Danny Devito Found Delight In Making Dark `Matilda' For Kids | The Chicago Tribune 

Take 2. FRIDAY\'S GUIDE TO MOVIES & MUSIC. Movie review.

Danny Devito Found Delight In Making Dark `Matilda\' For Kids

LOS ANGELES — Everybody who is anybody in Hollywood has "people" who look out for them, who get the early word on the hot scripts that might be just perfect for a certain star or director, who scout the fall publishing lists for a book that will be adaptable, who make the connections that count.

Because Danny DeVito\'s own Jersey Films is one of this town\'s hotter production companies ("Pulp Fiction," "Get Shorty"), it stands to figure he must have the very best "people" on the case. Most of them are taller than he and very well paid. One is not:

"My daughter Lucy brought `Matilda\' into the house when she was 10," says DeVito, rousing himself from a hotel suite bed where he was watching television with his wife, Rhea Perlman. "We knew right away what a great movie it would make. Lucy\'s 13 now, so that gives you some idea how these things go."

"Matilda," which opens today, would have made it to the screen without DeVito\'s patronage, but it is safe to say it would have been a very different "Matilda." The children\'s book is one of the darkest of the 24 written by the late Roald Dahl.

Dahl specialized in tales of children who are emotionally battered or abused by monstrous grown-ups, but who persevere, triumph -- and, best of all, take revenge -- often with the help of fantastic powers. Though a few of Dahl\'s books have made it to the screen, most recently "James and the Giant Peach," they are inevitably softened and smoothed. Not "Matilda."

"It\'s out there, isn\'t it?" DeVito says, chuckling like a kid who has just glued his evil stepmother to the inside of a clothes dryer. "Kids love it. I\'ve shown the movie in about six stages to big groups of kids, and the response was so positive that this dark pill got easier for the studio to swallow."

"Matilda" is about a little girl born to absolutely the wrong parents. Harry and Zinnia Wormwood, played by DeVito and Perlman, are gauche, stupid louts who can barely tolerate their preternaturally intelligent daughter (played by Mara Wilson of "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "Miracle on 34th Street"), much less comprehend her.

Left on her own, she devours hundreds of books at the library and learns how to be completely independent. But when her parents consent to send her to school, it\'s one ruled by a horrible principal named Trunchbull (Pam Ferris), who locks students who displease her in a spiked closet and uses them to practice her shot put.

Fortunately, Matilda has three things in her favor: the discovery that she is gifted with telekinesis; the friendship of the lovely, supportive teacher Miss Honey (Embeth Davidtz, of "Schindler\'s List"); and her intelligence. Using all three, Matilda saves the day.

"Lucy brought the book into our house, which is usually how it goes with Roald\'s books," says DeVito. "The kids pass them around. We read it together at night, and I was thrilled. And I thought if I ever could make a movie for my kids, this would be the one, and I thought the Wormwoods would be wonderful parts for Rhea and me, since we always wanted to do something else together."

As it turned out, he had been beaten to it. Dahl\'s widow, Liccy, told DeVito that Nicholas Kazan ("Reversal of Fortune") was working on a script subject to her approval. But she had seen DeVito\'s dark comedies "Throw Momma from the Train" and "The War of the Roses."

"She recognized a kindred spirit," says DeVito. "She really believed I would be the right person to direct the movie."

DeVito describes Wilson "as an absolute gift from heaven. I mean, she is Matilda. She even looks like the drawing Quentin Blake did in the book." Davidtz, he says, was perfect the minute she walked into his office: "She was the most delicate, sweet, loving person, just perfect."

"But I had no idea what to do for Trunchbull," he adds. "I mean, I was looking at opera singers. I was looking at female wrestlers. Finally, I got a tape in the mail from an English actress. I had never seen Pam Ferris, although I since found out she was on this hit television show in England, playing the doting, dutiful mother of a bunch of kids. But this tape was like, wow, Robert Morley on a really bad day. She was just standing there, talking to these imaginary children like they were little carbuncles. She was bliss."

DeVito is proud of the film, although he expects to be charged with juvenile subversion. But he says if he had taken the more extreme scenes out of the film, he could never have faced his kids again.

"Lucy\'s 13, Grace is 11 and Jake is 8, and they all loved the movie," he says. "I\'ve shown it to 600 kids, and they all love the movie. I\'ve even had kids who have read the book tell me they like the movie better, and that\'s the greatest compliment I could have."

Regardless of what happens with "Matilda," DeVito is moving Jersey Films from Tri-Star to Universal. It is there that he\'ll produce "Out Of Sight," the film version of Elmore Leonard\'s next novel, which is to be published next month.

It will reunite the "Get Shorty" team of director Barry Levinson and writer Scott Frank, and possibly the "Hoffa" team of DeVito and Jack Nicholson, although DeVito says no casting decisions have been made. But he is adamant that the half of the story that is set in Detroit will be filmed in Detroit, just as he is adamant that "Out Of Sight" will never suffer the fate of the last Leonard movie made at Universal, the smoothed and sanded "Stick."

"You know what the difference is," says DeVito, stabbing a stubby thumb into his chest. "Right here. The studios can do whatever they want, but they won\'t do it with me. They ain\'t gonna tamper with what we do. Send me your tired and hungry and mistreated. Send \'em to Jersey Films. We\'ll take care of \'em."

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