>Patricia Hearst Appears in Movie
>
>By LINDA DEUTSCH
>AP Special Correspondent
>LOS ANGELES (AP) via NewsEdge Corporation -
>Patricia Hearst's role in a new John Waters
>movie may surprise some viewers. She's playing the mother of a
>terrorist kidnapper.
>
>The movie, ``Cecil B. DeMented,'' is a wild spoof typical of
>Waters. But this spoof is of a kidnapping with weird parallels to
>Hearst's own abduction by the Symbionese Liberation Army 26 years
>ago.
>
>In this film, a group of obsessed ``cinema terrorists''
>protesting the state of the mainstream film business kidnaps a
>movie star portrayed by Melanie Griffith.
>
>Hearst, who has appeared in three of Waters' previous
>productions including ``Serial Mom,'' plays the mother of a young,
>inept kidnapper known as Fidget. She and her husband go on TV to
>urge their son to surrender.
>
>``Tell us where you are,'' she pleads, much as her own parents
>did in the 1970s.
>
>Griffith's character, Honey Whitlock, becomes converted to her
>captors' cause, waving guns in the air and declaring, ``Death to
>those who support mainstream cinema.''
>
>The SLA slogan was ``Death to the fascist insect that preys upon
>the life of the people.''
>
>Honey Whitlock becomes the subject of ``wanted'' posters after
>she joins her abductors in their terrorist forays. At one point, TV
>host Ricki Lake, in a supporting role, declares, ``I wouldn't be
>surprised if Honey was in on her kidnapping from the beginning.''
>
>Hearst, heiress to a newspaper fortune, was kidnapped in 1974 by
>members of the SLA who broke into her Berkeley apartment, hit her
>boyfriend over the head with a bottle and announced that she was a
>prisoner of war.
>
>Hearst was held for weeks in a closet, then emerged in support
>of her captors. She was later convicted of taking part in an armed
>bank robbery with the SLA and was sent to prison. President Carter
>later commuted her sentence.
>
>Recently, she has been resisting efforts by prosecutors to force
>her to testify in the bomb conspiracy trial of Sara Jane Olson, a
>former SLA fugitive, which is scheduled for January in Los Angeles.
>Hearst has said she is trying to forget her past with the SLA.
>
>``Cecil B. DeMented'' opens Aug. 11.
-end-
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jul 24 2000 - 22:31:18 CUT