Day 2 began all too early this morning…but, then, if you’ve been reading my reports, you already know that, since I was writing that HBO entry this morning at, what, 6-something?
Anyway, I eventually found my way down to the breakfast sponsored by the TV Guide Network; it was quite tasty, it wasn’t much of a presentation. In fact, short of a couple of TV screens running in the background, it wasn’t a presentation at ALL. Still, I highly recommend the French toast. Very tasty.
From there, I entered the interminable 3-hour stint that was the MTV networks panels. Okay, it wasn’t all bad – I got some pretty cool stuff out of it before all was said and done – but it was very hit or miss, especially for our readership. (As a parent, though, I found the Nick Jr. panel about their new pre-K show, “Ni Hao, Kai-Ian,” quite informative.) Fortunately, though, it started with a pretty cool panel about Spike TV’s new mini-series, “The Kill Point.” I must, however, first offer up the incredibly awful joke that Spike TV General Manager Kevin Kay opened his comments with:
“First up this morning, we’ve got ‘The Kill Point’ and ‘Murder,’ two new shows that have nothing to do with what CBS would like to do to Katie Couric right now.”
Ugh. Believe me, the crowd groaned…and rightfully so. Even Bob Hope would’ve thrown that joke back.
Anyway, on with “The Kill Point,” which stars Donnie Wahlberg and John Leguizamo. As it turns out, Leguizamo is moving from one Wahlberg straight on to another. “He’s going to go to work with Mark right now,” said Donnie, ” which will be a stressful situation in itself. I will prepare my brother for what he’s in for, having worked with John now for the second time.” (“Thank you, buddy,” said Leguizamo.)
Wahlberg says he tried to keep himself as distanced from the other scenes in his films, i.e. the scenes he’s not in, as possible. “For the most part, as the information comes into my character, it’s then funneled out into the audience, and I try to do that a little bit in my preparation, you know, to not know everything,” he said. “I didn’t want to know everything that was going on. I didn’t necessarily want to take part in the scenes that they were doing, or be around when they were shooting it.” When Leguizamo made the suggestion that it was totally personal and that he just didn’t like him, Wahlberg assured him, “No, no, it wasn’t that. It was your dog.” (“But I bathe him!” argued Leguizamo.)
Next up was “Murder,” an unscripted series where amateur sleuths try to solve a real homicide pulled directly from police files. It’s an interesting idea for a reality show, but the best part was the host, Detective Tommy LeNoir, who’s been a cop for years and, quite clearly, doesn’t take much shit. At one point during the clip we were showed, he says outright to one of the contestants, “Let me put this very nicely: that’s just stupid.”
“I’m very hard on them when they screw up. Actually, I’m a little more tame with these individuals simply because they’re not homicide detectives. If one of my partners made the comment that that gentleman made about a golf club (he said the victim looked like they’d been struck with a club, then made light of it), I would have thrown him out of the crime scene because…and I this seriously but also tongue in cheek…because that’s incredibly stupid.”
From there, it was on to TV Land’s “Elvis Presley Month” panel, which involved two members of Elvis’s Memphis Mafia, the official biographer for the Presley family, and one of Elvis’s ex-girlfriends…one who just happened to be a former “Hee Haw” cast member, I’ll have you know. Anyway, as a music geek, I was enthralled by the entire discussion, and I had to wonder if there was any truth to the story that Colonel Parker was more interested in making movies than Elvis himself was, and if Elvis even had a favorite film of his.
“Well, you know, in the old days in Hollywood, you signed long contracts,” explained Joe Esposito, one of those aforementioned Memphis Mafia members. “Nowadays, you only sign for one picture. And, so, the colonel signed all of these contracts for, like, seven pictures for MGM, five pictures for Paramount, and all of that stuff. And in those days, yes, they used Elvis to make a lot of money in the studios. I don’t think he realized it until after it all started going on with the colonel. At that time, you signed…you’d get an option. Whatever script they give you, there’s three of them, and you pick the one that is the best of the three. Well, naturally, the studio would give you scripts, and it was two bad ones and the one they would really want you to do, basically. And you’re committed, and you do it. But like Jerry (Schilling, the other Memphis Mafia member in attendance) said, after awhile, all of his movies were basically the same thing: a lot of music, beatiful girls, animals, singing to a cow, and all of that stuff. Eventually, he was not too happy about that, but he had a contract. When Elvis had a congtract to do something, he did it, no matter what. That’s the same thing with the (much-maligned 1977) CBS special, too. So, you know, Colonel, he made his mistakes, but as far as I’m concerned, my personal opinion, there couldn’t have been a better man than the Colonel Tom Parker. By any means, he handled Elvis the best out of anybody because other managers, when they get a big star, they have a lot of other artists that they handle, too. They have a whole stack of artists. Colonel Parker turned down a lot of big stars they wanted to have him manage. He said, ‘No, I dedicate my life to Elvis, and that they way it is.’ And that’s the truth. So, but he made mistakes like…well, I don’t want to go into all of those details.”
Oh, and as far as his favorite movie…? Linda Thompson, Presley’s former girlfriend says it was “King Creole.” “That was his favorite movie that he ever did. He thought his acting chops were the best in that, and he had an opportunity to show them.” (She also added that, “even in the years that I was with him, Elvis was still complaining about having had to sing to bulls and walls and inanimate objects.”)
Too tired. Must sleep now. More tomorrow.
