FLASHES

Now showing at the Holiday Inn! The latest movie market: closed circuit TV in hotels. Already two companies are vying for control — Trans-World Communications (Columbia) and Computer Cinema (Time/Life). A network of NYC hotels will soon show Klute, Carnal Knowledge, Catch 22 and X, Y and Zee. By 1974, 160,000 rooms in 25 different cities will offer the flick service.

Dustin Hoffman may join First Artists Production Co. owned by Barbra Streisand, Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier and Steve McQueen.

Freda Payne, of “Band of Gold” and “Bring the Boys Home” fame, is in Dallas for her film debut in Book of Nowhere.

Live and Let Die, the next James Bond film, which will be released this fall, is not the last, as rumors have it. According to United Artists there is no end in sight.

Chicago’s Police Dept, has slapped an “X” on Portnoy’s Complaint despite the MPAA’s “R.” However, MPAA isn’t complaining.

Leon Russell filmed his July 16th show at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines for a feature-length film a la Mad Dogs and Bangla Desh, both of which Russell was instrumental in instigating. Other appearances have also been shot, including a date in Tulsa, Okla., Russell’s home town. A portion of the profits from the Iowa concert were donated to Sen. John Tapscott’s gubernatorial campaign.

United Films, who distribute Yellow Submarine, have produced a 90-minute documentary out of footage shot at the Powder Ridge Festival in Connecticut two years ago. A state court injunction prevented the booked groups from appearing but the non-festival drew the expected large crowds, cops and dope anyway. They will appear in the movie along with the promoters.

Tom Wolfe’s The Last American Hero has been scheduled for production by Joe Wizan (Junior Bonner, Prime Cut). It’s about stockcar racing driver Junior Johnson.

The fifth primate sci-fi pic (the fourth is reviewed above) The Battle for the Planet of the Apes begins shooting in December.

Pink Floyd and King Erickson are featured in Jose Antonio Barrer Garcia’s first movie, Satyricon’s Theorem.

Jesuit Priest Rev. William J. O’Malley (call me Bill) has been cast as Father Dyer in the movie version of The Exorcist.

The world premiere of The Godfather -Part Two will be on March 24, 1974.

Andy Warhol and Paul Morrisey’s latest venture, Heat starring Sylvia Miles and Joe Dallasandro, has recently concluded a distribution deal.

D.A. Pennebaker (Monterey Pop, Don’t Look Back) has cut Lennon and Ono from his film of the 1969 Toronto Pop Festival after negotiations with Allen Klein broke down. The “rock concert” movie, Keep on Rockin’, features Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Alan Pakula (Klute, Sterile Cuckoo) is directing Democratic fund-raiser Warren Beatty as a cop in The Parallel View. The political assassination thriller* is being filmed in England.

Although Fillmore lost its appeal for a PG rating, most theatres showing it aren’t enforcing its R rating (which would mean that anyone under 18 had to have a parent with them). Outdoor advertising doesn’t indicate the restricted code either, an action the rating system calls “tampering for economic convenience.” The whole ratings hassle is over the frequent use of a four-letter word that was heard so often from the Fillmore stage as to make additional comment superfluous.

Trash distributor Don Rugoff has produced Marjoe, the story of Marjoe Gortner, the one-time child prodigy evangelist. Howard Smith and Sarah Kernochan, of the Village Voice Scenes column, directed the non-fiction film.

The story of the mother of American birth control, Margaret Sanger, is being filmed by producer Stephan Freidman of The Last Picture Show. The movie deals with the legal conflicts resulting from Sanger’s campaign for b.c. in the early 1900’s.

20th-Century Fox announced the establishment of 20th-Century Records. Russ Regan (who brought you Neil Diamond and Elton John while at Uni Records) is the president.