THE TV COLUMN : Stars come out to shine at critics summer meeting
Posted on Tuesday, July 15, 2008
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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — It was an inauspicious beginning to the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour. Al Sharpton had been promised and was a noshow.
Jaded veterans suspected the ol’ panel session bait-and-switch. Schedule a big star to pack the room and, poof, some last-minute something prevents him from coming and you’re stuck with four no-name producers.
The colorful and always quotable Sharpton was supposed to appear on behalf of a couple of new series on TV One, the cable outfit that caters to adult blacks. It turns out he was comforting a friend who had been in a terrible automobile accident that had killed his wife and grandson. Can’t grumble about that.
If we wanted star power in the first session, we had to settle for a Little Rock native, comedian Sheryl Underwood. Underwood prides herself as being “a Bush Republican who backs Barack” because “McCain is not going to win. That’s why I’m over here, because I want to be with the winners.”
Underwood was asked if black Republicans will feel slighted because TV One is covering the Democratic National Convention, but not the Republican.
“I speak for all eight of us,” she quipped. “We are not slighted.”
The TV stars — the celebrities — are a big part of the press tour although they are frequently the least informed on their forthcoming series. Readers always want to know about the stars.
I’ve heard it explained that America’s obsession with celebrities is because we have no homegrown royalty. We create royalty out of TV and movie stars.
That makes sense. Egalitarian society that we are, perhaps we’ve always envied that touch of whimsy that we sloughed off along with George III.
How else to explain Queen Latifah ?
Lacking a royal class would explain our never-ending tabloid fascination with the fact that Angelina Jolie is adopting an alien baby from the Kardasian galaxy and Charlie Sheen has married his third wife, a woman 23 years his junior. Go, Charlie !
Nothing, however, explains or ever will explain Paris Hilton.
Our obsession with celebrity is reflected in the 27 magazines with actors on the covers at the checkout counter and the innate pride Arkansans have that Oscarwinner Mary Steenburgen is one of our own.
I once had a fellow gleefully tell me he’d pumped gas right next to KATV weather guy Ned Perme. That Ned pumped his own gas was a source of fascination.
And you’ll remember the giddy fuss around central Arkansas three years ago when Ashley Judd was here shooting Come Early Morning. Judd mania gripped us all.
But this is LA. Stars are everywhere. They just blend in.
I recall some family friends who 20 years ago did the whole Hollywood vacation package. They went to Disneyland, toured Universal Studios and put their hands in the Hall of Fame handprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
But what they talked about most was their chance brush with celebrity at a Ralphs Grocery on Sunset Boulevard. There they were in produce when they looked up to find Bill Macy squeezing melons.
Kids, Bill Macy (now 86 ) is the actor who starred as the husband in the groundbreaking 1970 s sitcom Maude.
“He was real nice,” our friend said. “We told him we enjoyed his work and he was very polite and asked us where we were from and shook our hands.”
They talked about meeting Macy for weeks.
The point is, television and its stars have always seemed magical. From our first day with Howdy Doody to the latest twist on Grey’s Anatomy, TV has fascinated us.
Every summer when I return from the TV critics press tour folks ask me who I saw. Did I see their favorite actor ? Did I get to chat with the cast of their favorite show ? And if so, what are they really like ?
Even after coming out here for 14 years (I’ve spent a total of 41 weeks in LA hotel rooms ), there’s still a touch of TV magic when I see one of my favorite stars for the first time in person — from Carol Burnett to Evangeline Lilly, Betty White to Hugh Laurie.
I keep it professional and hardly ever gush anymore. Some of the twentysomething TCA members, however, are way too star-struck, having grown up on Entertainment Tonight hype and hyperbole. “Oooo, there’s Mario Lopez ! He’s so dreamy !”
The vast majority of writers on the tour, however, take it all in stride, as do the stars. The actors are here to provide information about their latest project; we’re here to report on it for our readers and put it all into perspective.
I have no idea what the actors are like in real life. Most of them seem friendly, eager to chat and don’t expect to be treated with deference or privilege. Most realize that they are fortunate to be working in an industry where only a small percentage have steady jobs at any given moment.
Yes. Bill Macy puts his pants on one leg at a time. So does George Clooney. OK. Maybe Clooney doesn’t.
During the press tour we’ll meet everybody from A to Z. Literally — the very first day included Ed Asner and Daphne Zuniga.
Here’s a partial list from just the tour’s four days with cable folks. PBS and network bigwigs arrive next week.
Appearing for Hallmark Original Movies are Jane Seymour, Florence Henderson, Asner, Ben Vereen, Cheech Marin, Cicely Tyson, Lesley Ann Warren, Meredith Baxter and Grey’s Anatomy’s Chandra Wilson.
Peter Bogdanovich and billionaire Mark Cuban for HDNet; the entire cast of Mad Men; Bobby Brown (without Whitney ); Maureen “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia” McCormick; Jamie Foxx; George Foreman and four of his children (only one of the five sons named George was here ); Vivica A. Fox; astronaut Buzz Aldrin; the cast of The Cleaner, including Benjamin Bratt and Grace Park; Tommy Lee and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges; Spike Lee; Elvis Costello; and Ricky Gervais. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer is here to tout election coverage, as is Soledad O’Brien; Steven Bochco and the cast of Raising the Bar; Timothy Hutton and the cast of Leverage; Dennis Harper and Don Cheadle for Crash; Carson Kressley, Nicole Sullivan and Shirley MacLaine for a movie about Coco Chanel. Also here are Kyra Sedgwick and the cast of The Closer; Holly Hunter and the cast from Saving Grace; and, finally, Tony Curtis and Robert Osborne from Turner Classic Movies. That’s some impressive star power for just the first four days. There’s a week and a half more to go. Maybe someone will invite Macy, too. The TV column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail:
mstorey@arkansasonline. com