ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 23, 1996 TAG: 9611250135
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: KENNETH SINGLETARY STAFF WRITER
How often is it that Roger Ebert, he of "Siskel and Ebert" fame, gives your video a personal thumbs up?
That's exactly what happened to a couple from Blacksburg who submitted a video response to Ebert's recent television review of "Romeo and Juliet," now playing in local cinemas.
Ebert chose Starflower and Miko O'Sullivan's 28-second response to be this week's "Viewer's Thumb" segment on his program. It will be shown at 11:30 a.m. Sunday on WDBJ, Channel 7.
Starflower "did a good job of expressing herself clearly and convincingly. Her submission was the best and most amusing submitted this week," Ebert wrote in an e-mail message received at the New River Current. The message arrived early Friday morning from New York, where Ebert is on a tour to promote his new book about movies.
Ebert panned "Romeo and Juliet" on a recent program, saying it was "a complete mess" and "pretty much a missed opportunity." (Gene Siskel gave the movie a thumbs up, saying it portrays "very real threats and very real options available to young lovers today.")
Ebert especially disagreed with staging the play's famous balcony scene with Romeo and Juliet treading water in a swimming pool in this version of Shakespeare's classic. The movie uses modern settings and costumes but sticks with the Bard's original dialogue.
But Starflower and Miko loved the pool scene, so they went to the Blacksburg Aquatic Center and recorded their response with a camera they borrowed from her parents. She floated at the edge of the pool in a bathing suit and T-shirt while he did the camera work. Friend Andy Hodges held the cue cards for the five-sentence response.
"I disagree with Roger's thumbs-down review of 'Romeo and Juliet.' This movie brings energy and passion to a well-known story. In particular, I disagree with Roger's distaste over the love scene taking place in a pool," she says in the video.
Then, taking a direct approach, Starflower talks directly to Ebert (he's the short guy on "Siskel and Ebert"): "Roger, the water gives the scene the floating visual quality of a dream, a nirvanic state, and symbolizes a rebirth into a new and pure state of love. The pool scene worked for me."
Ebert wrote that the couple's video was "a wonderfully creative idea," and "It was a lot of fun to watch," though, alas, "she has still not convinced me." Still, he predicted the video "will inspire other contributors to our 'Viewer's Thumb' segment to think of more creative approaches than just pointing their home video cameras at themselves."
Larry Dieckhaus, executive producer of the "Siskel and Ebert" show, said from Chicago that the Viewer's Thumb segment has been running for about seven weeks, receiving 25 or more submissions each week. The O'Sullivans' response was "intelligently spoken and ingeniously filmed."
The O'Sullivans are avid "Siskel and Ebert" watchers who knew they eventually would be moved to shoot a response as soon as they saw the program had started taking viewer submissions.
Shooting the video "was a huge project for 28 seconds," Miko said, requiring days to prepare the script and up to a dozen takes to get their response just right. They were a little disappointed with the sound quality, due to echoes at the indoor pool, and are hoping the program's producers will work some post-production magic to solve that problem for them. Indeed, they plan to record their segment Sunday in an effort to get a good copy.
Coincidentally, the O'Sullivans will celebrate their third anniversary Sunday. Starflower, 33, is a customer-service representative at Tech Bookstore on Main Street in Blacksburg. Miko, 29, is a database developer and website designer. They got to know each other in a Virginia Tech theatrical production and in a film class, in which he starred in a three-minute video she produced.
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON\Staff. Starflower and Miko O'Sullivan poseby CNBwith the video they shot for Siskel and Ebert's "Viewer's Thumb"
segment. color. KEYWORDS: 2DA