If you're among those who say film critics don't matter, consider this story. It begins in the pouring rain in Manhattan in 1982, with two men - the late, legendary actor Burt Lancaster and a newly discovered Brazilian director named Hector Babenco - sharing a doorway at Sardi's while awaiting their cars. Lancaster and Babenco had just picked up awards from the New York Film Critics Circle at a dinner inside the storied restaurant. Lancaster won the group's best actor prize for his performance as a retired mobster in Louis Malle's brilliantly evocative "Atlantic City," and Babenco was honored as director of "Pixote," his landmark social drama about the homeless children of Sao Paolo. As they stood there together, Lancaster was trying to learn more about the film Babenco said he dreamed of making, an adaptation of Manuel Puig's 1976 novel "Kiss of the Spider Woman.
" Although he spoke almost no English, Babenco conveyed enough of Puig's story line - about a political prisoner and his transvestite cellmate - to capture Lancaster's interest. The following day, Babenco dropped a copy of the novel off with Lancaster, and for the next year and a half the two men who had shared a doorway at Sardi's would share an obsession - to bring "Kiss of the Spider Woman" to the screen, with Lancaster in the role of the transvestite. "Lancaster was absolutely obsessed with the novel and with playing Luis Molina," said Babenco, who was in town last week to promote "Kiss of the Spider Woman's" rerelease on Friday. "He had five copies of the book in his house. He knew pages of it by heart. He always had a copy of it in his hand.
" Occasionally, when Babenco visited Lancaster, the 72-year-old actor also had high-heeled shoes on his feet and silk stockings on his legs. Whether the most macho of Hollywood leading men was cross-dressing as a Method actor, getting a feel for his character's compulsion or because it was a side of his own life, he never said. And Babenco never asked. In any case, it became moot when Lancaster suffered a massive heart attack in 1983. The near-go project at now-defunct Lorimar was canceled. But when William Hurt, a younger actor with a strong macho image, offered to play the role for scale ($1,020 a week), as his co-star Raul Julia had agreed, Babenco and producer David Weisman went back to beating the bushes for money, and found it. Babenco raised about 80% of the $650,000 budget in Brazil, and Weisman got the rest from friends in the U.
S. With the roles cast, and the money in place, Babenco led his stars through two months of rehearsals in Sao Paulo, and then spent a deliberate 13 weeks shooting what would become one of the acknowledged gems of the '80s. "Kiss of the Spider Woman" opened at New York's Cinema 1 theater in July 1985 and played there for nine months. It had a similar run in Los Angeles, and as critics' top-10 lists and various awards began coming out at the end of the year, it was suddenly getting buzz as an Oscar contender. In fact, it received four nominations - one for Hurt, who would win as best actor, and others for best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay (by Leonard Schrader). But what should have been a celebration turned into a wake when the company that owned the home-video rights to "Kiss" decided to release it the week after the Oscars. In protest, exhibitors canceled their bookings, and a movie hitting its commercial stride was gone, just like that. Weisman and Babenco own all rights to "Kiss" now, and after a leisurely rollout of the film in the U.
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