hollywood can do that.
Of course, he wanted to make some changes too. Glenn Close's role, for example, was written as a man. But Howard "thought it would be interesting and better if we tried changing the gender. It made some people at the studio a little nervous but my feeling, my theory was that while you didn't really need heavies or villains in the movie, you did want a good adversarial relationship between the Michael Keaton character and the managing editor."
The rest of the ensemble cast is just as impressive. Marisa Tomei plays a reporter who's unsure whether she's made the right choice in putting her career on hold to have a baby. Randy Quaid is a columnist whose recent series may have gone too far. Jason Robards Jr. shows up briefly as the publisher. Robert Duvall is the boss who keeps his feuding editors from tearing each other apart.
To prepare for the film, Howard went to New York and spent time with writers and editors at the tabloids. "I wound up doing more research than I really needed to do," he said, "because I found the environment so tantalizing and exciting."
On his first day hanging around with Pete Hammill at The New York Post, he heard the facetious line of dialogue that shows up in the movie, "You're accurate, you're ethical and I want you out of the building." He also found out that the tabloids are essentially local papers that don't care much about the world beyond New York. More importantly for the film, he "sensed a kind of legitimate passion and enthusiasm that I didn't really expect. As well as a kind of overworked, exasperated quality.
"I saw in that environment the bursts of energy and movement that were pretty cinematic - a columnist literally running across the newsroom with a cigarette dangling from his lips, holding out some paper and trying to balance a cup of coffee and saying `you've only got three minutes.' "
The importance of time is central to the film, and Howard underlines it with some interesting visual tricks, cutting between some scenes through the interior of an old-fashioned mechanical clock.
The inspiration for the device came when he and George Lucas were promoting their film "Willow" in Japan where they met the legendary director of "The Seven Samurai." "Kurosawa said that one of the most overlooked, powerful and artful cinematic techniques is the careful use of transitions. He felt that the real power in the story was in those cuts from one scene to another - if I was getting this right from the interpreter - almost more important than the body of the scene. I felt that with this movie there was a chance, without being too obnoxious, to do some interesting transitions."
Those tricks are effective, but the main attraction of "The Paper" is the strong, funny performance by star Michael Keaton.
He and and Howard have worked together several times since Keaton made his screen debut in "Night Shift." As Howard sees it, simple relaxation is the key to their successful collaboration.
"When the `Night Shift' dailies were first coming in, he was erratic, all over the place and it looked like the studio was interested in replacing him. I thought they were wrong, that he was doing some great work. So I edited a couple of scenes to show that when you took three lines from this take and four from the other, you had a pretty amazing performance. I trusted that and was patient enough to wait through the erratic bits. He has fewer of those now, he's much more consistent. He can also do the script beautifully never changing a word. I can see when there's a little spark going off. When that happens I make sure the camera's rolling to catch it."
It's the director's job to capture those "inspired moments" and Howard has done so well that he is one of the few filmmakers who can get a project started on his name alone. "They've got some statistics on the last few movies that indicate that people go to the movie and list the fact that I directed it as one of the reasons they wanted to go.
"But," he shrugs, "in the business there may be actors who say `I don't think I'd ever want to work with him,' but I don't feel that. Making movies is hard, and people feel they can do good work in an environment that's not fraught with neuroses and unneeded intensity . . . so the nice guy thing is an easy label and it's OK by me.
"I just turned 40 and I'm so much farther along than I thought I might be when I first started out. This is my tenth feature. I wouldn't call them all hits but I haven't lost money for anybody."
In the movie business, that's a remarkable track record, nice guy or not.
by CNB