Entertainment news for August 9, 1991
Video
The Beatles' First U.S. Visit will be released this fall by
MPI Home Video. The 86-minute production includes the group's entire
first Ed Sullivan Show appearance on Feb. 9, 1964; clips from
Sullivan appearances on Feb. 16 and Feb. 23; and highlights from
their first U.S. concert, at Washington's Coliseum, on Feb. 11. Also
on the tape: offstage footage culled from 10 hours of film shot by
David and Albert Maysles (Gimme Shelter). Initially, the video will
carry a stiff purchase price and aim primarily for
the rental market. Waleed Ali, MPI's chief executive officer, says
MPI will later lower the price, though probably not for at least a
year.
Music
The latest jab in the slugfest between ex-N.W.A rapper Ice
Cube and his former group, now helmed by rival Eazy-E, occurs in a
scene from John Singleton's Boyz N the Hood: A crackhead wearing a
T-shirt bearing E's tag gets a beating from Cube and his posse for
snatching a chain. The shirt potshot idea didn't come from Cube,
swear Singleton's people. It came from the Boyz wardrobe department.
And it was ''definitely a joke.''
Movies
A screen remake of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men,
coming soon from MGM-Pathé, will feature old Steppenwolf Theatre
Company pals John Malkovich as slow-witted Lenny and Gary Sinise as
best friend George (Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr. starred in
the 1939 original). Sinise, who directed the Richard Gere movie Miles
From Home in 1988, will also direct the Horton Foote (Tender Mercies)
screenplay.
''I can't cast by simply watching someone's movies,'' says writer-director Paul Mazursky. So, for the role of Danny Aiello's French girlfriend in The Pickle, Mazursky went to France last month for four days of interviews. César winner Clotilde Courau (Le Petit Criminal) got the job; filming begins in September. The tale about a director in an artistic quandary also features Dyan Cannon as Aiello's ex-wife, Shelley Winters as his mother, Jerry Stiller as an agent, and Barry Miller as the studio chief.
TV
NBC scored two of its biggest hits in recent years with
miniseries based on Joe McGinniss' true-crime best-sellers Fatal
Vision and Blind Faith, so the network wasted no time in securing
rights to McGinniss' newest nonfiction book. Cruel Doubt, his account
of a North Carolina housewife who comes to believe that her Dungeons
& Dragons-obsessed son killed her husband, will reach bookstores in
October and TV screens as a four-hour miniseries this season.
Written by: Barry Gutman, Diane Cardwell, Pat Broeske, Leonard Klady, Mark Harris
