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ON LOCATION : Rockin’ Robins : The tug of war over the dashing outlaw has come down to two movies--Fox’s TV movie will be first, but Warners has Kevin Costner

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<i> David Gritten is a frequent contributor to Calendar. </i>

“I had a great day the other day,” actor Patrick Bergin recounts with a broad grin, on a break from “Robin Hood,” the upcoming 20th Century Fox film in which he stars. “There was a scene where I had to shoot my arrow at a target, a piece of wood about an inch thick and 60 yards away.

“In the script, it was a competition between Robin Hood and one of the other characters. I’d been practicing with my bow and arrow for a few days, and getting close to it.

“When we came to shoot it, the other guy missed. Then I stepped up, and split it in two. On camera. Everyone cheered. The crew was amazed. Our bowman, who had been coaching us all, was especially amazed. It was a wonderful feeling.”

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Bergin can be forgiven for boasting that his aim is true--he experienced the surprised joy of a victorious underdog as that stick split. But everyone concerned with “Robin Hood” here in this remote, bucolic north Wales resort village is cast in the role of underdog.

True, the film has a strong cast, led by Irish actor Bergin, who impressed in last year’s “Mountains of the Moon” and the just-released “Sleeping With the Enemy,” and by Uma Thurman, the promising young actress from “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Henry and June,” as Maid Marian.

But a shadow hangs over “Robin Hood” in the form of the lavish “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” with Kevin Costner as the medieval forest-dwelling English outlaw who robbed from the rich to give to the poor.

Both productions have been shot in Britain this winter, and until Fox decided to air its film on the Fox network rather than release it in American theaters, they were in a race to open first. Costner, arguably the hottest male lead actor in the business at present, had been widely quoted as saying he did not wish to star in the second Robin Hood movie. As things stand, however, the race is hard to call: “Prince of Thieves,” a Morgan Creek production for Warners, should open around Memorial Day. Fox’s “Robin Hood” will open in Japanese theaters in April and in Great Britain in May, and the rest of the world in June--but will air in this country on Fox TV May 13.

Two versions of “Robin Hood,” a 144-minute version for American TV, and a shorter cut for foreign theaters, around 110 minutes, will be made. With this in mind, Sarah Radclyffe, the British producer of “Robin Hood,” secured the services of veteran editor Peter Tanner, whose credits go back to 1950s classics like “Kind Hearts and Coronets.” “Peter’s very fast,” she sighs. “As he’ll need to be. Two versions by April 19? Oh, I hope not.”

“Robin Hood’s” $15-million budget looks paltry next to that of “Prince of Thieves,” which is said to be close to $50 million. Then there’s the Kevin Costner Factor. Since starting work on “Prince of Thieves” in September, his reputation took a quantum leap from hunky leading man to Major Hollywood Player because of his critically acclaimed and commercially successful “Dances With Wolves,” in which he starred and directed. The film was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, the most nominations for a single film in a decade.

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Costner is reportedly receiving $7 million for “Prince of Thieves,” almost half of the budget of “Robin Hood.” How can the smaller film compete? “If you’re going to go up against Kevin Costner, you’ve got to be as different as possible,” says Radclyffe, a leading British film producer whose Working Title company is best known for movies like “My Beautiful Laundrette,” “Wish You Were Here” and “A World Apart.” .

The aim was to make “Robin Hood” more English. After its American writer, Mark Allen Smith, came to Britain for a swift structural rewrite, Scottish playwright John McGrath was brought in to Anglicize the script. McGrath is an odd figure to be involved in movies; he is best known as a leading light in 7:84, a leftist theater group that flourished in the 1970s. Its name derived from a statistic that 7% of Britain’s population allegedly owned 84% of its wealth; since Robin Hood’s fame is based on robbing the rich to benefit the poor, maybe McGrath’s presence is logical.

“John has brought in a lot of elements you’d imagine he’d bring in,” Radclyffe says. “The political situation at the time, the business of redistributing wealth. I’m sure Fox wouldn’t like this to be seen as a love story with a political background, but that’s kind of how it’s turned out.”

Authenticity was also dictated by shooting exteriors during a cold, wet English winter. (The greenwood scenes in “Prince of Thieves” were shot on a lavish set at Shepperton Studios near London.) The bleak conditions played perfectly into director John Irvin’s vision for “Robin Hood.”

“My idea of the Middle Ages is probably more realistic than most,” Irvin said, bracing himself against the chill on a damp afternoon in a forest setting beside a fast-flowing river. “When Sarah asked me to do ‘Robin Hood,’ I agreed, but I hold her we had to lose that green hat of his. You know, the one with the feather. I wanted Robin out of Lincoln green altogether. And definitely no tights.”

Instead, Irvin suggested getting away from the tableaux and pageants that had dominated other versions of the Robin Hood legend. He put Robin’s outlaw band in furs and skins, and had them living in caves. “It was rough in the forest back then, particularly in winter,” Irvin said. “People were starving. To survive in the Middle Ages, you had to be tough. But people who live in hard circumstances have a strong sense of humor, and that’s what we’ve gone for in the script, a sardonic humor.”

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This afternoon in Betws-y-Coed, less greenery is on the trees than one associates with a setting for a Robin Hood story. That’s also fine with Irvin, who wanted to escape the look of the “Robin Hood” TV series with Richard Greene. “There was so much vegetation on that set,” he remarked wryly “it looked as if it had been shot at Chelsea Flower Show.”

Irvin called the invitation to direct a Robin Hood film “a once in a lifetime opportunity. For an Englishman, it’s a summons, really, isn’t it?”

In fact, the offer has come twice in Irvin’s life. He recalled being asked by Universal executives several years ago to consider directing a “Robin Hood” remake. To help clarify his thoughts, he screened for them the 1938 version of “Robin Hood,” starring Errol Flynn. “When it was over, I turned and said, why not forget about remaking it? Why not just re-release it?”

Well over a dozen versions of Robin Hood’s saga have been committed to film. Richard Todd starred notably in “The Story of Robin Hood” (1952). Tongue-in-cheek adaptations of the legend include “Robin and the Seven Hoods” (1964) with Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack. Richard Lester’s myth-debunking “Robin and Marian” (1976) starred Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as the couple in middle age.

Recently Connery’s son Jason played Robin in a British TV series, which had nothing like the impact of Greene’s 1950s TV version. The theme song from Greene’s series (“Robin Hood, Robin Hood riding through the glen/Robin Hood, Robin Hood with his band of men/Feared by the bad, loved by the good/Robin Hood, Robin Hood”) is among the most familiar in TV history.

Last year saw an unseemly scramble to bring new versions of “Robin Hood” to the big screen. Joe Roth was said to be developing a “Robin Hood” script while he was boss at Morgan Creek Productions. When he became studio head at Fox, he took the idea along with him. Morgan Creek started looking for its own “Robin Hood” project when Roth quit; then Tri-Star entered the fray by announcing its own “Robin Hood” movie, with Marshall Herskovitz, co-creator of TV’s “thirtysomething” as director, and Kevin Kline or Alec Baldwin as possible Robins.

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Fox bought Mark Allen Smith’s script and planned to shoot in the Californian redwoods. John McTiernan (“Die Hard,” “The Hunt for Red October”) was set to direct with a handsome budget, but wanted to delay filming until spring. When Morgan Creek announced it had landed Costner for “Prince of Thieves,” Roth angrily denounced the other two studios for proceeding with Robin projects after Fox began developing its own.

Within three weeks of the Costner announcement, Tri-Star had pulled the plug on Herskovitz and Fox had changed its approach. “They decided to do it quickly and cheaply,” Radclyffe says. On a down-scaled budget Irvin, director of “The Dogs of War,” “Hamburger Hill” and TV’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” came in, and new leads were sought. Radclyffe says Bergin and Thurman were first choices on the new list.

Irvin studied the Flynn, Greene and Todd versions before starting on his own Robin. He cares far less than Radclyffe about “Prince of Thieves.” “Ultimately my greatest rival is Errol Flynn’s version,” he says. “That’s the one I have to supplant or better. Luckily, I think Patrick’s in a direct line of descent to those old screen heroes like Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. So I’m not losing any sleep over it.”

Irvin is already a veteran of rival film campaigns. There’s a legendary story of him making the Vietnam war movie “Hamburger Hill” in a race against opposition that included Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.” Scouting a remote jungle location in the Philippines, he came upon a polystyrene cup on the ground--a strong indication that another film unit had already visited. Irvin held up the cup, and mused: “ ‘Platoon?’ ”

Still, he understands the rush to rediscover Robin Hood: “He’s an enduring hero who’s been entertaining people for 700 years. Superman and Batman are very much Johnny-come-latelys. His virtues are that he’s tough without being a bully or sadistic. He’s gentle and chivalrous, but he’s not a wimp.”

Patrick Bergin agrees. “I’ve always had fond memories of Robin Hood. He has permission to be mischievous, to be an outlaw. His goodness comes from an adaptation of the Christian ideal, helping the poor, and adding a balance to society.

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“His attributes and strengths are very human, and so are his weaknesses. There’s nothing superhuman about him. In recent years, younger audiences have demanded super-heroes because for some reason they feel impotent to deal with their own surroundings. But Robin’s qualities are human qualities, both morally and physically. It’s very encouraging.

“The reason I mentioned shooting the arrow is that bows and arrows are much more accessible as weapons. They’re not laser guns. You can pull a branch off a tree and make a bow and arrow, and I think that’s appealing to children. There’s some part of us that wants control of our lives. I think there is a fascination still with bows and arrows, even in America--as I suppose Kevin Costner in ‘Dances With Wolves’ is proving.”

Bergin says he is delighted to be playing a light role like Robin Hood after a run of dark parts. In “Sleeping With the Enemy,” he plays a repressive, obsessive character who is jealous of and violent toward his wife (Julia Roberts). He has also completed a movie with Sean Young, in which he plays a philanderer who may also be a sex criminal. Last year Bergin also made a film for the BBC in which he was a frustrated alcoholic widower who abused his young stepdaughter.

“My trio of obsessives,” says Bergin wryly. “They were great, but it’s good to take a break. One underestimates the effect the character one plays has on one’s personality. You try to shrug it off, but these were heavy parts.”

Still, Bergin has suffered for this role too. Exhaustion and an unspecified bug kept him off the set for a week; attempts to shoot around him faltered when his double fell from the wall of a castle on another location across the English border. When you’re in a race, these things count.

So does the weather. Earlier, a driving snowfall has covered the forest in white. An hour’s shooting has been lost before the snow stopped and could be hosed away, leaving conditions treacherously muddy. At 2:45 p.m., the light is going fast; though artificial mist is being pumped out to give the glade an eerie look, a real mist is also descending. Irvin sighs. “When shooting days are this short, it only needs one thing to go wrong, or a change of scene, and you’ve lost half a day.”

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The scene being shot is one after Robin encounters the giant Little John on stepping stones across a swollen, rushing river. Robin and John fight with staffs to decide who should give way--and Robin loses.

“That’s my point about him,” Bergin says. “His fight with Little John is raw, ordinary courage--he goes up against a man twice his size, with a stick which he’s clearly very good at using.”

Radclyffe thinks Robin Hood is an ideal character for the ‘90s. “The saga has to do with a hero,” she said. “It’s got romance, it’s got action and the element of being right-on politically. After the materialistic ‘80s, it’s the right timing.”

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