Little Lord Balthazar

Ever since Shirley Temple tap-danced her way into the American heart, it's been one of the least challenged tenets of Hollywood that puerility is more or less the same thing as purity. Trucking in a kind of hand-me-down romanticism, American movies have tended to portray children as adorable, ingratiating, and, above all, innocent. No wonder, then, that it's taken so long for Hollywood to wrangle with the nettlesome subject of William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies: a band of boys stranded on an island as lush and bountiful as Eden turns into a horde of menacing savages.

This fall, thirty-five years after its publication and twenty-six years after the premiere of Peter Brook's lukewarmly received film adaptation, Lord of the Flies is returning to the screen Holly wood-style. Lewis Allen is reprising his role as producer, and Rob Reiner's Castle Rock Entertainment is backing the risky project, which is made somewhat riskier by the fact that its twenty-five-member cast is composed entirely unknowns. However, one of these unknowns is not entirely unfamiliar: Balthazar Getty, the fourteen-year-old son of J. Paul Getty III. Plucked from his highschool art class by a talent scout to play the role of Ralph (the lone and embattled protector of civilization among the boys), Getty is making his first go at acting in Lord of the Flies. But at least one expert is already convinced he's got what it takes for the long haul: his mother, Gisela Getty, a filmmaker and photographer who took these photos while visiting the set in Jamaica, says, "He's a natural."

JIM RASENBERGER