DATE: Thursday, May 1, 1997                 TAG: 9705010047

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  114 lines

MAKING LAVA: STUDIO'S TASK NOT EASY

THERE'S MORE than one way to blow your top.

Director Mick Jackson, with an expense account nearing $100 million, an explosive star named Tommy Lee Jones, and a lot of lava are out to prove it. 20th Century Fox, the studio at risk, gambled it all on a roll of the dice that the public still loves that lava. After a mad race to the theaters that is a good deal more exciting than anything captured on screen, Fox agreed to blink and let its ``Volcano'' open after Universal's volcano flick ``Dante's Peak.''

The result, at long last, is in over 2,000 theaters nationwide with Fox's hope that potential ticketbuyers will take a look at the destruction of Los Angeles and ask ``How did they do that?'' rather than ``Why did they bother?''

Jackson, a Brit who admits he used to hate Los Angeles, seemed fairly calm and minus any heat rash when he and his harried cast gathered for the premiere of ``Volcano'' a few weeks ago - perkily forecasting eventual victory in their battle of the ash. ````We let them go first. We could have got our film out first, even though they had a two-month start on us,'' he declared, ``but we were't willing to cut corners. If they wanted to eliminate major special effects, just to get into the theaters first, that was OK with us.''

``Volcano'' details what happens when an earthquake triggers a volcanic eruption that burps through the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles. Jackson, with some degree of British tact, foregoes knocking ``Dante's Peak'' but he does take offense that its director made fun of ``Volcano's'' premise.

``They claimed they had an authentic volcano premise, in the northwest, while our idea was farfetched. We maintain that our idea is unlikely, but possible, and that's enough. Everyone likes to play games of `What if?' and Los Angeles is an advantage to us, not a disadvantage. It seems that everyone is a little envious of Los Angeles. Movie audiences around the world are going to get some perverse joy in seeing Hollywood wrecked. They think we have better sex, more money and more sunshine. A disaster serves us right.''

It was a year ago when it suddenly dawned upon Fox and Universal that they both had volcano movies in the planning. Some effort was made to combine the efforts into one huge volcano epic but neither studio liked the other's script, so the race was on. By cutting post-production to a minimum, ``Dante's Peak'' announced it was going to open three weeks prior to ``Volcano.'' Fox reacted by moving ``Volcano'' forward to April, and reportedly using the time to turn out a more complex show. To the dismay of Fox, ``Dante's'' became a hit, in spite of dismal reviews, to the tune of a $64 million gross - so far. Still ``Volcano'' claims it has more bang for the buck and, after all, it's the new volcano in town.

The lava itself was the real problem. Matt Beck, the visual effects supervisor for ``Volcano'' who worked on the first two years of TV's ``The X Files,'' admitted that there was something of a mild panic when the lava problem hadn't been solved eight weeks before shooting was to begin. Computer-generated lava didn't look real enough. Taking a look at ``Dante's Peak,'' it was ruled to be half-ashed.

``They emphasized the ash,'' Beck said. ``We wanted to feature the lava - glowing red, deadly, unstoppable. Our ash was fairly simple. It's made of shredded blotter paper - some 20 tons of it.''

Only after extensive trial, though, was it learned that methyl cellulose was the answer to the lava problem. That, to us, is the stuff that is used to thicken milk shakes. Hey, don't laugh. Did you know that jello was the main ingredient of the Red Sea when Cecil B. De Mille parted it for ``The Ten Commandments?'' And that was long before ``The Blob,'' which also owed a great deal to food additives.

Beck added fluorescent chemicals, lit the whole thing from below and let the goo flow.

The actors, who were notably perplexed about the whole thing, were told to react with horror, even though they never saw what it really looked like until the film was finished months later. Anne Heche, who is making a starring debut after stealing the dismal ``The Juror'' from Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin, admitted that ``it was truly daunting to think that if I fluffed a line, some 40,000 people had to go back and do the scene over. And, yes, it happened. Once. I go running in. A few thousand people are screaming. Sirens are going off. The world is coming to an end - and I forget the line. The director said, `Everyone back to zero. Anne fluffed the line.' That doesn't happen to an actress but once. Next time, she says SOMETHING, even if it isn't the right line.''

Heche, who is set next to star with Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro, wasn't talking about her otherwise public affair with Ellen DeGeneres, but she was talking about the fact that the usually irritable Tommy Lee Jones was a lamb on the set. ``I was singed in one scene because I got too close,'' she said. ``Tommy grabbed me and said, `Anne, honey, don't ever improvise with fire.' ''

Jones, who hates interviews and has been known to pointedly tell off reporters, was making a valiant effort to be a nice guy, even though someone dared to ask him about his college roommate days at Harvard with Vice President Al Gore and the fact that his role in ``Volcano'' was first offered to Bill Pullman from ``Independence Day.'' He isn't talking about either, but he does claim that he didn't sell out by taking the role. ``It was time to go back to work and I thought I could do something with the role,'' he said. He admits that a ``Fugitive'' sequel is in the works, although Harrison Ford is no longer the fugitive.

Don Cheadle, who plays the guy back in command central during the crisis, was lamenting a series of disappointments in his life. First, he was a little sad, although laughably, ``that I don't get near any of the lava. I see the movie and I'm envious of everyone else. I was back in the office.''

Secondly, he's still getting consolation from people who think he should have received an Oscar nomination for ``Devil in a Blue Dress.''

``Yes, I was up that morning and I heard them read the names, and then the telephone didn't ring. No one knew what to say.''

Thirdly, he isn't surprised that ``Rosewood'' sank at the box office. ``While we were making it, I kept thinking, `No one is going to want to see this. White audiences don't want to be seen as victimizers. Black audiences don't want to be seen as victims. If it was in Germany in another time, we can take it. But audiences can't take it happening in this country.''

The cast realizes, though, that human talk is too much of this world. Jones, keeping uncharacteristically calm, pointed out that ``Everyone knows who the star of `Volcano' is, and it isn't me. It's that stuff. But, after all, there was a lot of human activity. It's not for nothing that we had the biggest fire permit of any movie in history.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by 20TH CENTURY FOX

Lava oozes down a Los Angeles street in the movie ``Volcano.''

Methyl cellulose was used to thicken the goo. KEYWORDS: SPECIAL EFFECTS

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu