isn't any longer. With the omnipresence of paparazzi and scandal sheet journalists in her public life. Such pop-psychology from supposedly reputable journalists is the perhaps inevitable outcome of the fact that Roberts' in finding good comedic material. "You don't want to go backwards, you want to do something that's better than what you did and different and has more to offer in some way. They're really the hardest scripts to find intact "OUR SECRET WEAPON:" Rupert Everett and Roberts share a laugh on the set popularity makes her the easiest headline for tabloid journalists since the heyday of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Writers who would never dream of accepting a byline from the National Enquirer have to stand in supermarket check-out lines like the rest of us, after all. Kenneth Turan of the L.A. Times helped to launch the "Let Julia be Julia!" viewpoint in an August, 1995 mash note/commentary, plaintively entitled "Give Us Something to Smile About." The lead went like this: "The big question for Julia Roberts' career is: when is she going to realize that it's okay to smile again?' Entertainment Weekly, in its inimitable attraction/repulsion relationship with the rich and famous, went so far as to publish a "chart" last July which purported to show conclusively that the more Roberts smiles, the better herfilms do at the boxoffice. ("This isn't just a vague generalization," EW scribe Tom Rasso solemnly intoned. "It's a fact!") Roberts professes to be immune to such coasiderations. "I love all my movies," she says simply. "I don't search for specific scripts. I just look for good scripts. If they're good scripts that are funny, then terrific. If they're good scripts that are tragic, then terrific as well. It's really ju.st the quality of the piece, it's not, 'Okay, let's goout and find... ."Cause you can't do that, 'cause you'll never find it that way. It's like a needle in a haystack." Roberts does admit that the success of "Pretty Woman" in some ways raised the bar for her where similar types of material are concerned. "For me, it's so hard," she says. "Especially to have had a mmantic comedy be really sixxessful the way 'Pretty Woman' was, becaase it's very difficult to then find other films of that genre that can compete with that." But the larger point, she iasists, is the difficulty and with great quality, the sort of romantic-ish comedies. [With "My Best Friend's Wedding"], I just thought, 'Well hell! Finally! Something that's funny and fi"esh and has all these great relationship elements to it.'" So Kenneth Turan should be pleased —^not to mention millions of moviegoers if all goes to plan. After all, Roberts really is a master of light comedy—it isn't like she shouldn't be doing it just because a few curmudgeons want her to. And it won't be long at any rate until she moves back into a more "serious" role—^"I mean to the point where it's shocking to me just how completely serious I was the whole movie. I'm like, 'Jesus!'" Less than a month after "My Best Friend's Wedding" hits the bigscreen, Roberts will be at it again, this time opposite Mel Gibson in director Richard Conner's action-thriller "Conspiracy Theory." Gibson plays a paranoid anti-government loony who inadvertently stumbles onto an actiml evil government plot; Julia is the young Justice Department lawyer who may be the cabal's unwitting target. So what do you know? It sounds like someone finally got around to doing a screen adaptation of that popular old bumper sticker from the 1980s that read, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." With "Lethal Weapon" director Donner at the helm and Gibson as hot as he'll ever be following "Braveheart" and "Ransom," tagging "Conspiracy Theory" as a smash-in-the-making is among this summer's easiest calls. Among other things, "Conspiracy Theory" al.so makes Julia Roberts the first actress in film history to play the oascreen love interest of both Mel Gibson and Wcxxly Allen in a single year. Which opens up all sorts of interesting lines of serious joumalistic inquiry. Like: who's a better kisser? "Ummmmmmm...," she says, drawing it out. Then she warms to the subject. "I kissed Woody more. 1 only did a little smooch on Mel. Just a little smooch, the way, you know, I kiss my mama or something. Just a little smooch. Sol had much, you know, my kiss with Woody was a bit longer, 1 was able to assess more. And it was veddy nice. But the Mel smooch was good, you know. They 'rejust different. It's like an apple and an orange. One's a smooch and one was more a kiss." Making "Conspiracy Theory" was "rowdy in a completely different way from 'My Best Friend's Wedding,'" Roberts says. "Dick and Mel have made a slew of pictures together, and they've got their whole repartee, and they're big pranksters and they're very lighthearted and jovial, and both really loving and kind. So I was sort ofjust fascinated and enamored and a little terrified going into it. In this movie [ 'My Best Friend's Wedding'], I'm pratfalls and I'm mad and running around and doing all these things. In 'Conspiracy Theory,' I'm the straight man, all the way down the line." Given the high profile and different market skews that "My Best Friend's Wedding" and "Conspiracy Theory" are sure to occupy, it's tempting to see Roberts' busy summer season as something of a "master plan." In contrast to the "little" movies she's lavished hertalents on recently, which are created for a small segment of the audience and therefore designed to blossom and die, Roberts is very likely to prove inescapable to the average summer moviegoer, perhaps even into the early fall. "Well, honestly, I wish there was more distance between the two. Because this is, like, over a year of my life that will come and go in a season. So it's kind of like..." She crumples in comedic anguish. '"Oh, spread it out a little bit! 1 worked really hard! I can't get another one out there before fall!'" That said, is one of the two films perhaps a bit nearer to her heart? "These are, um, I think they're both really entertaining movies," she says carefully. "Completely, utterly, completely difterent. [But] I have to say, if there's any lost soul in the worid who I love and would send Christmas cards to, who's looking for, you know, 'I just want to go see Julia Roberts in a movie...' If there's that person in existence on the planet, then I would hafta urge them more towards 'My Best Friend's Wedding.' Just because, I mean, if you're looking for me, that's where you'd be far more inclined to find me." She smiles, a picture-perfect parody of a little-giri-lost. "But I don't know if that (x>rson exists other than my mommy." She laughs. "If there is that person, I ui^ge you..." Then Julia Roberts lilts her head back, smiles that million-dollar smile, and laughs and laughs and laughs. "My Best Friend's Wedding." Starring Julia Roberts, Canwron Diaz and Dermot Mulroney. Directed by P.J. Hogan. Written by Ron Bass. Produced by Ron Bass and Jerry Zucker. A TriStar Pictures Release. Romantic Comedy. June 27.
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