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Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 20, 2001
Latin Grammys deal reached
The city of Miami agreed Sunday to allow anti-Castro Cuban exile groups to protest across the street from the arena where the Latin Grammy Awards are scheduled next month.
The agreement could anger the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences and the Latin Recording Academy, which have threatened to move the Sept. 11 ceremony to suburban Fort Lauderdale or Los Angeles if the protesters were not kept away from the AmericanAirlines Arena.
Officials for the academies did not return calls for comment Sunday, but Lily Abello, executive director for the South Florida Latin Grammy Host Committee, said previously that "the academy had made very clear that (having the protesters across the street) wasn't what they were anticipating as the secure zone."
The academies have said they worry the demonstrators could threaten the safety of those attending the Latin Grammys and impede traffic into the arena.
The 60 exile groups, which want to demonstrate against the Cuban musicians who could perform or be honored at the ceremony, had been angry because city officials originally planned to keep them in a protest zone three blocks from the arena.
Now they will be allowed to protest in front of the Freedom Tower, a former immigration processing center that Cuban Americans call their Statue of Liberty that's across from the arena. About 15,000 demonstrators could fit into the new protest zone.
"We won," said Angel Cuadra, president of Cuban Writers in Exile, after Sunday's meeting with city officials. He said the groups accept that the Latin Grammys will be held in Miami, but they want the right to protest the appearance of Cuban artists.
Audiences took a second helping of American Pie 2, which grossed $21.4-million to remain the No. 1 movie for the second straight weekend.
It was the first movie since Pearl Harbor to hold the top spot for two weekends running. Rush Hour 2 held second place, taking in $19.2-million.
Other new films had soft openings, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The comedy Rat Race debuted in third place with $11.8-million. The World War II romance Captain Corelli's Mandolin opened in sixth place with $7.1-million.
Add "movie soundtrack songwriter" to Sen. Orrin Hatch's resume.
A song written by the Republican senator and Utah resident Janice Kapp Perry can be heard in the background toward the end of the movie Rat Race, which opened Friday in theaters nationwide.
"It tickles me to death," Hatch said.
The senator described his song, America Rocks, as a "patriotic rock song for children." He wrote the lyrics and Perry wrote the music.
Hatch has written numerous gospel and love songs and released several compact discs containing his music.
TV producer Aaron Spelling, whose credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Hart to Hart, Hotel and Melrose Place, has undergone radiation treatment for a throat lesion, his publicist, Kevin Sasaki, said. . . . Director Taylor Hackford, whose films include An Officer and a Gentleman and The Devil's Advocate, and Argentine actor Cecilia Roth, star of All About My Mother, will be part of the jury at the upcoming Venice Film Festival, Aug. 29-Sept. 8. . . . David Ross has resigned as director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. ... Jack Elliott, a composer and conductor who worked on numerous hit television shows and movies, died Saturday of a brain tumor at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 74. If a television show was popular in the 1970s, it most likely had the music of Elliott and his frequent collaborator Allyn Ferguson. Those shows included: Police Story, Barney Miller, Starsky and Hutch, Charlie's Angels and The Love Boat. . . . Flip Phillips, a tenor saxophonist who was one of the last links to the swing era and who gained his greatest fame through his performances in the epic Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts of the 1940s and '50s, died Friday in Fort Lauderdale. He was 86.