A Twist of Lemmon

It’s every movie buff’s dream: watching a great film and then getting to talk about it with the people who made it.

“Save the Tiger,” the 1973 film that earned Jack Lemmon a best actor Oscar, had just finished screening Monday at the Edwards University Theatre in Irvine.

Then Lemmon himself arrived, striding down the aisle with a large gray poodle in tow and taking a seat on a stool to discuss the movie with the audience.

“This is Chloe Lemmon,” the 74-year-old actor explained, as his perfectly coiffed pooch sat at his feet and cast a regal gaze at the near-packed house of about 350. “She’s gotten terrific. When they say, ‘Roll ‘em!’ on the set, she runs behind the camera and lies down.”

Chloe Lemmon may have been an unexpected guest, but the appearance of her master, along with “Save the Tiger” screenwriter Steve Shagan, was the main attraction.

The “Save the Tiger” screening was part of Los Angeles Times arts editor emeritus Charles Champlin’s Coming Attractions, a UC Irvine Extension staple since 1994.

Champlin’s usual procedure for the six-Monday-evening series is to preview a surprise first-run film, which is followed by a Q&A; session with a surprise guest--an actor, writer, director or someone else involved with the film.

But this time Champlin tried something different for the series, which usually is offered in the fall.

“Spring is always more difficult to get [unreleased] films than the fall,” Champlin explained before the screening. As author of “Hollywood’s Revolutionary Decade” (Daniel & Co.; 1998)--a collection of his reviews of films made in the 1970s after the new motion picture rating system gave movie makers unprecedented artistic freedom--Champlin figured that “in addition to showing four unreleased films, I’d show a couple of films from the ‘70s to make the point.

“I just thought [‘Save the Tiger’] was a beautiful script and one of the really rougher, uncompromising films,” Champlin said, “so I persuaded Jack and Steve Shagan to come down.”

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Shagan received an Oscar nomination for his original screenplay, the story of a disillusioned dress manufacturer struggling with the loss of his youthful idealism as he makes unethical business decisions to keep his company afloat. He provided a colorful chronicle of the two years it took him to obtain financing for “Save the Tiger.”

“Everybody said no one under 40 is going to care about this middle-aged guy having a breakdown,” he recalled. The film ultimately was shot entirely on location in Los Angeles for $1 million, with both Lemmon and director John Avildsen working for minimum scale--$165 a week at the time. Lemmon also got a percentage of the gross.

Lemmon recalled the first time he met Shagan, when the screenwriter arrived unannounced at the studio one day to talk him into reading his “Save the Tiger” script.

“As he was saying goodbye he said, ‘By the way, my major credit is I’m a producer of the ‘Tarzan’ [TV] series.’ And I thought, “Well, isn’t that nice.’

Lemmon said he didn’t get around to reading the script for three or four days “because I really did think it was going to be some damned jungle thing. Then finally, there was a long lighting break in between scenes and I said, ‘Oh, well, what the hell.’ So I started reading it. I don’t think I got more than two or three pages and I was hooked. I couldn’t put it down.”

Lemmon, who has made more than 60 films, just finished shooting a remake of “Inherit the Wind” for Showtime. It premieres May 29, with Lemmon as Henry Drummond opposite George C. Scott’s Matthew Brady.

Considering Lemmon’s five decades in the movies, it was not surprising that the questions quickly strayed from the film at hand.

Here’s Lemmon on:

* Lee Remick, his co-star in “The Days of Wine and Roses” who died of cancer in 1991: “She was one of the loveliest ladies I have ever known professionally or personally. . . . As an actress she was absolutely wonderful. There are very few--Lee, Annie Bancroft, they’re born and bred to be an actress, I swear. . . . As I’ve said often in the past, really good actors don’t act at you, they act with you. And there’s a big difference.”

* Whether he and frequent comedy co-star Walter Matthau do much ad-libbing on the set: “Actually, there’s very little ad-libbing that Walter and I have ever done, but I’m delighted that it seems that way. What does happen is we start to rehearse and we quit. Walter says, ‘That’s enough of that.’ What he feels and what happens is that whatever one of us does [on camera], the other is going to pick up immediately and go with it.”

Mention of Matthau, Lemmon’s longtime friend, not surprisingly came up more than once.

Proving that not even Academy Award-winning actors are immune from making bombs, Lemmon recalled “Alex and the Gypsy,” a 1976 film about a romance between a bail bondsman (Lemmon) and a gypsy (Genevieve Bujold).

“I thought it was quite a different part for me,” he said. “I thought it was going to be terrific, and I couldn’t wait for my buddy Matthau to see it.”

At the preview, Lemmon, Matthau and their wives sat near the back of the theater--the perfect vantage point, it turned out, to see the audience “leaving in droves about 20 minutes” into the picture.

“They weren’t getting popcorn and Hershey bars, believe me,” said Lemmon. “Anyway, at the end of the film, the 20 or 30 people still left are coming up [the aisle] . . . and I’m just sitting there and Matthau is sitting there and I finally just nudge him on the knee. I said, ‘All right, Walter, what did you think of the picture?’ ”

“And he says, ‘Get out of it.’ ”

Said Lemmon with a laugh: “That’s almost worth doing the film just for that line.”

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The New, the Classic

Although the new, unreleased films shown in “Charles Champlin’s Coming Attractions” have always come to the audience as a surprise--a necessity since Champlin and his UCI Extension colleagues often don’t know until the last minute what film they’ll get--the remaining movies in the current series have been confirmed:

* May 10, “The Love Letter,” a new romantic comedy starring Kate Capshaw, Ellen DeGeneres and Tom Selleck. Guest: director Pete Chan.

* May 17, “Chinatown,” the 1974 private-eye classic starring Jack Nicholson. Guest: Robert Towne, who won an Oscar for best original screenplay.

* May 24, “The Dinner Game,” a new French film. Guest: director Frances Vedar.

Admission to the films, which begin at 6:30 p.m., is $25 per person. For advance tickets call (949) 824-5414.--D.M.