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Old Christine crew gets $1000 checks

Posted by Vogt
at May 28, 2008

Old ChristineA note to TV show crews that are suffering during this writers strike: the shows feel your pain.

Nikki over at Deadline Hollywood Daily has learned that the crew of the CBS comedy The New Adventures of Old Christine got a nice surprise earlier this week: checks for $1000 (to go with the nice jackets they got for Christmas). The card attached to the checks said “To Our Old Christine friends: We miss you and hope we’ll be together soon. Keep the faith. With love, from The Writers, The Actors, The Director.” Awwwwwwww. A source close to the set says that the showrunner is being quite generous “even when her show has yet to become a big hit.”

I’m glad that this source added the word “yet,” because this show deserves better. I don’t understand why CBS is screwing around with it. They took it off the schedule so they could put on Rules of Engagement (which did well in the ratings, actually), and even though it’s now returning, the network is treating it like it’s some sort of midseason replacement or something. This show is quite good (which is great to see after Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Watching Ellie and the lame shows that Michael Richards and Jason Alexander starred in - I can’t even remember the titles right now), and really hit its stride last season. TV needs a traditional sitcom filmed in front of a studio audience that’s actually funny. If I remember correctly, this show did pretty well in the ratings too, so it would be a shame if CBS just let it drift away for some reason instead of giving it a permanent time slot next fall.

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Whoopi Goldberg Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

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Versatile stand-up comedienne and performance artist Whoopi Goldberg gained the attention of Hollywood with her eponymous 1984 Broadway show of character sketches, directed by Mike Nichols. Her trademark dreadlocks, gravelly voice and blunt, hip yet compassionate style made her unconventional star material to be sure, and the ups and downs of her career clearly represent the attempts of producers to smooth over what they consider to be her “rough edges.” She made an auspicious feature debut with an atypically subdued but very moving performance in Steven Spielberg’s controversial “The Color Purple” (1985), but subsequently her energetic presence was underutilized in a series of mostly uninspired vehicles (e.g., “Burglar” and “Fatal Beauty”, both 1987) prior to her Oscar-winning portrayal of a fake psychic medium in the 1990 boxoffice hit “Ghost”.

Things were not all bad for this unique actress during the second half of the 80s before “Ghost”, with “Jumping Jack Flash” (1986) and “Clara’s Heart” (1988) having their fair share of ardent admirers. Goldberg became a seemingly ubiquitous presence on TV, racking up over 80 appearances in specials (most notably HBO’s “Comic Relief” and its follow-ups), several memorable guest spots (including a 1986 Emmy-nominated turn on ABC’s “Moonlighting”), in addition to a stint co-starring with Jean Stapleton on “Bagdad Cafe” (1990-91), a short-lived CBS comedy series based on the 1987 feature film of the same name. Goldberg played a likable if rather modest recurring role as Guinan, the enigmatic alien bartender, on the hit syndicated series “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1988-94), reprising the role in the feature “Star Trek: Generations” (1994), and also produced several specials for cable and syndication.

Her feature career enlivened by “Ghost”, Goldberg went on to a dignified dramatic role in the pre-civil rights 50s era film “The Long Walk Home” (1990) and a comic part in “Soapdish” (1991) before starring in the surprise blockbuster comedy of 1992, “Sister Act”, which grossed more than $300 million worldwide. She ended 1992 with a strong supporting role as a cop in Robert Altman’s “The Player” and the lead in “Sarafina!”. Goldberg also began hosting her own late night one-on-one chat show, “The Whoopi Goldberg Show” (syndicated, 1992-93). Though the informal show featured major stars, Goldberg was more of a gushy friend than a probing interviewer, and lackluster ratings led to a quick cancellation. She returned to films with “Made in America” (1993), a comedy co-starring Ted Danson, and the inevitable sequel, “Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit” (also 1993).

Far from making her difficult to cast, Goldberg’s unusual and considerable talents and her earthy, straightforward persona have kept her extremely busy, from hosting three Academy Awards ceremonies to performing in the low-key romance “Corinna, Corinna”, voicing Shenzi the hyena in “The Lion King” (both 1994) or playing a lesbian in the road film “Boys on the Side” (1995). She was all-but-inescapable in 1996, prompting her to quip in 1997 that most of her 30 movies were “released last year.” She starred in the passable comedy “Eddie”, as an ardent basketball fan who wins the chance to coach her favorite team; the whimsical misfire “Bogus”, about an orphaned boy who creates an imaginary friend to help him cope with his mother’s death; “The Associate”, a remake of a 1979 French/West German comedy, portraying an investment banker who furthers her career by employing male drag and “whiteface” to personify a fictional white male CEO; and Rob Reiner’s “Ghosts of Mississippi”, a return to civil rights era drama, as Myrlie Evers-Williams, the wife of slain NAACP officer Medgar Evers.

Perhaps watching those four movies rack up disappointing to outright disastrous grosses made Goldberg hungry for a change, and she returned to the Broadway stage, replacing Nathan Lane in a gender-switching turn as Pseudolus in the revival of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”, her first attempt at a book musical. Never mind that the show’s leering combination of vaudeville and Plautus presented a somewhat dated attitude toward women, Goldberg made the role (originated by the great Zero Mostel) her own, identifying particularly with the Roman slave’s thirst for freedom. After appearing as herself in two 1997 features (”Burn, Hollywood, Burn” and “In & Out”), she played Delilah, a woman dying of cancer in “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” (1998) and a gay detective in “The Deep End of the Ocean” (1999). For the former, her death scene was touching but in a way extraneous to the adaptation by Ron Bass and Terry McMillan of McMillan’s novel, which yielded thinner material than the duo’s previous “Waiting to Exhale” (1995). As for the latter, her detective seemed gay only for the sake of political correctness, and not for anything directly connected to the ponderous story itself.

Goldberg saved some of her best work at the end of the 90s for the small screen. She appeared sparingly in Christopher Reeve’s movingly acted “In the Gloaming” (HBO,1997) as the live-in nurse of AIDS-stricken Robert Sean Leonard, who had come home to die. She acted in two spare-no-expenses extravaganzas, ABC’s multiracial “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella” (1997, as Queen Constantina) and NBC’s “Alice in Wonderland” (1999, as a laid-back, marvelously made-up Cheshire Cat), sandwiched around another “Wonderful World of Disney” presentation (fulfilling her contractual obligation to the Mouse), “A Knight in Camelot” (ABC, 1998), a remake of Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”. Though Twain would not have known what to make of either its vision of Camelot or of Whoopi Goldberg, the combination made for enjoyable, family viewing. That year also saw her executive produce a new syndicated version of “Hollywood Squares”, as well as occupying its center square, and she has continued to lend her voice to quality feature animation projects like “A Christmas Carol” (1997), “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Movie” and “The Rugrats Movie” (both 1998). In addition to gracing the cast of “Girl Interrupted” (1999), starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, Goldberg executive produced and starred in “Kingdom Come” (2001).

Goldberg subsequently busied herself primarily with cameos and voiceover appearances in films of widely varying quality, with more notable leading appearances on the small screen in telepics including the Christmas-themed “Call Me Claus” (2001) and opposite Danny Glover in “Good Fences” (2003), a telepic about an upwardly mobile 1970s-era black family struggling to adapt to their new posh Connecticut neighborhood. Her 2003 NBC sit-com effort “Whoopi,” which cast her as opinionated ex-lounge singer-turned-hotelier Mavis Rae, debuted to promising returns but subsequently sunk, cancelled in its first season. She was also a pitchperson for the Slim-Fast weight loss system in 2004 until her salty political comments bashing President George Bush at a Democratic fundraiser prompted the company to drop her. More roles as herself and animated voiceovers followed, including the childrens TV series “Littleburg” (2004) as Mayor Whoopi, “The Lion King 1 1/2″ (2004), “Pinocchio 3000″ (2004) and (as Franny the Goat) “Racing Stripes” (2005).

Meanwhile, the actress did much of her best work in the theater, replacing Nathan Lane as Pseudolus in the Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” in 1997, receiving a Tony Award for best musical as one of the producers of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 2002 and playing the title character in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” by August Wilson at New York’s Royale Theater in 2003. Two decades years after her acclaimed one-woman show took Broadway by storm, Goldberg revived and updated her performance in 2004 for “Whoopi: The 20th Anniversary Show” in a 12-week run at New York’s Lyceum Theater, revisiting characters Fontaine, the Surfer Chick and adding Lurleen, a middle-aged character who talks about topics like dieting and menopause. The show was later broadcast on HBO as “Whoopi: Back to Broadway” in 2005.

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Catherine Bach Biography

Posted by Vogt
at May 9, 2008

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This curvaceous brunette is best-known for her role as the feisty sister of “good ol’ boys” John Schneider and Tom Wopat on the popular CBS comedy-drama “The Dukes of Hazzard” (1979-85). Bach moved to California at 16 to study acting (at USC, and with coaches Milton Katselas and Anna Strasberg). She first came to the notice of TV viewers in the telefilms “Strange New World” and the “Matt Helm” pilot (both ABC, 1975). Her roles were small, and even smaller was her next billed part in “Murder in Peyton Place” (NBC, 1977).

But “The Dukes of Hazzard” came to her rescue, and from 1979-1985, Bach cavorted in cutoffs and tank-tops, the idol of male viewers in this mindless and popular rural comedy. The athletic and outgoing Bach also graced such ongoing TV specials as “The Battle of the Network Stars”, “Celebrity Challenge of the Sexes”, “Circus of the Stars” and “World’s Greatest Stunts”, as well as one-time shots on “The Nashville Palace” (ABC, 1980), “The Magic of David Copperfield” (CBS, 1981), and “Willie Nelson’s Picnic” (syndicated, 1987). She also provided the voice of Daisy in an animated version of the series, “The Dukes” (CBS, 1983).

Buoyed by her popularity but tied to the backwoods image, Bach appeared in two TV-movies: as a photojournalist up against “White Water Rebels” (CBS, 1983), and as “the other woman” in the PBS comedy “Drive, She Said” (1987). From 1992-1994, Bach returned to series TV as a businesswoman who moves to Africa with her teenaged son in “African Skies” (Family Channel). She agreed to reprise Daisy in “Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion” (CBS, 1997).

Bach’s forays into theatrical releases have not been as high-profile. She had small roles in Michael Cimino’s action comedy “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” and the drama “The Midnight Man” (both 1974) as well as Robert Aldrich’s thriller “Hustle” (1975), co-starring Burt Reynolds. She reteamed with Reynolds for “Cannonball Run II” (1983) and had her first starring role in the low-budget actioner “Driving Force” (1989). Since then it’s been large roles in small films: another actioner, “Street Justice” and the horror flick “Criminal Act” (both 1989); the biker road comedy “Masters of Menace” (1991); and the martial arts film “Rage & Honor” (1992). Former co-star Burt Reynolds gave Bach a theatrical showcase in the drama “Extremities” (1986), at his Florida dinner theater.

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