1. ae
THE SUNDAY REPUBLICAN MARCH 30, 2008
SECTION
ON BROADWAY “Crimes of the
H
Heart,” starring Jennifer Dundas,
left, and Lily Rabe, gets 5 stars. 2H
rts& ntertainment
WittyWonka
CONNECTICUT’S GENE WILDER LOOKS BACK, WRYLY
more fun to make than any he’d ever worked on
BY STEVE WINN
about to be finished — he played the title role in
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
a cast that included Peter Boyle, Marty Feld-
The day before shooting ended on “Young
man, Teri Garr, Gene Hackman, Madeline Kahn
Frankenstein,” the brilliantly fashioned 1974
and Cloris Leachman — but he was going back
comedy and enduring cult favorite, Gene
to an unhappy life in a miserable marriage.
Wilder was all but inconsolable as he sat on a
“Transylvania was heaven,” Wilder, who lives
bed on the set. His director and co-scriptwriter,
in Stamford, Conn., told a packed house at a re-
Mel Brooks, found him there and asked him why
cent screening of the film in San Francisco.
he was so sad.
Wilder knew what was wrong but just couldn’t
See WILDER, Page 4H
express it. Not only was the movie that had been
INSIDE: On April 9, Gene Wilder will be among four Connecticut residents
to receive the Governor’s Awards for Excellence in Culture & Tourism. PAGE 6H
ILLUSTRATION BY MICHELLE MCCLEARY-SISS REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
AFTER THE SHOW
Litchfield County’s
Stop wasting computer power LuPone finds her way
BETTER TO SEARCH FOR E.T. THAN UNNECESSARILY PRETTY UP ‘HORTON HEARS A WHO!’
to Rose in ‘Gypsy’
BY MICHAEL KUCHWARA
ASSOCIATED PRESS
When Patti LuPone was in
her early teens, she appeared in
a local Long Island production
of “Gypsy,” put on by what she
says was “a group of kids that
got together in the summer-
time. ... It was just kids who
loved musical theater.”
LuPone played Louise, the
ugly duckling daughter who
BLUE SKY STUDIOS/MCT
grows up to become that classy
Kangaroo, right, lectures Horton on the ‘impossibility’ of life existing on a speck on a clover in ‘Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!’
swan of a stripper, Gypsy Rose
hat a waste — Once, digital animation gave a universe, and down the road Lee. Even then the committed
W the computer new kind of life to cartoons, we may run out. professional, she threw herself
power spent on but now this new technology That road will end in 20 into the role — and the strip-
today’s movies. has pixilated the life out of years or so, computer scien- ping.
JOHN
What? Computer power? them. tists fear, according to an arti- “I actually Krazy Glued my
GREENWALD
Movies? Waste? Let me ex- It doesn’t matter. Those cle in ZDNet.com. What we belly button shut because I put
plain. cute, fuzzy little animals your consider computer power — a jewel in there,” says Lupone,
First, except for some low- kids want to see are computer- how much data and processing who lives in Kent. “I went, ‘How
budget indie films shot in ized. Guaranteed. speed we get from our ma- am I going to keep it in there? A
Mongolia, almost all pictures those action, superhero, sci-fi So?, as Dick Cheney might chines — depends on how little Krazy Glue.’ (The next
have some computer effects. and fantasy pictures are com- ask. Who cares? We’ve got an many itsy bitsy transistors sci- day) I woke up, and my belly
The movie may be an intimate pletely dependent on artists endless supply of bits and entists and engineers can button was stuck together. It got
three-character drama set in a and geeks bent over computer bytes, megas and teras, and shrink onto a silicon chip. terribly infected.”
single motel room, but check screens and keyboards creat- silicon, too. “Semiconductor makers won’t Such are the memories of her
out the credits. You’ll see at ing all those eye-popping ef- Maybe. be able to shrink transistors first stage experience with the PAUL KOLNICK
Kent resident Patti LuPone
least one for a computer ef- fects you love so much. I heard a guy on one of those much, if at all, beyond 2021,” remarkable Jule Styne-Stephen
stars on Broadway in
fects company. Then, we have feature- wonky NPR shows say the ZDNet reports. Sondheim-Arthur Laurents
Next, some films wouldn’t length cartoons. They’re all world is using as many bytes ‘Gypsy’ as the memorable
exist except for computers. All computer-animated now. as there are stars in the known See TECHNOLOGY, Page 6H See BROADWAY, Page 5H Rose.