No surprise there: Disney working on a Camp Rock sequel
What should come as no surprise to anybody: Disney is now hard at work to the sequel of its High School Musical trilogy follow-up, Camp Rock. The Disney Channel is hoping to broadcast the sequel in spring or summer of 2009.
The first Camp Rock debuted to 8.9 million viewers on Friday night, the second highest viewership ever for the network (but still far below the 17.2 million they got for High School Musical 2).The movie stars the Jonas Brothers (Joe, Kevin and Nick), who had a following before the movie was released. With that in mind, shouldn’t the ratings have been even higher? Maybe it’s just that they’re no Zac Efron.
With the High School Musical phenomenon moving to theaters, Disney does have to do something to pick up the slack. Admittedly, I am not the target demographic for this genre, but it was once described to me as “this generation’s Grease”, which seemed pretty accurate. Although, to my knowledge, Grease didn’t spawn these sort of copycat milk-it-till-it’s-dead follow-ups.
Whoopi Goldberg Biography
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.
- Also Credited As:
Caryn Elaine Johnson - Born:
on 11/13/1955 in New York, New York - Job Titles:
Actor, Comedian, Producer, Author, Playwright, Talk show host, Bricklayer, Mortuary cosmetologist
Family
- Brother: Clyde K Johnson. works as Goldberg’s personal driver on film sets
- Daughter: Alexandrea Martin. born in 1973; gave birth to daughter Amarah on November 13, 1989; married in 1993; gave birth to son Jerzy c. 1995
- Father: Robert James Johnson. born in 1930 in South Carolina; separated from Goldberg’s mother (abandoned family when Whoopi was a toddler); died on May 25, 1993 of stomach cancer and complications from HIV
- Granddaughter: Amarah Skye Martin. born on November 13, 1989
- Grandson: Jerzey Martin. born c. 1995
- Mother: Emma Johnson. separated from Goldberg’s father
Significant Others
- Husband: Alvin Martin. was Goldberg’s counselor in early 1970s; first husband; married in 1973; divorced in late 1970s; father of Goldberg’s daughter
- Husband: David Claessen. married on September 1, 1986 in Las Vegas, Nevada; separated in 1987; divorced in October 1988
- Husband: Lyle Trachtenberg. born c. 1954; met on the set of “Corrina, Corrina” where he was unionizing crew members; married on October 1, 1994; filed for divorce on October 26, 1995
- Companion: David Schein. lived with Goldberg from 1980 to c. 1985
- Companion: Eddie Gold. together from 1987 to 1990
- Companion: Frank Langella. co-starred together in “Eddie” (1996); together from c. October 1995 until early 2000
- Companion: Jeffrey Cohen.
- Companion: Ted Danson. starred together in “Made in America” (1993); no longer together; performed a risque monologue in blackface at a 1993 Friars Club Roast in honor of Goldberg, provoking some guests (i.e., scandalized talk show host Montel Williams) to walk out of hall
- Companion: Timothy Dalton. together from 1990 to 1991
Education
- Washington Irving High School, New York, New York
Milestones
- 1974 Moved to San Diego, California with her one-year-old daughter; co-founded San Diego Repertory Theater (where she appeared in “Mother Courage”)
- 1980 Joined Blake Street Hawkeyes Theater in Berkeley, California; partnered with David Schein
- 1982 Went solo with “The Spook Show”, which she wrote; toured San Francisco, later USA and Europe
- 1983 Co-authored the play “Moms Mabley”, about the life of the pioneering black stand-up comic; appeared in the play in San Francisco
- 1984 Starred in own Broadway show, “Whoopi Goldberg”, directed by Mike Nichols; based on “The Spook Show”; played five different characters
- 1985 Feature film acting debut, “The Color Purple”; received Best Actress Oscar nomination
- 1985 First TV appearance, “Mothers by Daughters” (PBS)
- 1986 Co-hosted “Comic Relief” (HBO) with Billy Crystal and Robin Williams
- 1988 Wrote TV special, “Whoopi Goldberg’s Fontaine: Why Am I Straight” (”HBO Comedy Hour Live”)
- 1990 Produced and starred in comedy special for “HBO Comedy Hour Live”, “Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Connolly in Performance”
- 1990 Starred as Brenda in the short-lived CBS-TV sitcom, “Bagdad Cafe”, based on Percy Adlon’s art-house feature of the same name
- 1990 Won Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “Ghost”
- 1992 Publishing debut, wrote a re-vamped version of “Alice in Wonderland” as an urban fairy tale called “Alice”
- 1992 Starred in the comedy hit “Sister Act”
- 1993 Took to the habit again for the inevitable sequel, “Sister Act II”
- 1994 Became first female and first solo black host of an Academy Awards show
- 1994 Voiced one of the hyenas in Disney’s blockbuster animated hit “The Lion King”
- 1995 Hooked up with Frank Langella while the two were shooting “Eddie” (1996)
- 1995 Named to host the 1996 Academy Awards telecast in November by producer Quincy Jones
- 1995 Negotiated a two-picture deal with Disney for nearly $20 million; would act in the ABC remake of “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella” (1997) and “A Knight in Camelot” (ABC, 1998), a contemporary retelling of Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”
- 1997 Replaced Nathan Lane as Pseudolus in the Broadway revival of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”
- 1998 Appeared in the center square of the new syndicated version of the TV game show “Hollywood Squares”; also executive produced through One Ho Productions
- 1999 For the third time, hosted the 1998 Academy Awards telecast
- 2001 Appeared as Death in the combined live-action animated fantasy film “Monkeybone”
- 2001 Co-starred in “Kingdom Come”, a comedy-drama about a family reuniting for the funeral of its patriarch
- 2001 Starred in the holiday-themed TNT movie “Call Me Claus”
- 2001 With Barbra Streisand, served as executive producer of the Lifetime movie “What Makes a Family”
- 2002 For fourth time, hosted the annual telecast of the Academy Awards
- 2002 Reprised role of Guinan in “Star Trek: Nemesis”
- 2003 Starred as the character Mavis in the stereotypical-based sitcom “Whoopi”
- 2005 Appeared in “Whoopi: Back to Broadway — The 20th Anniversary,” an HBO film of the one-woman show she performed in New York
- 2005 Voiced Franny, a wise old goat in the animated feature “Racing Stripes”
- 2006 Launched a live, syndicated radio program, “Wake Up With Whoopi”
- Became a member of improv group, Spontaneous Combustion
- Began career in theater with the Hudson Guild children’s program and the Helena Rubenstein Children’s Theater at age eight
- Dropped out of high school and became in her words “a junkie”
- Executive produced the TV-movie “The Piano Man’s Daughter” (lensed 1999), starring Stockard Channing
- Formed One Ho Productions
- Hosted syndicated talk show “The Whoopi Goldberg Show”
- Played recurring role of Guinan, an enigmatic alien bartender, on the syndicated sci-fi hit, “Star Trek: The Next Generation”
- Provided voice of Gaia for the animated series “Captain Planet and the Planeteers”; received Daytime Emmy nomination
- Will guest-star on the NBC drama “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” in a recurring role as Chesley Watkins, a foster mother gone bad
Amber Benson Biography
Pretty blonde performer Amber Benson racked up numerous film and television credits before rising to fame on the popular supernatural series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Benson moved with her family to Los Angeles at age fourteen in 1991. By 1993 she had made the first of three “Jack Reed” TV-movies, “Jack Reed: Badge of Honor”, appearing as the daughter of the titular Chicago cop in this NBC entry as well as its 1994 and 1996 follow-ups. 1993 also saw the actress make her big-screen debut with featured roles in the teen thriller “The Crush” and Steven Soderbergh’s coming-of-age drama “King of the Hill”. Her relatively small but memorable parts in these very different features helped to launch the young performer’s career.
The following year she was featured in Anthony Drazan’s period drama “Imaginary Crimes” and had a pivotal supporting role in the social satire “S.F.W.”. Playing determined, pure-hearted and somewhat wise characters seemed to come easy to Benson, who brought a palpable intelligence to her powerful performances. She essayed the charmingly innocent daughter of divorced dad Randy Quaid in “Bye Bye, Love” (1995) and guest starred on an episode of the Fox series “Partners” the following year. Though her role as ‘Stoned Girl’ in the teen comedy “Can’t Hardly Wait” was drastically cut to earn a PG-13 rating, Benson soon became a familiar presence to the film’s target audience when she began appearing on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (The WB) the following year. Her 1999-2001 recurring role as the good witch who becomes more than just a friend to fellow enchantress Willow (Alyson Hannigan) saw the actress taking on controversial topics and earning the esteem of the notoriously hard-to-please “Buffy” fan base. When the series moved to UPN in 2001, Benson’s role was upgraded to that of a regular.
In connection with “Buffy”, the actress sought to broaden the scope of her talents, co-writing with novelist Christopher Golden the comic book WannaBlessedBe, based on her character on the supernatural series. Back on the big screen, Benson was featured in the festival-screened, controversy-plagued “Don’s Plum” (2001; filmed 1995-96) which was barred from domestic release as per a legal agreement mandated by the film’s stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, who allege the project was misrepresented. Taking over her own project, Benson proved a multitalented filmmaker and avid do-it-yourselfer as writer, producer, director and prime financer of “Chance” (lensed 2001), a dark comedy in which she also starred.