News & Notes

The Singing Director Maybe it's the popularity of music video that's done it, but many of today's pop stars are just dying to cross over into movies. Few, however, are taking as big a leap as John Mellencamp. The 38-year-old singer-songwriter has decided to make both his acting and directing debut with Souvenirs, now in production and scheduled for release next year. In the drama Mellencamp plays — surprise! — a famous vocalist who returns home to rural Indiana to celebrate his grandfather's 84th birthday. With Mellencamp's actual hometown of Seymour, Ind. (pop. 13,600), serving as the movie's setting, the only stretch the budding film star will have to make is pretending that costar Mariel Hemingway is his wife.

He's Gotta Sell It
When fans kept hounding the offices of Mo' Better Blues director Spike Lee with requests for T-shirts, posters, buttons, and other paraphernalia associated with his movies, the 34-year-old filmmaker decided to do the bright thing. Spike's Joint, a slick 1,700-square-foot space done up with polished wood floors and neon lighting, opened recently in Lee's own Brooklyn neighborhood. Merchandise, which is also available through mail-order, includes T-shirts from each of his movies, as well as posters, key chains, postcards, caps, published screenplays, and production diaries. Black cardigan sweaters and jackets featuring Lee's Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks logo are the top-of-the-line items. Business has been brisk, says Lee's executive assistant, Susan Fowler, who notes that ''People are discovering this part of Brooklyn. We get a lot of tourists and people from Manhattan calling up for directions, saying they don't usually do Brooklyn.'' So why is Spike branching out into retailing? ''To make money,'' said the straightforward Lee at a recent press conference publicizing the store's opening. ''I think we're making a very important statement that we black people have to start building and owning our own businesses.''

In Your Face
What is it about actor Kiefer Sutherland that makes people want to smack him around? Sutherland is currently starring in three movies, and in each one he is somehow brutalized. In Flatliners, a very angry visitor from his past uses a hockey stick and a crowbar to right childhood wrong; in Young Guns 2 he's dragged off to jail by a pack of horses, dumped in a trench, and eventually shot and killed; and in Chicago Joe and the Showgirl he's battered by a woman he's trying to kill. On the bright side, Sutherland is engaged to Pretty Woman Julia Roberts.

Shooting Hoops
This summer it's been tougher than usual to get a basketball court at Cabrini Green, a housing project on Chicago's North Side. Since July the neighborhood's roundball regulars have had to make room for the production crew of Heaven Is a Playground, a film adapted from Rick Telander's acclaimed 1976 study of New York's hoop scene. The movie's starting lineup includes former UCLA all-American and Hill Street Blues regular Michael Warrchael Warrself-proclaimed coach of the park; D.B. Sweeney (Eight Men Out) as a lawyer who helps him; and Richard Jordan (The Hunt for Red October) as a scouting agent. Making his movie debut is the L.A. Clippers' first-round draft choice, Bo Kimble, the Loyola-Marymount University star who turned in a sensational performance in last season's NCAA tournament. Rookie writer- director Randall Fried hopes to score big when the film is released next spring.