THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 7, 1996 TAG: 9602070034
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 154 lines
GUY TALK! If you believe pop culture's soothsayers, it's almost a lost art. Writers feverishly seeking best-sellers bellow about how men are from one planet and women from another.
``Lack of commitment'' is the catch phrase of the day.
On the other hand, the movies has been flooded with tales about women who whine, moan and fight back against men who either die or leave. ``Now and Then,'' ``How to Make an American Quilt'' and the current ``Waiting to Exhale'' expound the joys - and revenge - of girl bonding.
It's time the guys got their say, and they do in ``Beautiful Girls.'' Opening Friday, just in time to spice up Valentine's Day, it's a date flick with ``surprise hit'' written all over it.
Directed by Ted Demme (nephew of Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme), it has Matt Dillon, Timothy Hutton, Uma Thurman, Rosie O'Donnell, Lauren Holly, Mia Sorvino, Martha Plimpton, Natalie Portman, Michael Rapaport and Annabeth Gish playing characters looking for commitment - or running from it.
``It's the ultimate guy movie - without the usual Vietnam getting in the way,'' Demme said last week in New York, where the troops had assembled for a screening.
``It's the perfect date movie because it raises all these issues, but at the same time, it's not uncomfortable,'' added screenwriter Scott Rosenberg. ``Couples won't need to fight on the way home. It's not a yuppie movie. It's not a Generation X movie. It's a six-pack movie.''
Demme, who once churned out videos for MTV, said he took the project because ``I didn't feel there were any movies around for my age group. There are a lot of movies about people in the early 20s, or the older crowd, like `The Big Chill' people, but none for people who have just hit the 30s.
``I want people, particularly guys, to see this movie and to think that someone has been following them around, writing about them.''
That someone is Rosenberg, who teamed with Norfolk's Gary Fleder for the upcoming ``Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead'' before writing ``Beautiful Girls.''
``I grew up in a blue-collar surrounding,'' Rosenberg said. ``People like my guys in the movie don't identify with Generation X. They go to Chuck Norris or Arnold movies. They might not, in fact, go to this movie, but if they do, they'll either recognize themselves or someone they know.''
The movie's message, he said, is ``the beautiful girl is the girl you're with. She's the girl you're in love with, and you have to have the balls to recognize that she's beautiful, even if she's not Uma.''
Demme put it more succinctly: ``It's a movie about all these guys who are not smart enough to know they should be grabbing all these great women around.''
Rapaport is typical. His character keeps pin-ups of gorgeous women all over his walls. He has a dog named Elle Macpherson. But he can't quite commit to the girl he's been dating seven years, played by Plimpton. However, when she starts dating the local butcher, he gets mightily upset.
O'Donnell has the speech that will have women cheering. She tells off one guy because he wants only perfect women with huge breasts but won't admit that ``to have breasts that big, a woman would have to be fat. You slobs want both - thin women and big breasts. It doesn't exist. Get over it! You're living in a fantasy world.''
The speech is so fiery it was largely suspected to have been ad-libbed. Not so, said Rosenberg, adding, ``We all have to accept the fact that there are not many people in the world with zero fat on their body.''
Plimpton, granddaughter of John Carradine and daughter of Keith Carradine, said she would not have been as meek as the long-suffering girlfriend she plays.
``I would have made life miserable for him,'' she said. ``A good-looking man is trouble to a woman. He's always going to wander. It doesn't matter if he's a salesman or an actor, the problem is the same.
``People set themselves up for disappointments by rushing into a relationship. Expectations get you into trouble. Don't expect much from a man and you'll be about right - or, at least, not disappointed.''
``The movie is saying something like we shouldn't care about boobs and butts so much, but it's more subtle than that,'' added Plimpton, who was a teen-ager when she co-starred with the late River Phoenix in ``Mosquito Coast.''
``I think people, more than ever, are searching for commitment today, mainly out of fear. This is a very lonely age,'' she said.
Holly, girlfriend of superstar Jim Carrey, plays the town's prettiest girl - a cheerleader and prom queen who married well but still has the hots for her old boyfriend, former football star Dillon.
``I think women are smarter,'' she said. ``I mean, women know how to play men a little better than the other way round. The real secret is that a guy has to have a little escape route. You have to leave the door cracked, just a bit, so that he can see through there.''
How does that jibe with life with Carrey? ``He's so sweet. And contrary to what some people think, he's not `on' all the time. At home, I'm the one with more energy.''
Love did develop on the set between Hutton and Thurman. He plays a New York saloon pianist who returns to snowy Massachusetts for his high school reunion and meets the stunning visiting beauty from Chicago played by Thurman.
``I had never met Uma before this, but I admired her acting,'' said Hutton, who is divorced from actress Debra Winger. ``There's something about her, on screen, that let's you know that she's smart. She had amazing ideas about her part, right from the first.''
Producer Cary Woods was surprised Thurman even took the role because it's so small and she's getting offers from everyone since appearing in ``Pulp Fiction.''
He added that ``Beautiful Girls'' and other movies give guys a bad rap.
``Both men and women fear commitment until they meet someone that clears that up,'' he said. ``Love happens over a period of time, not instantly.''
Matt Dillon, who has been something of a sex symbol since his teen days in ``Tex,'' admits that he is similar to his character, Tony.
``I do have a problem with commitment. The older you get, it doesn't get any easier,'' he said. ``It's a war out there, but I'm different from Tony in that I improvise more. He was the football star and he expected great things from life. He lives in the past rather than the future. I don't do that. I don't plan. I see what will happen.''
Director Demme agreed. ``I think Matty is happy with where he is today,'' he said. ``He knows that his films don't gross what Brad Pitt's do, but he's content with that. I kept telling my cast to have a good time. This isn't Shakespeare we're doing here.
``The real problem was how much to leave up to the audience against how much to tell them. I decided to let them decide for themselves about most of these characters.''
Dillon said the movie isn't so much about getting out of a small town as it is about universal relationships.
``I grew up in a small town, sorta - a suburb of New York City,'' he said. ``I never felt isolated. I never felt I had to escape. It just happened that I did.
``To really get to know someone is hard, but it's even more difficult in the big cities. Even people's pets get jaded in the city. There are so many distractions out there right now that people forget to talk to each other.''
During filming, the girls came and went, but the male stars remained together for months.
``We'd think of it as `the Uma week' or the `Rosie O'Donnell week.' They'd do their part and then leave,'' Rapaport recalled. ``I was really curious about what the women talked about when they banded together - you know, if they talked about us guys and which one they liked.''
``We didn't do any soul-searching at all,'' Dillon said. ``We played basketball and bought records. I think we emptied out the local record stores.''
If ``Beautiful Girls'' is the counterpunch to ``How to Make an American Quilt,'' the men are throwing in the towel pretty easily. Written and directed by males, it concedes that 1990s guys are going to put off commitment as long as possible. They'd just as soon have their beer, pin-ups and football games - as long as women let them get away with it.
Natalie Portman, who plays a wise 13-year-old who becomes Hutton's good friend, summed it up: ``Guys are such babies.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Bar talk turns to babes in ``Beautiful Girls,'' starring, from left,
Matt Dillon, Noah Emmerich, Max Perlich, Michael Rapaport and
Timothy Hutton.
Lauren Holly and Dillon, above, and Natalie Portman and Hutton,
right, face commitment problems.
by CNB