“Were doing Gods work, proclaimed David Shore, creator of the Fox medical drama “House. He was responding to a woman who runs a foundation for or rather, against — vasculitis (and for those who suffer from it), who thanked him for bringing awareness to the disease by mentioning it on the show. He was also kidding.
It was “Houses turn for the Museum of TV and Radio’s Paley TV Festival treatment tonight at the DGA. An audience that was a little more fawning toward the stars and creators than the “My Name is Earl crowd was the night before were treated to an upcoming episode in which House the crank played by Hugh Laurie whose medical brilliance is rivaled only by his anti-social misanthropy got to solve a crime as well as a medical mystery.
The panel discussion afterwards was a little foursquare, nuts-and-bolts affair for a while, detailing the shows creation in a fashion that if you were enough of a fan of the show to attend the event, you had probably already read in one or more articles on the series. Creator David Shore joked, “I tend to take all my characters and attach the word `hostile in their descriptions. Or maybe that one wasnt a joke.
But things got more interesting when the actors started talking out of school. Robert Sean Leonard decried the kind of scripts actors receive: “Just watch the Sid and Marty Kroft Saturday morning shows thats what most scripts you get are.
He discussed, for example, an audition for the CBS cop procedural “Numb3rs: “I said, ‘Really interesting the guy solves crimes with math. Thats the dumbest idea Ive ever heard.
It was revealed that a Fox executive balked initially at casting Lisa Edelstein as hospital administrator Lisa Cuddy because the suit couldnt imagine her, of all things, as a woman. See, she had appeared on “Ally McBeal as a man in the middle of a sex-change operation. “I hadnt cut off my penis yet, Edelstein offered.
”Cuddys back story hasnt come out yet, cracked Jennifer Morrison, who plays Dr. Cameron.
Couple of general observations: Before each Festival event, they run a series of clips from each TV program being honored this season and, for some reason, some people in the audience find the need to applaud their favorites (whatever’s on that night’s schedule gets the loudest cheer, naturally). Both nights I’ve attended, no one has applauded “How I Met Your Mother” or “Everybody Hates Chris.”
Also: If you arrive early, you’ll still probably have to park down on the third level of the parking lot — you might even have to hand over your keys to an attendant — and it’ll take an ungodly amount of time to escape after the event. (The parking lot across from the DGA is gone, which accounts for the traffic headache.) But, as I discovered last night: Show up just as the program’s about to begin and they’ll slip you into the street-level lot and you’ll be the first one out. (Imagine the nightmare if everyone actually tried this.)
