‘Heaven’ Fans Can’t Wait

Actor Kevin Conway recalls bumping into Tom Hanks about seven years ago: “Hesaid, ‘Could you get me a copy of “The Lathe of Heaven”?’ ” Then a few years later, Conway began getting inquiries from fans--”a few letters every week”--about the whereabouts of the 1980 TV movie in which he stars with Bruce Davison.

When Steve Savage, president of New Video--a company that has released such vintage TV series as “The Avengers” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” on tape--asked video store chains what titles consumers were requesting, “The Lathe of Heaven” was always on the list.

“The Lathe of Heaven” was one of PBS’ few forays into science fiction. And sci-fi fans have been bombarding the noncommercial network for years to repeat it. “My stack of e-mail is like the size of a medium-size phone book,” says Joe Basile, director of program rights and clearances for WNET-TV in New York City, the PBS station that produced the film.

The demand is finally being met. On Tuesday, New Video is releasing “Lathe” on video and DVD ($25 each).

“It has still got a kick to it,” Conway says of the first TV movie ever attempted by PBS. “I was thinking about it. As much as I love theater, once your play closes, you go home. The beauty about film is that you do it and, even 20 years later, somebody can be looking at it again. The movie has found a whole new raft of advocates.”

Based on science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1971 novel, “Lathe of Heaven” tells the parable of George Orr (Davison), a young man whose dreams turn into reality.

Living in a dreary, not-so-distant future, Orr is haunted by his situation and is sent to a shrink, Dr. Haber (Conway), a dream specialist. Haber recognizes Orr’s gift and decides to use his patient’s dreams to cure the world of all its ills--from inclement weather to overpopulation to war.

But things go wrong because Haber can’t control the path of Orr’s dreams. The weather becomes too hot, a plague erupts and the Earth is invaded by a group of aliens that look like a cross between a cockroach and the Michelin tire man.

Directed by Fred Barzyk and David R. Loxton, “Lathe of Heaven” was made for less than $500,000 in just two weeks. Many involved in the production went on to bigger things: Co-writer Diane English created “Murphy Brown”; casting executive Scott Rudin became a major film producer; and co-star Margaret Avery, who plays an attorney, received an Oscar nomination for “The Color Purple.”

Low-Budget Special Effects

The special effects are quaint and rather ingenious. A scene of the aliens attacking, for example, involves lights streaking across the sky. “They didn’t have any money to do opticals,” Conway recalls, “so they got a guy and he went out in the middle of the night to a big shopping center. He put a flashlight on the end of a fishing pole and shot it from his car as the car raced around the parking lot. That was our alien [invasion]. Eat your heart out, George Lucas.”

“The Lathe of Heaven” had been unseen since its initial presentation in early 1980 until this summer, when several PBS stations aired it (though not KCET in Los Angeles). Why the delay in repeating it and releasing “Lathe” to the home video market?

“Any time you have a program or a film that was created 20 years ago, you are dealing with a [question] of whether a program can technically withstand 20 years of sitting in a vault somewhere,” explains Susan Marchand, executive director of program marketing and distribution for WNET.

“Then from a rights and clearances standpoint--that is, all of those underlying talent rights--it takes money to step up and pay these people, whether they are the director, the costumer, the actors.”

But the demand got to be so great that WNET finally took steps to make the film available again. “There was a vast fan network connected by the growing Internet,” Basile explained. “People wanted to know where this program was.”

It also took awhile to get “Lathe of Heaven’ physically fit. “We had to initially clean and get rid of the gunk” from the 2-inch quad masters, says Marchand. After transferring it to a digital format, “we then went through and did more enhancements to bring back as much as possible the original luster.”

Conway believes there are several reasons why “Lathe” will still hold viewers. “It’s a very literate piece,” the actors says. “The best science fiction always is. It is also rather appealing--the idea of a good man who could actually dream a better world. But it’s not that simple, and George doesn’t understand his own gift.”