Banner Graphic, Volume 21, Number 27, Greencastle, Putnam County, 4 October 1990 — Page 7

People in the news An offer DeNiro couldn’t refuse NEW YORK (AP) Mobster-tumed-informant Henry Hill has seen “Good Fellas the movie based on his life, and gives it two thumbs up for reality. “That movie was 99 percent accurate. That’s the way we lived, that’s (the way) we treated our wives, always on the hustle,” Hill said in an interview with the syndicated television program “Inside Edition.” Hill, whose story was told by author Nicholas Pileggi in the book “Wise Guy,” took pride in the performance of Academy Award-winning actor Robert DeNiro. “I spent a lot of time on the phone with DeNiro, coaching him for playing Jimmy the Gent,” said Hill, who appears on the show wearing a beard and sunglasses because he is in the witness protection program. 1 (ill says life has changed dramatically since he turned government witness and slipped into anonymity. He is remarried and has a new baby. “I can put my head on the pillow and not have to worry about a phone call in the middle of the night to ‘come and meet me with a shovel,’ ” said Hill. “All that craziness, that insanity, is gone from my life.” The interview aired in some markets Wednesday. • SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) Pat DiNizio, lead singer of the rock group the Smithereens, underwent an emergency appendectomy while on tour. As a result, the Smithereens have canceled a show Saturday in Harrisonburg, Va. But the group plans to resume the tour in a few days, the band’s touring manager, Brendan McCabe, said Wednesday. McCabe said the singer began complaining of pains in his side late Monday after a performance in Savannah. DiNizio was diagnosed with appendicitis and surgery was performed Tuesday. “He still has a little pain, but he’s in good spirits and he’s doing fine,” said McCabe. “He just needs a couple of days to recover.” FULTON, Mo. (AP) Former President Reagan will dedicate a sculpture next month that marks the first anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s demise. Reagan will dedicate the sculpture “Breakthrough” on Nov. 9 at Westminster College, where Sir Winston Churchill said in a 1946 speech that “an iron curtain has descended” on Europe. The sculpture was done by artist Edwina Sandys, Churchill’s granddaughter. It includes eight concrete sections of the wall, which went up in 1961 to separate Germany and became the physical embodiment of Churchill’s metaphor. Ms. Sandys went to East Germany soon after border restrictions were eased and persuaded the government to donate sections of the wall.

Don’t say ‘comeback’ to Dern

LOS ANGELES (AP) To the critics’ trumpet call that “Bruce Dem is back!” Dem himself replies: “Where’ve I been?” The 54-year-old actor has been gratefully reading the reviews for “After Dark, My Sweet,” a hardedged thriller based on a novel by the long-neglected pulp writer Jim Thompson. “A guy in Vanity Fair gave me glowing remarks, but in the middle of it he said, ‘Mr. Dem has been absent from the mainstream movie scene for over a decade.’ “That almost paralyzed me,” Dem said. “I just couldn’t believe it. I did almost a movie a year for the last 10 years. ‘The ’Burbs’ may not have worked on the level everyone wanted it to, but it was fun. ‘On the Edge,’ ‘That Championship Season’ those are not lightweight experiences.” Such comments are minor annoyances. “THE NICE THING ABOUT this film is that it’s not an unsimilar venture to what got me going 20 years ago at BBS, a small company that made mil-lion-dollar films (‘Easy Rider,’ ‘Five Easy Pieces’). Now Avenue is another small company that makes the 1990 million-dollar film, which is now a $5 million film. Last year it was ‘Drugstore Cowboy,’ this year it’s ‘After Dark, My Sweet,”’ he said. The film casts Dem as a scruffy ex-cop adrift in the California desert. A boozy widow (Rachel Ward) introduces him to a former boxer and mental patient (Jason Patrie) who is conned by Dem into kidnaping the son of a rich Palm Springs family. “One of the things that people seem to be appreciating,” Dem observed, “is that I’m not too far from the well. Uncle Bud has a lot of sleaze on him, a lot of little moves on him. “If there is a ‘Bruce Dem role,’ this might be the ultimate. He’s not overtly savage, not an overt bad man. But he’s lurking in the area. I’d definitely ask for his driver’s license right away if I saw him.” HOW DID DERN GET this way? He appears to

THE FAMILY CIRCUS® By Bil Keane

“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind.”

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ROBERT DeNIRO Coached by mobster

WASHINGTON (AP) Environmentalists are working with singers Carole King and John Oates to have logging and mining outlawed on 13 million acres of Northwest wilderness. The two appeared Wednesday at a news conference to push a proposal from the Alliance for the Wild Rockies, based in Missoula, Mont “Some environmental groups are like the unpopular kids at a high school dance who stand around in the comer because no one wants to dance with them,” said Oates, from the singing duo Hall & Oates. “I’m here to see if I can’t get someone to dance with them,” he said. King said taxpayer money should not be used to drill, build roads and clear-cut trees in national forests. “If we stopped spending federal money to destroy our public lands maybe we wouldn’t have to raise the taxes that President Bush talked about this morning,” she said. The alliance wants to ban logging, mining and road-building on public lands in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington. NEW YORK (AP) “Red, Hot And Blue,” a 90minute musical special of popular contemporary artists reinterpreting the music of Cole Porter, will air around the world on Dec. 1. The date has been designated as World AIDS Day. The event which will feature U 2, Fine Young Cannibals, Neneh Cherry and Diane Keaton, among others —will benefit AIDS research and relief. The project was created by John Carlin and Leigh Blake and developed by Carlin through Initial Film & Television. Chrysalis Records will release a 22-track, double album in late October. The program will consist of specially commissioned short films featuring today’s top contemporary vocal artists. Each recording artist will perform a different Porter song. The films will contribute to 70 minutes of the special with the remaining 20 minutes consisting of documentary-style interviews, archival footage of Cole Porter and statements from the artists involved.

be an upright citizen; his only addiction seems to be running, which he does for 15 miles, day in, day out. “I began in television as an actor who worked,” he said by way of explanation. “I didn’t have a strong, individual, leading-man persona. The jobs I took in order to maintain any semblance of a career were roles in this (villainous) area. “When you’re introduced into the movie business, they remember you in the first strong images they have of you. The images of me were always as bad guys in television shows or movies.” And what bad guys! He was the man who shot John Wayne in “The Cowboys,” the crazy who attacked the Super Bowl in a blimp in “Black Sunday,” Jane Fonda’s war-crazed husband in “Coming Home,” the polo-playing cad in “The Great Gatsby.” DERN IS QUICK TO CITE some of his non-vil-lainous movies: “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” “Smile," “Middle Age Crazy.” “But I don’t fight (type-casting) anymore,” he sighed. Dem is doubly celebrating these days, for his own success in “After Dark, My Sweet,” and daughter Laura’s in “Wild at Heart.” “It’s amazing,” he said with fatherly pride. “You have a daughter who suddenly explodes on the scene even though she’s been around for 10 years. “She’s what I call a ‘townie.’ Even though she grew up in the Valley instead of Beverly Hills or Hollywood, all of the kids who grew up here are townies,” he said. “Most of the actors in my generation didn’t come from L.A.; they came from other lands. Laura and her generation were around (films) all their lives.” DOES HE GIVE LAURA any career advice? It’s not necessary, says Dem. “She knows it’s a marathon. She got in knowing that in the marathon the race doesn’t start until you’ve done 16 miles. It’s what you do with the last 10 that counts.”

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October4,l99o THE BANNERGRAPHIC