While I’m certainly excited about Ronald D. Moore’s next project, I can’t help but be a little leery of a prequel. “Caprica” has the same challenge that the “Star Wars” prequels had: Everyone knows how it turns out. The question is whether or not the history is compelling enough to outweigh the certainty of the story’s outcome.

Were there any “Battlestar Galactica” fans clamoring for a prequel? I’m sure there were a few, but I hadn’t even considered the prospect until I heard that “Caprica” was already in development. How interested are we in seeing how Cylons were developed?

On the whole, I enjoyed the two-hour pilot, though I didn’t find it as compelling as “BG.” And the next two episodes consisted of a lot of mourning, religion and setup — in other words, it was a little slow. It wasn’t until the most recent episode — “There Is Another Sky” — that the series really took off.

And it would seem that most viewers out there agree. The series was getting consistent scores in the 8.2-8.8 range at TV.com, but the latest episode garnered a 9.2, the highest of the series. On the whole, “Caprica” is getting an 8.7 compared to a 9.2 for “Battlestar Galactica.” Some might argue that “BG” fans are being too hard on “Caprica,” but there is also probably some element of support for the show that wouldn’t otherwise be there. Those two factors may very well offset each other.

There are spoilers ahead, so if you recently gave up on “Caprica,” you might want to track down this episode and give it a go. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

** SPOILER ALERT **

This episode of “Caprica” took the story of Joseph Adama’s daughter, Tamara, to another level. In an attempt to escape, she entered a chaotic part of the virtual world, and ultimately discovered that the real life version of her was killed in the train bombing. The storyline has a similar feel as “The Matrix” where the chosen one (Neo/Tamara) has all sorts of abilities in the virtual world. One can’t help but suspect that the two daughters — Tamara and Zoe — represent the genesis of the Cylon intelligence.

The episode ended with Joseph’s discovery that Tamara’s avatar is still alive, so that should give him a purpose again. I’m now looking forward to seeing him meet his daughter again, whether it be in the virtual world or in the real world in the form of a Cylon. She went through quite the metamorphosis in just one episode, so there’s no telling what kind of “person” she’ll be by the time Joseph tracks her down.

“There’s no stark bad guys and good guys,” she explained. “This is a world that is perceived by some of its residents as sort of sliding over the edge, there’s a whole bunch of people who think they’ve got the answer, and it’s not at all clear that any of them have the answer. The guy who believes in technology thinks that’s the answer. The person who believes in religion thinks that’s the answer. And if everybody has moral shadings, we can tell very complex stories as a result.

Espenson’s fellow writer / executive producer, David Eick, clarified another similarity: the two shows take their genre very seriously. “We really do try to involve depth of character, realism, grounded-terrestrial naturalism to a science fiction world,” he said. “That sort of came from what we always admired about the greats and the classics, from Asimov to Heinlein to Philip K. Dick, this idea that science fiction was not just fun and games. We wanted to go sort of the opposite direction of George Lucas, if you will. We wanted to make it less about escapism and more about moral complexity, as Jane was saying, and great characters.”

For those who have seen the pilot to the series, which will air again tonight on SyFy, you may be wondering if its tone and content will remain consistent when the series officially kicks off next week. Apparently, so were stars Eric Stoltz and Esai Morales. According to Eick, both actors wanted some reassurance that the pilot was not going to be a one-off, with the series going in a different direction altogether.

“I think, if anything, we go towards that even more rather than shying away from it,” said Stoltz, “because that’s what interests all of us as actors: playing these ambiguous, conflicted people living not in a black-and-white world and trying to find their way in it. We wanted to be exactly like that, so we’re all striving to make it as good as possible.”

“Also,” added Morales, “the naturalism in what I see from my fellow actors and their acting, it’s very unlike anything I’ve seen on television. The atmosphere of the show as well. The planet feels like it has a presence, a consciousness, in a sense, that I think is taken from the pilot, and it moves. It’s rooted in the pilot, but I think the show will evolve from what you saw in the pilot.”

Rest assured, however, that you don’t have to have to know “Battlestar Galactica” to appreciate “Caprica.” In fact, as Eick is quick to point out, the network’s marketing strategy for the series involves a notable lack of the words “Battlestar” or “Galactica” in the title of the show. Still, it’s not as though there’s a single article that’s been written about the show that doesn’t mention the connection, so why should newbies join in the fun?

“The same reason they come to any well-marketed and, hopefully, well-executed television show,” replied Eick. “That it’s compelling in its own right, that it has ideas embedded in it and a visual style that looks inviting and exciting. On that front, I’m not terribly concerned. From the standpoint of the execution within the show once you’re in, new viewers will find that there’s virtually no tether to ‘Battlestar Galactica’ from a storytelling standpoint whatsoever. There are the occasional Easter eggs and nods and acknowledgments for the faithful to enjoy or maybe deepen some of their appreciation for it, but I think legitimately the show stands on its own. Other than the fact that, if you happen to know ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ you know that that show had its roots in some of the stories we’re telling now, there really is no relationship between the two shows whatsoever.”

“Imagine you were watching a show that you knew nothing about and they were developing sentient robots,” added Espenson. “You might very well get a glimmer that these sentient robots are going to be trouble down the road. You don’t need ‘Battlestar Galactica’ to tell you that. In a storytelling sense, (‘Caprica’) tells you that.”

“I have a lot of friends who have never seen “Battlestar Galactica,” don’t like sci-fi, and they watch it because of me,” admitted Magda Apanowicz. “But when they actually end up watching it, they love it. Like, they’re shocked, and they’re, like, ‘There’s so much that you can take away from it. There’s so many different storylines that you can relate to.'”

“We just have fun, guys,” said Morales. “We hope you do, too.”

For your reading enjoyment, I’ve pulled together a list of 100 of my favorite quotes from the various interviews I conducted for Premium Hollywood, Bullz-Eye, Popdose, and The Virginian-Pilot this year, along with the links to the original pieces where available. As you can see, I had some extremely interesting conversations in 2009. Let us all keep our fingers crossed that I’m able to chat with just as many fascinating individuals in 2010…

1. Pamela Adlon: “In the first season (of ‘Californication’), when we had the threesome with the nipple clamps, I was, like, ‘I don’t get this, I don’t know how you’re gonna do it.’ And then, all of a sudden, there’s a crane with a camera hanging over our heads, and you’re, like, ‘Okayyyyyyy. But how are you gonna sell this? How are you gonna make it work?’ And they ended up shooting it brilliantly, cutting it together, and it just all ended up working without me having to compromise my own personal morals.”

2. Jonathan Ames: “After my first novel, my mother said to me, ‘Why don’t you make your writing more funny? You’re so funny in person.’ Because my first novel was rather dark. And I don’t know, but something about what she said was true. ‘Yes, why don’t I?’ Maybe I was afraid to be funny in the writing. But since then, seven books later, almost everything I’ve done has a comedic edge to it.”

3. Ed Asner: “I loved journalism until the day my journalism teacher, a man I revered, came by my desk and said, ‘Are you planning on going into journalism?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I wouldn’t.’ I said, ‘Well, why not?’ He said, ‘You can’t make a living.’”

4. Sean Astin: “When somebody brings up a movie (of mine) that I haven’t heard about in a long time, I feel like a 70-year-old pitcher at a bar somewhere, and somebody walks in and says, ‘Oh, my God, I was in St. Louis and I saw you. You pitched a shutout.’ It’s real. I really did do that, because someone today remembers it.”

5. Darryl Bell: “The legend of ‘Homeboys in Outer Space’ has become much more incendiary than the actual show. It’s funny how I usually challenge most people who talk about how much they disliked ‘Homeboys’ to name me five episodes. Most of them can’t, because they just bought into the ‘oh, it’s awful, just the title. Oh, it’s terrible.’ What’s interesting is that I had a great conversation with Chi McBride, who was doing ‘The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer,’ which, if you want to talk about in terms of the imagery of what was wrong, that show was much more infamous than ‘Homeboys.’ Yet it’s not remembered in the same way because the title didn’t grab you in the same way. I remember Chi pulled me aside and he was, like, ‘Look, everyone who is criticizing what you’re doing would take your job from you in two seconds. All of them. So all I can tell you is that this is one blip on both of our careers, and we are moving on.’”

6. Adam Campbell: “For some reason, people always pick on the British sensibility, and we always come across as stupid, but remember: we used to run this country!”

7. Nestor Carbonell: “Let me make this perfectly clear: I do not wear make-up, and I do not wear eye-liner. This is something I’ve had to deal with my whole life. I remember I was in college in Boston, I had a commercial agent, and they sent me out for some print commercial stuff. And they called me into the office and said, ‘Look, we called you in to talk to you because we just want you to know that…well, we don’t think you need to wear eyeliner.’ And I’m, like, ‘What?’ ‘Yeah, it’s okay, you don’t have to wear it for print ads.’ ‘No, I’m not wearing eyeliner!’ And I kept dabbing my eyes and saying, ‘Look! No eyeliner! I’m not wearing any!’”

8. Elaine Cassidy: “The last two days of shooting (‘Harper’s Island’) was probably the most hardcore, the coldest anyone has ever been. It was like your head was freezing, and my motivation for most scenes was, ‘The minute this scene is over, I’m heading straight over to that heater to get warm.’”

9. Chris Cornell: “I started as a drummer, so I sort of took on singing duties by default. I had sung backgrounds and some lead vocals from behind the drums in different bands that I’d been in, and I’d gotten great responses for the songs I would sing. I really started pursuing the possibility of being a lead singer based on the fact that I was working a full-time restaurant job and then playing gigs at night, hauling drums around. One day, it just dawned on me that, ‘Hey, I could be in a band and be the singer, and it would be a lot easier!’”

10. Bryan Cranston: “When ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ was over, I was looking for a drama more than a comedy…but if it was a comedy that came up, it would have to be as well-written as ‘Malcolm’ was, and it would have to be a different kind of character than I played on that show. That’s harder to come by. In drama, there were more opportunities, more options for me, and when I read (‘Breaking Bad’), it was just, ‘Good night, Nurse! I’m going after this sucker!'”

11. David Cross: “I had this sketch group or comedy-show thing that I used to do, and I kind of recruited Sam (Seder) and his friend and partner, Jon Benjamin, to do stuff for that. It was really back in the day when you just had a shitty job that paid the rent, and you spent the bulk of your time just drinking, getting high, playing softball, and putting on these dumb shows. But in a good way.”

12. Richard Curtis: “(Choosing actors is) a very serious business. I was taught this by Mike Newell, who was an obsessive auditioner. I mean, obsessive. And when we were doing low budget movies, he saw it as basically a way of rehearsing the movie. By the time anyone got the part, they’d been in three times, done it, thought it through, and talked it through, so they didn’t need to get any notes when we were shooting it. So trying to find Talulah Riley or particularly trying to find Tom Sturridge (for ‘Pirate Radio’) was a long journey. We must’ve seen 50 or 60 people, everyone between the ages of 20 and 28 in the UK, and you were just looking for that strange moment that’s a bit like love, where suddenly the lines take off rather than fill you with shame and embarrassment.”

13. Andy Dick: “I went to network on a handful of pilots, and going to network is the most stressful situation anybody can ever be in. You’re supposed to be on point, you’re supposed to be at the top of your game, the funniest you can be, in about five minutes, in front of people wearing suits who really don’t care, and they’ve probably already picked their person, but they have to see a handful just to satisfy the process. It’s the most horrible, horrible process known to man. I wouldn’t want anybody to go through it.”

14. Hugh Dillon: “(‘Hard Core Logo’) was really what got me into the whole acting thing, ‘cause I just got to work with such a great director and a great cast. And, y’know, he allowed me to do a lot of stuff. I wrote the ending to that movie. So that movie was really…I just thought, ‘You know, I fucking like acting!’”

15. Chiwetel Ejiofor: “I think that this generation has witnessed, like, incredible change. And I sometimes wonder whether every generation feels that way. You know, maybe they do. The generation before me would have witnessed the end of the Second World War. They would have witnessed the first man on the moon. Do you know what I mean? They would have seen these seismic changes and gone, ‘Does everybody see it like this?’ And then the next generation…I was born in the late 70’s, so I was sort of party to the end of apartheid, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of Barack Obama. And you sort of feel, like, ‘Wow, this is so much,’ you know? But you really hope that the next generation absolutely does take things that they haven’t seen themselves or with their own eyes, and that they watch programs like this and realize that anything…anything…is achievable.”

16. Antonio Elias: “When I was first on (the ‘Star Trek’) set, doing the walk through with Chris Hemsworth and Faran Tahir, who plays Captain Robau, the first day we were actually filming our dialogue on the bridge set of the ship, the detail on that set was unbelievable. It was just…everything just looked real. I remember we were walking through with JJ (Abrams) and his first AD, and I literally had to stop and was, like, ‘Guys, I’m sorry, but I’m totally nerding out right now. Am I the only one that’s nerding out right now?’ They started laughing, because it was just so cool. It was, like, ‘What am I doing here?’”

17. Nick Frost: “Eight years ago, I was a waiter, and I didn’t have a pot to piss in. And now…? It’s like I said to my wife: I love the fact that, if I was in a restaurant and Steven Spielberg walked in, I could go up to him and say, ‘Hey, mate, how are you?’ I think that’s pretty amazing, actually.”

18. Jim Gaffigan: “I’m kind of a guy who’s missing a little bit of the guy gene. I love steak, but the notion of golfing is the last thing I would want to do. I love women, but I’m also a mama’s boy, and some of my best friends are women. So I’m kinda half guy’s guy.”

19. Corey Glover: “I always thought that the Grammys were, you know, the industry patting itself on the back. There is nothing wrong with that, and I appreciate it for what it is. But, you know, the day after we got this Grammy, I got on a subway and went back to Brooklyn. A Grammy and a token will get you on the subway. I appreciate it, and it’s great, and people look at it and say, ‘Wow, that’s really cool!’ And it is very cool. It’s very interesting, and I love it. But I’ve still got to get to work. In fact, what it means is that I’ve really got to get to work now, because, y’know, most people are expecting things from you that…well, I don’t know what they’re expecting, but whatever it is has got to be better than this piece of brass, you know?”

20. Bobcat Goldthwait: “Kurt (Cobain) was a fan of my standup, which was pretty weird. I know when people hear that, it’s kind of like finding out that Jimi Hendrix really liked Buddy Hackett, but he interviewed me at a college radio station before they broke and did Bleach. And then, like, about two years later, I was opening for Nirvana at these huge sports arenas.”

21. Elliott Gould: “Groucho Marx, in his later days, gave me the best review I’ve ever had and probably will ever have. I changed a light bulb over his bed, and when I came off of his bed with the used one after putting the new one in, Groucho said, ‘That’s the best acting I’ve ever seen you do.’”

22. David S. Goyer: “You know, we didn’t intend to have so many British people (in ‘FlashForward.’) Basically, it was who came through the door first. We cast Joe Fiennes first. We decided we wanted him to be American. I had seen him play American before a number of times, I knew he could do a pretty good American accent. So we decided, alright, he’s American. I’m ashamed to say that Sonya Walger…I didn’t actually realize that the actress in ‘Tell Me You Love Me’ was the same actress as in ‘Lost’ – I thought they were two different actresses – but her accent was quite good in ‘Tell Me You Love Me,’ so that happened. When Jack Davenport and Dominic Monaghan came along, we cast Sonya and Joe first, they said, ‘What about playing American?’ And I said, ‘You’re too late, our quota has already been filled.’”

23. Javier Grillo-Marxuach: “ABC Family wanted a Latino lead in (‘The Middleman.’) They thought that, because I’m Latino, it would be a great match. It’s funny because when Kate Juergens, who is the senior VP of ABC Family, called me with that suggestion, I was, like, ‘Absolutely not.’ She was, like, ‘Wait a minute, but you’re Latino. Don’t you want to put Latinos on TV?’ ‘Well, I do, but I don’t want to make this character into a stereotype. I don’t want there to be necessarily be salsa music playing whenever she gets on the screen and stuff like that.’”

24. Greg Grunberg: “I never root for a failure. I learned that when we were on ‘Felicity.’ There was a show that failed on the lot, and suddenly all of this food showed up on our set. I was, like, ‘What is this?’ And they said, ‘Oh, they cancelled this other show right before their lunch.’ And I said, ‘Throw that food away! We don’t want to touch that food! There’s no way I’m eating it!’ So I never root for anybody, because it could happen to you in two seconds.”

25. Sammy Hagar: “I would be happy to try to do a record with Van Halen. But they’ve only done one record since I left the band. They did one record, the Gary Cherone thing, and that’s it. What the fuck is the problem? You know, don’t blame me. Don’t be pointing at me and saying, ‘Fucking Hagar, fucking Hagar.’ I’m here, brother!”

26. Daryl Hall: “(‘She’s Gone’) was well-played in the R&B scene, and then ‘Sara Smile,’ which was on the silver album (Hall and Oates), was the third single released, and that broke in the R&B community, too. So our first success was on black radio – which was sort of natural, given our background – and then we crossed over onto pop radio. So that’s really how we came in: very much through the back door.”

27. Harry Hamlin: “I loved playing (Aaron Echols on ‘Veronica Mars.’) I was really sad when I got my head blown off, but…that seems to happen to me. I seem to be murdered on all of these shows. But, okay, as long as the checks don’t bounce, I’m all right with that. Besides, when Aaron Echols was killed, as I recall, he’d just had sex with a beautiful young girl, he was smoking a Cuban cigar and drinking a rare, 18-year-old brandy, and watching himself on television. If you gotta go, I think that’s probably the way to go.”

28. Dhani Harrison: “We were sitting around one day, and (Alex Rigopolos) just said to me, ‘Do you think they would ever go for a Beatle (‘Rock Star’) game?’ ‘It would be amazing, wouldn’t it?’ I said to him. Actually, I think I said, ‘It would be amazing because I could kick your ass at ‘I Am the Walrus’ while dressed as a wizard in Shea Stadium.’”

29. Lance Henriksen: “We’d be doing these really dark, dark metaphoric stories (on ‘Millennium’), and occasionally it would come in on you, because you do long hours to begin with, so you’re tired at the end of the day, working into the night. A couple of times, I went, ‘I’ve got to see the sun; I’ve got to go to Hawaii and lay on a beach, man, this is burning me!’”

30. Brian Henson: One of the criticisms of “Farscape” when we were on the air was that it was hard to catch up, that if you missed a few episodes and then tuned in, you might feel lost, and that might get you a little angry. That’s really why getting this show as a box set is a science fiction fan’s dream: because they really Aeryn’t episodes. You start at the beginning, and you’re gonna watch an 80-hour movie…and there’s no other 80-hour movie on the market!

31. Susanna Hoffs: “To anyone who’s trying to be an artist, in any medium, it’s a very odd and lonely and nerve-wracking and scary process when you let anybody see what you’re working on. You have to learn to listen to your instincts. Absorb other people’s advice, opinions, or whatever it may be from the outside world, but at the end of the day, you have to be true to whatever it is that you’re trying to say in that work.”

32. Michael Ironside: “One of the young production assistants (on ‘Terminator: Salvation’) stepped over to my chair and said, ‘Mr. Ironside, are you any relation to the Ironside who was in ‘Top Gun’?’ And I said, ‘I am, yes.’ And she grinned and said, ‘I knew it! Talent must run in your family!’ And she walked away. And all of the producers and directors kind of looked at me uncertainly, and I said, ‘What are you guys so uncomfortable for? That’s an incredible compliment. I do look like the father of that guy, for Christ’s sake!’”

33. Howard Jones: “There are, broadly speaking, 2 parts to my audience. The first group are the fans that are actively engaged with my output for the whole 26 years, and the second a more general or casual audience that only knows the ’80s work. I don’t find this a problem. I’m happy to have an audience that knows me at all!”

34. Chris Kattan: “With the Roxbury guys (on ‘Saturday Night Live’), I think the breaking point was when Stallone came on and wanted to do the sketch just because. And we’re, like, ‘Well, now we’ve got to create a story, so, what, are we bopping our heads with Rocky? What are we doing?’”

35. Phil Keaggy: “I think people are starting to get used to the idea thati t was impossible that Jimi Hendrix could ever have heard me and would never have said anything about a guy who, at the time, was only nineteen years old. We actually recorded our first album at Electric Lady Studios two weeks after his unfortunate death, so I just can’t imagine how he could’ve heard me. I think it’s just a rumor that someone’s kept alive, and it must be titillating enough to keep an interest there. But it’s just a strange, ironic sort of thing. I’ll never be in the category of Jimi Hendrix, and I couldn’t understand him saying something like that, anyway, even after all these years.”

36. Lisa Lackey: “Often they would come to me (on ‘Rude Awakening’) and say, ‘Uh, you know, we just can’t really hear your accent. Can you be just a little bit more Australian?’ And I was, like, ‘No!’ I mean, how do you be ‘more Australian’? I wasn’t born in the back of the Outback. I was born in Sydney, I grew up in a city, I moved to the farm when I was bit older…I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘mate’ in my entire life!”

37. Zane Lamprey: “I think a lot of the charm of (‘Three Sheets’) is in its honesty and its candor. I do my best to never try to be cool or look good, because I think that endears me to the fans of the show, so if by making myself vulnerable or self-deprecating or whatever, then…I just feel like it makes the show more enjoyable and more relatable. So therefore I’m going to be myself. If I don’t know what something is or if it tastes like crap, I’m going to say it. If I drink too much, you’re going to know about it, and if I pay the price the next morning, I’m going to be honest about it.”

38. Stephen Lang: “I was relatively buff (before ‘Avatar’), because I was working in a tanktop half the time on stage, anyway, but I just went kind of into hyperdrive after that and really worked to beat that old body into shape, to get that carcass where…I didn’t want to be looking at it and see anything hanging where it shouldn’t be hanging.”

39. Wallace Langham: “(William Petersen’s last day on ‘CSI’) was a really tough day to shoot for all the usual reasons, but, sadly, my father was passing away…and, actually, after we had finished filming, I got the call that he had died. It wasn’t a surprise, but…you know, I knew that would be the day, oddly enough. Once I got the call where they said, ‘Okay, you’re going to be shooting on the 10th,’ I just had a feeling. I thought, ‘Okay, the irony of life has always served me well,’ and true to form, it was a very heavy day on all levels.”

40. Lucy Lawless: “I haven’t actually used the merkin yet (on ‘Spartacus: Blood and Sand.’) It’s still a virgin merkin. I haven’t actually done anything that is quite full frontal nudity, though there are some men sort of wandering around in the altogether. They’re always going to baths, the Romans draping one another down with oil and stuff. It’s just a fact, so we show it. One of the gladiators is gay, and there was no taboo on homosexuality in those days, so we allow it. There’s no stigma attached to it. We don’t demonize or play it up or make him mince around with a bow around his neck. He’s a great big manly gladiator and he happens to be in this relationship with a gorgeous young man. It just shows you how we’re not in Wyoming now.”

41. Bill Lawrence: “My kids aren’t allowed to watch (‘Cougar Town’). That’s crazy talk! My God, they’re barely allowed to watch ‘Scrubs’! And even then, only certain ones. I let them watch that damned musical, and they sang ‘Everything Comes Down To Poo’ for six months.”

42. David Lewis: “There’s that scene in ‘Harper’s Island’ where Cameron (Mink) is tied up and sort of hanging from a beam, and I was kind of groping her, and I’m, like, ‘What can I do here?’ And she’s, ‘You can do whatever you want, it’s all cool, we’re acting.’ So I’m groping away, but the producer comes over and says, ‘Um, you gotta do less groping.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Yeah.’ And, meanwhile, people are getting cut in half and having their heads chopping off. But I can’t put my hands near her breasts, because you can’t have that on TV. But impaling someone with a whaling harpoon? That’s okay.”

43. Damon Lindelof: “Hopping around time in a non-linear storytelling fashion (on ‘Lost’) allows you to bring back characters who are dead and, in some cases, buried. Now that time travel is the story itself, it opens up even more doors. So when an actor reads that they’re getting killed off on the show, they’re basically, like, ‘Okay, but should I still bother to show up next week?’”

44. Joe Lo Truglio: “The internet may have saved the State reunion…and any future State collaborations, considering we’re about as big as the Waltons and half of us are on one side of the country and the other half is on the other. E-mail is really the only possible way for us to communicate…and it’s a little bit easier. because we’re not all in the same room.”

45. Dolph Lundgren: “(Filming in Russia) was a nightmare. It was really bad. But then it kind of resolved itself. We were shooting in Red Square, which is always the toughest location, I suppose, outside of the Kremlin. You can get fined in Russia, but we had the permits and everything, and we came in with our actors and crew from Bulgaria…and then we lost the permits the night before, and the only time we could do anything was on the weekend. Everybody was ready to shoot themselves. The producers were, like, ‘What? What?!? You’ve got to be kidding me!’ We could’ve turned into instant alcoholics.”

46. Rod Lurie: “A reckoning is coming on the state of the internet journalism, because right now, the way it’s set up, there is so much room for libel to squeak through that you’re going to see…they’re going to rewrite the rule book on journalism very soon. They have to, because the bloggers are getting away with so much rumor-mongering about public officials and even private figures because they don’t have editors and they don’t have fact checkers and they don’t have lawyers. There is going to be a price to pay somewhere down the line.”

47. Jennifer Lynch: “(‘Eraserhead’) may seem like a dark film, but my father and I watch it, and all we do is laugh. It was Disneyland everyday on the set. That’s when I fell in love with film.”

48. Ken Marino: “I’m assuming that there’ll be a new group of people who’ve never seen ‘The State,’ and they’ll go, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about this, I’m looking forward to seeing it.’ And then they’ll watch it (on DVD) and be, like, ‘Who the fuck…? What is this? What are they making fun of? Who is that?’”

49. James McEachin: “I got an interview to come and do (‘Play Misty for Me’), and…Clint Eastwood wasn’t really that much at the time. You know, he wasn’t the Eastwood that he grew up to be, so to speak. I walked into the office and the door was opened, so I just sat down and started reading and looking at some things, and all of a sudden this guy comes through the door and says, ‘Hey, man, how are you doing?’ We struck up this conversation and we started talking. ‘What are you here for?’ ‘Well, I’m going to interview for this movie.’ And we just continued with the conversation, and I really didn’t know it was Clint I was talking to, to be honest with you. A few minutes later, (producer) Bob Daley showed up and said, ‘What are you doing in here?’ And Clint said, ‘Hey, leave the guy. We’re talking. Can’t you see we’re talking?’”

50. Duff McKagan: “Playing in (the Neurotic Outsiders) with John Taylor was great. A lot of pussy every time we played a gig. So many chicks. It was, like, ‘Wow, John, really? So this is what it was like, huh?’ And there would be like a couple guys with mohawks and a guy with, like, a jean jacket coming in to see me and Jonesy!”

51. Ian McKellen: “I’ve played an awful lot of people that other people would call villains, but that isn’t a very helpful attitude to have if you’re about to play them. They are just people, and they may do dreadful things and say dreadful things, but your job as an actor is to know why they do them or say them.”

52. Colm Meaney: “I do go back to Ireland, and I’ll probably be doing a film in Ireland in January, and I guess that kind of keeps me classified as ‘the Irish actor,’ but the last four or five projects that I’ve been in are either American or English, so I don’t feel terribly trapped in that. But sometimes, yeah, you would like to not be called ‘the Irish actor.’ You’d prefer to just be called ‘the actor.’”

53. Jonny Lee Miller: “I think Danny Boyle’s got it in his head that we all still look too young (to do a ‘Trainspotting’ sequel.) But, I mean, I don’t look like anyone I play, anyways, so I don’t really know where that comes from. Because, you know, you change yourself for the roles. I’m actually not Scottish, either!”

54. Katie Morgan: “There’s lots of things I never did (in porn). Like, I never did do the butt. And I had rules of no more than two at a time, on account of things that I do and don’t do. Ya can’t leave people standing around bored! So, yeah, all sorts of stuff. I was actually quite picky!”

55. Kevin Nealon: “Me and Conan O’Brien and Robert Smigel and Dana Carvey wrote a script called ‘Hans and Franz: The Girlyman Dilemma,’ and it was going to be co-produced with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he was going to co-star in it. We had a deal with Sony, we got paid to write it, and it was a musical, but it never got made because…I think Arnold kind of backed out at the last minute because he was getting cold feet because ;The Last Action Hero’ had come out, where he was parodying himself. But it was a really funny script, and I wish it could’ve seen the light, because I think it would’ve done really well.”

56. Kyle Newman: “I think everybody should see (‘The Star Wars Holiday Special’) to realize how bad something can be. There are some cool things in there, but it’s two hours long, and you could probably cut it down to about two minutes and twelve seconds of cool material. The animated Boba Fett sequence is great, and there’s some cool stuff, but overall, the whole format of a variety show in the ‘Star Wars’ universe is just a train wreck.”

57. John Noble: “Because I was so heavily pumped to get (an Emmy nomination) this year, you try not to think about it, but it starts to permeate into your thinking. It was actually quite a relief when it didn’t happen, because I’ve been in the business for so long that you kind of grow aware what goes on, so I went, ‘Oh, no? Okay, back to work.’”

58. John Oates: “I haven’t had a mustache for 20 years and people actually still talk about it! But I kind of understand it on the level that the mustache is back in vogue, you know. It’s back in style, and there is a lot of talk about it. My mustache took on this iconic kind of symbol of the era, of those decades in a way. Of course I didn’t carry the ‘stache torch singlehandedly…”

59. Chris O’Dowd: “I actually fly back to London this weekend to start learning how to ride a horse (for ‘Gulliver’s Travels’), so that’s going to be interesting. I’m fucking shitting myself. And I’m a big guy; I’m, like, 6′ 4″, so I have no idea what size this fucking horse is going to be. So I’ve decided on day one, I’m just going to let him know who’s boss. Which will consist of me quietly whispering into his ear, ‘Mr. Horse, you are the boss.’”

60. Ed O’Neill: “I used to say things like, ‘My name’s not Al (Bundy), you know?’ Not to the press, but to fans. ‘My name is actually Ed.’ I’d find myself saying that, and I’d think, ‘Who do you think they think you are? They only know you from that!’ And finally I just got…I don’t know, I guess a switch went on for me, and I realized, ‘This was the greatest job that you’ve ever had in your life. Why are you acting like an asshole?’ So from that minute on, I kind of…well, I hate the word ’embraced,’ but I just kind of went, ‘Yeah, okay.’ ‘So you’re Al, right?’ ‘Yep!'”

61. Patton Oswalt: “I think most comedians go through that (period), where you have to change or evolve. You don’t want to just keep doing variations on the same themes. And, besides, it would look kinda creepy for a guy my age to be doing stuff that, like, a 20-year-old would do. ‘Yeah, this is bullshit!’ It’s, like, ‘Really? You don’t have bigger concerns at this point in your life?'”

62. Aaron Paul: “I have had viewers that come up to me, and they’re, like, “You know, we used to watch (‘Breaking Bad’) as a family, and once the melted body came falling through the ceiling, my mom was just, like, ‘I can’t watch this show anymore. This is just way too disturbing for me.’ So it’s not for everybody.”

63. Jim Parsons: “(Wil Wheaton) was so fun to have on the set, and he was such a good guy, just in general. He seemed to be completely okay with the fact that his entire name became a mantra of vengeful hate. That didn’t seem to bother him.”

64. Andy Partridge: “I don’t like people turning up and A) wanting to stare at me, B) wanting to play me their music, C) wanting to be my best friend. You see, I just…I’m very private, and I hate all that. I usually try and be pleasant to them, but inside I’m going, ‘Fuck off and die! Fuck off and die!’”

65. Ron Perlman: “I like doing voiceover work. I just like it in general, because you’re constantly working on a very first-instinct level. You show up, you get in front of the microphone, you look at the lines, you say the lines, and then you move on. You work on a really primal level, is what I’m saying. You don’t have to shave. You don’t even have to wear pants. But, uh, that wasn’t your question.”

66. Danny Pudi: “You know, you’re just sitting with Chevy, then you’re doing a scene with him and acting, and all of a sudden you go, ‘Omigod, that’s Chevy Chase!’ And then you’ve got to keep acting. ‘Danny, your lines? Your lines…? You’ve got to keep going!’ ‘Oh, sorry, sorry!'”

67. Gordon Ramsay: “Chefs aren’t very good at sleeping. Guy Savoy said to me 20 years ago, when I was in his kitchen and said, ‘Sorry, Chef, I’m a little bit tired,’ he said, ‘Tired? How many hours sleep did you have last night?’ I said, ‘Six.’ He said, ‘Fucking way too much.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Think about it: the average person sleeps for eight hours a day, so when you get to sixty years of age, that means you would’ve slept for twenty years. Does that scare you?’ I said, ‘Yeah!’ He said, ‘So shut the fuck up, sleep four hours a night, get to sixty, and only have slept for ten years of your life!’”

68. Dileep Rao: “I think my beard (in ‘Drag Me To Hell’) is getting a better IMDb rating than I am.”

69. Francis Reader: “There’s a certain period in your life, I think, where if music is something that you’re passionate about and it’s something that gives you a thrill…what you feel about the music in a critical way doesn’t come into it. If I hear anything from, like, the year 1979 or 1980, when I was first just getting knocked over by music, reading the charts every week and taking the radio to school, it doesn’t matter what the record is or if it’s the craziest comedy record or whatever. It just gives me such a thrill of nostalgia that I can’t not like it and can’t not enjoy that moment.”

70. Andy Richter: “I never try to think that (a show is too smart for the average viewer), just because I think you put yourself in the position where you go, ‘Well, I tried to do something smart and funny, and I guess they want dumb shit, so I’ll try and write dumb shit.’ You just have to do the best job you can. Otherwise, it’s just too soul-deadening.”

71. Talulah Riley: “It was (Nick Frost’s) first-ever bedroom scene and my first-ever bedroom scene…not that we were actually doing much, but we did have to lie sort of semi-nude under the sheets. And he was incredibly sort of vibrant and outgoing, but then he suddenly got very, like, ‘I’m engaged and I’m getting married!’ And I was, ‘Okay, that’s good. I just won’t be touching you, then!'”

72. Robbie Rist: “Sometimes people will bring up these odd things that I did a one-off from. Like, I did a ‘Knight Rider,’ and I’ll get an E-mail from a ‘Knight Rider’ fan who says, ‘Look what I did to my car!’ And I don’t know if you know about this, but there is a sub-cult of ‘Knight Rider’ fan who trick out their cars to look like KITT. I’m, like, ‘Really? Isn’t there anything else you can do? Do you make that much money? Because I have projects I’d like to get off the ground, so how about you don’t make KITT and you give it to me?'”

73. Krysten Ritter: “It was just a little weird coming into the seventh season (of ‘Gilmore Girls’), where everyone is already set in their ways and their dynamics, and you sort of feel like you’re coming into a party late. So I was just, like, ‘Ugh! How do I make friends?’ It’s like high school dynamics!”

74. Joan Rivers: “The only good thing about age is that I get out there and…I say I’m working better than I ever worked. That started about seven years ago in Edinburgh. I just said, ‘Oh, what, am I going to censor myself?’ I’ve been fired, I’ve been broke, I’ve been bankrupt, I’ve had to go to court to get my name back, I’ve been publicly humiliated. Screw all you. Now I’m going to tell you what I really think about Jennifer Aniston, that little miss boo-hoo. So, no, I don’t censor myself at all now. But, you know, ‘fuck’ is in the vernacular now. It was good enough for Shakespeare. When Jane Fonda can say ‘cunt,’ it’s over. It’s done.”

75. Saul Rubinek: “I have a very good recollection of working on ‘Death Ship.’ We called it ‘Death Shit.’ I was glad I was killed off quickly. But you’ve got to remember that it was my second movie. I think I had done one movie before that. I was thrilled. You know: no mortgage, no kids. I was just thrilled to travel down to Alabama. We were in Southern Alabama, and all I remember was that, as I was leaving the production trailer, I saw all of my fellow cast members in the water. And there was a production report saying that under no circumstances should the actors be in this water, it’s polluted, and you will have to be hospitalized. But apparently nobody had told the actors. And that’s when I began to understand something about the nature of independent movies.”

76. Vik Sahay: “(Playing with Jeffster at Comic-Con) was absolutely the scariest thing I have ever done. I literally skipped over the ‘what a great moment’ to ‘oh, my God, I can’t believe I have to do this.’ And when I was up there, the people were, like, “Oh, my God,” and they were all screaming and stuff. But I didn’t hear a thing. I was just in my own little bubble of horror and panic, utterly, utterly blanched with terror.”

77. Rob Schneider: “Carsey-Werner cared more about power and control than they cared about comedy, so I’m glad I got the fuck out (‘Men Behaving Badly’) after a season and a half. I would never work for those people again. I would rather do any other menial job than to ever work for that company again. Totally. That’s one the reasons I never want to do television in America: because I had such a horrible experience with Carsey-Werner. It was a really funny show, and they talked me into it by saying, ‘We’re gonna make it just like the British show.’ And then they fucking lied to me. Fucking bunch of liars. And then on top of that, they watered it down, so it was more like ‘Men Apologizing For Trying To Behave Badly.’ That’s what they should’ve called the show.”

78. Campbell Scott: “I’m 47, I have gray hair, and yet people still come up to me on the street who are in their twenties, who weren’t even born when ‘Singles’ was made…well, they were pretty tiny, anyway…and they say, ‘Oh, I love that movie ‘Singles.’’ And I always say, ‘How old are you?’”

79. Amy Sedaris: “I don’t really consider myself to be a comedian. I mean, it’s not like I’m sitting around writing jokes or anything. I just like dressing up and pretending to be other people.”

80. Paul Shaffer: “Some ten years ago, I got a book deal and tried to do it. I wrote three stories up, and I just never had time to go back to it. So this time, when I was re-introduced to David Ritz, who is the A-list celebrity biographer, just a couple of years ago, he said, ‘If you ever want to do a book’… I thought, ‘Well, that’s the way to do it: do it with somebody, and that way, he has the responsibility of turning it in on time.’”

81. Craig Singer: “As filmmakers, we all kind of borrow and steal. I don’t think it’s an intentional tribute, but you’re influenced by things that you’ve seen, and a lot of times it’s about where you wish films had taken you. So you’re using your imagination to say, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if…’ Or, you know, ‘I’ve never really kind of seen this executed quite in this way before.’ So you try to keep it fresh, and if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best.”

82. Kevin Smith: “It’s not like someday my kid’s gonna be standing over my grave, and somebody’s gonna hang her a folded flag and say, ‘You know what? This is ‘cause he did 24 hours straight on Twitter.’ But it’s just one of those little personal victories, like, ‘I wonder if I can do this.’ And I did it. A stupid goal, but I accomplished it. Life’s all about…for me, at least…having very stupid achievable goals. That way, you always feel like a winner.”

83. Rich Sommer: “(‘Mad Men’) was my final audition of the pilot season. It had been three miserable, horrible months where I had zero callbacks, zero positive reception, one of those pilot seasons that makes you pretty sure you are never going to be an actor and never want to be an actor. And then that happened.”

84. Jon Stewart: “I think, in general, most of the people who come on (‘The Daily Show’) are relatively sophisticated media professionals. There’s not a lot of, ‘Wait a minute, how did you get access to comments I made three years ago?’ They’ve been around the block, so you don’t often get people who walk away angry. Now, you do get people who walk out oblivious. Rob Blagojevich came on, and…look, he’s either been the victim of one of the greatest travesties of justice to a political figure or he’s a sociopath, because he’s just out there going, ‘I’m telling you, I didn’t do anything!’ But I don’t normally hear people say, ‘That was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen!’ They’re pretty hip to the game.”

85. Dean Stockwell: “I’ve got categories of jobs, and one of the categories is ‘money jobs.’ If one of those comes along and I have to make a living, even if I don’t like the script that much, I’ll do it and just try to stay above water, which I’m able to do most of the time. I try not to sink with the ship.”

86. Tom Sturridge: “You know that scene at the beginning (of ‘Pirate Radio’) where I take The Count a cup of tea in the studio, and he shakes my hand, gives me a hug, and slaps me on the arse? That’s genuinely the first time Tom Sturridge met Philip Seymour Hoffman. Literally, I’d hadn’t seen him or exchanged words with him before. Richard just called me on set and said, ‘Take him a cup of tea.’ So that’s what I did. And the smile of delight as he slaps me on the arse is purely mine.”

87. Kurt Sutter: “The great thing about having a serialized drama (like ‘Sons of Anarchy’) is that I’m allowed to bring up events and circumstances that have happened in the past in other episodes to show that this kind of violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It has ramifications. It has repercussions. Whether it’s a week from now or five years from now, you know it will play out. Nothing is ever tied up into a perfect knot.”

88. Matthew Sweet: “I never cared about covers. I really only wanted to do new songs of mine, always. I went straight to writing and had this kind of empty hole. I remember one time I was standing with Brendan O’Brien, maybe during The Thorns, and he can play, like, any song in all of rock history on any instrument. He’s a complete hot dog with that kind of thing. He was playing something, and he said, ‘Come on, play along,’ and I was, like, ‘I don’t know how to play that.’ ‘Oh, come on, what are you talking about? Quit fucking faking it!’ He thought I really knew them, but I really just don’t know that many songs.”

89. Amanda Tapping: “It’s just so much fun making (‘Stargate’) that, as long as they keep asking, I’ll keep doing it. It really is one of those dream gigs. It sounds hokey as hell, but it really is just so much fun. Samantha will be rolling through the Stargate in her wheelchair, going, ‘Where’s my gun, dammit?’”

90. Alan Thicke: “The key to writing for Richard (Pryor) was to just push his buttons and then know when to push the buttons on your cassette recorder. You’d get him started, then surreptitiously start recording when he got inspired and started walking around the room and improvising in character. Then you’d get it all transcribed and take credit for it.”

91. Lea Thompson: “My kids can’t watch (‘Howard the Duck’). By the time I get in bed with the duck, they are, like, ‘Turn it off, mom. You in bed with a duck is just pretty much a deal breaker.’”

92. Sam Trammell: “Most of the time when people have to get naked, it’s for a sex scene or it’s post-coital, and they’re in a bedroom and it’s kind of a closed set. But with Sam (on ‘True Blood’), it always seems to be because he’s turning back into himself from being an animal, so I’m always outside. Like, way out. Like, out for everybody to see.”

93. David Wain: “Everyone who went to college and especially people working in media seem to know at least one person from Shaker Heights. There’s just something about that place that made people go to the coast.”

94. Dave Wakeling: “If you look at the history of IRS (Records), you can see there’s a certain point right about the time when ‘Tenderness’ came out, just before, where all of a sudden songs on IRS were starting to enter the top 40. And I think that they’d had enough success with the college charts and the independent charts that they could now afford to enter the top-40 lottery game. There had been jokes running around IRS that the only way you could get a top-40 hit on IRS was if you had a vagina. Miles (Copeland) liked his girl groups!”

95. George Wallace: “When (Jerry Seinfeld’s) first child was born and we had the bris, and I was honored to hold one of the baby’s legs, which is supposed to be for the daddy and the granddaddy. I said, ‘Whenever I walk into that house, that boy looks at me like, ‘I know you from somewhere.’”

96. Patrick Warburton: “You know, my mother actually thinks my soul is in peril for being on (‘Family Guy’), and after I watched last Sunday’s episode, I thought, ‘Geez, maybe she’s right.’ You know my rationalization is that it is just absurd, crazy humor, and…what the fuck. It is a deplorable show. It’s horrible.”

97. Carl Weathers: “(‘Rocky’) was so simple and, at the same time, such a complicated movie in a way, and a feat that John Avildsen pulled off, to shoot a movie in so few days with so little money that looked so much bigger than it actually was. The right people came together at the right time…and it worked. It just worked. And nobody thought that movie was going to be what it was. In all honesty, *I* thought it was going to be huge, but I was so young, naïve, and inexperienced that that doesn’t mean very much.”

98. George Wendt: “It’s maybe every third person now (who calls out ‘Norm!’ when they see me). It used to be every other person. It’s faded a bit, but not too much. They’re always going to remember me that way. I decided a long time ago that if I’m going to let this make me crazy, I’m going to be certifiable, so I just roll with it.”

99. “Weird Al” Yankovic: “If Michael Jackson hadn’t given his blessing (for ‘Eat It’), it’s hard to say the direction my life would’ve taken. If my second album hadn’t done well, that might’ve been it for me. But with Michael Jackson signing off and giving me his support…I mean, I’ve been able to ride that for quite some time.”

100. Andrew Zimmern: “The single greatest pleasure that I have in doing (‘Bizarre Foods’) is when I meet families with 6, 7, 8-year-olds, or teenagers, who say, ‘It’s something the whole family can watch, and it lets us show our younger children that one man’s ‘weird’ is another man’s ‘wonderful,’ and we all kind of live in the same place.’ It’s just the best part of my day.”

Within the format itself, the whole concept of reality TV must surely have been the biggest revolution of the decade. It’s really easy to bag on reality TV – mostly because the bulk of it is so damned unreal – but anybody who spends any time in front of the tube has surely had at least a couple of reality series they consider appointment TV. The two concepts that paved the way for everything else are undoubtedly “Survivor” and “American Idol.” The former, of course, opened the floodgates for the genre, and while it’s seen a considerable dip in the ratings department over the years, 12 million viewers isn’t a viewing figure to sneeze at. The latter, despite all the bitching and moaning and cries of “it’s not as good as it used to be” that accompany each new season, remains one of the most watched shows on the tube, likely due to the fact that it’s strictly a talent competition.

On “American Idol,” the only backstabbers are the judges, and since they aren’t part of the competition, their amusing duplicity is championed. The contestants, on the other hand, are innocents, and once the competition is underway, we’re given no peek into any possible backstage drama, which is a good thing, because by the time the audition rounds are over, we’ve had enough drama to last the whole season. Everything that comes after is all about who can best transfix us for three minutes a week via one pop ditty. It actually says something positive about the U.S. that “American Idol” remains our #1 form of reality entertainment, even if the actual reality is that the vast majority of Americans couldn’t care less about buying the winner’s album six months after they’re crowned.

You might think reality TV is a bunch of crap, and in most cases you’d be right, but the whole idea of it, to my mind, led to an important revolution, and that is serialized nighttime television (the classic “soap” formula notwithstanding). Reality shows taught viewers how to become invested in characters, how to be concerned for their eventual fate, and, most importantly, how to pay attention to an ongoing storyline, and the need to tune in every week. It didn’t take long for the networks to figure out that there was an audience for shows that didn’t continually hit the reset button. “24” must have been the first successful show of the decade to embrace the serial formula, and it embraced it whole hog. It required you to tune in for every episode, because each installment was another hour of a single day in the life of Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer. That “24” premiered less than two months after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 was pure happenstance. That it became enormously popular with viewers? Probably not so much. America needed some fictitious reassurance that there were folks on the job who could get shit done, and “24” filled the prescription.

Strangely, “24” didn’t open the network floodgates for more such programming right away. It took a few years, and then “Lost” made its mark. The number of “Lost” episodes I’ve seen could be counted on two hands, but that’s not because I didn’t like it, but because real life got in the way of it being appointment TV. Yet I viewed the pilot for “Lost” several months before its 2004 premiere, and when it ended I was convinced that I’d seen the second best TV pilot ever made. (“Twin Peaks” stills sits at #1.) The fact that a show as intricate as “Lost” still has a hardcore, central audience is perhaps a testament to that pilot. “24” started a new story with each new season; “Lost” required that you tune in for every episode of every season.

Another sci-fi series that did just that was “Battlestar Galactica,” a show that, due it being on a niche network (Syfy), never amassed a huge audience yet snagged boatloads of publicity and awareness nonetheless. It was no small feat to take an utterly laughable short-lived series from the late ‘70s and re-envision it for modern audiences, but Ron Moore and company did just that…and they did it far more successfully that anyone ever guessed possible. Most amazingly, the show taught us a lot about ourselves, by thoroughly defining what it means to be human, and as the damaged ‘00s dragged on, there may not have been a more important lesson to be learned.

On the same day I saw the “Lost” pilot, I saw another pilot for a completely different kind of series. While I didn’t rank it as one of the greats, there was one thing I was sure of: it would be a massive hit…and it was. “Desperate Housewives” was precisely the sort of vapid, soapy fare that had been absent for far too long on American TV. It clued into the seemingly bland suburban construct which surrounds so many Americans, via the Lynchian notion that “all is not what it seems.” Most anyone who lives a suburban life can no doubt relate to that idea, because wherever there are groups of people, there are bound to be some of them that are fucked up. “Housewives” is littered with fucked up suburbanites of all shapes, sizes and types, but they’re kooky and funny and there’s always some twinkly music playing in the background that in the end makes everything OK. It is not great television, but over the years it has, for the most part, been immensely watchable in the most disposable sort of way.

Around the same time period as “Housewives,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” made some major waves. It’s a series I have never watched and never plan to, but I’d be foolish to omit it from discussion since it brought two annoyingly obnoxious terms to the TV table: McDreamy and McSteamy. I haven’t heard either in a few years, but there was a time when they seemed to define everything that was wrong with television. I assume “Grey’s” fans have grown out of it…or maybe the show killed one of those guys off? I’ve no idea and can’t be motivated to investigate. Presently, there’s a brand new version of it going around, through cinema, via Camp Edward and Camp Nimrod. People can be so easily distracted it makes you wonder why some shows actually try harder.

Speaking of trying harder, it’s a good time to bring up some cable shows, otherwise I’m going to lose about 90% of the readers – only people who appreciate cable fare are likely to be on the net reading an article like this in the first place. “The Sopranos.” Jeez, what can possibly be said that hasn’t been said already? It turned pay-TV into a must-have for millions, and proved that there was a huge audience for an ongoing series with gratuitous nudity, violence and bad language. Of course David Chase’s baby wasn’t just tits, blood and variations on the word fuck – it was also a deep exploration of the human condition. You didn’t have to be a gangster to identify with Tony Soprano’s problems – you just had to understand them, which wasn’t a tall order since most of his dilemmas had nothing to do with offing people. The show rearranged the mafia formula so methodically, that it’s presented a serious challenge for any like-minded material that’s come since. It’s too soon to proclaim the definitive TV series of the ‘00s, but were I placing bets on what folks would say 20 years from now, I’d put my money on this one.

Fans of “The Wire,” would tell me I’m insane with the previous assertion, but since every time I’ve tried to watch “The Wire” I’ve fallen asleep, I’ve no basis for an argument. The thing is, the people I know who worship “The Wire” (and for some it really is a fucking religion) are the smartest, most well-read and educated, witty and interesting folk in my life. I’m probably a boob for not “getting it,” but I’m willing to bet there are quite a few other “boobs” reading these words, nodding in agreement. “The Wire” must be engaging, literate television…that was so niche it failed to capture a huge audience. The thing is, “Wire” fanatics, not everyone “gets” your show, no matter how damn good it is. You know how I know this? My two favorite shows of the ‘00s – both of which I believe to be incredible examples of TV – are “Doctor Who” and “Farscape,” and yet I know better than to showcase them in this piece, because it quite simply wouldn’t make any sense to do so, as neither of them had any real impact on American culture. “The Wire,” however, probably made some very relevant statements on certain segments of our culture, which is why I’ve devoted this much space to it. It’s too bad the general public didn’t bother to tune in and care. Maybe there wasn’t enough tits and ass?

There was plenty of tit and ass on another HBO series that captured a great deal of attention, and that was “Sex and the City.” This one I’ve seen far too much of, and I’ve no hesitation in saying that while “The Wire” made me comatose, and its fans may have driven me up the wall, “Sex and the City” made my blood boil, and its fans are some of the most clueless I’ve come across in all my TV watching years. Here’s the thing with this show: These women are not meant to be emulated. They are not just bad examples of women, they are bad examples of human beings. Some folks made the same mistake by rooting for Tony Soprano, only David Chase had the good sense to eventually call them on the carpet for it. The people who made this show never did any such thing, even though I’m fucking positive they damn well know better. If you think Carrie Bradshaw is an encouraging role model, then I hope you enjoy living alone for the rest of your life, because that’s exactly what’s going to happen if you choose to behave as she did in this series. Since the show has miraculously moved on to successful movies – proving that its disciples are more slavish than any fan base outside of “Star Trek” – it begs to have a happy ending sooner or later. And unless the writers dig way down deep and drag these women through the muck all the way to a reasonable sense of enlightenment – it’s going to be horribly hollow. There was, quite simply, no show that was more evil and insidious in the past decade than this one. Not even “According to Jim.”

Lest you think that outside of “The Sopranos” I’ve a hatred for all things HBO, that’s hardly the case. Even with my opinions of “The Wire” and “Them Clueless Bitches in NY,” there’s no question that HBO uniformly provided the finest entertainment of the decade. There have been times when critics have championed Showtime as “the new HBO,” yet I couldn’t come up with a single series from that network that really mattered. Oh, they’ve tried, but if the cream of their crop is “Dexter” and “Weeds,” they’ve got a long way to go before catching up to Home Box Office (a phrase that’s all but forgotten, yet is perhaps more descriptive than ever). “Six Feet Under” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” are two series that have had a lot to say about the people we are/were in the ‘00s: The former through its deep exploration of fractured and problematic humanity, and the latter though its shallow exploration of fractured and problematic humanity. I miss “Six Feet Under” immensely, although it ended at a perfectly reasonable point. I look forward to more “Curb” because it has no clue where to end; hopefully Larry David will keep coming back to it every few years until either he dies, or runs out of straw men to bash.

“Curb” is damn funny. Wish I could say that about more comedies in the ‘00s, but the humor was scattered and inconsistent. As far as the defining comedy of the decade? That’s a tough one to assign, since nearly every single offering seemed to appeal to a different kind of audience, but the honor should probably go to “The Office.” Here’s a show that, given the track record of translated Britcoms, should not have worked, and yet it did, and continues to do so. I’m not sure exactly what “The Office” has to say about the typical workplace, because I haven’t done that sort of work in years, yet it still largely manages to be a scream on the occasions I bother to tune in, which is, admittedly, maybe once every six or so weeks (chances are if I tuned in every week I’d have gotten sick of it a long time ago).

Probably the most influential comedy of the past ten years was “Arrested Development,” and it also happened to be the most prescient: George Bluth, Sr. was Bernie Madoff long before the phrase “Ponzi scheme” entered our everyday vernacular. The series has a devoted following that continues to demand a movie followup that they may never even see (but we’ve got our fingers crossed, even if the storyline revolves around George Michael’s funeral).

Fox discovered it could build a Sunday night empire on animated fare outside of “The Simpsons” by bringing back a series in ‘05 that it’d cancelled in ‘02. “Family Guy” may not be the definitive comedy of the ‘00s, but it must be one of, if not the most popular. It’s been amazing to watch comeback kid Seth McFarlane conquer the world through sheer idiocy, and one wonders exactly what sort of Faustian deal was made, and which supernatural deity has such a warped sense of humor.

Comedy Central’s “South Park” remains the go-to series for pissing people off, and rare is the season that goes by without some kind of shitstorm erupting from the questionable content presented by Messrs. Parker and Stone. Again, here’s a show I never really got into, but probably not for any reason you’d guess: I simply get bored by the cutout animation style, and it visually fails to hold my attention. One of my editors, however, was quite insistent that it be included here, which seemed a reasonable directive, especially given how often it’s been a focal point for controversy and discussion.

Also on Comedy Central we’ve seen the rise of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” a comedic take on daily events that for many has turned into an actual source of news, which in itself says something more profound about our country than anything I can possibly come up with. But I ask you, who presents a more reasonable version of the day’s events – Stewart or Glenn Beck? Sometimes the only thing left to do is laugh, because nothing’s really funny anymore. Something should be said about the show’s previous host, Craig Kilborn, but it would fall on mostly deaf ears, as nobody either cares or remembers that “The Daily Show” ever even had another host. (See also “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.”)

“The Colbert Report” is a spinoff of “The Daily Show,” and a lot of people are fervent believers in Stephen Colbert’s mock brand of conservatism. Occasionally, you get the awful sensation that some of them might not realize that it’s all a big joke, but rest assured it is. Mind you, I say that even though the joke has always escaped me, but then again, I love “Real Time with Bill Maher,” so what do I know?

Actually, one thing I do know for sure is that Americans love their fictitious cops, doctors and lawyers. We can’t get enough of idealizing these three professions that in real life we fear and/or hate. Noteworthy legal dramas were on the lean side in the ‘00s, and with a half a dozen versions of “Law & Order” (a concept that has the cojones to showcase all three professions to varying degrees) on the schedule, it’s perhaps unsurprising that lawyers especially got the short end of the TV stick. Regardless, “Boston Legal,” was a fantastically entertaining series that was never shy on opinion. During its run (’04-’08), it managed to do an exhaustive job of chronicling the political and social landscape as seen through the eyes of two very different lawyers – über liberal Alan Shore (James Spader) and extremist conservative Denny Crane (William Shatner). The show was clearly aimed at folks who wanted to think, which is probably why it never amassed a huge audience.

On the cop front – or indeed on any front – there was no show people tuned in for en masse more than “CSI.” Man, this thing was a ratings monster, and it even spawned two successful spinoffs. Of course, the central characters aren’t actually cops, but rather criminologists, but since they’re investigating and solving crime, they might as well be. The concept likely paved the way for all sorts of other successful fare such as, but not limited to, “NCIS” and “Criminal Minds,” as well as their current and future spinoffs.

The best cop drama of the ‘00s was “The Shield,” and it was a huge step forward for the genre, since it didn’t ask us to love its morally bankrupt central character, Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), and yet the intricate study of this man made it very difficult not to relate to him on some level. For perhaps the first time in a cop drama, we saw an officer of the law (actually several) faced with all the temptations we assume cops are presented with on a daily basis; sometimes they indulged, sometimes not. Either way it went down, for the first couple of seasons especially, the damn thing felt so real.

If “The Shield” was the most real cop show of the decade, then “Monk” was the most absurd, but it never pretended to be anything other than a whimsical presentation of criminal investigation. In lieu of delivering a fascinating storyline, “Monk” delivered a fascinating central character, brought to life by Tony Shalhoub. This past weekend saw the end of “Monk,” which was heartbreaking and uplifting simultaneously, and yet it was an ending for a lengthy ongoing series that snagged little press. People won’t realize how much they’re missing “Monk” until it’s been off the air for a few years. This is the kind of show of which we’ll see TV-movie followups in the coming years; Shalhoub, much like Peter Falk before him, will never escape this character.

Then there are the doctors. Resting uncomfortably at the top is Hugh Laurie who stars as “House.” I personally have some major reservations about this show, but I’d be a damn fool to not realize its power to entertain, and much like “Monk,” the show wouldn’t work without the talents of its central star driving the bus. There’s no question that the man just inhabits this character, and adding to the equation is the fact that, once again, it’s a bold new stab at a tired genre. The idea of taking the medical cases for which nobody has the solution is a grand one, and episodes typically feel more like mysteries than medical drama. The other great series of the ‘00s that revolved around surgery turned out to be not so great after all.

FX’s “Nip/Tuck” charged out of the gate, and its first two seasons rewrote the book on what TV doctors could be. During that period, it felt like we were watching TV history unfold, and we probably were. Too bad that book ended up being more of a novella. Here I am watching the show’s sixth season every single week, mostly because the end is nigh and Episode 100, which, as I understand it, airs in March of ’10, will be the finale. (If the show had no end in sight, I’d have given up some time ago.) Surely there must not have been a series this decade that showed more promise in the beginning, and then went so disastrously south so quickly? I suppose there’s a lesson to be learned here about making tit jobs the central draw of your series – or perhaps knife-wielding madmen are just not the best course of action to take when telling this kind of story. In any case, flawed though it is, you gotta give credit to the show for saying everything there is to say about the previously unexplored topic of plastic surgery.

Speaking of madmen, let’s wrap all this up with “Mad Men,” a series I was reluctant to mention here, yet two people on the Bullz-Eye staff suggested it as being important to this piece. The main reason I didn’t see it as worthy of inclusion is because, even with three seasons under its belt, the show still feels as if it’s in its infancy. Perhaps this is my problem, as I don’t see that the series has properly defined its mission as of yet. It’s a period piece and when I watch it, I wonder, “How will these characters react to disco?” Yes, that proposition is ludicrous, yet I’m unable to see a proper end for this story, and I’m not sure how it fits into this decade any more than it will fit into the next. But I have a feeling that the deepest parts of the series have yet to be presented, and that much of what we’ve seen over the past three years has been a sort of buildup. Matthew Weiner cut his teeth on scripts for “The Sopranos,” and even though the first few years of that series had massive amounts of greatness, the show delivered some of its finest, most definitive and thought-provoking material in the last two seasons. I’m hoping that Weiner took some notes from David Chase.

Join us now for…

Dean Stockwell: Hi, Will.

Premium Hollywood: Hi, Dean, it’s a pleasure to speak with you.

DS: It’s a pleasure to speak with you, too.

PH: You first turned up on “Battlestar Galactica” back in the second season, how much did you know about your character, Cavil, and were you given any forewarning that you’d be coming back?

DS: I had not seen the show before I did that episode, and I was very impressed with the script and the whole idea as I shot it. I had no idea that I…well, I had an idea that I would come back for another episode, yeah, or else why would they put me in it? But I had no idea that I’d come out so strongly.

PH: I presume that you were pleasantly surprised.

DS: Pleasantly surprised is right. (Laughs)

PH: So when you were playing Cavil, were you given any inkling toward the end of the series that you’d be playing a part in “The Plan”?

DS: No. I didn’t know they were going to do “The Plan,” and I certainly had no idea what my character’s role would be in it.

PH: How close to filming the movie did you find out how important Cavil was going to be to the proceedings?

DS: No one really told me. The minute I read it was when I found out, which was probably about two weeks before we shot.

PH: I didn’t know how close to the vest they played it.

DS: Well, they’re a little paranoid. They sent me a copy…I was telling Jennifer (the Universal publicist) here that they sent me a copy of the movie, and I put it on, and because they’re so paranoid and don’t want it shown anywhere, they put my name at the bottom middle of the screen for the whole damned thing, and I’m… (Starts to laugh) …I’m going, “Come on, I need to get one I can actually watch!”

Publicist: Sorry about that!

PH: Well, you’re ahead of me, anyway. This was kind of a last minute bit of scheduling, so I haven’t seen it at all yet.

DS: Oh, you haven’t seen “The Plan”?

PH: No, not as of yet, though I suspect a copy is on its way to me as we speak. I read online, though, that it’s being described as a “side story” to the series proper. Would you say that’s a fair assessment?

DS: Uh, no, I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. It’s the origins of the whole series and my role in that, which is very, very heavy.

PH: Sorry about that. I’d just gotten the impression that some of the events that take place in the film are happening simultaneous to events that took place in the series.

DS: Well, pieces of scenes from the series are used in the film, but the film pre-dates the series. It starts at the very beginning and explains what happened to all of humanity, where they’re left with just these souls on Battlestar Galactica itself and just a few on Caprica. Well, there were 12 planets in the whole deal, at the beginning, and I’m the one who decided that he was going to nuke them all. And I do. And for the whole rest of the series, I’m trying to stamp out the ones that are left alive. See, I didn’t intend for anyone to be alive! (Laughs) I wanted to get rid of the rest of them! Whereas Cavil Two, which is of course me as well, he spends quite a bit of time on Caprica with the humans who’ve survived, and he got an insight into their souls, as it were, and develops some sympathy for them. So Cavil One, who’s totally negative, “Kill ‘em all,” and Cavil Two are separated by that, and that becomes kind of interesting. But you’ll have to see it… (Laughs) …because it’s kind of complex!

PH: I plan to, I promise. So how is it to play someone who’s as morally dark as Cavil is? I mean, he’s definitely not what you’d call a nice guy.

DS: No, not a nice guy. Well, I’ve played some very negative characters, and some of them were pretty good performances, and some of them were for, uh, stupid shows. (Laughs) But what made this so unique is that the character is a machine, right? So then I feel that, as an actor, I’ve got all kinds of freedom as far as how I want to play a machine. The thing that’s interesting about Cavil Two, who lives on Caprica, is that he develops a little bit…just a little… (Laughs) …of a conscience. Or a little bit of sympathy – we’ll put it that way – for the humans.

PH: One of my colleagues described Cavil as a combination of Cain, Oedipus, and a reverse Pinocchio. How’s that for a comparison?

DS: (Bursts out laughing) That’s pretty funny!

PH: Is there any other character that strikes you as a point of reference for Cavil?

DS: Not really, because the idea that he’s a machine makes him unique, and then he goes ahead and…there’s a line of dialogue where Cavil One says to Cavil Two, “I have a yen to witness a nuclear holocaust.” So it’s a yen for him. And he goes ahead and does it, and…you’re talking about billions and billions of people on all of these planets. He kills them all. I have never heard of a character in any TV show or movie or even in a book that’s that completely evil. (Laughs) Or negative, shall we say.

PH: And, yet, you still manage to get some funny lines.

DS: Well, I’ll leave that up to you. I like to include dimensions to my characters.

PH: Have there been any lines that struck you as funny, that made you laugh?

DS: Well, not one that made me laugh, but a line like the one I just mentioned to you…that quite titillated me.

PH: Did you enjoy your death scene? I should…

DS: Well, I’ve had a couple of them. (Laughs)

PH: (Laughs) Right, I was going to clarify that I was talking about your sudden “Frak!”

DS: Oh, yeah. “Frak!” Bam! (Laughs) Actually, that was funny to me.

PH: Well, there you go. I wanted to also ask you about a couple of other projects that you’ve worked on over the years…

DS: Okay.

PH: …and, of course, I’ve got to start with “Quantum Leap.” I’m a big fan.

DS: Oh, good!

PH: Did you ever anticipate that the show would come back in any capacity, perhaps as a film, or were you just resigned to it being over?

DS: Well, immediately after it closed down, there was talk about it, certainly by Scott and myself and Don (Belisario), but the guys at the studio never got off the dime and did it.

PH: Do you think that ship has sailed forever at this point?

DS: Well, I keep hearing little spasms and twits about it. (Laughs) But in my mind, it’s sailed, yes.

PH: How did you and Neil Young first cross paths?

DS: (Long pause) You know, I can’t remember first meeting him. But I moved to Topanga Canyon in 1965, and then he got in there shortly thereafter, and there was just an amazing amount of wonderful creative activity in that canyon for several years. And I had written a screenplay that Dennis Hopper encouraged me write, and it never got produced, but somehow someone got a copy of it to Neil, and…he had been going through writer’s block for the better part of a year, and his record company was pissed off at him, and someone handed him this screenplay, he read it, and it just opened him up and inspired the album After the Gold Rush, which was the title of the screenplay. And even though I had Dennis behind me and I had Neil and all of this incredible music from that album…do you know that album?

PH: Yes, absolutely.

DS: I had all of that music, and the fucking guys at Universal still wouldn’t make the movie. (Laughs) Pardon my French. But it’s just as well. Now, I look back over at a lot of years, and I don’t know if I was really ready to do a movie that, uh, people could follow. (Laughs) I think I would’ve stepped out a little too far.

PH: Well, on a possibly related note, what was the experience of working on “Human Highway” like?

DS: Oh, that was fabulous! That was great. That came up after that, and…I love Neil. I love him as much as anyone I love or have ever loved. He’s an absolutely great guy. Not only a super great artist, but also as a human being, he’s just beautiful. So we have a lot of fun, and so “Human Highway” was a lot of fun. It was…the concept was Neil’s, and it had some silly-ass things to it, but I just went with that… (Laughs) …and there you have it: “Human Highway.”

PH: Do you remember how Devo first got involved?

DS: I got them involved. I cast a lot of the people in it: Russ Tamblyn, Dennis, Devo, and several others. And not that it matters, but my favorite scene in the whole damned movie is Booji Boy in the crib singing, “Hey Hey My My.” (Laughs) That’s just fabulous.

PH: So the Canyon must’ve built some strong, long-lasting friendships.

DS: Oh, it did, yeah.

PH: Was that where you first met Dennis Hopper as well?

DS: No, I met Dennis in Hollywood, prior to that. I met Dennis around 1956 or ’57, and that’s a great, deep friendship there as well.

PH: I know you guys have appeared together in “The Last Movie,” “Tracks,” “Blue Velvet”…

DS: Yeah, but beyond what we’ve appeared in together…well, we’re the same age – I’m three months older than him – and we’re the same height, the same weight. He’s got different color eyes, but we’re both actors and we have been for a long time, and we’re both artists and we have been for a long time. I make art, too, and Dennis makes art…on a very, very heavy scale. I don’t know if you know it, but he’s the first living American artist to have an exhibition in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

PH: I did not know that.

DS: Yes. Ever. Yeah, and he has a show on in New York now, a big one. He makes these big canvases, and there are also photographs, but he had 12 canvasses, and right after the start, he sold eight of them. And out of 140 photographs, he sold 100. He’s one of the hottest artists in the world, forget about him as an actor. Seriously, in the world.

PH: At the time that you made “Gentleman’s Agreement,” were you aware that it was going to ruffle some feathers?

DS: I was aware that it was a controversial thing. I was aware from the content of the scenes that there was something wrong in the world when people had prejudices against one race or another. So, yes, I was aware of it, and I took it seriously, just as I took “The Boy with the Green Hair” seriously: because it had a meaning. It was an anti-war film.

PH: What’s your favorite film you’ve made that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?

DS: Hmmm. (Long pause) I can’t come up with one for you there.

PH: It’s not “Werewolf of Washington,” is it?

DS: (Bursts out laughing) That was a real heartbreaker, because the screenplay was really funny. Really funny. And the fellow that directed it, Milton Moses Ginsberg, he had made one film prior to that, which was called…I can’t think of it, but it was all about a psychiatric looking through a two-way mirror at his patients.

PH: Wait, I’m on IMDb right now: it’s called “Coming Apart.”

DS: That’s right. And was it Rip Torn…?

PH: It was.

DS: Anyway, that film did well, because the guy had a lot of wonderful ideas, but none of them…none of them…had to do with the camera. Because the whole film was shot with a locked-off camera. Okay, so here we go, we’re going to start this “Werewolf of Washington,” which, like I said, had a wonderful script. But the guy doesn’t know camera right or left! He just doesn’t know it, and he can’t figure it out. Even the D.P. tried to help him, but he couldn’t do it. So it became impossible to edit the thing! (Laughs) It was really a heartbreaker, because I had great high hopes for it, and I think I have some pretty funny scenes in it.

PH: Well, I finally saw it courtesy of “Elvira’s Midnight Movies.”

DS: Oh, did you? Do you remember when I start to turn into the werewolf and my hand gets stuck on the ball…? (Laughs) I thought that was pretty funny.

PH: Just a couple more quick ones, because I know we have to go. Between working with David Lynch (“Dune,” “Blue Velvet”) and Wim Wenders (“Paris, Texas”), you were one of the kings of the alternative film scene for a few years. How was it working with them versus a “mainstream” director?

DS: Well, I think they have an artistic vision, and I think that both of them have much more of a capacity to improvise and create on the spot than other well-established directors. And…well, say, in the case of…is it David? One of them, I can’t remember which one… (Laughs) …doesn’t like to know how the film’s going to end until he’s well into it, and you wouldn’t find any major studio director starting into a film without knowing how it’s going to end. I always thought that was kind of funny. But I love both of them, and if they came and asked me to come to Asia and film a screenplay for nothing, I’d do it. They’re really great guys.

PH: And, lastly, you were in the film “Psych Out.” What are your thoughts on how it’s aged, and did you enjoy it at the time?

DS: I haven’t seen it since it was released. (Laughs) It was just…it was a money job. Even at the time. I’ve got categories of jobs, and one of the categories is “money jobs.” If one of those comes along and I have to make a living, even if I don’t like the script that much, I’ll do it and just try to stay above water, which I’m able to do most of the time. I try not to sink with the ship. (Laughs) So I can’t answer how it’s aged. Have you seen it? What do you think?

PH: I think it’s an artifact of its time, but an enjoyable one. But it’s no “Anchors Aweigh.”

DS: (Laughs) Yeah, that was a nice film. But if I had to pick a favorite, it’d be “The Boy with the Green Hair.” That’s got such an underlying meaning to it. And the main players on that film…the director and two of the producers were blacklisted by the Hollywood Blacklisting. The director, Joseph Losey, never made another film in the United States. He said, “Fuck you,” and he left. He went to England and made his career there. Because they thought this was an anti-war movie, which of course means that they were Communists. (Laughs) Totally crazy. Totally crazy. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I was still on a list somewhere.

PH: And with a title like that, it seems like it would be so innocuous. But it’s actually quite serious at its heart.

DS: Oh, absolutely.

(Writer’s note: Not that you probably have the time to veg out in front of your computer and watch the whole thing, but the entire film – this is Part 1 of 12 – is up on YouTube.)

PH: Well, Dean, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much.

DS: Thank you, Will. I’ve had a good time!

PH: And I hope to see “The Plan” in the very near future.

DS: Cool. I hope you enjoy it!