Film Director

David Schaffer Epstein, 73, a film director and screenwriter, died after a heart attack Tuesday in Connecticut. He had directed educational films and documentaries on many political and public-affairs issues, including atomic energy, the creation of Israel as a state and the post-war reconstruction of Eastern Europe. As the liaison between the Ford Foundation and the "Omnibus" series on CBS television, he directed and produced films on Frank Lloyd Wright, the Quincy Adams family and other subjects.

A celebrated writer doesn't always have the makings of a writer-director. Steven Zaillian earned his reputation as a screenwriter with Schindler's List, but as a writer-director his work is often clumsy or simplistic; even at the script stage, it's as if he's writing down to his limited powers as a film director, or else, as a director, is not getting whatever life or complexity he has on the page. In Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), his writing-directing debut, Zaillian sheared away the fascinating, complicated mesh of real-life characters in Fred Waitzkin's autobiographical book about being the parent of a chess prodigy, and constructed a hollow fairytale about the need to lead a free, well-rounded life.

M. CARROLL RAVER, writer, photographer, cinematographer and film director, died Monday April, 9th. He was 67. A native of Carroll County, Md., he attended the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where he was a National Collegiate Athletic Association champion fencer. Early in his career, while at J. Walter Thompson Advertising (NY), he served as a copywriter, producer and director working on television commercials for national clients including Ford. Later, as an award-winning director and cameraman, he directed commercials for Hertz, General Motors, the U.S. Army, BMW and others.

"Nine," making its area premiere at the Vagabond Theatre through Dec. 15, is a different kind of musical.Not quite in the revue genre (it has a story line and believable characters), the Tony-Award winning work depends on smart, sophisticated execution of the 23 numbers that serve as plot exposition.With singing by the capable 13-woman chorus and central male character, the Vagabonds do an admirable job in carrying off this difficult piece. Professional choreographer and director Todd Pearthree has created some exceptional choreography so that everyone moves smoothly and suavely about the limited stage.

Daniel Mann, the film director who guided Elizabeth Taylor to her Oscar-winning performance in "Butterfield 8" and directed the TV miniseries "How the West Was Won," died of heart failure Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 79. In addition to Miss Taylor, Mr. Mann directed some of Hollywood's most enduring stars, including Marlon Brando, Jimmy Stewart, Sophia Loren and Geraldine Page. He guided Shirley Booth to an Academy Award in his first film directing effort in 1952 in "Come Back Little Sheba," and he directed Anna Magnani in her Oscar-winning role in the 1955 film "The Rose Tattoo."

Federico Fellini, the great Italian film director, was so unique an artist that his death yesterday should have been likewise unique. But it wasn't.Instead, the 73-year-old man passed quietly in a coma after suffering a heart attack a month ago and going on a life-support system in a Rome hospital.It was an ironically commonplace end for a man who, loved or loathed, lionized or ignored over his long career, was never commonplace.In fact, so unique was Fellini's vision and accomplishment as a film director that no existing word could quite describe it; one had to be invented.

When the call came in March 1995, Sara Maitland thought it was a prank. The voice on the other end of the line introduced himself as film director Stanley Kubrick, and asked, "Would you like to write a film script for me?""He rang me, no warning," the British author recalls. "I called up my agent and said, 'What do you mean giving up my private phone?' "But the call and offer were both genuine. The next day a contract arrived, beginning Maitland's yearlong adventure as the screenwriter for "A.I."

Movie directors are surely the most dynamic men in the world. Think of Cecil B. De Mille in jodhpurs with a megaphone and a riding crop. Think of John Huston laughing and fighting and drinking his way through a fabulous career. Think of Woody Allen's neurotic energy or Steven Spielberg's incredible pizazz.But when one says -- "I sit in a room and people come. I always depend on what's presented" ?That sounds like a memo from the invisible man, or the winner of the Mr. Passive-Aggressive World Championships.

The luckiest day in Federico Fellini's life may have been the day the circus sent him packing. Fellini, the subject of a month-long film series beginning tonight at the Creative Alliance in Highlandtown, was only 7 at the time, and the middle-class life his parents had made for themselves in the small Italian village of Rimini wasn't doing it for him. Like many kids, he dreamed of something more exciting, more splendid, more colorful. So he ran away from his boarding school and linked up with a traveling circus for a life of clowns and jugglers and animals and people who in their day would have been called freaks.

Incongruous or what? The hotel dining room is posh, brocaded in silks, and through its stately aisles rush liveried waiters with the muted aplomb of funeral directors. Swanky bouquets detonate their expensive colors on each linen-shrouded table, and the silverware and crystal gleam like diamonds in a tiara.And there, in the middle of it all, sits . . . Laverne?Yes, Laverne -- that is, Penny Marshall, with those sad Brooklyn eyes and the look of being endlessly put-upon, sitting in a funk of exhaustion so dense it would, a few days later, cause her to collapse and briefly enter the hospital.