THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 23, 1994 TAG: 9407210084
SECTION: TELEVISION WEEK PAGE: 01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LARRY BONKO, TELEVISION COLUMNIST
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
THERE IS MUCH gray in his neatly trimmed beard. The hair on his head is all but gone, except for a patch of white here and there. Once upon a time, Frank Langella was the young, handsome, dashing leading man in ``Diary of a Mad Housewife.''
And was as dashing as Dracula has ever been on film in ``Love At First Bite.''
And now?
``Since I don't dash about as much as I used to, I now consider myself a walking leading man,'' Langella said, reflecting on his life as an actor.
Oh, there is still some of that dash in his performance in ``Doomsday Gun,'' the HBO original film that premieres Saturday night at 8 and will be seen again on Tuesday, July 31 and three times in August.
Meeting with TV reporters, Langella, a tall, almost gaunt man in his 50s, dressed all in black. He has eyes that can burn a hole in your soul. In the recent film ``Dave,'' Langella's career was reborn.
He's hot again.
HBO Pictures, a division of Home Box Office, has changed made-for-television movies from slow-moving network time-killers to first-class entertainment. Remember ``Barbarians at the Gate'' with James Garner? Wasn't that a hoot?
``Doomsday Gun'' is good TV, too, with Langella cast as Canadian Gerald Bull, who was hired by Iraq's Saddam Hussein to build a weapon that would help him defeat Iran in the 1980s. Hussein wanted a cannon that could fire a payload as large as a telephone booth 1,000 miles.
The building of this doomsday gun so obsessed Bull that he ignored warnings from the Israelis, among others, that he might be killed before he could finish.
``He had immortal yearnings,'' said Langella. ``Gerald Bull wanted to be forever remembered, to have a place in the world with the great weapon creators of all time. Gerry's mind was not on the fact that he was building something that, in fact, was going to destroy people and things. He never felt responsible for the results of what he built.''
You will see the gun - at least, Bull's first scaled-down version of the cannon to end all cannons - midway through the HBO film. The scene in which it is test-fired will knock your socks off. The 200-yard-long supergun that Hussein wanted so desperately was never built.
``The last two or three pieces of the barrel never made it to Iraq,'' said executive producer Michael Deakin. ``It was never completed. When the Iraq-Iran war ended, the United Nations forces went in there and cut the gun up.
``We've heard that the Iraqis have ordered parts from Russia to build another gun. They're very cheap to make - about $10 million. You can build six or seven of the guns for what it costs to build an airplane.''
The film alleges that both the British and U.S. were involved in the plan to provide this super weapon to Iraq. The Iraqis were once on our side, remember.
This is not a political film, however, but a film about one man's obsession to build something no other man has built. The finished gun would have dwarfed the Statue of Liberty.
It doesn't take long for director Robert Young to involve viewers in Bull's quest to build the gun. At that point, ``Doomsday Gun'' becomes a thriller and a suspense story. (Bull's story was told in the PBS ``Frontline'' series not long ago, but not with this much flair.)
Reflecting on his career, which is on the rise again, Langella said, ``Actors' lives are cyclical. You have good cycles and bad cycles. I have gone through a number of very bad ones since I was in my 20s, and now I am in a good cycle again. That's just the way it is when you are an actor.''
Elsewhere on the tube this weekend, A&E concerns itself with an even bigger story than the building of Iraq's doomsday gun. It is the sinking of the White Star liner Titanic in 1912 with 1,522 people aboard.
To retell this story the world never tires of hearing, A&E sets out a few facts you may have never heard before in ``Titanic: The Death of a Dream,'' which premieres Sunday at 8 p.m.
The interviews with survivors of the sinking are compelling - almost as compelling as the reasons the greatest ship of its age met up with that ice field in the North Atlantic. Excellent documentary.
Here in the California southland, where the Earth seems to shake beneath your feet almost every day of the week, the Television Critics Association 1994 awards will be presented Saturday night at 6 on the E! Entertainment network. Eight awards will be handed out.
Comic Ellen DeGeneres, who has a sitcom on ABC, is scheduled to appear. Brandon Tartikoff, former head of NBC programming and recently named chairman of New World Entertainment, will receive a career achievement award. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Alan Arkin, Frank Langella, Tony Goldwin and Kevin Spacey star in
``Doomsday Gun,'' which premieres Saturday night at 8 on HBO.
Photo
Frank Langella stars as a ballistics genius whose obsession with
building a ``supergun'' sparks international intrigue in ``Doomsday
Gun.'' by CNB