GODFATHER, ROCKY STAR FOLLOWS FAMOUS BROTHER'S FOOTSTEPS:

SHIRE TAKES A SHOT AT DIRECTING

Canoe Network  ::  1/10/96

Talia Shire, noted for playing a member of the Corleone family in The Godfather trilogy and Sylvester Stallone's wife in the Rocky fivesome, has followed the family trade: She has turned director.

The film is One Night Stand. It stars Ally Sheedy as a young professional whose brief sexual encounter brings profound, even frightening changes in her life. It's a moody piece which had a brief release in Los Angeles and will be appearing soon across North America.

The tragic circumstances of the production almost overshadow the film itself. Shire's husband, Hollywood dealmaker Jack Schwartzman, fell ill and died as she was struggling to complete One Night Stand.

She spoke openly of her ordeal at the Bel-Air mansion she shared with her husband and their children.

The movie was sponsored by the legendary Roger Corman, whose low-budget films helped start the careers of Shire's brother, Francis Ford Coppola, as well as Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Jack Nicholson and dozens more.

"The beauty of going first-time-out was having Roger Corman as mentor, as well as New World (releasing company) as sponsor," she said.

With controlled emotion, Shire talked about how her husband pushed her into directing One Night Stand. He acted as executive producer and found the financing through his many contacts as an entertainment lawyer.

"For only a week I banished him from the set because I was so scared," she said. "Then he became very much an an on-hands producer. It's wonderful to go from having your husband loving you and being your greatest fan to really respecting you as he sees the process happening.

"When I had brought the project in and started the post-production process, he was feeling terribly, terribly ill. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was strange; looking back I could see various things about behavior and health. It's a tricky cancer to diagnose.

"We decided along with the doctors that he had a tremendous chance to live with the various therapies. We changed our lifestyles in this house. We lived very privately. I edited downstairs. He did his therapy in the morning," she said.

"I have to tell you, (we believed) he was going to live. That's the way it was until shortly before he died."

She said finishing the movie "began to save me, put a frame around my sanity.

"More and more it spoke to matters of life and death and loving somebody and taking a risk. That's what we had done."

Shire sees hope in the growing number of women directors, but she added: "It's unfortunate that the men seem to be directing very large budget action pieces, and the women are trusted with the more sideways, character-motivated, family pieces. One would like to see that change, so that everyone could work the whole range in terms of storytelling and budget."