LW STRANGE animal, your human being. Publicize, boost, hype something that costs more than the average person can afford — and probably more than it’s worth — and people will eagerly Hock to it, con- vinced that it must be great. Offer something free and most people will ignore it — suspecting that anything that costs nothing must be worth the price. Which no doubr explains why just halfa dozen people passed through North Vancouver’s Presentation House Gallery during the hour or so I was there last Saturday afternoon. Why? “We'd probably draw more people if we were in Vancouver,” the young man behind the desk sur- mised, adding that at times attendance is quite strong. But, drawing on a North Shore population of around 170,000, you'd think that this particular show (which continues to Oct. 28) would have local people lined up. It’s not for lack of atten- :- tion. The exhibit has _ received big coverage in the News, Vancouver Sun — whose ‘critic Michael Scott called Presentation House the province's foremost gallery of its kind — anda ‘- double-page spread in The National Post. : ‘It’s a fascinating exhibit : called Camera Over ’ Hollywood — photos taken by John Swope in the years it she Trevor autens garden of binses 1936-38, at the Keight of Hollywood's star system and movie popularity for the masses. Credit where due: Karen Love is Presentation House's curator, and Mark Timmings designed this show. Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda (both close friends of Swope), Olivia de Havilland, Orson Welles, Luise Rainer, Clark Gable, Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, W.C. Fields, John Barrymore, Bette Davis, Dorothy McGuire (to whom Swope was married), Norma Shearer (she of the sad, sad ending -~ and a scandalous affair with the very young Mickey Rooney, half her age, about which Rooney later wrote with devastating can- dour), mogu! Louis B. Mayer, and directors Josh Logan and Frank Capra are among those captured by Swope’s camera. But this is an unglam- orous Hollywood, a Hollywood without makeup, a demytholugized - Hollywood, Hollywood off- camera, so to speak: a work- ing town after all, almost just Cindy Crawford's Choice Constellation «Carré» Diamond-set blact. diat and diamund-set bezel, Detroit with pictures. I's a Hollywood exhausted after — sometimes during — a dav's work, the hard work of creating escapist contections for a world hammered by the Depression. Stewart and de Havilland sprawl on their coats on the grass, eves closed, oblivious te one another, a wind-up record player between them. Walter Matthau is just a face among men pausing from work on the sets. Swope offen focused on workers and extras trying to catch forty winks: My favourite of all is a napping extra in a cockade hat, lace at his wrists — and an empty mickey at his side. There’s a slide presenta- tion of 621 Swope photos, not all of them of Hollywood, and, for the impatient, a computerized version that offers rows of contacts from which vou can bring up images that fill half the screen. Not to ignore a small sideshow called Telephones, put together by New York artist Christian Marclay. Simple idea: cuts from movies showing actors and actresses answering, speaking over, and hanging up phones. It’s mesmerizing — the drama that the ringing phone, the eager or hesitant answer, the disappointed end of a conversation can evoke. It’s an amazing character- istic of the human being that — surrounded by the glori- ous music, books, art pro- CAPILANO MALL. NORTH O84 Ht PARK RUVAL SOUTH, WEST VAN © ote aS found and art profane of Western civilization — he can listlessly look out of the window and say “P'm bored.” aaa Speaking of the arts and such: “I'm optimistic that ich be finished in time,” Margo Gram said — voice genuinely optimistic — over the phone the other day, hammering audible in the background at the Centennial Theatre. Ms. Gram runs the the- atre, where renovations, largely of the foyer, wash- rooms, bar, and wheelchair space — which has cut a few seats, now 703 — were still proceeding only 10 days before the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra's open- ing concert next Thursday. It sounds scarily like running close to a deadline somewhat miore serious than, say, a columnist’s. But Ms. Gram seemed perfectly assured, and praised the construction company to the skics. The spiffed-up theatre will officially reopen the weekend of Oct. 13. high- lighted — for me — by the Sunday, September 24, 2000 — North Shore News - 7 lywood Oct. 15. 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