'Lost World' Finds a Big Crowd in O.C.

By SCOTT MARTELLE

May 23, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEWPORT BEACH — The dinosaurs are back, and so is Shea Foley.

While most of Orange County was crawling out of bed Thursday morning, Foley--like a primeval tyrannosaurus rex staking out territory--perched himself outside the Edwards Newport Cinemas at Fashion Island. Other movie fans came and went during the day, buying advance tickets for the 10 p.m. sneak preview of “The Lost World.”

Foley, though, stayed to guard his turf.

“Mainly,” he said at dinner time, “because when 9 p.m. rolls around 1,200 people behind me are all going to want to be where I am.”

The advance screening of “The Lost World” didn’t draw the lines of camped-out fanatics that accompanied the re-release of “Star Wars” earlier this year. Still, by 5:30 p.m., about 800 tickets of the 1,050 available at the Newport theater were sold, and fans queued up by the dozens in other Orange County theaters to grab the prime seats when theater doors opened. The movie opens nationwide today.

The obvious draw was the movie itself, which some advance reviews described as darker and more suspenseful than the original box-office hit “Jurassic Park.”

Yet those Steven Spielberg movies are more than just fuel for film fans drawn to suspense and violence. They are based on the odd hybrid of fantasy and reality inherent in dinosaurs, which, as conceptualized these days, embody majesty, mystery and delicious fear--a mix that has long fed the imaginations of countless youngsters.

“Part of it is that they are imaginary creatures,” said Dr. Ed McCabe, physician-in-charge of UCLA Children’s Hospital. “They will appear very real on the big screen, but they’re creatures that kids have no real experience with. They can go to a zoo and see a lion and a tiger or an elephant. Dinosaurs are creatures that look very familiar because they kind of look like an animal in a zoo, yet they’re very different.

“Also, there’s the size. Giants intrigue us--’Jack and the Beanstalk’ kinds of things. These are large, so it’s that fascination, as well.”

The infatuation isn’t limited to kids.

“I’m pretty fascinated with them and I’m not a kid, at least according to the IRS,” said Bill Nye, host of the PBS program, “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” “They’re cool because they’re real monsters. They’re as big as any animal you can imagine, and they were real. You can infer from them anything you want. You know what they looked like, but you can make up your own color.”

Nye has only done two shows dedicated to dinosaurs--one to the creatures themselves, the other more broadly focused on fossils. Yet about one in five letters from young viewers mention dinosaurs.

Helping youngsters understand dinosaurs and other fossilized remains, such as ancient trees, makes it easier for them to comprehend the passing of time in a single place, he said.

“You get a sense of a completely different world, right where you’re standing,” said Nye, who is based in Seattle. “And their bigness is a large part of it. How could any animal be that big, and live on land? It’s just astonishing. What would you do if you could confront a dinosaur?”

That question, posed years ago by his young son, helped establish children’s author/illustrator Bernard Most, best-known for his 1978 book, “If The Dinosaurs Came Back,” a playful mix of imagination and speculation that feeds directly into kids’ infatuations.

“It’s the mystery of these things,” said Most, who lives in suburban New York. “There’s a little bit of monster to them. Everybody loves monsters, and kids are preoccupied with being scared. Yet these were real creatures.”

Dr. Lawrence G. Barnes, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, said kids’ fascination is tied to imagination.

“It’s something that’s not around now, so it’s the unknown,” he said, adding that fossils are the touchstones. “It’s like finding something in the closet that you didn’t know was there.”

The museum supplied some of the materials used in “Jurassic Park,” and Barnes not only saw the movie shortly after it opened but bought the video when it was released.

He’s going to miss out on the early run of “The Lost World,” though, because he’ll be in Mexico for a convention.

“I’ll probably go see it in a week or so,” he said.

Barry and Vida Reid of Laguna Hills couldn’t wait that long. By 6 p.m., they had set up their lawn chairs outside the Edwards 21 Theatre in Irvine Center to make sure they got a seat close to the dinosaurs’ teeth.

“Anything with Spielberg, it’s got to be a hit,” Barry Reid said. “We got the first one on videotape. I think I wore the tape out already. Then I did the ultimate. I went out and got Surroundsound.”

“That’s the first movie we put on,” added Vida. “It sounds like they’re walking in your living room. He makes them so real. It’s so fun to be so scared, and be so safe.”

Times staff writer Zan Dubin and correspondent Steve Carney contributed to this report.

* THEY’RE BACK: “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” covers old ground in a spectacular manner. Review F1