The Prince George Citizen — Tuesday, November 11,1986 — 11 'Urban legends' only sound like truth by CHRISTOPHER HANSON WASHINGTON (Reuter) -Many newspapers recently published a droll incident involving actor Robert Redford. A woman, so the tale went, entered a Santa Fe ice cream parlor for a cone and saw the movie star seated at a booth. Dazzled but determined not to stare, she contented herself with side-glances as she ordered, paid and left. Outside, she realized she was holding her change, but no cone, and went back in assuming she had forgotten the ice cream. Whereupon Redford shouted, “You put it in your purse!” It’s a great story — but it never took place, and papers that ran it had to print a retraction. Folklore expert Jan Brunvand says the press had been taken in by the latest variant of a longstanding “urban legend” — a false but true-sounding story, usually attributed to the friend of a friend, that gains widespread currency. In earlier versions of the ice cream yarn, Paul Newman or Jack Nicholson supposedly delivered the punch line. Some versions placed the incident in Cape Cod. Brunvand said in an interview many bizarre urban legends have circulated through the years. The story that alligators infest New York City’s sewers is a classic, he said. So is the claim that assassinated President John Kennedy lives on, a human vegetable, on a secluded island — or, in some tales, in a Swiss sanitarium — his fate a state secret. Another legend concerns an American woman who becomes attached to a small stray dog while vacationing in Mexico and smuggles it home. It begins foaming at the mouth and she takes it to a veterinarian, who tells her: “It’s not a dog; it’s a Mexican sewer rat. And second, it’s dying.” Brunvand, a professor of English specializing in folklore at the University of Utah, has written several books on urban legends both for the academic and the popular market. He says he collects urban legends from many sources — word of mouth, correspondence with readers, and study of ancient folktales which may have inspired modern ones. Brunvand says different versions of many tales have circulated as gospel throughout much of the world. “The Choking Doberman” legend is a case in point. A woman returns from work to find her pet Doberman pinscher gagging in the front hall. She rushes it to the vet, who says he will have to operate to remove whatever is blocking its throat, and suggests she go home. The phone is ringing as she opens her front door 20 minutes later. It is the vet, sounding frantic. “Leave the house immediate- ly!” he shouts. "The police are coming!" The vet had found two fingers lodged in the dog’s gullet. Police search* the house and find an intruder in a closet, his bloody hand minus two fingers. The Times of London reported a version of this yam as fact in 1982, setting the action in the British capital, but swiftly retracted the story after readers insisted it had happened in Manchester, Glascow, Liverpool and so on. ’ Brunvand calls one global legend “The Animal’s Revenge.” In the U.S. version, a sadistic rancher ties a lighted stick of dynamite to the tail of a coyote. The animal takes refuge under his $20,000 truck, which is blown to bits. In the Australian version, the animal is a kangaroo. Brunvand has traced origins of some legends to ancient times. “The Animal’s Revenge,” he spe- Assante's Cajun a rogue, lover by IN A WARREN The Canadian Press From anyone else it might sound like a cliche. But when Harvard-educated Glen Pitre tells you in a gentle Cajun cadence that he became a filmmaker because he “grew up hearing stories on the front porch,” you believe him. That porch was -in Pitre’s home town of Cut Off (pop. 3,000) in southern Louisiana and the storytellers, usually Pitre’s elderly relatives, were French-speaking descendants of the Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia by the British in 1755. Ironically, Pitre’s first feature movie, Belizaire the Cajun, is set in the Louisiana of 1859 when the French-speaking Cajuns were being chased off their lands by local vigilantes. Now this might not sound like swashbuckling movie entertainment. But Cajun-hero. Belizaire Breaux, played with uncommon warmth by Armand Assante (Private Benjamin, Unfaithfully Yours), is a roguish herbal healer — sort of a cross between Robin Hood and Casanova. Beneath Pitre’s fast-paced plot twists — complete with a daylight manhunt chest-deep in water through an algae-covered Louisiana bayou and a hilarious climax on the gallows — lies a poignant romantic triangle. Belizaire is still in love with his boyhood sweetheart, Alida (Gail Youngs), a Cajun living common-law with Matthew Perry, an upstanding American landowner (non-Cajuns in the movie are called Americans) who also happens to be a vigilante. Belizaire diagnoses Alida’s pregnancy, prescribing citronel-ia and raspberry leaves, and is told to keep it a secret from Perry. Disturbed that Alida has cut herself off from her people, the wily Belizaire invites her to a • Cajun dance while Perry is away on a spring cattle roundup. “Before they’re born, they love to dance,” coaxes Belizaire, the folk healer. “If that child were mine, we’d be dancing all the time,” adds Belizaire, the man. As far as Pitre is concerned, casting Belizaire was the key to his movie’s success. One of the reasons he wanted the dark, half-Irish, half-Italian Assante was that he looks Cajun. Pitre, a slim man of 31 with a head of dark, curly hair and old-fashioned handlebar mustache, also knew that Assante was adept at accents. He had seen him play Goldie Hawn’s French-Jewish doctor husband in Private Benjamin. In Belizaire, which is peppered with French phrases, Assante delivers a flawless Cajun accent — sounding much like a southern drawl set to a Caribbean rhythm. Although Pitre went to Harvard to study film-making, he returned to Cut Off to found Cote Blanche Productions. He often had to work on shrimp boats to make ends meet while his company survived on documentaries, commercials and radio productions, as well as 16-mm Cajun docu-dramas. “Before Belizaire, I had never done anything in English and my biggest budget was $28,000,” Pitre said in an interview in Toronto, where his $900,000 movie recently opened. Pitre’s previous films include La Fievre jaune (Yellow Fever), a story told to him by his grandmother, while Huit piastres et demie! ($8.50!) starred two feuding cousins, aged 82 and 93, who had taken opposite sides in a shrimp war in 1938. Pitre wasn’t told the Belizaire story on his family’s front porch, but at a party where a friend suggested he make a movie about his great-grandfa-ther, a Cajun folk healer arrested for murdering a vigilante. “A few weeks later, the charges were dropped and a few days after that he moved in Armand Assante had the dark good looks necessary to portray Belizaire the Cfyun. with the widow,” says Pitre with a wink. The film-maker then came across an official history of the vigilantes written in 1850 and wove the threads of the story into a movie script. His break came when the script was selected by Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Institute, which was created to help independent film-makers. There, Pitre got pointers from veteran director Sydney Pollack and actors Karl Malden and Robert Duvall. Duvall makes a cameo appearance in Belizaire as a preacher and his wife Gail Youngs plays Alida. Even with this expert advice, Belizaire remained a “family” affair financed by Louisianians. Pitre’s father Loulan plays the movie’s sheriff, producer Allan Durand also appears as a priest and hundreds of locals are used as costumed extras. Beau Soleil, a group specializing in Cajun music, created the film’s zesty soundtrack. Belizaire also gives Louisiana’s 1.5 million Cajuns their first real cinematic hero since Evangeline, a 1929 talkie starring Dolores Del Rio. Pitre says it’s only in the past 15 years that Cajuns have discovered a sense of pride in their French-Acadian roots. Before that, the word “Cajun” was generally used in Louisiana to denote “low-class.” “If you spoke French in school, not just in class, but even in the schoolyard, you got whipped.” Today, Cajun has even become trendy as North Americans discover Cajun culture and cuisine. You won’t hear Glen Pitre complain about this. “Look, there’s nothing like national validation to convince people back in Louisiana that maybe we have something worth hanging on to after all.” Belizaire the Cajun opens later this month in Edmonton, Calgary and Montreal, and other cities may be added to the list. Videos by ASSOCIATED PRESS Here are the Top 10 video cassettes by sales and rentals as listed in this week’s Billboard magazine. Copyright 1986, Billboard Publications Inc. Reprinted with permission. SALES 1 Sleeping Beauty — Disney 2 Jane Fonda’s New Workout — Karl-Lorimar 3 Jane Fonda’s Low Impact Aerobic Workout — Karl-Lorimar 4 The Sound of Music — CBS-Fox 5 Alice in Wonderland — Disney 6 The Cage — Paramount 7 The Music Man — Warner 8 Pinocchio — Disney 9 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — Paramount 10 Amadeus — HBO-Cannon RENTALS 1 Down and Out in Beverly Hills — Touchstone 2 Out of Africa — MCA 3 Pretty in Pink — Paramount 4 F-X — HBO-Cannon 5 The Money Pit — MCA 6 9Vi Weeks — MGM-UA 7 Gung Ho — Paramount 8 Wildcats — Warner 9 Runaway Train — MGM-UA 10 Crossroads — RCA-Columbia MOW SNEL, Hans For School Trustee This ad paid lor by the people to elect Hans Snel GIFT CERTIFICATES Available at NR MOTORS 805-1 st Ave. 563-8891 D7970 DOREEN GLASSEL for SCHOOL TRUSTEE — Equity for northern students — More parental involvement — Encouragement and preparation for post secondary education Paid for by the Committee to elect Doreen Glassel Cineplex Odeon THEATRE GUIDE MATINEE TUESDAY 2:00 P.M HE JUST HAS TO WIN' /— -v B.C. Warning: Occasional coarse (GMOaQ languag# \ HTTTJTf EVES. 7:00 p.m. only culates, goes back to a Viking tale in which flaming torches are tied to birds. Why do these legends persist? “They are fascinating, funny, suspenseful stories with a literary appeal, and they appear to be true — people think they are passing on a bit of news,” Brunvand said. “Maybe most important, they often have a warning or a message — you can’t trust the big companies; anyone can be a victim of crime; keep your eye on your kids.” Brunvand says many urban legends tap a deep human fascination with the gruesome or the macabre. Babies are roasted in microwave ovens. Wet cats die in laundromat dryers. A tiny tot is killed, cut open, and stuffed with cocaine in a smuggling scheme. According to a bogus story that swept the United States several years ago, “Little Mikey,” an adorable child in television cereal ads, died when he washed down some fizzy candies with a gulp of cola and suffered an internal explosion. Some scholars offer complex interpretations of urban legends such as one popular with high school girls about a teenage couple necking in a parked car late one night. The car radio reports a hook-hand-ed killer is on the loose, the girl asks to be taken home, the frustrated lad hits the accelerator. Later a hook is found dangling from the car door. University of California scholar Alan Dundes says this legend is full of Freudian symbol and its subconscious message to girls may be summarized as: “Beware premarital sex.” Dundes views the hook-hand as a phallic symbol, the villain’s effort to get into the car as a threat to the girl’s virginity, and the tearing off of the hook as a castration symbol. Costello softens up bit on new records NEW YORK (AP) - Elvis Costello, considered by critics the most talented songwriter to emerge from English new-wave rock, has released two records this year that he considers to be his most compassionate work. King of America was released last spring, co-produced with T-Bone Burnett and used country studio musicians. “There are not so many mean songs on it,” Costello said in an interview. “Some of my most successful songs have been quite malevolent. Those things are in me, like in everybody else. When I start thinking about angry things I become meaner. I’ve got some pretty mean songs lying festering away in my songbag, you know.” Blood and Chocolate, Costello’s 13th LP in North America, is a bitter and desperate record, obsessed with betrayal and heartache. He recorded the album with his longtime band, The Attractions. “Over the last couple of years I haven’t been doing songs of great emotional substance. People’s feelings have been strong for more vivid material that came earlier in my career. I haven’t gone to the hearts of people. The ones they get excited about are the old songs, still. “Some people do their washing up to records,” said Costello, who thinks his songs require concentrated listening. “There’s no handbook on how to listen to my records but I think it is unlikely people wash up to mine.” An aura of mystery and unavailability has surrounded Costello through much of his career. “It was for avoiding having to do interviews,” he said. “They had written the article before they came to you. There was very little point in saying anything. “It was easier to foster being difficult or mysterious or violent or all three, so people stayed away from you ... Let them write the stupid nonsense they were going to write anyway. All I wanted to do was get on with the work.” Costello lives in London. He put his real name, Declan McManus, on King of America. On Blood and Chocolate, he called himself Napoleon Dynamite. “I’m 32. I was 22 when 1 started. It’s a way of saying that a period of time has elapsed and that’s my name. You’re not to take my name changing too seriously. There’s no psychoanalytical reasoning behind it.” About changing Declan McManus to Elvis Costello, he said, “McManus was hard to say over the phone ... My great-grandfather’s name was Costello. My manager added Elvis, like a stunt, a life-long stunt.” Costello’s grandfather came to the United States in the 1930s as a ship’s trumpet player. His father was a trumpet player and singer. “I’ve got a trumpet; I’ve always meant to take it up,” he said. “Somebody gave me a guitar. It has taken up all my time since.” He left school when he was 18. “I was living in Liverpool. I worked for a bank, then a cosmetics film and then I got in this business. “I made my first records while still working,” he said. “I’d take sick days off. I gave up the bank when they said I had to stand outside when the bullion was delivered and blow a whistle if there was a raid. The first person they’re going to shoot is the guy with the whistle.” Costello has recently been doing some record producing for the Irish band the Pogues. “I’m not technically minded as a producer. I’m more like a musical director. I grab something with imaginative feeling and strong emotional content and capture it. I can describe what I want to hear. “T-Bone Burnett worked that way with me. He told me not to lose my nerve if I failed to get one version down. He told me not to tinker with it. Remember why I wrote it instead of getting anxious and trying to change it.” I good health starts i | with your spine, j dQiiir check it a regularly ^ C —* B.C. Warning: Soma vary coaria Ian* guaga, occaiional q.qa - m & suggestive ’ ' LilkUuLIB scene, ONLY YEARS | 1894-1966 SKOtt FINISHES LONGEST RALLY IN THE WORLD! TWO SKODAS have Just completed the gruelling CANAMEX Rally with flying colour*, FINISHING FIRST AND SECOND In their claaa. 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