Musical brings comedy, drama to Lied
By Paula Lavigne
Senior Reporter
teamy bedroom vixens,
m ^ sleuthing private eyes,
evil villains, valiant he
roes, jiving jazz and Hol
lywood dreams pack the
A W action backdrop of the
1940s in the musical com
edy “City of Angels,” com
ing to the Lied Center this weekend.
Stuck somewhere between the
black-and-white fantasy of the silver
screen and the colorful reality of life,
Stine, a young novelist, falls into the
trap of producer/director Buddy
Fidler. Fidler, carving out^ place for
his own ego, coerces Stine to compro
mise the substance of his script.
Stine, blinded by the Hollywood
glare, buckles down and gives in,
while living his parallel life through
Stone, his fictitious character with a
big heart and a strong will.
Stine, played by actor Randy Lake,
is basically a man who loses himself
to stardom.
“He’s a good guy, even though he
doesn’t come off as a good guy in the
show,” Lake said. “He just screws up.
He ends up selling himself short.”
Lake, who is used to playing the
good guy, said he was having fun por
traying a character undergoing some
torrential emotional battles.
Lake said Stine’s problem lay in
compromising his values for this
glossy, overblown image of success.
“Stine’s a very successful novelist
who wouldn’t normally aim for such
lofty goals,” he said. “Hollywood ap
proached him, he fell into it and be
came, basically, a patsy.”
He sold out “big time,” Lake said.
Stuck with his head in the stars, Stine
starts living his life through his char
acter, Stone.
“Stone is the idealized hero. He has
a heart of gold, even if he does shady
things,” Lake said. “That’s the way
Stine is true to his character, even if
in real life he’s selling out.”
On a more symbolic level, Lake
said Stine’s situation could represent
that of anyone involved with the cre
ative process.
“People imbibe creations with the
characteristics they themselves don’t
possess but want to attain,” he said.
Lake, who has been an actor all his
life, said he just started trying his own
hand at the writing process. Unlike
Stine, however, Lake said he was
“pretty bullheaded” and wouldn’t be
willing to compromise his own script.
“I can relate to a line that his
(Stine’s) wife says to him in his first
scene, ‘When are you going to start
liking yourself a little more when
people can start liking you a little
less,”’ Lake said. “You have to stop
trying to be everybody’s best friend,
juggling all the balls at once.”
Being true to yourself, Lake said,
is the deeper message under all the
shotgun action and sexual fiascoes.
“Don’t give into the fame and for
tune of the bright lights,” he said. “Be
true to the people that are true to you.”
“City of Angels,” with its soul
searching philosophy, still remains
true to its musically comic base, Lake
said.
“City of Angels” will be at the Lied
Center at 8 p.m. tonight and at 2 p.m.
and 8 p.m. Saturday. Regular tickets
are $34, $30 and $26; student tickets
are half-price.
'Raiders of the Lost Ark' to invade Star Ship 9
By Gerry Beltz
T
he year was 1981. Ronald Reagan
was president; “Dallas” was one
of the top television shows. Songs
like “The Tide is High” by Blondie
and “Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Spring
field were at the top of Billboard’s charts.
1981 was also the year that an action-adven
ture film entitled “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was
released. It would go on to remain one of the
top 10 money-making films of all time, and had
two successful sequels.
“Raiders of the Lost Ark” is being shown in
celebration of the second anniversary of the Star
Ship 9 movie-theater at 1311 Q St. this week
end.
Star Ship 9 manager Byron Bonsall said there
was more to choosing this movie than just its
previous success.
‘“Raiders of the Lost Ark’ was the movie that
got me interested in this business,” Bonsall said.
“I saw it when I was in high school and said,
I’m going to get into this business somehow.
“It’s my favorite movie of all time. I saw this
movie about 25 times in the theater, and I’ve
gone through a couple of videocassettes of it,
too. Harrison Ford is getting paid to do the stuff
that we all loved to do when we were kids: play
the good guy, shoot the bad guy. He had a whip;
it was so cool!” - —
Bonsall also admitted to
some personal favoritism
toward “Raiders of the
Lost Ark.”
tism
the
“Harrison Ford is my favorite actor of all
time,” Bonsall said. “I don’t care about an au
tograph; I just want to shake his hand, that’s it.
I wouldn’t sell my soul to meet Harrison Ford,
but I’d come pretty damn close.”
Bonsall did note, however, that “Raiders of
the Lost Ark” was not his First choice for the
second-anniversary celebration.
Originally, Bonsall had lined up the 1977
mega-hit “Star Wars” for Star Ship’s birthday,
and he had been promoting it since Thanksgiv
ing. But it was pulled by Lucasfilms, 20th Cen
tury Fox and specifically, George Lucas. How
ever, Bonsall said that he wasn’t
too upset about the decision.
L“When George Lucas tells
me 1 can’t have his film,
who am 1 to argue with a
film god?” Bonsall said.
Bonsall said that “Raiders” was something
he had planned to play next year.
Bonsall said he was expecting the same di
verse audience that he got with “Monty Python
and the Holy Grail,” which he showed for the
Star Ship 9’s anniversary celebration last year.
“Last year, college-age people made a big
majority of my crowd, but I had a little bit of
everybody in there.” Bonsall said.
“I know a 50-year-old couple who were very
intent on seeing ‘Star Wars,’ and then when
they found out that we were getting ‘Raiders of
the Lost Ark’ instead, they were really pleased.”
The box office opens at 1:45 p.m. Monday
through Friday and at 12:15 p.m. on Saturdays
and Sundays.
James MehsUng/DN