Holiday Films Go for the Heart

Happy. Sad. Nostalgic. Mad.

Hollywood’s Christmas offerings ring plenty of emotional bells, and contrast sharply with the fall season’s crop of tough, nonfiction films.

So it’s hello “Working Girl”--and goodby “Gorillas in the Mist”--as the studios aim to beat last year’s record, when Disney’s “Three Men and a Baby” and “Good Morning, Vietnam” scored almost $300 million between them at the box office.

“It’s awfully hard to name two pictures that will do that kind of business this year,” warns John Krier, a Los Angeles-based theater consultant.

But the public will be the judge. Some early holiday entries--”Cocoon: The Return,” “Scrooged” and “Buster”--have already opened. Here’s an inside line on the rest:

“The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!” (Paramount): True: The Zucker brothers’ Brentwood office is decorated with hand-me-downs from a dentist.

False: The Zuckers are not related to Paramount founder Adolph Zukor, even if they do call themselves “The Next Generation” when they’re hanging around the lot.

True: Writer/director David Zucker, brother Jerry, and partner Jim Abrahams (directors of “Airplane!” and “Ruthless People”) have turned this send-up of their own failed TV show “Police Squad” into what some exhibitors are calling the movie to beat this season.

Not that anyone’s overconfident. “There’s so much comedy out there, it’s ridiculous,” groans David, who is diligently promoting “Naked Gun” on a tour of American campuses with 62-year-old star Leslie Nielsen in tow.

David Zucker shows the movie and answers student questions. Nielsen operates a whoopee cushion. According to the director, it’s all highly effective.

He claims preview audiences are laughing because the film makers have corrected a flaw that afflicted “Top Secret!,” their poorly received spy spoof. The difference: “The Naked Gun” has a plot: Los Angeles Police Lt. Frank Drebin (Nielsen), foils an attempt to assassinate Queen Elizabeth at an Angels game, becoming romantically entangled with Priscilla Presley (in her first big movie role) along the way.

Release date: Dec. 2, wide.

“Twins” (Universal): Supposedly, it happened like this:

Ivan (“Ghostbusters”) Reitman bumped into his dumpy little friend Danny (“Throw Momma From the Train”) DeVito, and said he’d love to make a movie with him.

A week later, Reitman bumped into great big Arnold(“Red Heat”) Schwarzenegger at a screening, and said he’d love to make a movie with him . Directors are always saying things like that.

Enter British comedy writers William Osborne and William Davies, with an idea for a script about two very different brothers spawned by a genetic engineering experiment gone awry. A light flashed.

“ Arnold and Danny . . . and they’re twins ,” said Reitman.

Roughly a year and five writers later, Universal’s big Christmas comedy is ready to go. Schwarzenegger is Julius, a perfect human being who got all the good genes from six brilliant fathers--and De- Vito is brother Vincent, who got the rest.

(WARNING: DeVito and Schwarzenegger are not supposed to look alike to characters in the film, despite a studio media campaign that promises: “Only their mother can tell them apart.”

“That came from the ad department. It isn’t in the movie,” says Reitman.)

The early buzz said “Twins” was the No. 1 box-office bet this Christmas. But expectations slipped a bit when exhibitors got a look at Paramount’s competing “The Naked Gun.”

Release dates : Wide on Dec. 9.

“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (Orion): Is that a classic touch hiding behind this down-and-dirty title? Black-tie nights and grand hotels on the French Riviera. Michael Caine mustachioed to look like David Niven. Steve Martin projecting just a bit of Cary Grant. What gives?

In fact, “Scoundrels,” this season’s grown-up comedy, is a re-make of “Bedtime Story,” which starred Niven and Marlon Brando and bombed for Universal in 1964.

So why redo a movie that flopped? “The funny thing is, I never thought about it. I saw the original when I was 18 or 19, and couldn’t really tell how good or bad it was,” says director Frank Oz (“Little Shop of Horrors”).

But exhibitors are high on this one. Coming off an Oscar nomination (for “Roxanne),” and a tidy hit last Christmas (“Planes, Trains and Automobiles”), the new, more adult Steve Martin apparently can do no wrong. Release dates: Dec. 14, wide.

“My Stepmother Is an Alien”: (Weintraub). Think of this as an issue movie. The issue: Will people pay to see Dan Aykroyd have hot sex (or as hot as PG-13 gets) with an alien?

Maybe so, since the alien is played by Kim Basinger, of “9 1/2 Weeks” and “No Mercy” fame.

“This is going to be the break-out film for Kim,” one of the movie’s makers promises of Basinger, who has had more magazine covers than hits in her career.

She isn’t the only one who could use a boost. Co-star Aykroyd is coming off less than sizzling performances in “The Great Outdoors” and “The Couch Trip.” Director Richard Benjamin didn’t have much luck lately with “The Money Pit” and “Little Nikita.” And Weintraub Entertainment Group, formed two years ago with much hoopla and $461 million funding, is still looking for its first big winner.

Benjamin is billing “Stepmother” as a story of family values. As he says in the production notes: “Three people (Basinger, Aykroyd, and a 13-year-old daughter played by Alyson Hannigan) find each other and find a whole life together.”

Release dates: Dec. 9, wide.

“Working Girl” (Fox): A year ago, Fox banked heavily on Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street,” which was long on issues but short on feeling. “Gordon Gekko, this great character, in the entire movie never kisses the girl,” one Fox executive says of the film, which fell off a bit quicker at the box office than hoped for.

So this time around, Fox wanted heart--and got it from Mike Nichols’ “Working Girl,” which also happens to be set in the sin-ridden financial lairs of New York City.

As our executive says, “It’s a story I can relate to. This little girl from Staten Island works very hard. She wants to be somebody. But her people tell her, ‘You’re not gonna be anybody. You’re gonna be who you are.’ She goes to night school. She gets screwed around. She makes it.”

Some very big-name actresses wanted the lead. But Melanie Griffith (“Milagro Beanfield War,” “Something Wild”) got it because Nichols insisted she was just right. Sigourney Weaver and Harrison Ford, in supporting roles, make this a strong bet.

Release dates : Dec. 21 in Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto. Wide on Dec. 25.

“Beaches” (Disney): It may be hard to imagine a 12-year-old Bette Midler belting out “The Glory of Love” while she fights a losing battle with her own pre-teen chutzpah. It will be easier once you’ve seen Mayim Bialik (a former regular on ABC’s “Webster”) in her scene-stealing sequence as the young C.C. Bloom, Midler’s chanteuse/heroine in “Beaches.”

“I really didn’t think of it as playing Bette. I just thought of myself as a little C.C.,” says Bialik. Even so, according to a Disney publicist, Bialik’s parents prepped her for the role with tapes of Midler’s famous bathhouse performances in New York City.

This time around, Bette’s a little quieter. Barbara Hershey looks even thinner. And Disney’s banking on a new, bittersweet mood to match its big success with comedy last year.

If “Beaches” hits, it’ll be a bang-up year for the Marshall family. Director Garry’s younger sister Penny directed “Big” for Fox last summer.

Release dates : Dec. 21 in Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, and Chicago. Wide in January.

“Rain Man” (MGM/UA). For those who lost track of United Artists’ long-planned Christmas picture about the adventures of an autistic-savant heir and his ne’er-do-well brother:

Martin Brest (“Beverly Hills Cop”) was set to direct “Rainman,” but quit when he couldn’t agree on script changes with stars Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise.

Steven Spielberg was supposedly ready to take the job, but his third “Indiana Jones” movie got in the way.

Sydney Pollack (“Out of Africa”) then signed on for a while, but turned it over to Barry Levinson (“Good Morning, Vietnam”) before the ink had dried on touching stories about how “Rainman” would reunite Pollack with Hoffman for the first time since their sturm ing and drang ing on “Tootsie.”

Meanwhile, Hoffman’s “Ishtar” came and went. Cruise passed up a role in “Wall Street”--remember, that was last Christmas--so he could finish “Rainman” before the 3-minute directors’ strike of July, 1987, which was ultimately eclipsed by the 5 1/2-month writers’ strike of 1988. Time marched on. United Artists collapsed.

And MGM/UA says Levinson is still tinkering, though some exhibitors have seen “Rainman.” “People are definitely going to talk about it,” says one, who nevertheless says it is “difficult to predict” whether audiences, and Academy voters, will also fall in love with the film.

Release date : Dec. 16, wide.

“The Accidental Tourist” (Warner Bros.): Yes, Anne Tyler has seen and likes this movie based on her best-selling novel, says her agent, Nina Coleman.

No, Tyler didn’t work on the script, which is co-authored by Larry Kasdan and first-time screenwriter Frank Galati.

Yes, there will be more Tyler books on film if this one works out. According to Coleman, all six Tyler novels, mostly about life and love in Baltimore, have been optioned by producers.

The current movie’s unlikely hero, played by William Hurt, is an emotionally scarred travel writer who hates to travel. That’s not the easiest movie material. But it seems a natural for writer-director Kasdan, whose 1985 cowboy epic, “Silverado,” took him on a detour from all that human relationship stuff in “The Big Chill.”

“The Accidental Tourist” re-unites Kasdan with other “Body Heat” veterans Hurt and Kathleen Turner. Warners is opening the picture early here and New York to qualify it for some hoped-for Oscars.

Release dates : Dec. 23 in Los Angeles and New York. Wide in January.

“Tequila Sunrise” (Warner Bros.) Over the years, Warner Bros. has made lots of bread and butter with a certain genre of film that involves cops, buddies, fast action and big stars.

“Tequila Sunrise” seems to be the studio’s bread-and-butter bet this Christmas. But the mix is a bit more complicated, and emotional, than usual. One buddy, played by Mel Gibson (“Lethal Weapon”), is a major drug dealer who’s trying to give it up. The other, played by Kurt Russell (“Overboard”), is a local narcotics cop who happens to get along better with Gibson, his old high school pal, than he does with the feds. Both try to get along with a pretty restaurateur, played by Michelle Pfeiffer (“Married to the Mob”).

Loyalties are tested. People get shot. Things blow up. But there’s no sign of Clint Eastwood, who powered many of Warner Bros. past action hits.

Written and directed by Robert Towne (“Chinatown,” “Personal Best”).

Release date : Dec. 3, wide.

“Mississippi Burning” (Orion): Orion won’t be premiering director Alan Parker’s indictment of the ‘60s South in Jackson, Miss., after all. According to a studio spokeswoman, bad “logistics”--not second thoughts about opening old wounds--got in the way, and the Dec. 2 gala has been moved to Washington.

Wherever it opens, “Mississippi Burning” is likely to rouse some strong feelings, however.

Parker (“Angel Heart,” “Midnight Express”) examines the 1964 murder of three civil-rights workers, mostly from the viewpoint of two mismatched FBI agents. One is an ex-Southern sheriff, played by Gene Hackman, the other a by-the-book Northerner, played by Willem Dafoe (“The Last Temptation of Christ”).

History says the Klansmen-killers were ultimately betrayed by paid FBI informants. Parker’s version is a bit more romantic. But who’s going to accuse him of melodrama? After all, the real-life sheriff of Neshoba County, where it all took place, once chillingly campaigned as “the man who can cope with the situations that may arise.”

Release dates : Dec. 9 in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Toronto and Washington, D.C. Wide, Jan. 13.

“Talk Radio” (Universal). “There’s nothing more boring than people who love you.” Merry Christmas, and welcome to the world of Barry Champlain, shock radio king and protagonist of this Oliver Stone-directed translation of actor-writer Eric Bogosian’s play.

Big studios were afraid to touch the project because it seemed uncommercial. (Are we really ready for open-mike confrontation with neo-Nazis, rapists and psychotics, not to mention bored and lonely people who might be ourselves?) But “Wall Street” veterans Stone and producer Ed Pressman slipped through Universal’s back door, by financing the picture with Cineplex Odeon, which is 50%-owned by MCA, the big studio’s parent.

The screenplay adds material from “Talked to Death,” Stephen Singular’s book about the real-life murder by neo-Nazis of Denver talk-show host Alan Berg. As in the play, Bogosian stars as Champlain, who is loosely modeled on Berg.

Release dates : Dec. 21 in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Washington, and Toronto. Wide on Jan. 13.

“Torch Song Trilogy” (New Line). When “Torch Song Trilogy” hit New York in 1981, it came across as a no-holds-barred look at the gay life. It was all there, from anonymous sex in a steamy back room, to the tragicomic agonies of dealing with Mother.

But along came AIDS. And suddenly “Torch Song” plays like an ode to lost innocence.

There’s not a word about the deadly virus in this film, which keeps the theatrical script essentially intact, though one publicist says some sexual scenes were slightly muted to conform with late ‘80s sensibilities.

Paul Bogart (“Oh God, You Devil!”) directs, and Fierstein stars. Anne Bancroft plays the mother. Matthew Broderick--who made his big-time acting debut as protagonist Arnold Beckoff’s adoptive son in the Off-Broadway version--plays Beckoff’s lover Alan this time.

Release date: Dec. 14 in Los Angeles, New York.

Something Different

“Dangerous Liaisons” (Warner Bros.). “I’ve always had a feeling Maurice Chevalier was never a big star because people couldn’t pronounce his name,” says one homespun theater executive.

Maybe that explains why Warners is going with an English title on this Stephen Frears-directed version of a Christopher Hampton-written play, based on Choderlos de Laclos’ pre-Revolutionary novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.”

Glenn Close, John Malkovich, and Michelle Pfeiffer star in a perverse tale of love among the aristocrats. Warners inherited this one from Lorimar in a merger agreement and is sticking with a narrow release for now.

Release date : Dec. 21 in Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto.

“Pelle, the Conqueror” (Miramax): Last year, Denmark grabbed an Oscar with “Babette’s Feast.” The culinary pickings are slimmer--cold herring, mostly--in “Pelle.” But this version of Martin Andersen Nexo’s turn-of-the-century novel about life on the farm could put the Danes, and their Swedish co-producers, in the running again.

Max von Sydow stars as a poverty-stricken Swede who migrates to Denmark with a 9-year-old son, played by Pelle Havenegaard. Bille August directs.

“Pelle” did well in Denmark last Christmas, and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. But Americans have yet to see this 2 1/2-hour saga.

(“There were two more parts to the ‘Pelle’ story . . . . If the film does well here, they might still be produced,” promises the film’s publicist.)

Release date : Dec. 23 in Los Angeles. Wider in January.

“The Boost” (Hemdale): Actor James Woods narrowly missed an Oscar shot when Columbia Pictures considered, then dropped, the idea of an Academy Award-qualifying run for his “True Believers” this Christmas.

But he might get another chance with this last-minute entry from Hemdale, which will open for Academy consideration here and in New York.

It’s sort of a “Days of Wine and Roses” for the cocaine set, co-starring Sean Young (“No Way Out.”).

Release date : Dec. 23, Los Angeles and New York.

“Burning Secret” (Vestron): As our film gets under way, a German baron entertains a youngster with war stories that seem too fantastic to be true.

No, it’s not “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” which Columbia pulled from its Christmas release schedule. But “Burning Secret” does star newcomer David Eberts, who happens to be the 12-year-old son of “Munchausen” executive producer Jake Eberts.

Based on a Stefan Zweig short story, Vestron’s tale of seduction and betrayal also features Faye Dunaway and Klaus Maria Brandauer. Directed by first-timer Andrew Birkin.

Release date : Dec. 23, in Los Angeles and New York.