Celebrity deaths come in threes, the morbid diktat informs us. But they rarely occur over a single weekend, as was the case when TV fans lost Don Knotts, Darren McGavin and Dennis Weaver in the past 72 hours. Knotts won five Emmys for his signature creation, the fretfully goggle-eyed Barney Fife, on “The Andy Griffith Show.� Weaver won one, not for what has become his best-known character, “McCloud,� but for playing the limping deputy Chester on the long-running series “Gunsmoke.� McGavin, contrary to what the AP story in today’s Daily News reported, never won an Emmy (he was nominated once for playing “Murphy Brown’s� father), but he did win a Cable ACE, an award so prestigious they’ve quit handing them out (imagine that, in an era where a new awards show seems to pop up every other week). His most beloved character was Carl Kolchak, the glibly beleaguered reporter/monster hunter of “The Night Stalker� telefilms and TV series. All three men died in their 80s after extended illnesses. I have powerfully uninteresting anecdotes about all three.

I met Knotts almost a decade ago at a session of Yarmy’s Army, a private gathering of comedians and comic actors who mainly emerged in the ’60s. It was created as a support group to help Dick Yarmy, Don Adams’ brother, as he was dying of cancer. It evolved into a monthly bull session where the group – Adams, Gary Owens (who was nice enough to invite me; otherwise, civilians can’t attend these dinners, though the group occasionally put on public performances), Jack Riley, Harvey Corman, Tim Conway, Peter Marshall, Pat McCormick and the list goes on – would meet at a local steakhouse and spend a couple of hours trying to outdo one another with their latest jokes and amusing reminiscences of some admittedly long careers in showbiz. Adams, who died last September, told a particularly amusing story of some Vaudeville misadventures with Mae West. Knotts was frail even at the time, but he had enough energy to do a brief routine that got laughs, and, as all have said about him, was unfailingly charming and polite.

TV Land will present the best of Barney Tuesday from 8-11 p.m. and, beginning at 6 a.m. Saturday, run a 48-hour marathon of his work on "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Three's Company."

I was a huge fan of “The Night Stalker� when I was a kid, so wrote my first – and last – fan letter to Darren McGavin. He never responded. I learned the probable reason why years later, when, visiting the White House set of the movie “Dave,� I saw stacks and stacks of fan letters to whatever teen-idol TV star was hot at the time lying unopened and being used as props in the secretaries’ office mail bins. I also tried to interview McGavin last summer for a story on the new (and since-cancelled) “Night Stalker� series that I ended up scrapping; he was too ill even then to speak with reporters. (A son of Richard Matheson, who wrote the script for the original TV-movie, erroneously told me then that McGavin was dead. Well, he’s right now.) McGavin was famously irascible – while working on the “Night Stalker� series, whose monsters-of-the-week got increasingly silly, he reportedly led what amounted to an open revolt, arguing with producers over the show’s direction and, in the end, purportedly begged ABC to cancel the show. (His plea wasn’t really necessary, as the show wasn’t exactly what you’d call a hit, even though the first TV movie was, at the time, the highest-rated in history.)

McGavin also appeared on “Gunsmoke,� though Weaver’s presence on the series was one of the most memorable things about the show. I was offered an interview with Weaver upon the publication of his 2001 autobiography “All the World’s a Stage,� but the interview was to focus, as I recall, on his ecological concerns (he created something called the Institute of Ecolonomics, which melded the environment and the economy) and his charity, so I passed. Oh, well. His Colorado ranch, which includes an energy-efficient luxury home he deemed the “Earthship,� is available for sale through his website for $3.75 million, if you’re interested.

Posted by David Kronke at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As good as the Oscar nominees may be, could they have been even better had the characters from the sundry films bumped into one another?

Probably not.

“Hustle and Flow� and “Crash:�

Cameron: That last awards ceremony may not have worked out so well for us, but I’m feeling really good about tonight! I think “Date My Mom� has the inside track for the Best Reality Series Emmy!
Christine: And the helicopter footage of the last time I tried to escape from LAPD in a car chase is up for a local Emmy, which got me my SAG card!
DJay: Hey, hey, sorry to interrupt, but I’m in town trying to launch my new single, and in the meantime, I need to make me some money. What about you, young lady – you wanna work for me? You’re so fine I’ll give you a special deal – we split everything 60/40.
Christine: What?
Cameron: That’s my wife, you lowlife.
DJay: Whoa – take a look at you! You almost as handsome as me!
Cameron: Why, you’re practically my doppelganger!
DJay: Not only that, you practically my lookalike!
Cameron: You might be family – I’ll put you on the payroll at my production company.
DJay: It’s all pimpin’.

“Brokeback Mountain’s� Ennis and Jack visit the Los Angeles of “Crash� and bump into “Transamerica’s� Bree as a bonus:

Jack (on Santa Monica Blvd.): When they said there were hills and canyons here, I expected something different.
Ennis: No sheep to herd, either, ’cept for all those people we saw amblin’ ’round talkin’ on them teeny little phones.
Officer Ryan: So, what do we have here? Well, well: a couple of midnight cowboys.
Jack: We just wanted to do a little fishing together.
Officer Ryan: Fishing for what, eh? I should warn you: Like everyone else in Los Angeles, I’m just an unbridled cauldron of seething hatred for anything different from myself, so I’m going to have to do something unspeakable to you guys.
(Officer Ryan proceeds to do something unspeakable.)
Ennis (philosophically): If you can’t fix it, you gotta stand it.
Bree: Toby? Is that you? I’ve been searching for my reprobate son – officer, what are you doing to them?
Officer Ryan (taking in Bree): Oh, God, it just keeps getting worse – I’d pray for an apocalyptic storm of frogs to cleanse this city, but that movie didn’t come out this year.

“Capote� is wished “Good Night, and Good Luck.:�

Edward R. Murrow (on his celebrity-interview show): Now that you’ve taken the literary world by storm, will there be a Mrs. Capote soon?
Truman Capote: Silly boy.. I’d like another Mr. Capote, though.
Edward R. Murrow: Ohhh…
Truman Capote: Now Eddie, you yourself said we will not walk in fear of one another…

“Syriana� and “The Constant Gardener� erupt in an orgy of conspiracy theories:

Tessa Quayle: My research has revealed that in order to facilitate the movement of oil from the Middle East to America, you’ve had a pipeline built under the Red Sea connecting Saudi Arabia to the Sudan to avoid attacks from Islamic extemists, and when Africans learned of it and threatened to protest, you inoculated them with fatal tuberculosis vaccines. Right?
Bob Barnes: Yeah. Kind of amazing Oliver Stone wasn’t involved with either of our movies, isn’t it?
Tessa Quayle: My only other question is, why would a couple of thinking-person’s sex symbols expend all their energy getting involved with such nonsense? Shouldn’t we just be making out?

“Walk the Line’s� Johnny Cash hires Jack and Ennis as back-up singers:

Johnny Cash: You good ole boys have the look – so raw, so honest.
Jack: You have a real good fashion sense yourself, Mr. Cash. The all-black thing really works for you.
Johnny Cash: Well said, young fella. Now, boys, all you have to remember is hit your marks and keep away from my autoharp player – that one is mine, all mine.
Ennis: That shouldn’t be a problem, sir.
Johnny Cash: Great. Want some pills?

Edward R. Murrow uncovers the “Munich� plot:

Murrow: Weren’t you paying attention when I came out with that whole “We will not walk in fear of one another� thing?
Avner: Yes, Mr. Murrow. You can’t imagine the devastating emotional scars my assignment has seared upon my soul.
Murrow: Save it for “Oprah,� pal. McCarthy was behind this, wasn’t he? Or was it the contemporary figures for which our respective movies used our tales as metaphors?

“Capote� visits “Brokeback Mountain:�

Oh, please, I think we all know where this one is going.

Posted by David Kronke at 1:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everyone who gets into the entertainment-industry business, no matter how tangentially, has that one film or TV experience in his or her youth that served as an irrevocable hook. (Except, of course, for some of those who came of age after the mid-to-late ’80s, when the allure of easy fame and money rather than artistic expression became just as compelling, as fawning “Entertainment Tonight� profiles began boasting about as much aesthetic merit as most Hollywood movies.) For me, it was Robert Altman’s 1975 masterpiece “Nashville.�

Altman, who turned 81 today, will receive a (some believe) long overdue Oscar next month, one of those nebulous “lifetime achievement� deals, a traditional Academy mea culpa acknowledging its penchant for rewarding work that’s more of-the-moment than enduring (can an honorary Oscar for Martin Scorsese be far behind?). In Altman's career, he's been 0-for-7 at the Oscars (including two nominations for producing Best Picture nominees). But then, as a self-styled maverick who preferred butting heads with studio executives over adhering to traditional narrative storytelling, that seems as it should be – you can scarcely be an outsider when the august body overseeing your craft rewards you for your craftiness, for your repeated refusal to play by their rules. He’d likely agree – he has always enjoyed trashing the Hollywood system to appreciative interviewers.

Terrence Rafferty offered an excellent appreciation of Altman over the weekend in The New York Times (linked below), and I’m not going to try to compete with his insights and eloquence (besides, he was earning big-NYT-bucks, while I’m just slipping in a blog entry around my other duties). In it, he celebrated all the things for which Altman has been praised in the past – his subtly sinewy camerawork, which sort of drank in his spectacles rather than forcing viewers to focus on specific actions; his use of overlapping dialogue (which probably alienated as many viewers as it enchanted); his loose, improvisational way of letting scenes and stories play out; his multi-plot approach to filmmaking in which, frequently, his movies didn’t so much offer a through-line as a tapestry of life proceeding apace. (Altman’s multi-character, multi-plot approach to movies inspired much of the best TV of the past quarter-century, from “Hill Street Blues� on.)

But Rafferty also underscored Altman’s essentially misanthropic view of life. Occasionally, the director was assailed as sexist – many complained about the treatment in “Nashville� of Gwen Welles’ delusional aspiring-singer character, when she’s forced to strip at a political fundraiser. But that incident cuts both ways – it’s the cynicism and boorishness of the men running and attending said fundraiser that forces her humiliation; the scene is far more critical of the male mindset than of women. And when Julianne Moore delivered a lengthy monologue in “Short Cuts� naked below the waist, many complained that it was gratuitously provocative; Altman’s private response, I’m sure, was a simple, “Oh, grow up.� We’re all adults here; people stand around naked in real life quite a bit. Not every movie has to be aimed at teenagers.

But there was an essential pessimism in Altman’s finest work, and that seems to be one of the things that ensures it endures. “Nashville� was so far ahead of its time that it still seems fresh (except, of course, for the garish now-period '70s costumes). It insightfully captured – 30 years ago – the overwhelming emptiness of political campaigns and TV coverage thereof, dependent upon glib soundbites rather than substance. Its assessment of ordinary people seeking fame, however ill-advisedly, resonates even more in a world saturated by reality TV. It understood the nexus of the worlds of politics and entertainment in ways the rest of us only began to clue into in the past decade or so, and it foresaw just how rampant voter apathy was to become – after the climactic tragedy at a political rally at film’s end, the benumbed, overwhelmed masses can find no other way to respond but by joining in a singalong, to a ditty entitled “It Don’t Worry Me.�

I remember as a teen watching “Nashville,� and even then absorbing its characters’ anomie. I remember, in particular, the scene where the addled country superstar played by Ronee Blakley arrives at the city airport surrounded by media hoopla – TV reporters, a crush of fans, even a marching band (an actual local high-school outfit) – and thinking that Altman was using those baton twirlers as a criticism of their own triviality. And I wondered, were I in that scene, would I have been angry to have been tricked like that or just happy to have been in a Robert Altman film?

“Nashville� concluded a stunning run of films, which began in 1970 with “M*A*S*H� and included “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,� “The Long Goodbye,� “California Split,� “Brewster McCloud� (whose willful eccentricities dated itself so quickly that it may have come out on the other side and feel kind of kicky now – or maybe it’s still a mess) and “Thieves Like Us.� Each of those films offered uncomfortable thoughts on an America that eats its own, on little guys repeatedly punished for their aspirations.

After that, for a while, his work seemed a bit too fueled by the chemicals that were available in ample supplies at the time (which is not to say that the aforementioned films didn’t suggest such an influence, just that there was still a focus beyond that). Naturally, he fell out of favor, particularly when he put his own topspin on what was supposed to become a tent-pole franchise, 1980’s “Popeye.�

He drifted through the ’80s, retreating to Europe and generally creating more modest efforts (“Secret Honor,� “Fool For Love,� “Vincent and Theo,� HBO’s “Tanner ’88,� which sort of kicked off the continuing trend of having real-life individuals play themselves and tweak their personae), even some TV stuff. He may have reached a nadir with “O.C. and Stiggs,� which seemed to want to layer “M*A*S*H’s� deadpan nihilism over a stupid teen sex farce, with predictable results. You wonder: What studio executive in his right mind would’ve let Robert Altman direct a teen comedy?

“The Player,� “Short Cuts,� “Gosford Park� and, to a lesser extent, “Cookie’s Fortune� re-established him in the ’90s and beyond, though none of those movies really carry the sheer eye-opening wallop of his best work. He has another movie on the way, “A Prairie Home Companion,� featuring writer Garrison Keillor alongside the sort of jaw-dropping cast that is a hallmark of Altman movies: Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, Robin Williams (all Oscar winners), Woody Harrelson, Lily Tomlin, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly (all Oscar nominees) and – huh? – Lindsay Lohan.

Was Altman robbed any of the years he was up for an Oscar? In 1971, when Altman was up for the anti-war “M*A*S*H,� Franklin Schaffner won for “Patton,� which you could argue was a case of establishment politics seeming to guide the decision, although “Patton� is the sort of bracing, sober-minded film that will always triumph over an anarchic comedy. Milos Forman won for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest� when Altman was up for “Nashville,� Clint Eastwood won for “Unforgiven� when Altman was nominated for “The Player,� Steven Spielberg, up to 1993 another perennial snub, received an Oscar for “Schindler’s List� when Altman’s offering was “Short Cuts� and Ron Howard rode the “Beautiful Mind� juggernaut to victory when Altman was competing with “Gosford Park.� The decision as to whether he was more deserving in any of those years is yours.

Nonetheless, the honorary Oscar should make for a nice belated birthday gift.

Terrence Rafferty’s appreciation of Altman

Posted by David Kronke at 3:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like most guys from Cincinnati, George Clooney likes his hometown's chili,

a weird brew with mealy ground beef and a zing derived from -- get this -- cinnamon. I admit I like it too, having eaten my share of Skyline Chili as a University of Cincinnati student. So back in 2000, when he gave me an exceptionally good interview a few days before his live television production of "Fail Safe," I thought it was appropriate for me to send him a little gift -- a couple of packets of Cincinnati chili seasoning. I reminded him of it Monday...

... at the Oscar nominees' luncheon where he was savoring three nominations for "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "Syriana."
"Yeah!" he said with a laugh. "I want to thank you for my clean colon!" No problem, George.

Posted by Valerie Kuklenski at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The motion picture academy has tapped Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies, Variety columnist and all-around Oscars historian, to be the official "celebrity greeter" on the red carpet. Osborne will introduce and interview any celeb who stops by his post. We presume he'll leave the breast-tweaking and underwear inquiries to Isaac Mizrahi of "E!"

Osborne takes over for veteran Variety Hollywood observer Army Archerd, a fixture at the ceremonies for decades who this year gets to take part in the arrivals from the other side of the microphone. The academy says even Army doesn't know when he started that job. We hope he enjoys the evening off -- and gets one of the best seats in the house for the ceremony.

Posted by Valerie Kuklenski at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Major proof why nobody gets excited about movies anymore:

The Writers Guild picked the two most obvious choices, Brokeback Mountain for adapted and Crash for original screenplays, at its awards ceremony Saturday.
Forget quality for a moment (Brokeback's a brilliant script and Crash is half-ludicrous, but that's not the issue). These are the two movies that official Hollywood has annointed 2005's best, and the writers, of all the people in this town, should be thinking more imaginatively.
But maybe this explains why so many movies these days are interchangeable, formula horror pictures, romantic comedies, fantasy epics and pop-reference cartoons

Posted by Bob Strauss at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hard to believe, but the Razzies, an awards group mocking the worst Hollywood has to offer (at least, ostensibly), has become an institution: Its founders announced their 26th annual nominees for 2005. Worst Picture nominees include "Son of the Mask" -- which I'm pretty sure no one with a discernible IQ saw, but still managed to lead all Razzie comers with eight nominations -- alongside "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo," "The Dukes of Hazzard," "House of Wax" and "Dirty Love." About all of which, here's guessing, that earlier caveat could be applied. (Can you imagine film critics at screenings for these movies, realizing they could probably rob everyone else in the theater of their life savings simply through rudimentary card tricks -- which obviously would not amount to a lot of cash, but still?)
All well and good, but this year, at least, it seems the Razzies're shooting fish in a barrel. Of course those movies were crap aimed at subliterates (or even worse -- has anybody even heard of the Jenny McCarthy movie "Dirty Love?"); they never aspired to anything but. So by that measure, at least, they're actually successful. So why pick on them?
More interesting to me are movies that think they're significant and yet are so misguided that you can only hope you can crawl out of the theater before you choke on your own vomit. For example: David Duchovny's epicly pretentious "House of D," the first movie of thousands I've seen in which I knew I would hate it based on the very first line of dialogue (or, more specifically, self-important voice-over narration). In case you wondered what, among so many other things, made this movie so particularly jaw-droppingly awful, here's six words: Robin Williams plays a retarded janitor.
And that's just one. I'm sure you sat through plenty you could add to the list.
Anyway, the point is, eviscerating "Son of Mask" et al doesn't strike me as very interesting, and, I'm guessing, it doesn't engage anyone else, either. So the Razzie folks decided to created some gratuitous categories involving tabloid stories to allow them to take some easy shots at Tom Cruise. Hey, Razzie folks -- you review movies, not people's life choices; let the pundits make fun of the idiots who misguidedly decide they're experts on "issues." And be guttier: Find higher-profile and more provocative movies to make fun of, rather than run-of-the-mill dreck that took their requisite knocks from professional critics way back when they were released.
By the way, is there an award for people who dump on people who dump on other people? Because, you know, there simply aren't enough awards given out in Hollywood every year.

Posted by David Kronke at 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The woman who has styled Oscars red-carpet looks for Courtney Love, Madonna and Aimee Mann has a new client to prep for the Academy Awards next month: herself.

Arianne Phillips, stylist to some of the world’s most trendsetting singers and actresses, was the wardrobe wizard on "Walk the Line," nominated for Best Costume Design. What’s interesting about this accolade is that it brings a thread of costume-designer history full circle. In the old days before stars had stylists, they would lean on costume designers for a little extra help at Oscar-time, sometimes ending up in frocks dusted off from studio wardrobe closets. Nowadays costume designers rarely do personal styling for stars, but Phillips is an exception: in between designing costumes for Madonna’s tours, she’ll do a movie here, a music video there, a magazine editorial here, a book there. Not only is Phillips an energetic maverick, she’s also a rare bird in that she is already talking about whom she’ll wear to the Academy Awards. “I will probably wear a dress that my assistant costume designer on Walk the Line will design,� she tells ClothesHoarse. “His name is Carlos Rosario.� We hope Rosario is ready for the aftermath: when Phillips dressed Madonna for the '97 Oscars (above) in Olivier Theyskens, the unknown Belgian designer pole-vaulted to almost unmanageable stardom. Now he's designing the venerable French line Rochas.

Posted by at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

David Wild is a busy man these days, so it was very impudent of me to pester him, but I have his email address, so there wasn’t much he could do about it. He’s a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine and has written a few books, including the “Friends�’ farewell retrospective two years back. But the reason he’s appearing in this blog is he writes awards shows – in the past, he’s done the Emmy Awards, the MTV Movie Awards, the People’s Choice Awards among others (he received an Emmy nomination himself for co-writing the post-9/11 tribute special “America: A Tribute to Heroes�). Today, he’s working 24/7 as head writer for the 48th annual Grammy Awards, airing Feb. 6 on CBS. And, as you’ll find out in this little Q&A, not only is he a busy man, but he’s a very diplomatic fellow, as well.
Q: What's the biggest challenge in writing an awards show?
A: My biggest challenge is to keep things moving, to get out of the way of all the much more talented people onstage, and to get invited to all the afterparties.

Q: How much of the music do you have to listen to in order to write the Emmy ceremony? How much of it do you like?
A: I listen to all sorts of music constantly -- the only difference is that the Grammys provide me with the perfect excuse to my family. Often my wife will have to say, "Boys, leave Daddy alone, he's busy listening to Kanye West for work."
Q: How much of the writing is comic material and how much is place-keeping stuff like "He's the funniest man in America; she's not: Ladies and Gentlemen, Jim Carrey and Dame Judy Dench?"
A: I write jokes. I write serious stuff. Sometimes I write jokes that turn out to be serious stuff. Sadly, I do not write the songs. (Blogger's note: This apparent reference to Barry Manilow strips Mr. Wild of half the cool points he earned for the Kanye West shout-out. Sorry, but those are the rules.)
Q: How do you feel when presenters mess up their lines or go off-script?
A: As for messing up, I cannot imagine such a circumstance. In terms of people going off-script? I prefer to think of it as celebrating the improvisational spirit at the heart of so much of our finest musical expression.
Q: How often does something bizarre happen during a ceremony that forces you to hastily write a bunch of punchlines referring to it? What was the oddest thing that happened on a show you worked on?
A: Suffice to say, live TV is never boring. The most surreal experience was having the leader of the free world tell my joke -- not the current one, the guy from a place called Hope. Upon reflection, I'd have to say these questions are the oddest things I've ever had to respond to. (Blogger's note: And that observation, from a guy who wrote Les Moonves' material when he presented CBS's May upfronts.)
Q: Is there any sort of factors that can predict how professional a presenter will be? Such as, say, a presenter who's just there to plug an upcoming project not taking it very seriously as opposed to someone who's dedicated to their work?
A: I love all my presenters -- they're like my children. Except the kid presenters, who are like my adults.
Q: How far in advance do you know the winners?
A: I know the winners when the viewers do -- sometimes later because I'm backstage sweating. In fact, I'm sweating right now.

Posted by David Kronke at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)