By Deborah Wilker
When Michele Lee debuted as Karen Fairgate in the CBS series Knots Landing, it was Christmas week 1979 and the most popular shows of the era were M*A*S*H and That’s Incredible. The lead-in for Knots provided by CBS that first season?
Barnaby Jones.
Has it really been 13 years?
Of course television looks much different now, but universal themes don’t change. Neither does intelligent acting and directing, both long the center of Knots Landing, now TV’s longest-running prime-time drama.
“I think one reason we’ve lasted so long is that we’ve always really cared about our audience,” says Lee. “There’s a familial connection between us. I really feel it because I’m a Knots viewer, too.”
Michele Lee
Like most devotees of this durable cult-status serial, Lee says she plans to settle in at 10 p.m. this Thursday to watch the season cliffhanger. She isn’t just the show’s moral center, she’s a fan.
If Dallas was the wealth fantasy, Knots is the wife fantasy — a story of the intertwining lives on idyllic Seaview Circle, a suburban cul-de-sac near the beach in Los Angeles. Its premise has changed little over 13 years.
Thursday’s installment of KL (as loyalists call it), is titled Little Girl Lost — one of several episodes Lee has directed in recent seasons.
The show’s producer, David Jacobs (Homefront, Dallas), was so impressed with her directorial debut, season 10’s The Perfect Opportunity, he wrote a memo to CBS brass lauding her.
“Many of us who produce television tend to regard actors who direct as a pesky phenomenon to be avoided,” Jacobs’ memo reads. “This can’t be applied to Michele’s episode. It is simply too strikingly singular. And for the record: She completed the film on time, on budget and it cut like butter.”
Trailblazer
Actors who direct pop up all the time. But actresses? There are few, if any, at the helm of a huge ensemble cast and a weekly budget of about $2 million.
“I do feel unique,” Lee says. “I have a chance to portray such a positive role model for women in a show that portrays so many aspects of real life. Karen is a female who exemplifies goodness and morality and has never swayed from this.
Knots ensemble, circa mid-80s/CBS
“There aren’t too many women on TV of her strength,” she adds, speaking by phone from her Los Angeles home. “I think that’s because I’m you — I’m all those ladies out there. I am that viewer of Knots Landing.”
Think she’s kidding?
Ask her about the time she was getting ready for work one morning, but then stopped in her tracks, diverted by an old Knots rerun she caught in passing on TNT.
“It was the episode when [Karen’s husband] Sid died. I’m watching and getting more and more emotionally involved. I’m trying to get dressed, and my heart started palpitating.
“I found myself just transported back into the episode. I stopped everything.
“I’m getting so upset. I pick up the phone and call the set and I say, ‘I’m sorry, I have to be a little late today. Please don’t be alarmed, but I’m watching Knots Landing and I cannot tear myself away.’ ”
And here’s what she does when she and longtime co-star Joan Van Ark can’t quite muster the proper motivation:
Joan Van Ark (Valene Ewing) and Michele Lee (Karen MacKenzie), are close friends, on-screen and off/CBS
“If we’re doing a scene and we have to connect and we’re not quite there, we’ll look at each other, and I know this sounds corny, but I’ll hum the [show’s] theme song,” she says.
“There’s something in the theme that touches a note with us, just some emotional connection. I’ll hold her hand, gaze into her eyes, sing a couple notes and we’re there.”
Michele Lee is not only star, director and viewer, she is often the show’s loudest publicist, too.
With CBS generally writing off the show as little more than a durable mainstay, rather than something to be vigorously promoted, it has been up to producer Jacobs and veteran cast members like Lee to delicately sing Knots Landing’s praises.
After new scriptwriters botched several shows at the beginning of the season, Jacobs shut down production and retooled for spring. The show’s rebound was cause for celebration — and lots of publicity, something Jacobs and production company Lorimar, did completely on their own.
Long odds
For almost all of its prime-time life, Knots has brought in top ratings while competing against some of the most formidable shows on TV: Hill Street Blues, Cheers and L.A. Law — all without the windfall of a blockbuster (or even remotely compatible) lead-in on CBS.
Among the shows Knots has followed on CBS on Thursday nights: Hawaii Five-O, Magnum P.I., Simon and Simon, Paradise and now Street Stories.
Despite rich production values and its place in TV history, Knots was never a critical favorite — until recently.
But even then, the show lost some of its newly attained critical status when scripts ran off-course last fall.
Talk about lousy timing.
After 12 years of perfection, just as the world begins to notice, the ship runs aground.
Now safely back on course, Lee wonders how much more successful Knots might have been had it received just a few of the breaks bequeathed to other shows.
“We’ve always been the little engine that could,” she says. “We’ve beaten unbeatable odds against some wonderful programming.”
Ratings and fan favorite Knots Landing is now TV’s longest running drama
Though Knots has been renewed by CBS for season 14, bringing it back may require concessions from some cast members. With longevity comes one of the highest cast payrolls on television.
“If we could all join hands together and come up with something that is equitable and fair for everybody,” Lee says of her castmates, “certainly with love in my heart I am willing to make concessions.”
With the threat of cancellation looming earlier this season, the possibility of life without Knots wasn’t easy for Lee and her castmates, who have grown as close as family.
“I’m sure when it does happen, it will feel like a death.”
She says she would do pretty much anything to keep it going. Among the ideas being mulled for next season is a “star rotation” that would keep the higher-priced veterans out of some episodes.
Lee, however, may be the only old-timer to sidestep the plan. She is the only cast member who has been in all 325 episodes to date, and she would like to keep her streak alive.
Family
Only two other cast members — Van Ark and Ted Shackelford (Gary Ewing) — have been with the show since Day One. But Van Ark, who actually created the role of Valene Ewing on Dallas in 1978, may soon leave to star in a new NBC sitcom.
“I love Joan,” Lee says. “In year 14 of a show, you can hardly fault someone for wanting to move on.”
Her voice cracks when she describes their long friendship.
“When we give each other birthday gifts, we have signed them to each other, ‘Love, Val’ and ‘Love, Karen.’ We really do. It’s also nice to see girlfriends exemplified on TV. I know the audience will miss her, as well as that aspect of the show.”
Lee has a similarly close relationship with TV husband Mack, played by Kevin Dobson.
Michele Lee and TV husband Kevin Dobson/CBS
“We are like husband and wife. We speak a language all our own, very much like anyone in a very long, intimate relationship.”
In real life, Lee is married to former CBS executive Fred Rappoport, now an independent producer. She has a grown son from her previous marriage to actor James Farentino.
Raised in Los Angeles, Lee first found fame on Broadway, starring in the musicals How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (with Robert Morse), and in Seesaw with Tommy Tune.
She says she’ll go back to Broadway when — and if — Knots ever ends, but she won’t even venture a guess as to when that might be. “It could absolutely run indefinitely.”
ON TV
Program: Knots Landing
Stars: Michele Lee, Joan Van Ark, Ted Shackelford, Kevin Dobson, William Devane, Nicolette Sheridan, Michelle Phillips, Kathleen Noone
Airs: Thursday, 10 p.m., CBS
Originally Published April 5, 1992 5:00 AM ET
Updated August 15, 2024
]]>Moving Pictures mag | Summer 2010
What is it they say about the sound of one hand clapping? Brendan Fraser now knows the answer.
“You see what happens – you miss clapping your own hand — just once!” Just one missed clap. Is that all it takes?”
Apparently yes, that’s all it takes to blow up overnight these days. Just miss your own hand. No need to star in some 40 movies or gross nearly a billion dollars at the box office.
It was hardly a cataclysmic event – the four-second fumble that catapulted Fraser atop YouTube playlists a few months back. He was just minding his own business at the Golden Globes, a guest at the CBS table when the show cut to a shot of him laughing at a DeNiro quip – and then strangely missing as he went to clap his hands.
Within moments, enterprising netizens had sent the gaffe global. By morning “The Brendan Fraser Clap” was a lead story. Soon after, a fan posted his own humorously edited “Clap Remix” — set to Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl.” More than a million views later . . .
“I guess in this age, things that would have largely gone unnoticed four or five years ago, are now what people want to see.”
Brendan Fraser speaks with Moving Pictures magazine, summer 2010at people want to see,” Fraser says with a good-natured laugh. “They wanna see you show your underpants.”
The moment was, of course, about little more than a guy who freely acknowledges he was a bit out of his element. Fraser says the sight of his “own giant melon” on the big screen in the banquet room startled him for just a second. He began to point and temporarily “spazzed out.”
“I was just there as a guest of CBS. I’ve never really been nominated for anything or in the audience much. I’m really good at handing them out,” he says of industry awards. “I give great podium.”
Yet just a few weeks after speaking with ‘Moving Pictures’ – a conversation in which he discussed his recent tear-jerker with Harrison Ford “Extraordinary Measures,” his upcoming family comedy “Furry Vengeance,” and the coming sequel to “Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D” — Fraser did indeed receive a noteworthy industry award.
In February the newly formed International 3D Society recognized him in the category Best 3D Talent for his acting and producing roles in 2008’s “Journey,” a film which he help shepherd with great enthusiasm.
Fraser, who is well known to his fans as an accomplished still-photographer, Polaroid buff and all-around camera aficionado has picked the right moment to let his inner tech geek shine.
“Initially it was a very challenging process convincing the industry and the public that 3d does have a place,” Fraser said. “The challenge at first is that there just weren’t enough projection systems set up around the country. That’s why we had to go on the road and champion it and say ‘look this is good – this is worthy. This is relevant!’ ’’ he explained of the “whistle-stop” tour he and the film’s other producers embarked upon in pre-“Avatar” America. “We were preaching.”
“I think that our picture planted a flag in cinema that is on a par with other cinema milestones. We’re in a time when anything is possible. If you can imagine it, you can create it. And now you can do it in three dimensions, and it doesn’t have to be with those awful glasses that give you a headache.”
But before he gets too carried away with words like “cinema” and “milestone,” he stops himself from taking any of it too seriously.
In just a few weeks time he’ll be back on screen, co-starring with a raccoon, a couple of squirrels and other assorted forestry.
Brendan Fraser speaks with Moving Pictures magazine, summer 2010
In “Furry Vengeance” (on which he is once again also a producer) he’s back to comedy – portraying a harried real estate developer whose plans to raze a nature preserve are met with high jinks and moral lessons from a group of cagey mammals.
Of course Fraser has been all over the creative map. He established himself in the early ‘90s with both the wacky Pauley Shore feature “Encino Man” and the sobering “School Ties.” Ever since, he’s become something of an expert at darting from genre to genre.
Truly silly early comedies “Airheads” with Adam Sandler and “With Honors” with Joe Pesci; the Oscar-winning “Gods and Monsters” in 1998 with Lynn Redgrave and Sir Ian McKellen; family flicks such as “Loony Tunes Back In Action” and “George of the Jungle;” the dramatic teleplay “Twilight of The Golds;” as part of the ensemble of the Oscar-winning “Crash,” and of course “The Mummy” franchise.
Lovable lunk, friend of cartoon animals, occasional action hero — he isn’t picky.
“I don’t want to be disingenuous when I tell you I am very grateful to be a working actor. It’s all I ever wanted to be. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world when I was a teenager and I didn’t even care what kind of actor,” he said about the way he chooses roles and weighs opportunities. He sincerely just likes to work.
He acknowledges there’s a lot of luck involved. “You can be as talented as anybody but unless you are also very lucky indeed – you are not going to succeed. Sometimes I need to be saved from myself,” he says of some of the roulette spins he has considered.
He has leant his voice to animated series’ such as “The Simpsons,” “King of The Hill,” “Duckman: Private Dick” and the kids’ show “Fairly Odd Parents.” He played Ben Sullivan on three episodes of “Scrubs” in 2002 and 2004, because he says it was just something he really wanted to do.
“Oh there’s always dissent in the ranks. Agents, managers, lawyers, studios. Your own screaming nagging conscience! Your therapist,” he says, his voice trailing into laughter. “I agonize over things.”
Brendan Fraser in Moving Pictures magazine, summer 2010
One choice he made rather swiftly however was accepting the role of John Crowley in the true-life film “Extraordinary Measures” – a modestly budgeted Lifetime-like drama for CBS’s somewhat experimental new features division. The movie, about a distraught dad (Fraser) who teams with a House-like physician (Harrison Ford) to research a cure for his terminally ill children, was not a box office success.
Fraser says he does not regret the decision.
“Now that the film has opened – I’m told by the studio that ‘it had difficulty in finding its audience.’ I guess that means that people didn’t go,” he says, softening the bad news with a smile.
“Maybe it just wasn’t what people wanted to see. Did they want to see a film about a father whose children’s days are numbered and who is in so much anguish, and so angry with the medical establishment and big pharmacology – he has to tread some morally ambiguous ethical waters?
“There’s always that X-factor that causes people to go to some movies and not others. Maybe they’ll all go to see “Furry Vengeance” because it’s about animals playing tricks on me? You never can tell.
“But I don’t know when I’d ever again have the chance to portray or encapsulate the essence of someone’s life,” Fraser said about Crowley, whose paternal earnestness he embodied so adroitly. “And working with Harrison Ford, that‘s always an opportunity to learn, so this was an opportunity not to be missed.”
Aside from the “Journey to the Center of the Earth” sequel, Fraser has long been attached to Oren Moverman’s “This Side of the Looking Glass.” Fraser said that working with Moverman — the Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director of one of the most lauded films of last year, “The Messenger” – is a priority.
Brendan Fraser wins best actor Oscar, March 23, 2023 in Los Angeles PHOTO/courtesyABC
“I know this has been the subject of many rumors for five or six years. I’ve wanted to do this movie for at least five years now. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed. From your mouth to whomever is reading this, I really want to do it. But ‘The Messenger’ has become such an important piece of American cinema now. He might move on to something else.”
Fraser said he believes that “at one point or another,” the two will work together. “Oren’s a friend, such an honest man and a solid humanitarian,” Fraser said, adding he’d do pretty much anything the screenwriter might ask of him.
Anything?
Swing from a vine? Miss another hand-clap?
“For sure! It’s your job. It’s what we are paid to do. You create a reality where ever you are, whatever you may be doing. Whether you’re talking to a mummy or a misbehaving cartoon monkey – as long as you believe it your audience will too.”
]]>What would Diplo do? On Wednesday at the annual Billboard Touring Conference & Awards, the international hit-making DJ and producer discussed his approach to dominating the globe with his music and how he and his team make things work — even in the most challenging environments.
The Major Lazer mastermind offered key strategy and advice to fellow artists during the event’s The World According to Diplo panel: Musicians must think about having hits “beyond the U.S.”
“Expand your mind,” he said. “Take advantage of opportunities all over the world.”
Flanked by agent Sam Hunt of Paradigm and Andrew McInnes and Brendan Hoffman of his management team at TMWRK Management, Diplo (real name Thomas Wesley Pentz) also called himself a “junkie for traveling.” He said, “I became a musician so I could do it.”
But the road did not always produce big paydays.
“We did shows for no money for years and years just to get out there,” he said.
Soon he found his mix of dancehall, pop and EDM translated “to different cultures very well.” But getting giant touring set-ups into less developed locales in Venezuela, Cuba, Bangladesh and Pakistan is never simple.
Logistics guru Hoffman said the first place he visits in every foreign country is the local embassy. “Each place has its challenges,” Hoffman said of the complexities of setting up perimeters, stages, lights — every aspect of live-event infrastructure. “Everything is built from scratch. You have to weigh options and figure out how to get through it.”
The team has only “pulled the plug” once — “on a show in North Korea,” McInnes said. The panel was moderated by Billboard’s dance music director Matt Medved, who asked the team to reflect on doing business off-the-beaten-path.
“If you’re in Pakistan you don’t really know who these guys are,” Hunt said of locals who help them stage shows. “But you know they are very excited.”
Before the team selects a concert stop, Diplo asks himself, “How can we have an impact where ever we go?” McInnes said it has been illuminating learning how fans consume music in unique locales, pointing to an evening they all shared at a local Jewish community center in Cuba.
Diplo’s March 2016 concert and trip to Cuba, which came after President Obama renewed ties to the island, allowing commerce and travel (rule-changes since undone by the Trump administration) is the focus of the documentary about youth culture there called Give Me Future–debuting via Apple Music on Friday. “There was a window for about 18 months,” said McInnes. “We took advantage of it.”
The two-day Billboard conference, now in its 15th year, focuses on every aspect of the $25 billion-per-year global touring business.
]]>by
It wasn’t long after the Universal Ampitheatre opened in 1972 that a teenager named Rita Wilson — a born-and-bred Angeleno — found herself in the middle of all the musical action with a short list of questions.
“I remember literally aching when I would watch the shows, thinking, ‘How do you get in?'” recalls Wilson of her time as a concert employee at the once popular, now closed Universal City venue. “I didn’t know how to play an instrument. How do you get in a band? How do you write a song?”
Safe to say that in the decades that have followed, Wilson, now an accomplished and admired singer, songwriter, actress and producer, has found a few answers and then some. But it’s the latter question that is at the heart of Wilson’s return to the Skirball stage at Geffen Playhouse tomorrow night for Liner Notes: Songwriters, Stories and Music with Rita Wilson and Friends.
Joined by Jeff Barry, Kristian Bush, Desmond Child, Dan Wilson, Liz Rose, Patty Smyth and Billy Steinberg, Wilson will perform with the hand-picked musicians and serve as a tour guide of sorts as they dish on the stories behind their songs. She hopes the eight-show concert-stand will inspire as well as entertain. “If there’s one person thinking, ‘Oh Rita’s doing that, maybe I can do it,'” Wilson says that will make her day.
Despite being infatuated with the music industry since those early years, Wilson, 60, launched her music career just five years ago. “I started out loving music and wanting to do that more than anything, but acting happened at such a young age, 16. I got my SAG card and literally have not stopped since,” she admits.
After decades on screen in hits such as Sleepless in Seattle and It’s Complicated, she figured it out, releasing 2012’s AM/FM, a well-received set of ’60s and ’70s covers. In 2016 she stepped it up by co-writing every track on Rita Wilson, a breezy pop collection inspired by her favorite ’70s icons. She also has a cabaret act that she’ll bring back to the Cafe Carlyle in New York from Oct. 10-21, as well as a straight-ahead pop show she performs on tour, as she did last year when she opened for classic rockers Chicago.
Her music career has unfolded these last few years amid roles on Girls and The Good Wife, as well as Larry David’s 2015 Broadway comedy Fish in the Dark, in which she co-starred while powering through surgery and treatment for breast cancer. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter at her Santa Monica office, Wilson reflected on her breakneck work pace, changing up her career in her 50s, why female energy needs to be more present in the world and why songwriting is like sex.
Fair warning: At the end, you may be left with a question of your own. How does Rita Wilson do it all? (For the record, she’s also executive producing and starring in the indie Simple Wedding and has an executive producing role on the Mamma Mia! sequel.)
Starting a music career at age 55 seems daunting. Yet you say you’re not particularly fearless?
I’m not. I do things that scare me because I feel like that’s how you grow. If something is terrifying, you should probably be doing it. I’m a big believer in risk-taking, but it doesn’t mean that you’re fearless.
In 2006, when you played Roxie Hart in Chicago on Broadway, that was the first time you ever sang professionally on stage?
Yes. I had been in my agent’s office and they said, ‘What are you interested in doing?’ I said, ‘I’d love to do a musical.’ When I said it, I felt like I was standing there naked. I couldn’t believe it came out of my mouth. I knew I could carry a tune, but I was not really trained in a Broadway way of singing. I had to learn how to do that.
Would you consider that to have been your boldest move?
Yes, because it was me saying to myself, “I love music. And if I don’t immerse myself in music in some way I’m going to be a less happy person.” I feel women can be limitless. Men have been able to go off and do many different things throughout their lives and nobody says anything. But sometimes we’re categorized to do one thing only. I just I never thought of myself like that.
Tell me about creating “Liner Notes” and how it differs from the other concerts you do.
I had performed at a songwriters round in Nashville at the Bluebird — four songwriters in an acoustic show telling the stories behind their songs. And I had this idea that we could take it to the Skirball — the little tiny black box theater at the Geffen, and make it into a club like the Troubadour used to be. This will be our third time doing it there. It’s so wonderful to hear Jeff Barry tell the story behind “Going to the Chapel,” or Billy Steinberg tell the story about “Like A Virgin.” I try to have people from different genres and eras so no matter who you are or what age, you’re going to have a connection to some of the music. I called it Liner Notes because I used to sit on my bed and take out that album and the sleeves and read every single thing. I knew every single songwriter, musician, background vocalist, studio photographer. Now we’ve lost that ability to actually listen to album as a whole and really understand what the artist was trying to accomplish. But I’ll still do albums even if people only buy one track.
Describe your songwriting process when working with other writers.
I call it this … You meet a complete stranger. You fall madly in love. You strip naked, emotionally. You have incredible musical intercourse. And you leave with a gorgeous song baby. You have to get so intimate with somebody. You have to reveal so much truth.
You’ve been an outspoken feminist for years and of course all around us the world is regressing in ways I’m not sure many of us could have imagined. How are you coping in this Trump era?
When Maria Shriver was first lady of the state of California she had an amazing womens conference, and one year she had Deepak Chopra speak — this has to have been 10 years ago now — and he said it’s time for female energy to be more present in the world in terms of leadership. Because when men have ruled and they’ve gotten to the point where they have achieved the power that they want to achieve — they start killing each other. There has to be a shift at some point where women’s voices are being valued. Because the way men have been doing it does not really work.
You got the worst possible news just as you were opening on Broadway with Larry David in Fish in the Dark. Yet you got back on stage just four weeks after major surgery. Looking back on it, how did you do it?
I just slept a lot. That’s all I did basically. I slept until I did the show. I did the show — and then I went home and I slept. I had asked my doctors, “When do people usually go back to work?” And they said about three weeks after. And I said “OK great, I’ll take four weeks because I’m doing a play.” But it was too early. The concentration required and the physicality of being on stage and standing, doing eight shows a week. … But I am a person who honors my commitments. I felt I owed it to the cast, to Larry and our audiences. And I’m so glad I did it. I don’t have any regrets.
Did it make you rethink the way you eat, work out or take care of yourself in general?
Yes. I eat much less red meat. I read Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food and I follow his Haiku: ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’ I’ve decreased alcohol consumption. I always exercised, so that wasn’t an issue. I try to get really good sleep, and practice mindfulness and meditation.
What’s next?
If I had a little mission statement it would be products for women that involve music.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
]]>By DEBORAH WILKER
Read this story in The Hollywood Reporter
The ‘American Crime Story’ actor plays the lead role of Hero in Pulitzer winner Suzan-Lori Parks’ Homeric trilogy, having its West Coast premiere at the Mark Taper Forum.
He is mindful that the subject matter of ACS is tragic. Yet simmering all through this series is the romantic subtext between Darden and Marcia Clark (portrayed so perfectly by Sarah Paulson), which has introduced Brown to the world of “shippers” and super-couple hashtags, in this case #Darcia. “To ‘ship’ Chris and Marcia, I had to learn what that meant,” the actor admits.
A graduate of both Stanford and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, the soft-spoken St. Louis native caught the theater bug in high school after stints in Godspell and West Side Story. Brown originated the role of Hero in Father Comes Home at New York’s Public Theater in fall 2014.
The love story surprised you.
It did. Week by week it became clear just how strong the connection was for our audience. Then it started to hit me, oh — this is bigger than anything I could have possibly anticipated.
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Sarah Paulson and Sterling K. Brown
But does the almost-soap opera undermine the important issues?
I don’t think so. Life is as it is. It’s not all serious. It’s not all comedy. You have to allow for all the different emotions. The intimacy between those two people was apparent then and hopefully it’s apparent as we replayed it. If the show weren’t entertaining, the themes of racism, sexism and the actual trial itself wouldn’t receive the attention they’re getting.
You took a lot of heat online during episode 7.
When we took our trip to the Bay Area and we do not kiss at her hotel door. Lord have mercy! It was all, “What are you doing, DUDE?!”
In one of the more pivotal scenes you say to Marcia Clark, “You wanted a black face but not a black voice.” Was it difficult for you to explore these themes, particularly through Darden, who was seen as a traitor to his community, and then as a loser?
It was a lot to balance. I had similar feelings 20-21 years ago about him being a race traitor or an Uncle Tom. By virtue of the fact that there were two prominent black lawyers in this case — one of them was the hero, the other has to be the fall guy. It wasn’t a fair role for him to be placed in. Being able to step into his shoes allowed me to release the judgment that I had, and overall that’s what I think is fascinating about acting. You can’t play someone and judge them at the same time.
With so much happening for you, tell me about your decision to continue with Father Comes Home From The Wars.
Do you see yourself on Broadway?
Maybe. That’s if my wife [/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][actress Ryan Michelle Bathe] is willing to uproot our family and she can also be fulfilled artistically.
The diversity conversation has changed dramatically in this last year. But is the landscape really changing?
I see it changing — incrementally. I remember the great work that Norman Lear did. That was an incredible heyday to be a black actor. My wife and I will often have conversations about Good Times and The Jeffersons and Sanford and Son. They were doing incredible stuff that was very funny but also very socially conscious. It feels now like we’re entering a time where people are willing to push that envelope again.
Tell me about what’s next. You just did an M. Night Shyamalan film?
Yes, it’s called Split. It’ll be out in the beginning of 2017. And there’s The Untitled Dan Fogelman Pilot. We shot in February and we’re waiting, hopefully, to see if we get picked up.
Well, now that the guy who played Darden is in it …
If that makes any difference at all, I’ll take it.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
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Hosting Al Pacino’s ‘One Night Only’ – April 24, 2013
AL PACINO: ONE NIGHT ONLY | Hard Rock Live Hollywood, Fla. | April 24, 2013
By DEBORAH WILKER
Al Pacino has done brisk business in recent years with his One Night Only tours —candid evenings in the style of Inside The Actor’s Studio during which he discusses his celebrated career, favorite roles, co-stars, directors, highs, lows, motivations and such. The performance I was to moderate would be the first of two he was doing at Hard Rock Live in SoFla.
My understanding is that Pacino dislikes hearing the same questions again and again, thus preferring new hosts most nights — sometimes selected on-the-fly from a pool of theater professors and arts reporters as he makes his way around the world.
Unbeknownst to me, a colleague threw my hat in a ring. Pacino asked to see some of my TV and print work, and a coupla days later his producer called to say I was hired.
Pacino’s career is, of course, a massive one to memorize, let alone on short notice. To be ready for any possible reference from more than 50 films over five decades, in addition to his theater work seemed daunting.
I expected his people to have lots of rules, and at least a few specific questions he wanted asked of him. But when his producer called back to go over the details, she explained that Pacino had almost no ground rules at all. He wanted me to create all the questions – which he very deliberately did not want to see in advance.
He is wedded to the element of surprise in these shows.
Other than one recent film he’d prefer I’d ignore, she said nothing was off limits, even his personal life. Refreshing in this age of managed everything.
She asked me to prepare a discussion with him that would run about 70 minutes or so. I’d also have to toss to film clips and assist him later with an audience Q & A. He would finish the evening by performing a scene from one of his favorite plays.
The next day, about three hours before showtime she walked me through a brief sound and lighting check. While we were marking out where we’d be on stage and where I needed to look to receive her cues, Pacino popped in and asked her, “How we doin’?” — wondering I guess if they had hired a dud moderator, or maybe gotten lucky.
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Hanging with Al Pacino after the show — just holding hands under the table, nbd
He then turned to me, arms outstretched, and said, ‘I hear we’re batting a thousand!” We shook hands and took our places so the lighting director could do his thing.
Pacino has a sweet, nutty-professor vibe. He was easy to work with, fun and funny. He knows he’s one of the greats but presents himself with humor and humility.
It seemed he could talk about the craft of acting – his own and everyone’s — till the end of time. During the show he had to be steered back on track a few times, his passion getting the better of him. Don’t ask me what the particular stories were that he became so engrossed in. The whole thing zoomed by in a blur.
Alas, there is no video or print interview to go with this little blog entry. It was, as they say, One Night Only. I’m told Pacino does photograph these performances, and keeps the videos only for himself.
After the show we met backstage, where he thanked me and introduced me to his girlfriend. Later there was an after-party for the casino’s high-rollers, during which Pacino invited me over to his table for a photo.
“Well, did you like that?” he asked of our one night only together. It was only then just sinking in that I had spent an actual evening on an actual stage with actual Al Pacino. “What did you think?” he asked again.
What did I think? What did HE think is all I wanted to know. But he never did give me the slightest clue as to whether I met his interviewing expectations; was a dud; or something in between.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
]]>By DEBORAH WILKER
(MIAMI BEACH) — David Bowie is having breakfast: Marlboros and coffee. Three years after his glitzy Glass Spider tour blew around the world, a leaner, more humble David Bowie is back.
Despite the smoking and a lifetime spent on the road, he looks terrific. Relaxing on a plump sofa in a plush oceanside hotel, he’s complaining about jet lag, but accepts the constant overseas travel as a necessary evil.
“I loathe it, but am now finally resigned to it,” he says.
The new Bowie — dressed in casual cotton and silk — isn`t nearly as eclectic as the old one. This one is singing his Top 40 hits in a new retrospective show that has one aim: To please loyal fans.
Bowie has even gone so far as to set up a 900 phone number so fans can call in their song requests. (A percentage of the phone line profits are earmarked for various charities, among them Bowie`s favorite, Save The Children.)
His Sound + Vision tour, which has played in Canada and Europe, makes its American debut in Miami on Friday.
The all-request show was actually the idea of Rykodisc — the maverick Massachusetts record company that has acquired Bowie`s catalog and is now remastering and re-releasing it all on CD.
Ryko also recently released Changesbowie, a greatest hits set.
“They asked me to support the album, and I said I’d love to if I can do it in an interesting way,” Bowie said. “Bands always support their albums on the road. It just so happens that this year my album is a greatest hits album.”
Concerned that all this mainstream nostalgia might obscure or invalidate his current work with his new band, Tin Machine, Bowie insisted that this be a one-time outing.
“After this, I’m through with it all,” he said. “You’ll never hear those songs again. It’s the ‘90s. A new decade. What better way to start out than by cleaning house, getting it out of the way and moving on.”
“You may have heard this from others, but never from David Bowie. I promise you, there’s no chance. I won’t be singing Suffragette City when I’m 50.”
And that being the case, Bowie has gone all-out with his fan-friendly hit fest. The peoples set list includes: Let’s Dance, Fame, Young Americans, Changes, Suffragette City, Rebel Rebel and of course, Space Oddity — the song upon which he built his future-man image two decades ago.
Long a performer ahead of his time, Bowie really did appear to be from some other planet when he burst upon the world in the early 1970s. He was a video star before video — a visual performer who used the stage as his outlet in the age preceding MTV.
He was often called “the first great rock star of the 1970s” by critics who praised his innovative music but were perplexed by his eccentricities.
Cloaked in bizarre costumes, Bowie played various characters while creating stories with his lyrics. He was Aladdin Sane, The Thin White Duke and most often Ziggy Stardust.
He blushes when asked to recall those days.
“I keep thinking about those big red shoes,” he says, motioning toward his feet. He’s laughing now — almost hysterically. His cheeks have turned a deep shade of scarlet. Looking back on it, he admits the costumes “dehumanized” him.
There is an unexpected vulnerability about Bowie. He’s confident, but not overwhelmed with himself — characteristics at odds with his theatric stage persona.
He is also not entirely comfortable discussing MTV. Though Bowie was among the earliest sight-and-sound groundbreakers with his ever-changing fashions, `80s icons such as Prince and Madonna have run away with the bulk of the credit.
Still based in Switzerland with his 18-year-old son Joey, Bowie will be on the road through August, traveling between the United States and Japan. (His son, who attends Cambridge University, plays American football and listens to “lots of rap, house music, Hendrix and Cream.”)
Bowie has kept a low video profile during the past five years, wearing sleek business suits for his debut with Tin Machine. The group will release its second album at year’s end. This tour should restore his commercial fortunes just enough to give Tin Machine a bigger springboard next time.
Though his current show is low on set pieces, he says it is no less dramatic.
Last time out he dragged along a crew of 150 and three mammoth Glass Spider sets that leapfrogged from city to city.
Of the massive stadium-sized stage gear he said, “I gave all that to the Stones,” laughing at his own joke. “So now they’re doing all that.”
Rather than store the goods, Bowie and company burned the majority of the Glass Spider sets after their last show in New Zealand, “to make sure we`d never use it again.”
Though some critics pummeled the over-produced tour, Bowie says there were aspects of it that he “really enjoyed.”
An art student and actor who has performed in offbeat films such as The Man Who Fell To Earth, Absolute Beginners and Labyrinth, Bowie also had a small role in The Last Temptation of Christ. In 1980 he starred on Broadway in The Elephant Man.
Though he had little formal stage training other than what he had learned as a musician, critics lauded his Broadway debut. Of the demanding title role, Bowie said the work was challenging at first, but then became “so boring.”
“Six months of it was enough.”
Initially frustrated that his film career had stalled, Bowie says he is no longer interested in acting roles.
“I don`t have the commitment anymore. If I want to do a good job I really should be studying, but I haven’t got the will. I’m doing music 24 hours a day. It shows where my commitment lies.”
]]>By DEBORAH WILKER
Back when John Cusack was getting his first look at Roland Emmerich’s script for the end-of-days epic “2012,” he wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. On the one hand, there were all kinds of promising nuances – well drawn characters, authentic dialogue — potential Cusack says, “for a disaster movie that would be far more thoughtful than it may appear to be at first glance.”
But on the other hand?
“As I am reading I find here’s this very interesting well written role — and then on the next page California falls into the ocean. I really didn’t understand how they could film what they had written, the scale was so big.”
Cusack, who’s worked on nearly 60 movies over a 26-year career, and has seen pretty much every trick the business has to offer, says he was initially stumped by a script that essentially had the world disappearing out from under itself.
“I just really didn’t know how anyone would go about shooting it, let alone how do you film that?”
The sci-fi action-thriller, due Nov. 13, is Emmerich’s take on the ancient Mayan prediction that a world-ending event is due in 2012. The writer-director of effects-laden projects such as “Independence Day,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” “Stargate” and “Godzilla,” Emmerich is not necessarily known for his light touch.
But Cusack believes the human element that runs throughout “2012” is unique. The film’s all-star ensemble includes Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt, George Segal, Woody Harrelson and Amanda Peet.
“These people find out they have a finite amount of time and they quickly start separating what is essential from the non essential. They see a vision of the world where countries are gone.”
If in fact Sony Pictures wanted to insure that “2012” would have a genuine chance with women and deep-thinking film-goers – a tough task in this genre – casting Cusack was a good start.
One of few seasoned actors whose appeal remains as strong with men as with women — and with fans of wide-ranging ages and interests — the agile Cusack has long been an everyman in thoughtful films, as well as a bankable star.
Yet when asked if he felt any personal pressure concerning “2012’s” high-profile opening date – where it’s positioned for prime holiday blockbustering – Cusack seemed initially to not understand the question.
“Are you asking am I nervous because it’s opening Friday the 13th?”
He says he doesn’t dwell on marketing, grosses and related aspects of the business.
“First, most importantly I think, you should make movies you care about. In this case I enjoyed myself very much,” he said quite believably.
He rarely maps out too far in advance what he’ll be playing next. He has slipped as easily into big-studio fare like “Serendipity,” “ Con Air,” “ Must Love Dogs” and “America’s Sweethearts” as he has into character roles in films such as “Being John Malkovich” and “Cradle Will Rock.”
He played a classic con in “The Grifters;” an assassin at a crossroads in “Grosse Pointe Blank” (which he co-wrote); the lovesick record shop owner in “High Fidelity,” a stolid war widower in the more recent “Grace is Gone,” and was a quintessential geek in “Sixteen Candles,” his second film role, back in ‘84.
Of course there has probably never been a John Cusack interview over the last 20 years during which he was not asked for his take on Lloyd Dobler.
In the ensuing years this pop culture moment took on a life of its own. Fans of the iconic character have written reams of explanatory material about him, created infinite collectibles,(T-shirts coffee mugs et al.), dedicated fan pages and forums. The character has been endlessly parodied, so much so that decades later teens who never heard of the movie still get the reference; still know instantly that it’s the ultimate move any guy can make.
There’s even a fairly decent rock band that calls itself the The Lloyd Dobler Effect. We could go on. (And on).
Cusack has never much minded the attention that has followed this character. He realizes it’s not often that an actor gets to create anything lasting on screen. He has never had the typical worries that Lloyd might typecast him into oblivion, or that The Dobler Effect might somehow seep into his other films.
“If somebody really loves something you did 20 years ago – it never struck me as something to worry about. I think it’s a nice problem to have in this business.”
He says he also still hears from friends and fans quite a bit about “Grosse Pointe Blank,” “High Fidelity” and more recently “Grace Is Gone” – and freely admits that of the many movies he’s made, he only really likes “maybe 10 or 15 of them.”
“I never really counted. Some of them though, they just really worked.” Diplomatically, Cusack says no more.
Moving so freely between “big movies like 2012, to a relatively tiny film” like the upcoming ‘Shangai’ (a drama in which he plays an American fighting corrupt Asian forces before the bombing of Pearl Harbor), also delights him he says. Though the Weinstein Company recently announced that the film’s U.S. release date has been delayed, Cusack doesn’t seem worried. Maybe that’s because he always has another gem in his back pocket.
In this case it’s the just wrapped “Hot Tub Time Machine,” due next Spring, in which he stars with a group of aging guys who long to party as they did years ago. Inevitably they’ll time-travel in uproarious style.
“It’s certainly the most important hot tub movie ever made. Maybe the most important movie of all time. I think the title encapsulates all you need to know. It’s just a bawdy R-rated studio comedy.”
He is aware that few actors get so long a run, with such a varied script.
“I know I’ve been really lucky that way.”
He gives part of the credit for his longevity to his family. He likes working with his sisters Joan and Ann; siblings Susie and Bill are actors too. Growing up in Evanston, Ill., they attended the Piven Theatre Workshop, founded by the parents of their friend Jeremy Piven, (with whom Cusack also frequently co-stars). Cusack’s late father was a documentary filmmaker.
Though it’s been a life steeped in familial performing from the earliest of days, he says please don’t call the Cusacks a show biz dynasty.
“We’re really not a show biz family. We’re just a family from Chicago who got into the business. We came out here to L.A.
We didn’t know anybody, we had no connections. For some reason now we’ve just stuck around.”
That they still lean on one another softens the rigors of Hollywood life, he said.
“As people get older and they have their own families, it becomes very hard to find time to just hang out. But if I can hire my sister for 12 hours a day and pull her away from her own family and have fun on a set – I will.”
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]]>By DEBORAH WILKER
It had already been a busy couple of years when Peter Frampton got back on the road last month for an all-new tour — his first-ever run of acoustic shows. The dates came after a summer on tour with Cheap Trick, a stop at the Dear Jerry tribute concert to Jerry Garcia, a visit to the Grand Ole Opry and his well-received Guitar Circus tours with legends such as the late B.B. King.
Now 65, the writer of hits such as Show Me The Way, Baby, I Love Your Way and the epic jam Do You Feel Like We Do, maintains a relentless touring schedule, even more demanding than the itineraries of his Frampton Comes Alive! days of the mid 1970s.
“Yes, I have been called relentless,” Frampton says, laughing at himself. “I’m still wanting to be out there as much as possible.”
That Frampton has such varied options at this stage in life — and after much turmoil — is a source of great joy and relief for him.
“You learn from the downfalls,” he says. “You learn from the fork in the road. You took the wrong fork for a while. And sometimes it’s your fault and sometimes it’s not. But no matter what you do for your living, we have ups and downs and it’s how we deal with them.”
That fork of course was the chaos that followed his boundless 1976 double set, Frampton Comes Alive! — a perfect moment in rock history that became what was then the best-selling live album of all time.
But before the record even had a chance to cool, his career was unraveling. The bare-chested photos, the hurried follow-up, bad movie and other poor decisions are well chronicled.
His credibility evaporated overnight.
“I’ve just had this survival instinct that as many times as I’ve been knocked down, through mistakes of my own I’ll be very honest — I dust myself off, I get back up. It might take me a couple of months. I just get my hat on again and I keep going.”
FRAMPTON’S CAREER had mostly been a charmed rocket ride in its first 10 years, beginning with stints fronting The Herd and Humble Pie as a teenager in England during the 1960s. At barely 20 years old, his guitar skills were so well defined that George Harrison asked him to sit in on his landmark solo set All Things Must Pass.
“I felt I had always had that industry respect — until the post-Comes Alive onslaught of magazine covers with my clothes off,” he says. “And gradually, by allowing all that, I had turned myself into this sex symbol pop star, as opposed to a musician.”
In an interview with PRIME magazine from his Nashville home last month, Frampton recounted years of stalled comebacks and the relentless optimism that finally put him back on track.
That this turn-around took hold while he was in his mid-50s seems all the more inspiring.
What advice does he have for the rest of us who may feel stalled at mid-life, unfulfilled by careers gone awry or just plain due for a change? Keep an open mind, he says. Passion plays a huge role too.
“Because you’ll be sitting at home and looking at that guitar and you’ll go to pick it up and I’ll play something brand new and I’ll get chill bumps. That’s why I do this, for that feeling.”
FRAMPTON’s early cracks at rebuilding had some interesting moments. Despite the critical success of his 1986 album Premonition, he was at that point relegated to opening-act status on the road, warming the stage for headliner Stevie Nicks.
Just years earlier it was Nicks and her band Fleetwood Mac who had opened for Frampton. The acts went neck-and-neck for a while, but now the Mac’s superstar front-woman had so fully eclipsed him – with not one, but two dazzling careers of her own — it was a humbling juxtaposition. Frampton remained undeterred, mind open, grateful for the opportunity.
A year later he fielded an offer from childhood friend David Bowie, with whom he had jammed in the school stairwells while the two were growing up in South London.
The man who had once held giant stadiums rapt on his own wouldn’t even be playing his own material this time. Rather, he was joining Bowie’s band as lead guitarist on his Glass Spider stadium tour.
To be viewed again simply as a musician, he says, was enough.
He was then, as he is now, philosophical about the reversals that can hit anyone — and the attitude required to push through.
“Things change. Whether you like it or not, you have to accept it,” he says. “David introducing me as the guitarist was the greatest gift anyone could give me at that point in my career, and I’ll never forget it.”
While there were well-received club shows and more albums, there were other setbacks through the ‘90s, including the death of his Humble Pie bandmate Steve Marriott in a house fire, just as the two were reuniting.
In 1998, Frampton aligned with a new management team and slowly a new career evolved. Fans point to a surprise 2006 appearance with the Allman Brothers Band during one of their storied Beacon Theater runs, as a turning point. While his presence at the hard-core jam show momentarily threw a few fans, his fiery work on the band’s barnburner, Southbound, quickly quieted non-believers.
Months later he would appear on the prestige PBS concert series Soundstage, and then pick up a first-ever Grammy for his instrumental album Fingerprints.
The momentum continued as the social media era dawned. His homespun posts about family life with his son and daughters, his cherished guitars, life in the studio and on the road — and owning a catalogue that really holds up — have endeared him to millions of fans old and new.
“What Fingerprints did was solidify respect for me from peers as a musician again, and that was an amazing feeling. It was really a stepping-off point for where we are today.
“It started with me becoming sober 12 years ago and I have relished every moment since,” Frampton says. “It was a wonderful change in my life and I am so thankful for that.”
When his favorite custom Les Paul guitar — thought to be lost in a 1980 plane crash — was miraculously returned to him in 2011, he told CBS News, “If you think about it, my career started to ebb and the guitar went away. Things have been going remarkably well over the last few years, and I get my guitar back. It’s almost like the guitar said, ‘OK, you’re worthy again.’ ”
JUST AHEAD, another first: He’ll headline the Rock Legends Cruise IV, with Gregg Allman and Randy Bachman, sailing from Fort Lauderdale on Jan. 21. After that he’ll be back on the road this winter with more acoustic dates, featuring bare versions of his classic hits that will also have an accompanying album. His son, singer-songwriter Julian Frampton, tours with him, making the shows all the sweeter.
“It’s my first time ditching all electronics,” says the master of the talk box. “I guess I never felt comfortable doing that until now.”
These days he’s still agile and wiry on stage, prone to 20-minute Do You Feel jams and the same powerful vocals and jazzy noodlings that have been his trademark for decades. He maintains his energy by working out, “eating less” and staying in constant motion.
“If you’re a musician I don’t think you ever retire. You just slow down a little bit, but you keep moving, otherwise you’ll stop!”
In the past year he’s been in the news frequently as part of the ongoing discussion about smart-phones in concert venues (and Broadway theaters and movie theaters and everywhere else).
At a show last year at The Palladium in Carmel, Ind., Frampton became so agitated by one fan’s ongoing use of flash videography, he stopped the show and asked the man to show him what he had recorded. When the fan handed him the phone, Frampton hastily tossed it behind the stage.
The episode impressed some fans and artists, but perplexed others. The flash of anger seemed out of character for the genial Frampton, long known as easy-going and grateful for every fan.
“I think we’re just gonna end up with nubs for hands or maybe just have a bolt on the end of our arms to click into the iPhone,” he says, laughing in resignation. “Don’t get me wrong, I am as addicted to my phone as everyone else, but when I go to see a band or a movie I turn it off. I live in the moment.
“But I know I’m fighting a losing battle.”
But if his followers don’t always get to see some of his lightning-in-a-bottle performances on YouTube, he can live with it.
“I feel as soon as fans pick up that phone, they’re no longer in the room. I’ve lost them. Sometimes it’s good to just have it in the memory.”
He’s found a balance now by asking concert-goers to shoot only during the first three songs at his shows, the same access accorded professional photographers.
He is flattered that his all-ages fans still want photos of him — and content that he appears to have sealed his status as rock legend. When he runs into his old tunes on the car radio he’ll typically change the station, but if he’s in a store, he says he’ll pause for a moment.
“It makes me smile,” he says. “I can’t fight the monster that was Frampton Comes Alive! It’s not that I haven’t done good work since, but if that’s what I’m remembered for most, it’s OK. It’s a great album and I’m very proud of it.”
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