THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 18, 1996 TAG: 9601180033
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 130 lines
ILLITERACY, DRUGS, violence. The ills of America's education system have become routine news. But is there a flip side? Do some students - eager and uncorrupted - find inspiration in the teacher, society's real hero?
``Mr. Holland's Opus'' offers more than hope. While Hollywood is often chided for dwelling on life's underbelly, the accusation doesn't apply this time. The new film, opening Friday, celebrates the American teacher.
Even more unlikely than the source, is the actor chosen to follow in the footsteps of other beloved movie teachers (see story, Page E3).
Richard Dreyfuss, on film and in life, is often thought of as brash, smart-alecky and intellectually overbearing. The same characters that were so appealing early in his career grew tiresome. Ten years ago, Esquire ran a cover story calling him ``out of control.''
Yet, here he is, playing Glenn Holland, a man who initially fancies himself a musician and composer. He never intended to be a teacher, much less a high-school band instructor.
``I took the part in `Mr. Holland's Opus' because no one had ever asked me to play `a life' before,'' Dreyfuss said, sitting for an interview in a New York hotel suite. ``I get to age through 30 years. The idea really challenged me.''
The story begins in 1965. Over the next three decades, Holland's definition of success changes. He's poor; he has marital woes; his beloved son is born deaf, unable to share his father's love for music. He has to squeeze in time to compose between classes and teachers' meetings.
In the end, he comes to realize, as does a deftly manipulated audience, that his legacy will be greater than he had planned. Mr. Holland's students have gone out into the world and left him, but not his ideas.
Dreyfuss' on-again, off-again career reached a low point in 1982 when he was charged with driving under the influence of drugs after crashing into a tree in Hollywood. He admitted to drug and alcohol addiction. Last year, he divorced his wife of 12 years.
Not since 1977, when he won the Academy Award for ``The Goodbye Girl,'' has anyone been likely to list him as a candidate for another Oscar. ``Mr. Holland's Opus'' has generated considerable talk.
``I'm still here, that's the important thing,'' Dreyfuss said. ``I've mellowed; at least, I hope I've mellowed. In interviews, I was as much a provocateur as I could be. I loved to make trouble for journalists. I don't do that anymore. I don't have to do it.''
Today, his career is varied. He appeared on Broadway in ``Death and the Maiden,'' he produced ``Quiz Show'' and the HBO drama ``Nixon and Kissinger'' and directed a recent production of ``Hamlet'' in England.
``Mr. Holland's Opus'' presented other challenges. Prematurely gray since his 20s, Dreyfuss merely had his hair dyed to play the younger man. ``For the older scenes, going up to age 60, I needed very little makeup,'' he said. ``I didn't want it to be a prostetics show. I wanted to act the age.''
Technical advisers had to give him crash courses in conducting an orchestra, playing the piano and sign language.
``The most difficult aspect was the piano,'' said Dreyfuss, 48. ``The hands have to be just right. You can cheat, a little, with the conducting. The most fun was the scene in which I lead a pretty awkward marching band. It's the kind of scene in which everyone can overact.''
Born in Brooklyn and raised in Beverly Hills, Dreyfuss said he knew he wanted to be an actor almost from the start.
``I decided at age 9, but I was reinforced at age 13 when a teacher told me I had talent,'' he said. ``I can't say she really motivated me because I already knew. I knew I had talent. I went to the Jewish community theater and got in plays there. Then I went for the movies.''
A year after playing Baby Face Nelson in ``Dillinger'' (1973), he received critical acclaim for ``The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,'' the first of several feisty, aggressive-boy roles.
``American Graffiti,'' directed by George Lucas, made him a star - and led to a unique partnership with Steven Spielberg, who put him in the mega-hits ``Jaws'' and ``Close Encounters of the Third Kind.''
``Yes, I knew there was something special about Steven from the first,'' Dreyfuss said. ``He was already being called a boy wonder when he made `Jaws,' but I couldn't believe anybody could pull that movie together. The filming of it was all over the place. When I saw it, I forgot that I was even in it. It was like seeing a new movie I'd never seen.''
His best-actor Oscar for ``The Goodbye Girl,'' a romantic comedy in which he played a struggling actor in a decidedly offbeat version of ``Richard III,'' was a surprise. He was the youngest actor in history to win the award.
A slump eventually left him all but out of movies for a while. He made a brief comeback in ``Down and Out in Beverly Hills.'' ``Moon Over Parador'' was one of the last times he was asked to carry a comedy.
But Dreyfuss denied that he's an unlikely choice to play Mr. Holland; to the contrary, he said, the role is entirely appropriate.
``If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a teacher, a history teacher,'' he said. ``After all, teaching is very much like performing. A teacher is an actor, in a way. It takes a great deal to get, and hold, a class. I thought that, perhaps, when I'm in my 50s, I'll be a history teacher. That still might happen.''
Dreyfuss has even co-written a book that looks at what America would be like today if there hadn't been a Revolutionary War. ``The Two Georges'' will be in bookstores soon.
``I am of the opinion that we might have been better off,'' he said. ``We would probably be more graceful, quieter and, of course, more Anglicized. There would be less anxiety, and there might have remained an Indian nation, or a nation of what we call Native Americans today. The Westward expansion would have been slowed.''
Besides reading history books, Dreyfuss devotes most of his nonworking time to his three children, ages 12, 9 and 5. ``I still think the divorce was a tragic thing and that this means I need to spend even more time with them.
``I feel a little guilty because I took them out of the public school system last year because I thought it was so badly lagging behind,'' he said. ``I realize that people like me are one of the problems.
``We all need to fight for the public school system. We all need to fight for our theaters, but I'll fight while my children are in private schools, for the time being. I feel I have to be fair to them.''
He added that he hopes ``Mr. Holland's Opus'' makes a difference, ``not because I think the schools have to teach my son to be an actor or teach my daughter to play the clarinet. That's not the main point. The point is that everyone, every child, needs some background in the arts. Only through that can they be well rounded enough to live a full life and to even begin to understand what Western civilization is all about.''
At the end of the film, Mr. Holland, now retired, unveils the symphony he'd been delaying all these years. Dreyfuss has an idea of his own opus.
``The one thing I hope for is that I'll end up with a varied body of work,'' he said. ``So far, I think I'm approaching it. But a lifetime is something you don't quit on. As someone said, life is something that happens while you're making other plans.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Hollywood Pictures.
Richard Dreyfuss shares his love of music with his students,
including the timid but talented Gertrude (Alicia Witt), in "Mr.
Holland's Opus."
by CNB