Our Flagging Film Fortunes
Though the Tribune thinks that feature-film and television production are booming hereabouts (“Filming Booms as Movies Get Real,” September 29), “boom” most assuredly is not the word to describe what’s happening in 1989. We’ll be lucky if feature-film and TV production add $25 million in direct outlays to the state economy this year; in 1987 the figure was $39 million, and the year before that it was $52 million.
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Some observers believe the only way to boost film production statewide is to step up marketing efforts on the west coast, where most key filming decisions are made. Several years ago the state launched a major billboard campaign in Hollywood, but it has not been as aggressive recently.
Revenge of the Choreographers
Even as a financially strapped Ballet Chicago is limping through an abbreviated engagement at the Chicago Theatre, former prima ballerina Maria Tallchief is none-too-subtly proclaiming her return, along with cohort and friend Paul Mejia. In case you hadn’t noticed, Tallchief and Mejia are the forces behind the Fort Worth Ballet’s Thanksgiving presentation of the full-length ballet Cinderella, also at the Chicago Theatre.
Not to worry. The Japanese (who else?) have stepped in to save Lyle, at least for the immediate future. Japanese producers will open a revamped version next March in Japan. If the musical’s book is in better shape there, it just might head for Broadway. “The Japanese are putting a lot of money into the show,” says a Lyle spokesperson. “We hope it will work.”
Next spring Maurice Rosenfield also may work with Perkins to produce Other People’s Money, an off-Broadway hit in which Wall Street takeover artists try to buy out a New England town. Rosenfield produced the ill-fated Broadway version of Singin’ in the Rain, which bore the odd choreographic stamp of Twyla Tharp.
