Ernie Hudson in ‘Ghostbusters.’

Ernie Hudson Celebrates the 30^th Anniversary Of Ghostbusters!  

by London Christopher

Copyright © 2014 London Christopher/PopEntertainment.com.  All Rights Reserved. Posted: September 3, 2014.

Hudson fondly reflects on Ghostbusters 1 and 2, what’s new with the much-anticipated Ghostbusters 3, and the 20th anniversary of The Crow.        

This year marks the 30th Anniversary of Ghostbusters.  In honor of this momentous occasion, the hilarious 1984 motion picture mash-up of comedy, supernatural horror, and science fiction has been given a one week, limited theatrical re-release.  This will be starting on August 29, 2014 in some 700 theaters nationwide.  On September 16, Columbia / Sony Pictures is releasing a special anniversary edition of Ghostbusters on Blu-Ray.  Also on Septembers 16, Ghostbusters II will be released for the very first time on Blu-Ray in honor of its 25th Anniversary.

It’s been three decades since the fabulous foursome of parapsychologist dispatchers of evil spirits first made their debut on the silver screen.  Bill Murray’s Dr. Peter Venkman, Dan Aykroyd’s Dr. Raymond Stantz, the late, great Harold Ramis’ Dr. Egon Spengler, and Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore are still making people laugh via their droll, witty repartee as they take on all manners of ghosts, goblins, and a giant Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man bent on Armageddon.

Deftly directed in rare form by Ivan Reitman, Ghostbusters featured a hilarious and clever, tack-sharp script penned by Ramis and Aykroyd.  Ghostbusters went on to become a blockbuster summer hit and a beloved pop culture phenomenon of cinema and the 1980’s.  The film spawned a hit theme song by Ray Parker, Jr., whose video featured a who’s who of celebrity cameos.  Ghostbusters also spawned the 1989 sequel film, a video game, and a hit children’s animated television series.

Talk of a Ghostbusters 3 film has been bandied about for years, with the original cast members all weighing in with their thoughts and support, but to date, nothing concrete has been set.  The sad passing of Harold Ramis this past February, followed by Ivan Reitman backing out of directing, hasn’t put a damper on the project though.

Sigourney Weaver (who portrayed Dr. Venkman’s romantic foil, demonically-possessed Dana Barrett), Rick Moranis (who portrayed demonically-possessed accountant Louis Tully), and Bill Murray have all expressed interest in a third film.  Aykroyd dropped a new bombshell in July on NBC’s The Today Show telling Carson Daly, “It looks like we’ll be in pre-production in the spring now, from what I’m hearing. It should be good. But there is still not much known about who will be involved.”

Ernie Hudson also has expressed his interest in reprising his character of Winston Zeddemore should Ghostbusters 3 see the light of day.  Hudson’s affable portrayal of Winston, the lovable, unassuming, everyman of the four ghost busting heroes, continually endears him to audiences of the film franchise.  People can relate to the down-to-earth Winston and his hilarious take-it-in-stride attitude of things, of just being all in a day’s work, (while saving New York and the world!)

A gifted character actor, Hudson has appeared in countless film and TV roles, including his memorable role as Solomon in the hit 1992 horror film The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, and starring as Warden Leo Glynn in HBO’s 1997-2003 stark prison drama TV series, Oz.

Hudson also starred in perhaps his most beloved and memorable dramatic role, as the kind and benevolent police officer Sgt. Albrecht in the 1994 film adaptation of comics/graphic novel author James O’Barr’s The Crow.  The Crow, currently celebrating its 20th Anniversary, went on to become a cult film and phenomenon in both pop and underground culture.  It was also the last film of the late actor Brandon Lee.  Lee, who starred in the title role of The Crow/Eric Draven, tragically died in an accident on set while filming.  Hudson’s compassionate portrayal of the gentle policeman who befriends both Lee’s character, heroic spirit, Eric Draven, and the waif child Sarah, is one of the central highlights of the film.

Just a few days after Ghostbusters enjoyed its re-release in theaters on Labor Day holiday weekend, Ernie Hudson graciously discussed his creative thoughts and memories on Ghostbusters and The Crow.

Ernie Hudson, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis in ‘Ghostbusters.’

Congratulations on the 30th anniversary of Ghostbusters and also the 25th Anniversary of Ghostbusters II!  What are your emotions on being such an integral part of such an iconic and beloved film franchise in 80’s pop culture and cinema history? 

Well, it’s nice to be loved.  I think it’s great that people embrace the movie and still love it after all these years.  My emotions are that I am honored and very appreciative.

Why do you think that Ghostbusters means so much to so many people of all ages, generation after generation, to this day?

I think this movie is a timeless classic that crosses generations.  It is one of the few films that families can share and enjoy together.

Ghostbusters is having a special 30th anniversary theatrical re-release for one week, in over 700 theaters nationwide starting on August 29.  Will there be a special celebratory premiere, and if so, will you be there on the red carpet?  Will you be involved with any of the planned special events?

We have been doing various interviews.  I will be in Chicago watching the movie at the Hollywood Palms Cinema and introducing the movie along with fans, but there is no collective gathering of the stars or premiere planned.

Will Director Ivan Reitman be there or any members of the cast?

There isn’t one premiere but we are certain each of the team will be celebrating in some way or another.

What are your thoughts on the theatrical re-release?

It’s great that fans who have only seen the movie on TV will have the opportunity to see it on the big screen, as it was intended.

Ernie Hudson in ‘Ghostbusters.’

How did you get the role of Winston Zeddemore?  How did Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd who wrote the story and script, and director Ivan Reitman know of you and your work?  How did they approach you for the role?

I auditioned and tried to impress the film makers.  I also did a movie in 1983 called Space Hunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone with Molly Ringwald and Peter Strauss.  Ivan produced it and Harold was one of the writers, (Ed. note: Ramis also had an uncredited voice-acting cameo role in the film), so that was my introduction to them.

What were your thoughts about the script, storyline, and your character when you first read through it?

I thought it was a great role.  I liked the character and the story.  I very much wanted to be a part of it, even though the story changed from the original script to the one we shot.  While the role changed considerably, I still liked the character and very much wanted to play Winston.

What did you do for your audition and how did it go over with Ivan, Harold, Dan, and Bill?

An actor prepares and goes in and tries to convince the producers that he is the right person for the role.  Apparently that is what happened as I got the role.  I was cast by Ivan and Harold.  I met Dan and Bill afterwards.

Winston Zeddemore is such a likable and affable guy, especially made so by your sparkling performance.  He’s always so calm and collected when confronting the supernatural.  I love your first scene with Annie Potts as Janine Melnitz, when she interviews you and lists the “unique” qualifications for the Ghostbusters job.  She asks you, “Do you believe in UFO’s, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography”, (while she’s asking you this the camera cuts to your very calm, relaxed expression like this is nothing out of the ordinary), as she continues, then listing “telekinetic movement, full trans-mediums, the Loch Ness Monster, and the theory of Atlantis?”  You reply, very blasé, “If there’s a steady paycheck in it, I’ll believe anything you say”. How did you prepare for your role as Winston?

The heart of the character was what I was feeling when I was shooting and I prepared as I do for any role, by immersing myself in the character of Winston.

How did your rehearsals go?  Did you crack up a lot while rehearsing and then filming your lines?  Did you and the cast have a lot of bloopers and did you have to do a lot of re-takes?

We had a lot of fun and we absolutely laughed a lot!  Everyone was professional and we had a great script.  There were not a lot of retakes but we did shoot a lot of alternate funny lines.  What was seen in the completed cut of the movie was what worked the best.

Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis in ‘Ghostbusters.’

Many actors say that comedy is actually much more difficult than drama.  Have you found that to be the case?  What are the challenges in doing comedy as opposed to drama?

I think comedy and drama both require good timing.  The difficulty is determined more by who you are playing off of.  I don’t find one more difficult than the other unless you were doing comedy with people that weren’t very funny.

What was that unlicensed Nuclear Accelerator really made of, and what was it like to have to wear that heavy thing on your back as you shot the film?

I’m not sure of what it was made of.  It was mostly metal and it was heavy and uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time, but that is a small price to pay for such great footage.  We also had stunt “rubber packs” for more demanding shots.

You look extremely badass sporting that Proton Pack!  Did you feel as badass as you looked, wearing it while using your particle thrower?!

Absolutely!  You can’t have a Proton Pack and NOT feel badass.

What did you think about the evil supernatural destroyer of Gozer taking form as, of all things… an adorable, giant, Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?!

I think that was perfect casting for this kind of film!

What did they use for the melted marshmallow all over you, after Winston, Peter, Ray, and Egon zapped the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?

It was actually tons of shaving cream.

How did the makeup and costume crew get that goo all over you to shoot that scene, and how did they get it off of you?  And the same goes for the pink slime in Ghostbusters II?

There were vats and tubs filled with shaving cream that were dumped on us.  As far as getting it off, we were on our own!

You have what many Ghostbusters fans regard as the two best and most classic lines in the movie.  Why do you think your first iconic line, “That’s a big Twinkie,” has become, and continues to be, such a memorable milestone with fans?

Great imagery!

Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson in ‘Ghostbusters.’

Then there’s my very favorite line of yours in Ghostbusters.  After you and the Ghostbusters save New York City and its citizens from Gozer and the 112 and a half feet tall, giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, we see Winston, who’s covered in melted marshmallow, raise his head and arms up to the city skyline and exuberantly exclaim, “I LOVE this town!!  Ha Ha!!” as you clap your hands with joy.  How did Ivan, Harold, and Dan decide that you should recite that iconic line?

We felt we needed something to put an unforgettable button on the movie and that line was it!

How did saying that line, for you, exemplify the magic of New York and the magic of the film, which is also, very much a love letter to the beautiful Big Apple?

I love New York, so it was easy and great to say a line that says that sentiment.

You are also in Ray Parker, Jr.’s official music video for the theme song from Ghostbusters.  Tell me about that creative experience and the shoot for that, and what that was like for you.

It was a lot of fun shooting that video in Times Square.  Ray Parker is a great guy.  It is a great song, and it was a really fun experience.

When was the last time you spoke with Harold Ramis? Did you have a chance to speak with him before his sad and untimely passing and what did you talk about?

The last time I spoke to Harold was at the premiere of his movie, Year One.  We talked about Ghostbusters 3 and caught up on the fun of the first two.

How recently have you talked with Dan, Bill, Sigourney, Annie, Rick, and Ivan, and have you discussed Ghostbusters 3, which is still in the planning, pre-production stages?

I have talked to all of them in the past year.  All expressed a desire to do the next film, but I haven’t seen any definite plans yet for this.

Ernie Hudson in ‘Ghostbusters 2.’

Will you be reprising your role as Winston in Ghostbusters 3?

If they offer it to me, I would love to!

Without giving too much away, what plot details can you reveal?

None of these details have been released so I can’t comment on that.

What are some of your fondest and most memorable on set anecdotes, reflections, and especially creative experiences working with the cast and crew, Bill, Dan, Harold, Annie, Rick, Sigourney, William Atherton, and Ivan?

Being on the streets of New York.  Spending time with the cast and crew was fabulous, and there are very fond memories of all for me.

You were the only member of the film’s original cast to audition for a voice acting role in The Real Ghostbusters animated TV series, in which you had hoped to reprise your role as Winston.  But the voice acting role went to Arsenio Hall, which with respect to Arsenio, greatly disappointed a lot of fans.  Did the show’s producers and creators ever tell you why they made that choice, and how did you feel about that?

The timing was off for my own schedule at that particular time.  No, they did not talk to me specifically about their casting.  I think Arsenio is a wonderful talent and a great friend.  If anyone replaced me, I am happy it was him.

In 2009, you, Dan, Harold, and Bill, and most of your other cast members did lend your voices and likenesses to Ghostbusters: The Video Game.  Critics and fans were very impressed, and Dan Aykroyd stated “This is essentially the third movie.” What was that creative experience like, getting into character via voice acting?  Did you think the creators of the game did a good job recreating the atmosphere and excitement of the movie?

I think the creators did an incredible job.  It reflects very clearly their love of the movie.  I loved getting together with the other guys and I am glad we created something we are all proud of.

In 1989 you reprised your role as Winston in the sequel and this time you had the chance to be slimed!  What are your creative thoughts about the sequel, how it progressed the storyline concept, and how Winston’s character was developed?

I think the second movie, Ghostbusters II, was much more family friendly and kids seemed to enjoy the sequel the most.  I was glad to be a part of this.

My very favorite role of yours, is that of police officer Sergeant Albrecht in 1994’s The Crow which is now celebrating its 20th Anniversary.  For many people, including myself, that is your most emotional and meaningful dramatic role.  How did that role come about for you?  How did director Alex Proyas approach you for the role and why do you think that that character, and film, resonates so powerfully and emotionally with people?

The Crow is one of my favorite movies.  It was very tragic and I knew Brandon for seven years before we shot the movie.  It breaks my heart that he is no longer with us.  The movie turned out great and I was happy to be a part of it.  It was one of my favorite acting roles ever.

What are your fond memories of working with Brandon Lee?

Brandon was a really sweet, generous, giving guy and very talented.  It was an honor to work with him and I enjoyed every moment I spent with him, professionally and personally.

What are your thoughts regarding The Crow remake starring Luke Evans?  Would you reprise your role as Sgt. Albrecht or play another role or cameo in the new remake film if the opportunity arises?

I wouldn’t reprise my role.  Brandon was The Crow for me.

How have your roles in both the Ghostbusters and The Crow film franchises impacted and affected you emotionally and creatively throughout your career as a gifted actor?

It’s part of my entire resume and I am proud to have been part of both.

What new creative film and TV projects are you currently working on that we can look forward to seeing you in?

I am in the upcoming film You’re Not You with Hilary Swank and I star in the Gallows Road indie movie with Kevin Sorbo.  I am also enjoying my time doing public speaking.  I am also up for a recurring role on a TV series that I cannot discuss officially yet, and I am writing my first book.

Israel Horovitz and Kevin Kline discuss “My Old Lady” at Cohen Media Group in New York.

Kevin Kline and Israel Horovitz

Looking In On Their Old Lady

by Jay S. Jacobs

http://popentertainment-interviews.tumblr.com/post/97117378409/kevin-kline-and-israel-horovitz-looking-in-on

Kevin Kline has spent a lot of time in France in his long career as an actor.  He has done everything from French Kiss to The Pink Panther there.  He even made the film Queen to Play in which he did his role almost completely in French.

Therefore Kline jumped at the chance to go back to Paris and star in the film version of the play My Old Lady by famous playwright Israel Horovitz, co–starring Dame Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas.  Beyond writing the screenplay for the film, Horovitz also took the artistic leap of becoming the film’s director.

Horovitz is not to be confused with famed classical pianist Israel Horowitz.  “I met him once in my life,” Horovitz explained.  “I got onto a plane and they put me in his seat….  He was staring at me like I did that on purpose.”  Ironically Kline knew Horowitz as well.  “He lived on my block,” Kline recalled.  “He used to hang out with one of my doormen.”

Mr. Horovitz has had a long and impressive career in the theater, writing and directing such plays as Line, Park Your Car in Harvard Yard, The Primary English Class, The Widow’s Blind Date, What Strong Fences Make, and The Indian Wants the Bronx.  He has also written several films, including James Dean, Sunshine and the Al Pacino hit Author! Author!

My Old Lady was another popular play from Horovitz.  However, the stage somehow felt too small for the writer, he decided he wanted to bring it to the big screen.  The film is the story of Mathias Gold (Kline), a man in his late 50s who is just about out of money and at the end of his rope.  When he inherited an apartment in Paris from his estranged late father, Gold flew directly to the City of Lights, planning to quickly sell the place.

When he arrived, Gold found out that the apartment was a viager apartment, a French system where you have to pay the person who currently owns the place to live in the apartment, and eventually when they die, you get full ownership of the place.  Living at the place was Mathilde Girard (Dame Maggie Smith), a 90-some Englishwoman who turns out to have been surprisingly close to Gold’s father.  Her neurotic daughter Chloé also lives there.

Suddenly stuck in Paris with two unexpected roommates, Gold goes on a journey of self, coming to like his odd new acquaintances, and hopefully eventually learning to like himself.

A few weeks before the American premiere of My Old Lady, we were one of several media outlets who were allowed to sit down with Kline and Horovitz at the New York headquarters at the Cohen Media Group.  We were able to discuss their experience in making the film, their careers and life in France.

Kevin Kline discusses “My Old Lady” at Cohen Media Group in New York.

Kevin, how familiar were you with Israel’s play before you got involved in the film?

Kevin Kline: Ooh!  I read it in French. 

Israel Horovitz: Oh, that’s right.  I gave it to you in French.  Or somebody did?

Kevin Kline: Somebody, some crazy French producer thought I could actually speak French well enough to play it when it was done in Paris.

Israel Horovitz: You didn’t see it in Europe, though?  In French?

Kevin Kline: No, I didn’t.

Israel Horovitz: With Peter Friedman.

Kevin Kline: Peter Friedman.  One of my favorite actors.

Israel Horovitz: Good actor.

Kevin Kline: Great actor.

In that version, was the character French?

Israel Horovitz: No, he was American.

Kevin Kline: They wanted me to play this American, but he spoke French.  I obviously didn’t.  It was no version with the idea that he couldn’t speak French.  This was something new.

Israel Horovitz: The play has been done in – I don’t know – 15 or 20 languages around the world.  It was most popular, very popular in France.  It was done in a 1,200 seat theater and played a couple of years.

Kevin Kline: What year was that?  Do you remember?  The original production?

Israel Horovitz: Uhh… I should remember and I gave the New York Times lady my thing with [those facts...].  Five years ago?  I would say…  Six years ago?

Kevin Kline: I saw it.  I thought it was longer.  Okay.

Israel Horovitz: No, it was six years ago and it was played by Line Renaud.

Kevin Kline: That was the original?  Line Renaud?

Israel Horovitz: She was the original French star.  Maybe it’s six years ago?  (ed. note: The French production started performances in January 2009.)  She was a huge, huge singing star in France.  When she was a kid she was on The Ed Sullivan Show.  She sang with Dean Martin.  She had a little thing with Dean Martin.  She was 87 when she did the play.  Smoked cigarettes and drank champagne.  She was great.

Israel Horovitz and Kevin Kline discuss “My Old Lady” at Cohen Media Group in New York.

How did you encounter the concept of viager purchasing? What was your reaction to it?

Israel Horovitz: I’ve had 50–something of my plays translated and performed in French.  I’ve spent tons and tons of my life there.  And I couldn’t believe it when I first heard of it.  Then I started to research it.  I saw these real estate agents that specialized only in viager apartments.  It’s much more complicated than I made it in the movie.  You can buy a viager apartment that has – they say deux têtes, two heads – and you’re buying a husband and wife.  So you have to outlive both of them.  At first I thought, man, this is the most barbaric thing I’ve ever found.  Then I realized, you know, it’s not so bad.

Kevin Kline: You’re giving them an annuity.

Israel Horovitz: If somebody is old and they have no money and they don’t have kids to leave their apartment to, somebody gives them a bunch of money and pays them to stay in the apartment.  Pays them a little something.  They know they’ve got a roof over their heads for the rest of their lives.  It’s fine.  It’s not so much a gamble for that person as it is a real security.

Why did you decide to expand your play to a film?

Israel Horovitz: I should say this, to start with, the play is a three character play.  Three actors in one room.  I’ve seen the play all over the place.  I’ve seen it in Moscow.  It was at the Moscow Art Theater.  I don’t speak a word of Russian.  The old actress who played it must have been a great star sixty years ago, but I missed the whole career…

Kevin Kline: A friend of Chekhov’s.  (ed. note: He is joking, Anton Chekhov died in 1904.)

Israel Horovitz: … so I was just looking at somebody who looked vaguely like Elvis Presley at the end of his life.  I started to daydream.  It really hit me that Paris was the missing character in the play.  No matter what I did, I couldn’t get Paris.  It was always just three actors in a room.  Really, wouldn’t it be beautiful, this story, if you really saw this?  I started to see the movie.  At the same time, I knew I was heading towards my 75th birthday.  I thought: I want to really do something in my life that scares the living shit out of me.  For me to do another play… it’s important to me.  It’s exciting to me.  But moving from one to two is a lot more exciting than moving from 73 to 74, let’s say.  So I thought directing this movie – writing and directing this movie – would really be a buzz.  It would really be important in my life.

So I talked to my daughter Rachael, who is a film producer.  She did Moneyball and About Schmidt.  My five kids, we all live in the same neighborhood.  We’re like a little team against the world.  She thought it was a good idea.  I wrote the script.  Won a prize, and part of the prize was going to Paris for six weeks in an abbey, a 16th century abbey.  The prize was given by Île de France Film Commission and Writers’ Guild of America, looking for screenplays that had French and American cultural exchange.  It won the prize.  The French part of the prize, the Île de France Film Commission sent a car every day and took me location scouting for my movie.  It quickly became clear to me that this was a great idea.  Once I started looking at Paris as what will be in the movie, and also realizing that if I don’t have the apartment, how the hell would you make the movie without the apartment?  (chuckles)

Ultimately, they found that apartment for me.  It was this derelict old place.  It was really ramshackle.  Nobody had lived in it forever.  Our deal was we’ll fix it up.  When we leave it, you’ll have a beautiful apartment again.  It was in a complex that allowed us to park our trucks.  It was a place that employed 6,800 people 300 years ago for the manufacture of tapestries for the great castles of Europe, including Versailles.  Now it’s empty, really.  They give some government people cheap apartments.  But that apartment was absolutely empty.  We created… just about everything you see in the movie was in this complex.  If you know Paris, it’s in Les Gobelins.  It’s near the market.  It’s not a distinguished neighborhood at all.  There is a museum that shows the tapestries.  School kids are dragged there and they just hate it.  That’s everybody in Paris’ relationship with that place.  Behind that museum is all of this unused space.  The park was actually the park that they own for their workers.

Kevin Kline: It became our back yard.

Kevin Kline stars in “My Old Lady.”

How did the casting come together?

Israel Horovitz: Kevin was the first… I didn’t want to do a movie that had, I won’t say unknown actors, but less than great actors.  Because, some years ago, the Pope came to Paris.  There was a big to do with French writers saying, “You must have a division between church and state.”  They went out to the airport with signs, protesting.  The Pope was this little old man about to die and the first thing he said, he got off the plane and there were microphones.  He said, “It’s a pleasure to arrive somewhere in this life as an unambitious guest.”  I directed this movie as an unambitious guest.  I wasn’t trying to build a big film career.  That’s not in any way, by any stretch of the imagination – even mine – [going to happen].  I just want to make a beautiful movie.  I settled on that story, because I thought that the story could be funny and it could be serious at the same time.  It could be possibly the same kind of movie that I would love to see if I didn’t know.  If I didn’t do the movie.  And we shoot in Paris.  What’s wrong with that?  My daughter would be the producer.  What’s wrong with that?  My friend would be the star.  I asked Kevin, who is famously Kevin de–Kline (laughs).  And he said yes.

Kevin Kline: (laughs) I did it for the money, which I haven’t seen yet.  But I’m waiting.

Israel Horovitz: I wrote him in and we did readings at my house.  And really… (he knocks on the table) he really knew who he was playing and helped me refine it.

Had you worked with Kevin before?

Israel Horovitz: I don’t think so. We certainly knew each other for a hundred years.

Kevin Kline: I was in Juilliard, and my class was doing The Indian Wants the Bronx.  I wasn’t in it.

Israel Horovitz: That was kind of the dark ages, a long time ago!

What happened after Kevin signed on?

Israel Horovitz: Then Dame Maggie [Smith] said yes.  I flew to London and had a lunch with her and she said, “I’ve had 25 scripts offered to me and I’ve chosen yours.  Do you want to know why?”  I go, oh my God… I said, okay, why?  She said, “Because I don’t have to die at the end of your movie.”  (They both laugh.)  I hope I’m not ruining it for your readers.

Kevin Kline and Dame Maggie Smith star in “My Old Lady.”

What was Dame Maggie like to work with?

Kevin Kline: Oh, she’s lovely.  She’s magnificent.

Israel Horovitz: I knew I wanted to get great actors.  I was too old to do a movie that might come and go without anybody seeing it.  I wanted it to be really significant.  So Kevin was my only choice, and Maggie was my only choice, and by God, they said yes.

Had you ever worked with her before?

Kevin Kline: No.  No, no, no.  She’s probably the first Dame [I’ve worked with]… no, I worked with Dame… actually Lady… Lady Olivier, Joan Plowright, who is maybe her best friend.

Israel Horovitz: Actually, Judi Dench is Maggie Smith’s best friend.

Kevin Kline: Ahh…

Israel Horovitz: They’re both 79, turning 80, and they’re both terrified to turn 80.  They talk to each other on the phone every day of their lives.

Kevin Kline: She was great, when I stopped finally boring her, pleading for more theater stories.  I wanted to hear about all of her experiences in the theater.  She’s the ultimate, consummate professional.  (to Horovitz)  Remember the day when she faints in the movie?  Even if a 30 year old faints…

Israel Horovitz: … there’s a mattress by you…

Kevin Kline: … you’ll fall out of frame onto a nice, soft mattress.  We were like the first take and she just fell on the floor.

Israel Horovitz: She scared the hell out of us.

Kevin Kline: All of us.

Israel Horovitz: I did three takes and she would have gone on.  I thought, I can’t be the man who killed Maggie Smith.  And I said, “I’m very impressed that you can do that.”  She looked at me with this kind of sexy voice and said, “You’d be amazed at what I can do.”

Kristin Scott Thomas and Kevin Kline star in “My Old Lady.”

Kevin, you’d worked with Kristin before on Life As a House.  What is she like to work with?

Kevin Kline: I remember on the first day on Life as a House… her first day, we’d been shooting for a week or two.  I love it when the director doesn’t say “Cut!”  The scene’s over, but let’s see what happens after the scene.  Maybe there’s some little bit of improvisation that could end up being usable.  Kristin was over, and I’m still talking.  She’s looking at me, and she looks at the camera and goes, “Aren’t we finished?”  (whispers)  I said: “We’re still shooting; just see what happens.”  Then she adapted to that and she said, “Oh, I see.”  But she hadn’t worked that way before, apparently.  Maggie, also, slightly different generation.

Israel Horovitz: Yeah, just a different training.

Kevin Kline: Yeah. But the British school of acting, I find be they stage actors, or working on film – very professional. No nonsense like: “Let’s talk about inner monologues and subtext.”  Just: “Let’s get on with it. Put the show on. Let’s go.”  I like that.  I had British teachers growing up, so maybe that English work ethic.

Israel Horovitz: Kevin was really an American in the film, and so he could be quite different from Maggie and Kristin, who played mother and daughter three times now, actually.

Israel Horovitz and Kevin Kline discuss “My Old Lady” at Cohen Media Group in New York.

Did having theater in common make things easier for you?

Kevin Kline: I remember when I was working with [director] Irwin Winkler when we did De–lovely [ed. note: a bio film about songwriter Cole Porter] in London – all theater actors, all British theater actors, almost entirely.  He was saying, “You know, it’s great working with theater actors because you know they’re either trained for the stage or at least housebroken.”  I don’t know, it’s such a cliché to say, “Well, there’s a shorthand with stage actors.”  There isn’t.  You have a day in between takes, whereas we have ten seconds between takes. “Let’s do it again!” and we only have time for two or three and then we got to move on.

So it’s tricky.

Israel Horovitz: The thing I noticed is: we all knew each other’s work from theater for so many years.  Establishing intimacy took about 12 seconds.  We all had stories to share, and friends and all. Then this trust that everybody knew what they were doing….  There was no movie star who happened to have had a role that matched them so perfectly and then they couldn’t do anything else. Everybody could do it.

Kevin Kline: Though Maggie wouldn’t come out of her trailer that one day. She didn’t like the dessert that the caterer had.  (laughs at his joke, shaking his head)  [No], there were no movie star tantrums of that nature.

So it was quite an experience with that cast.

Israel Horovitz: I can say simply, directing Kevin and Maggie and Kristin Scott Thomas and Dominique Pinon, it’s like telling the sun to give light.  It kind of knows already that it’s supposed to give light.

Was the expectation of making the film different than the reality?

Israel Horovitz: The thing that shocked me more than anything was, besides being an artistic venture, it was also like being the foreman on a construction site for a 70–story building.  Every single person involved has a problem and you are the person they bring it to.  You spend the whole day filtering out “Will you just deal with it?” (chuckles) and you smile and you give answers.  And there are personalities that are…. But, it’s very different from directing a play.  You direct a play, you sit in a rehearsal hall for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks.  Then maybe the actor sticks his finger in his nose on opening night, but that’s rare.  Usually you know exactly where it’s all heading.  It was just very different.  I loved every second of it.  It was just a thrilling… unfortunately 23 days.  It should have [been much longer].

Kevin Kline stars in “My Old Lady.”

Your character was very world weary.  Was it difficult to get into the mindset of someone who was pretty broken?

Israel Horovitz: (looks at Kline) Look at him!

Kevin Kline: (mock dramatic) I can’t believe you’re asking this same tired question.  World weary?  I do world weary very readily.  I’m sick of that question.  I’m weary of this nonsense.  (stops joking around and answers seriously)  Umm, world weary.  Well, he’s just a mess.  Part of me, I didn’t know.  Supposedly I knew the character, and part of me must have known him, but to me he was a revelation every day, because I never quite understood him, nor did I wish to.  I think it’s a good thing for an actor not to… I’m always wary of actors and directors who say, “I’ve got an idea about Hamlet.  Here’s the deal, this is what his problem is.”  Or “here’s an idea I’ve got for Lear.”  Or if an actor says, “I’m playing this, you know what my subtext is?”  I don’t want to know!  There’s a certain point to a degree of ignorance, which I’ve maintained satisfactorily….

Israel Horovitz: I just talked to an actor who played in Doubt [ed. note: John Patrick Shanley’s controversial play about a possibly pedophile priest] in Florida.  On the first day of rehearsal, the director told him he did do it.  (They both laugh.)  Can you imagine?

Do you think the characters in this film would be averse to therapy?  What kind of therapy would you recommend?

Kevin Kline: My character went to a therapist.  (to Horovitz)  Is that scene still in, where I say I went to a therapist and he tried to put the damaged child on his knee and all that?  It’s interesting, because therapy is now at a state where, because of pills, therapists are going to be out there as psychopharmacologists, basically.  So it’s interesting.  I think that would be a swing in the other direction.

Israel Horovitz: Whereas Kristin [Scott Thomas]’s character would never have gone to a therapist.

How did you work out the dynamic with Kristin’s character?  Before the paternity tests come in, it’s dealing with a weird taboo in the middle.

Kevin Kline: It’s funny, we didn’t work on it.  We played it… we didn’t talk about it. One of the advantages of having a 23–day shooting schedule is there’s not a lot of time to “Let’s just sit down, can we just talk about this scene?  You know, we could also…”  Let’s just shoot it.  You see what evolves.  You let things happen.  You discover it.  That’s part of the joy of it.  So we didn’t work on that dynamic.  It’s there in the writing.  We just play it.

Israel Horovitz: That’s a really good question, though.  It was important to me to keep them separate.  Kevin’s on his track.  To really keep them hating each other, until they discover what they share.  It’s just this thing: nobody will ever know his pain the way she knows his pain.  No one will ever know her pain.  So I do think it’s kind of thrilling when they…

Kevin Kline: But everyone is damaged.  The nice thing about having people that age falling in love – aside from the fact that it’s taboo in Hollywood to fall in love with somebody over the age of 25 – but these are people who have battled demons all their lives.  Who are damaged.  As we all are.  But they are damaged and they can love through that.

You once said in an interview, “I write because I don’t know how to answer my questions any other way.” What question were you asking?

Israel Horovitz: Oh, wow.  I don’t remember saying that, but I’m glad I said it.  You know, I started out writing a love letter to Paris.  Not surprisingly, midway through, I had to say to myself, “Isn’t it interesting where this is taking me?” and go with it.  I think the question in this film is really: why do people do that to their children?  In our lives we hear people are 50, 60 years old talking about their parents.  A piece of your brain is saying, “Oh, get over it!”  But another piece of your brain is saying: “But you can’t get over it.  You know that you can’t get over it.”  There’s such serious damage done.  I think it’s thrilling.  In this film, I always knew that his character knew her pain like nobody else would ever know her pain.  And her character knew his pain like nobody else would ever know his pain.  I think it’s a relief, and thrilling, when these two people get together.   It’s more than just a love story or a romance: it’s really profound when they together and they can lighten up a little bit.

If you could have had someone from the golden age of Hollywood to play your parts, who would you get?

Israel Horovitz: Our cast from the golden age.  (laughs)  I can’t imagine casting anybody else in these roles.

Kevin Kline: Steve McQueen.  Bogart.  I was channeling Humphrey Bogart the whole time.  Humphrey Bogart and Wallace Beery.  (to Horovitz)  Did you get that Wallace Beery thing I was doing?

Israel Horovitz: Don’t you think… It’s of our time, this movie.  I think.

Kevin Kline: Yeah.

Israel Horovitz: This kind of recognition of damage as opposed to just somebody who jumps off a cliff or murders somebody.  I just lived for the moment when they finally talked to each other, those two characters.  I knew it was going to be great.

Israel Horovitz and Kevin Kline discuss “My Old Lady” at Cohen Media Group in New York.

As first–time film director, how involved were you in the editing process?

Israel Horovitz: I was there every day, all day.  It was endless.  I was very involved.  I can tell you that Kevin Kline in particular as an actor gives you what you want as a director with the first take, and then shows you five other things that come into his mind.  So when you’re editing we could’ve done a straight–out comedy based on it; we could’ve done a very dark drama.  He really understood the kind of thing that I love, which is comic and tragic – like life – in the same work.

Kevin Kline: The great thing about having a first–time director.  I suppose there are in broad strokes, two types of first–time directors.  Those who’ve just come out of film school and want to direct the actors.  And those who know how to let actors do their work and not interfere.  Just interfere when it’s appropriate, when they’ve gone astray or whatever, and you think you can say something that will…

Israel Horovitz: … put it back on track.

Kevin Kline: … put it back on track, or inspire a variety of things. We were on the Quai de Seine; the opera singer’s singing and Israel says, “Why don’t you sing back to her?”  “Yeah! Fine, I don’t have the lyrics!”  So I start madly Googling the lyrics to the aria.  Whereas a filmmaker who’s just out of film school, in my experience … sometime’s they’re, “No, no, we have to stick just to what’s there, what we’ve got here.”  They’re keen on telling the actors what the motivation is, and nonsense like that …

Israel Horovitz: I’d agree.

Kevin Kline: … but someone who’s experienced with actors knows how.  Also how to trust the cinematographer, who was brilliant.

Israel Horovitz: We had a great, great DP, a guy named Michel Amathieu.  I told him 18 months before we shot the movie, “You’re the guy.”  It was all about fitting the schedules of the three main actors and this guy.  I knew his work.  I knew him intimately, and he knew that he was heading for this.  I mean, I’m glad that I can’t tell you the number of the lens, because I could tell him what I wanted, the look that I wanted, and he could translate it.

Kevin Kline: [Horovitz] saw every frame.  His reel was right there on the set, but he saw what the camera was seeing.  They have these little monitors now.  But not like many directors, who are in another room counting, watching on a monitor, he was there with the actors and Amathieu.  So he knew how everything was being framed [and] could make his comments.

Israel Horovitz: This might interest you.  I don’t generally film adaptations of plays. They seem not to be plays, and they seem not to be movies.  They’re some weird thing in between.  I knew that I had to make a movie that was a movie.  I knew that when I was writing the movie, and certainly when I was directing the movie: that Paris was a missing character in the play, and that’s why I saw the movie as I saw it.

Dominique Pinon and Kevin Kline star in “My Old Lady.”

Israel just mentioned how Paris is basically a character in the story.  You’ve made several films in Paris and other parts of France in your career.  How is filmmaking in France?

Kevin Kline: This is a good lesson, because one tends to after you make your first film in France, you say: Oh this is totally different.  The culture is so different.  Everybody is so quiet on the set.  No one ever has to say, (in French accent) “Silence!”  Because they are all very respectful of the actors.  Everybody shakes hands and kisses everybody.

Israel Horovitz: A lot of kissing.

Kevin Kline: You get an hour to an hour and a half for lunch.  Everything’s different.  It’s different!  So cultured.  Then this film was… Hey, hey, hey, let’s go!  Fuck.  We came in and we had to really go.  So there was not a lot of… Yeah we did have hour lunches and food was delicious and there was a little wine served…

Israel Horovitz: Kristin said something interesting.  She said French DPs can shoot actresses like nobody else on Earth.

Kevin Kline: Really.

Israel Horovitz: That they can really make an actress look good.

Kevin Kline: Yep.  That’s right.  I like that.

Israel Horovitz: She really believes that. And I can tell you, no question in my mind, the food – craft services – is amazing.  The hour and a half for lunch doesn’t start until the last crew person sits down.  Boy, are the French serious about their eating.  The food was amazing.  I gained about eight pounds on the shoot.

Kevin Kline: But, especially when somebody says, “Action!”  Action!  It’s the same.  There’s no difference.  Except, it’s Paris.  (smiles)  And they’re all speaking some stupid language.

What surprised either of you the most after seeing the final cut of this movie for the first time?

Israel Horovitz: Well, I saw every infinitesimal moment of it every day of my damn life for months and months and months, so there were no surprises in the final cut unless it was a mistake, a technical mistake.  But Kevin saw it pieced together pretty close to…

Kevin Kline: I saw… it wasn’t the final cut, but it was a pretty final cut.  I still haven’t seen it with the music, which to me is like a ballet without the music.  I mean, there’s temporary music, but the music is very important, at least to me, anyway.  When I first saw it, I think I told you, I said, “If I see this four or five more times, I can begin to see the film.”  It’s not what I expected.  I don’t think it’s what anyone can expect, because there are so many loops and surprises and iterations and textural colorations of comedy and drama and romance that are all intertwined in a very unexpected way.  I was just surprised and delighted, but I have to see it again.  Hopefully, others will have the same feeling; we’ll have a lot of repeat audiences.

Photo credits:

#1. © 2014 Jay S. Jacobs. All rights reserved.

#2. © 2014 Jay S. Jacobs. All rights reserved

#3. © 2014 Jay S. Jacobs. All rights reserved

#4. © 2014. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group. All rights reserved.

#5. © 2014. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group. All rights reserved.

#6. © 2014. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group. All rights reserved.

#7. © 2014 Jay S. Jacobs. All rights reserved

#8. © 2014. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group. All rights reserved.

#9. © 2014 Jay S. Jacobs. All rights reserved

#10. © 2014. Courtesy of Cohen Media Group. All rights reserved.

The Man On Her Mind

THE MAN ON HER MIND (2014)

Starring Amy McAllister, Samuel James, Georgia Mackenzie, Shane Attwooll, Bronwen Hruska, Martin Hyde and Jordan Wouk.

Screenplay by Alan Hruska.

Directed by Bruce Guthrie and Alan Hruska.

Distributed by Paladin Films.  98 minutes.  Not Rated.

http://popentertainment-moviereviews.tumblr.com/post/97222968521/the-man-on-her-mind-2014-starring-amy

There’s an old, old song by the Atlanta Rhythm Section that started with the stanza, “Imaginary lovers never turn you down.  When all the others turn you away, they’re around.  It’s my private pleasure, midnight fantasy, someone to share my wildest dreams with me.”

That’s both kind of a seductive idea and kind of really sad at the same time.

Everyone has fantasies about romance and sex, but at what point does it go from harmless imagination to something a bit more disturbed and disturbing?  Is it possible to fulfill someone’s needs or make them happy in life?  And if it does make the person happy, then who is getting hurt?

(Those questions are not meant to be completely rhetorical, I can’t claim to completely know that there is one hard and fast answer to them, though I may have a personal opinion.)

The Man on Her Mind has an opinion on the subject as well.  In fact, it appears to have more than one conflicting opinion about it.  It uses the dichotomy between fantasy and reality as a barometer of the confused state of modern relationships.  I wish I could say the film makes some huge breakthroughs, but honestly it is only a somewhat successful look at modern love and the fear of intimacy.

The Man on Her Mind is based on a play that ran in 2012 in London.  The writer Alan Hruska has decided to expand the film to the screen to make his film (co-)directing debut.   The original cast appears in the film as well, though taking on perfect US accents, as the play is based in New York.

Its theatrical background is rather obvious, in the writing (the dialogue is smart and funny and often just a hair too pithy for real life), the very limited cast (only four actors log significant screen time) and even the settings, which are basically limited to five places: her apartment, his house, her sister’s house, a park and eventually the sisters’ childhood apartment.

The above-mentioned her is Nellie (Amy McAllister), a plain, single, 30-ish New York book editor.  She’s something of a loner, completely jaded about dating and relationships.  She has been ducking the increasingly frantic romantic advances of Leonard (Samuel James), an eccentric novelist (he’s been living in a house for seven months and hasn’t unpacked at all) who met Nellie at the home of her sister Janet (Georgia McKenzie), who happens to be his new neighbor.

Leonard is so head over heels for Nellie that he has created a Nellie in his head, who has become his friend, lover and confidant.

And Nellie also has an imaginary paramour.  Oddly, her knight in shining armor is Jack, a spitting image of Leonard, if he spiffed himself up, grew some confidence and bought a power suit.  She is sometimes disturbingly frank about her fantasy romantic and sexual escapades with the people around her.

Frank wants to get to know Nellie because he wants what he has in his head to be real life.  Nellie doesn’t want to know Frank because she is afraid that getting to know him will kill her fantasy version.

Then the imaginary lovers meet each other in an attempt to act as matchmakers for their people, and find a certain attraction for each as well.

Suddenly we’re having a huge scandalous love do-se-do taking place between two people.

The Man on Her Mind is extremely well-written, terrifically acted and sometimes quite astute about relationships.  Yet whether the film will work for you all comes down the question of whether you find the idea of your two main characters having imaginary friends with benefits sweetly whimsical or kind of creepy.

Jay S. Jacobs

Wetlands

WETLANDS (2014)

Starring Carla Juri, Christoph Letkowski, Marlen Kruse, Meret Becker, Axel Milberg, Peri Baumeister, Edgar Selge, Harry Baer, Edgar Selge, Clara Wunsch, Ludger Bökelmann, Bernardo Arias Porras, Selam Tadese and Pia Röver.

Screenplay by David Wnendt and Claus Falkenberg.

Directed by David Wnendt.

Distributed by Strand Releasing.  105 minutes.  Not Rated.

There is nothing new about making films about the sexual awakenings of young girls – particularly in Europe.  This one is a bit different than many, just because it does not romanticize sex at all.  The sex that our young heroine is interested in is much more scatological than sensual, as you may pick up by the all too accurate film title.

Wetlands is not a film for the squeamish or the sexually tame.  The heroine, and therefore this film, appears to be mostly attracted to all sorts of fluids: water, saliva, blood, alcohol, sperm, urine, feces, vomit, vaginal secretions, even amniotic fluids.

Honestly, it’s one of the least sexy films about sex you’re likely to see, unless you share certain kinks with its protagonist.  Which does not, oddly, make it a film that isn’t strangely worthy of seeing.  There were moments in Wetlands that made me feel hinky, even occasionally overt my eyes (and I am not a squeamish person), but the film also paints an interesting picture of some rather unsavory people.

I may not want to spend time hanging with them, but they do have some interesting quirks which may be worth observing from the distance of a theater seat.

Besides, any film that not once, but several times, compares a vagina to a cooked fowl has a very strong point of view, whether you agree with it or not.

This kind of sexual awakening film appears to be all the rage in Eastern Europe – in recent years films like Nymphomaniac, Turn Me On Dammit, Somersault and several others have trod similar thematic ground.  (I’m not sure what exactly it says about Wetlands that only Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac was even more detached from its sexuality than this one.)

Sex is treated clinically here.  It is not so much a source of pleasure as a refuge from pain, sometimes it even purposely exacerbates that pain.

The lead character is Helen – bravely played by Carla Juri as a character with almost no filters – a tomboyish German teen who is rebelling against her uptight religious mother’s hygiene teachings.  She decides to turn herself into a human petrie dish, conducting what she calls a “living-pussy-hygiene experiment.”  This experiment includes (but is not limited to) almost never changing her panties, trading used tampons with her best friend, rubbing herself over filthy public bathroom stalls, masturbating with vegetables.  And, of course, having sex with as many people as she possibly can.

We never quite know what has brought out this masochistic streak in her – although we do see flashbacks of unhappy childhood and the film also integrates a frankly uncharacteristic Parent Trap-gone-bad subplot of her trying to reunite her estranged divorced parents.

When she injures herself trying to shave her anus around her long-term case of hemorrhoids (you can’t make this stuff up, in fact, I wish they hadn’t), she ends up having to have surgery and stuck in the hospital for a while.  However, there is a cute nurse (Christoph Letkowski) taking care of her, so she acts sicker than she really is, all the time trying with little to no subtlety to seduce him.

All of which kind of makes you wonder about Helen.  And, honestly, one act she performs towards the end, where she nearly kills herself in the vain hope of getting her parents back together, really makes you worry for Helen’s mental stability.  

As the film winds down to as close to a happy ending as it is likely to get, you have to admit that while Wetlands is not nearly as titillating as it thinks it is, the film is somewhat intriguing in its own offbeat way.  You certainly have never seen anything like it, and you’re not likely to again anytime soon.

Jay S. Jacobs

The cast of “The Wonder Years” recently reunited to celebrate the DVD release of the series. l to r: Alley Mills, Josh Saviano, Olivia d’Abo, Jason Hervey, Fred Savage, Danica McKellar and Dan Lauria

Alley Mills, Olivia d’Abo & Danica McKellar - Looking Back in Wonder

by Jay S. Jacobs

On January 31, 1988, just moments after Washington killed Denver in Super Bowl XXII, ABC aired the premiere of a new little series about suburban life in the 1960s.

The Wonder Years broke a lot of rules in television, and wrote many to come. It was a comedy, but it was also often quite dramatic. It was a single camera show filmed on a soundstage in Culver City, California, in which they created a dream suburbia of the end of American innocence.

The Wonder Years was created by Neal Marlens and Carol Black. It was the story of Kevin Arnold, played by Fred Savage, who growed from twelve to eighteen years old right before our eyes. Kevin lived in a generic American suburb (very pointedly, the show never said where it took place) during the late 60s and early 70s.

His father Jack (Dan Lauria) was a low-level business exec, mom Norma (Alley Mills) was a stay at home mom. Kevin had two older siblings, a beautiful teenaged hippie sister Karen (Olivia d’Abo) and the bane of his existence, his obnoxious brother Wayne (Jason Hervey). His best friend was the nerdy, hyper-allergic Paul Pfeiffer (Josh Saviano). The girl-next-door was Winnie Cooper (Danica McKellar): his first crush, first love, first heartbreak and eventually the one who got away.

The Wonder Years took us through this entire stage Kevin’s life: through junior high and high school, first love and first heartbreak, early jobs, Vietnam and moon shots, his first color TV, and all the other suburban milestones.

After it’s post-Super Bowl launch, the show became a smash success. It was not just popularity, the first six episodes of the first mini-season were as close to perfect as television comes. In fact the first for seasons were quite extraordinary and The Wonder Years was a huge hit during that time. During the last couple of seasons, the quality and the popularity waned a bit, but even in those years there were some wonderful episodes. When the final two episodes aired back-to-back on May 12, 1993, all of America tuned in for the bittersweet farewell to the shows and the characters.

For well over a decade now, The Wonder Years has been hovering right at the top of the public’s wish list of TV series that should be released on home video. However, due to the massive amount of music used on the show, licensing fees proved prohibitive, making it impossible to release at a reasonable cost.

Finally, StarVista, a division of Time-Life, has worked out the legal machinations and has put together a deluxe box set of the entire series of The Wonder Years, complete with multiple extras and a cool school locker packaging.  Due to the licensing costs and the massive amount of content (six seasons on 26 disks), the set is a little pricey, but for a Wonder Years fanatic who has been salivating for this release for years, it’s worth every penny.  For the more budget conscious, individual seasons will be released down the line.

We recently had the opportunity to take part in an hour-long media conference call with the women of The Wonder Years. (Danica McKellar had to leave about halfway through because her son had a doctor’s appointment.) Here’s what McKellar, Olivia d’Abo and Alley Mills had to say about life on the iconic series and the excitement of it finally reaching home video.

The Arnold family from the first season of “The Wonder Years.” l to r: Jason Hervey, Dan Lauria, Olivia d’Abo, Alley Mills and Fred Savage.

How did the time period add to the experience for you guys as opposed to doing the show that would be set in the 80′s? Did you learn anything about the 60′s through the experience?

Alley Mills: I am going to start because I’m the oldest and I lived through the 60′s. That was when I was in high school.  The 60′s were so important in this show. I had the great honor of teaching all of it to Olivia, who kept going that she was the big hippie. I went, “We need to talk.” I got her all these CD’s of the music. Told her everything. Even though her father was a rock and roll guy, she didn’t really know the joy and the hope and the incredible energy behind the movement of the 60′s. I think the whole point of The Wonder Years was this was the beginning of the end of wonder.

The whole series began with the introduction of the Vietnam war into our little TV in the kitchen. It was at that very time that the whole country began to feel the pain of the war and the ramifications of that whole joyous movement. The period was everything about our show. That was what for me gave it all the beauty.

Danica McKellar: From my perspective, my character was almost acting independent of the time period, except for the wardrobe. What I thought was the meaning of the show was that it paralleled with huge things going on in the world. Then, what seemed like a huge things going on to a couple of kids. Their whole life revolved around whether or not they’re about to have their first kiss. Of course, Winnie Cooper’s brother died in Vietnam at the beginning of the show, but he could have died from anything. It’s loss and these very universal things that happen in every time period, which is why I think people can relate to the show even if they didn’t experience the 60′s.

What I am saying is I didn’t have to know very much about the 60′s, unlike these two who I am sitting with, who are more interactive with the world around them. My character interacted with school. Interacted with Kevin Arnold and Paul Pfeiffer. Dealt with things that are absolutely universal. Does this guy like me or not? Am I popular? Doing well in school. All those things. My parents in the show separated. Things that happened at any time.

Alley Mills: Except for go-go boots.

Danica McKellar: I had to wear this pants for the second episode with the flowers in all of them. I was horrified. I hated them like no other pair of pants that I ever wore in my whole life.

Olivia d’Abo: And the pink dress. The pink dress with the go-go boots.

Danica McKellar: That, I liked. I like that outfit.

Olivia d’Abo: Yes. I did too.

Danica McKellar: I love it, but the second episode, I had to wear this awful pants.

Olivia d’Abo: I wonder where it is today.

Danica McKellar: I don’t know. That little dress. Probably some warehouse somewhere.

Olivia d’Abo: No. These two have enamored me so much. I forgot the question you asked…

Danica McKellar: Yeah. How did the period affect the show?

Olivia d’Abo: Alley and Dan luckily lived through the 60′s. I think still to this day, everybody I know – including myself – feels like it was the most pivotal, incredibly exciting, electric time that we’ve had. Probably compared to the renaissance. The period for my character… she was a teenager. She was burst into this incredible time where she was experiencing free love. Tuning in and tuning out. Being very politically proactive in terms of being not pro-Vietnam but anti-Vietnam.

I was really amazed to learn as much as I could in a very short amount of time about the period. I studied. Luckily, I was able to watch it on video. A decade of shows called The Fabulous Sixties, which basically covered Woodstock and every year that transpired between 60 to 1970. I got really a very thorough education. I spent an entire summer with an acting coach of mine at the time at the Actor’s Center. I just studied. It was like going to college for the 60′s. Then, I read Letters to Vietnam, which was incredibly moving. It was a really palpable experience for me because actors are very sensitive and very emotionally connected to stuff that they are playing, if they are passionate about it.

I just digested it. Jumped right in. Immersed myself in music that Alley was kind enough to [give me]. She was a huge anchor for me, by the time I met her and got on set. She was actually a lot like Karen was. It was …

Alley Mills: (jokes) Yeah, we took LSD together.

Olivia d’Abo: Yeah, exactly. (laughs) It was just great to have that camaraderie. To shoot things off in terms of being able to say, “Am I off here? Am I in the right zone?” We had some improvisational stuff which we got to do luckily within the first season where there were no words but clearly the camera was on Fred and there was Daniel Stern’s narration. Those are some really pivotal times where we got the time to explore terrain that was without words but very much about the vibe of the period and the emotion behind [it].

Like when Karen disappears and goes to Woodstock and the car breaks down. Then, there’s a scene between myself and Alley and Dan. Kevin is watching and getting to know Karen a little bit better. Seeing a very different side of her. It was beautiful that those kinds of things were able to be explored without dialogue. Just the fact that we are characters who develop and well established by that stage. We all loved each other so much and work so well off of each other that we just let it rip and worked with the local osmosis between each other.

Fred Savage and Danica McKellar in the pilot episode of “The Wonder Years.”

Have you guys missed the characters? Do you ever say, “I wish I could go back and visit them again.”?

Olivia d’Abo: We do every day. They are a part of our DNA at this point. Yes, definitely.

Danica McKellar: Well, every day somebody recognizes one of us on the street. Every day we get to be that character in some form. We get to see people’s looks on their faces. They say, “Oh my gosh, that show I miss so much. My family watched it together.” We get to feel how special the experience was over and over again. They’re both nodding right now.

Was this really a life changing job? There’s many acting job that are just acting jobs, but this is something that really sticks. It’s one of those things that’s not just temporary.

Olivia d’Abo: Yes. I think that every actor’s dream. Every artists’s dream. You want to be part of something that’s cyclical. That comes around every 20 years. That makes you feel like all of the hard work that you’ve been putting into your craft is actually paying off. Hopefully you get into it to really have a purpose and address something out there in the world that’s it’s going to resonate and be memorable and touch people and make them laugh.

Luckily, I think we hit on all of those things with our show. It’s sort of bitter sweet, but there was a lesson in every show that stuck with everybody. When you watch it today, it resonates even more. The world has changed even from the 80′s when we shot it, let alone the 60′s.

Danica McKellar: Now, nobody has to miss the characters because it’s coming out on DVD. (They all laugh.)

Olivia d’Abo: Good answer.

Alley Mills: This is not an answer to the character question but to did it change us? Working on a show, I think it’s very rare. I am the oldest at the group. Once you’ve been around the block, you can see what things resonate. What things resonates and what things stick in the hearts of people. The thing that this show did… nobody really knows what that magic ingredient was, except I always say it starts with writing, probably goes half way with writing and ends with writing. But it was also that we got to be part of it. It was a great gift of that.

Something that can touch every walk of life, every economic background, every color, every nationality. It’s so rare that writing can do that. It’s like any great novel. It’s like Shakespeare in the theater. Those things last and were we luckier than… I won’t say the “S” word because I am sitting here with two young girls… but luckier than anything to be part of that?

Olivia d’Abo: Lucky as shit? I’m sorry, I said it. (They all laugh again.)

Alley Mills: Norma would never say that. Danica was being somewhat facetious about now we get to see it on DVD. But the truth is it’s amazing that right now all of us run into eight-year old Hispanic kids on the street in LA who get to watch this show. I am so thrilled that now, my grand children [can see it], because it’s not probably running anymore on Nick at Nite which they got to see on and it’s running out on Hispanic TV. They’re going to now be able to go on and on and always see this. I think the show is always going to just have that human link that make shows magic. And make them laugh. Long answer. Sorry.

Olivia d’Abo: That’s all right.

Josh Saviano, Fred Savage and Danica McKellar in “The Wonder Years.”

The show has been several years at the top of the list of the shows that people want to see on DVD. To what do you attribute the ongoing popularity of the show? Have you watched it over the years? If so, how does it hold up for each of you as a television show?

Danica McKellar: I haven’t watched it in a while to be honest. I haven’t watched a full episode, although I did watch the first kiss recently because we had the outtakes for the first kiss from the pilot and Fred and I had to give commentary on it.

Olivia d’Abo: How many?

Danica McKellar: There are like six takes. The reason I think is of course is in the writing. Why did the show make such a splash? Why did it resonate so much in people? Why does it still matter? I think it’s because this was, from my perspective, the first show that really honored the strength and the emotions that kids have at such a young age. Most TV shows up until that point were all about parents and the kids were there too. This is the first show that have the narration. You got inside the mind and a heart of the small child. I don’t think that it had been done yet. When we’re little, we all have huge emotions. The world doesn’t really honor them in the same way that they honor adult’s feelings because they’re just kids.

You’re not in control of your own lives yet. You can’t make your own decisions. And, “Oh, it’s puppy love.” “Oh, it’s this.” “Oh, it’s that.” “Come on, buck up or whatever.” We all have memory of those painful early years and the elation of those early years. The huge feelings. Christmas morning is never the same from adult as it is to a child. The huge strong emotions. The show honored them and made [people] say, “Yes, this is valid. This is real, this happened.” So we all get to go back and say, “Oh, yes. I am validated.” As a child, I had these strong feelings and now I see that it mattered. I don’t think any other show had done that before. We got to be a part of something that was ground breaking and gave a new perspective for people on their own childhood. I think that’s why, for kids watching, it mattered. For adults watching it, it mattered. Because we’ve all been …

Alley Mills: We’ve all been there.

Danica McKellar: Yes, exactly. That’s just my long answer in that.

Alley Mills: I have one other answer, I totally agree with Danica about that. I think the fact that the format was in one half hour. A story was told that would make you laugh and at the end, always when I have watched it with my grandchildren recently, make you cry. [It] is another phenomenon that I think is why the show was so successful. Like a little morality tale almost, every single week. [It] transcended barriers somehow that could affect everybody, as Danica just said, young and old. All walks of life were moved by this.

People that didn’t even speak English, that watched it in different language. I think that’s another reason that it does hold up. My grandchildren like things that change every 15 seconds Boom-boom-boom-boom on their little iPads and stuff. But they love the show. That moved me.

Olivia d’Abo: That’s a really interesting point, Alley, in terms of what you see that your grandkids. They like stuff that changes quickly, because their generation is so used to that. I think that the positive thing about that generation now watching this show is knowing that they would love the show as everybody else does. It can rewire their mind a little bit to have the kind of concentration to actually get through an actual scene and be moved by it, which is very rare. In the modern day world, that’s the thing that I think is really exciting and poignant and positive about it being re-released for this new generation of kids.

Danica McKellar: So you’re saying, it’s actually healthy for them.

Alley Mills: It’s healthy. Obviously, it’s healthy.

Danica McKellar: It’s healthy for their brain development.

Alley Mills: It’s like a Mulligan Stew for… It’s almost like, I have taken the kids to the theater and they’re rapt. They sit there like, “Huh.” They didn’t know that they could concentrate for that long in the quiet. It might have that effect on this new generation – [the] tranquility of an actual human story, which is getting lost.

Danica McKellar and Fred Savage in the sixth season of “The Wonder Years.”

Danica, you mentioned a lot of the universal themes. Kevin and Winnie taught so many of us about love. What have you learned from their relationship that helped you in your own relationships and how would you describe their relationship?

Alley Mills: Oh, girl. She wears go-go boots.

Danica McKellar: What did I learn about love? Well, I had my first kiss. Yes, I had my first kiss on the show. I learned how to kiss. I learned that things aren’t straight forward. Things aren’t black and white. I am remembering in the second episode called “Swingers.” Kevin and Winnie go back to the same place where they had their first kiss. But they don’t kiss, they sit down and swing and they act like little kids again. He said that maybe, I remember just thinking about progress not being straight lined and sometimes, it’s … I don’t remember the quote. We can probably look at it, it’s a great quote.

To be honest, I haven’t even seen this episode for probably 25 years, but I still remember this moment of progress doesn’t always move forward. Sometimes we have to swing back and forth a little bit. That’s a beautiful and important message. Relationships are not straight forward. They’re not black and white. Sometimes things don’t always go in a straight line. And that’s okay. That’s okay.

Love can be very confusing. (laughs) The show was told from the point of view of Kevin, though. So I also learned that women are fickle, and not to be understood. (laughs again) Which I thought was a little strange since to me, we make perfect sense. One thing I will say too is that not even so much me learning from Kevin and Winnie’s relationship. Kevin and Winnie’s relationship was in some ways defined by my friendship with Fred and some of the things that we would say. The writers would actually take lines from things that we were saying to each other off camera and put it in the script. There’s this whole episode dedicated to, “Do you like him?” Or, “Do you like him like him?”

That was the expression that he and I used when we’re talking about some guy that I had a crush on in real life. Then it showed up on the script a few weeks later. There was a lot of blurred lines. The other interesting thing is I broke up with my first boyfriend in real life about a week before we shot the episode where I have to break up with Kevin on the show.

It was fascinating how many parallels there were. Real life informing TV. TV informing real life. It was fascinating.

Have you watched it with your fiancé now and have you guys discussed that?

Danica McKellar: No. I have not watched the show with my fiancé. We know when it comes out on DVD, when we get the box set, I’m sure we’ll pull out much of the episodes.

Danica, I read you and your sister were both auditioning for the role Winnie Cooper. What was that like?

Danica McKellar: Yeah. Actually, in fact, we didn’t just both audition for the character of Winnie Cooper. It came down to the two of us. I still remember that audition. We kept going on and there were fewer and fewer girls in the room. Then we’d go back in again and there were three of us. Then, there was just the two of us. They told my mom, “Look, we’re going to cast Danica because she’s a little older and there’s a kiss in it, but we love Crystal so much we want to write a part for her if this goes to series.” The other interesting thing is that Winnie Cooper was not supposed to be a series regular. We didn’t know that we are competing for a life-changing role. It was just a guest spot on the pilot.

That was helpful because then, it wasn’t such a big deal. It was just a one-time guest role. As it turned out, midway through shooting the pilot, they asked if we would sign the series contract, which is really exciting. By then, Crystal knew that they were going to be writing a part for her and they did. She ended up doing nine episodes. She played Becky Slater and it all worked out. She’s a lawyer now, no longer acting and I am, so it all worked out. She’s making all the money.

Dan Lauria and Alley Mills in “The Wonder Years.”

There were so many topics discussed and played out on this series? Was there a one that you wish that they would have tackled or maybe something that they touched on and you wish maybe would have been gone into a little bit deeper?

Alley Mills: You want to take that?

Olivia d’Abo: It’s interesting. It’s hard to think, because there were so many topics. I can’t think of one topic that wasn’t tackled other than gay marriage. That’s a great question. I think Alley and I … we’re letting things percolate here to see if we can …

It was just such a topical time.

Olivia d’Abo: Can you think of anything? Is there anything that you think you would have like to have seen that maybe we can nod our heads and agree with? I know that there was a lot of stuff covered with the family and there was a lot of stuff clearly with the kids… Josh and Fred and Danica. That stuff was really golden. Danica has so eloquently answered a little while ago that you really got a perspective of what it was like for kids that you hadn’t really gotten before on the television show. What they were really experiencing in a very real and personal way.

Personally one of my favorite stepping stones was with Norma and Jack. When you got to dive in to their relationship as baby boomers. I would have like to have seen topically a little bit more explore about what happened with their relationship a little bit more. I found that just as interesting and I am sure other people would have as well.

I am trying to remember what the episode was, it was “Pottery.” It’s just brilliant moment in that scene where Norma and Jack are at the kitchen sink. Karen and Kevin and Wayne, we look at them and it’s this momentous occasion where as their kids we get to see how truly in love they are. How there is this that wonderful softness and vulnerability in the relationship which you otherwise really… I don’t know if it was explored as much on the show.

I would have like to have seen that more just because it was so tender and so sweet. You really get in those moments. We got to see a few of them on the show but maybe not as many as I would have like to see why they are really together. Why they’re so solid. And I think why they raise their kids the way they do. The togetherness of them as a team.

Alley Mills: I think actually that “Pottery” episode was the only episode where you saw us fighting. Honestly in life, that happens more than once in a seven and a half period. Where a child walks through a door, or in this case, Fred was in the living room down the hall and heard us having a huge argument. It was about my ashtray but it was really about his jealousy of my taking a pottery class and being out of the house and not just being his wife. I think like Olivia just said, they could have done more about the intricacies of an adult relationship seen again by the eyes of a young boy, a ten-year old boy. I don’t know if that answers your question.

Why do you think there isn’t yet a show that conveys the moment in time in the early 2000 starting with when we all saw the planes at the Twin Tower on September 11th. Do you think that concept would work for a show today?

Alley Mills: Look, can I clarify your question? Are you saying the actual 9/11 experience and that whole concept of America being vulnerable to outside forces?

With The Wonder Years, it’s a snapshot of what life was like then at that age. For me, I was at high school when everything happened in 2001. It doesn’t seem like an era yet that can really be captured the way the 60′s were when you were from the show in the 80′s or like the 90′s or now or the 70′s or the 80′s are.

Olivia d’Abo: I think we’re probably a little bit of a ways out before we can tap into that in hindsight and have a really clear view. Translating it appropriately. People are still quite sensitive about it. I think it’s just a question of… I mean we’re in the tweens again which is really crazy.

Alley Mills: I think it’s a really good question, because in the same way that when Vietnam started because I was alive and 18. That war for the first time came into the American public’s living room, which is very much what The Wonder Years were based on. How it’s just the end of an innocent period. I think the fact that our country was invaded for the first time in your childhood is a very important issue. How it’s affected your generation would be a great show. I don’t know why they haven’t done it.

The jury may still be out in terms of how it has affected you, because I feel as a grown up now that there’s a cynicism in my grandchildren’s generation that I don’t like. They’re younger than you, but one of them is 17. I am worried about how removed we are from the effects of that act. Everybody remembers that day, the same way that I remember the Kennedy assassination and I remember Vietnam, both the invasion and as people were being lifted out and the people left behind.

It’s a crucial thing about this country and that we’re now not the safe country that’s got water all around it that we used to be. I think the ramifications of that on your generation would be a great show… but I haven’t seen it either. (laughs) I am not in love with a lot of television right now, to be totally honest with you. That’s why I’m so happy that this DVD is coming out, because I am not in love with a lot of what my grandchildren are watching.

Is there anything throughout your years working on the show you were surprised to learn about yourselves as actresses that you’ve carried with you?

Alley Mills: Well, I’ll start with that, because, yes, for me for sure. I had never played a house wife. I was shocked when they cast me as Norma Arnold. (laughs) I was not married. I did not have children. I was Karen in my youth. I was a hippie. In the business, I played tough single women up until that point. I’d done ten other series that hadn’t lasted like The Wonder Years, but I was always a rebel character. (laughs again) They told me to put on a shirt waist and Keds and pearls and keep your smarts to yourself. It was a great experience for me. I fell in love with this woman whose priority was her family, not herself.

I had always looked down on that. My mother was a feminist, and a divorcée and worked. Very smart. She went to Vassar. She was always, “Be independent and work.” But I grew and have so much admiration for that generation of women who carried their family on their backs and who didn’t complain, but weren’t weak either. At all. Just kept their strength inside and put other people first. I ended up not being a feminist. I’m in love with those women and have said so all across the country as Norma for the past whatever it’s been now, almost 30 years.

Olivia d’Abo: She’s the best. Amazing. I knew it really. It’s a very interesting question. This whole experience of the DVD coming out and me re-engaging again with the show. Watching these shows that completely hold up. My son loves the show. You can put it on with anybody. It’s rare that you can do that. Interestingly enough, whenever I do put the show on, the first thing my son says is, “You know mom, you’re just like Karen. That’s so you.” I’m still like that. That being said, while doing the show – just in terms of wanting to keep up my chops and I wasn’t necessarily in every single episode – I did go out and do other roles. Explore and experiment. What’s interesting is there’s certain parts that come about in your youth, if you’re very lucky, that are as well written as Karen was. Or as Norma was. All the characters that were involved in The Wonder Years.

Again, I have to go back to the writing, but the casting was just so incredibly well thought out. The way that Carol [Black] and Neal [Marlens] just knew what people to put in these roles. That also has a lot to do with the sustainability of the show. Like I said to Alley now, she is just still exactly the same person that she was. A lot of the qualities that are so quintessentially Alley are in Norma, though interestingly enough, she wasn’t cast in roles like Norma.

I wouldn’t think that I would have been cast in a role like Karen. But when I read it, it was like, “This is my role.” I knew it was meant for me. Now that I look back and I have played villains, I’ve played nerds, I’ve played sexpots, I’ve played mothers. I play mothers now. I always track The Wonder Years and compare it in terms of what a high barometer was set for the kind of work that we did.

It’s hard. After doing something that are so brilliantly put together and has that kind of sustainability and has such a profound effect on others, as well as yourself. It’s really hard to go out and do crap. (Alley laughs.) You just can’t. I’d rather wait tables, quite honestly. Because you’ve made your mark. I’ve been very privileged to go off and be on Broadway. I got to do The Odd Couple with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. That’s the kind of stuff that I compare to The Wonder Years. Being on stage and having that amazing chemistry with such great actors.

It’s a pale comparison amongst the stuff that’s out there. The kind of roles. You really have to seek them out, lift up rocks and dig to find something that even compares. In my life as an actress, I am happy to be engaged in it now and say, “Yep, she was a really smart, strong minded, pig headed, stubborn, sensual, fearless woman, young woman.” I challenge myself to continue to hold that up in the roles that I continue to play.

Alley Mills: I just want to share one story of when I met Olivia.

Olivia d’Abo: (laughs) Oh, please, no! You’re going to tell the bra one.

Alley Mills: I know it. We both auditioned together. Here comes this gorgeous young girl, really skinny in these blue jeans and a piece of silk on the front. And nothing in the back, but a string. Because I could see the string, [I knew] she had no bra on. I was already in the room. I had already read with Danica. In she comes and she’s got these lovely 15-year old breasts and – not small. Because I was in my shirt with dress and Keds that they told me to wear, I turned bright red. (They both laugh.) I started laughing. I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t speak!

They just went, “Okay, that’s it.” I think we were cast literally from that moment of chemistry. She completely shocked me. (They laugh harder.) I felt like a housewife. I had never felt that way. I didn’t think you could shock me! But I’ll never forget that as long as I live.

Olivia d’Abo: Anyway.

The packaging and extras of “The Wonder Years: The Complete Series” on DVD.

I think we’re all huge fans of the show obviously. I am very, very excited to finally get to see this out in DVD, but my question is the price for the DVD is like $250. Can you talk a little bit about what extras we get in this DVD experience?

Alley Mills: Well, I don’t know if you know this, but we all just got together a couple of weeks ago and there’s hours and hours and hours…

Olivia d’Abo: 23 hours of bonus features on 26 of the DVDs.

Alley Mills: … They came to our homes…

Olivia d’Abo: (reads off from list of extras) “Two notebooks with detailed episode information, production photos, a replica yearbook with behind-the-scenes photos and signatures by the cast and crew. Custom Wonder Years magnets to decorate your locker!” How’s that?

Alley Mills: No, but honestly speaking from my point of view, other than the things that you get – we’re now sitting here right now signing the year books, which are filled with all kinds of memorabilia and stuff. These interviews I think are going to be for fans of the show, really at trip. It was so great to see everybody again. I hadn’t seen some of the cast members for I think, 16 years. Since we’ve seen each other once.

Olivia d’Abo: At the Writer’s Guild event.

Alley Mills: But what’s happened to their lives? Their experiences of the show behind the scenes. They’ve interviewed our writers, our producers. Skip Cook, who was everybody’s favorite person on the crew. I think that of all the things is going to be the richest thing for people to see because it’s been amazing for me to see what I’ve been able to see so far. Does that answer your question?

Can you say a little bit about maybe one or two things that we might learn about the show or a fun memory or fun experience?

Olivia d’Abo: I think the behind-the-scenes stuff that’s never been seen before is worth all the money in the world. For people who are really die hard Wonder Years fans, or even people who are just really curious and becoming familiar with the show, those are always added pluses, those bonus features.

Alley Mills: Like the six takes of the first kiss? (laughs)

Olivia D’Abo: Yeah. Exactly. The six takes of the first kiss. Just the amazing music. That’s really one of the things that’s prevented the show from being released from DVD up until now. I mean, that stuff is an amazing added plus. Also, I think the interviews with each individual cast member, talking about nostalgic moments for them and how they got the roles and what specifically…

Alley Mills: They’re like ten years old when they get their first kiss.

Olivia d’Abo: If you have families who relocated from East Coast and Chicago. For all of us when we actually get interviewed about how this impacted our life, I think those stories in and of themselves are really, really interesting and will be really quite something for people to hear about.

Alley Mills, Dan Lauria and Jason Hervey in “The Wonder Years.”

Alley Mills: I don’t know if it will be as interesting to you as it was to me having known these kids as children, but when I got to get with them a couple of weeks ago, it blew my mind to see the men and this woman sitting across me. I was so proud of them. It was so unlike the children that I’ve seen grow up to be adults in this business, because it’s a very tough business for children. We worked so hard to protect their integrity. We had fantastic teachers. I was very close to all of their mothers. I just left that day, so impressed with these boys that have become this amazing men. Fred is a formidable director and a very good, good man. Jason, the butthead, (they laugh) has become a glorious guy. Yeah, he’s a really cool guy.

Olivia d’Abo: He’s come into his own.

Alley Mills: The CEO of a company. And Josh is a lawyer, who is actually a good man as opposed to a mean lawyer. It’s things like that I think will really interest fans, too. I was amazed to see what these children have become. And Danica, of course who we’ve just been sitting with. A beautiful young woman and phenomenal.

It was really great to see so many different generations represented from the show. Obviously, Danica being the youngest at the time on up to Alley. What are the biggest lessons you might have learned as actors working on that series. Looking back on it now, how do you feel that you’ve evolved since that show in your craft?

Alley Mills: In our cast as opposed to in our lives?

Yes.

Alley Mills: Okay. Well, I will speak first. I don’t know if you were in on this entire conversation that we had, but I was already saying how playing the character of Norma changed me as a person, definitely. It has changed my attitude towards women profoundly. In terms of my craft, when you do a show for seven years, which I hadn’t up until that point. I had done ten different series but nothing that lasted for this period of time. It’s like doing a play for a couple of years, every night. We did one show a week. So it’s like being fully immersed in another character. I think that as a woman, it made me relax. It changed my stakes because I’d already done The Wonder Years. I felt like now I can just do what I want to do. I put all that money in the bank. That changed my need to be doing other lesser things as an actor. That was an amazing blessing that came out of it for me. I got to play weirder roles. I did a lot of independent movies and I played stranger roles.

I found myself, oddly enough, back in a full time job for the past 8 years on a soap opera because I played a bipolar weirdo on CBS. Again, I like living inside one person a lot. I find it really interesting. I find it interesting to be able to tell different stories from that one point of view instead of always playing other people, which is what I’ve always loved to do as a theater actor. I guess what I learned the most craft-wise was doing something every day.  Playing the same person everyday brought a relaxation to my work as an actor if that makes sense to you.

Olivia d’Abo: I completely agree with what Alley just said. I think the relaxation part is huge because there was a very high barometer that all the actors set on this show. We needed to know our lines. It was just so much fun by the end of the first season once all of our characters will really establish and developed that there was just fluid freedom that came with being able to really play with the material. Just make it our own and just trust that we were cast because we were right for these roles. Sometimes it’s a question mark when you first saw the job or a TV show. Seeing how you’re going to embody this character. What you’re going to be able to bring to it seven years down the line. But because the material was so amazing. We knew that it had a potential to have a lot of longevity. Dan Lauria said to me the first day, “Kid this show is going to go. It’s going to for many years. We’re going to get very rich. You better get ready.” (Alley laughs) For me really, it was very, very liberating.

Still looking back, I can’t think of any other role that I’ve played with the exception of what Alley mentioned. I played Nicole Wallace on Law & Order [Criminal Intent]. I’d been [Vincent] D’Onofrio’s nemesis for six seasons reoccurring. She was much darker and fiercely intelligent because she was a sociopath. She’s always ten steps ahead. A very smart woman but a much darker role.

With Karen, what getting that role got me excited about as an actor because I was so young when I did it, was how to really explore researching a role. Diving off the cliff and jumping off the cliff and getting in the life of the character. I’d had a lot of Stanislavsky training by that stage. It was the perfect prototype of a role for me to really go and just let it rip. It carved out a procedure for me that I now go about with every role that I have taken on since then. I take it very seriously. Like Alley, I also really like to just play one role if I can. If it’s really interesting, you can just explore everything that another person will do – from brushing her teeth to dressing to the inner thoughts that would go on in their mind. I had seven years of being able to play a really amazing character. I feel very blessed. In many ways, very spoiled. (laughs) But very blessed nonetheless.

Alley Mills: The other thing that we’re very lucky about is for the first… I think it was the whole first 17 episodes, we had one director. Steve Miner. He was fantastic. He was there when Olivia came in without a bra for the audition. (Olivia laughs.) He started laughing so hard and I thought, “Okay. I know this is chemistry.” He really walked us through. From wardrobe, they took such care of taking every single thing that we wore on those first episodes. The color of my hair. My hair was dyed three times because they wanted it to be…

Olivia d’Abo: They put a yellow, a blonde.

Alley Mills: They tried blonde. Then, they tried another in the pilot. You can tell it’s been a brown and then, they made it really bronzy. They tried it for film. They tried out and took it every night the DP, the film, to test it and dye it. So it had this old fashion sepia look to it. I mean, they were so meticulous. These producers, Carol and Neal, in those first seasons about every single little detail of how we acted and reacted to things. Because it was a comedy but not a comedy. That was another ground breaking thing about The Wonder Years. It was a comedy without a laugh track. They were only doing that very little before our show. One camera. I’ve done one other one camera comedy.

They were trying it out as a new comedy form. Then, a lot of people said, “It will never work without it. You have to have a laugh track. Got to have an audience. You got to be the sitcom.” All that stuff was taking the line ratings of comedy like, “Don’t go for the comedy.” Just say something and it’s just so corny that it’s going to make people laugh. I remember I knocked on the door of the bathroom, “Are you all right in there, Kevin?” I said, “I can’t do this, can I?” All the crew went, “Yeah! Everybody’s mother did that!” Stuff like that. We just took so much time on the show and that was again… like really, really spoiled.

Olivia d’Abo: That’s where we were spoiled. That’s exactly it.

Alley Mills: Do you have anymore?

Olivia d’Abo: Yeah. It’s really good. FYI. But with that being said, if we’ve had the opportunity to work on The Wonder Years and it gives us a little bit of gravitas if I’m maybe so bold to say, I think that we’re very lucky. From the stand point that because we bring that with us, in our repertoire of work, if we want to ask for a little bit more time to find things I think we’re probably… there’s nothing wrong with asking. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. You just say, “Hey, this is what we did on The Wonder Years and that did pretty well, right?”

Have you heard from the sizable online fan base? It seems like a lot of the reception has been really positive, but there’s always going to be fan that takes things a little too far. What are your overall experience has been with dealing with the fans?

Alley Mills: Taking it too far in a negative place?

Olivia d’Abo: Well, I personally think that is nice that they are still passionate about the show. Could you give us some example of how they get a little crazy? You mean, possibly with the Fred and Winnie stuff, or what in particular just so that we can answer your question appropriately?

I guess if there’s any fans that have ever crossed the line? I don’t know, approached you in a way that made you uncomfortable?

Olivia d’Abo: You’re talking about in public when did we just go out and …

Alley Mills: Or on the internet?

Olivia d’Abo: Or on the internet? I personally have never had a bad experience with people who are Karen Arnold fans. What’s really nice is it’s going to hit this new generation of young women who are 18 or going into college who are just discovering the show. They really connect with Karen’s sensibilities and her plight. For justice and civil rights and just rights. What’s right and what’s wrong and the way things should be. She’s a truth seeker.

I see that being a component in young women today, especially women in college or younger. Where they don’t filter things as much as they used to. They don’t feel like they necessarily have to have a steady boyfriend. They’re really more career-oriented and wanting to seek out their empowerment. My experiences with fans on the internet or on Twitter have been that. I just implore them to continue that wonderful spirit that they’re running with. I think it’s a positive thing. An empowered young woman is only going to make the world a better place.

Alley Mills: It’s funny, I find the fan of The Wonder Years very, very different than say, soap fans, because I’m now on a soap opera. Those fans can get really kind of bizarre. (chuckles) I’ll be honest with you. Bless their hearts. I’ve had even a stalker in that department, in the soap world. It’s a very different audience than I have found from The Wonder Years, even though as I said it crosses all these boundaries of race, color and economic background and everything.

People that love The Wonder Years just tend to be really cool people. (laughs) That’s been my experience. I don’t Twitter, because I’m an older person, but I did the other day. We had this huge Twitter day. Olivia did it and Danica did it and everybody was incredibly respectful there. And those were the hard core Twitter, “hang in there Wonder Years” fans from forever.

We had a gagillion calls. All the questions were really respectful. I just never had a bad experience with a Wonder Years fan. I ran into tons of women going across the country, during that time especially but even now. I find in the Mid West, that’s where Norma’s people are. (laughs) Mothers that felt totally understood, because of the show. I love my little fan base, all the housewives. I love them. Okay.

People have danced around my question for the last hour but I’ve been struck by the juxtaposition  you were making a show about an era that was a couple of decades in the rear view. Now, we are celebrating the work that you did then looking back on that era and we’re about equal distant in time. I was just wondering if that…

Alley Mills: I know.

… passage of time has colored your perspective of your personal experience with the show and the impact of the show. How it might have colored that?

Alley Mills: Well, I would say that yes, there’s no question that the time passage from the end of the show until now we’re in a different world, to be honest with you than we were 20 years ago. We were in the different world when the show started, like exactly what you’re saying. It’s a really good question. I love that question.

Thank you.

Alley Mills: I personally am very worried about the world. I worry about my grandchildren. It doesn’t do any good to worry, so I don’t actually worry, but my heart is heavy for what they are facing. I wish I felt like it was a better world. In some ways, there’s a lot more information and that’s really great. They’re incredibly smart, my grandchildren and that’s great. But when I look at the media, the thing that I missed about the period of time that The Wonder Years was lucky enough to land in, was we could actually have a little morality play for half an hour on network television.

They even put it on after the Super Bowl, the pilot, which was incredible for a show that was so out of the box. This was not normal. No one had ever seen the comedy like this before. For Brandon Stoddard at ABC to put it after the Super Bowl was a very bold move on his part. The time has made me really happy that Time Life put money behind putting these DVD’s out right now. Because a show like this, I don’t know if the networks would pick it up, which breaks my heart.

The things that they’ve got – not only on network television but all the cables now, HBO and Showtime and everything – some of them are smart but, boy, are they mostly cynical. Not things that I really want my grandchildren to be watching. The Wonder Years, the great thing was it wasn’t sentimental and it wasn’t sappy and it wasn’t stupid. It was smart, but deep. It was funny, but moving. You learned something from every week about human nature and human life, which was really rare. The longer we get away from it, the more it still packs its punch. I just really hope that a whole new generation of kids will be encouraged to watch it with their parents.

That’s the other thing. What on earth can you watch with your parents? My kids always say, “Want to watch this with me grandma?” I look at them like, “No. I can’t.” I want to do things with them. I go to the zoo with them and I’ll read with them. I don’t want to watch TV with them, what they watch. I don’t like it. It’s so rare to have a show. I don’t know what it would be today. I can’t think of one that you could watch with your parents or your grandparents. That’s the major thing about the time passage. You’re right that even then when we were doing the show, it was twenty years before. It was ’68 and we were doing it [starting '88]. It was a 20-year thing back.

Olivia d’Abo: I think that Alley answered the question just beautifully and really succinctly. I think there’s this disarming quality that the show has, whether you followed it since the very first pilot episode where Winnie’s brother dies. Just that pilot episode, I don’t think could have been conveyed in a more brilliant way. The word disarming and nostalgic just comes to mind. Even if you’re so young that you don’t quite know what that means, it’s something that you feel. It’s a visceral, immediate experience that you have when you watch each episode. I was really so profoundly affected recently through watching about 12 of the episodes that they gave to the cast, just to recap before our reunion. I was just amazed at the consistency of all these characters and how they grew and they blossomed through each and every year that we covered.

Notably, there was very little that was left out. I think that we got all the great aspects, the positive and the negative aspects that happened during the duration of that time from the 60′s into the 70′s. What transpired with the country. It’s a history lesson to me as an actress. I can sit there and put the show on and teach my 18-year old, “Look, this is the way America used to be.” This is something to be very, very proud of. Just look at this whirlwind of electricity. What was going on politically and what was going on socially. The genesis of so many things that were born out of that time were documented brilliantly on the show.

It’s almost like the way Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is a history lesson for young kids. I feel comparatively for television, The Wonder Years is a history lesson for young people in television. I am very, very proud of that. As an actor, I feel just incredibly honored to have been part of that because it’s a huge contribution.

Alley Mills: I just want to add one thing, but Olivia has just mentioned StarVista. I just wanted to say one thing because I don’t know how many reporters know this but the reason that we couldn’t have DVD’s until now, the reason has been this 20-year of passage, is because the music in the show is so important and integral and phenomenal.

StarVista was the only company that came up with doing these DVD’s with that music in it which we are so incredibly indebted to them for. It was very expensive. We did not secure the rights to the music. (laughs) I don’t know why ABC didn’t do that, but they didn’t. That’s why we haven’t had DVD’s and why this generation wasn’t able to access them. I just wanted to say that and thanks to them. Because of them, we are able to have this roll out and somebody was asking a question of what would we get in the set and everything. That’s the major reason that it’s been so incredibly expensive to do the DVD’s. The cast and everybody is just so incredibly grateful that they’re doing this. I just wanted to add that at the end.

Olivia and Alley, do you have anything else that you’d like to add before we close?

Alley Mills: Yeah. Yeah, my heart was really full right now. (chokes up) The question was: did it change our lives? Yeah. In such an incredibly profound way. I think we are both so grateful to have been a part of something that Neil and Carol conceived. That brilliant people were involved in executing. And such phenomenal kids! I likened it to somebody to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. How did all those founding fathers happen to be on this planet at the same time and make that Constitution? Blows my mind.

Well, I feel as an actor that kind of gratitude for being in something that’s iconic. I just do. I feel it every day. I feel really grateful. I never feel bothered when a fan comes up to me –ever – about The Wonder Years. It’s just so different because it was such a deep thing. I know that when people come to ask me something, it’s because their lives were moved. For various reasons depending on what the episode was.

I would like to just add that that I carry that gratitude in my heart everyday. I am so excited that not only this generation of people will be able to see it, but they will be able to have it. Because my VCRs don’t work anymore! (laughs) I have masters of it all on VCR and they’re terrible. They’re all broken up by now because it’s been so long and they don’t last. But these will last. Do you want to say something, sweetheart?

Olivia d’Abo: I have a lot of gratitude. It’s just a very, very special time in my life for this to all be kind of re-immersing itself. To be reconnecting with Alley, who I love and adore and I don’t see often enough. But it’s like we pick up where we left off. There’s a kindred spirit thing that I can’t even explain. Its just super, super special. As well as the rest of the cast members and Jeff Pike who runs StarVista. These are such, such hardworking exceptionally committed people who clearly are so passionate about the show. It’s evident in every single yearbook that I signed and that Alley is about to sign. The 500 beautiful maroon yearbooks in front of us as we speak.

They’ve had their work cut out for them and they’re doing incredible things. I am so grateful to them for bringing this all together. Doing this properly. Presenting this to the world in a very timely manner, I think when the world really needs it. So that we can have that sense of love in our hearts that may be missing a little bit in the world right now. But again, great writing, great performances and something to be very, very proud of as being an American. We need to put the pride back into  this country. I think this is a really great example of how we’re doing so.

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 18, 2014.

Photos ©2014. Courtesy of StarVista/Time-Life. All rights reserved. 

Melissa Joan Hart in “Melissa & Joey”

Melissa Joan Hart – The Witch is Back

by Landyn Gerace

From Sabrina Spellman to Mel Burke, Melissa Joan Hart has continued to entertain fans of all ages.

This week on ABC Family’s hit show Melissa and Joey, Hart has a blast from the past channeling her inner Sabrina the Teenage Witch in the show’s Halloween special. From black cats to familiar faces, Melissa and Joey will have a magical twist that will definitely please the audience. Beth Broderick, who played Aunt Zelda on Sabrina will return to the ABC Family sitcom for a second time helping Hart’s character Mel get in touch with her supernatural side.

“With this episode, we’re really giving a nod to Sabrina and my past and combining the two shows so completely,” says Hart. “I would say it’s more Sabrina than it is Melissa and Joey.”

Melissa Joan Hart stars in “Melissa & Joey”

Not only did the mother of three get in touch with an old character, but she also directed the episode “Witch Came First.”

“I directed the 100th episode of Sabrina and a few Halloween episodes of Sabrina – that was something I always liked…. I think it was always in the works for me to direct this episode,” Hart says.

She first began directing around the age of 20. Since then she has directed her own short film, Mute, and several Disney Channel shows.

Hart jokingly says “I guess I was always very bossy on set and I was just always wanting to learn new things.”

As an experienced director on both hit television series, Hart expresses how different directing both shows actually was for her. On Sabrina the Teenage Witch, there were a lot of special effects and a permanent green screen. “It was like shooting a small movie every week.”

Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence star in “Melissa & Joey”

Melissa and Joey is the first show Hart has directed in front of a live studio audience. With a live audience, Hart makes sure the show runs smoothly. It is apparent in the episodes she has done, and certainly will be in the ones she directs in the future.

Combining her two shows into a Halloween episode was both challenging and exciting for the cast and crew. “It was interesting to combine my two worlds together, but it was a lot of fun.”

Not only did Hart have the pleasure of working with Broderick again, but she was able to work with her current cast on the Halloween episode.

“It’s been such a great journey and so much fun. He’s such a pro,” Hart says on her costar Joey Lawrence. “We find each other very responsible and professional…. I think that just added to the chemistry.”

Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence star in “Melissa & Joey”

Not only does Hart work alongside Lawrence, but also Taylor Spreitler and Nick Robinson, who play Lennox and Ryder respectively. Hart says both young actors have come out of their shells since the first season of the show and “come alive as actors.” She refers to the cast and crew as a family, “Together we just count our blessings and love to make people laugh!”

Along with the special Halloween episode airing October 22, Melissa Joan Hart has some of her own plans with her family to celebrate the spooky holiday. With her husband and three sons, the family plans to do fun Halloween traditions such as carving pumpkins, trick-or-treating, and a candy swap at the boys’ school. As for family costumes, that is yet to be decided.

“I really like to do a uniform costume for the family, have some kind of theme…. I’m trying to wait until just before so that I can make sure I know exactly what they want to be.”

Between balancing work life and family life, Melissa Joan Hart has worked hard to create an episode that will not disappoint. Be sure to watch what happens when Mel Burke clashes with Sabrina Spellman on ABC Family’s Halloween special of Melissa and Joey “Witch Came First.”

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 18, 2014.

Photos ©2014. Courtesy of ABC Family Channel. All rights reserved. 

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon

SUPERMENSCH: THE LEGEND OF SHEP GORDON (2013)

Featuring Shep Gordon, Alice Cooper, Anne Murray, Michael Douglas, Sylvester Stallone, Emeril Lagasse, Willie Nelson, Steven Tyler, Tom Arnold, Mick Fleetwood, Sammy Hagar, Bob Ezrin, Caroline Pfeiffer, Bob Richard, Nancy Meola, Dean Fearing, Derek Shook, Chase Williams, Amber Williams, Don Nelson, Herb Karlitz and Mike Myers .

Directed by Mike Myers.

Co-directed by Beth Aala.

Distributed by Radius-TWC.  85 minutes.  Rated R.

http://popentertainment-moviereviews.tumblr.com/post/100929958566/supermensch-the-legend-of-shep-gordon

Former Saturday Night Live comedian Mike Myers (Wayne’s World, Austin Powers, Shrek) has been off the pop-culture radar for quite a bit now, with a self-imposed exile… I think meant to make us all forget about The Love Guru.

People were wondering where he would finally pop back up.  I doubt that many people, if anyone, would have imagined that it would be as the director of a documentary about an old-school Hollywood manager of whom very few people outside of the industry had heard.

Yet, here we are.  An unpredictable choice, but an intriguing one.

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon is the very definition of a labor of love.  It’s also rather entertaining, even if you are not in the biz.

Shep Gordon has most certainly had an interesting life.  He has guided the careers of such diverse talents as Alice Cooper, Anne Murray, Groucho Marx, Teddy Pendergrass, Blondie, Raquel Welch, Emeril Lagasse, Luther Vandross and many, many others.  He branched out his music career to a successful gig in filmmaking.  He almost single-handedly invented the celebrity chef.  He’s a gourmand and a practicing Buddhist.  He has a home in Hawaii which is the scene of legendary parties on a regular basis.  He’s friends with Michael Douglas, Sylvester Stallone, Mike Myers, Tom Arnold and the Dalai Lama.  He had a series of relationships with beautiful women, including a just-pre-fame Sharon Stone and former Playboy centerfold ex-wife Marcy Hanson.

Gordon literally just stumbled into artist management.  He was living and selling dope in the famous Hollywood Landmark Hotel and became friends with fellow residents like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.  One day Hendrix suggested (because Shep was Jewish) that he should manage an unknown rocker who also lived in the hotel, a guy who had a band called Alice Cooper.

Though he really had no idea what he was doing, Gordon was a savvy businessman and a savvy showman.  Nearly as much as the band, Gordon was responsible for turning Alice Cooper into the character that he became, and one of the biggest stars in 1970s rock.  Gordon also helmed the music career of the very different Canadian songbird Anne Murray and the solo career of R&B lover man Teddy Pendergrass.  (In fact it was Gordon who had to break it to Pendergrass that he was paralyzed after the singer’s early 1980s car crash in Philadelphia.)

His career spanned into indie filmmaking and the promotion of chefs, and in every field Gordon became a success and made many fawning friends, quite a few of whom are interviewed here.

Supermensch is certainly not a warts-and-all profile: Shep Gordon comes off as unfailingly affable, a calculating-but-fair businessman, exceedingly generous and caring, and beloved by those around him.

You’d sort of like to get a little more background into the darker passages in Gordon’s life.  For example, why exactly was Luther Vandross so incensed with Gordon that he literally erased him from his autobiography?  This fact is mentioned in passing in the film, and no follow-up is made.  Gordon’s explanation that the singer was so upset that he would leave him behind when Gordon decided to retire can’t possibly be the whole story, could it?  Obviously Vandross is no longer around to explain his side of the story, but there must have been someone who had some further insight into what had happened.

Also definitely missing: not one of Shep’s exes is interviewed, not even Sharon Stone.  The closest thing to that comes when in a move of personal largess, Gordon essentially adapts and takes financial responsibility for the grandchildren of his former lover Winona Williams when their mother died.  The grandchildren have grown up to be smart and well-adjusted adults and speak glowingly of Gordon.  However, Winona herself is not involved in the film (and she may quite possibly also be dead, but the film never addresses it) and you never get an idea of why she and Shep had broken up in the first place.

Late in the film, Myers says, “Shep Gordon is the nicest person I’ve ever met, hands down.”  Perhaps that is why Supermensch does not dig deeper.  Perhaps it is just not what Myers was looking to do.  He’s a friend and he doesn’t want to look for skeletons in the closet.  However, when you watch Gordon’s early work at image-creation, you can’t help but feel that Gordon could not have scripted it better if he had tried.

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon is a worshipful look at its subject.  It truly is nice to see a man who has inspired such unabashed love and friendship and respect.  Perhaps it’s not the whole story, but it certainly is a nice story.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 9, 2014.

Hit By Lightning

HIT BY LIGHTNING (2014)

Starring Jon Cryer, Will Sasso, Stephanie Szostak, Jed Rees, Braulio Eliser, Chantal Chamandy, Sean Tucker, Alexis Maitland, Richard Sutton, Harley Chamandy and Ricky Blitt.

Screenplay by Ricky Blitt.

Directed by Ricky Blitt.

Distributed by Chantal Chamandy Entertainment.  89 minutes.  Not Rated.

The romantic comedy has pretty much trotted out every potential variation on the meeting of soul mates.  Therefore Hit By Lightning does deserve some credit: it has changed things up a bit.

Hit By Lightning is a light farce about Ricky (Jon Cryer), a middle-aged lovelorn schlub who meets the perfect woman (Stephanie Szostak) through a dating service.  Danita is smart, beautiful, funny, sexy, loves all the same things as he does.  She is his perfect woman.  Oh yeah, there is one slight downside.  She’s married and wants him to murder her husband so that they can be together forever.

The movie flirts with the dark side of the situation – having the hero racked with doubts that she may be a femme fatale like Kathleen Turner who is just using him to get her wicked ways – and yet in the long run, the main character and the movie don’t seem to think that asking someone to commit a violent felony and a mortal sin should be a deal breaker in modern romance.

Through most of the film you just have her word on in that her husband is a slime ball, in fact really through the whole film.  On the surface, he appears to be a terrific guy – a former rabbi, a best-selling author, friendly, generous and helpful.  The only reason you may believe it is that he is played by Jed Rees (The Chris Isaak Show), who has made a career of playing jovial sleaze balls.

So, yeah, Hit By Lightning seems to be coming out in favor of killing someone as a courting technique.  But hey, she’s hot, she’s way out of his league, she’s good in bed and she loves Albert Brooks films.  Life in prison seems like a small price to pay.

Not that anyone in Hit By Lightning ever really thinks of the moral or legal implications of the act.  Even Ricky’s cynical party animal best buddy Seth (Will Sasso) barely even blinks when the idea of becoming an accessory to the crime is brought up.  Sure, why not, anything for a buddy….

I know, it’s a parody.  They aren’t really suggesting that murder is just a bump in the road on the way to true love, like different favorite sports teams or religious or political differences?  Are they?

Of course not, but writer/director Ricky Blitt – who previously worked on Family Guy – can’t quite seem to juggle the different levels of humor.  It all comes off feeling pretty much like a sitcom, the darker edges of the humor feel sanded down and have little bite.

Looking at it as a sitcom, he does have a good cast, though.  Cryer (who is ending an 11-year run on Two and a Half Men) and Sasso (best known for playing Curly in the recent Three Stooges reboot and MAD-TV) have a natural and charming (if light) rapport together.  As stated before, Rees is always good playing a personable asshole.  Szostak takes a character that is something of an enigma, and could be considered to be somewhat morally repugnant, and makes her rather charming, if never completely believable.  (That was the script’s problem, not the actress’.)

Of course, believability is remarkably low throughout.  For example, this dating service eHappily.com seems to have an insanely good record.  Literally everyone in the movie who met someone through eHappiness.com falls in love and starts planning the wedding within a matter of days.

Which means that maybe Ricky would be better off just waiting for the next post from an exceptionally attractive woman who will overlook all of his quirks and neuroses.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: October 31, 2014.

Planes: Fire and Rescue

PLANES: FIRE & RESCUE (2014)

Featuring the voices of Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Danny Mann, Julie Bowen, Brad Garrett, Teri Hatcher, Curtis Armstrong, Ed Harris, Wes Studi, John Michael Higgins, Fred Willard, Hal Holbrook, Teri Hatcher, Stacy Keach, Cedric the Entertainer, Barry Corbin, Regina King, Dale Dye, Matt Jones, Bryan Callen, Danny Pardo, Corri English, Kari Wahlgren, Patrick Warburton, Rene Auberjonois, Kevin Michael Richardson, Erik Estrada, Steve Schirripa, Brent Musburger, John Ratzenberger, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.

Screenplay by Jeffrey M. Howard.

Directed by Bobs Gannaway.

Distributed by Walt Disney Films.  83 minutes.  Rated PG.

Planes: Fire & Rescue takes place in the world of Pixar’s Cars, but it is no longer Pixar and it really is very little like Cars.

In, fact, if anything, Planes: Fire & Rescue is more of a light action film than the light comic love story/underdog victory mold of Cars, or even the first Planesmovie.

In fact you know from the beginning that the film is flying off in a totally different direction when the film begins with a title card honoring the firefighters who put their lives on the line to save others.

Of course, if you had seen the first Planes movie, you may be wondering where the fire stuff came from.  Wasn’t it about an old crop duster turned racing plane?  It was, but Planes is more like a very, very light version of a mostly forgotten old Steven Spielberg film called Always.

Which is probably for the best.  While Always wasn’t a great film, it was certainly better than the first Planes.  And the whole idea of downplaying the old racing milieu, which had already worn out its welcome in Cars, Cars 2 andPlanes, is probably a good choice.

So instead of replaying that whole storyline yet again, Planes: Fire & Rescuetakes on the much more visually-arresting and thematically-deep subject of forest fire fighting.

Oh, it starts out with the racing.  Dusty Crophopper (voiced by Dane Cook, of all people) is still enjoying the celebrity of his big racing win in the first Planesfilm.  But when flying a follow up race, he starts to sputter.  Turns out he has damaged his gear box and the part is no longer made.  Therefore, if he tries to go all out in a race, he will probably crash.

Bereft from his short-term career and celebrity, Dusty takes a job as a forest-fire-fighter.  He assumes that he will never have to work at his new craft and be exposed as being injured, but of course soon after the entire area becomes a raging inferno.

And that is pretty much all that happens for the rest of the film.  The cars, trucks and planes of the area band together to fight off the pernicious fire, which is encroaching on more and more of their land.  Meanwhile, an evil politician refuses to let visitors in a new (all wood) resort know of the impending danger.

The firefighting scenes are both spectacular (the background artwork of this project is head and shoulders over the first Planes) and disappointing (at any given time, the firefighters are only able to douse very small areas in a much bigger fire).

However, through working together to save lives, Dusty discovers what’s really important.  Or something.  The back story is what is really not important.  Nor are the gentle jokes traditional to the Cars and Planes films.

The thing is, in the firefighting scenes, there are some real moments of life and death importance.  The artwork and sense of danger changes this trifling series up and gives it a gravity that it never had before.  It also makes Planes: Fire & Rescue one of those rare occurrences when the sequel is head and shoulders above the original film.

Alex Diamond

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 4, 2014. 

Willie Garson stars in “White Collar.”

Willie Garson

Saying Goodbye to White Collar

by Jay S. Jacobs

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Willie Garson has been pretty lucky recently in long-term TV roles.  First he spent several years playing Sarah Jessica Parker’s flamboyant best guy-friend in HBO’s Sex and the City.  He quickly followed up that beloved character with one that has become even more widely embraced, playing the constantly-scheming but lovable con man Mozzie on the hit USA Network show White Collar.

White Collar is the story of a dashing con man Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) who gets caught by the FBI and is forced by crusty agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) to help them on cases.  The popular ensemble show — which also stars Tiffani Thiessen (as Peter’s wife Elizabeth), Diahann Carroll (as Neal’s friend, mentor and landlady), Marsha Thomason and Sharif Atkins (as tough Federal agents).

The fifth season ended months ago with Neal being kidnapped after helping to foil a big heist.  Sadly in the months since that cliffhanger, USA Network decided that the sixth season would be the last for the long-running show, and it would be an abbreviated six-episode arc.

A few days before the final season starts, we were one of a few media outlets who were able to speak with Garson to discuss the end of White Collar and what is coming next for him.  (Hint: Bill Bixby fans will be very excited.)

What would you say excites you the most about this final season?

What excites me the most is that we got it. That we got one actually, because it was a little in jeopardy just to due to economics. It was really important to us – and eventually, also thankfully to USA – to give us these six episodes to finish up the story, as much of it as we could. We’re really excited, because our fans are so into the show, which we’re very thankful for. We really want to give them some kind of closure. We really took that opportunity seriously and worked very hard on these last six. I’m excited for people to see it.

What would you say is your biggest take away from this experience?

Well that’s a great question. My biggest takeaway from this experience is that TV shows can be run a different way. This show was run a different way, in terms of the collaborative nature of it. The studio – which was FTVS – and the network USA and our creator executive producer Jeff Eastin set up the show to be a very collaborative place. We all felt that we had some kind of ownership of the show, in terms of how it’s made and what goes on and what happens. It just made it a different place than I’ve worked before. We all felt a real part of making it, rather than just showing up to work and doing what was presented to us.

In recent seasons they’ve been giving certain hints about Mozzie’s background. I know that in the last six episodes they really have to focus mostly on Neal and Peter’s stories, but will they have time to explore any more about Mozzie’s background in those final episodes?

Very much so, and in a very incredible way. It was a massive surprise to me and it will be a massive surprise to our fans. (laughs) It’s terrific. I think it’s episode four. It’s quite terrific. People can really look forward to that. Any very strange Mozzie fanatics can really look forward to that episode. (laughs again)

Terrific, now not asking for any spoilers or anything but where do you think that Mozzie would like to end up five years from now and where do you see him winding up?

It’s always been an interesting question about Mozzie because Mozzie is kind of where he needs to be. He doesn’t have a goal, other than pulling cons, outsmarting people, being the smartest guy in the room and living comfortably. It’s interesting, if Mozzie suddenly woke up to a treasure of $200 million, I don’t know if he’d be fully happy just sitting there and rotting. I think he’d be one of those guys who would actually try and get rid of it, so he could get it again. The game is what keeps Mozzie going. I think he would do that forever.

I thought you were hilarious in the premiere. Can you explain a little bit about your process for choosing a role? Now that Mozzie is done for you, what will you miss most about playing him? And can you describe the evolution over the seasons as you see it for Mozzie?

Well thank you. [In] the pilot, Mozzie was going to be this underground, dark, behind-the-curtain figure. What happened was the producers – Jeff Eastin the creator and the other writers – had to figure out a way to make him more involved with the show, because the character worked so well. That was a huge decision, which changed the show in a lot of ways. It affected all the other characters. That Mozzie was now going to be known to the FBI and part of the FBI’s process. If you think about it, it’s absolutely insane. However, it worked for the show because of how well Tim DeKay especially played it. That evolution took place really on camera, in terms of how much can Neal be involved with the FBI and keep his old life going? Which means Mozzie.

That was really great. As far as choosing roles, as actors in general on television the roles kind of choose you. I’ve been pretty fortunate in that they’ve been pretty decent projects that I’ve been very lucky to be in. I always joke that you go after NYPD Blue as hard as you go after Gilligan’s Island. You get the one that you get. I’ve been very lucky to go from NYPD Blue to Sex and the City and John from Cincinnati then straight to White Collar.

Now that I’ve been doing this for 100 years, I get the opportunity to create something on my own, which is a remake of Courtship of Eddie’s Father, which I’m developing with Fox. It’s been an interesting ride, but I believe as actors you end up where you belong. You get the role that’s the role you’re supposed to be getting. I’ve just been very fortunate.

With White Collar and Sex and the City you’ve now been part of these two iconic New York shows where the city is as much of a character as it is a backdrop. Has that been a choice to keep trying to do shows in New York, or has that solely been a blessing?

It’s been completely by coincidence. I’m from there, but I’ve lived in Los Angeles for a very long time. Since 1986… which is amazing because I’m only 20 now. What’s amazing is that I’m just thought of as a guy who works out of New York. While NYPD Blue was shot in LA, it’s thought of as a New York show. Then Sex and the City obviously. I don’t know why I’m thought of as someone who lives in New York, but I’ll take it as a compliment, I guess. Is it? I don’t know. (laughs) Then this one came up. I’m hoping my next show, just because of the logistics of raising my child in Los Angeles, that I get to shootCourtship of Eddie’s Father in Los Angeles. Which is what we’re trying to do, but we’ll see what happens. I’ve been blessed to be on iconic New York shows. New York has treated us like gold. Like we’re on the Yankees. It’s been fantastic. It’s been a great city for us.

Did you ever think back in season one that Mozzie would warm up to Mr. and Mrs. Suit quite the way that he has over six seasons?

(laughs) No, not at all. I never thought that Mozzie would have any contact with anyone near the FBI. I think in season three is that great scene where Mozzie actually comes through the FBI office for the first time. He can barely step off the elevator, with sweat pouring out, everything going blurry. (laughs again) I just thought that was handled so well. What’s great about this show is the agility of the writers. They handle it and they move on. It’s like: Okay, we did that. Mozzie is afraid of going to the FBI. Well now, next time he goes to the FBI, he’s been there already. It’s not that big of a deal. That’s been what’s great about this show. As actors we talk about hitting beats. The show doesn’t hit the same beat over and over. It keeps going forward. That’s been a real blessing.

Do you think that Neal and Mozzie still want the same thing when the show comes to an end?

I believe they do. I don’t know how much it’s discussed in the episodes. But I believe that the characters are cut from the same cloth in a lot of ways, in terms of… we’re con men. What’s great about the show is even when Neal,when Matt’s characterhas been deeply involved in an FBI situation, the show never forgets that he is an international con man. Mozzie is cut from the same cloth as well. So possibly they do want the same outcome.

Knowing that these were the final episodes that you were all making, what was the experience like on the set? Was it different than it had been on previous seasons knowing that it was coming to an end?

It was sad and horrifying for all of us. It came too quickly. It was a lot of tears. A lot of: “It is the last time we’re doing this. The last time we’re doing this.” It came too quickly. We have been pretty open that none of us are rewriting history. It just was a situation where art and economics just did not mesh on the same page. We are ending too early and we’re all aware of that. USA found a way to thankfully make room for these final six, to give us a chance to tie up a lot of loose ends. We did the best that we could. But it all came too soon. We honestly felt we were going to have a full sixth season and a full seventh season and then be done. So we’re about 20 episodes short.

That said, we were thankful that they gave us the six. We’re thrilled for people to see them because we worked… I don’t want to say extra hard because we worked hard in all the episodes… but these were very carefully designed to build to a quick climax in the final episode.

Looking back on the six seasons what were some of your favorite episodes to act in?

It’s really hard when people ask questions like that. It’s so difficult, because the reality is as an actor on a show that shoots the way we shoot – which is 10, 11 pages a day – it’s all kind of one long episode. (laughs) It’s like a six-year episode. It doesn’t feel like I really like that one, I really like that one. Personally, in terms of scenes, I always like scenes that are not so much about a caper, but more about two people talking. Because Mozzie has been such a usable character on the show, I’ve been fortunate enough to have scenes run in just normal conversation with every other character. With Jones, with Diana, with Marsha’s character. Certainly with Elizabeth, with Peter and obviously with Matt. We love scenes where we’re just talking about feelings, whatever. But all actors feel that.

If Mozzie was to pop up on some other show sort of like Frasier or Detective Munch from Homicide, where would you see him landing?

(laughs) Well, I will say that a version of Mozzie is landing on this show I’m developing on Fox called Courtship of Eddie’s Father. The best friend/business partner of the father. That I kind of created for myself (laughs again), because I really liked Mozzie. Mozzie was certainly the closest to myself that I’ve played. I found that that was very freeing in a lot of ways. To have more fun with. Mozzie could show up on any show. Maybe not Survivor, but there are many shows that Mozzie could show up on.

What are you going to miss most about White Collar when it’s over and done?

Really the day-to-day camaraderie and fun of being together. We’re all very much the same kind of people and we just jelled perfectly. Jeff Eastin, the creator, along with the network, worked very hard on casting this show. They just got it right in this blend of people. As hard as we all worked actually to get it. It just worked out perfectly. It was never like all of us, I got some pilot. It was like no, no I got the one I wanted. We all felt that way. I got it with my friends who I was friends with I studied with already, Tim and Tiffani. And Matt just fit in perfectly in my life.

So I’m going to miss the camaraderie and the collaborative nature of it. We almost felt like we were in a high school, that first time when you’re acting in high school plays. You’re all in it together, making it as good as it can be together. That somehow transferred into a big time TV show. It was just delightful. I’m really going to miss that camaraderie. Seeing Matt and Tim and everyday is a big deal for me. We try to now, even though we’re not working together.

Social media has really changed how fans interact with shows and I know you’re active on things like Twitter. Is there anything that you would like to say to those fans that don’t have the chance to talk to you today and thank you for six wonderful seasons?

Well, it’s always so interesting to me and I think to all of us when fans thank us all the time. The real thanks is from us to the fans. When I was studying acting, there’s nothing worst than actors saying, “I had an amazing experience in this scene. I really felt this is the scene.” It’s actually a two-way street. It’s me acting, but it doesn’t matter if I’m acting if no one is watching. So it’s been just a delight to have all these fans who care so much about us. It keeps us literally employed and able to do what we do.

Social media has been terrific as a way to be aware of what people are thinking. What they like and don’t like and how they feel. On the worst side of it, it’s a fantastic ego boost, because to know that you’re actually affecting so many people is why we do this for a living. This way it’s just very tangible. It’s a minute-by-minute thing. I can Tweet one thing and get 500 replies within two minutes. That’s amazing. I don’t take it lightly. I don’t think any of us do. It’s been terrific. Twitter has been terrific for me, so I love it.

You’re producing Courtship as well as acting right?

I am producing. Story wise, it’s a combination of the original show Courtship of Eddie’s Father combined with myself and Nathan, my son. Our life together as a single adopted father combined with Courtship. I came up with it, I’m producing it and I will be acting in it as well, yes. It’s in development for Fox, so who knows what’s going to happen but we’re well on our way.

Is there any chance we could see White Collar alums make an appearance?

In my perfect dream world – absolutely all the time. (laughs) Let’s all keep our fingers crossed for about two years and we’ll see what happens.

When I spoke with Jeff Eastin a few years ago and asked him what was the biggest surprise creating this show, he told me it was your character. A pleasant surprise of course.

(laughs) I hope so.

What did you enjoy or like about this character?

What I liked most about this character was that it was the closest to myself. I’d never really had a chance to play that much to myself. In that it was very freeing, in terms of adding stuff and coming up with ideas that entertained me. I really got the opportunity to entertain myself on this role. That said, that all comes from the way Jeff set up the show. It’s so collaborative. It was a surprise, because this was going to be a very ancillary character who just helped where Neal would maybe go consult with him once an episode for a scene about something nefarious.

It turned into part of the actual family of the show. I thank him for that and really I thank the fans for that. It’s just been a great opportunity for me to have more of a playground. It’s been a playground the whole time. They also let us write stuff. Change and fix scenes and add stuff. It’s just been terrific in terms of all of that. That’s been a very special experience. I don’t know if I’ll have that again. I’ll try to have it but I don’t know if I’ll have it as well as it’s been done on this one.

As fans we tend to identify with the character often more than the actor itself. When I see you on other shows to me that’s Mozzie appearing on another show. What character are you surprised that you’re identified with the most?

That’s hilarious. You know, I guess Sex and the City was a real… I don’t want to say a hurdle… but it’s something always that people just assume that I was that character. Because of the success of White Collar I would say it got to about 50-50 where people now think I’m Mozzie, which is terrific, too. That’s a very big compliment, I hate to say it, but I guess to my work. That’s very nice that people believe that.

Can you give the audience maybe three tidbits about you that might surprise them to know about the real you rather than the character that we associate with?

What’s a surprising thing? I’m a pretty good athlete, which I think is surprising to many people. I have a pilot’s license. I think that’s surprising to people. Let’s see. People know about my poker playing, so that shouldn’t be too shocking. I’m a huge fan of reality television. (laughs) All those three things aren’t interesting at all.

What are your favorite reality TV shows? Do you watch the Housewives and which one is your favorite?

(laughs) I have been known to dip into the Housewives pool. I have a soft spot for New Jersey because it’s where I’m from. I have a soft spot for Orange County because I know a few of them. And you can never count out Atlanta, which for a long time was the Cadillac of those shows. I like any reality shows that have to do with real estate. I’m a huge fan of House Hunters International. Anything to do with food. I love cooking ones and I love Anthony Bourdain. I never miss an episode. I’ll even watch a little daytime when I’m at the gym to see my friend Mario Batali on the tube. Anything to do with food, I’m in.

So you’re a Food Network junkie?

Not a junkie, because there’s things all around the dial now with food. I am a partner in two restaurants here in Los Angeles and I am a food guy. So I like food. (laughs)

Which restaurants?

I am an owner of a restaurant called Dominick’s and another restaurant called Little Dom’s, both here in Los Angeles.

Ending a show is very difficult to do. Are you happy with how it ended?

It’s a really hard thing to end a show that satisfies everyone. In a way, I think ours will be pretty successful. Not for the reason that you think. It’s because we were in a hurry. We didn’t have a ridiculously long amount of time to prepare for it. Much like I tell my son when he’s playing tennis, the longer he waits to take that shot the worse the shot is going to be. That’s how I feel about endings of shows. It came too quickly. We were not prepared for the show to end, so we just went to work and quickly summed it up. I think it came out in a really elegant way. I was surprised at how lovely the final episode actually is. We did our best. I think all shows try to do their best and we did our best. So there you have it.

Over the last few years we’ve seen a real evolution in TV as far as shows likeFargo. They’re smaller, they’re confined and featuring more movie actors. How are you approaching your show differently than you might have had you had done this a few years ago? How do you see the evolution that we’re seeing right now in television?

Well that’s a good question. What’s happened is people with power, meaning big movie stars moving to television, have decided as TV has evolved and the art form has evolved. It’s only 50, 60 years old. [They] have figured out that there are ways to do this better. What’s great about television is that in the realm of a number of episodes it does offer more control. Over this is how we’re going to make this environment. This is how I’m going to stick this scene in, that scene, that scene. If you did that with a movie you only have the 90-page script and you stop doing it for a year or two years.

With TV you get a lot of practice to hone it and make it a better place and do it better. I have found now it was really started on Sex and the City by Sarah Jessica [Parker], who came in and said our show is going to be a different place. We’ve all been in different shows that have not been a good place to work. So let’s make this a better place for our guests, for the way we treat each other on set and the way we get our best work out of each other.

I took that to White Collar and with Matt and Tim and Tiffani and Marsha and Sharif. We said let’s make this a better place. Let’s improve on that, even. Then with our partners at USA and with Jeff Eastin in our studio FTVS they said: Okay go, run. Make it. Make the show that you want to make together.

Now I’m going to take that into Courtship of Eddie’s Father. I was talking yesterday about well how do we make this an even better place, where people are thrilled to be here. Like where White Collar ended up was the word on the street about White Collar was it’s a great place to be. You were half there. So we got incredible guest stars, movie guest stars who had no problem having to do an episode of a cable television show. That was a testament to people wanting to be there. Our directors were primed to be on White Collar. We can just continue to make it better.

That’s why movie stars, it’s very hard to go to a $6, $7, $8 million movie to have that environment. But you can have that environment on a $3 million television show. That’s why people are flocking towards TV. That may seem a little esoteric of an answer but that’s actually the real answer.

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 6, 2014. 

Photos ©2014. Courtesy of USA Network. All rights reserved.

DigTour Slay Bells 2014

DIGITOUR SLAY BELLS 2014

by Debbie Wagner

The face of concerts has changed a bit in the last years.  It’s not always the fan favorite that has gone platinum in records sales or one who has won a Grammy or two that people are flocking to see.  Now some of the most popular tours out there are those of the YouTube generations favorites.  So, move over Bono, here come Andrea Russett, Sam Wilkinson and Digi Tour.

One of the most popular shows for the YouTube-hungry youth is the DigiTour, which continues to offer a wide variety of young artists from various genres including rock, alternative music, hip-hop artists and comedians.  Compiling millions of followers on YouTube, Twitter and other forms of social media, these artists stay in touch with their fans.  They form a bond unlike performers from decades past, because of everyone’s easy access to the web.  This is where DigiTour steps in.  It brings the artists and their fans face to face at fun-filled tour and event stops across North America.  In 2014, nearly 100,000 fans will attend one of their events and meet their YouTube idols.

DigiTour has just announced their holiday tour – DigiTour Slay Bells 2014 with Generation Z favorites including Andrea Russett • Andrew Lowe • Trevor Moran • Sammy Wilk • Rickey Thompson • Kenny Holland • Skate Maloley • Twaimz • Lohanthony and many more!

Check out the dates below and see if their “slay” is pulling up in a city near you!

Tickets are available at  http://www.digitourslaybells.com

The tour dates and locations include:

Mon, Dec 1st – Seattle, WA – The Showbox

Wed, Dec 3rd – San Francisco, CA – Regency Ballroom

Fri, Dec 5th – Anaheim, CA – The Grove of Anaheim

Sat, Dec 6th – San Diego, CA – The Balboa Theatre

Mon, Dec 8th – Las Vegas, NV Hard Rock Live

Tue, Dec 9th – Phoenix, AZ The Marquee

Fri, Dec 12th – San Antonio, TX – 210 Kapones Live

Sat, Dec 13th – Houston, TX – Warehouse Live

Mon, Dec 15th – Ft. Lauderdale, FL – Revolution Live

Tue, Dec 16th – Orlando, FL – The Plaza Live

Thurs, Dec 18th – Washington, DC – Howard Theatre

Fri, Dec 19th – Philadelphia, PA – Trocadero Theatre

Sat, Dec 20th – Clifton Park, NY – Upstate Concert Hall

Sun, Dec 21st – Hartford, CT – Webster Theatre

Tue, Dec 23rd, – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club

Monty Python Live (Mostly)

MONTY PYTHON LIVE (MOSTLY) (2014)

Featuring John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Carol Cleveland, John Du Prez, Eddie Izzard, Mike Myers, Warwick Davis, Brian Cox, Stephen Hawking and archival footage of Graham Chapman.

Written by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

Directed by Eric Idol.

Distributed by Eagle Rock Entertainment.  162 minutes.  Not Rated.

http://popentertainment-moviereviews.tumblr.com/post/102431555536/monty-python-live-mostly-2014-featuring-john

Last year, the five remaining live members of the legendary British comedy troupe Monty Python – John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, as well as their long-time straight woman Carol Cleveland – reunited for their first performances since around 1983.

Back then, they were at the top of the comedy world, releasing their fourth filmMonty Python’s Meaning of Life to moderate critical and popular acclaim.  While Meaning of Life certainly had its moments, it was a bit of a let down after the group’s previous stunning artistic and popular achievements, the pioneering TV series Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the beloved films Monty Python & the Holy Grail and Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

Before the end of the decade, troupe-member Graham Chapman died of cancer.  In the years since, the different members have had long and prosperous careers apart and have periodically even worked together in groups of two or three.  But Monty Python as a name and as a troupe was apparently completely in the rear view mirror.

Which is why it was rather surprising that last year, the guys decided to do a series of five live performances at London’s huge O2 Arena, a final loving farewell to the fans (and the guys cheekily teased, a blatant money grab).

Monty Python Live (Mostly) captures one of these shows.  The five actors (who gleefully pointed out that they were a combined age of 357) performed some of their best-loved bits with their old co-hort Cleveland and a troupe of young, attractive singers and dancers.  Mix in some of Terry Gilliam’s classically surreal animation and some videos of the original skits and voila, they had a show.

I have no doubt it was pretty magical to experience in person, but the video points out that this performance was probably a bit of a mix of wonderful nostalgia and disappointment.

Honestly, none of the skits have necessarily improved upon the many earlier versions of the same material.  There are some minor tweaks here and there to make things more timely, but many of the skits and songs are nearly word-for-word recreations of stuff we’ve all seen before.  Also, more than a few of the skits are simply video showings of the originals.

Much of the material is brilliant, so the show is never uninteresting.  At least, not for us.  The guys have done this many times and sometimes it feels a bit like they are going through the motions.

Still, a brief and wonderfully goofy all-new video segment with cameos by genius scientists Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking makes you really wish that the surviving Pythons had taken the time and effort to do some more new material.

Even when they are obviously enjoying themselves – like a few times when Cleese and Palin acknowledge screwing up their lines or losing their place – very little is surprising or different here.  And this material was at one point nothing if not different.  In fact, the first Monty Python movie, in which many of the same skits were redone from the TV series, was specifically called And Now For Something Completely Different.

Still, these skits are so iconic – “The Spanish Inquisition,” “The Lumberjack Song,” “The Argument Clinic,” “The Ministry of Silly Walks,” “The Dead Parrot,” “The Cheese Shop” and many more – that it is nearly impossible not to crack up many places on this Blu-ray.

Some of the choices are a bit adventurous, not just all of the most obvious bits – though many of those are here too.  There is also surprisingly little fromMonty Python & the Holy Grail.  And personally I would have cut down on the musical numbers from Meaning of Life, which seem like a way for the guys to let the young kids carry the show while they take a little breather.

We all have obscure favorite skits that we wish made it but didn’t – some of mine would be “Self Defense From Fresh Fruit,” “It’s the Mind: Déjà Vu” and “The Encyclopedia Salesman” – but overall it is a good overview of the Python’s career.

By the time you get to the almost inevitable closing number – yet another version of Life of Brian’s song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” – the show closes down with a warm glow of appreciation for the brilliance of Monty Python.  Yeah, much of this has been done better before, but it’s still always quite special.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 11, 2014. 

Ryan Potter promoting “Big Hero 6″ at Comic-Con New York 2014. Photo by Brad Balfour.

Disney’s Animated Big Hero 6 Turns Actor Ryan Potter into A Super Hiro

by Brad Balfour

Winning the weekend audience sweepstakes, Disney’s latest animation spectacular, Big Hero 6, made over $50 million in its first week. The animated film beat out the sci-fi mega story Interstellar — and provided a fascinating take on near-future versions of modern maker technology and bionic adaptations for the human body.

Premiering at the 27th annual Tokyo International Film Festival this October,Big Hero 6 posits a near-future city of San Fransokyo, where technological possibilities can transform kids into superheroes. Especially when the enabler is teen tech prodigy Hiro Hamada.

Hamada’s older brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) has convinced his slacker brother to forgo robo-fights and street betting for a coveted slot at the exclusive university he already attends. To meet the admission requirement, Hiro develops a remarkable nano-tech device. His presentation demo is witnessed by both the school’s dean, professor Robert Callahan (James Cromwell), and unscrupulous billionaire Alistair Krei (Allan Tudyk), who wants to whisk Hiro and his invention away from the school. As the Hamada bros leave to enjoy his victory, an explosion in the building ensues.

When this death-dealing disaster catapults Hiro into the middle of a mysterious danger, he springs into action — creating the super-powered team, Big Hero 6. The team is made up of his pals: adrenaline junkie Go Go Tomago (Jamie Chung), neatnik Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr.), chemistry whiz Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez) and fanboy Fred (T.J. Miller). In turn, prodigy Hamada establishes a special bond with his late brother’s creation, the plus-sized inflatable med-bot Baymax (Scott Adsit), and transforms it into his crime-fighting partner.

As the first non-live-action project based on a Marvel Comics property, the director and producers — part of the Disney animation team behind mega-hitsFrozen and Wreck-It Ralph — turned to 19-year-old actor Ryan Potter to voice Hamada. Born in Oregon, he spent part of his childhood in Tokyo; then the seven-year-old’s family returned to the States. Something of a prodigy himself, fluent in both Japanese and English, Potter began studying White Tiger kung fu, a discipline pursued since age eight, while also handling drums, baseball and skateboarding.

In 2010, the 15-year-old began acting after he got a leaflet in kung fu class announcing that Nickelodeon was looking for teens to star in Supah Ninjas, a new martial-arts series. After auditioning, Potter landed the role of Mike Fukanaga, an American teen who discovers he comes from a long line of ninjas. Following its 2011 debut, Potter became one of Nickelodeon’s popular young stars, accruing features in teen mags and making appearances in the network’s Worldwide Day of Play special and its reboot of the ‘90s game showFigure It Out, among others. Though Nickelodeon renewed Supah Ninjas for a second season in March 2012, Potter also began a recurring role on Fred: The Show, playing the best friend.

Besides acting, the precocious Potter founded a charity In 2011 —Toy Box of Hope — which holds an annual holiday collection drive for children in Los Angeles area homeless shelters and transitional living facilities. During its 2012 event, Potter said of the organization’s efforts by explaining, “[W]hat we want to do is provide bed sheets, jackets and toys to [homeless shelters], so these kids are like, ‘Wow, someone cares, there’s hope.’” Potter reportedly planned to expand Toy Box of Hope to include a “Birthday Party Box” program.

In June 2012, he also became one of the youngest celebrities to lend support to California’s No H8 Campaign in defense of same-sex marriage. To explain his involvement, the then-16-year-old officially stated: “I know what it feels like to be bullied and I will not tolerate the thought of anyone, for any reason, being bullied. It starts with young people, and can end with young people. As we learn to embrace our diversity, we become stronger, more tolerant. The differences are beautiful. The differences matter. It’s what makes life an adventure.”

But Potter is blowing up well beyond both television and film appearances and plans to transform his acting successes into much more. As he engaged in this breathless one-on-one phoner during this film’s junket day, I wondered what next I will be discussing with this skilled-beyond-his-years talent.

You’ve got this great starring role in a big feature film — but it’s animated! Girls aren’t going to see you in the flesh!

I know, and I actually love that; I get to fly under the radar.

Were you recorded digitally with motion capture?

We didn’t use any motion capture for this. I went in and did a bunch of recording sessions and I did get very physical in the booth. I would run around and jump around, throw myself around, to create that physicality, that energy. But they animated everything afterwards, so they animated to the voice and the physicality that I created in the booth.

With the little twists at the end, how did you feel when you read the script?

There were rewrites constantly, and there were definitely some scenes, like one of the ending scenes. It was very emotional, and you could feel that in the room. They’re like, “Oh, here we go, this is a very emotional day. Are you ready?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I’m ready to go,” and we’d be in the booth for a couple hours at a time. We almost had to leave the booth, trying to crack jokes or tell funny stories as much as possible, because the mood of the room definitely did go down for some of those scenes.

When I was in the booth and was going on with the lines and had to keep doing them over and over, it was tough for some of the engineers who came in to sit there recording all day long. I’d see them on the other side of the glass tearing up and some of them crying, and it was just as emotionally draining for them as it was for me.

Did you meet your fellow voice cast members in the course of doing the recordings?

I met the cast for the first time last week during the cast dinner. It’s so bizarre because you work on this film for a year and a half with your cast mates, but you don’t get to see them. And the way the film comes together, it really doesn’t sound that way. It sounds like we were all in the booth at the same time.

I met Maya Rudolph [voicing Aunt Cass] very briefly, and she was a blast to work with. She is a phenomenal, phenomenal lady, and she is so funny.

She’s so funny in person.

She was just killing me. We recorded for maybe 20 minutes, but that was it. [Other than] that, I was by myself in the booth the entire time, and I met the rest of the cast last week. But we clicked immediately.

We had been working on this project together for a year and a half, and when I met Scott [Adsit] — who plays the voice of Baymax — I was like, “Hey, Scott!” and he was like, “Hey, Hiro!” and I was like, “Oh, hey, Baymax!” and it didn’t feel like we missed a beat.

I was trying to introduce myself, but he already knew, and I already knew. Scott and I picked up immediately, and it didn’t feel at all like we had to tell each other about ourselves because we already knew so much.

You did the live action television series Supah Ninjas for Nickelodeon where you used your martial arts training. How did you apply your martial arts knowledge to this character?

It’s interesting because early on in the process there were a lot of lines like “Strike” or “Kick” [in the script] and they didn’t quite know the actual terms. So I was able to go in and say, “That’s actually this; that strike is that; that kick is this.”

So early on they took my word for it, but they brought in the martial arts consultant for the rest of the film. I’ve done stunts before, so I’ve done rigging, and I’ve sparred, and I’ve done grappling, so I know the physicality that Hiro [Hamada] goes through in this film. He is very active; he’s being thrown around, he gets lifted up. So I know what all those sounds really sound like in real life, and it came very easily to me.

You can do the most amazing stunts and not get injured doing animation. Were you ever injured in the process of doing stunts or martial arts?

At my martial arts school, I got my bumps and my bruises, but [for] stunts, I worked with a phenomenal fight coordinator, Hiro Koda. It was awesome to work with him because he really did want me to do more and more. So when I trained with him and he got me into the harness and onto the wires, he taught me everything I know now. He kept me safe throughout that entire process, and he was phenomenal to work with.

So you’re Nisei — second-generation Japanese in America, right? I should have said, “Kon’nichiwa [hello]” earlier, and I’ll say, “Hajime mashite [nice to meet you],” now.

I am. I’m half-Japanese, half-Caucasian.

Do you go to Japan and visit relatives? What have you learned from your grandparents and their experiences?

I actually grew up in Tokyo. The city they created is very familiar to me; I’m very familiar with Japanese culture and Japanese pop culture. That was my childhood. I moved here when I was seven years old.

I go up to San Francisco on holidays and spend time with my family there, but whenever I go to Japan I enjoy every moment. I try to go back there every year or so. It’s a phenomenal place, and I absolutely love it. It’s not my second home; it is my home. Whenever I go back I feel very connected with Japan.

Have you seen a lot of anime and read a lot of manga [Japanese comics]?

Oh, yeah. I grew up with [Hayao] Miyazaki films [such as the Oscar-nominatedSpirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises] and I grew up withWeekly Shōnen Jump [comic magazine]; I grew up with [the anime series]Dragon Ball Z, [and director] Satoshi Kon films like Paprika.

Really, the late anime innovator Satoshi Kon?

Satoshi Kon is without a doubt one of the top three animators of all time. His work is so under-appreciated. His work has inspired so many films here in the US that have gone on to do so well, and there was really no credit given. InInception [Christopher Nolan’s 2010 sci-fi thriller], there’s a lot of scenes fromPaprika in it. It was kind of a nod — “Hey, that was a great thing you did” — but they didn’t quite give the acknowledgment. And Satoshi Kon is on par with Walt Disney and on par with Miyazaki [among others].

And there’s the great manga artist Katsuhiro Otomo, creator of the sci fi series,Akira — which became an incredible anime.

Otomo — oh, absolutely. These guys have shaped my childhood.

Once the idea of acting and doing Supah Ninjas was introduced to you, did you always want to do both? Were you ever torn with doing more martial arts and not pursuing the acting?

This isn’t to play down people who pursue acting… For me, I do acting just as a fun job. It is a phenomenal job, and I have fun doing it, but I relate more to my martial arts, to my baseball, to my film study. There are more facets to my life that I relate to.

I love acting — I love doing it. It’s a lot of fun, but for the longest time, I wanted to become a firefighter. I still do want to become a firefighter. You never know; I may go to film school and not like film school, and then go learn to firefight.

You should talk to Steve Buscemi. He was a firefighter before he became an actor.

Yeah, and Steve Buscemi, without a doubt, is one of my top three favorite actors of all time. I love his work and he is an inspiration to me.

If you were a director, what would you do?

I would want to do music videos, actually, because I have a love of music, and I feel like I’d be too much of a critic of my own music if I were to produce or create or whatever it is. I’ve always been a very visual and very creative person; I’ve always had to be hands-on. Combining my love of music with my need to create, music videos are the perfect combination of the two.

What’s your favorite music… or artist?

My favorite musician has to be Prince, without a doubt. Prince is, I think, one of the greatest artists of all time. A lot of this younger generation doesn’t know about Prince, and it kind of blows my mind. This man mastered so many instruments by the age of 13. He’s very under-appreciated, but there is a generation that idolizes him.

So what are you doing next?

I’ll continue to promote Big Hero 6 and do the other things that come from Big Hero 6, but I’m working on putting together a portfolio and going to film school.

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 11, 2014.

Photos 1-3 ©2014 Brad Balfour.  All rights reserved.

Photos 4-6 ©2014.  Courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures.  All rights reserved.

Bridgit Mendler performing at iPlay America in Freehold, NJ. Photo copyright 2014 Maggie Mitchell.

Hello, Her Name Is…  Bridgit Mendler

by Maggie Mitchell

True to the lyrics of her hit song “Hurricane,” you can certainly say that talented singer/songwriter Bridgit Mendler is “standing in the eye of the hurricane.”  At the age of twenty one, the popular singer/songwriter and actress is a calm, sweet person surrounded by a crazy lifestyle which is spinning around her.

Mendler has had to balance her acting and music career for the last several years now, yet she still makes it look easy, seamless  and fabulous.  When her hit television show Good Luck Charlie ended earlier this year after four seasons on top of the Disney Channel’s ratings, Bridgit’s schedule lightened a bit allowing her to concentrate more on her music.

Born in Washington, DC, the Mendler family moved to the west coast when Bridgit was just eight.  While living outside of San Francisco, she developed her interest in acting while performing in small local productions.  By thirteen, she landed a guest starring role on a soap opera and knew that acting was what she wanted to do.  When Mendler got the nod from Disney to play the video-taping big sis on Good Luck Charlie, Teddy Duncan a.k.a. Bridgit Mendler became a household name to kids, tweens and teens everywhere.

Mendler started to develop her musical career while recording songs for several movies including Disney’s Lemonade Mouth, which she also starred in.  In 2012 she released her first single “Ready or Not,” from her debut album Hello My Name Is…”  And that’s when the concerts and touring started, and actually the first time we got to sit down with Bridgit.

We caught up with her again at her recent stop in N.J., where she talked about writing her own music, working on album number two, her fans, keeping in touch and with her Good Luck Charlie family and so much more.

How have you been since we last time talked to you at Jingle Ball nearly two years ago?

Wow.  That was awhile ago.  Well, I finished up Good Luck Charlie.  We started working on a second album.  We’ve been touring a bit for this album.  We’re just basically finishing up touring now.

What are you looking forward to in your show tonight?

I am looking forward to sharing some new exciting things that people haven’t seen in the past concerts.  We are still definitely doing songs from Hello My Name Is, but we’re also mixing things up.

Are you working on your own music on your album?  Do you write your songs?

Yes, I do.  It’s pretty fun.

How will the new album be different from your past music?

I think it just boils down to influences.  I’ll just be influenced by different things.  At the same time I’m still the same person, same writing, same taste that is still inspiring me in this phase of life.

Are you ever planning on acting again?

Yeah, yeah totally.  It’s just about the right timing.  I’ve been putting a lot into this album.  It’s hard for me to do both fully at once.  I just want to finish this task before I move on the next thing.

Do you miss Good Luck Charlie?

I do.  I really do.  I actually am seeing the cast tomorrow.  That will be good!  We definitely try to keep up with each other.  I keep up with the crew as well.  It was a really special time and I am so grateful for it.

Would you like to work in another sitcom, or something different than before?

It just depends on what the right thing is.  I think I’ll know it when I encounter it.  I would love to do movies.  If it’s the right series then that would be cool as well.  But something different would be nice.

What has touring with so many different people been like?

It’s fun.  I love hearing artists that I haven’t been familiar with until I go on tour with them.  Also, there are people that I’m familiar with and I get to see their live take on it.  I think seeing people live is so much more fun.  Everyone has a different way of doing it.

When on tour, is there anything that you don’t like?

Just the unreliability of good food.  Sometimes you are in a situation where you only have crap and that is all you can eat.  That’s kind of a bummer.  We have all these little snacks on the bus.  It’s always a challenge to hunt down a nice meal though.

Who is your favorite artist at the moment?

I just recently saw Banks live, and she did a really good job.  She has a really beautiful voice.

When you were at a younger age did you always see yourself performing?

I did perform a bit, but just for my family.  Honestly, the songwriting was most intuitive to me.  Performing and being on stage was never a part of my childhood fantasy.  Well, that’s not true.  I always use to love watching Hilary Duff do her performances.  Just seeing that crowd, and the energy of all that it, seemed exciting.  It gave me goosebumps.  I think the storytelling came natural to me, but performing has been something to get used to.  I am not a dancer and I am not elegant all the time.  Sometimes you feel awkward up there.

Do you write your music based on personal experiences?

Yeah, it can be a lot of different things.  It can start with a melody and then you try to think of what kind of story matches that melody to make it the best it can be.  Other times it can really be inspired by an idea that turns into the song, and that steers wherever it goes.  There are just so many more elements to a song.  It’s interesting what comes first because you never know.

On stage, have you ever had an embarrassing moment?

Yes, I had one last night. I tripped when I tried to get on the drum riser.  There was a flap of carpet on the drum riser.  It was a really un-elegant moment, but that’s fine because it was during my song “Blonde.”  I was talking about being a fool, so… (laughs).

Where do you want to see yourself in the next 10 years?

Hopefully I’ve made some awesome music.  That is my goal.  Hopefully people like it and I get to share it with them.  It grows into a great audience for that.  I’d also love to keep acting.

Do you have a message for you supporters?

Thank you guys so much for your support.  Honestly, getting to meet you and seeing your genuine enthusiasm is so cool.  Please do say hi whenever you can.  And I’m working on new stuff for you guys.

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 11, 2014.

Photos ©2014 Maggie Mitchell.  All rights reserved.

Clara Mamet stars in “Two-Bit Waltz.”

Clara Mamet

Dancing the Two-Bit Waltz

by Jay S. Jacobs

Clara Mamet is no stranger to show business.  Her father, David, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter and director.  Her mother, Rebecca Pidgeon, is a well-known actress and singer.  Also half-sister Zosia is one of the stars of HBO’s hit series Girls.

Therefore, it is no real surprise that Clara Mamet would gravitate towards filmmaking.  Though she spent the last couple of years in the cast of ABC’s cult-followed comedy The Neighbors, Mamet was already looking toward the big screen.  However, she was not willing to wait around for someone to offer her the perfect role.  Instead, she went out and wrote it herself.

Two-Bit Waltz is a dreamlike modern comedy in which Mamet plays Maude, a proudly anti-social teen who is often stumbling as she tries to find her way in the world.  In the meantime she is surrounded by a virtual big-top of characters: a passive-aggressively loving mother (played by her mother), a quiet oddball of a dad (William H. Macy), a wise-beyond-his-years younger brother, a boyfriend with serious commitment issues, a best friend who doesn’t really seem to like her very much, a dismissive therapist and a rogues gallery of imaginary ballerinas and men with elephant heads.

A week before Two-Bit Waltz had its New York premiere, we sat down with Mamet to discuss her film.

Obviously Two-Bit Waltz is stylized and rather surreal, but how much of it is autobiographical?

A lot of it.  It’s pretty much a caricature of my family.  A loving caricature.  Yeah, but I pretty much based it on my life.  I wanted to make a movie.  My mom said, “Write what you know.”  So, that’s what I did.

So what does your dad think about the idea of him being represented as reading incessantly and sleeping underneath a chaise lounge?

I think he’s okay with it.  (laughs)

Your father is a famous playwright and director and your mother is an actress and singer.  Did you know from your childhood that you would end up in the arts?

Yeah, I always figured that I would become an actress.  I wanted to make this movie and write a part for myself.  It’s fate, now I can go for what I want to mainly do.

It’s funny, in your film I didn’t see so much the influence of your dad as much as that of the Andersons – Wes and Paul Thomas.  Are you a fan of their work?

Yeah, you know, it’s funny, I get that a lot.  I don’t know that I was mainly thinking so much about that at the time, but I’m flattered.  I am a fan.

Maude seems to be going out of her way to do everything she is told not to – smoke, drink, have sex, gouge on cookies, avoid college.  At what point did you outgrow your rebellious phase… if you did?

I probably haven’t.  I still really like attention.  I crave it.  Negative attention.

How so?

Oh, I don’t know.  Just sort of like pooping my pants, or attacking strangers.  Or whatever.  Whatever I can do.

You’re still only 19, I believe, right? 

I’m 20.

Most people your age would be going to college.  I know a big plot point in the movie was that Maude had no interest in it.  Was that the same for you?

Yeah.  No, I didn’t go to college and I don’t plan on it.  Time’s running out for me, anyway.  I visited my friend recently, she goes to college.  I don’t think I’m missing much.  I think I’m pretty much doing the same things, but without paying the money.

It takes some real drive to write and star in your own film so young.  Did it seem like a daunting task to get started?

It didn’t actually seem very daunting.  Everyone told me that it was a daunting task, but I didn’t believe them.  Then, with the nature of Maude, (dramatically) I pressed onward!

Maude seems to be going out of her way to be sort of unaffected or almost blasé about things going on around her.  What kind of things excite you or get a rise out of you?

Oh.  (laughs)  You have to ask my best friend that question.  Probably a lot.  I consider myself a pretty laidback person, but that’s probably a lie.

Obviously you have some big shoes to fill as a writer.  Are you concerned that people may just look at you as David Mamet’s daughter rather than look at the film for its own merits? 

Yeah.  (laughs)  Yeah.

How do you think that you can avoid that?

Umm… I don’t know.  I don’t know that I can.  Short of pretending that I’m not his daughter.  But I think the gig is up.  (laughs)

You worked with William Macy, who has also worked often with your dad, as well as your mother and David Paymer.  As a first-time director, what was it like to work with such established talents?

It was lovely.  They were so kind to me.  I was so lucky that they agreed to be in the movie.  We had a lot of fun.  It was a good time.  It was like summer camp working on that film.

Like your father, you have a very good way with words and dialogue.  Does dialogue come easy to you or is it something you have to struggle with?

Thank you so much.  It does come easily to me.  I have trouble with the story much more.  A lot of times I write a screenplay and it’s just sort of aimless words.  (laughs)  Nebulous, random nothing.  So, yeah, I do have trouble with the story composition.  That is something that I have to get better at.

You’ve also written a couple of short plays, “Paris” and “The Solvit Kids.”  Are you looking to juggle theater and film?  You also have a singing group with Zosia.  Are you still working on your music as well? What do you enjoy about each art form?

I mainly just want to make movies.  When you get rejected by enough people, sometimes you have to do something else for a while, so you can get back into the swing of things.  But, I like plays.  I’d like to write a few more plays and see what happens.

You have also starred on The Neighbors, which was a good show that didn’t get nearly enough attention.  What was that experience like, and did it help you to get ready to make your own project?

It was great.  It was so much fun.  It was my first real job.  I was lucky to have it.  I miraculously got it right after I dropped out of high school, which was really nice.  It was fun to see how a big, grown-up set works.  That was helpful in making my movie.  And I did it all when we were on hiatus, in between seasons one and two.

Was it difficult to fit in that short window of time?

It was stressful, but it was good.  I was up for the challenge.

Did you run any of your ideas past Dan Fogelman [the creator of The Neighbors], or even your dad, or anyone else, when you were making the film?

No, I kind of just ran them past my crew.  Kind of like: (dramatically) I’ll do it on my own!  And I did, by gum.

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 28, 2014.

Photos ©2014 courtesy of Monterey Media. All rights reserved. 

Horrible Bosses 2

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 (2014)

Starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Jamie Foxx, Chris Pine, Christoph Waltz, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Banks, Keegan-Michael Key, Kelly Stables, Suzy Nakamura, Brendan Hunt and Lindsey Sloane.

Screenplay by Sean Anders and John Morris.

Directed by Sean Anders.

Distributed by Warner Bros.  108 minutes.  Rated R.

I’m not sure that anyone in the world has really been waiting around for a sequel to Horrible Bosses, even though the original was pretty entertaining.

But here it is, complete with bigger stunts, two new (and generally less interesting) bosses (played by Christopher Pine and the completely wasted Christoph Waltz), the return of two of the three old bosses (Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston – Colin Farrell’s character was killed off in the original) doing less interesting cameos, a beefed up cameo for Jamie Foxx and a new, even more inept heist.

Is there any reason for Horrible Bosses 2 to exist?  (Other than to pocket the studio a little fast cash?)  No probably not.  Is it as good as the original?  Absolutely, no.  Is it still kind of amusing?  Yeah, got to admit that it is.

Horrible Bosses 2 is not a very good film, but as turn-your-mind-off action comedies go, you could do a hell of a lot worse.

This is almost entirely due to the three stars – Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day – whose goofy camaraderie is still eminently watchable.  These guys know how to play off of each other, and that smart connection makes everything feel fresher than it is.

Which is probably a good thing, because if anything the new screenplay by director Sean Anders and his collaborator John Morris is even more mean-spirited than the original script by Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein.

And not mean-spirited in a good way, either.  There are multiple jokes which are homophobic, racist and sexist.  Just because we like the characters who say them, does that make it right?  I rather think not.

Storywise, on the other hand, it’s pretty much the same damned thing.  The guys – Nick, Kurt and Dale (and saying their name quickly and in order is the setup for a really, really bad joke – decide they are tired of working for others, so they invent their own product.

This product is called “The Shower Buddy,” a shower head that dispenses shampoo.  Beyond the fact that this seems like a pretty ridiculous and unneeded product – who is really so lazy that getting shampoo out of a bottle is a major problem? – the guys are sure that it is their road to riches.

Despite a disastrous appearance on a local TV info-tainment show, a major catalogue company offers them a huge bid.  However, it turns out that the father and son who own the company (Waltz and Pine) completely screw the guys over.  Desperate, they decide to kidnap the son to get the money to save their business.

Sounds like a pretty dumb idea, right?  Of course.  But that’s the whole point of the series, a group of nice normal guys who get delusions of gangsta grandeur and end up hopelessly over their head.  The payoff is significantly more modest in Horrible Bosses 2, but the idea still has a little juice left in it.  And, luckily for the filmmakers, the stars have the skills to make it seem much better than it really is.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 26, 2014.

Christopher Gorham stars in “Covert Affairs.”

Christopher Gorham

Under Covert Affair

by Landyn Gerace

Along with his acting career, Covert Affairs star Christopher Gorham has tackled several episodes of USA Network’s hit show as the director when not on air as character Auggie Anderson. He recently directed the episode “Starlings of the Slipstream” that aired earlier this month.

This being the third episode with Gorham in the director’s chair, he says they have all been different experiences for him. He says that “Starlings of Slipstream” is the episode he is the most proud of due to its overall structure and pace.

As both an actor and director on Covert Affairs, Gorham has to be able to change his mindset completely when switching roles on and off the camera. As an actor, he says all he focuses on is what that character knows at that point in time, where as the director, he has the entire episode in mind.

“I have to be thinking not just the moment before and what’s happening in front of me but also where it’s going.” He says, “The joy of directing is that you get to expand that out and now you get to influence the story telling of the entire episode. Not just your individual character and your individual scenes. You really get to be the guide for the audience in this experience. That’s a real privilege and very rewarding.”

When directing an episode, Christopher Gorham is typically notified a couple of months in advance. Once he got the script, he took five days to prep and then about seven days of actually directing. After production, he had four days with the editor of “Starlings of Slipstream.”

“One of the things that I love about directing TV actually is how fast the turnaround is. Because you’re rewarded with this completed project so quickly. I really like that,” says Gorham.

On the show, he says he looks up to Covert Affair’s executive producing director Stephen Kay.

“I’ve done a lot of TV shows and I’ve been lucky to work with a lot of really good directors…. He’s been nothing but encouraging and helpful and I’m always grateful for his input,” Gorham added about Kay.

One of the more fun aspects of directing episodes is choosing the music. However, it is not always guaranteed that every song selected by the director will be featured in the episode, as it is ultimately the producers’ decision. Gorham says he is really happy with his choices of music and it’s always exciting to see what songs make the final cut.

Although Gorham has been in the entertainment industry for many years now, he has never continued to play a character as long as he has Auggie. As the seasons go on, he finds it interesting to see how Auggie grows and enjoys unveiling to the audience more facts and events that took place in his character’s past.

One of the most vital aspects of Auggie himself is his relationship with Annie Walker, played by Piper Perabo. It has not only been the most consistent part of the show but also the heart of it.

This season, the audience not only gets to see how Auggie’s relationship with Annie changes but also with Annie’s new found love, Ryan McQuaid played by Nic Bishop. Ryan McQuaid is a former Navy SEAL who is now dating Annie after her relationship with Auggie ends. Auggie is known for his emotions getting him in trouble, so Gorham is excited to see how his relationship with Ryan plays out.

Along with recurring cast members there is a long list of people Gorham would like to work with on the show. One in particular is Ty Burrell. Gorham and Burrell worked together on the show Out of Practice where they played brothers and Gorham would love to have him on Covert Affairs as a potential brother for Auggie.

“He is incredibly jealous of all of the international travel that we get to do on Covert Affairs and I keep telling him that if he ever has enough time that he can come and play Auggie’s brother and we’ll take him on a trip,” he says on Burrell.

As Christopher Gorham wraps up directing for this episode, he hopes to get back in the director’s chair in the future. It is not only something he enjoys to do, but also something he continues to improve at with the more experience that he gets. At some point, he’d like to be able to work on a feature film, as it is something he could check off of his bucket list. Until then, Gorham plans to continue his work on Covert Affairs and spending time with his three young children.

He says, “I think directing is something that I’ll continue to do for the rest of my career hopefully.”

Covert Affairs airs Thursdays at 10/9 central on USA Network.

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: November 20, 2014.

Photos ©2014 USA Network. Used by permission. 

Two-Bit Waltz

TWO-BIT WALTZ (2014)

Starring Clara Mamet, Rebecca Pidgeon, William H. Macy, Jared Gilman, David Paymer, Matt O’Leary, Ella Dershowitz and John Pirruccello.

Screenplay by Clara Mamet.

Directed by Clara Mamet.

Distributed by Monterey Media.  79 minutes.  Not Rated.

Sometimes a film can be rather shocking, when you consider the highs of the highs compared to the lows of the lows.

Two-Bit Waltz is the first film written and directed by 20-year-old Clara Mamet, the daughter of genius playwright, screenwriter and director David Mamet and British actress and singer Rebecca Pidgeon.  With the Mamet genes running through her, it is no big surprise that Clara has an impressive way with pithy dialogue.

If Two-Bit Waltz was all people sitting around talking, it might be a pretty terrific film.  Unfortunately, the film also stops dead for a series of quirky, surreal “dream sequences” about people wearing animal masks and ballerinas and Shakespearean actors.  These sidetracks almost completely derail the film, making it feel a bit like a Wes Anderson knock-off.

Mamet seems desperate to surprise and shock with her characters’ offbeat behavior, but all too often it skirts way past quirkiness into preciousness.

In fact, in a recent interview I did with the young writer/director/actress, she acknowledges this fault.

“[Dialogue] does come easily to me,” Mamet said.  “I have trouble with the story much more.  A lot of times I write a screenplay and it’s just sort of aimless words.”  She laughed.  “Nebulous, random nothing.  So, yeah, I do have trouble with the story composition.  That is something that I have to get better at.”

Yes, it is.  However, she does show some real potential for such a young filmmaker.  If she only decides to curb her more whimsical tendencies and maybe learn a bit of her dad’s quality for an interesting, labyrinthine storyline, Clara Mamet may become a talent to be reckoned with.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 5, 2014.

Take Care

TAKE CARE (2014)

Starring Leslie Bibb, Thomas Sadoski, Marin Ireland, Betty Gilpin, Tracee Chimo, Kevin Curtis, Nadia Dajani, Michael Stahl-David, Michael Godere, Elizabeth Rodriguez and Tim Wu.

Screenplay by Liz Trucillo.

Directed by Liz Trucillo.

Distributed by Entertainment One.  93 minutes.  Not Rated.

You’ve got to give a certain amount of credit to Leslie Bibb.  As an attractive actress, it must have taken a huge leap of faith to take on a role in which she will spend a good 90% of her screen time in a body cast.

It’s a difficult role for anyone to take on, spending nearly the entire film in a single apartment, mostly in bed, unable to move around without great difficulty or help.  Good for Bibb for making herself so vulnerable for a role.

I wish that the script for Take Care was worthy of the hardship that Bibb had to deal with.  Not that we expect writer and first-time director Liz Trucillo to make her into Daniel-Day Lewis in My Left Foot or John Hawkes in The Sessions, but if you are going to make your character essentially helpless for months and almost the entire running time of the film, shouldn’t there be more of a payoff than this?

Trucillo, who wrote many episodes of Sex and the City, as well as the bookHe’s Just Not That Into You, takes a traumatic, life-changing incident and turns it into the springboard for a vaguely sitcom-ish romantic comedy.  (Not that the main character could use a springboard in her condition.)

It’s certainly not horrible, in fact in parts the movie is quite amusing, however watching the film one can’t help but think that there must be an easier way to try to reconnect with your true love.  I mean, we are talking high concept here.

Bibb plays Frannie, a thirty-something New York professional who was hit by a taxi, leaving her with the right side of her body bandaged up.  Let out of the hospital, she returns to her fourth-floor walk-up apartment where her friends and prickly sister quickly tire of tending to her.

While she was in the hospital, she finds out that her ex boyfriend Devon (Thomas Sadoski of The Newsroom) has become a multi-millionaire from the sale of his business and announced his engagement.  This makes the bed-ridden Frannie particularly bitter because Devon had dumped her soon after she nursed him through a serious bout of cancer.

Going stir-crazy in her home and mostly unable to care for herself, Frannie decides to guilt him into taking care of her, just as she had done for him.  Devon tries to hide what is happening from his jealous new fiancée, who fears that Frannie may try to steal him back.

As they spend lots of time with each other, they come to recollect their old connection.  Their friendship and repartee feels comfortable and right.  And then, well, you know…

(Don’t worry, I won’t give up any spoilers, but let’s face it, this film is not going to surprise many people.)

It’s honestly a kind of odd storyline, and much of the action and acting is overwrought and sitcom-y.

Yet, there is something intriguing about a film which is almost completely filmed in a small New York apartment, with three main characters (though several others pop in briefly) bouncing off of each other and yet unable to totally escape.

And, as Trucillo’s previous writing has shown, she does have a way with a clever line.

Take Care is not a very good film, but it’s at least interesting.  And Bibb deserves mad props for having the bravery to take it on.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 5, 2014. 

Life Partners

LIFE PARTNERS (2014)

Starring Gillian Jacobs, Leighton Meester, Adam Brody, Gabourey Sidibe, Anne O’Shea, Simone Bailly, Mark Feuerstein, Abby Elliott, Kate McKinnon, Beth Dover, Greer Grammer, Elizabeth Ho, Jaime Reichner, Julie White, Matthew Cardarople, Anne O’Shea, Monte Markham and the voice of Mary Page Keller.

Screenplay by Susanna Fogel and Joni Lefkowitz.

Directed by Susanna Fogel.

Distributed by Magnolia Pictures.  93 minutes.  Not Rated.

Life Partners is not a film about LGBT lifestyles per se, even though one of the life partners of the title is an out-and-proud lesbian woman and there is great love between the two female leads.  No, Life Partners takes the potentially even trickier – certainly more rare – approach of making a film that takes a serious look at the joys and hazards of female friendship.

It’s actually kind of funny with all the supposed “bromance” comedies out there like I Love You Man and 21 Jump Street that very few people have really tried to make an accurate chronicle of female best friends.  Bridesmaids certainly touched on this, but the central friendship mostly serviced larger plot devices of the wedding, the romance and the gross-out humor.

However, Life Partners, despite its LGBT-tweaking title, is actually the story about how two life-long best friends deal with changes and strife in their lives and their relationship.

Paige (Gillian Jacobs of Community) and Sasha (Leighton Meester of Gossip Girl) are long-time best friends, both in their late 20s.  Paige is a struggling environmental lawyer, trying hard to work her way up the ranks.  Sasha is a musician officially, though she has long ago lost passion for her art, settling into a low-level, low-tension gig as a secretary.

Sasha is the lesbian, though her relationship with Paige is completely platonic (other than Sasha’s slight compulsion to show her friend her boobs.).  Sasha knows and respects that Paige is completely straight, and they have found a comfortable and mutual intimacy as friends.

They have been together through years of bad relationships, bad jobs, bad reality TV shows, bad food and many drunken late night conversations.  In lives full of disappointments, they are the one constant in each other, the one thing the other can unquestionably depend on.

However, their lives are going in different directions.  Sasha loses her dead-end job right as Paige’s career is really taking off.  Then, when she least expects it, Tim, the latest of Paige’s dead-end dates (Adam Brody, star of The OC and Meester’s real-life husband) turns out to be Mr. Right.

Suddenly, the time Paige used to spend with Sasha is going to Tim.  And, like most newly-happy-in-love friends, Paige keeps trying to fix Sasha up, trying to find her the right woman.  Sasha is not interested in finding a love match, and as she is unemployed she is even more conscious of the absence of Paige in her life.

She tries to make it up by hanging out in bars with her lesbian friends, but the more she does that, the more her life seems to be spinning out of control.  Both Sasha and Paige are upset about Sasha’s wildness (though in different ways), and the strain on their friendship starts to do damage to Paige’s relationship.

It’s an interesting storyline, but nothing revolutionary.  However, the terrific performances by the three leads, the smart and funny dialogue and the canny direction make Life Partners even more than the sum of its parts.  It’s a small, sweet film that has real heart and pathos and a very pleasant surprise..

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2014 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: December 5, 2014.