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Monday, August 31, 1998

Bizarre love triangle

FILM: Writer Tina Andrews and director Gregory Nava try to answer the question

'Why Do Fools

Fall in Love?'"

By Stephanie Sheh

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

The year was 1983. Actress and aspiring writer Tina Andrews was sitting in front of the television watching MTV. Michael Jackson was doing "Billy Jean" and suddenly something caught her attention. Jackson slung his jacket over his shoulder. It was a pose that she'd seen many years earlier, struck by. Frankie Lymon.

And that was the start of a screenplay that took almost 15 years to bring to fruition.

"It's like Barbara Streisand's 'Yentil.' This is my 'Yentil,'" said "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" screenwriter Andrews, sitting in the ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel. The film, starring Larenz Tate, Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox and Lela Rochon, tells the rise and fall of doo-wop star Frankie Lymon through the fight for the right to his estate. Three women, who weren't aware of each others' existences - glamorous Platters' singer Zola Taylor (Berry), sassy shoplifter Elizabeth Waters (Fox) and demure school teacher Emira Eagle (Rochon) - all claim to be the real Mrs. Frankie Lymon.

Though Andrews has worked in the industry for years as both an actress and a writer "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" is her credited writing debut after her work as an uncredited contributor to 1997's "Soul Food." When she first thought to write the script, Andrews envisioned the Gloved One himself in the lead role.

"I'm thinking this would be a good vehicle because I thought he was so visual," Andrews said. "He had such a great presence that I thought, 'Wow, this guy should be doing movies.' What would be great if he could do a role that would do for him in terms of a film career what 'Lady Sings the Blues' had done for Diana Ross."

Jackson ended up turning down the role, but Andrews continued with her project. At the time there was very little information about Lymon, so Andrews had to go to the library and really dig. Then around 1986, something occurred that changed Andrews' entire structure for her film. By then, Diana Ross had sung a cover of Lymon's hit "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?" The song had also been used in a Hallmark commercial and in the film "American Graffiti."

And also in 1986 all three of Lymon's wives started a bitter fight over who deserved his money. Andrews then refocused her script on the three women learning to understand and love Lymon again.

With the script complete, Andrews faced difficulties getting the rights to the songs, and by the time the film was ready to be made director Gregory Nava was on board. Nava, who had just finished "Selena," had some worries and did not want to do another music movie.

"But when I read her script I just adored it. And everybody was offering me every musical movie," Nava said, shaking his head of gray curls. "People liked the way the concert scenes were done in 'Selena,' and those are a hard thing to pull off. They felt that they had a lot of vitality. So I was getting everything. I got one script about the birth and origins of rap."

To portray the teen heartthrob, the filmmakers always wanted Tate for the part, who jumped right on the chance. But casting for the three wives wasn't always so clear cut.

"I always wanted Vivica to be in the movie because I just think she's absolutely the coolest," Nava said. "And I kind of wanted her from the very beginning to play Elizabeth. But she didn't want to play Elizabeth, she wanted to play Zola."

Nava also wanted Berry to be in the movie and since Zola's part was already taken by Fox, they discussed having her play the quiet Emira. After a while, Fox realized that she was more suited for the part of Elizabeth, and Berry moved into Zola's role.

The next hurdle for Nava was re-creating the television footage of the '50s and '60s. There was no archival footage of "The Big Beat," the show that Lymon first appeared on. The filmmakers looked toward similar shows like "American Bandstand," but not much existed because television was live in those days. In the midst of their research, Nava came across an old Alan Freid movie called "Rock, Rock, Rock." Freid had been the host of the Big Beat.

"We looked at the movie, and I said, 'You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take the real Frankie Lymon out and put a recreation of Larenz Tate in the same set. But the rest of the movie is going to be the old movie,'" Nava said. "That's really Alan Freid introducing him and those audience sets, that's the real footage from the 1956 movie 'Rock, Rock, Rock.' So we shot Larenz lip syncing 'Why Do Fools Fall in Love?' and we then had all those chicks be-bopping from '56. And we threw the whole thing into a computer. We had the computer match the grain and scratches from the old movie in the new footage. And you have all those kids with the haircuts. You can't make anybody do that. Off rhythm and snapping on the wrong beat. It's hysterical."

In addition, television studios were made differently. The glass in the control booth looks directly out onto the set of the show.

"We looked looked and looked," Nava said. "And finally we found an old TV studio in downtown Los Angeles that was being used for educational television, but it was a real TV studio from that era and they still had the old lights up and the old accordion fixtures that they would bring the lights up and down on. It was an incredible find with the glass and the whole thing and it was like 'This is it! We've got our TV studio for "The Big Beat!'" I was so happy."

Watching the bubbly director talk about overcoming problems while filmmaking, the sense of passion for his craft becomes apparent. And it is that passion that this UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television alumnus advised aspiring filmmakers to keep a firm hold on.

"I think that the most important thing is to stick to who you are, because when I was a film student everybody was like, 'Forget Hollywood. We hate Hollywood. We're going to do art and do things that have social relevance, things like that.' I think in a way that was good mentality because nowadays people have kind of been Reaganized and are so into making it and what's the studio going to buy and how are we going to sell it to the studio that they lose their passion for who they are.

"The films that I've made like 'El Norte' and 'Mi Familia' certainly haven't been films that people would think that Hollywood would buy and they didn't want to buy it," Nava said. "And look where I am now. So I really think you have to find out who you are and be passionate and follow a dream. And those are the people who become successful in the film business, and I think that when you're a student it is a good time to experiment and find out what you've got to say. Because if you have something, this burden on you to say, it will come out and you'll be successful."

FILM: "Why do Fools Fall in Love?" opens Friday.(Left) Larenz Tate, left, stars as Frankie Lymon while Lela Rochon plays Emira, one of Frankie's three wives, in "Why Do Fools Fall in Love." (Far left) Halle Berry plays the glamorous singer Zola Taylor and wife to Frankie (Tate). (Below) Vivica Fox is the vivacious Elizabeth, another one of Frankie's (Tate's) wives, in the new Warner Bros. release.

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