THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 13, 1995 TAG: 9507130011
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 114 lines
GETTING AN Indian into a cupboard, and calling it a ``magical adventure,'' is no easy task.
It took millions of dollars plus a unique creative team to bring ``The Indian in the Cupboard,'' which opens Friday, to the screen. The script is by the same woman who wrote ``E.T.'' The director is the man who created Miss Piggy. The first Native American rap artist plays the title role.
Lynne Reid Banks' 1989 book sold 5 million copies and won the Virginia Young Reader's Award. In it, a 9-year-old boy gets a magic cupboard for his birthday, only he doesn't know it's magic until he puts a toy Indian in it and watches it come to life. Little Bear, a member of the Onondaga nation, is time-set in 1761, when his people are in danger of annihilation.
Also coming to life is a cowboy from the 1870s - when the modern world is threatening to eliminate the Old West.
There are all kinds of possibilities here for dealing with historical perceptions and prejudices. Reversing the size of child and adult - the toys remain toy-size - also raises questions of values. It's all tricky.
Litefoot, who plays Little Bear, just might become the first Native American film idol, even though it is his first movie. He was in Rome performing in a Native American arts festival when the filmmakers reached him. ``Seein' Red'' is his current album.
``We all have a responsibility to remember who we are, but the Native American has more than most,'' said Litefoot, who is really 26-year-old Gary Davis, a Cherokee from Tennessee. ``This movie will do much to do away with the stereotypes.
``Even today, people think all Indians ride horses, wear headdresses and live in teepees. I grew up being called `Chief.' I was never a chief.''
He also grew up listening to the Jackson 5, the Temptations and the Spinners but started creating his own music after graduating from Tulane University, where he played football. His sister, a recording artist, asked him to write a rap on one of her songs.
``I've been on the road for over two years,'' he said. ``The goal was not just to sing but to preserve Native American traditions. I was just a football player in college. I never said `jack' about any causes. It's just when I began rapping that I realized a message could, and should, be delivered.''
Meeting that kind of challenge helped him in his first movie. Litefoot had to play scenes opposite young Hal Scardino through most of the film, although they were not in the same place at the same time.
``I had to learn to talk to a blank space,'' he said, ``but it could be done.''
You won't hear any of his music - he calls it tribal funk - in the film. In fact, Litefoot seems to think of acting as a part-time venture.
The Indian in the Cupboard'' was produced by Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy, the same high-profile, husband-and-wife team behind ``Jurassic Park,'' ``E.T.,'' ``Raiders of the Lost Ark'' and ``Who Framed Roger Rabbit.''
While both said they are in favor of family movies, they didn't produce ``Indian in the Cupboard'' just to do good deeds.
``This is a book that's been read by a lot of kids,'' Kennedy said. ``It's one of those books the parents don't know about but the kids do. On the other hand, we think the film will be liked by adults, too. It deals with adjusting to varied cultures and that's something adults need to do. Most of all, we think it's enjoyable.''
She and Marshall are used to getting results. Kennedy is having the last laugh on those who said ``The Bridges of Madison County'' would falter at the box office. Marshall is happily counting the returns for ``Congo,'' which he directed and critics hated, but evolved as a surprise hit.
``The Indian in the Cupboard,'' Kennedy said, will fill a void in the market, particularly in the third week after the release of ``Pocahontas.''
As for Disney's latest hit, ``they were going to catch criticism no matter what they did,'' Kennedy said. ``The problem was that they were dealing with a real-life, historical person. Our Native American is fictional, yet we've gone to every extreme to represent his life as accurate.''
Director Frank Oz takes a different view. ``I don't give a hoot about political correctness,'' he said. ``I'm out to tell a story. I'm dealing with emotions, not with PC.''
``We've gone through a revisionist period in which all Indians were pictured as noble mystics,'' he said. ``Before that, they were pictured as mindless savages. Both are racist opinions.''
Oz, the man behind Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and other Muppets, said he was reluctant about directing the new movie. ``I don't make children's movies,'' he said. ``I told the producers that `if this is going to be a children's movie, I want no part of it.'
``I don't even know what a kid's movie is. Usually, it's a movie in which people of certain ages are not respected. When I was a kid, I didn't know how I felt as a kid. I just knew how I felt. It's the same now.''
The script was penned by Melissa Mathison, wife of actor Harrison Ford. She also wrote ``E.T.,'' a fantasy with heart that still ranks among the top money-making movies in history.
``I understand children,'' she said. ``I have children of my own now, but when I wrote `E.T.,' I didn't. But I was a baby sitter since I was 12, and I learned about dealing with children through that. In movies, I'm sick of dumb parents and wise children, all those movies about how `the little child shall lead us.' This isn't one of those.''
``The Indian in the Cupboard,'' Mathison added, may be a success ``because the fantasy has to do with a world that possibly no longer exits, but we wish it did.
``It was a world in which we, as children, could walk down main street and be gone for two hours and mom wouldn't worry about where we were. Times change and so do the movies. You can't really blame just the movies.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
PARAMOUNT PICTIRES
Native American rapper Litefoot stars as Little Bear in the new
fantasy-adventure ``The Indian in the Cupboard.''
Photo
PARAMOUNT PICTURES
A ``magical adventure'' starts when a toy Indian comes to life in
``The Indian in the Cupboard.''
by CNB