Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 17, 1995 TAG: 9510170080
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA LENGTH: Medium
The president is outraged. The archbishop calls it blasphemy. A local filmmaker has launched his own production, with official support, to set the record straight.
``Evita was a pioneering feminist, not the prostitute others would have you believe,'' said movie producer Victor Bo.
Bo's film, to be called ``Evita: The True Story,'' is backed by President Carlos Menem, who is a Peronist, and will feature a squeaky-voiced Argentine soap opera star, Andrea del Boca. Production is to begin in March.
While the Broadway musical ``Evita'' painted the second and most famous wife of dictator Juan Peron as a corrupt populist who slept her way to power, the Argentine production will promote her image as a champion of the masses.
To many Argentines, Eva Peron was nothing less than a saint.
They didn't take kindly to the Broadway musical, which was banned in Argentina. And for many of the former first lady's fervent admirers, casting Madonna in a film version of ``Evita'' only adds insult to injury.
``A total and utter disgrace,'' said President Menem. The Argentine version, he said, will be ``a film about the real Evita, not like one of those fakes people who know nothing about her life have been making.''
Antonio Quarraccino, archbishop of Buenos Aires, called Madonna ``pornographic and blasphemous - an insult to Argentine women.''
The Hollywood version of ``Evita,'' directed by Alan Parker, is set to go into production in January, and will be filmed mostly in Budapest, Hungary, a decision that producers said was based on budgetary and not political concerns.
In 1993, Menem granted American filmmaker Oliver Stone access to the presidential office to film his own version of ``Evita.'' The president changed his mind a week later after many Peronists protested. Stone later scrapped the project.
Few subjects split Argentines as passionately as Evita's controversial legacy.
Admirers still hang her portrait in their homes, and her name is evoked during political and union rallies. But detractors are inclined to agree with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who before his musical's 1979 opening said Evita was ``easily the most unpleasant character I've written about.''
by CNB