Three of the best and brightest days of my entire TV career where the days when I had Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds as guests on my VH1 talk show back in the late 1980s. Carrie was one on show. Debbie made two appearances. All three appearances drew big laughs and affection from the entire floor crew. After Debbie had taped her second appearance with me, she hung around. She stayed in the studio and stood behind one of my cameramen to watch me interview my next guest. She didn't like my next guest. She felt she was a cold fish. The crew felt the same way. So did I. Debbie was exactly like Shirley MacLaine as Doris Mann in the POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE party sequence when she coaxes her actress daughter, Suzanne Vale, to sing a song for the guests. I guess that's absolutely no surprise since Doris Mann was based on Debbie Reynolds in a screenplay written by Carrie Fisher. The screenplay was based on Carrie's novel of the same name. Now Debbie's son and Carrie's beloved brother has written a book. He calls it a "love letter" and a "thank you note."
I have got to get his book. I found out about it by reading a May 30th question and answer interview with Todd Fisher that Jamie Blynn conducted for usmagazine.com in the magazine's entertainment section. His poignant answers made me misty-eyed. If his answers did that -- like his answers about his final moments with his movie star mom after Carrie's untimely passing -- then his book will probably have me sobbing. The title of the Todd Fisher memoir is MY GIRLS: A LIFETIME with CARRIE AND DEBBIE. It hits bookstores this month.
Debbie Reynolds had won a special place in my heart ever since I was a little boy and saw her on local TV in the movie SUSAN SLEPT HERE. There were so many Saturday afternoons in my youth when I used my student discount card and enjoyed a Debbie Reynolds movie as a weekend matinee, movies of hers that don't often get mentioned but movies that gave me a lot of enjoyment as I sat in that air conditioned theater with some popcorn and a soda. Movies like GOODBYE, CHARLIE and THE SINGING NUN...DIVORCE, AMERICAN STYLE and HOW SWEET IT IS. When Mom surprised me with a reserved seat ticket to see THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN one Saturday afternoon at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, that was like an early Christmas Day.
I still feel that Debbie Reynolds was a terrifically talented yet under-appreciated Hollywood star. She truly was a triple threat actress. She sang, she danced, and she could really act when given a chance to exercise her dramatic muscles. Take another look at the steeliness of her New York City dance hall character in THE RAT RACE (1960) and the frustration of her Hollywood could-have-been character in WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? (1971). Debbie Reynolds should have been a Best Actress Oscar nominee for the wise, witty Albert Brooks comedy/drama MOTHER (1996) and, around that time, Hollywood should have honored Debbie with a special Oscar. She worked tirelessly for decades to preserve Hollywood history acquiring classic costumes and props were museum-worthy. She was Hollywood's top ambassador and she worked tirelessly to help others. As Ruta Lee said at Debbie's memorial, Debbie gave and raised money to help the less fortunate. She'd always say "You can never go wrong asking for something to help someone else."
As for Carrie, she was more than her internationally famous Princess Leia character from STAR WARS. She should've gotten a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE. She was brilliant writer with a crackling, devastating wit that made her novels and memoirs such fabulous and rich brain food. She was a terrific singer. I wish she had recorded an album. And how we loved hearing about her colorful relationships with her always devoted mother and her not-so-devoted father, singer Eddie Fisher.
Carrie, wow...how I miss her. Her quote "Take your broken heart, turn it into art" is very dear to me.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: If a movie like TERMS OF ENDEARMENT about the often bumpy but close relationship of a mother and daughter in show business opened and, in the last act, the actress daughter unexpectedly died and the actress mother died the following day, seemingly of a broken heart, critics would have written snarky reviews tagging the movie as overly sentimental with an ending that was too hard to believe.
But it really happened in the life and love story of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. That's Hollywood.
I wish Todd Fisher a great big success with his book.
This is a quick programming note, if you will. It's June now. In April of this year, we reflected on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This month, we reflect on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. 1968 was a mean year, a year that robbed us of two American men who gave hope to and fought for the poor and disenfranchised. Senator Kennedy was campaigning for the presidency when he was shot and killed. The care and compassion he had for under-privileged African Americans, for black people treated like second class citizens, had an energy you could feel in his presence. It vibrated. It touched your soul. That's the feeling I got when I was a school kid running joyfully behind his convertible, running with a mass of other South Central L.A. residents eager to see him when he came to speak at a park in Watts near my high school. Seeing him in person was an image that burned itself into my heart and memory and remains vivid. He was dead two days later.
The life and times of Robert F. Kennedy will be a feature tomorrow, June 3rd, on CBS SUNDAY MORNING hosted by Jane Pauley. Senator Kennedy's first child, Kathleen Kennedy, will be interviewed. CBS SUNDAY airs at 9am Eastern. Check your local listings.
Sunday night on MSNBC, the life of Robert F. Kennedy will be the subject of HEADLINERS. This MSNBC show airs at 9p Eastern. Again, check your local listings.
If you can, watch the shows. See the man. Listen to his words. Think about what America could have had in the White House. Compare it all to what we have now.
Let's face it. Movie screens today have been overbooked with caped crusaders and outer space characters from a galaxy far, far away. The romantic comedy, once regular fare from Hollywood, seems to be an art form that needs resuscitation. There's a hashtag on Twitter that I just discovered about six week ago. It's # FemaleFilmmakerFriday. On Friday, people tweet about women directors past and present. Lately, I've been craving a good romantic comedy and there isn't one at the nearest movie theater. Fortunately for me, HBO aired one -- one from a woman director who I've not seen mentioned for FemaleFilmmakerFriday on Twitter yet. And she should be mentioned. Nora Ephron directed Meryl Streep to one of her many Best Actress Oscar nominations (2009's JULIE & JULIA). Nora Ephron co-wrote and directed two of the best and most successful romantic comedies of the 1990s. America loved Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan as sweethearts in 1993's SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE and 1998's YOU'VE GOT MAIL. The 1998 box office hit, a modern-day remake of and valentine to Ernest Lubitsch's THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940), aired on HBO. Love, as co-written and directed by Nora Ephron, is a wonderful thing. Seeing YOU'VE GOT MAIL again was like visiting a cherished longtime friend.
Another cable station aired SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE. I watched that too. My spirits were lifted.
As did millions of other moviegoers, I saw both films in their original theatrical release. In fact, I paid to see each movie more than once. I was that entertained. This weekend, after I'd watched them again -- and it had been quite some time since I'd seen them -- my love for those two romantic comedies increased. It had grown. Why? Because, over time, I've grown into feelings that the male and female lead characters had. I was not just looking at them and laughing, I was feeling along with them with an understanding of why they acted and reacted the way they did.
The first time I saw SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, I was a bit jealous. Tom Hanks is one of my all-time favorite actors. I became a devoted fan way back when he was dressing in drag on the ABC sitcom BOSOM BUDDIES. That sitcom was Must-See TV to me when I had my first professional TV job. I worked on the ABC TV affiliate in Milwaukee. By the time SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE was released, I had 3 years of VH1 on-air work to my credit, work which included hosting my own talk show and doing segments with fellow VH1 veejay, Rosie O'Donnell. The best friend supporting role she had in SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE was exactly the kind of work I hoped to book after my VH1 years.
But that was a minor thing. The major thing about my first viewing of SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE? I was in my first and only romantic relationship. I loved him and the feeling was mutual. I took him to a Manhattan preview screening of SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE.
Two years later, he had died. So now when I see SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE, I see the rage and heartbreak of the Hanks character in the first 20 minutes, the heartbreak that motivates the widower dad to move himself and his little boy to Seattle so we can experience the loopy romantic comedy with Meg Ryan that'll happen once he relocates. SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE opens with grief. A grief I now understand because I loved someone as much as Sam Baldwin (Hanks) loved his wife.
As for YOU'VE GOT MAIL...wow. That was only 1998. Yet, it was before cellphones, text messages, DVRs and social media the way we know it today. You could still find a studio apartment in Brooklyn for under $1000 a month back then.
Joe Fox (Hanks) is a big, successful businessman. He's corporate owner of a Foxbooks chain store that's gobbling up the independent "Mom & Pop" bookstores in New York City. Ryan's character runs a beloved little indie bookstore on the Upper West Side. They are rivals in local news features. However, they have no idea that -- with anonymous screen names -- they are online buddies on AOL. They are online buddies who are revealing their hearts to each but not their real identities.
At a coffee shop meeting, where she has no idea he's her online friend, she hits Joe Fox right in the heart with a critical remark. She says "You're just a suit" and goes on to tell the corporate hotshot that, although she's an employee at a small neighborhood shop, that shop made a personal connection to people. It's beloved. People fondly remember her late mother who opened the store. It's called The Shop Around The Corner. Joe Fox may win but he won't be remembered fondly like her mother is, like her store will be, because he's just a suit.
That jars him. I understood how it jarred him. I came to New York to find a career and love. I wanted to do some work, be so talented, that I would be remembered fondly.
The last few years for me have been full of occupational potholes and bumps. I never made really big money but performing on TV was work I loved. Work that enabled me to keep a roof over my mother's head. One show I worked on was cancelled in 2008. A bunch of us, except the star, were out of work. I didn't find another regular job until 2010 and then, a month after I started, the Recession hit that job too. Another lay-off. I went flat broke. My emergency fund had gone to help my mother. I could not find new steady employment. I lost my studio apartment and most of my belongings in it. I had to leave New York City to live with a kind-hearted friend out West while I attempted to start over. In the last year of his life, Richard lived with me in that studio apartment. Leaving it and leaving New York City crushed my heart. When Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) makes the difficult decision to sell The Shop Around The Corner, she sends her online friend a message -- and I fully understand how she felt:
"...But the truth is, I'm heartbroken. I feel as if a part of me has died, and my mother has died all over again, and no one can ever make it right."
I miss New York City. Even more, I miss having someone in my life whose face lit up every time I entered the room.
In YOU'VE GOT MAIL, Kathleen's beau is an intellectual newspaper writer who seems to spend more on his column than he does with her. When her shop has closed and they are politely, mutually breaking up, he asks her if there's someone else. She replied, "No, but there's the dream of someone else."
I know that feeling too.
I miss filmmaker Nora Ephron. She gave us good, funny, wise movies about love.
Did I watch the reboot? Yes. The first three episodes. And the main reason I watched was to see that terrific actress, Laurie Metcalf. The ROSEANNE cast boasted two Oscar nominees -- Estelle Parsons, Best Supporting Actress winner for BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967), and Laurie Metcalf, Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee for LADY BIRD. I was not that excited about seeing the star who, reportedly, is quite rich and lives in Hawaii. A few years ago, my jaw dropped down to my computer keyboard when I read some of her comments on Twitter. I was surprised to see how conservative she is. Not like the working class character she played on TV.
Her online slams against President Obama and liberals were pretty pointed. But, it seemed, she'd retired from TV work. When the news of the ROSEANNE reboot hit, I noticed that she stopped tweeting. Especially after the follow-up news that Roseanne Conner would be a Trump supporter. To me, that explained the controversial comedy star's Twitter absence. Personally, when I read that Roseanne's rebooted TV character be a Trump supporter, I felt that her Fox News-like political comments on Twitter were, as a character in Preston Sturges' THE PALM BEACH STORY said, "...just an overture to the opera that's coming."
I met Roseanne briefly at an awards show in the late 80s. In 1993 or 94, I got a soundbite from her when I was covering an event at Disney World for WNBC TV news. Way back then, the behind the scenes Hollywood buzz on Roseanne Barr was never, ever "She's one of the nicest people to work and deal with...a professional. Just like a Mary Tyler Moore." Barr's behavior was reportedly erratic. Working with her as a producer or writer could be a stress test. But, she got paid. Big money.
I read the Twitter comment that got her fired and I read it about two hours before news hit that she had just been fired via the immediate cancellation of her rebooted sitcom. When I read the offensive tweet, I thought "Damn! She posted that? This is racially offensive." Comparing black people or a black person to a monkey is centuries-old racist talk. Period. And, for decades in my career as a TV performer, I was always aware of the morals clause in a standard talent contract. That basically says to mind your manners and not do anything extremely rude or lewd that would embarrass the company. If you did, you'd be fired. Do modern-day contracts have a morals clause anymore? When Trump was host of THE APPRENTICE on NBC and kept insulting President Obama with his birther-ism comments, I felt for sure he'd be fired. That stuff was racially offensive to us African Americans. If I'd been hosting an entertainment show on NBC and, on a red carpet, made a statement like "President Bush did nothing to help black people during Hurricane Katrina and he doesn't have the skills to be our President," I would have been replaced with Howie Mandel the following week.
No one said this yesterday, but ROSEANNE getting suddenly axed -- and axed by the woman who is the first African American president of ABC Entertainment -- was a definite big moment in the "Time's Up" movement.
Two other things that I thought about yesterday after this whole ROSEANNE show meltdown -- Do people with national broadcast jobs realize that this is public? Twitter is public. I thought that as I read absolutely vile remarks from popular TV host Adam Richman (MAN VS FOOD) on Instagram. Boasting about his weight loss after basically binge-eating for bucks on Travel Channel, he posted a hashtag that bothered women with a special health issue. A woman mentioned that in a response to him. Things escalated. He got egotistically angry and wrote to one woman that she should consider suicide....and he called her the C-word. On Instagram. A man with a new national show on Travel Channel called MAN FINDS FOOD. The Travel Channel dropped Richman's show because of that Instagram mess reported in papers such as The Washington Post. Jezebel has the full thing. Google "Adam Richman Jezebel." Anyway, my point is -- it's Instagram and it's public, Adam Richman. It's radio and it's public, Don Imus. It's a popular comedy club stage in Los Angeles and it's public, Michael Richards (who ranted the N-word) and it's public, Mel Gibson. When you made ignorant comments about gay men, Mel, you made them to a newspaper reporter.
I would have thought twice...thrice even...before posting anything like what Roseanne did on Twitter and what Adam Richman wrote on Instagram. But, there's another thing that I've learned about show biz through the years. It's that some white folks can act afool, do or say offensive things in public -- and make big money again six months later! I've since seen Adam Richman a few times doing food segments on TODAY on NBC. He now has a show on the Cooking Channel. If I called a woman the C-word on social media while I was hosting a national TV show, I'd be lucky to have work today as a janitor. Don Imus continued his top income radio career months after calling black female athletes "nappy-headed hoes," Mel Gibson is making movies again and even went on to snag another Best Director Oscar nomination. About six months or a little more after he was videotaped shouting racial slurs onstage in L.A., former SEINFELD star Michael Richards booked work. It may not have been a hit series, but Kirstie Alley got a TV Land sitcom called KIRSTIE in 2013. Michael Richards was cast as a regular on her sitcom.
All those people have made more money in a month than I've made in a decade. And look what they did. That's show biz. Let's see if Roseanne Barr has a new gig by Thanksgiving time later this year. If not sooner.
You saw the incident on the network news. Two young black men, courteous and minding their own business, were removed from a Starbucks by cops because a white employee made a call and complained about them. Starting this afternoon, May 29th, Starbucks will close more than 8,000 stores to provide anti-bias training to its employees. Music artist, actor and activist Common was on GOOD MORNING AMERICA today. He'll be seen in a corporate video during this Starbucks racial equality seminar. Hey, if Common's appearance makes the folks pay attention to the problem, I am all for it.
As Common mentioned on GMA today, black folks have been aware of this problem for a long, long time -- and I don't mean just the incident at Starbucks.
Personally, I think a lot of other businesses -- including local and network TV offices -- need to do the same exact thing that Starbucks is doing this afternoon.
I've blogged about my encounter with cops. My August 23rd post in 2014 was called "WWB: Walking White Black."
I took some vacation time during my years at Fox5 where I was a regular on the weekday live morning show, GOOD DAY NEW YORK. I took time off to reunite and reconcile with my dad, whom I had not seen in 20 years after my parents divorced. He was living in Seattle. We'd exchanged letters and calls in which I kept requesting the visit. So, in October of 1996, I flew out for 3 days and booked myself a room at Seattle's Four Seasons Hotel. After Dad and I visited, I had an early afternoon flight back to New York. In Seattle, a longtime buddy of mine worked as one of the best, award-winning reporters on Seattle TV news. He was driving me to the airport so we could catch up before he went to work for the evening newscast.
I sat in a Starbucks-like coffee shop the hotel and read a copy of THE NEW YORK TIMES I'd purchased while having coffee and a bagel. There wasn't a crowd and the clerk behind the counter struck up a conversation with me after he felt so bad about accidentally burning my bagel. He gave me another one on the house. I got an itemized receipt, as I usually do. Itemized receipts have the time on them. I left, with my newspaper and wearing business attire, to head back down the street to the hotel. Three ... THREE ... Seattle cop cars pulled up alongside me and stopped. Two cops approached me. Why? Because as one officer said, they'd gotten a report that "a black man with a newspaper had just robbed a bank" about 10 minutes earlier. I wanted to ask if the bank robber was casually walking back to his room at the Four Seasons Hotel, but I didn't.
I told them I was going to open my bag to show them ID. I had my photo work ID from Channel 5, my passport and my plane ticket. And my hotel key.
That still was not enough. Later, two other cops came up to my hotel room to make sure I didn't have a bag full of loot in my possession before having a local TV news reporter, in their minds apparently, act as my getaway man and drive me to the airport -- after I paid my Four Season Hotel bill and called my dad to say good-bye. I contained myself but, man, I was really angry.
This incident made the New York papers.
An incident with security guards who removed me from the location happened at the GOOD MORNING AMERICA studios when I was an ABC employee. It was not as intense as the Seattle incident. However, it was definitely a case of a white person making a false claim against a black person and the black person was dealt with strictly and with no questions asked.
I'll abbreviate the story because I want to add it to a book that I absolutely PRAY will get some book company interest. I was hired by ABC News to be the weekly film critic on its ABC News production, a live weekday hour-long show that aired on Lifetime TV. As with my Seattle visit, I had some days off. I'd been doing live local pre-dawn and early morning segments for years. For once, I wanted to be in the audience and watch a show in progress. So, while at the ABC News job, I emailed GOOD MORNING AMERICA reservations to request a solo admittance (me) for one particular morning. Pink would be performing and I am a major Pink fan. I was put on the audience list. Mind you.... I gave the info that I worked for the company with an on-air job and, of course, added my name to the audience request.
But to a young blonde production assistant, I was just another guy -- even though I told her my name and the name of the ABC News production I worked on. She pulled me out of the audience to ask a question during a segment with a female sex therapist. It was a fairly mainstream question about male menopause. So I was cool with it. However, thirty seconds before airtime, she changed my question to one about.... well, the female G-spot. Something in which I've had absolutely no interest. I asked the question. Someone in the control room recognized me from TV, and the blonde production assistant declared "I didn't know he was going to ask that question!" She claimed that I had sabotaged the segment.
Two security men, each one the size of Thanos in the Marvel Comics universe, came to where I was standing in the audience again after the show had gone to a commercial break. They took me by the arms and escorted me onto the sidewalk. I never got to see Pink. I was kicked out.
Months later, I was told by a GMA employee that the blonde production assistant got busted. The blonde was part of 2-assistant team. The other young woman who was with her didn't say much but she was present for every encounter with me. She told her bosses that I was upfront with all my information, behaved accordingly, and asked the question the production assistant told me to ask after she changed my original question which was about male menopause.
But, at the moment I asked it, the word of a young blonde had power over the middle-aged black network employee. She lied. I was physically removed from the premises by two security men. This was back in the year 2000. In that situation, I was invisible -- even though I worked on-air for the company -- and I was a second-class citizen, it seemed, to the young blonde who exercised an amount of white privilege. I continued to work on the ABC News/Lifetime TV show as a film reviews/historian. I never got an apology or any other kind of response.
I was at a Chritmastime party about six months later. One of the GMA segment producers, a black woman, was also a guest at the party and recognized me. She told me about what happened in the control room -- and the ultimate firing of the blonde assistant after her lie had been revealed.
Yes, I am glad Starbucks is closing this afternoon for a corporate seminar on the importance of anti-bias behavior in its workplace. Other companies need to do the same thing.
As for that ABC News/Lifetime TV job, I had to push and push for an audition. Network news producers were not sure if I knew anything about films. I got the job and I was one of the few African Americans ever seen reviewing movies regularly on a live network news production. African Americans reviewing new movies and discussing classic films are still a rare sight on network TV news programs.
This was the rock musical of the late 1960s that caused a great big controversy when it hit Broadway. Folks either hated it -- like Leonard Bernstein and Betty Comden -- or they loved it -- like lots and lots of young theatre goers. HAIR reflected and commented on the turbulent political times, changing social attitudes and the free-spirited youth movement with its R-rated lyrics and its now-famous group nude scene. So, after a day of news about Trump pulling out of a summit meeting in Korea, we got news of another live upcoming musical production on NBC, the network that started the Orange One on his move from self-absorbed, conservative TV celebrity to self-absorbed, conservative president. NBC gave us live TV productions of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, PETER PAN, THE WIZ, HAIRSPRAY and the excellent telecast of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR starring John Legend. Now on the NBC schedule for spring of next year -- HAIR.
Yes...HAIR. With the R-rated song lyrics and the group nude scene. HAIR was successfully transferred to film with an exuberant 1979 adaptation directed by the late, great Milos Forman. Treat Williams, Annie Golden (of TV's ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK), John Savage and Beverly D'Angelo starred.
I'm going out on a limb here, but I'll assume that NBC will cut and sanitize HAIR to be a network 2019 presentation. I've seen HAIR onstage. It's an unconventional rock musical that makes a point. Will NBC let viewers experience "Sodomy" in prime time? That's one of the songs in the original Broadway production. It's also in the film version.
Another song from the original Broadway production is..."Colored Spade." Click onto the link and listen:
If NBC will take the curl out of HAIR, will it still work? Why not go with something that would not have to be edited and censored? Something like the Broadway musical version of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, Jerry Herman's musical version of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, THE PAJAMA GAME, PURLIE or THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN? Or Lea Michele in FUNNY GIRL? That last one could be a live TV production for closeted gay men to come out by.
HAIR also gave us the songs "Good Morning Starshine," "Aquarius," and "Let The Sunshine In." They did well on the pop charts covered by top vocalists and groups of the day.
Hearing the latest news about that guy some Americans elected into the White House was enough to make me scream. So I turned the channel to see if there was something else that could calm me down. WONDER WOMAN was on HBO. Perfect. That hit movie was so entertaining and so well-cast. If you've seen it, the scene in which Diana is taken into the London department store and tries on a few unflattering and uncomfortable outfits always makes me laugh. The movie had the kind of fun scenes that Old Hollywood used to give us on a regular basis. Director Patty Jenkins, who directed Charlize Theron to a Best Actress Oscar win for MONSTER, did a great job with WONDER WOMAN. I loved the chemistry between Gal Gadot as Diana, the hero, and Chris Pine as Steve. They believed in their characters and in the story -- a key ingredient in making the action/fantasy work. I first noticed Chris Pine when he played young Captain Kirk in the STAR TREK movies. I'm sure I'm not the only person who thought, "Damn! He is one handsome dude!"
While I watched some of WONDER WOMAN today, it thoroughly confirmed the rightness of my opinion that, if we were in the 1930s and 40s days of Old Hollywood, Chris Pine would be a very busy leading man in movies. And he'd be introducing original songs by top songwriters the way Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire and Dick Powell did.
Buddies of mine in New York, guys who aren't hardcore fans of musicals the way I am, saw INTO THE WOODS because they were doing entertainment reports on the movie. They contacted me enthusiastically praising the work of Chris Pine as The Prince. And the main thing they all said was, "Wait till you hear him sing!" Even though Meryl Streep is in the movie, and got another one of her annual Oscar nominations for her performance, the storybook movie is pretty much stolen by Chris Pine as the comically self-absorbed and horny Prince Charming. Hear his duet with Rapunzel's Prince. Chris Pine's voice is the first you hear in "Agony." Here's the cut from the soundtrack:
In Old Hollywood studio days, he'd have been offered another musical immediately after that 2014 release. Also, Chris Pine is not "just another pretty face." He's got a classic movie star face. It's a face so fine that he could easily coast on those good looks for a time and get attention. But he doesn't coast. He's got solid acting skills. The modern-day western and Recession Era cops and robbers drama, HELL OR HIGH WATER, was one o.f my favorite films of 2016. A very scruffy Pine played one of the two bank robbers. I said on National Public Radio a week before the Oscars telecast of 2017 that I wished HELL OR HIGH WATER had made it into the Best Picture Oscar race. Take a look at the trailer.
Crackle TV is under the Sony corporate umbrella. A few years ago, back in Manhattan, Crackle TV held a promotional morning event in a theater. Clips of its new season were shown onscreen. There was good press turnout for this event. (Also, complimentary food and beverages were available in the lobby.) One of the shows was a loopy new animated comedy series called SUPER MANSION about a group of dysfunctional superheroes. Pine does voice work on the series.
When the onscreen presentation ended and press folks were standing up to gather their things and head up the aisles to the exit, a montage of outtakes from the SUPER MANSION voiceover session started.
People stopped leaving. Why? Because Chris Pine was so hysterically funny ad libbing different voices and lines of dialogue. He was like Robin William in his MORK AND MINDY years funny. Chris Pine made the crowd break up laughing and his outtakes got applause. So, in addition to other musicals, why isn't he getting top comedy script offers?
Hollywood may not be giving you the message but, believe me. Chris Pine is one terrifically talented actor. And handsome.
The title of the Todd Fisher memoir is MY GIRLS: A LIFETIME with CARRIE AND DEBBIE. It hits bookstores this month.
