Clooney gets The Fall of Bob on Showtime
To some people, George Clooney’s affable good nature and sincerity comes off as smug over-confidence. I fall into the former rather than the latter category.
I think George is ambitious and grateful to be working in the business. I think he remembers the years of struggling to become a star — those years on The Facts of Life and Riptide and E/R (the Elliott Gould sitcom, not the Emmy award-winning NBC medical drama).
Failures like Leatherheads have to keep him humble. Anyway, his efforts to expand as an actor and director and producer strike me as someone who is wisely not resting on his laurels. That said, today it was reported that Clooney’s production company, Smoke House, is behind a new pilot for Showtime called The Fall of Bob.
The title character of this half-hour comedy, Bob, is all about suicide. Actually, it’s about what’s happening while he’s attempting to commit suicide. Bob jumps off a building and as he’s plummeting to the ground, his life flashes before his eyes. In flashbacks, Bob narrates the stories of those flashback episodes. Presumably, those scenes will give us some idea why Bob has jumped in the first place.
Danny Zuker is the creator of this dark comedy. For obvious reasons, it’ll be shot in a single-comedy format, the current trend in Hollywood. Zuker’s been involved in all kinds of comedy, including Roseanne, Grace Under Fire, Coupling, and most recently, Pamela Anderson’s Fox series, Stacked.
Casting Couch: Showtime for Matt Perry, Janet Jackson Gets Real, Sopranos Reunite
Matthew Perry is getting gabby.
After a short-lived season on NBC’s defunct Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the Friends alum is rebounding to cable, coming aboard to executive produce and star in The End of Steve, a dark comedy series for Showtime chronicling the ups and downs of an afternoon talk-show emcee.
Perry cocreated and will cowrite Steve with veteran tube producer Peter Tolan, the mastermind behind HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show and FX’s Rescue Me and screenwriter of Analyze This.
The half-hour pilot centers on the titular character (Perry) as he tries to balance his professional life, in which he’s viewed as a likeable, funny guy on his chatfest, and his personal life as he struggles over a love affair with the station’s morning show host.
Meanwhile, in other casting news:
- Janet Jackson wants her MTV. The diva will front a reality contest in which she mentors a group of wannabe singers and dancers in advance of her world tour, which launches Sept. 10. The goal is to find the next big R&B star.
- That ’70s Show’s Wilmer Valderrama is joining forces with Fox again to headline the comedy pilot The Emancipation of Ernesto, which he will also executive produce. The hourlong series revolves around a Forrest Gump-like innocent on an epic journey to find his father and a long lost love in Los Angeles, with a tone said to be similar to Steve Martin’s The Jerk.
- Sopranos veterans Lorraine Bracco and Jamie-Lynn Sigler are set to reunite in the indie comedy Son of Mourning, playing a mother and love interest, respectively, of a resentful ad copywriter (Joseph Cross), who’s mistaken for a spiritual savior. Heather Graham costars.
Ron Perlman joins Sons Of Anarchy
Well now, if you were having trouble deciding between the competing biker shows in development, perhaps this news will tip your TV watching scales. FX has signed up Ron Perlman (Beauty And The Beast) to take over the role of Clay, president of the motorcycle club, and step-father to the main character Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam), in Kurt Sutter’s Sons Of Anarchy.
The part was played by Scott Glenn in the pilot, but the powers that be chose to recast it after deciding to make the series more of a dark comedy. I’m not exactly sure what that means, because I could go for Glenn in a dark comedy, but adding Perlman does heighten my interest in the show, to be sure. If you just can’t wait for the show to premiere to get your Perlman fix, he’ll be showing up at your local multiplex with Hellboy II: The Golden Army in July.
Kelly Preston in new HBO series
Kelly Preston (also known as Mrs. John Travolta) has been signed to star in a new HBO pilot called Suburban Shootout. The series is a dark comedy about rival gangs of suburban housewives. Most recently, Preston had a recurring role on Medium.
Preston will be playing Camilla, the leader of one of the gangs. Other cast members include Kerri Kenney and Rachael Harris. The show is based on a British series that was picked up by the Oxygen network.
The premise of the series sounds good. It’s a bit like Desperate Housewives meet Boys In The Hood. I envision a scene in which the housewives rumble like the rival gangs in The Warriors. While the premise works, its success depends on the execution of the idea.
There is one thing that can be confidently said about this new series. The show couldn’t possibly be worse that one of she and her husband’s previous efforts, Battlefield Earth.