Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 2, 1994 TAG: 9405020010
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Tom Batiuk, creator and writer of "Funky Winkerbean," said he decided to take on the gun issue after a student in Batiuk's old junior high school was caught showing off a .32-caliber handgun in the school.
The incident spurred Batiuk to write the gun series, as well as take a public stance on gun control. Some guns, he said, should be banned, such as Saturday night specials, assault rifles and other weapons whose primary use is shooting people.
Not only was he shocked that the incident happened in his small suburban city of Medina, Ohio (pop. 10,000), but it also happened in the junior high school that inspires the comic strip's story line.
"It seemed time to deal with it," he said.
\ It wasn't easy being a Munchkin. The pay was worse than Toto's.
Now, the surviving little people from the "The Wizard of Oz" are getting even with their own home-video movie, "We're Off to See the Munchkins."
Eight of the actors, now in their 70s, gathered Saturday in Bay St. Louis, Miss., to watch highlights of the documentary by John J. Anderson, a local filmmaker. The movie will be released May 27.
Of 124 Munchkins, only 19 are alive, Betty Tanner, who played a Munchkin townswoman, said. Each was promised $100 a week when they made the Oz film 55 years ago. Many received only half that or less.
Toto, Dorothy's dog, got $125 a week.
The Munchkins got no residuals from the movie, which didn't become a big hit until it came to television in 1956.
\ The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra added some Hollywood glitter to its musical roster by hiring composer Marvin Hamlisch.
Hamlisch, who composed "The Way We Were" and music to more than 40 other movies, signed a two-year contract to serve as the group's pops conductor, starting with the 1994-95 season.
by CNB