George Schlatter looks to Hollywood

© New York Times Service NEW YORK

Even

though he has "Laugh In," that big television bonanza still going strong for him, George Schlatter is preparing to enter movieland.

Schlatter said that he had acquired film rights to "Norman, Is That You?”

A

earlier this year shortly after the comedy ended its brief Broadway stand.

Now the playwrights, Ron Clark and Sam Bobrick, with a Schlatter assist, have just completed adapting it for the screen. "It's their first movie script," Schlatter said with some satisfac-

tion, "and it will be a film first for me too.”

"Norman, Is That You?" deals with the perplexities of a middle-aged square businessman whose wife has run off with his brother and whose son is living with a homosexual.

Schlatter said that these convoluted antics, which end happily, "have been opened up and expanded considerably. George C. Scott, who's in London, told me he liked the role of the father, and if he approves the script, we'll make the deal.

“And his wife, Collee Dewhurst, also told us she's in terested in the role of the wife and I very well might direct," he said.

Schlatter added that the plan is to start filming around next April on location in New York, the Midwest and in Montreal.

"We think we've got a funny subject,” he said, "and we think it will fill a gap since all of a sudden, we're convinced humor is coming into its own."

So perhaps, "Norman" will have the last laugh-in, after all.