Last night on Bravo’s “Top Chef: Las Vegas,” the remaining 12 contestants were asked to rough it, literally. But first, a unique quickfire challenge that would be judged by special guest Tim Love, who was a contestant on “Top Chef Masters” and owns Lonesome Dove Western Bistro and The Love Shack in Fort Worth, Texas. The challenge, as voted on by TV viewers, was to cook something using a unique ingredient–cactus. Thankfully this beat out the other two possibilities–rattlesnake and kangaroo. (ewwwww).
I was going to cover some of the usual folderol I cover here today, but, sadly, we have another passing to note with the death at 73 of Henry Gibson from cancer.
Gibson — whose stage name derives from an early character he did with roommate Jon Voight — was a personal favorite of mine. Not a large man, he was the kind of actor who might have one or two scenes in a movie, but was pretty much guaranteed to bring something detailed and memorable to his usually hilarious scenes; a relatively recent case in point was his great turn as the befuddled shocked clergyman towards the end of “Wedding Crashers.” He’s also familar to fans of “Boston Legal” as one of the show’s recurring judges.
With his eccentric but unassuming air, he gained his greatest fame as a cast member on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In,” a faster paced, but more shtick-laden late sixties/early seventies forerunner of SNL. His signature bit involved him reciting absurd, vaguely counter-cultural, poetry in his ultra deadpan style while holding a giant flower and bowing with exaggerated politeness at the end. (He was famously spoofed on the show by John Wayne, who brought his own unique socio-political sensibilities to his verse.)
Numerous movie and TV roles followed, including probably the closest Henry Gibson ever got to a leading film role, cast brilliantly against type as a controlling and hypocritical country music patriarch in Robert Altman’s masterpiece, “Nashville.” Later, he’d play out-and-out villains, but usually in more comical contexts. Fans of eighties comedies have a special affection for his commanding role as the patriarch of a very strange family who loom in Tom Hanks‘s fevered imagination in Joe Dante’s comedy horror homage, “The ‘Burbs.” He was also the head neo-Nazi in “The Blues Brothers.”
All in all, the loss of Gibson at the relatively young age of 73 is a sad one and hit me personally a bit harder than expected. I’ve loved Gibson’s work since childhood and, whether he was playing a Napoleonic villain or a gentle preacher totally out of his depth, there was an abiding soulful quality to his work that made him all the more funny. Truly original performers like him are few and far between.
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My friend, Zayne, has a very nice remembrance of Mr. Gibson at More a Legend than a Blog, and Edward Copeland shares my appreciation of his work as country music legend Haven Hamilton.
There’s less of him than I’d like on YouTube, but I did find a few fine moments of Gibson, which you can check out after the flip.
Last night’s “Biggest Loser” season premiere featured 16 contestants, some of them among the heaviest the show has ever allowed on. And the theme of the season is “second chances,” including Daniel Wright, the dude who last season was the heaviest competitor ever at 454 pounds. Daniel has returned this season to try and finish his mission and become The Biggest Loser. There are also folks who have had the short end of the stick in life, so to speak, none more dramatic than Abby, who lost her husband and two young children in a horrible car crash a couple of years ago, and let her weight balloon up. She’s been given a second chance to get her life back on track, as have others who have had their lives de-railed in one way or another.
So the episode began with the contestants being bused to the beach, where they met up with show host Alison Sweeney. Mrs. Mike reminded me to mention that Alison looks positively awesome, especially after having a baby last season. Seriously, she does….and I think I speak for all of America when I say I’d like to know what her own diet and workout regimine has been!
Just last week, in our Fall TV Preview, I wrote of the impending premiere of “The Jay Leno Show,” “This is the most controversial maneuver in the past several decades of television history, a Hail Mary by the people at the Peacock,” so as a TV critic, there was no way I was going to miss Jay’s premiere episode. Having now seen it, I am absolutely unsurprised to report to you that, aside from a change in set, there’s virtually no different between the feel of his work on “The Tonight Show” and his work on “The Jay Leno Show.”
Really, though, this can’t be a surprise to anyone.
Although I always picked Letterman over Leno in the late night wars, I never disliked Leno. He was always hysterical whenever he turned up on “Late Night with David Letterman,” so I was thrilled for the guy when he made the transition to Johnny Carson’s regular guest host and turned that into a gig as Carson’s full-time replacement. But you can like a guy without actually watching him, and although I can see the appeal that Leno offers to mainstream audiences, I just prefer my comedy to be a little bit more off-center.
Rest assured, there was very little outside-of-the-box comedy on display in the first episode of “The Jay Leno Show.”
Those who read Premium Hollywood know that I have a tendency to discuss the deaths of celebrities by remembering what they meant to me, and when I heard that Patrick Swayze died, my mind immediately went back to January 2009. Obviously, Swayze’s cancer diagnosis had led everyone to fear the worst about him, but I think I’m safe in saying that most of were rooting for him to beat the disease, and when it was announced that he was going to be starring in A&E’s new crime drama, “The Beast,” I don’t know about you, but that was a moment where I was, like, “Yeah! That’s so Swayze of him to say, ‘Screw the cancer, it’s time to get to work.”
I’d hoped to get a phoner with him in the midst of the press blitz for “The Beast,” but due to his treatment, he’d limited the majority of his media time to E-mail interviews and the one-off Barbara Walters conversation, so I immediately sat down and tried to come up with a list of 15 thoughtful, intelligent questions which covered his entire career rather than just shit like, “Could Dalton kick Bodhi’s ass?” I was damned proud of what I came up with, and I promptly sent them off to the publicist. Not long after that, I learned that Swayze was going to be attending the TCA press tour in order to help promote the show, and since I still hadn’t gotten my responses back, I found myself venturing into my usual naive optimism, thinking, “Hey, maybe I can get the answers to these questions in person!” Instead, we arrived at the panel to find ourselves with an unfortunate scoop: Swayze would not be in attendance, owing to the fact that he had checked himself into the hospital for observation after having contracted pneumonia. Rumors immediately circulated that Swayze was on death’s door, that the end was nigh. Me, I immediately felt like an asshole, because – for better or worse – the first thought that came to my mind was the incredibly selfish, “Oh, man, now I’ll never get those questions answered…”
And I didn’t. But it’s a testament to Swayze’s reputation as a tough guy that he managed to battle back from the pneumonia and fight the cancer for another nine months, and anyone who’s lost someone to cancer knows that, after a fight that long and hard, his departure was one well earned.
As I looked back over Swayze’s work to put together this piece, I realized that the reason I’d had that selfish thought upon learning that he wouldn’t be making it to the TCA panel was that I really, really liked Patrick Swayze. I didn’t necessarily love every movie he ever made, but there was just something about the guy that was cool and likable and yet still pretty damned bad-ass, but…well, I don’t believe that the term “big-brothery” actually appears in the dictionary, but that’s how I saw the guy. (It probably stems back to my having seen “The Outsiders” during my formative years.) And if truth be told, I don’t think Swayze ever actually saw my questions. He always seemed like the kind of guy who, if he had read them, would’ve written back and said, “Say, buddy, you actually put a lot of thought into these, didn’t you? You know, I really appreciate that!”
Damn, now I’m starting to get depressed…and if you’re a Swayze fan, too, then you’re probably already there with me, so let’s look back at ten classic quotes from ten of the man’s most memorable films and just think about the legacy he left us.
10.“Boy, you just discovered the oldest sexual position in the book: the foolish position. You just got to remember, your brains are between your ears and not your legs.” – Ernie “Slam” Webster, “Grandview U.S.A.”
9.“I don’t give a shit where I play as long as I go number one in the draft and I sign the biggest contract I can. I’ve been busting my ass in this league for four years, and I’m gonna get what’s coming to me.” – Derek Sutton, “Youngblood”
8.“Son, it breaks my heart to say this, but I believe you are a very troubled and confused young man. I believe you are searching for the answers in all the wrong places.” – Jim Cunningham, “Donnie Darko”
7.“Well, pumpkins, it comes down to that age-old decision: style…or substance?” – Veda Boheme, “To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar”
6.“I love you, Molly. I’ve always loved you.” – Sam Wheat, “Ghost”
5.“It’s kind of strange, isn’t it? How the mountains pay us no attention at all. You laugh or you cry, the wind just keeps on blowing.” – Jed Eckert, “Red Dawn”
4.“Listen, with your brains and grades, you could get a scholarship, and we could put you through college, ain’t that right, Soda? But you’re livin’ in a vaccuum, Pony, and you’re gonna have to cut it out. You just don’t stop living because you lose somebody. I thought you knew that. And anytime you don’t like the way I’m running things around here, you can just get out, all right?” – Darrel Curtis, “The Outsiders”
3. “I’m gonna do my kind of dancin’ with a great partner, who’s not only a terrific dancer; somebody who’s taught me that there are people willing to stand up for other people no matter what it costs them; somebody who’s taught me about the kind of person I wanna be.” – Johnny Castle, “Dirty Dancing”
2.“All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it’s absolutely necessary. And three, be nice.” – Dalton, “Road House”
1. “If you want the ultimate, you’ve got to be willing to pay the ultimate price. It’s not tragic to die doing what you love.” – Bodhi, “Point Break”
