Banner Graphic, Volume 14, Number 228, Greencastle, Putnam County, 1 June 1984 — Page 5

People in the news Book on Belushi trash: Aykroyd c. 1984 The Baltimore Evening Sun Dan Aykroyd didn’t waste words. Asked what he thought of “Wired,” the book Bob Woodward (“AH The President’s Men”) did on "The Short and Fast Times of John Belushi,” he got right down to it-This was a torrent unloosed. “I skimmed excerpts from it, and it’s really cheap, a trashy novel,” he said, smoking as he talked. “It’s depressing, it's a down book. Woodward is devoid of any kind of warmth. He doesn’t paint John as the great talent he was. “There’s no hint of warmth or humor in the book,” he said, “the warmth and humor that John had. If you want to get down and depressed for the summer, read that book. It’s trashy, sordid and very badly written. “Woodward, I believe and this is what I’ve heard from several people reaUy didn’t do that much of the actual writing. He left that to John Anderson, his researcher. “He skirfed the real story, which is how the police screwed up the probe and how one of the little sleazy chicks John was hanging around with at the end had a boyfriend on the police force. That was completely skipped. “There are lies and falsifications i the book,” Aykroyd continued, puffing as he spoke. “Woodward has me handing out cocaine in the ‘Saturday Night Live’ office. I was never a purchaser, user or purveyor of that drug. I am and have always been violently opposed to its use because of what it does. “It makes people psychotic, and I couldn’t be around John when he did it,” Aykroyd said. “I couldn’t be around anybody when they did that stuff, so that’s a falsification, that’s a lie right there, and there are other things that are attributed to me, things that just simply didn’t happen. “People are going to realize that this is a stale, trashy, old story, anyway. It’s a stale, trashy book. It will be out there for a while, then it’s probably going to go away very quickly. It is not quality reading.” Aykroyd’s newest film is “The Ghostbusters.” He, Bill Murray, Sigourney Weaver and Harold Ramis take part in the film, and Ivan Reitman both produced and directed. “I had the idea for the script a long time ago,” he said. “It was a narrative to be exploited. American humor and ghosts have always been linked. The idea goes back to babbott and Costello and Martin and Lewis. Everyone in show business, in the last 50 years, has worked with ghosts, but we have the advantage because of the special effects that are available today.” Those special effects sent the costs spiraling. At last count, “The Ghostbusters” came in for S3O to $36 million, depending on whom you consult. “It may be more,” said Aykroyd. “That isn’t unusual. ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ was in the thirties. So is ‘Cotton Club.’ I’m not worried. I’m not worried about Columbia. If it comes to that, Coca-Cola (Columbia is a subsidiary company of Coca-Cola) can make it up with a week’s sale of orange juice.” • One of the funniest short films ever made is surely “Hardware Wars,” Ernie Fosselius’ parody of “Star Wars” featuring household appliances steam irons, toaster ovens subsisting for intergalactic vehicles. Now Fosselius, who has also worked on such diverse material as “Return of the Jedi” music videos and television spots for Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s presidential campaign, is ready to make his own feature film. Scheduled to begin shooting next spring, Fosselius’ as-yet-untitled film will be a comedy rather than a parody, and it will not include special effects. “It will be human-oriented rather than har-dware-oriented,” one of the director’s representatives said.

'lndiana Jones' whips 'Jedi' records

c. 1984 N.Y. Times News Service HOLLYWOOD Earning $42,267,345 at movie theaters during its first six days, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” has broken nearly every box-office record set by “Return of the Jedi” during its opening week last May. The Steven Spielberg-George Lucas “Indiana Jones,” the “pre-sequel” to “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” sold $9,324,710 worth of tickets last Sunday for the movie industry’s singleday record. “Return of the Jedi,” the last movie in Lucas’s “Star Wars” trilogy, had held the previous single-day record of $8.4 million. “Indiana Jones,” directed by Spielberg, chronicles the earlier adventures of the intrepid archeologist played by Harrison Ford. Indiana’s omnipresent bullwhip actually knocked down “Jedi’s” light-saber swords on two additional days by earning $9.2 million last Saturday and $8.5 million on Monday. More than 13 million people have seen “Indiana Jones” in less than a week, according to Frank Mancuso, president of Paramount’s Motion Picture Group. In Chicago and Detroit and in San Jose and Sacramento, Calif., hundreds were standing in line a day or two before the movie opened. In Los Angeles, many of those waiting for that first 12:01 a.m. show last Wednesday were dressed like their idol, Indiana Jones,

THE FAMILY By Bil Keane 7h* ffagrtt "That's the stern, and this is the bow."

KIRSTIE ALLEY: Unheard of? Notice anything new under those pointy ears? The sole female Vulcan aboard the Starship Enterprise, played by Kirstie Alley in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” is played by a different actress in the current film. According to a reliable source at Paramount, which made the movie, Miss Alley’s salary demands are the reason for her absence from the new film. Miss Alley’s press agent, Michael Levine, says she had been offered less this time than for the second film. In any case, the role is now played by Robin Curtis. Another “Star Trek” casting peculiarity: What is Dame Judith Anderson doing in the movie? Apparently she has a nephew. And the nephew is an ardent “Star Trek” fan, who said he’s be furious if she turned the role down. That explains that. • BEDFORD, N.Y. (AP) Actress Jennifer O’Neill has escaped foreclosure proceedings by selling her estate in this Westchester County community, a lawyer and a real estate agent said. A New York City literary agent is buying the 14,000-square-foot stone house for $895,000, said Sally Siano of Sally Siano and Associates Real Estate Agency in Bedford Hills. She would not disclose the buyer’s name. The 9.5-acre estate had been scheduled to be sold at auction in July because the actress was behind in her payments, Steven C. Greene, an attorney for one of the mortgage holders, said Thursday. Miss O’Neill, 35, and her ex-husband, John Lederer, bought the house in 1981 for $600,000, according to Greene. On Oct. 22, 1982, the star of the film “Summer of ’42,” accidentally shot herself in the stomach with a 38-caliber revolver in the bedroom of the home. She was charged with possession of a weapon and received a conditional discharge. BOSTON (AP) The Associated Press reported erroneously on May 12 that former President Jimmy Carter recently accompanied his wife here for a promotion tour of her new book and that a maitre d’ at a hotel refused to seat Carter because he was not wearing a jacket. Heinz Uwe Bunger, the maitre d’ at the Copley Plaza’s formal dining room, told the AP that it was in 1976 that Carter showed up at the restaurant wearing a cardigan sweater. He said he explained to Carter that he could not be seated unless he was wearing a jacket, and that Carter ate at another restaurant in the hotel. Carter was then a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. However, Dan C. Lee, Carter’s chief of staff, told the AP that Carter was not with his wife on her recent visit to Boston, “nor has he ever at any other time been involved in any situation even remotely resembling” the story that the AP picked up from The Boston Herald newspaper. Lee said that he asked Carter about the Herald report and the former president “could not recall it at all.”

while in New York street vendors did a brisk business in safari hats and bullwhips. Although both “Return of the Jedi” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” opened on Memorial Day weekends and thus can be directly compared, “Indiana Jones” is playing in nearly 700 more theaters. Although the openingday receipts for “Indiana Jones” fell more than $1 million short of “Jedi,” “Our picture beat ‘Jedi’ over the weekend, when the demand was greatest,” Mancuso said. “We were able to fill the demand,” he said, “because we not only had more theaters, we had larger theaters. Considering the incredible 80 percent awareness of our movie before we spent a single dollar on advertising, the only way we could have gone wrong was not to advertise the image the public took away from ‘Raiders,’ that very strong image of Indiana Jones. ‘Raiders’ did our advertising job for ‘lndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.’” Playing on 1,687 screens, “Indiana Jones,” which cost $27.5 million, a relatively modest amount considering its many special effects, has already earned nearly sls million more than it cost. It is too early to tell whether it will have what Hollywood calls legs, the staying power to overtake “Jedi,” currently the third most successful movie of all time, behind “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “Star Wars.”

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June 1,1984, The Putnam County Banner-Graphic