In the past year, his RHI Productions has reincarnated ``Gypsy''and ``Call of the Wild.'' And he's in production on ``Scarlett,''the eight-hour CBS miniseries based on the sequel to one of the mostbeloved films ever made, ``Gone With the Wind.''
``I'm very arrogant,'' he states matter-of-factly. ``I think Ican do better. It doesn't deter me that a picture was done wheneverand by whom. The biggest arrogance in my life is to do `Scarlett.'I can do it better, I think, not because I am smarter, but withtoday's technologies I can do things that the moviemakers 30 yearsago didn't have the tools to do.''
Halmi believes his latest production, ``The Yearling,''premiering at 8 p.m. Sunday on WBBM-Channel 2, surpasses the 1946Oscar-winning picture that starred Gregory Peck, Jane Wyman andClaude Jarman Jr. Halmi also is executive producer of Monday night'sABC movie ``Getting Out.''
``It's incredible, physically, what you can do,'' says Halmi,who is in pre-production on Daniel Defoe's ``Robinson Crusoe'' andRudyard Kipling's ``Captains Courageous.''
``The film (stock) is better, the colors are better. We can dothings today that make (movies) a little bit more exciting.''
``The Yearling'' is based on Majorie Kinnan Rawlings' 1938Pulitzer Prize-winning coming-of-age novel about a boy and his petdeer, Flag. Wil Horneff (``The Sandlot'') stars as young JodyBaxter, who lives with his loving father Penny (Peter Strauss) andhis bitter mother, Ora (Jean Smart), on a farm on the edge of thenorthern Florida swamps.
Life is hard for the Baxters, who barely can make ends meetamong the oak moss. Because Jody's older brothers and sisters alldied in infancy, Ora is afraid to love her surviving son and herhusband. Without friends his own age, Jody and his father form apowerful bond, and it's Penny who allows Jody to have an orphanedfawn as a pet. Ultimately, the relationship between Jody and Flagbrings the boy into adulthood.
The film was shot last winter in Charleston, N.C. ``We foundjust the right swamp and the right look,'' says Halmi, who alsoproduced ``The Josephine Baker Story,'' ``The Incident'' and ``Mr.and Mrs. Bridge.'' He also insisted the actors speak the originaldialect used in the book. ``It just gives it another richness to it.The movies that were done in the past, they never used these things.They were adaptations.
``We are doing the book,'' Halmi explains. ``That's the majordifference between the movies of the '30s and '40s and today. Take`Gypsy.' Not one word, not one moment was different than theoriginal Broadway show. It's important that you don't change it. Inthe past, you read the book, it stirred you and then you redid thebook. You took this incredible liberty of arrogance and changed thewords. Those words are the real treasures. To ignore that is notonly ignorance, but stupidity. All of a sudden you stop becoming aliterate person and you become a fake.''
The Emmy Award-winning Strauss also wanted to be true to thebook. When he agreed to play Penny, the actor reread ``TheYearling,'' which, he says, ``stunned'' him.
``That book is read like `King Lear' and `Great Expectations,'when we are too young to really understand them,'' he says. ``It wasone the most magnificent books I had ever read in terms of language,in terms of dealing with the father's loneliness and the mother'sfear of loving. (I thought) it would be wonderful to make this filmin a manner that a family can sit down and see big values brought tolife.''
The original movie, Strauss believes, doesn't work today``because it's overly sentimental. For it to be vibrant and aliveand rich for an audience today, it has to be a little tougher.''
Strauss wanted to emphasize the loneliness Penny suffered.``It's very interesting that Marjorie Rawlings writes Penny Baxter'schildhood in one line, saying that he had a dreadful childhood and hehad come to this place to heal. I said to myself, `Wow.' He was theson of a preacher and he talks throughout the book about lonelinessand when this boy finally comes into his life, he is just so attachedto him. He wants the love of this woman and she has just shutdown.''
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