Even Oprah is mad at him!
I didn't see it, but apparently Oprah was picking on Jay Leno when he appeared in her show. Some coverage described Leno as whining. He did make an unkind comment about Conan's low ratings.
And apparently Oprah was siding with Conan, too. Told Leno that a joke he made about Letterman molesting his employees was "beneath him". This was in response to Letterman calling Leno "Big Jaw", or something.
Well, It's not Leno's fault he has a big jaw. But no one forced Letterman to have a love nest right there in his office where he would commit outrages against the innocence of junior staffers.
Jimmy Kimmel making fun of Leno on Oprah
"I don't think going on a comedy show and making jokes qualifies as a 'sucker punch'," he said.
He went in to say that his mistake when he went on Leno's show was thinking that Jay would have anything to say other than what was on the cue cards. He thought Leno would talk back, like comedians do.
Oprah's got nothing to brag about
Oprah's a monster. She was the one responsible for the state of these day time talk shows. Phil Donahue had a serious, respectable, informative show. The Oprah came along, stole his format and did shows on alien abductions and demonic possession. Donahue wouldn't sink to her level and he was run out. Then Oprah announced she was going to be classy for a change.
Word is that the reason she's retiring is that a new book is coming out about her and her disgusting show.
Leno and Letterman
Now, going back to the Tonight Show battle between Letterman and Leno, it seems that Johnny Carson, even though he made Leno his regular guest host, still intended to have David Letterman take over The Tonight Show, but Letterman was thwarted by Leno's backroom deals.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
And then you have the FAKE child stars
There was the case of an old man who appeared on 20/20 or some such show claiming that he played Buckwheat in the old Little Rascals movies. Now he was reduced to working as an elderly bag boy in a grocery store.
Of course it was a lie. Buckwheat worked as a technician at Technicolor and had died a few years earlier.
There have been others. Old timers who usually claim to have played a non-existent character named Stinky in the Little Rascals.
Cha-ka
There was little Phillip Paley. I remember seeing him on The Flip Wilson Show. He was a little martial artist. He got a black belt at age 9 at Chuck Norris's karate school. He flipped Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and beat up Flip Wilson.
I remember being angry about that. It was fake! He didn't really beat up Flip Wilson! He was the youngest person to have a black belt in karate, and he was slightly younger than me, which meant that I would never be the youngest person to hold a black belt in karate. The fact that I didn't study karate was beside the point.
Paley went on to play Cha-ka on Land of the Lost. He spent hours being made up, was on a set sweating all day in the ape suit.
Imagine his chagrin years later when someone called Rodney Sheppard, part of some sort of "band" called Sugar Ray falsely claimed over a number of years to have played Cha-ka. This became part of his official biography. Phillip Paley was aware of it and finally did something about when it appeared in an issue of People magazine.
Paley's lawyers sent a letter and the "musicians" put out a statement announcing that it turned out that Sheppard hadn't played Cha-ka after all.
Kenneth Anger
You can't expect complete honesty from a devil worshipper, I suppose, but Kenneth Anger, the underground filmmaker claimed for years to have played the changeling prince in the old movie, A Midsummer Night's Dream.
I don't know if Anger was in the thing at all. They list him as an extra in imdb.com. But the changeling prince was played by a girl named Sheila Brown.
I can't find the reference to it now, but Anger claimed that there was as accident during the filming and the costumes of of the children playing fairies caught fire which explained his life of sado-masochism.
Is it really so wrong?
I guess it's impossible now, with imdb.com. But if you could claim to have been a child star in a movie that never existed, would it be so terrible? Isn't show business all fake anyway? Aren't you just getting into the spirit of it?
Is it any worse than Steven Spielberg telling that stupid story about how he sneaked into a movie studio and the studio executives were so impressed them gave him a job? It was all a lie, disproven years ago. Just like his claim to have been a victim of anti-Semitism in high school. He used that story when people questioned his qualification to direct The Color Purple. Reporters went to his school expecting to do a story on how Spielberg was persecuted and instead discovered it was a lie. Which makes me doubt the rather implausible story he told after making Schindler's List---that an old timer used his concentration camp tattoo to show him that if you turn a 6 upside down, it looks like a nine.
So why should Hollywood bigwigs be the only ones allowed to lie?
Of course it was a lie. Buckwheat worked as a technician at Technicolor and had died a few years earlier.
There have been others. Old timers who usually claim to have played a non-existent character named Stinky in the Little Rascals.
Cha-ka
There was little Phillip Paley. I remember seeing him on The Flip Wilson Show. He was a little martial artist. He got a black belt at age 9 at Chuck Norris's karate school. He flipped Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and beat up Flip Wilson.
I remember being angry about that. It was fake! He didn't really beat up Flip Wilson! He was the youngest person to have a black belt in karate, and he was slightly younger than me, which meant that I would never be the youngest person to hold a black belt in karate. The fact that I didn't study karate was beside the point.
Paley went on to play Cha-ka on Land of the Lost. He spent hours being made up, was on a set sweating all day in the ape suit.
Imagine his chagrin years later when someone called Rodney Sheppard, part of some sort of "band" called Sugar Ray falsely claimed over a number of years to have played Cha-ka. This became part of his official biography. Phillip Paley was aware of it and finally did something about when it appeared in an issue of People magazine.
Paley's lawyers sent a letter and the "musicians" put out a statement announcing that it turned out that Sheppard hadn't played Cha-ka after all.
Kenneth Anger
You can't expect complete honesty from a devil worshipper, I suppose, but Kenneth Anger, the underground filmmaker claimed for years to have played the changeling prince in the old movie, A Midsummer Night's Dream.
I don't know if Anger was in the thing at all. They list him as an extra in imdb.com. But the changeling prince was played by a girl named Sheila Brown.
I can't find the reference to it now, but Anger claimed that there was as accident during the filming and the costumes of of the children playing fairies caught fire which explained his life of sado-masochism.
Is it really so wrong?
I guess it's impossible now, with imdb.com. But if you could claim to have been a child star in a movie that never existed, would it be so terrible? Isn't show business all fake anyway? Aren't you just getting into the spirit of it?
Is it any worse than Steven Spielberg telling that stupid story about how he sneaked into a movie studio and the studio executives were so impressed them gave him a job? It was all a lie, disproven years ago. Just like his claim to have been a victim of anti-Semitism in high school. He used that story when people questioned his qualification to direct The Color Purple. Reporters went to his school expecting to do a story on how Spielberg was persecuted and instead discovered it was a lie. Which makes me doubt the rather implausible story he told after making Schindler's List---that an old timer used his concentration camp tattoo to show him that if you turn a 6 upside down, it looks like a nine.
So why should Hollywood bigwigs be the only ones allowed to lie?
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Meeno Peluce
Meeno Peluce. He's Punky Brewster's brother. He was one of the kids in the original Amityville Horror movie. He even seemed to have done a stunt, falling on the basement stairs.
Later he played Tanner in The Bad New Bears TV series, he played the kid on a western sit-com, Best of the West, and, finally, he was the kid in the series Voyagers, which was sort of a cross between Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits and the TV show Quantum Leap. I read he works as a photographer now---I'm not sure.
As a child actor, Meeno had a knack for crying. I hope he was one of those kids who could cry on cue, because if not, the demands of the show must have left him an emotional wreck. He was to crying what Bruce Lee was to martial arts. Well. What Ernie Reyes, Jr., was to martial arts.
I remember him from Best of the West, which I sort of liked at the time. Meeno's TV father went on to be Ricky Schroder's TV father on Silver Spoons. I had seen but didn't remember him in The Bad News Bears TV show which I didn't like. And I did remember him in The Amityville Horror. I wondered how they got him to do his own stunt, or if they somehow got a tiny stunt double for him. Maybe he just tripped and fell and they kept the cameras rolling.
Anyway, I don't really have anything to say about him. I just happened to come across a set of DVDs of the show Voyagers.
Meeno's co-star on the show, Jon-Erik Hexum died just a year after the show left the air. He was killed in a tragic accident with a prop gun on the set of another show.
It's surprising when you look at the number of actors who have been injured or killed on the job.
Dick York's career ended because of a back injury he suffered in a movie. William Shatner's ears have been ringing ever since an episode of Star Trek where an explosion was set off too close to him---he was close to suicide because of it once. If you've seen the movie Ed Wood, you know about Bela Lugosi's problem. Linda Blair suffered a broken back in The Exorcist. No one knew about it at the time, but it caused her problems later, and Ellen Burstyn has suffered back problems because of a shot where she falls on the floor in that movie.
Noah Hathaway did a number of his own stunts in The Neverending Story, even though he was only about 12. But before filming began, they took him out to practice horseback riding for the movie. He fell off the horse and broke his back. He was in the hospital for a month before filming on the movie began. Years later, he was working as a dancer but had to quit because of back problems.
Roy Kinnear, who appeared in Help! and Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother was killed in a horseback riding accident while filming The Return of the Musketeers.
Acting is surprisingly dangerous work. And there are other unpleasant things about it.
In a TV documentary about The Brady Bunch, they talked about their Hawaiian vacation episode.
Peter really didn't want the tarantula on him. But he had to do it.
Sherwood Schwartz didn't care. He just said that there was more to being an actor than saying your lines.
Ellen Burstyn tells young actors not to be generous with their bodies. Don't volunteer to do stunts. It's not worth it.
And directors need to be extremely careful about the health of safety of their cast and crew.
Charles Grodin, writing about the filming of the movie King Kong mentioned that the director did not want to risk having actors run through a real jungle. It was too dangerous. He had to fight with Dino De Larentis over spending the money to construct a set for the scene.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Poor Conan
Yes, he's lost his battle. Walking away with $40 million. Combined with what Leno and everyone else is being paid, this may cost NBC close to the $100 million that the U.S. government has promised in aid to Haiti.
There was the movie Night Shift some years ago about the last fight over the Tonight Show between David Letterman and Jay Leno. It presented Leno as a very nice guy who was oblivious to what his obnoxious manager was doing---she helped push Carson out of the way by spreading a false story that he was retiring. This prompted Carson to actually announce his retirement. In the movie, we see Leno on the phone with Johnny assuring him that he had nothing to do with the rumor.
I don't know to what degree the present situation hurts Leno's image.
NBC had a couple of reasons for doing what they did. Five years ago, they didn't want Conan O'Brien leaving NBC and going to another network for a better time slot. So five years ago, they told him they'd give him the Tonight Show now.
Then, when the five years was up and it was time for Conan to get The Tonight Show, they didn't want Leno going to another network since he'd take his audience with him and crush Conan in the ratings. So they moved him to 10 p.m.
Leno did badly at 10 p.m., as they probably expected. The Tonight Show never had a large audience compared to prime time programs. But now he gave Conan a bad lead-in, so the new Tonight Show did even worse than expected.
So, Conan is finished. Too bad. At least he collected a substantial consolation prize.
Conan tap dancing
I saw interviews with Conan early on when he started hosting Late Night. He did what most of these people do. Tried to present his success as a fulfillment of destiny. He talked about how he had demanded tap dancing lessons as a child. He wanted to be an all-around entertainer even then.
Seems to be a common thing. Bernardo Bertolucci claimed that, as a child, when he played with other children, he would order them around, acting like a movie director even then.
Mike Lookinland (TV's Bobby Brady) was more modest in his claims to destiny and his actual achievement. He works in Hollywood as an assistant camera operator. He focuses the camera. And he pointed to the home movie camera Robert Reed gave him for Christmas as the thing that started it all.
Successful people and luck
Here's what I think.
If a highly successful person says he doesn't believe in luck, it means he got to where he is through sheer luck.
If a highly successful person modestly says that he was just lucky, then he clawed his way to top by committing some monstrous act he hopes nobody finds out about.
There was the movie Night Shift some years ago about the last fight over the Tonight Show between David Letterman and Jay Leno. It presented Leno as a very nice guy who was oblivious to what his obnoxious manager was doing---she helped push Carson out of the way by spreading a false story that he was retiring. This prompted Carson to actually announce his retirement. In the movie, we see Leno on the phone with Johnny assuring him that he had nothing to do with the rumor.
I don't know to what degree the present situation hurts Leno's image.
NBC had a couple of reasons for doing what they did. Five years ago, they didn't want Conan O'Brien leaving NBC and going to another network for a better time slot. So five years ago, they told him they'd give him the Tonight Show now.
Then, when the five years was up and it was time for Conan to get The Tonight Show, they didn't want Leno going to another network since he'd take his audience with him and crush Conan in the ratings. So they moved him to 10 p.m.
Leno did badly at 10 p.m., as they probably expected. The Tonight Show never had a large audience compared to prime time programs. But now he gave Conan a bad lead-in, so the new Tonight Show did even worse than expected.
So, Conan is finished. Too bad. At least he collected a substantial consolation prize.
Conan tap dancing
I saw interviews with Conan early on when he started hosting Late Night. He did what most of these people do. Tried to present his success as a fulfillment of destiny. He talked about how he had demanded tap dancing lessons as a child. He wanted to be an all-around entertainer even then.
Seems to be a common thing. Bernardo Bertolucci claimed that, as a child, when he played with other children, he would order them around, acting like a movie director even then.
Mike Lookinland (TV's Bobby Brady) was more modest in his claims to destiny and his actual achievement. He works in Hollywood as an assistant camera operator. He focuses the camera. And he pointed to the home movie camera Robert Reed gave him for Christmas as the thing that started it all.
Successful people and luck
Here's what I think.
If a highly successful person says he doesn't believe in luck, it means he got to where he is through sheer luck.
If a highly successful person modestly says that he was just lucky, then he clawed his way to top by committing some monstrous act he hopes nobody finds out about.
Nancy Kerrigan's Brother Charged With Assault | Father Dies | Video
Daniel was found unresponsive in his Massachusetts home Sunday morning. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. It is unclear is the attack caused his death. Autopsy results are pending.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Miley Cyrus desperate to get married
The 17-year-old star, who recently denied that she is engaged to Hemsworth, has been joking to pals about the possibility of changing her name to match her 18-year-old boyfriend's.
"Miley is crazy in love with Liam and keeps joking that Miley Hemsworth sounds so fancy and sophisticated. She says she can't wait to turn 18 this year so she that could do whatever she wants even if it means marrying her boyfriend," said a source.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Miley Cyrus supports suicide prevention campaign
Hannah Montana actress Miley Cyrus is lending her support to a suicide prevention group to help land them a 625,000-pound grant.
The 17-year-old star shot for a video calling out fans to vote for the To Write Love On Her Arms organisation to win the Chase Community Giving program.
“I don’t think people really realise what a problem (suicide) is and how many people really struggle with depression and end up taking their lives for it, especially so many young people out there so I think it’s really important we all get involved,” the Daily Express quoted her as saying.
“The money will go towards the launch of a live online crisis network which will be really amazing for all these people that just need a family and community.
“I think it’s an amazing cause and I really want everyone to go out there and get involved,” she added.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
How To Save on Your Wedding
Having a beautiful wedding doesn't have to equal to breaking the bank. Here are some ideas on how you can save on your wedding.
1. Don't Invite People Who Don't Matter
A wedding is an event for the family so don't go inviting people who don't really matter. As a wise friend once said, "it's your wedding not a political gathering." Also a wedding is not a popularity contest. Limit your guest list to family and friends you are really close with to avoid stress.
2. Get Only a Photographer's Service
If you are low on cash, you can opt to just get the services of a photographer and have your album printed later on. There are a lot of shops now in malls offering such services. They even provide nice layouts that is easy to follow for people who are not that adept in album lay outing.
3. Forget the Cake
A wedding cake can be really costly so for people on the budget you can choose not to have one custom made for you. Ask your caterer if a cake is included in their package and settle for that. If in case a cake is not included, you can push to have that included as a freebie instead.
4. Ride Your Own Car
If you have your own car or if your family has their own car then there's no need for you to rent one for your wedding. A wedding car can range from P4,000-P15,000. Imagine the dent that will make to your wallet! So let go of your dream of having a vintage car. What's important is you have something to ride on to go to your wedding.
5. Ditch the Free Dresses
If you are strapped for cash then you can ask your entourage to shoulder their own attire for your wedding. People who really care for you will be more than happy to do so. Or you can just rent. A lot of bridal shops allow couples to rent dresses of their own design and for first time use. So it's like having one custom made for your entourage but for a much much lower price.
1. Don't Invite People Who Don't Matter
A wedding is an event for the family so don't go inviting people who don't really matter. As a wise friend once said, "it's your wedding not a political gathering." Also a wedding is not a popularity contest. Limit your guest list to family and friends you are really close with to avoid stress.
2. Get Only a Photographer's Service
If you are low on cash, you can opt to just get the services of a photographer and have your album printed later on. There are a lot of shops now in malls offering such services. They even provide nice layouts that is easy to follow for people who are not that adept in album lay outing.
3. Forget the Cake
A wedding cake can be really costly so for people on the budget you can choose not to have one custom made for you. Ask your caterer if a cake is included in their package and settle for that. If in case a cake is not included, you can push to have that included as a freebie instead.
4. Ride Your Own Car
If you have your own car or if your family has their own car then there's no need for you to rent one for your wedding. A wedding car can range from P4,000-P15,000. Imagine the dent that will make to your wallet! So let go of your dream of having a vintage car. What's important is you have something to ride on to go to your wedding.
5. Ditch the Free Dresses
If you are strapped for cash then you can ask your entourage to shoulder their own attire for your wedding. People who really care for you will be more than happy to do so. Or you can just rent. A lot of bridal shops allow couples to rent dresses of their own design and for first time use. So it's like having one custom made for your entourage but for a much much lower price.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
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