13 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(04/23/08 1:53am)
NEW YORK – As guest host of “Today,” first lady Laura Bush proved she can be as chatty and genial as the broadcast pros.\nEven better, she demonstrated how to keep it under control Tuesday. In the company of the NBC morning show’s fawning, overeager veterans, Bush brought a welcome air of restraint – while much of the time, her on-air companions might have seemed to the former teacher like schoolchildren on a sugar rush.\n“You did that so well, it’s obvious that we are overpaid,” news anchor Ann Curry marveled after Bush did a brief voiceover announcement.\n“Well, it’s been obvious we’re overpaid for a long time,” co-anchor Matt Lauer chimed in. “It didn’t take Mrs. Bush to prove that.”\nIn this unusual, much-promoted appearance, the first lady co-hosted the third hour of the four-hour “Today” sprawl, sharing her slot with Curry and Al Roker. \nBut her guest appearance was clearly pegged to the publication of “Read All About It!” a new book she co-authored with her daughter Jenna. They shared a more conventional interview segment earlier in the program, conducted by Curry. The book, aimed at youngsters, is intended to promote reading literacy, a favorite cause of Bush.\nA bit later, once Bush had taken on the mantle of host, a segment on “life as twins” brought back Jenna with her twin sister Barbara.\n“Jenna, how are you different from Barbara?” their mom asked.\nJenna Bush said, despite being very close to her sister, they were different in many ways.\n“Our parents raised us to be different,” she said.\nIn a pretaped feature appropriate for Earth Day, the first lady gave Curry a tour of the Bush home in Crawford, Texas, which was designed to be eco-friendly. Curry gushed about the beauty of the residence and its pastoral setting.\nBack in the studio, Curry and Roker plied Bush with up-close-and-personal questions such as the songs on her iPod playlist. To that query, Bush responded not with titles, but a tip.\n“A great place to take your iPod,” she advised, “is to the dentist.”\nThen it was time to don aprons for a cooking segment under the direction of New Orleans chef John Besh.\nWell, not exactly cooking. Besh officiated as Curry, Roker and Bush competed in a challenge to construct the best po-boy sandwich in 25 seconds. Bush was declared winner.\nFinally, Laura and Jenna Bush jointly interviewed children’s author R.L. Stine.\nDuring the program, Jenna Bush emerged as a star in her own right, demonstrating a gift for a clever line. She fielded questions about her marriage next month to longtime boyfriend Henry Hager. But when trying to convey the close relationship she shares with her twin sister, she cracked, “We’ve already told him that on every Christmas Eve I plan to still sleep with Barbara.”
(10/24/07 12:58am)
NEW YORK – Just when fans had made peace with “The Sopranos” finale and moved on with their lives, David Chase has stirred things up again.\nBreaking his silence months after the HBO mob drama ended its run, he is offering a belated explanation for that blackout at the restaurant. He strongly suggests that, no, Tony Soprano didn’t get whacked moments later as he munched onion rings with his family at Holsten’s. And mostly Chase wonders why so many viewers got so worked up over the series’ non-finish.\n“There WAS a war going on that week and attempted terror attacks in London,” Chase said. “But these people were talking about onion rings.”\nThe interview, included in “‘The Sopranos’: The Complete Book,” published this week, finds Chase exasperated by viewers who were upset that Tony didn’t meet explicit doom.\nChase said the New Jersey mob boss “had been people’s alter ego. They had gleefully watched him rob, kill, pillage, lie and cheat. They had cheered him on. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that. They wanted ‘justice’ ...\n“The pathetic thing – to me – was how much they wanted HIS blood, after cheering him on for eight years.”\nIn the days, and even weeks, after the finale aired June 10, “Sopranos” wonks combed that episode for buried clues, concocting wild theories. (Was this some sort of “Last Supper” reimagined with Tony, wife Carmela, son A.J. and daughter Meadow?)\nChase insists that what you saw (and didn’t see) is what you get.\n“There are no esoteric clues in there. No ‘Da Vinci Code,’” he declared.\nHe said it’s “just great” if fans tried to find a deeper meaning, but “most of them, most of us, should have done this kind of thing in high school English class and didn’t.”\nHe defended the bleak, seemingly inconclusive ending as appropriate – and even a little hopeful.\nA.J. will “probably be a low-level movie producer. But he’s not going to be a killer like his father, is he? Meadow may not become a pediatrician or even a lawyer ... but she’ll learn to operate in the world in ways that Carmela never did.”
(09/26/07 1:15am)
NEW YORK – On “Desperate Housewives,” John Slattery plays a wily politician.\nOn “Mad Men,” he’s an advertising agency magnate.\n“A friend said to me, ‘You have a suit on all the time.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, well, nobody’s offering me a part in a dress.’”\nMaybe not. But whatever his costume, Slattery manifests a remarkable range. His lean, vulpine good looks, crowned by that prematurely snowy head of hair, can convey rectitude, menace, arrogance and vulnerability.\nAn actor clearly in demand, Slattery, 45, has stayed busy for more than two decades in theater and in films (including “City Hall,” “Mona Lisa Smile,” “Traffic,” “Flags of Our Fathers” and the forthcoming “Charlie Wilson’s War”). His past TV series have included “Homefront,” “Feds,” “Jack & Bobby” and “K Street,” as well as recurring roles on “Judging Amy” and “Ed.”\nThis isn’t to say he’s a household name, or that, even on the streets of Manhattan, where he lives, people typically recognize him as a star.\n“They think I went to high school with them,” Slattery says, “which is just about the perfect level of celebrity for me. Being on ‘Desperate Housewives’ has kind of bumped it up a little, and I’m not sure how much I like that.”\nOn the hit ABC soap (back with its season premiere 9 p.m. Sunday), Slattery resumes his role as the calculating Victor Lang, who, having caught Gabby (Eva Longoria) on the rebound from her marriage to Carlos, has less-than-romantic plans for his attractive bride. He figures she can fetch him the Latino vote in his impending run for governor.\nOn “Mad Men” (which airs 10 p.m. Thursdays on AMC), Slattery plays a different game. He’s Roger Sterling, the cool, sardonic boss of a Manhattan ad agency in 1960.\nA gin-soaked product of that bygone era, Sterling is a charmer, a manipulator, a skirt-chaser, but also, intermittently, a family man who’s apt to toss off a wistful crack like: “One minute you’re drinking in a bar and they come and tell you your kid’s been born. Next thing you know, they’re heading off to college.”\nThe pilot for the series (which premiered in July) was shot more than a year ago. Then, not long afterward, Slattery got asked to join “Housewives” for a story arc to begin in early 2007.\n“I confess to not watching the show regularly before. But when I called friends, they were like, ‘Are you crazy? You gotta do it.’ And I’m glad I did.”\nSlattery, juggling the “Mad Men” season finale (airing Oct. 18) with his affairs on Wisteria Lane, hastens to contrast the two gigs.\n“On ‘Desperate Housewives,’ I’m sort of a hired hand,” he notes, “and for a finite amount of time. That show was wildly successful before, and will continue to be after I’m gone.”\nWith “Mad Men,” though, Slattery is a charter member. He’s a key ingredient in this drama of modern society as viewed through the prism of a modern society unfolding nearly 50 years ago. (Happily for him, along with “Mad Men” devotees, AMC this week announced the series’ renewal for a second season.)\n“It’s great being on something like this from the start,” says Slattery, and, invoking series creator Matthew Weiner, adds, “It’s some of the best stuff I’ve ever gotten to do — just as he said it would be.”
(03/06/06 5:18am)
NEW YORK - You would have been more amused Sunday night if you'd revved up your TiVo and played back an evening's worth of "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" reruns while you tracked Oscar winners on the Web.\nStewart, usually a very funny guy, displayed a lack of beginner's luck as first-time host of "The 78th Annual Academy Awards," which ABC aired live from Hollywood's Kodak Theatre.\nHis usually impeccable blend of puckishness and self-effacement fell flat in the service of Oscar. But he wasn't alone. The rest of the broadcast was largely bland and by-the-numbers.\nCouldn't presenter Russell Crowe have departed from his script and clobbered someone (even Stewart) with a telephone, just to jazz things up?\nThank goodness for the occasional attempt at cleverness, as when the presenters for Best Makeup arrived on stage in foolishly awful makeup: Will Ferrell scarlet-faced and Steve Carell corpse-pale.\nAnd in a funny bit, Tom Hanks demonstrated the Academy's new strategy for speeding up acceptance speeches. Onstage musicians not only surrounded him but physically assaulted him to keep it brief.\nWait, this wasn't too far from the truth. From the instant each Oscar recipient began speaking, the orchestra's mewling Lite-FM assault began stepping on the winner's remarks, as if to play them offstage before they'd even opened their mouths. It was distracting and obnoxious, and undercut what are, potentially, the night's grandest moments.\nAlso irksome: a prevailing message through the broadcast preaching that movies should be seen on the big screen of a movie house, presumably at full ticket price. (Remember, DVDs: bad.)\nThe broadcast began on a shaky note with a filmed intro that found past Oscar host Billy Crystal being introduced as this year's host, then declining, followed by Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, David Letterman, Mel Gibson, even Mr. Moviephone -- none of whom wanted the gig.\nThat seemed to leave it to Stewart by default. Maybe it's come to this.\nSure, he's an outsider -- a New York-based comic and TV personality. The sort of star who reminded the audience that "tonight is the night we celebrate excellence in film -- with ME, the fourth male lead from 'Death to Smoochy.'"\nBut as the night wore on, Stewart proved too deferential, too nice and too obvious in his targets.\nHis biggest monologue laugh: In reference to the swan dress that singer Bjork wore to the 2001 Oscars, Stewart announced gravely that she wouldn't be on hand this year: She "was trying on her Oscar dress and Dick Cheney shot her." Tiresome squared.\nLate in the broadcast, the flashy, high-amp hip-hop number "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" surely roused any dozing viewers. And once Three 6 Mafia members Jordan Houston, Cedric Coleman and Paul Beauregard had received their Oscars for Original Song, Stewart got a big laugh by observing, "I think it just got a little easier out here for a pimp."\nBut more typical were Stewart's misfires, one of which he tried to recover from in a desperate way unworthy of him: "I am a loser," he declared.\nNot true. He's really funny. The many millions of Oscarcast viewers unfamiliar with Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" should tune in and see. If they do, that will make Stewart the biggest winner from Oscar night.
(10/20/05 3:33am)
NEW YORK -- You don't have to look far to find a reason for the New York Television Festival.\nLook no further than, say, NBC's dead-on-arrival drama "Inconceivable." ABC's long-running but torturously humdrum sitcom "According to Jim." Or enough other examples to fill the rest of this column.\nThe TV game clearly needs some new players. That's who the New York Television Festival was recruiting.\nHeld for the first time earlier this month, the five-day festival was an opportunity for unknowns to showcase their pilot episodes for network executives and other industry insiders. Befitting any indie competition, a pilot could not have been financed by any network or studio, or previously broadcast.\nIt was eight long years ago that Terence Gray, the festival's founder and executive director, began trying to establish a TV counterpart to Sundance and other independent film festivals.\n"That kind of grass-roots competition gave artists a very influential voice in the direction that the film industry would go," he notes. "I thought that's something television could really use."\nWhy now, after eight years, did the idea take hold? "Technology has caught up with inspiration," he suggests.\nThat is, with video equipment now cheap and palm-sized, and editing a snap on your personal laptop, a polished pilot is within the capability of almost anyone, anywhere.\nNow the New York TV Festival is giving auteurs the Hollywood connection they lacked until now.\n"A home run," says Gray, "would be that a network comes in and buys the idea, and works with the artists toward greenlighting the pilot into a series."\nWhile in the wake of the festival such conversations are indeed going on, thus far no firm deals have been announced.\nBut Gray, himself a 35-year-old writer-producer, sees the festival's more likely payoff in "the formation of a new creative community. There's an opportunity here to find new directors, producers and writers who, even if their projects weren't greenlit into a series, could find work on existing shows or go into development at the networks."\nEntries for 2006 will be accepted in mid-January, he says.\nThis year's 230 entries were winnowed to 25 pilots in five categories: comedy, reality, documentary, animation, drama. Judges included Whoopi Goldberg, TV personality Tom Bergeron, Mike Scully ("The Simpsons") and Rene Balcer (executive producer, "Law & Order: Criminal Intent").\nScreenings were held in the tony environs of Chelsea gallery space transformed into living room-like viewing pods.\nOne entry, the oddly endearing "Weathermen Boys," pairs two brothers -- nerdy but knowledgeable Bob Weathermen and his vain, actor-wannabe brother, Matt -- as the forecasting team at an Omaha TV station when their dad retires after decades as the station's chief meteorologist.\nProduced, written and starring actor/comic Matt Oberg and his partner Bob Wiltfong (who really was a local correspondent for 10 years before turning to comedy), "Weathermen Boys" was shot in three days at a TV station where Wiltfong used to work. It was edited on a Mac. Total budget for this remarkably slick and well-performed affair: $3,000.\nOberg and Wiltfong produced the pilot specifically for submission to the festival, hoping to drum up notice for their writing and performing skills. Thanks to the festival's spotlight, they are scheduled in the next month to meet with several cable networks.\n"Just imagine what we could do with $6,000," says Oberg with a smile.\n"And six days," adds Wiltfong.\nAs viewers know too well, it's high time the networks started imagining.
(12/03/04 4:56am)
NEW YORK -- If you don't think the First Amendment is a burning issue, you've already forgotten the ruckus over "Saving Private Ryan" just three weeks ago. Spooked by how the Feds might punish them, 66 ABC affiliates played safe by squelching that acclaimed, ultrapatriotic war film. Their excuse was its handful of swear words.\nA case of prior restraint imposed by the government? Not exactly, but with 66 stations caving in to a perceived threat from the Federal Communications Commission, it's the next best thing. This is an excellent time, then, for "The First Amendment Project," four short films that, seizing various entry points, examine with flair what "freedom of expression" really means -- and the threats it's facing.\nIn an unusual partnership, this series has been co-produced by Sundance Channel and Court TV -- both of which will air each half-hour film. The films will premiere at 9 p.m. EST on Sundance Tuesday and at 10 p.m. on Court TV:\n"Fox v. Franken" revels in Fox News Channel's quixotic crusade to bar publication of Al Franken's book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." Directed by Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob ("The War Room"), this film investigates, in aptly cheeky style, the First Amendment implications of cribbing a trademarked phrase (Fox's "Fair and Balanced" slogan) for the purpose of parody.\nDespite Fox host Bill O'Reilly's ire that his photo was on the book cover (and Fox's legal complaint that Franken was "deranged") the First Amendment stood firm against the Fox lawsuit, while, fueled by the publicity, Franken's book shot to the top of the best-seller list. Right after that, "Poetic License" recalls the clash between New Jersey's poet laureate Amiri Baraka and his government patron, which in 2003 stripped him of his funding and title after a poem about the events of 9/11 triggered charges of anti-Semitism. Directed by actor-filmmaker Mario Van Peebles ("Baadasssss!"), this film interlaces Baraka's reading of his prickly poem with numerous viewpoints on the sometimes conditional nature of government arts money and whether this amounts to government censorship.\nThe film will air at 9 p.m. Dec. 15th on Sundance and 10 p.m. on Court TV:\n"Some Assembly Required" travels back to the Republican National Convention in Manhattan, where the need for security collided with the First Amendment rights of protesters to assemble peaceably- and where the First Amendment took some serious hits.\n"Every tyrant knows that if you can eliminate spaces where people assemble, you can protect yourself really well," one speaker said, noting how freedom of assembly is an innate part of the First Amendment.\nThe film, by John Walter ("How to Draw a Bunny"), follows a couple of rather ordinary Americans as they, with some half-million others, exercise their right to dissent. The resistance they encounter is captured in footage you probably didn't see on TV news.\nThen in "No Joking," actor-filmmaker Bob Balaban ("Strangers with Candy") takes a fractured look at what is actually protected as free speech, and what isn't (hint: CBS firing the outspokenly satiric Smothers Brothers in 1970 wasn't, in constitutional terms, censorship). This film, which features Eric Bogosian and Richard Dreyfuss, unearths fascinating footage of First Amendment poster boy Lenny Bruce, as well as other standards-flouting comedians such as Richard Pryor and George Carlin, who marvels at the variable power of language: "No one has ever gone to jail for screaming 'pneumonia' or 'topography.' But there are some words you can go to jail for!" Or, at least, that stir the hot breath of the government (as viewers who couldn't see "Saving Private Ryan" last month should consider).\n"We felt like this was a time when filmmakers' perspectives on the First Amendment were something that an audience would really like to hear," Sundance programming head Adam Pincus said, "and it's only grown more timely in recent weeks."\nThis joint exploration was a natural for Sundance and Court TV, their bosses agree: Court TV is devoted to important legal matters, while Sundance, an outlet for independent films, embraces artistic expression.\nThe big idea emerging from their collaboration is that the First Amendment "makes all the sense in the world," Sundance Channel President Larry Aidem said, Aldem still worries that "it's blasphemy right now to a lot of people."\n"I think we have fundamental agreement on our respect for the First Amendment," Court TV Chairman Henry Schleiff said. "What we're struggling with, all of us, is the right balance"
(12/03/04 4:49am)
NEW YORK -- Tom Brokaw began with a report on U.S. troops in Iraq. He ended the broadcast by saying farewell.\nAfter nearly 23 years in the "NBC Nightly News" anchor chair, Brokaw reminded his viewers that "we've been through a lot together, through dark days and nights, and seasons of hope and joy.\n"Whatever the story, I had only one objective: to get it right," he said Wednesday, declaring how he was "always mindful that your patience and attention didn't come with a lifetime warranty."\nBrokaw, 64, is leaving "Nightly News" and daily journalism to pursue other interests, including more time on his Montana ranch. He will still contribute to NBC news, doing at least three documentaries a year.\nWhile Brokaw was saying his good-byes, Peter Jennings was praising him on ABC as "a competitor in the best sense, which in our trade means when he beats us on a story, it is usually the result of enterprise."\nOn his CBS newscast, Dan Rather said, "For more than 30 years, I have known Tom as friend and competitor who has earned the respect of his audience and his colleagues, myself included." Then to Brian Williams, Rather added, "Welcome to the neighborhood."\nWilliams takes over "Nightly News" with Thursday's broadcast.\nSpeaking Thursday on the "Today" show, Williams, 45, said he does not expect big changes in the program. He said it excelled "because it kind of skews to middle America. It calls balls and strikes right down the middle."\n"I don't want to pretend this will be a day like any other day," he added. "I feel the weight of history."\nThe NBC transition plan was briefly upstaged last week by the surprise announcement that Rather would be departing "The CBS Evening News" anchor chair in March, after 24 years. (No successor to the 73-year-old Rather, who will report full-time for "60 Minutes," has yet been named.)\nThose changes will leave only Jennings among the old-timers.\nAs Brokaw marked his 30th anniversary with NBC in 1996, he recalled the inevitable ups and downs at the network where he stuck it out and prospered.\n"I never expected the waves would be quite as steep as they were," he admitted. "But even in the worst of times, it was better than anything I thought I'd ever have in life."\nIn 1981, with NBC's prime-time ratings in a tailspin -- Brokaw almost leaped to ABC News, whose new boss, Roone Arledge, had come courting.\n"I came very, very close to going," Brokaw said. "So close that I went out to dinner with (wife) Meredith and said, 'I'm gonna do this,' and she went to bed thinking it was a good idea. Then I sat up and drank some scotch and smoked a cigar and stared out the window for several hours."\nAt NBC nearly a quarter-century later, Brokaw signed off Wednesday by expressing gratitude to the viewers who had watched him through the years.\n"Thanks for all that I have learned from you," he said. "That's been my richest reward"
(12/05/03 5:17am)
NEW YORK -- "The Award Show Awards Show," which isn't an awards show but a documentary, wants you to know there are 565 show-biz awards competitions each year, of which 100 are televised. That's more than one broadcast every four days.\nConsider: On the heels of "The First Annual Spike TV Video Game Awards," which aired Thursday, the coming week brings "The 14th Annual Billboard Music Awards" on Fox, "The Third Annual DVD Exclusive Awards" (whatever that is) on FX, and the inaugural Commie awards on Comedy Central going head-to-head with "The Award Show Awards Show," which Trio is airing 9 p.m. Sunday.\nWide-ranging and snarky, the documentary expands on Andy Warhol's prediction: Not only are you destined to be famous for 15 minutes, at this rate you're also practically a shoo-in for a televised award.\n"Conflicts are endless when awards shows outnumber the works of art they are trying to honor." said Tatum O'Neal, the film's award-winning narrator.\nWitness the juxtaposed clips of a program that wins both a Prism (for accurately portraying the dangers of drug abuse) and a Stony (for promoting the pot-smoking culture).\n"The Award Show Awards Show" explores many facets of the media-celebrity complex.\nIt examines the monetary blessings realized from a top-drawer award like the Oscar or Grammy, and the fierce campaigning mounted by would-be nominees.\nIt exposes the driving force behind the awards-show pandemic, which mainly reflects outstanding achievement by the industry in ginning up ever more shows for viewers to watch and thus ever more outlets for promoting entertainment product to the public.\nIt proposes ways to insure yourself a prize. (If you're Susan Lucci, just keep showing up.)\nFrom the lectern of a decades-old Oscar broadcast, Jimmy Stewart remarks on how seemingly "us folks out here in Hollywood spend most of our time just givin' awards to each other. It's amazing how any work gets done."\n"Awards shows," says Alan Alda in a long-ago interview, "mainly publicize the people giving the awards."\nNot to be outdone, "The Award Show Awards Show" institutes its own mock prizes in such categories as Most Meaningless Awards Shows (a leading contender is the award show for infomercials) and Most Inexplicable Snubs: There was never an Emmy for Jackie Gleason, never so much as a Grammy nomination for the Who!\nWhere else could you learn that the wing-tips of the Emmy statuette are sharp enough to pierce the flesh of a careless recipient?\nAnd who else could tell you why the carpet is red? O'Neal said Hollywood borrowed it "from pre-colonial India, where rajahs chose the color red since it was the rarest, and thus most expensive dye."\nO'Neal, of course, brings special authority to the documentary. In 1974, she walked the red carpet as a 10-year-old Oscar nominee for best supporting actress in her first film, "Paper Moon."\nShe even practiced weeks beforehand with her father and "Paper Moon" co-star, Ryan.\n"He wanted me to rehearse," she recalled in a recent chat with a reporter. "I remember him dressing me up and letting me wear platforms, which I always wanted to wear, and we pretended to walk down a red carpet."\nBut on that April 2, when she became Oscar's youngest-ever winner in a competitive category, neither parent was present. Her grandparents brought her.\n"For years I didn't think about it," O'Neal said, 40. "Now, today, it makes me sad."\n"Winning was a great honor," she said. "But the truth is, I had no idea what Oscar meant. I just knew there was a lot of people, and it was gonna be a long time that I was sitting in that seat."\nO'Neal has since come to appreciate the higher meaning of the Academy Awards, just as she can identify with the twisted yearnings that keep an audience glued to even the lamest awards telecast.\n"The more awards shows, with their red carpets and glitz, the more chances for ordinary people to get out of themselves," she said. "It's a sort of celebrity royalty that we love and hate. We can feel happy when they win, and when they lose we can put them down and feel better being average people.\nAnd as she observes in "The Award Show Awards Show," the hucksterism underlying every awards show is just the viewer's price of admission.
(02/13/03 4:33am)
NEW YORK -- Less than a week after Valentine's Day, you will learn the funny valentines Evan and Trista chose.\nMonday's "Joe Millionaire" (8 p.m. EST, Fox) will find Evan Marriott deciding between Zora, the substitute teacher, and Sarah, a former bondage-video queen the show identifies as "Asst. to Mortgage Broker." They are the finalists from a field of 20 lovelies who began vying for Evan's heart and the $50 million they were told would come with it.\nThen on Wednesday's "The Bachelorette" (8 p.m., ABC), Trista Rehn will give her heart (or, anyway, her final rose) to firefighter Ryan or financier Charlie, the remaining pair from what were once 25 hunky swains.\nOn each finale, the Chosen One will be revealed. But exactly what Evan or Trista is proposing may remain far less certain. Marriage? Engagement? To "be with" that someone (whatever "be with" might mean)? On "The Bachelorette," the obligatory wording is, "Will you accept this rose?" Just see how far that gets you in the real world.\nBut this, of course, is fantasy land. Here, Trista, Evan and those who pursued them get to act out the audience's fantasies, which conveniently include nonbinding terms: Till death, or the next commercial break, do us part.\nJust recall banker Aaron Buerge, who, on ABC's "The Bachelor" last fall, told schoolteacher Helene Eksterowicz, "I'm really looking forward to sharing my life with you."\nThat was then. Now their makeshift engagement is apparently kaput. But you can learn more next week on an ABC special, "The Bachelor: Aaron and Helene Tell All" -- more evidence that the highest ambition of people who go on TV isn't likely to be love or marriage, but being on more TV.\nWithin the glut of staged-but-unscripted TV fare, the spin-the-bottle category is hot. And reliable. Whether a syndicated dating show or a serial bacchanal like Fox's "Temptation Island," the idea is the same: Some participants get lucky (as in, you know, wink-wink, lucky) and some get hurt (as in, not lucky).\nBut there's something distinctive about "Joe Millionaire" and "The Bachelorette." While sexual conquest is at the crux of both shows, each cloaks potential bawdiness in the trappings of romance.\nEvan, though a red-blooded male of 28 with a harem in arm's reach, has remained a gentleman, a model of propriety, whether squiring his date du jour on a bicycle ride through the French countryside or jetting her to Cannes.\nThe show even frames his moneyed masquerade as a romantic ploy, a way to test his chosen mate's pure-heartedness on learning he is actually a $19,000-per-year construction worker, not a stinking-rich heir. Thus the moment of truth: Has she been after Evan for his nonexistent fortune, or for what he really is -- broke, handsome and a liar?
(02/06/03 5:29am)
NEW YORK -- For their new Showtime series, Penn and Teller chose a title that proclaimed their skepticism for such things as weight-loss products, feng shui and creationism; for end-of-the-world forecasts and the purity claims by bottled-water marketers; for ESP, sex aids and "second-hand smoke."\nOf course, the title they arrived at -- a more graphic version of "poppycock" -- isn't usually found in a family newspaper. No matter. Viewers up for a weekly dose of artful debunking are urged to watch what will here be designated "Penn & Teller: (Poppycock)!"\n"We're gonna hunt down as many purveyors of (poppycock) as we can," pledged Penn Jillette (the tall, pony-tailed one) when the series began its 13-episode run two weeks ago.\nHe and Teller (the mute one with the single name) are off to a rambunctious start.\nAlready, they have tackled alternative medicine of varying extremes, including magnet therapy and chiropractic.\nAnother episode targeted people who claim to communicate with the dead. It cast a jaundiced eye on TV psychics John Edwards and James Van Praagh, after which Penn and Teller presented their own convincing "spiritualist" -- who turned out to be an admitted fake.\nAiring Fridays at 11 p.m. EST, "(Poppycock)!" this week blows the whistle on such Penn-and-Teller-decreed (poppycock) as UFOs and alien abductions.\n"(Poppycock)!" has no time for what is Penn and Teller's forte: magic.\nOn the other hand, their magic act has always championed intellectual honesty. Costumed in their gray three-piece suits, Penn and Teller strive to make the audience see how magic is, so to speak, easily explainable (poppycock).\nSassy secularists in the priesthood of magicians, they do everything they can to undermine their brethren's baton-and-black-cape mystique. This includes a most heretical practice: revealing how they perform certain tricks, blowing the whistle on themselves as a way of proving that magic, after all, isn't magic. Just fun.\nPenn and Teller are, in short, skeptics promoting skepticism.\n"There's always been that point of view to our work," Teller says in a recent interview. "This show is just a chance to make it very explicit."\nVery, very explicit. As host and narrator, Penn uses extremely harsh language to describe the people whom "(Poppycock)!" sets out to debunk.\nMaybe he would have preferred to brand them "liars," "quacks" and "rip-off artists." But such precision could get a guy sued, he explains on the show. Far preferable, or so the lawyers advised, are more freewheeling terms of character assassination, which slander laws don't usually prohibit.\n"So forgive all the (poppycock) language," said Penn on the premiere episode. "We're trying to talk about the truth without spending the rest of our lives in court because of litigious (unpleasant people)."\nDuring Penn's excited outbursts, the seemingly pint-size Teller stands by silently, often wearing the sly smile that seems borrowed from a Dr. Seuss character.\nThat is Teller's shtick. But outside of the act, he displays a loquacious streak (and, at 5 feet, 9 inches, normal height, despite being dwarfed whenever standing by the 6-foot-6 Penn).\n"There's a movement of people who want to look into dubious phenomena with a critical eye," says Teller, further explaining the colorful language, "but this movement has been very polite, for lack of a better word. The idea of our TV series is to look into areas that people believe in that may not be true, but with the same passion that previously only the believers have demonstrated."\n"Television as a medium does not care about the truth, it only cares about the temperature of the performance," Penn chimes in. "What you've always had on skeptics' shows is someone who's well-mannered, has all his ducks in a row, going up against a nut. On TV, the nut will always win.\n"But I can promise you I'm as bum-nutty as anybody you've ever seen on the other side."\nSo consider the style of "Penn & Teller: (Poppycock)!" as craziness deployed in the name of reason as Penn introduces "whack-job passion to the side we believe in."\n"It will alienate a portion of the audience, I'm sorry to say," Teller sighs. "I don't think we'll have many nuns tuning in. And I suspect that nuns would benefit from knowing the truth about bottled water or reflexology"
(01/10/03 6:37pm)
NEW YORK -- Actress Kim Coles got the boot, along with 10 handsome bachelors and four star-struck performers. All were casualties on the same night as a trio of new series swelled the ranks of "reality TV."\nOn Wednesday night, viewers could watch the live premiere of "Star Search," CBS' version of the Fox smash "American Idol" with an over-revved Arsenio Hall presiding and a $100,000 grand prize at stake.\nThirteen-year-old Meaghan Markert beat out a moppet rapper with her rendition of "Ave Maria." Thus did little Eric Kidd get the hook, along with a model, a comedian and a singer.\nLater, on ABC, viewers could see seven contenders loosely billed as celebrities (including actor Stephen Baldwin and supermodel Frederique) try to flush out the "double agent" infiltrating the group on "Celebrity Mole Hawaii." The first "victim" of the unknown mole: former "Living Single" star Coles, sent packing at the end of the hour.\nIn between, ABC unveiled "The Bachelorette," which, turning the tables on its successful "Bachelor" predecessors, turned 29-year-old Trista Rehn loose to choose her dream man from 25 eager suitors. A pediatric physical therapist from Miami, Rehn was jilted last April by Alex Michel, the original "Bachelor."\nBy hour's end, the bachelorette had offered boutonnieres to the 15 men who made her first cut. Then she started to cry as the other 10 began to take their leave.\n"It really hurt my heart to think that I could be making someone else sad," she said later.\nWednesday's shows premiered in a week that on Thursday ushered in the WB's "The Surreal Life," which packs a house in Hollywood with celebrity has-beens like Corey Feldman and Emmanuel Lewis, then invites them to get on one another's nerves.\nAlso Thursday, the WB repeats the debut of its Sunday reality series, "High School Reunion," which gathers 17 classmates from a decade ago for two steamy weeks in Hawaii.\nAnd don't forget Fox's new hit "Joe Millionaire," which blends a "Bachelor-like" mating game with a wicked joke: the 20 beautiful rivals for Evan Marriott's love have no idea he's a $19,000-a-year construction worker, rather than the fabulously wealthy heir he pretends to be.\nBut this is no joke: "Joe Millionaire" attracted a huge 18.6 million viewers for its premiere Monday night.
(11/26/02 4:43am)
NEW YORK-- What is it about Sigmund Freud that makes us feel anxious? \nIs it his bearded, stern countenance? That business with the cocaine? The way he, under the auspices of science, turned a cigar into a phallic symbol? \nWouldn't it be a lot more comfortable without Freud in our lives -- where Mom is just Mom, not some taboo love object, and a cigar is always just a cigar? \nDream on. Freud may make us feel defensive or conflicted (both are terms he coined), but we can't escape his influence, even when the couch we're on is the one facing our television. We hear fractured Freud on "The Jerry Springer Show.'' We find mob boss Tony Soprano talking to a shrink about his mother. \nA century ago Freud rocked our world and we're still pondering the tremors, says filmmaker David Grubin, whose documentary, "Young Dr. Freud,'' airs on PBS Wednesday at 9 p.m. EST. \n"Other than psychoanalysis, I don't think you can point to a field that's had such a profound effect on us that owes its creation and its history to one single man,'' says Grubin, settling on his office couch (though seated, not recumbent) for a session with a reporter. \n"Thanks to Freud, we not only call a slip of the tongue 'a Freudian slip,' but we also assume it has a deeper meaning. We accept that we're not transparent to ourselves, that we're driven by irrational forces that are out of our control. These are scary ideas. They are his ideas.'' \nGrubin's film traces the journey of the young Viennese scientist in the late 19th century -- most of it traveled inside his head and others'. \nFreud had first set out to study the brain. But with medical science helpless to cure "hysteria,'' a mysterious affliction whose diagnosis meant a lifetime shut away in a psychiatric hospital, he saw no choice but to develop a theory that transcended the brain's biology and focused on the mind. \n"The science of Freud's day couldn't answer the questions he was asking,'' says Grubin. "So he came up with deeper answers.'' \nHe tried using cocaine as a treatment for depression (and used it himself), but abandoned those experiments early on. \nHe treated patients with hypnosis. Then he evolved a different way of tapping into a patient's unconscious state: by engaging the patient in a process of free association. \n"Freud said, 'There's this thing called 'the unconscious.' Let's investigate it, let's try to understand it.' And he placed a tremendous emphasis on childhood. He said, 'Things happened back there that are really important. We better take a look.''' \nThis was the beginning of psychoanalysis, at a time when the closest equivalent to "talk therapy'' would have taken place with a priest or a barkeep. \nOf course, Freud wasn't the first guy to suspect that the mind can have a mind of its own. \n"Poets and philosophers had long understood that there are unseen forces within that are driving us,'' says Grubin. "It goes back to Socrates and the idea, 'Know thyself.' But that's a very complicated thing to do. Freud systemized this investigation.'' \nDevising a system was no cake walk. Not only was Freud living in a society that was squeamish about sex and dubious about his inquiries, he also was saddled by depression, migraines and his own deeply rooted fears, including issues with his mother. \n"He had to look into his own heart,'' says Grubin, "as well as his patients'.'' \nWith the 20th century's arrival, he had another four decades of work facing him. But in "The Interpretation of Dreams,'' published in 1900, the 44-year-old Freud declared his basic theories of identity, memory, childhood and sexuality. They have shaped our self-understanding ever since. \nFine. Now, how was Grubin supposed to put this Id Parade on film? \n"Freud lived a very uneventful life. It was all inside,'' says the 58-year-old filmmaker, whose past subjects have included men of action like Napoleon and both Roosevelts. "What does this guy Freud do all day? He gets up in the morning, sees his patients, has his dinner. Then writes. That's basically it.'' \nTo tell Freud's story, Grubin interviewed experts, tracked down archival photos and documents, and, along with dramatizing key events from Freud's life, enacted scenes to illustrate his dreams and fantasies. \n"I wanted to understand how he created this thing called psychoanalysis that has changed the way we think about ourselves,'' Grubin says. "I also wanted to see the human being underneath Freud's creations. \n"He's a man who never says, 'I can make you happy,' but instead, 'I can help you live better,''' notes Grubin, the session drawing to a close. "But even that makes people nervous.''
(10/30/02 3:54am)
NEW YORK -- NBC is promoting a night of Halloween-themed series as "Must Scream Thursday." The WB is pitching "Haunted Thursday." \nWe can meet "Ghost Detectives" on Discovery Channel, cackle at Mel Brooks' masterpiece "Young Frankenstein" on Comedy Central, or, on VH1, get creeped out by a circa-"Thriller" Michael Jackson. \nThen we can throw the jack-o'-lantern out and clean the eggs off our car. But Halloween TV won't be over until Monday when, fashionably late, Stephen King's high-school horror "Carrie" premieres on NBC, starring Angela Bettis in the title role that launched Sissy Spacek a quarter-century ago. \nAs in the original film, Carrie White is a loner scorned by her schoolmates and tormented by her religious-zealot mother. An added burden: She has telekinetic powers which seem to control her as much as the other way around. \nPoor Carrie is caught in a titanic struggle between the sacred and the profane, and, just as in the earlier film, a climactic battle is waged at the senior prom. This is no dance, it's payback time as Carrie teaches all the kids an awful lesson. \nA massacre in a high school gym at the hands of an alienated student -- this classic scene seems overtaken by real-life episodes of school violence in recent years. \nEerie enough. But watching "Carrie" or any other freaky Halloween TV, we may be plagued by an even more immediate issue: What could be scarier than the newscasts we've been watching leading up to Halloween? What could be more macabre than the real-life events TV news is covering: \n-- Just last week, 800 Moscow theatergoers were held hostage by Chechen rebels for 2 1/2 days. Then 115 of those captives died from knockout gas used as part of the rescue effort by Russian special forces before storming the theater. \n-- War against Iraq is in the air, and therefore on the air. Still in the talking stage, we hear more than see this story in the form of saber-rattling from President Bush, arguments pro and con from other officials, and, of course, endless chatter from the pundits. And it all seems to take place beneath the spectral gaze of real-life monsters Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, who we never see but, we fear, can see us. \n-- The sniper shootings in the Washington area seemed to borrow from a horror-movie formula: an unknown, deadly stalker terrorizes a community, picking off its citizens one by one. But this carnage was real, with 10 killed and three wounded in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia since Oct. 2. \nHour after hour through the month, cable news networks carried police briefings, spun theories and maintained chopper-vision vigils over each successive shooting site. \nWith such a sprawl of airtime to fill, TV news even found time to raise the possibility that its coverage was excessive. \nTV commentators "are just engaged in sheer conjecture," said radio talk show host Laura Ingraham on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Oct. 19. "No one knows anything and yet everyone keeps talking about it .... I call cable news `tragedy TV."' \nNew York magazine media critic Michael Wolff agreed that, aside from the actual shootings, the story being covered "is all made up. There is nothing here, absolutely nothing. It's television engaged in ... selling this event. This is theater." \nThe story reached a resolution of sorts with last week's arrest of two suspects. But even if the "who" was answered to the great relief of a preyed-upon public, "whys" remained in short supply. And weighing on everyone were these prevalent unknowns: What will be the horror-film scenario next time, and where and when will it unfold? \nThis year, as with last year after the terrorist attacks, no wonder some of us condemn Halloween. Real-life evil puts us out of the mood. \nBut the fault isn't with Halloween, which offers us an annual safe haven for identifying what most horrifies us (or amuses or enchants us) -- then becoming that thing for a night. Halloween invites us to face (and even mask ourselves as) what we dread, then have a fine time spitting in its eye. What could be more restorative? \nAnd as spectators, we could hardly ask for a better time than Halloween to quaff a witches' brew of ghoulish TV. 'Tis the season to be morbid, to submit to our demons while the media assists. \nOn TV and off, then, Halloween is a good day. \nIt's the rest of the year that should continue to alarm us.