Donna Roth

'Grosse Pointe Blank" director George Armitage figures it was fated that he'd end up making a movie with producers Donna Roth and Susan Arnold. As a young screenwriter in the late '60s, he made his first big splash writing "Gasss-ss" for American International Pictures, fabled producer Sam Arkoff's beach-blanket B-movie factory. Armitage still remembers that the most telling script notes he got were from Arkoff's daughter and unofficial D-Girl--the then-13-year-old Donna.

Having officially resigned Wednesday as chairman of Walt Disney Studios, Joe Roth starts a new job next week: fund-raising for a new venture into independent movie making. Roth leaves behind one of the most coveted, high-profile executive jobs in Hollywood, running the studio with the largest box-office share in the industry.

Having officially resigned Wednesday as chairman of Walt Disney Studios, Joe Roth starts a new job next week: fund-raising for a new venture into independent movie making. Roth leaves behind one of the most coveted, high-profile executive jobs in Hollywood, running the studio with the largest box-office share in the industry.

'Grosse Pointe Blank" director George Armitage figures it was fated that he'd end up making a movie with producers Donna Roth and Susan Arnold. As a young screenwriter in the late '60s, he made his first big splash writing "Gasss-ss" for American International Pictures, fabled producer Sam Arkoff's beach-blanket B-movie factory. Armitage still remembers that the most telling script notes he got were from Arkoff's daughter and unofficial D-Girl--the then-13-year-old Donna.

Enjoyed the article on producers Donna Roth and Susan Arnold and their new film "Grosse Point Blank" ("They Came From Hollywood," by Patrick Goldstein, April 20). The interesting part was all the references to actor John Cusack and his "high school buddies" writing the film. As a script reader in the summer of '93, I had the pleasure of reading the screenplay for "Grosse Point Blank." It was funny and original. The finished film captures the characters and situations of that screenplay, but the script did not have Cusack's or his friends' names on it. In fact, Tom Jankiewicz, the original writer, is never mentioned anywhere in your story!

Tom Jacobson has stepped down as president of worldwide production for Twentieth Century Fox after six years as an executive with the studio and plans to start his own production company and return to the kind of hands-on movie making he did before joining Fox, the company said. Sources speculate that Jacobson will set up shop at Walt Disney Co., where his close friend and former Fox boss Joe Roth runs the motion picture studio.

Tom Jacobson has reunited with his former Twentieth Century Fox boss Joe Roth at Walt Disney Co. under an independent production deal. Last week, Jacobson resigned as head of worldwide production at Fox to form his own company. He has now entered a four-year exclusive production agreement to develop and produce movies for the Disney motion pictures group, of which Roth is chairman.

At the Los Angeles Music Center Opera's opening of "Carmen," Earl Russell said to the man next to him at an intermission: "That's the sexiest Carmen I've ever seen." "Thank you," the man replied. "That's my wife." The stage Carmen, Denyce Graves; her husband, David Perry, and co-star Placido Domingo and his wife, Marta, were the attractions at the benefit "An Evening in Seville" in the Grand Hall after the curtain calls.

MOVIES Monroe Memorial: Today is the 35th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death, and the Marilyn Remembered Fan Club will hold its 15th annual memorial service for the actress at 11 a.m. in the chapel at Westwood Village Memorial Park in Westwood. Guest speakers will include photographer George Barris, biographer Donald Spoto, Monroe's stand-in Evelyn Moriarty and foster sister Bebe Goddard. Monroe's death on Aug. 5, 1962, was ruled a suicide.

With "Benny & Joon" (citywide) we're back in the fantasyland popularized by movies like "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and, before that, "David and Lisa"--where being crazy is the only sane response to an insane world. Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson) is the kookily unbalanced sister of Benny (Aidan Quinn), a soulful, overprotective auto mechanic.

Usually at a movie premiere, members of the audience will respond politely, if not enthusiastically, to the film out of deference to those involved in the making of the film who happen to be sitting all around them. But such was not the case at Tuesday evening's premiere of DreamWorks' "The Haunting" at the Mann Village Westwood.

"A hero," Selma Lidz tells her son Steven, "is anyone who finds his own way through this life." Only 12, Steven is on the verge of discovering how difficult that task can be. And how much help he can get from an unlooked-for source, his two fiercely eccentric uncles, the "Unstrung Heroes" of this lovely film's title.