Big Shots at the Box Office

“I was in Australia, touring with my films and live show, and I got an E-mail from my agent, saying that there was interest in me for Tim Burton’s ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ I thought, ‘Okay, that sounds good.’ I thought it would be for a day or two, maybe a few days or something, and I would’ve been very happy to do that. But then the offer came in, and it was for virtually the entire run of the film. I didn’t even know what part it was for, so I asked my agent, and he said it was for the Knave of Hearts. So I looked up the Knave of Hearts in the original book online and…it didn’t really seem like a character that would require the run of the film. I thought, ‘Something must be different.’ And then I got the actual screenplay, and it was extremely different. I could see that it was written as a sequel. But it was a great part, and I was ecstatic to be in it…and I’m still ecstatic to be in it!” – Crispin Glover, Alice in Wonderland

“They called my agent and said they were auditioning for (‘Inception’), so I flew myself back, I read for Chris (Nolan) once, and I left. I think it was later that day that I heard from my agent, saying, ‘They’ve cut everyone except you. Now, they’re going to go to London to see some people, and then we’ll know more after that. So don’t get your hopes up, but…this is great!’ Then I came back and read again, and I got the job. And then, as you might expect, I freaked out completely.” – Dileep Rao, Inception

“I was actually down at my ranch in South Texas, and my guys called me and said, ‘Hey, we’re trying to get you a meeting with Sylvester Stallone. He’s casting a movie called ‘The Expendables.’’ Several months went by, and he’d already cast ‘The Expendables,’ but he still wanted to meet me for potentially playing the part of Dan Paine. So I went in to meet Sly, it was the first time I’d ever met him, and I’m a huge fan. I remember watching ‘Rocky’ back in ’76 or whenever it was, then getting up the next morning, drinking eggs, and running down the street…and now here I am meeting with this guy!” – Steve Austin, The Expendables

“I was privileged and honored to work side by side with Sly (Stallone in ‘The Expendables’). Most of my scenes take place with him, and I’m telling you, man, he took me under his wing, and it was a brilliant thing. I don’t know what else to say. ‘Rocky,’ ‘Rambo,’ just everything he’s done is iconic, and it wasn’t lost on me. I love the man, and I can’t wait to do another one, ‘cause Sly’s the king of the sequels…and in my whole career, I’ve never done a sequel to any one of my projects. So I’m, like, ‘Sly, I’m ready for ‘Expendables 2,’ okay?'” – Terry Crews, The Expendables

“Jessica (Pare) was just about to disrobe…we were in the (hot) tub…and they were, like, ‘Ready!’ And she took off whatever was covering her in the tub. And somebody asked the boom guy a question just as she was disrobing, and all he could say was, ‘Yesssssss…’ He could only whisper. I didn’t make a joke about it, though. I was just, like, ‘Okay, Craig, keep it cool, keep it together…’” – Craig Robinson, Hot Tub Time Machine

“I made the mistake of using one term loosely and saying (filming in 3D) was a tedious process, and somebody made it sound really bad. The bottom line is that it took a little longer, and the one that suffered more than anybody was (director Kevin Greutert) and the camera guy, because they have to get it right. You know, calibration and being specific with lights and all that stuff. For me, it was a good excuse to go play with the crew that wasn’t on set and crack a couple of jokes, so I got to socialize a little bit more.” – Costas Mandylor, Saw 3D

“Usually, when you’re coming in completely blind with who you’re working with, you don’t know if you’re going to get along, nor do some people put the time in to try to get along. We were all in Pittsburgh, and we did do, like, two weeks of rehearsal before we started shooting (‘She’s Out of My League’), and in those two weeks, we hung out a lot…and, luckily, it went good rather than bad. Because sometimes it’s just awful, and you’re going, ‘I can’t stand that guy!’ So we were lucky. I know a lot of people always say this when they come off work, because they’re kind of trained to say it, but with this one, we all really got along, and I think that’s what helps our chemistry on screen so much: we thought each other were funny, we even liked to hang out afterward, and that played well. ” – Nate Torrence, She’s Out of My League

Folks from the Shows We Blog

“Honestly, as a (‘Mad Men’) viewer…I’m a fan of the show, too…I just loved seeing (Don and Peggy) finally get to talk about things and be together and have things come to a head. You’ve had four seasons of history and life with these two people, and I think that it was just time for us to see them address some of these things. I think that 90% of what Peggy does, she’s learned from Don. I think that she really respects him and looks up to him, and I think he’s starting to ask her to make these decisions on her own. He’s giving her more and more responsibility…and that’s what she wants, but it’s also a little bit scary, and I think that she’s obviously continuing her evolution into becoming who she will be. Also, she…well, I don’t want to say that she’ll become like him, because I don’t think she’ll actually ever end up like him, but perhaps she’ll end up as savvy and professional and as good as he is at his job.” – Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men

“I think you’re going to see such a change in everybody (in Season Three). The stakes are much higher. Walt and Jesse are kind of really gently walking on egg shells, struggling to keep their head above water. There is definitely going to be a change in all of these characters. This season is really intense. It’s much darker, if that’s possible.” – Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad

“(Skyler) has run the household, she’s been in charge of a lot of things, and that’s who she is. Then she finally got the opportunity to say, ‘Wait, I can do something here, and I’m going to put my two cents in.’ She finally realized, ‘I can either run with my kid, I can turn him into the police, or I can deal with the situation as it is.’ For the writers, I think the challenge was, first of all, you create a show about a man who’s a good man and who’s always been a good family man and a moral person and kind of a milquetoasty guy and has flown under the radar for all of these years, and then he becomes a criminal. Then, you have to bring in his partner, and how do you realistically make that happen? And I think that they took their time with it, and they slowly gave her enough pieces of her personality so that when she finally came around to it, I think the audience said, ‘Oh, yeah!’” – Anna Gunn, Breaking Bad

“People love Hank as a common guy…and I love playing Hank as a common guy, too! Hank was so much more fun in Season 1 as a bit of comic relief to the dark stuff that was going on. Now he’s become part of the dark stuff that’s going on. While I kind of miss some of the lightness of Hank early on, as an actor, of course, it’s really fun to be able to play someone who is, in essence, a completely different guy now than he was when he first started.” – Dean Norris, Breaking Bad

“I think (Gus) has the capability of being very much the cold killer if he has to. But I think he’s grown to a place where he has such intricate tentacles out there and a network that’s so fierce that he doesn’t even have to touch that. But I wouldn’t for one second think that Gus could not take care of himself in a very, very stealth and very, very effective way. And I think that, because of the way he thinks, nothing gets in the way of the business and nothing gets in the way of the family.” – Giancarlo Esposito, Breaking Bad

“I talked to Vince (Gilligan), and I said, ‘I can do a shady lawyer, but the problem is I’m not Jewish. Saul Goodman is Jewish.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, no, no. He’s not Jewish.’ And he goes, ‘What are you?’ ‘I’m Irish.’ ‘Oh, he’s Irish. You know, he’s Irish, but he took this name to try to win the appreciation of the gangbangers who would use him, so they’d think they have a Jewish lawyer.'” – Bob Odenkirk, Breaking Bad

“My hat’s off to anyone who sustains a series for more than a season or two, because it’s tough. You always have the push/pull going on of ‘I want to keep them watching’ and ‘I want to keep giving them new things.’ To me, the way you hook people is to, oddly enough, parcel it out slowly. Don’t fill the waters with every bit of chum you have. Just put a little bit of bait.” – Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad

“What I would much, much prefer is to end (‘Breaking Bad’) sooner rather than go too long. This type, this conceit of this story doesn’t lend itself to any real longevity. There’s no eight years here. There’s no seven years. I don’t see seven. It might be able to go six, but if that’s true, then we’re halfway. But are we halfway through the telling of the story? Maybe. But is the telling of the story over when he completely transforms into this other person? Probably, right? I mean, once he becomes this other person and lives this life, is there anything else? I don’t know. Maybe there is more to tell. I don’t know.” – Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad

“I got all kinds of the oddest mail from (‘Sons of Anarchy’). People would write me in my character. Like, girls. Angry girls, because I had hit Charlie. ‘Look here, Mr. Weston, I don’t know you who think you are…’ Uh, I think my name is Henry, and I think I drive a Subaru back to my house after the day of work is over in the Valley where we shoot this, you weirdo.” – Henry Rollins, Sons of Anarchy

“(‘Angela and Mary’) had a genuine relationship instead of just something to sort of scandalize the viewers or whatever. When we talked about the way it was going to be handled, I really became very interested in just discovering what someone in that time period would be going through by having such a challenging relationship, to try and conceal it from people. It’s just hard enough to explore yourself, but when it’s something that off-limits…” – Aleksa Palladino, Boardwalk Empire

“The nice thing about (‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’) is that people think I’m my character, which I’m not. I’m not a screaming, yelling, cursing crazy woman. It’s a character I play. It’s called acting. But the nice thing is that if people bother me in the street and I am rude to them, they’re never upset or disappointed! Sometimes people are visibly disappointed when I’m nice! People will come up to me and say, ‘Oh, I love the show,’ and I’ll be gracious and nice, and I can see that they’re upset that I’m not screaming and yelling at them.” – Susie Essman, Curb Your Enthusiasm

“My favorite (‘True Blood’) scene is probably one with Andy, where I talk about, ‘Look, this town might be full of crazy rednecks and dumbasses, but it’s still America,’ and Andy says, ‘Well, that used to mean something.’ And Jason’s comment is, ‘Well, it still does!’ That’s one of my favorite moments. That Jason, beyond it all, is an American, and he has that real sense of patriotism and standing up for what he believes in. And that’s a really endearing quality. And as far as the storylines that I thought didn’t work…? I really don’t know. For me, I like to think that they all did. They all made him where he is today, and I don’t think he would be the same person without those storylines, so…it’s almost like saying, ‘Would you take a part of your life out of the way?’ And I wouldn’t. It’s like saying, ‘Which kid would you rather have die?’ I want them all!” – Ryan Kwanten, True Blood

“You wouldn’t really want to know (what happens in the ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas special.) I can tell. Also, what you have to keep in mind that I genuinely lie. I do. I actively lie to people about what’s going to happen. I’m not officially employed with the BBC. I can say any old thing I like. Even if I told you something, there’s no guarantee that it’s true. Disinformation and the white noise of nonsense is how we get through this!” – Steven Moffat, executive producer of Doctor Who

“Everybody is so good in all of the departments (on ‘The Walking Dead’), it made my life, our lives, so much easier, because it just felt real. Our job…I said to Frank (Darabont), ‘If we’re going to sell this world, what we need to do is make it as raw, as painful, as difficult, as beautiful, as intimate as we possibly can, to make sure that people really buy the fact that there are zombies out there.’ We have to work a lot harder, I think. But, then, that’s a great opportunity. The world is so ramped up that it makes our job more exciting.” – Andrew Lincoln, The Walking Dead

“One of the first shots I had to do on (‘The Walking Dead’), I had to sprint up the street, jump over a bunch of pylons, grab heavy bags, jump back over them, and just run back. And I remember…that was the first day that I got there. And I was not used to the heat yet. And I had been training, but I’d been training in L.A., so it’s, like, 70s and brisk. And I literally had to stop, and they go, ‘You look green.’ And I lay on my back, ate a banana and drank some water, took some pills…it was crazy. And that was kind of how everyone was welcomed to Atlanta.” – Stephen Yeun, The Walking Dead

“It’s kind of hard to believe that you’re (at the 100-episode mark), especially when it’s hard enough to get a pilot made, let alone picked up. I’ve always maintained that whatever you’re working on, you should work just really in the moment and not think about the next episode. You should just maintain a real strong sense of your work and your ethics and being honest with yourself and just continue to work hard and see where that takes you, whether you do 12 episodes, 20 episodes, or whether you just do a pilot. You’re just fortunate to be working.’” – David Boreanaz, Bones

“I recently just watched the pilot (of ‘Bones’) again, because I’ve been thinking about doing this 100th episode and doing a flashback. I think (Brennan has) become less guarded, more open…she’s trying to learn socially how to interact with people. Watching the pilot, I was, like, ‘She’s very wild, in a way.’ She’s just determined to do her thing and just does it and doesn’t care what anybody else thinks…and I just love that about her! That’s definitely still true. In one sense, she’s become more polished…and I say that in a lot of ways! But she’s just growing up and kind of thinking about something before she does it. And she’s also trying to understand social interaction and people’s emotions and feelings…and her own! Trying to understand other people’s through exploration of her own. She’s not as quick to just kick someone’s ass!” – Emily Deschanel, Bones

“I feel so lucky just to be involved (in ‘Modern Family’). It’s been incredible. I mean, it’s felt really surreal. And then to get nominated for the Emmys…? It’s felt like a dream, essentially.” – Ty Burrell, Modern Family

“I was in fierce denial (about Steve Carell’s departure). It was speculated for a long time, but I always thought he’d stay another year. Yeah, it’s sad. For sure. And infuriating. We found him when he was nothing but a movie star, and we made him a TV star. And this is how he repays us.” – Paul Lieberstein, The Office

“I’ve heard so many other stories about series where, after they’re over, this one had a problem and that one had a problem, but our cast is really, really close. And I can genuinely say that it’s a family situation around here. There’s no jealousy, and everybody gets along so well. To be around Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan…I mean, I learn from the best, so I get the best of both worlds. I learn from the best, and I’m part of a real family.” – Grizz Chapman, 30 Rock

“I didn’t know (‘Community’ had caught on). Has it? I don’t know. It’s back, anyway. It was picked up. But I don’t understand TV well enough to know what ‘picked up’ really means. It could just mean, ‘We’ll give it another shot.’ I don’t know.” – Chevy Chase, Community

“I was focused on my production company, but my agent said, ‘They’ve inquired about you for this script (for (‘The Event’), which is pretty good. You might want to check it out.’ Now, if I’m focused on something creative, I just totally immerse myself, but I always tell them, ‘If something great comes along, let me know.’ And it was incredible.” – Blair Underwood, The Event

“They simply know how to write comedy gold for Barb (on ‘Cougar Town’). The whole show is fabulously written. It’s very subtle, very nuanced…and then there’s Barb. And I think…I really think the writers probably have a tremendous amount of fun with Barb, because Barb gets to say the things that would get anybody else on the show committed. Or arrested!” – Carolyn Hennesy, Cougar Town

“You know, the cool thing (about Jennifer Aniston’s guest appearance on ‘Cougar Town’) is that Courteney and Jennifer’s friendship isn’t a media fabrication. They’re great friends. And so when we talked about doing it, it really became a Courteney thing, talking to her friend, asking her if she liked the show and if she wanted to do it. Jen was really cool and amenable. It was pretty easy. The only thing that was tough about it at all, to tell you the truth, was that we realized early on that we’d love to do it as the first episode, so it became less about whether or not she wanted to do it and more about scheduling. It was just tough, because…I don’t know if you know this, Will, but Jennifer works a lot.” – Bill Lawrence, executive producer of Cougar Town

“We first wrote (‘The Middle’) about three years ago, and we had a deal with Warner Brothers to come up with some idea, so Eileen (Heisler) and I started talking about, ‘Okay, what do we want to do?’ And I guess two things struck home: 1) we were both tired moms, so we thought we should write a show about a tired mom, and 2) living out in L.A., we were yearning for and missing home, in the Midwest.We all have kids, and it’s nice, because there are very few shows anymore, it seems like, for the whole family. Kids watch the Disney Channel, adults watch their own shows…we’re very proud of the fact that you can watch ‘The Middle’ as a family.” – DeAnn Heline, executive producer of The Middle

“I’d been on shows before that have been new, but with this one, not only is the show new, but Chi (McBride) is kind of new to the genre, I’m new to this genre, even the show runners are sort of new to this. So I went into it with an open mind thinking, ‘This is going to be exciting,’ as to how it’s going to come together. And it has been exciting. It’s sort of a collaboration in some ways, where everybody’s influence is kind of…if it’s not heard, then it’s felt and it’s reacted to, and the end product is something that everybody feels a part of.” – Mark Valley, Human Target

“I’m old enough to remember the Rick Springfield series (of ‘Human Target’). Somebody asked me a crazy question today, like, ‘I heard that there was a rumor that Rick Springfield was supposed to be doing this one.’ I was, like, ‘What are you, goofy? The Human Target in a walker?’ Do you know what I mean? But I remember that old show, and…that was pretty bad. But we’re the 2.0 version of that, and it will make you forget about that thing.” – Chi McBride, Human Target

“You want to really always be trying to bring in new viewers and designing stories and jokes to, like, if someone is tuning in for the first time, you would just want them to enjoy themselves. But at the same time, there’s people who have been fanatical about the show from the beginning, and it’s always nice to do little tiny things to try and reward that devoted following.” – Michael Schur, executive producer of Parks and Recreation

“There’s pilot season starting from January all the way to April, where you get a bunch of scripts, and even before they had sent out casting, my agent had sent me the script of ‘Outsourced.’ And I have to tell you, it was one of the funniest scripts I have ever read. I laughed out loud, and I think it was because I was able to relate to it. At the end of the day, it’s there to make you laugh. That’s what the final goal is, and I think it succeeds in doing that.” – Rizwan Manji, Outsourced

“I was at Comic-Con and I saw (an ‘Outsourced’ shirt). I kind of freaked out a bit. I’m, like, ‘Are you serious? A line that I say on television is a t-shirt? One that I did not make myself and give my friends to wear?’ We saw it before we met any of the NBC people. I’m, like, ‘Somebody just put that on!” – Parvesh Cheena, Outsourced

“I think we were very fortunate in that, from the onset, (David Spade and I) seemed to have an intuitive understanding of the other. Very little had to be spoken about or assessed. We seemed to play off of each other very well, and I think that, as we’ve gotten to know each other better and have become friends off the set, our love/hate relationship on the screen has been served better by that. It’s been really terrific.” – Adhir Kalyan, Rules of Engagement

“Those writers (on ‘Rules of Engagement’), any time they get access to a computer and they get to write a script, it’s nudity, nudity, nudity. It’s their favorite thing. I swear, there was a script where the writers actually, after we read the script out loud, they came to me with that look, like, ‘Are you going to hit me? Are you going to hit me?’ There’s so much nudity. I’m, like, ‘You guys, I’m not 16. What are we doing with all of these nude things?’ They’re, like, ‘What? We like it. We think you look good.’ Okay, so I’m naked on camera all the time. It’s terrible. As the wardrobe girls said, ‘You know, those guys would have written it whether you were working out or not, so you’re just lucky that you’re actually in good shape.’” – Megyn Price, Rules of Engagement

“I actually started in comedy. Those was my first jobs: sitcoms. I couldn’t get an audition for a drama to save my life. They were always, like, ‘Oh, he’s a sitcom guy.’ And now they’re, like, ‘Oh, he can’t do comedy. He’s always the killer!’ It seems like you’re always having to re-prove yourself.” – Garret Dillahunt, Raising Hope

“I think (Cloris Leachman) is one of the funniest people who’s ever lived, and sometimes…and I think she’s always been this way, or at least that’s what I’ve heard about her…she simply does not know how to not tell the truth. Her version of the truth, but the truth. She’s as blunt as can be, but God damn if she isn’t funny. She’s just funny!” – Martha Plimpton, Raising Hope

“The thing I love about Lucinda (on ‘Outlaw’) is that she’s very playful, but beyond that, too, she’s not going to play with anyone that she knows can’t take it. Lucinda is street-smart. That’s her thing. She has never formally been educated. She’s just a survivalist. She’s done whatever she’s had to do to get where she is.”- Carly Pope, Outlaw

“They sent me the script (for ‘Blue Bloods’), and…I had been looking for a long time for an ensemble piece, something where I wasn’t just the lead. This really has four leads…and what that really means, practically speaking, is that you’re not going to work every day for 15 hours a day, which is why I finally left ‘Magnum.’ I wasn’t tired of it. I was tired from it. So “Blue Bloods,” in description, fit what I was looking for. Also, when I read it, it moved me, and that’s really what I think gets any actor.” – Tom Selleck, Blue Bloods

“I’m aware of (the ‘Law & Order’ franchise), of course, but aside from one episode that I watched for Vince (D’Onofrio), I really haven’t seen any. I don’t think I need to, really. The writing…I mean, it’s so well done. The rhythms are there, the characters are there. I don’t know what watching it would give me that’s any different than what I feel for it innately.” – Skeet Ulrich, Law & Order: Los Angeles

“When they approached me in 1987 (about ‘America’s Most Wanted’), I said “no” for six months. I didn’t know what Fox was, I didn’t know who Rupert Murdoch was, and I didn’t know who Barry Diller was. I didn’t want to be on television. I was trying to change laws, trying to recover from (my son) Adam’s terrible abduction, and…I was a businessman. I built deluxe hotels before Adam was murdered. So when they approached me…it wasn’t my idea…they said, ‘You know, you’ve spent so long trying to change laws and change the way this country looks at missing and exploited children. How would you like to host the first reality television program?’ My first question – other than ‘who’s Rupert Murdoch?’ and ‘what’s Fox?’ – was, ‘What’s reality television?’ Because America didn’t have reality television. So we were Fox’s first show. I did it because the first guy was a child killer that escaped from prison. He was our first capture. Three days after the show had aired, he was caught in Staten Island, New York. Guess what he was doing? He was running a shelter for the homeless. An escaped killer and rapist. It’s been an incredible experience…but it was really Fox’s idea. They pursued me, and it’s been a wonderful partnership for 23 years.” – John Walsh, America’s Most Wanted

RIP TV

“I’m not saying that (‘Happy Town’) is going to take the place of “Lost,” because that’s a tall order, but this is something that could help fill the void for viewers of that kind of mystery-type show. I think it’s something that if people got behind it and enjoyed it…I mean, if they watch the pilot, I really feel like they’re going to come back for the second episode. And if they watch the second episode, then they’ll be hooked for the whole season.” – Geoff Stults, Happy Town

“The sad thing about sitting down and watching the subsequent episodes (of ‘Lone Star’ is) that you want to be able to say, ‘Ugh, well, then it went south,’ but, really, you sit down and watch ‘em, and you’re like, ‘Hey, that’s pretty good TV. I wish that was still on the air!'” – Kyle Killen, creator of Lone Star

“I’m not trying to say that (‘Terriers’) gets super-heavy, but the stakes get high, and it feels pretty real. I’ve always had this feeling where it’s, like, ‘Look, if you’re on a show and you’re in a dangerous situation, it’s better to be frigging dangerous. It ain’t time to say cute, funny-ass things for the benefit of an audience to chuckle for a second. Let’s suspend that.’ And I thought we fought hard…and Shawn (Ryan) and Ted (Griffin) and Tim (Minear) fought really hard…to make sure that everything felt poignant. Like, if your wife leaves you, it hurts really bad. These things were all pretty real, and it felt like an adult-like, human show.” – Donal Logue, Terriers

“(My show is) like all (MTV’s) other reality shows. You have to put them all in quotations. Are you telling me someone’s not there scripting ‘The Hills’ or recutting that stuff? I don’t think they actually have any reality shows that are the least bit realistic. It’s ‘docu-tainment,’ or whatever they want to call it. I’m just the latest in their long line of victims. My agent told me that beggars can’t be choosers and that final cut was something that was open to the network for branding and creative positioning, blah blah blah. I didn’t realize it was going to be full-on character assassination. I mean, I really do think a lot of the stuff is taken out of context and sort of presented in such a way as to make me look buffoonish…although I did get a kick out of seeing Greg the Bunny in prison. Ah, that was a good day…” – Warren the Ape, Warren the Ape

“My goal with ‘The Hasselhoffs’ is to kind of highlight who we are, get over the tabloid garbage, move on, laugh at ourselves by showing the Comedy Central roast, and highlight my girls and their passion to make it in this business, and what it takes. It’s kind of a combination of ‘Entourage’ meets ‘Fame,’ which is one of my all-time favorite shows, meets ‘The Cosby Show.’ So whether that makes for successful reality television, I haven’t a clue. I really have no idea. We’ve got great reviews, which scares me. Every time I get bad reviews, the shows are a huge success. But we’ve got great reviews, so I told the girls, ‘This is great, but I’m a little concerned.’ So we’ll see what happens.” – David Hasselhoff, The Hasselhoffs

Chatting About Cable

“I got very angry at the way everything went down (with ‘Southland’ on NBC). It wasn’t the fact that we got canceled. It was the way that we were canceled. Once that had happened, the focus immediately became, ‘Look, there are other people involved and interested in looking at the show, so what can we do to facilitate letting them know that there are a lot of people who are interested in the show and don’t want the show canceled?’ Look, this is a business where everybody in the town works with everybody else at some point in their career, and then it loops back around and we’ll all work together again. I was pissed off at a very specific business move that was made at a very specific time to a very specific show, and nothing I said has changed.” – Michael Cudlitz, Southland

“(‘Southland’) is not going to appeal to everyone. And in a sense, I think that’s part of the reason it didn’t work on NBC. If you look at NBC’s programming…and, to a certain degree, all networks’ programming…the shows that are going to actively turn people off…and our show may, because it’s pretty violent and there’s foul language, and some people don’t like that…those shows are going to be made on cable now. And I feel like…I hate to be overly dramatic, but I actually think I’m totally right…I think we were the last 10 PM character-based, edgy, kind of gritty show that will ever be made on network TV!” – Ben McKenzie, Southland

“In the beginning, (the character of Russell) wasn’t all mapped out, because there was the possibility that he was going to be sort of preying on women who were victims of crime. If a woman was suffering and it was his case, he’d get closer than was appropriate. That was kind of where the character was starting, and then he was also having a bad marriage. But then I think Anne (Biderman, the series’ executive producer), switched gears, and she didn’t want him to be, as she said, ‘a serial philanderer.’ She wanted him to just be struggling with the marriage, because in reality, these police officers do find it hard when they spend more time with their partners than their spouses to actually have a connection at home. So that’s kind of the line that we’ve found and we’ve started to follow.” – Tom Everett Scott, Southland

“(Lydia and Russell) definitely have a chemistry, and it was and is a beautiful relationship that a lot of partners have, because they spend so much time together. And, y’know, because there’s no romantic involvement, there’s this guard that, as adults, after so many failed relationships, we automatically put up when it comes to new relationships that you’re not putting up because there’s not any romantic involvement. So they’re able to have this honesty with one another about how they feel about things and not feel like they’re gonna be judged.” – Regina King, Southland

“People had to get past the premise (of ‘Big Love’), and then we knew once they just watched the show for an episode or two, they would realize it was so much more than just some salacious show about a guy with three wives, and this kind of ex-Mormon player, you know. Funnily enough, though, I think the show seems to skew probably 60-40 towards women. I think most of the men who watch it are watching it with their girlfriends or their spouses or significant other. It’s funny how it has caught on. But, still, because it’s HBO, there’s still a lot of people out there that have heard of the show and they still (think), ‘Oh, I would never watch that.’ You know, it kind of exasperates me sometimes, but that’s the way people are, you know? We decide on something before we even really know what the hell it is. And that’s kind of a premise of the show, too. You take something as taboo as most of society’s views towards polygamy, and you put a human face on it, and you create the characters that you can genuinely kind of emotionally invest in and love, and you start to kind of think, ‘Well, God, when you strip it all down, when you strip the religion, when you strip all the mores down, everybody is hoping for the same thing: for the health and welfare of their families.'” – Bill Paxton, Big Love

“The script (for ‘Hung’) was sent to me, and I knew it was a series for HBO, and I just was at a point in my career where I was thinking, “Nobody’s going to want to hire me because I’m not young and blonde,” so I wasn’t really looking at it. But then I noticed that Alexander Payne was directing it, and I had met Alexander years earlier, so I decided I should read it…and I liked it, so I went down to meet Colette (Burson) and Dmitry (Lipkin, the series’ co-creators) and Alexander a few days later. I was up in Washington state, I flew down to California to meet them, and the rest…is history.” – Jane Adams, Hung

“We shot (‘The Pacific’) for the first 3 months in far North Queensland, we were hiking through the jungle, we blew up everything we could see up. And then we flew to Melbourne and we shot episode 3, and…that was such a nice moment. The truth was, I hadn’t seen a woman for so long, man. I mean, to sit at that table read…we just spent the last 3 months around these smelly guys, and then suddenly we’re surrounded by all these beautiful Australian actresses. You just had all these men acting like 12-year-old boys, you know? It was like this competition for affections going on, and it was beautiful. It was just beautiful to see.” – James Badge Dale, The Pacific

“My grandfather served in the Pacific, actually. Not as a Marine, but in the Army in the Philippines and he received a purple heart. I got to talk to him before (we started ‘The Pacific,’) and it was great to know that he knew I was going to be doing this, he knew that I was kind of going to be telling his story in a way. I think it, hopefully gave him some closure on the whole thing. Because he was one of those guys, as many of the veterans are, who talk about, like, the fun things — you know, the jokes with their buddies — and don’t really talk about the tough stuff too much. Sadly, he passed away while we were shooting, so he won’t be able to see the finished product, but he knew I was doing it, and that alone meant so much to me.” – Joe Mazzello, The Pacific

“I just really hope that what I did with my portrayal of John (Basilone) really continues to honor his legacy and does him justice. I mean, I’m not him. I would never even try to say that I am equal to him or anything. I just feel fortunate and honored that I was chosen to portray him. I gave it everything I had, did the best I could physically and emotionally, and hopefully that’s what people see. And I hope that what I did continues to honor him.” – Jon Seda, The Pacific

“(Al Pacino) said things like, ‘Now, let’s not get too haughty. Let’s not get too sure of ourselves. Remember, these people were in uncharted territory. They had to be nervous.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, what a good thing to say…and to remember.’ Because, you know, you don’t want to play heroes, you want to play people. We told (Dr. Kevorkian) about Al’s ‘uncharted territory’ comment. And he said, ‘You’d better believe we were in uncharted territory! We were damned nervous!'” – Brenda Vaccaro, You Don’t Know Jack

“(The film ‘I Know You Know’) was a beautifully written thing, a labor of love by the director himself…and it was, in typical UK film industry fashion, kind of ignored. It got a couple of weeks release somewhere, but it was basically seen by no one…and, perversely, that’s actually one of the reasons that I’m here talking to you just now. ‘Cause I thought, ‘I ain’t doin’ that anymore.’ I’d had a couple of experiences like that in the past couple of years, films that you put an awful lot of work into, and anybody who knows me will tell you that I give 130% every day. It takes a lot out of you, that kind of stuff, and for it not to be seen…? Well, I’m not one of these artists who paints a painting and then throws it under the bed. That’s not me at all. So when (‘Stargate Universe’) came up, I thought, ‘Well, here’s an opportunity for me to do something that’ll actually be seen!’” – Robert Carlyle, Stargate Universe

“(‘The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret’) sort of floundered around Channel 4, they were trying to figure out what they were going to do, if they were going to pick it up or let go of it. Initially, they said, ‘We’re not going to do it.’ I was literally on the phone in my apartment in New York with Jon Benjamin, who was telling me that Adult Swim was not going to pick up our pilot, and the other line beeped in. It was (executive producer) Clelia Mountford from London, and I’m, like, ‘Okay, man, that sucks, obviously, but let me call you right back, I gotta take this call.’ Click. ‘Hey, Clelia!’ ‘David, I have some terrible news…’ I was, like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ I told my girlfriend, ‘If you’re going to break up with me, do it right now. Let’s just get it all out.’” – David Cross, The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret

“(I was) dumb as a rock (about sports.) When I got (‘My Boys’), I was, like, ‘Oh, crap.’ And even my friends were going, ‘How did you get this job?’ So I started shadowing sports writers, hanging out in press boxes, going into locker rooms…you know, clearly suffering for my art. Drinking a lot of beer, all in the name of research. And then I grew a gut, and they said, ‘Stop with the beer.’ I’m kidding. But then the show started going in more of a relationship direction than toward a workplace sitcom with an office dynamic, so my knowledge of baseball wasn’t as imperative as I had initially thought it would be. So then I just started drinking more beer, basically.” – Jordana Spiro, My Boys

“It’s a little bit depressing (being the elder on the cast). And I try to ignore it and remind myself that we all age, and that one day these kids will be the old dude on a show. And, you know, I remind myself that I can still do a 60-minute cardiovascular workout, I can do yoga, I surf, I can ride a surfboard, and women still generally seem to flirt with me when I’m out and about.” – Tim Meadows, Glory Daze

“This whole thing about celebrities doing voices for cartoons is maddening, because they create a character for the celebrity who looks just like the celebrity and sounds just like the celebrity, and then they give it to the celebrity and say, “Can you do it?” I have a lot to say, and people are always, like, “Aren’t you afraid you’re going to get clobbered or black-listed or something?” And it’s, like, I’m 60 years old. I’m not afraid of anything or anybody. Those days are gone. That’s the beauty of being an adult: you don’t have to explain shit to anybody…especially when you’re 60.” – Billy West, Futurama

“Let’s get one thing out of the way: the fact that it’s called ‘Brad Meltzer’s Decoded’ is ridiculous. I say to my wife, ‘Honey, what are we have for Brad Meltzer’s Dinner tonight? Because yesterday we had Brad Meltzer’s Chicken, and tonight I’d like to have Brad Meltzer’s Pasta.’ So anything that involves calling me the host…? It just amuses me to no end, because I’m just so convinced that someone’s going to come in and say, ‘Why is that pasty white bald guy on TV?'” – Brad Meltzer, Brad Meltzer’s Decoded

“’Leverage’ isn’t just one thing. You can’t just call it a drama only. It has some very funny, odd, quirky elements to it within the drama. I like the balance that they’ve struck for the show, and it’s a really fun ride to watch it. So, yeah, I’m very happy with the way it’s evolved. I feel like we’re not doing light fare, and we’re also not doing some heavy drama, either. We get to be involved in these scenes of great conflict, scenes of great adventure, character connection…it’s a really nice balance.” – Timothy Hutton, Leverage

“When (‘Heroes’) came on the air, I was watching it, and one day I went into our offices (at Slammin’ Salmon) and said, ‘Jay, there’s a hot, new, dashing Indian on the scene. You’re out, man.” And he said, ‘Oh, are you talking about Sendhil?’ ‘Yeah, the guy on ‘Heroes.’ ‘Yeah, Sendhil. You know Sendhil.’ And then he reminded me: when we were living in New York City, we were sharing an apartment, and Jay (Chandrasekhar’s) 18-year-old cousin came and lived with us on our couch for, like, three months one summer. And that was Sendhil Ramamurthy!” – Kevin Heffernan

“We all knew that there was a chance that ‘Heroes’ wouldn’t come back, and then the ‘Covert Affairs’ guys called me up and said, ‘We shot the pilot, but we’re kind of going to bring in another character. We don’t think the character from the pilot is working, so we’re bringing a new one in the second episode, and we’d love to consider you. How would you feel about it?’ So I found out that ‘Heroes’ was canceled while I was shooting the third episode of ‘Covert Affairs.’ And as an actor, that’s kind of the dream, you know? That doesn’t really happen. So I got really, really fortunate, and very lucky.” – Sendhil Ramamurthy, Covert Affairs

“I’d never thought of myself as an action person. And I’m not really involved in the action on the show, anyway, but…normally, the female action heroes are, like, super-sexy and are known for all of their graduate roles. Me, I’m known for playing the crazy person on all of these weird TV shows. So it didn’t really seem like I was going to be involved in anything involving action, least of all doing the action. But here I am, I’m on a show that has incredible action sequences, and my character does have a few close calls and come close to that. We’ll see. I’m hoping that maybe in the second season my character can start doing some karate or something.” – Anne Dudek, Covert Affairs

“The problem we have today is that people in the United States live by soundbite media, and they don’t do any investigating on their own. All they do is accept what the government tells them, and then soundbite media backs up the government, and they move on, we move on, and the truth is never known. As a thinker and as someone who wants to look at both sides, you just have to weigh the evidence and see what you think has credibility and what you think doesn’t. I mean, you know, people can call me a cynic today, but my government has lied to me so often, and…I’ve been part of the government. I’ve been a mayor, I’ve been a governor, I spent six years in the Navy. My government lied to me. You know, the big question I’d like answered out there is, how come when we lie to the government we go to jail, and when they lie to us we seem to go to war? I mean, that seems like we’re getting the wrong end of the stick.” – Jesse Ventura, Conspiracy Theory

Talk About Pop Music

“The past, to me, is something that…it’s almost like if you have a picture on your wall at home and stare at it long enough, you can’t even see it anymore. I’m at that point in my life. The last original-era (Smashing Pumpkins) album was from 2000, so now you’re going on 10 years since that. All of those things are close to me because of those moments in my life, and there are certainly a lot of memories, but it just starts to look like…you almost become more influenced by others’ thoughts than your own, because it’s so far in your rear view mirror. I’ve had so much life since then that it’s sort of like…I guess I look at it more from a standpoint of appreciation. Like, I appreciate that I did those things, and I appreciate that people still find something and come back and return to them, but…I guess I’ve kind of given up the ghost of trying to fight the fight of the old band. I’m so focused on fighting the fight of the band I’m in right now. And whether or not people understand why it’s called Smashing Pumpkins or if it should be called something else, that to me is such a minor argument, because even if it was the original line-up, if the band wasn’t qualitative, nobody would give a shit. So my number one issue is, ‘Can I create quality music at 43 years old that not only is current in terms of the world that we live in but can stand side by side not only against my past accomplishments but also people’s memories?’” – Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins)

“It’s such an effort to make an album where you feel happy with all the songs and all the tracks. And I’m doing loads of touring at the moment, and, you know, that takes a lot of time and energy doing all that. So making an album actually gets harder. But for me, it’s really important to keep making new songs, to keep doing it. Otherwise, you just stop dead as an artist.” – Howard Jones

“We change the set every night. We mix it up. Some people are going to miss out on their favorites, and some people are going to be delighted to get some obscurities that they didn’t expect to get. But I think it’s more important to make every show a unique experience rather than try and provide a greatest-hits experience to everybody. I think that the people who are coming along are coming based on a long association with the band, and they quite like to hear things that are a little bit less obvious.” – Neil Finn (Crowded House)

“(When ‘Cuts You Up’ became a hit,) I was thinking, ‘Oh, dear…’ I was suddenly being recognized in malls and stuff when I walked around during the day, and I was, like, ‘Oh, no!’ I was being interviewed by ‘Entertainment Tonight’ and all sorts of things, and I thought, ‘Oh, God, I am what I am, and I know I am, but…I may need to take a raincheck, because I’m not sure I know how to talk to these people. They’re aliens from some other planet!’ ‘Hi, my name’s Julie, and I’m the host of this, that, and dah dah dah, and I hear you’re a legend?’ ‘Am I? I don’t know. What the fuck are you on about?'” – Peter Murphy

“I tend to think that ‘The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle’ was Malcolm McClaren’s take on (the Sex Pistols), and that movie, ‘The Filth and the Fury,’ was John (Lydon’s) take on it. But there’s another thing called ‘The Making of Never Mind the Bollocks,’ a ‘Classic Albums’ thing, and I think that’s the most even-handed appraisal of the situation, really. That’s the one that gets my money. You want the story to be straight. But there’s never one story in the band. There’s loads of different ones…” – Glen Matlock (The Sex Pistols)

“(‘LENNONYC’) was very, very emotional for me. And I just never thought it was going to be that emotional, because I thought, ‘Okay, thirty years…’ I’ve been doing John’s songs and dealing with it on a business level for thirty years, so it’s nothing, right? But it wasn’t.” – Yoko Ono

“Pink Floyd offered me a job after Dark Side of the Moon. They said, ‘Come and work for us full-time, do our live show, be our engineer.’ And just at that time, I was starting to get involved in my own production, and Pilot’s ‘Magic’ came out. It was a difficult decision to make, and, obviously, I made the right decision, but it’s sad that we only made one album together. We worked very well together.” – Alan Parsons

“We started (Hootie and the Blowfish) to get drunk and meet girls, you know? And it’s just funny. We got lucky, we had some success, and we decided that we were going to be good guys, do the right thing, and help people when we can. For our state to be recognizing us (with a monument) 25 years after we started this thing, it’s pretty amazing…and it’s pretty damned cool.” – Darius Rucker

A Peek Behind the Scenes

“My very first directorial endeavor was with a ‘Love Boat,’ and I got to direct Susan Strasberg. I’ll never forget it, because her father (Lee) was, like, the patron saint of method acting, and I was really worried about it and kind of nervous about directing her because I’m thinking, ‘She probably knows everything about acting. What can I ever say to Susan Strasberg?’ But it was the very first day and the very first shot, and she did something that made me go, ‘Well, let me go over and tell her that, actually, she should do this and this and that.’ So I went over to her, and I said, ‘Listen, Susan, why don’t you try this on this part and that on that part?’ And it seemed like an eternity when she answered, because I didn’t know if she was going to say, ‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,’ or, ‘That’s brilliant,’ or what! But she looked at me and said, ‘Okay.’ And after that, I was cool. I didn’t have a problem directing anybody after that, ‘cause if Susan Strasberg can say “okay” after I give her direction, then I’m not intimidated by anybody!” – Ted Lange, The Love Boat

“I don’t make a strict delineation between narrative, documentaries, short films, videos, commercials. It’s all storytelling. Filmmaking’s hard as a motherfucker, no matter what you’re doing.” – Spike Lee

“I would say that (the sexual tension in ‘Macbeth’) has been increasing for more than a decade or so, and I think it’s just an indicator of the kind of things that interest us today. It was massively important to Kate Fleetwood and myself, and it was for me at the very beginning because, right at the start, I said to the director, ‘I want a young Lady Macbeth. I think this would create a very interesting dynamic, potentially.’ You know, two generations of age difference, which there was. And is it sexual? Oooh, yes. Yes! The way she talks in that soliloquy before she arrives…? The very first thing he says to her is, ‘My dearest love!’ This is one of the world’s great monsters. “My dearest love! Bring forth men-children only!’ Fantastic. Yeah, there’s sexuality in the relationship, isn’t there? And it’s incredibly important. Partly because she uses it as a weapon against him.” – Patrick Stewart

“I fully expected a PG rating (for ‘Coraline’) and would hope that parents would know their own kids well enough to see whether or not it would be appropriate for them, because there actually have been some 3- and 4-year-olds who can handle it, but there have also been some 11-year-olds who couldn’t handle it. It was always a delicate dance of where to go and how far to go.” – Henry Selick, director of Coraline

“A lot of times, people hear a lot of buzz, and then they say, ‘What the fuck…?’ That’s the great thing about getting buzz for a movie: it’s like free promotion. And then the bad thing is that the message boards sometimes run wild on you.” – Ti West, director of House of the Devil

“I’d wanted to work with (Colin Farrell) for about seven years, and I got to know him, and when I finished the script for ‘Ondine,’ I sent it to him, and…I was kind of unsure as to what I’d written. Was it good? Was it bad? Was it a fairytale? Was it not? But he loved the character, and he just leapt on it and said, ‘I want to do this.’ So that was good.” Neil Jordan, director of Ondine

“C. Thomas Howell was the other finalist (for Marty McFly) at the time, but John Cusack was somebody we considered. Johnny Depp read for us, believe it or not. I don’t remember the screen test. I mean, I looked through the notes, and I said, ‘Geez, I don’t even remember that we read Johnny Depp!’ So whatever he did, it wasn’t all that memorable, I guess.” – Bob Gale, screenwriter and producer of Back to the Future

“We have been a little shocked with how people have reviewed (‘Stolen’), because either people really love it or they expected more from the film, and…for us, we always look at the movie as having this wonderful energy about it and a blessing-or-curse sort of thing that goes along with it, and I think a lot of it comes from people’s expectations when they see the cast. They go, ‘Wow, what a phenomenal cast! And really interesting subject matter, too…? This movie should be this, this, and this!’ And, yet, people should remember that they’re looking at a low-budget film. That’s not an excuse in the sense of the filmmaking. I mean, we’re extremely proud of the movie and think it’s actually exactly the film that we were looking to make. But we’re wondering, like, ‘What were your expectations coming in? Were you expecting to see a ‘Bourne Supremacy’ meets ‘Changeling’ or something?’” – Andy Steinman, producer and director of photography of Stolen

“What I didn’t know (about making independent films)…but what I learned!…is that you must ally yourself with an entity prior to the shooting, so they feel part of the birth and there’s an emotional connection to your picture. Because, y’know, they’re dealing with all of the other things that they do have a connection to, and here you are, coming in cold and asking, ‘Will you adopt this child?’ And they’re, like, ‘Why? I didn’t conceive it!'” – Robert Davi, star, writer, director, and producer of The Dukes

“(Jason Calacanis and I) were at Mahalo.com, and he had this little studio. And I said, ‘What the hell’s this?’ He said, ‘One of my worker drones does a ‘This Week in YouTube’ show.’ And I said, before I could stop myself, ‘I think I want to do a ‘Charlie Rose with a sense of humor’ from here.’ And, unfortunately, he said, ‘How soon can you start?’ And my sphincter tightened, and I said, ‘Oh. Right. I guess I wasn’t kidding. Uh…soon?'” – Kevin Pollak, host of Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show

“We met Ronald Reagan (for ‘Monster A Go-Go’). He was very intrigued with the project because June Travis was already committed to it, and I found out about six months ago that, in his radio days, he had kind of a crush on June Travis. I can’t remember what caused the sudden interest in the project on his part, but evidently that had something to do with it. And when I went to my investors and said, ‘Listen, we can get Ronnie Reagan to star in it, and June Travis,’ they said, ‘You’ve got to be crazy! He’s a has-been. He’ll never do anything at the box office.’”- Bill Rebane, director of Monster A Go-Go

“I met with (Claire Daines) for about six hours, and I gave her the oldest VHS tapes I could find of me, where I’d be more autistic-acting. Like, in old programs from the late ‘80s, where I was on a TV show, and some lectures from the early ‘90s. We dubbed those over onto DVDs, and she had those to practice with. Watching Claire play me during the ‘60s and ‘70s was like going in a really weird time machine, and she did an absolutely brilliant job. She’s a brilliant actress.” – Dr. Temple Grandin, the subject of the HBO movie Temple Grandin

“I watched the movie with (Temple) the first time she saw it, and she was in tears. And I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘He was only Mr. Carlock,’ referring to her teacher. And the screenwriter and I had decided to call him Dr. Carlock, to convey an eminence that would kind of enhance the impression he made on her. But she thought that giving him his doctorate was a way of her giving back thanks to him for everything he’d done for her. That was lovely.” – Mick Jackson, director of Temple Grandin

“I got to share an office with John Oliver for two and a half years (on ‘The Daily Show’), which was amazing, because he’s one of my best friends. That’s what I miss on a day to day basis: going in in the morning, seeing John Oliver, and just talking about whatever we ended up talking about…which was usually nothing. But we’d do that all morning, and that’s what I miss the most. He wanted to learn, like, a Jersey / Brooklyn accent. Like, y’know, ‘Hey, fuck you, you fucking jerk-off!’ So we worked on it, and it’s still one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard him do…because it’s so fucking bad!” – Rob Riggle

“(‘Hank’) wasn’t working. And no one could argue that, really. It wasn’t coming together. You get an incredible amount of notes, and you’ve got a lot of people who have their feet in this stew, so those are tough. That’s a difficult water to wade through. I can’t even imagine it. I’m not very good at that kind of thing, suffering the opinions of people who’ve never done it. That’s tough. It’s like somebody telling you how you should write your articles or conduct your interviews, having never done either one. It’s hard to take, isn’t it? Someone starts telling you how to do your job, and you’re, like, ‘Have you ever put pen to paper? Have you ever sat in front of a typewriter or computer keyboard and actually had to pull all of this stuff together? Have you done it? Then I’m not sure you’re the best person to tell me how. Did you ever take a journalism class? Did you ever take a creative writing class?’ And they’re, like, ‘Uh…’” – David Koechner

Beautiful Girls

“You would think on a movie like (‘Bitch Slap’), with all of the sexual plots going on, that there maybe would’ve been a certain degree of inappropriateness or sexual harassment going on. But there really wasn’t, and I think part of it was just because we had such a free, open dialogue, and you could make a sex joke and know that it was all in good fun and games. It was almost like we were sitting in a sports bar all day when we were shooting. It was just constant jokes about all sorts of things, and…there was really no term for male or female sexual organs or sexual acts that didn’t have some crazy term made up for the film. In fact, we would have days where we would go, ‘Okay, exactly what is a Rusty Anchor? What does it mean to sluice someone’s badger?’ Just all of these different things, and half of them we were, like, ‘We don’t even know what that means.'” – Erin Cummings

“Oh, God, I so, so wanted to have a bonfire when (‘Star Trek: Voyager’) ended. I was so lobbying for them to let me just burn one of the corsets. ‘Just one!’ But, no. It was so nice to get on a show with actual clothing!” – Jeri Ryan

“I’m such a square in my real life that I’m, like, the polar opposite of Kimber (on ‘Nip/Tuck’). But I get her. In kind of a voyeuristic way, I had so much fun playing the character because my life is so structured and, like, I’m very strict with my lifestyle and what I do. So going to play this character was very fun for me. You know, it was liberating. I always said that we should have The ‘Nip/Tuck’ School of Lovemaking, because I’ll tell you what, I’m sure not one woman has made love on television more than I have. I could start, like, the Strasberg School for Lovemaking on Television.” – Kelly Carlson

“I thought that I wasn’t going to be an actress. I did not want to act, because I thought that I could never be as good as my mom, and so I was always going to be a frustrated person in my life because everyone would say, ‘Oh, she’s not as good as her mom,’ and it was going to be very difficult to match my mom’s career. When I became a model, and then I became quite successful as a model, I still loved films very much, so I thought, ‘Well, let me try and be an actress,’ because then I had the certitude that I could do it, that I could make it. As a model, you have to evolve into something else. You know that it’s one of those careers, like a sports person or a dancer, where you stop when you’re 30 or 35. But it was the success of modeling that gave me the courage to attempt acting.” – Isabella Rossellini

Stand Up Guys

“I was talking to somebody the other day, and he said, ‘I think more people think you’re dirty now than think you’re clean.’ What’s happened now is I’ve got to defend myself, because I’m definitely not an X-rated comedian. I’m just some guy who…I mean, you watch ‘South Park’ and ‘Family Guy,’ and you cover the gamut of everything I could possibly say. So I have a 10-minute hunk of material about what college kids shouldn’t do with small animals. Who doesn’t? But I’ll be in a public place, an airport, and there’ll be five or six people all at the same time, and one’s a little girl who should not know anything I’ve done on HBO, and if she’s going to know anything about me, it’s that I’m the father on (‘Full House’)…but then her father goes, ‘Oh, I loved you in ‘The Aristocrats’!’ And I’m, like, ‘Your kid is six!'” – Bob Saget

“The first couple of years when I would go to London twice a year to work, because I was on a real tight budget. I’m not saying this to try and make people feel sorry for me, but, y’know, I was cheap, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on hotels and stuff, so I would stay at these hostels. I don’t know what they’re like now, maybe they’ve improved that, but, I mean, these places were pretty seedy. Like, little tiny worn-out cots, three guys sleeping in a room the size of a closet, eating canned beans for dinner. Just because, y’know, you’re out there, you’re trying to save money ‘cause you’re not making a ton. There were times when that was a little depressing, waking up at 5 AM ‘cause of the jetlag, and you wake up with a sore back, and there’s a snoring guy about two feet away with you, and you can smell people’s feet. But that didn’t make me want to quit. It just made me want to get to the next level really quick.” – Arj Barker, Flight of the Conchords

“”We knew that anything we’d do (on the reunion tour) would work. It was just, ‘What do we want to do?’ I mean, we’re icons, man! When we first come on the stage, there’s such loud applause that you can almost just go home after that. It’s that warming. So we know that whatever we do is going to be received well, and we take advantage of that and do stuff that we’ve never done before.” – Tommy Chong

“Before (Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro) were supposed to come out (for ‘The Joe Pesci Show’)…not the live show, but the dress show…they came up and they said, ‘They canceled. De Niro’s never been on live television, he didn’t know it was live, he’s not doing it.’ Complete panic attack. But Pesci was going to do it without De Niro, so it was going to be me, and Colin Quinn as De Niro and then Pesci…and then Lorne insisted on bringing out Darrell Hammond dressed as like a fat De Niro. To me, it was just the dumbest thing. The wind was completely blown out of my sails, and during the dress, I was actually a little depressed and annoyed during the sketch, because I knew just Pesci was going to come out, and…it was just going to look stupid. And all of a sudden, I heard the loudest roar I have ever heard in my life on that show, and I turned around…and De Niro was there. I will never forget that feeling, to see that guy just glaring at you with that look he’s got, just nodding his head with this little smirk on his face. It was unreal. Unreal.” – Jim Breuer, Saturday Night Live

“In the past, I’ve had these big sets for these one-man shows, and this one has just a beautiful background which HBO quality controlled…and you can bet that, with the big money going down there, it looks good. Really good. But, you know, I did the very first HBO comedy special, and I did it at a college. And one time, Rosie O’Donnell did one, and she took the money and did it in a little club. HBO was so pissed at her! They want to see production values!” – Robert Klein

“When I was a kid, I found comedy and it…it changed my life. It saved my life, really. I mean, for me, it was, like, the way some kids pick up a guitar and, boom, they’ve got a way to cope. They’ve got their thing. For me, it was comedy. When I heard Carlin for the first time, when I was 12 or 13 years old, that was for me what it must’ve been like for a kid who wants to play the guitar to hear Hendrix for the first time. My involvement in comedy is really quite personal and quite emotional. I have this tremendous passion for it, and I’ve been struck over the many decades I’ve been doing this at how people perceive it as just kind of like…well, like I said, they see as this pop culture fluff. There’s no real comedy criticism, there’s no real critique. Like, where’s the Pauline Kael who covers comedy? It’s as deep and rich an art form as any other, like music or painting or anything, and yet there are no courses in comedy appreciation like there are for music and art…and it’s because people don’t think of it as being that high an art form.” – Paul Provenza

Roles People Played

“I really enjoyed (playing Messy Marvin). I was seven or eight or something like that, and I was hired originally as what’s called a back-up. When you hire kids, you hire your primary, but, y’know, kids are young, so just in case, you also hire a back-up, and for whatever reason, the one who was hired just didn’t work. I’d been there for, like, eleven hours and was ready to go, and then they brought me in and did it…and that wound up being something like eight or nine commercials and a decade-long thing. Hershey’s was great. They would send me boxes of chocolate every year. I was on that short list of special clients, and every Christmas we’d get a big box full of Hershey’s candy.” – Peter Billingsley

“You don’t get to be a top-25 show for five years from just girls watching you. This was actually one of the challenges when we first started (‘Blossom’). The saying was, ‘Girls will watch boys and girls will watch girls, but boys will only watch boys.’ And, obviously, a lot of the trying to really bump up the Joey Lawrence kind of plots, bringing in Playboy bunnies every other week, and guest stars and fantasy things…I mean, those were all ploys to get boys to watch us.” – Mayim Bialik

“I was in New York doing publicity for (‘Dallas’), and I was invited to be on ‘Good Morning America’ with David Hartman, and David said to me, ‘Does anyone know (who shot J.R.)? What about your children? Do they know?’ And I said, ‘Well, they made guesses…and one of them actually got it right!’ And that was the end of it…but when I got off the show, I thought, ‘Oh, my God…’ It was such a frenzy that I thought the press would call my house, talk to my children, and say, ‘Who did you guess?!?’ But it never happened. Nobody called…thank God! But I went into a panic. I called home and said, ‘If anybody asks you, do not tell them who you guessed! You can’t say a word!'” – Linda Gray

“I have been just so blessed and lucky to be involved in a few really amazing movies in my career thus far, and ‘JFK’ is one of them. It will live forever. And whether you agree or disagree with the philosophy or the ideas that are being expressed in that movie, people, when they see it, they remember it. And I enjoyed the hell out of doing that. That was so much fun. You could have an hour movie that seems like three hours, or a three-hour movie that seems like an hour and you’re begging for more…and that’s ‘JFK.’ It just wows you, and you’re, like, ‘Man, I want to do that again!’ So you go see it again. I’d love to be involved in another project that was as amazing as that. It was crazy. Bill Broussard, man…” – Michael Rooker

“I was driving down the street in my convertible Cadillac, (‘Thelma and Louise’) is just out, and these two girls looked over at me from another car right next to me. And one of them said, ‘Omigod, it’s that guy from ‘Thelma and Louise’! Omigod!’ And the other girl looks over and says, ‘Shoot him!’ Yeah, that movie empowered women all over the world…” – Christopher McDonald

“I didn’t even know I was on (‘Spongebob Squarepants’) until my granddaughter told me. You know, you do these things, and then they send them to China to draw them, I guess, for a year or whatever. So the show was on, and my granddaughter said, ‘You know, I think that guy on that show is you!’ And I said, ‘Geez, let me see…’ So I watched one, and I said, ‘By golly, you’re right!’” – Tim Conway

“(’24’) was one of my favorite things that I’ve ever gotten to do. That year, I told anybody who’d listen, ‘I have the best job in Hollywood.’ My only regret is that I never got to do a scene with Kiefer. But Gregory Itzen…what a husband.” – Jean Smart

“I cannot tell you how many people were, like, blown away by that and lost themselves as kids in the world of ‘Silver Spoons.’ And everybody asks about the train. Everybody! Unfortunately, I haven’t seen or talked to my friends from that show in a long time. I saw Joel Higgins, who plays my dad, maybe eight years ago, and I haven’t seen or talked to Alfonso in about four or five years. No, I really don’t keep tight with those guys. It’s just that everybody’s spread out. Joel’s back on the east coast, and everybody’s, y’know, in their own lives.” – Ricky Schroder

Still, before I got off the line with Messrs. Anderson and Steinman, I felt obliged to buckle up and ask them what they thought about the film’s Tomatometer rating….and, no, the line didn’t go dead immediately after I asked it.

Bullz-Eye: Hi, guys! Good to talk with you.

Anders Anderson: Hey, Will, how are you doing?

Andy Steinman: Hey, Will, nice to talk with you.

BE: Now, I hope you guys don’t mind if I ask you to identify yourselves before you answer questions, just because your voices sound kind of similar.

AA: Yeah, no problem.

AS: They’re actually quite different, but when you’re around someone that long, they start melding into one.

BE: (Laughs) That’s probably what it is. Well, I guess my first question is to ask how you guys first began your collaboration. Had you been friends prior to this project?

AA: Yeah, we had, but I’ll let Andy tell this tale. He’s told it many times.

AS: Yeah, we first met on a short in Santa Fe, NM, that Anders was acting and…I think you were producing it, too, yeah?

AA: Yeah.

AS: And I was a cinematographer, and I came out there, and we just clicked. Talking to him about whatever we had to do with the camera, talking to him about performance, talking to him about movies that we like, how to make the short the best it could be. We just kind of hit it off on what we wanted to do in our careers when we were done with this short, so we started talking about possibly forming a company and trying to do movies that we wanted to do. And it was just one of those things where we talked to each other and asked, “Well, what do we do next?” And the answer was always, “Well, we’ve got to make a feature.” And so we started talking about, “How do we make a feature? What do we do?” And we just started that process, step by step, of trying to get a movie made: pulling our resources and connections, however little they were, to try and get a feature off the ground. And we became friends all at the same time.

BE: So how did Glenn Taranto’s script cross your path? Did you know him, or was it pitched to you?

AS: We basically contacted everyone we knew. (Laughs) Friends, family, any type of business connection, and asked, “Does anyone know anyone who has a script? Does anyone have a script? We’re looking for material. We’re just looking for something that we can get behind.” And a production company that we’d worked with in the past basically said, “Here, we have a couple of scripts that we like. Why don’t you take a read?” And, lo and behold, Glenn’s script – which was originally called “Box in the Box” – showed up in front of us, and instantly we knew that something was there was that was a great vehicle to get actors, to get performers to be in our first film. Being first-timers, we knew that a lot of this had to be…we knew that we had to get some really good cast behind us to kind of help get the movie out there, and we thought that script would do that. So we just kind of took it and ran with it.

BE: There are a ton of familiar faces in the film, some of which weren’t nearly as familiar when you made the film, I guess.

AS: Yes.

AA: (Laughs) Definitely.

AS: Yeah, I mean, having access to the talent that we did was such a blessing for us. We were, obviously just so lucky for our first film out. It really started with Josh, who was the first person we got, and it was just such an amazing experience to contact Josh. Really, what it was was that we knew someone who said, “I have Josh’s phone number, and when you’re ready to go, I can basically call Josh for you, but that’s all I can do.” We said, “Okay!” So being the first time filmmakers that we were, and nobody really knew us from anything, we decided that we had to show someone like Josh what we were about, what we wanted the movie to be. In a sense, we knew that we had to prove to people that we could get a movie off the ground, or at least to show them what our vision was. So Anders and I, we sat down at a computer with Final Cut Pro and cut together a bunch of stills, movie clips, soundtracks, we took ideas from painting, and we put together some sort of montage piece that we could then send along with the script to Josh and tell and show him, “This is our vision of what we want to achieve, and this is what we think the movie can be.” And we think that was pretty instrumental in his choice to at least call us back. And once we got him on the phone, we all discussed where the movie would go, how he had an affinity for one of the characters, and how it related to him and one of his family members, and we just hit off. And that really started a process where we could now start talking to other people and start getting other cast members, and it just snowballed from there. It was just fantastic.

BE: Who was the most surprising person, in your opinion, that you were able to get at the time?

AS: Wow.

AA: I’ll jump in here, because everything Andy says, I’m, like, “Yep, that’s how the story goes.” (Laughs) I think the most surprising person…well, I think for me the most surprising person was Jon Hamm and his sort of rising stardom. That was something that…you know, the most interesting aspect of it was, like Andy said, our first contact was with Josh Lucas, and obviously Josh, being in “Poseidon,” “Stealth,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” being in these big movies, you’re, like, “Wow, there’s our rock star, our superstar, and I can’t believe we got this guy in this film.” He’s amazing to work with, anyway, because he brings so much passion to a project, no matter what it is, and he understands filmmaking really, really well, as an actor but also just as a storyteller. So Josh was really helpful. But I think the big surprise was that, at this point, Jon Hamm was working on “Mad Men,” and they were just finishing up their first season, and our casting director, Stephanie Corsalini, came to us and said, “Look, you’ve got to meet up with this guy Jon Hamm, I think he’ll be perfect against Josh.” And we were really looking for that guy that was going to be strong against Josh’s character. Even though they don’t share the same time period and stuff, they’re the roles of the two leads, in a sense, and they need to be able to match well and not be overpowered by the other one. And I think what was so great was to first meet Jon Hamm…well, we met him at a Starbucks downstairs from our casting session, and basically we talked to him for about two seconds and were, like, “This is the guy.”

I think the surprise for me was really just finding someone who was a fresh new face in many ways, that really brought something to the table that was exciting for all of us, and then being able to see what he was able to bring to the table with all of his acting chops and everything like that. That was one of the most surprising things, because in a sense, he was really coming to light and coming to the forefront, and we were able to get to him at that point of, like, his rising stardom, which was really, really fun and interesting for us. I think we really enjoyed seeing Jon and his success and everything post-“Stolen.” To me, that’s one of the biggest things. I know another one…and, Andy, you might want to talk about this…but Andy and I always talk about the surprise of James Van Der Beek and the work he was able to pull off. I don’t know if you want to talk about that, Andy…?

AS: Yeah, in particular, with the movies that he’s done in the past, from “Rules of Attraction” to “Varsity Blues,” they’re so different, his roles. So we knew that if we could get a little bit of what he had in “Rules of Attraction,” to get that kind of sinister feeling for that character who spans both time periods, where Jon’s character and Josh’s character do not. He in a sense brought something in between the two, and James went toe to toe with Jon and Josh, in makeup and out of makeup and in different time periods, and he just blew us away. He really did. We knew he was going to be really great, but the subtlety in his performance in playing within the makeup and the subtlety, even, when he’s playing in the 1950s era…it’s something that, when you can see it in the editing room, you’re just, like…I mean, everything he’s bringing absolutely was a surprise. It was fantastic.

AA: Yeah, and, y’know, something we haven’t talked about really much…and, as you can tell when we start talking about our actors, we loved everybody on the show, basically… (Laughs) …but other actors that stand out a lot – and, unfortunately, for consideration of the project as a whole, we had to sort of leave a little bit of their performances on the cutting room floor – were our kids. We had Jimmy Bennett, who played John Wakefield. You had Christian Bender, who played one of his brothers, and you had another kid named Graham Phillips. Graham Phillips was a huge surprise to us. He played Mark Wakefield, the oldest brother of the 1950s kids. There were a few scenes where we were really playing with the relationship between Josh and the older brother, in the sense of passing on this responsibility. I remember there was this one scene which was a very, very emotional scene where Josh and Graham are talking to each other, and Graham breaks down crying and everything, and Graham nailed the complexity of this scene of a kid who’s in a period of transition, his teenage years, and having to take on this responsibility. Andy, I don’t know if you remember the tractor scene…

AS: (Scoffs at the suggestion that the might’ve forgotten it)

AA: …where it was so well performed, and yet the hardest part was that we had to cut it down so much, because we had to keep the story moving in the direction it was going. And, yet, it was this moment where you’re, like, “God, I wish that we could keep this, and it really is a shame that we can’t,” because the performances from Graham were just beautiful. You see a lot of Jimmy Bennett, and he did such a wonderful job, but the big surprise was the depth that Graham brought to his character. Not being able to use that was really a shame, and it was hard for Andy and I when we were first looking at that and knew that we kind of had to move past that scene and keep the story moving. So I think our kids were a big surprise, too, because it’s not easy. You only get four or five hours a day with the kids, and they came in and just were absolutely fantastic. So I think that was another big surprise, how good they were.

AS: Absolutely.

BE: You’ve got a lot of TV series who cover the same kind of ground as “Stolen.” When you approached this material, did you do so with a particular eye toward trying to make it stand out cinematically?

AA: Yeah, we definitely did. I’ll give my own opinion…because I’m sure Andy has his, too…but that was one of the biggest things we were looking at. Our first thing about the script that we really liked and that we really wanted to push was, “Look, this is not ‘Cold Case.’ This is not what you see on TV. We need to bring much more of the cinematic elements to this story, and we also have to…” We knew that we were playing within the mystery / thriller genre, but we also saw such a deep story of drama between all of our characters, especially the story of two fathers who lose their sons. Our big thing was trying to infuse as much dramas possible and get away from any sort of “Cold Case” stuff. For one, we didn’t really have the budget to deal with it, but for another, it wasn’t really that important to the story in the sense that it’s much more about the emotional ride of the characters, not about finding evidence and how they process that evidence. It wasn’t this flashy sort of film that we were trying to make. We were trying to make it much more of a character arc and tell deeper stories. So it was a tough balance trying to figure out, “Okay, how do we give people a little bit of ‘Cold Case,’ so that they can buy it and at least go, ‘Okay, cool, I understand that,’ yet at the same time move on to, ‘Look, we’re trying to tell a story much more cinematically in the sense of character arcs and character direction’?” I think that was something that we really worked hard at, and I’m pretty proud of that balance that we found. Andy, what are your thoughts?

AS: Yeah, it was always our goal, from the very beginning, to acknowledge the issues and similarities to something like “Cold Case” but say, “This is a movie, this isn’t a TV show, so what do we have to do to show that it’s a movie? What do we have to bring to it?” And we talked about transitions, and we obviously talked about performances, with sound effects, dealing with the composer, and all of the things that we could bring to it in addition to what the story really was. To get into those arcs, to get into those characters that you don’t have the opportunity to see in a TV show. Because in a TV show, you have characters that people already know, and then you bring in different clues and different little mysteries for that hour. For us, we had characters that you don’t know, and you don’t really care about the clues as much. You care about the characters, and that’s what we wanted in this feature. And we’re definitely proud that we went into that direction. I mean, it was our first time out and with a low budget, so that was how we had to go. But we’re happy with the results.

BE: Now, Andy, you’ve worked as director of photography and camera operator on quite a few other films. Is there anything on your resume that you think really stands out that you think people might not have seen? Because I know that, for the most part, they’re kind of smaller films.

AS: Gosh, there are so many, it’s just hard to remember. (Thinks about it for a moment) That’s a great question. People have seen some of the second-unit work I did on the original “Saw,” but…y’know, I don’t remember! I’ve worked on this movie for so long, to be honest, that I’m kind of hard pressed to come up with something from all of the movies that I’d done before this one. I mean, this one…it pretty much changed the game doing this one.

BE: Well, of course, IMDB is always accurate, as you know…

AS: (Laughs) …and not at all easy to change things.

BE: Well, sure. But they’ve currently got you guys attached to the same two projects, “The Last Territory” and “The Rise and Fall of Gabriel Pine,” so I figured I’d ask you about the status of those.

AS: The status of those is that they’re still in development. We actually have four other projects that we think are pushing further along than those two.

AA: Yeah.

AS: We optioned a book called “Dickfish,” by R.S. Moore, which we’re looking to pitch into a series, and we’re going to do the pitch really soon here. We’re just finishing up the treatment, the pitch book, as of right now. And we have another original series that we’re working on that we’re going to pitch, and a feature that we optioned called “Immunity,” which is a suspense thriller, and then we have the big sci-fi action tentpole film that we’re working on… (Laughs) …that we’re trying to get to a studio. So those are the four that we’re really working on now. We like the idea of splitting between doing a series and doing features. We want to start venturing into that world.

BE: And as my last one… (Takes a deep breath) …I really enjoyed the film – I’m a parent, so it was easy for me to get caught up in it – but I’m just curious: I went to RottenTomatoes.com and, uh, it has a ridiculously low rating. Are you shocked, or do you feel like this one of those films that’s kind of critic-proof?

AS: You know, Andy and I, from the very beginning, have kind of been… (Considers his choice of phrase) We have been a little shocked with how people have reviewed this movie, because either people really love it or they expected more from the film, and…for us, we always look at the movie as having this wonderful energy about it and a blessing-or-curse sort of thing that goes along with it, and I think a lot of it comes from people’s expectations when they see the cast. They go, “Wow, what a phenomenal cast! And really interesting subject matter, too…? This movie should be this, this, and this!” And, yet, people should remember that they’re looking at a low-budget film. That’s not an excuse in the sense of the filmmaking. I mean, we’re extremely proud of the movie and think it’s actually exactly the film that we were looking to make. But we’re wondering, like, “What were your expectations coming in? Were you expecting to see a ‘Bourne Supremacy’ meets ‘Changeling’ or something?” (Laughs) Like, the expectations are, I think, very surprising when people write a review for the film more in the negative light, because it’s kind of, like, “Well, I don’t know what kind of movie you were trying to watch.” But, again, like you had brought up before, it’s almost like they wanted to see a “Cold Case” and ended up getting a “Sweet Hereafter” or something like that. And it’s, like, “Well, that’s not what…” I mean, the movie’s much more along the lines of…we don’t care about the evidence. The evidence is important, but what’s really important in driving the story are these two fathers who lose their children.

So, y’know, I think it’s more of an expectations issue, because when we go film festivals and people sit down and watch the movie, just your regular general audience members, they absolutely love the film. And they see it the same way we look at it. And by watching it, I think, as a movie and not trying to watch it as a critic who is looking for a certain thing…I think that’s where a lot of the criticism falls into this more negative light: because they’re looking at it from a different perspective and not actually watching it as a story but as something to critically take apart. And we’re kind of, like, “Well, that’s not what this movie is about.” You know? I don’t know how to describe it any better. I don’t know, Andy, if you have any other thoughts, but the thing for us is that, at first, it’s kind of, like, “Okay, well, wow, that’s kind of shocking to us,” but the great thing is that the people who see it at a film festival or go to the movies and actually see it or whatever, we’ve gotten nothing but people really loving the movie. And we go, “Well, that’s cool, because that’s who we make the movie for.” We make it for the general audience member. We didn’t make this movie to become critically acclaimed and get 5 stars from some high-end critic. So to us, that’s sort of the feeling, and that’s the way that we look at it. Again, it’s just something we found pretty interesting, but the great thing is that people who watch it as an audience member absolutely love the movie, and that’s what important to us. Andy, I don’t know if you want to add anything.

AS: Yeah! (Laughs) I mean, we spent our energy working on doing the stuff that we can control, and to the extent that we could control the movie, we’re quite proud of it. We can’t control critics. Just as much as one critic might dislike it, three more actually like it. You bring up one critic that might not like it, and you can come up with one who does. So we’re, like, “Okay, cool, I’m glad so-and-so liked it. Oh, so-and-so didn’t like it? Whatever.” (Laughs) You know? We can only stand by it and be proud of the work that we did. And, yeah, it’s sometimes surprising who liked it and sometimes surprising who didn’t like it, so we just kind of take it with a grain of salt, move on to our next project, and be proud and stand behind this one.

AA: Yeah, and the good thing is that people are very split: they either really liked it or they didn’t at all. And we’re, like, “Hey, that’s great, because at least we know where we stand.” It’s not a film that sort of gets squashed in the middle somewhere. So that’s a really nice thing: the movie at least has some sort of stance on something where people can kind of go, “I really liked this,” or, “I didn’t.” And that’s interesting. I’d like to explore that further as an artist, to kind of know what people really thought, but you’ll never be able to get that. But at the same time, it is nice to know that this is this sort of polarization of the film, which is pretty interesting to us as artists. We just like that people do enjoy it.

BE: And just in closing, not to belabor the comparison, but you’d be hard pressed to find a TV critic who admits to liking “Cold Case,” and yet it’s in its seventh season.

AS: Yes!

AA: Exactly! (Laughs) That is absolutely a valid point!

(NOTE: This trailer has been on YouTube for so long that it dates back to when it was still called “Stolen Lives,” but it is indeed the same film, as you can clearly see.)

Here’s the official word from TNT on the latest addition to their line-up:

TNT has picked up the critically acclaimed series “Southland,” closing a deal with Warner Bros. Television that will bring the drama from Emmy-winning producer John Wells (“ER,” “The West Wing”) to the network in January. TNT has obtained exclusive rights to air all six episodes that have been shot for the second season, as well as the seven episodes from the series’ first season. “Southland” will air on TNT Tuesdays at 10 p.m. (ET/PT), beginning with the first episode of the series on Jan. 12.

“This is a great win for fans of ‘Southland’ and a perfect opportunity to introduce the series to new viewers,” said Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks. “It’s also another outstanding example of how TNT has established itself as the go-to place for the best dramas on television.”

“We are extremely pleased that TNT has acquired all 13 episodes of ‘Southland,’ giving devoted fans the opportunity to watch a show that they passionately support,” said Peter Roth, president of Warner Bros. Television.

“We’re delighted that TNT has stepped forward to pick up ‘Southland.’ We are all extremely proud of the show,” Wells said.

Of course, if you’ve been following the Twitter feed of “Southland” star Michael Cudlitz since he started making with the obscenities over NBC’s treatment of the series, then this is old news to you, anyway. He reacted to the news minutes after the story broke, thanking everyone in Twitterland and saying, “The reason this happened was because of you. They never would have picked this show up if they didn’t think it had an audience.”

But will the audience make it over to TNT come January…?

Sadly, you’ve probably deduced that it’s the latter which has happened to NBC’s “Southland.”

The news broke yesterday via The Hollywood Reporter, who revealed that production on the John Wells-produced cop series is being shut down before any episodes of its second season even make it to air. “Southland” was originally slated to make its return to NBC on at the same time the rest of NBC’s new shows emerged, but instead of having Season 2 kick off on September 18th, the 9 PM timeslot was filled on that Friday by “Dateline NBC.” So it has remained ever since. Plans had been afoot for the series to come back on October 23rd, but…well, obviously, those plans changed.

You barely need to read between the lines of Wells’ statement on the matter in the Reporter’s article to see that it was uttered through gritted teeth:

“I’m disappointed that NBC no longer has the time periods available to support the kind of critically-acclaimed series that was for so many years, a hallmark of their success,” Wells said. “We remain extremely proud of ‘Southland’ and are actively looking for another home for the series.”

Wells may have managed to maintain his politeness in the midst of being profoundly pissed off, but the same can’t be said of Michael Cudlitz, one of the stars of the show.

PopEater.com offered up a piece about the show getting its walking papers from the Peacock and cited Cudlitz’s comments on his Twitter account, which – as of this writing, anyway – remain out there for the world to see:

* Don’t go quietly…….. People need to know when they fuck up this big. Saw ep 2.1 …….. Dumb fucking people.

* season was so fucking good this year…….. I mean good.

* we are still in production. The shows are very, very good………… They have broken their word. I should know better.

* Honestly, not bitter. Kinda pissed. I still believe the show would have done well on Fri.

I reckon we’ll never know if “Southland” would’ve succeeded on Friday nights or not, but here’s hoping that someone…maybe TNT?…will be agreeable to saving the series and giving it a chance to play out for at least a little bit longer. Wells and his cast sat for a panel during the TCA tour in August, and the plans for the upcoming season sounded promising. This actually was a surprise to me…not because I didn’t like what I’d seen during Season 1, but because when NBC’s President of Primetime Entertainment, Angela Bromstad, talked about it, it sounded like it was going to be turning into a show that would feel more at home on CBS.

“I think we’ve made some creative adjustments. I think they tried to do too much in those six episodes, and instead of re-piloting the pilot and letting the audience get more familiar with these characters, they sort of…you know, it became very serialized, and they were a large, large ensemble. So it’s really going to focus on Regina King and Ben McKenzie and the two sets of officers and detectives and sort of focus on, you know, crimes and how they come together.”

To me, that sounded like they were basically going to be getting rid of the type of stuff that Wells brought to shows like “E.R.” and “The West Wing.” But when we talked to Wells later in the tour and Bromstad’s comments – which he hadn’t heard – were brought up, he first smirked and said, “Well, I think we are all interested in reading what Angela had to say to you the other day,” then tried to calm us down:

The show we are making is the show that we wanted to make. I think that, for people who have been watching the show, they will recognize it as the same show, and I think some of the more serialized elements that began to take over a couple of the final episodes will be less serialized, so that someone who shows up and just watches that episode will fully understand what’s happening in the episode. But we are very proud of the show we were making last year, and I think for most casual viewers of the series, they will not see a significant difference in what the show is bringing to them when they watch it. What they had asked us to do when we were coming back was to make certain that the characters of the patrol officers and the detectives were appearing in every episode. When we originally began planning the series, we had talked about doing episodes that would be solely about one group or one character, and they’ve asked us not to do that in the future or move towards that. They would like it to be an ensemble show, which has all of the characters in it on a weekly basis.

In the end, I think you have to trust Wells’ track record as a producer and presume that he and fellow producer Christopher Chulack would’ve still made Season 2 of “Southland” more than worth checking out.

In closing, I feel like I should offer up this comment from Wells during the “Southland” panel about NBC’s decision to wipe out five hours of programming in favor of “The Jay Leno Show.” I don’t think I’m wrong in suggesting that he might well have offered a more succinct response if the panel had taken place on NBC’s TCA day rather than on the Warner Brothers lot, but whatever the case, it strikes me as ample proof that, although he might not be happy that NBC has kicked “Southland” to the curb, he’s probably thrilled at the possibility that he has a chance to peddle his wares elsewhere:

“Well, you know, it would be disingenuous for me to say anything other than this is what I do for a living, and we lost five hours’ worth of time periods that had been known throughout the history of the network for putting some really terrific shows on. So I wish NBC and Jay Leno well, personally. He’s a very nice guy. But I hope he falls flat on his face and we get five dramas back. I mean, you know, that’s what I do for a living. That’s what I think should be on network television at 10:00. It should be an opportunity for narrative programs to be on the air. So it’s only one more thing that’s going to force more and more dramas into the basic cable and pay cable world. And they made the decision that they felt was necessary to make for financial purposes and whatever other decisions they had, but I hate it.”

* “Southland,” the new drama from John Wells (which was formerly known as “Police”), will premiere on April 9th, Thursday at 10 PM.

From Emmy Award winners John Wells, Ann Biderman and Chris Chulack comes a raw and authentic look at the police unit in Los Angeles. From the beaches of Malibu to the streets of East Los Angeles, “Southland” is a fast-moving drama that will take viewers inside the lives of cops, criminals, victims and their families. Michael Cudlitz plays John Cooper a seasoned Los Angeles cop assigned to train young rookie Ben Sherman. Cooper’s honest, no-nonsense approach to the job leaves Sherman questioning whether or not he has what it takes to become a police officer. Cudlitz and McKenzie are joined by other cast members including Regina King who plays Detective Lydia Adams. Adams lives with and is the primary caregiver of her mother. Her partner, Detective Russell Clarke (Tom Everett Scott) is an unhappily married father of three. Michael McGrady plays Detective Daniel “Sal” Salinger. Sal oversees fellow gang detectives Nate Moretta (Kevin Alejandro) and Sammy Bryant (Shawn Hatosy). Arija Bareikis plays as patrol officer Chickie Brown, a single mom who dreams of being the first woman accepted into SWAT.

* They have ordered 3 more episodes of “ER,” bringing the season total to 23. The series finale will now air on April 2nd, with a one-hour retrospective preceding the two-hour finale. Why the additional episodes? “Why not?” asked Bromstad. She then clarified, however, that it allows John Wells time to get “Southland” ready.

* They have officially signed on for additional seasons of “The Office” and “The Rock”

* NBC has signed Don Cheadle and his company, Crescendo Productions, to a two-year, first-look television development deal.

* Due to its success up against “American Idol,” they will indeed be picking up another season of “Biggest Loser” for next season.

* The new season of “The Celebrity Apprentice” premieres March 2nd. The contestants this time around: Clint Black, Andrew Dice Clay, Annie Duke, Tom Green, Natalie Gulbis, Scott Hamilton, Jesse James, Claudia Jordan, Khloe Kardashian, Brian McKnight, Joan Rivers, Melissa Rivers, Brande Roderick, Dennis Rodman, Herschel Walker and Tionne Watkins.

* There will be a new cooking series, “The Chopping Block,” starring Marco Pierre White.

* “Kings” will be premiering Sunday, March 15, at 8 PM, which will be its regular timeslot. This is a surprise, given that it was originally slotted into the Thursday at 10 PM timeslot which has just been given to “Southland.” “When I came in, we talked about launching another drama this spring, and the John Wells pilot had just been turned in,” said Bromstad. “We feel so strongly about both of these shows that, as opposed to waiting for fall, we wanted to premiere both shows this spring.”

* Despite rumors to the contrary, “Lipstick Jungle” has not been canceled. There are alternatives they may look into for the show, but they will most likely not be doing anything with it until the fall.

* Despite Jay Leno taking over the 10 PM time slot five nights a week, NBC will not be cutting back on their development slate. They’ll be shooting the same amount of pilots as the previous year – six dramas and four comedies – and will continue developing scripts. So, wait, we are going to get pilots from NBC now? “We may go straight to series,” said Bromstad, “but we’re going to try to take it on a case by case basis and see what the show calls for.

* Hey, where are Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff? Oh, around. “They’ll be here for your questions, they’re here all day,” Bromstad assured us. Any chance of them joining you guys on stage? “We’re here to talk about TV shows,” sniffed Telegdy.

* Announced via press release: Chevy Chase will guest-star on “Chuck” as an iconic computer genius who may be more than he appears, in a multi-episode arc scheduled for broadcast this spring. Let’s hope it helps the ratings, since the fate of a third season for “Chuck” is not 100% secure.

* “Heroes,” however, is reportedly “very secure.” “We have a great relationship with Tim Kring,” said Bromstad, but “we want to make sure that it’s on track.” But it’s not yet renewed for another season, even though “The Office,” “30 Rock,” and “The Biggest Loser” have been…? Apparently, we’re not supposed to take anything from that. “There’s no indication that ‘Heroes’ will not be picked up,” she assured us.