MORNING REPORT - News from July 4, 2000

POP/ROCK

Roskilde Festival Closes Quietly: As concerts continued Sunday on all seven stages at Copenhagen’s Roskilde Festival, police searched for answers about how eight concertgoers were trampled to death late Friday during a performance by Pearl Jam. Band members reportedly shouted to the crowd of about 50,000 to move back as fans packed in closer to the stage, then halted their performance when fans didn’t comply. Police were interviewing witnesses and security guards as they tried to figure out how the deaths happened despite barriers erected in front of the stages and dozens of people positioned to help squeezed spectators escape. British bands Oasis and the Pet Shop Boys pulled out of their scheduled Saturday night appearances, but other groups, including Lou Reed and Live, played as scheduled, organizers said. Pearl Jam responded to the tragedy on the band’s official Web site: “There are absolutely no words to express our anguish in regard to the parents and loved ones of these precious lives that were lost,” the statement said. “We have not yet been told what actually occurred, but it seemed to be random and sickeningly quick--it doesn’t make sense. When you agree to play at a festival of this size and reputation, it is impossible to imagine such a heart-wrenching scenario. Our lives will never be the same.” Police reported that all eight victims died of suffocation.

FILM

Legendary Stuntman Dies: British stuntman Terry Forrestal, a veteran of Hollywood blockbusters like “Titanic” and “Braveheart,” died in a jumping accident in Norway on June 10, the Associated Press reported Sunday. He was 52. Forrestal was one of Europe’s leading film stunt coordinators, designing and executing action sequences for a series of leading directors. In 1996 he made headlines when he checked out of a Danish hotel in a cloud of smoke, plunging 90 feet from the roof onto an air bag to promote the video release of the James Bond film “Goldeneye.” He died while parachuting from the 3,000-foot Kjerag cliff in Lysefjord, Norway. He landed badly on a ledge 2,000 feet down, injuring his legs; while waiting for rescue, he launched himself from the ledge, but there was insufficient height for his parachute to open properly.

STAGE

British Actors Stage Concern: A group of prominent British actors wrote to England’s Chancellor Gordon Brown to plead for help for regional theater, saying it is “in crisis” and needs more money, according to the Independent. Dame Judi Dench, Sir Michael Gambon, Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Derek Jacobi, Alan Rickman and Prunella Scales all signed the letter saying that “the crisis facing English regional theater derives from years of underfunding.” Earlier this week the Arts Council’s chairman, Gerry Robinson, called on the government to give an extra 100 million pounds (about $150 million) to the arts, saying that about $38 million of that would go to help theater. However, he added that theater itself had to share the blame for being too insular and failing to attract younger audiences.

TELEVISION

Estrella Gigante: The most famous variety-show host on Spanish-language television will have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame next year. Mario Kreutzberger is known worldwide to viewers of “Sabado Gigante” as simply Don Francisco. The show, which appears in 42 countries, is broadcast in the United States by Univision, this country’s largest Spanish-language television network. Kreutzberger began hosting the show in his homeland of Chile in 1962 and brought it to the U.S. in 1986. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, “Sabado Gigante” is the longest-running television program in the Americas.

QUICK TAKES

Turner Classic Movies will honor Walter Matthau, who died of a heart attack Saturday (see appreciation, F12), with a daylong film festival Saturday. The cable network will air “The Kentuckian,” “The Fortune Cookie,” “The Odd Couple,” “Fail Safe” and “Private Screenings: Lemmon/Matthau” in succession beginning at 8 a.m. . . . Lee Ann Rimes has rescheduled her Aug. 18 and 19 concerts at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, which were canceled because of illness. Rimes will now perform Nov. 17 and 18. Tickets for the August shows will be honored on the new dates. . . . Veteran producer Jeff Valdez has been nominated to the board of trustees of the American Museum of the Moving Image. Valdez created and is producing “Brothers Garcia,” a sitcom about a Latino family that will premiere on Nickelodeon on July 23.