Film office has great expectations to put Vizcaya in movie

Vizcaya's seven-member policy committee said no thanks when location scouts and administrators from Metro-Dade's Office of Film, TV and Print outlined cinematographers' needs at the 1916 villa, 3251 S. Miami Ave.

The panel -- a volunteer advisory board to the county commission established in the 1950s when Metro purchased the 10-acre bayfront property -- feared vast physical damage that the estate could never overcome, said member Valerie Callahan, president of the Vizcaya guides.

``They wanted to put a coating on the house to make it look as if it had been in a state of disrepair for a number of years,'' she said. ``They wanted the gardens to be neglected for weeks. We simply said no.''

Jeff Peel, head of the film office, remains hopeful. ``It's a high-quality project; I liken it to Sense and Sensibility, that kind of approach.''

The movie, which is set to cost $20 million to $30 million, would star Robert DeNiro, Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow, Peel said. Filming would take perhaps three months. Coral Gables' Biltmore Hotel has been inspected for interior shots.

Callahan doesn't think Vizcaya's policy committee will budge.

Museum ``reaccreditation is up for renewal this year,'' she said. ``What would happen if we got surprise visits from inspectors while filming was going on?''

Exceptional juggling

When Catherine Newcome won a master's degree from the University of Miami last week in cello performance, she earned accolades in juggling schedules, as well.

Since 1989, Newcome, 32, has been an American Airlines flight attendant, spending most weekends flying to Latin America.

``Sometimes, I'd get to the point where I'd be calling 10 friends, begging them to sub for me on trips so I could have more time to practice,'' she said.

On Fridays, she would take her cello along on overnight flights to Buenos Aires, practice during the layover and arrive back in Miami on Mondays in time for a 10 a.m. rehearsal with the UM Orchestra, in which she is principal cellist.

``I need a break,'' she acknowledged. ``It's been a little nerve-wracking.''

She actually had abandoned the cello after high school in Spartanburg, S.C., and again when in and out of college at Loyola University in New Orleans. But somewhere along the way, a date's sister remarked ``how nice it was that I had a gift I could share with other people. It made me realize I was wasting that gift.''

Said Ross Harbaugh, a UM music prof who played in a cello sextet with Newcome at Thursday's graduation ceremonies: ``She has a very natural musicality and a beautiful sound concept. If she weren't talented, I think she'd just fold up.''

Receiving the music school's Distinguished Alumnus of the Year award Thursday was world traveler J. Samuel Pilafian, a 1967 Gables High grad who finished UM in '72.

Well-known to jazz audiences as leader of the Travelin' Light Jazz Ensemble and the Great American Main St. Band, he's a current member of Summit Brass and was a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Empire Brass Quintet.

Now a music prof at Arizona State University in Tucson, he served on the faculty of Boston University for more than 20 years.

Coming up . . .

Decoys, weather vanes, carvings and sculpture will fill West Palm Beach's Norton Museum next month, as the Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art arrives from the Milwaukee Art Museum on June 1.

Collectors since the mid-'60s, the Halls accumulated 270 pieces, including ``a great collection of walking sticks, whirligigs, toys, outsider art and lodge-hall paraphernalia,'' said Margaret Andera, Milwaukee's curatorial assistant. The works have been touring since 1993 -- to Kansas City; Buffalo; Phoenix; New York; Wilmington, Del.; and Williamsburg, Va. But when the Norton show closes Sept. 22, they'll return to Milwaukee and ``never leave again,'' Andera said.

The Halls met in the mid-'60s when she was a student in a pottery class he taught. They are now divorced.

Call for help

The Bridge Theater, which produces Hispanic plays at 2100 Washington Ave., Miami Beach, needs storage space -- 2,500 square feet, to be exact.

For five years, it has been the recipient of donated space, but, as of Wednesday, that deal is fini.

``Other theater companies can borrow our costumes and sets until we make arrangements,'' said J.D. Steel, Bridge's executive director.

Call him at (305) 886-3908 for details.

Now hear this . . .

An arts think tank known as the Bernstein School Network (as in the late Leonard Bernstein) was announced Thursday to analyze how learning in the arts facilitates learning in academic areas -- and Miami's New World School of the Arts was one of nine schools across the country invited to join.

New World accepts high school students solely on the basis of talent and ignores academic qualifications, producing incredible success stories.

The network, announced at a ceremony at the Boston Latin School, from which Bernstein graduated in 1935, ``is about educational reform and making the arts an integral part of a complete curriculum,'' said Scott Massey, network president.

It will be based in Nashville. For the first year's study, New World will be joined by Boston Latin, the Special Music School of America in New York (opening this fall), the W.E. Greiner Middle School in Dallas and five Nashville schools. Each school will receive $30,000 for the project.