“American Idol” would love these ratings. NBC’s “The Voice” scored a whopping 4.9 Monday night in the key age demo. The singing contest also pulled in a total of 13.67 million viewers. The show was so hot that it beat the NCAA Basketball pre-game show and took its time period easily. “The Voice” has broken out as a show that attracts a young audience compared to “American Idol”–now sort of like “Lawrence Welk” with key demo numbers around 2.8. An even older skewing show is last night’s “Dancing with the Stars,” which rated a 2.0 in the key demo even though it pulled in 12.94 million viewers. That means that most of the people watching “Dancing with the Stars” may have had trouble getting up and walking to the kitchen for a snack unaccompanied by an aide.
Exclusive: Source Says Jay Leno Doesn’t Have the Option of Going to Fox
The dust has settled a little bit on the NBC Late Night Wars. Jimmy Fallon takes over for Jay Leno around March 1st, 2014. But where does that leave Leno? There was a lot of talk last week that Fox would jump at the chance to put Leno in at 11pm simply because he’s number 1. But now I am told quite definitively by someone who knows the inside workings of these sort of things: Jay Leno will not be starting a late night talk show at Fox.
According to my sources, Fox did explore the idea of having a late night show with Conan O’Brien three years ago when the carrot topped host was being pushed out of NBC. “We talked to the affiliates about breaking their syndication deals at 11pm for sitcoms. It was going to be done.” But since then, executives have changed, and so have positions. The 11pm sitcoms on local Fox stations do very well. O’Brien made his deal with TBS. And now Jimmy Kimmel is in at ABC.
Not signing Leno isn’t “age thing,” as the source says. And then again it is. “To make the show work, we’d have to have five years establish Jay on the network and in that time slot. He’d be 68 and that would be too old. Look at Jon Stewart. He’s really number 1 among those shows, and he’s been there on Comedy Central for years. For Jay it’s too late to start over.”
Leno has plenty of opportunities and decisions to make. At almost 63, he’s not exactly a doddering senior citizen. Thinking “outside the box” could lead him to some interesting new projects.But Late Night on Fox with Jay Leno isn’t going to be one of them. My advice: a once a week Ed Sullivan type live show with Leno, maybe on Sundays. It’s not like NBC has so many hits.
Sad: First Broadway Show of Tony Season Closing on Sunday
This is sad news: “Hands on a Hardbody,” a really fine musical that just opened, is closing on Saturday. Starring Keith Carradine, “Hardbody” is truly ingenious show with terrific songs and a brilliant staging concept. It’s the story of a truck giveaway in Texas and how a group of people stuck it out to the end in order to win the truck. “Hardbody” was based on a documentary, and at the Broadway premiere many of the real people who’d been in the contest back in 1995 came to New York for the show.
Alas, “Hardbody” did not have a strong advance sale, or a good commercial hook akin to “Motown” or “Kinky Boots” or “Matilda.” I do hope all of its elements make it into Tony nominations, from the fresh score and songs to the performers– Carradine and Keala Settle, who should be a shoo in for Best Featured Actress.
It’s always easy to figure these things out in hindsight, but “Hardbody” might have worked better at the Roundabout with a subscriber base. Last week, it played to just 58% of its capacity, which is just too low to hang on. And obviously, the producers didn’t have the money to keep it going. A fine effort. My hat is off to the people who worked on it.
PS An even bigger shame when you realize real junk like “Jekyll and Hyde” is coming back– just wasted money. Oy.
Exclusive Update: Streisand Not Directing Cate Blanchett, Colin Firth or “Skinny and Cat”
EXCLUSIVE I told you ten months ago that Barbra Streisand would direct her first film in 16 years. It was called “Skinny and Cat.” Colin Firth and Cate Blanchett were all set to star in it. Alas, I am now told that “Skinny and Cat,” a love story about famed photographer Margaret Bourke White and novelist Erskine Caldwell, will proceed without Streisand. Blanchett is also gone, succeeded by Oscar winner Rachel Weisz (who actually resembles Bourke White). The financing is completely in place, and the producers are looking for a new director.
But the back story here is quite amazing, and a real Hollywood saga. This project has been kicking around since 1982, when producer Linda Yellen wrote her first script and spoke to Streisand about acting in the film. For years, sources say, like thirty, no one said a word about it. Then last year Streisand expressed interest in it as a director. Unfortunately, a new draft of “Skinny and Cat” was quite different than the one Streisand had last read. Still, she was adamant about directing it.
In Hollywood, it’s all about scheduling. Even as Streisand felt committed to the cause, she had other projects like a world tour. (Not many directors are also international superstar performers.) Insiders say Streisand was unable to make meetings about the project last fall. In the meantime, Yellen set the movie up with producers Holly Wiersma and Logan Levy under their Lagniappe Films banner. That trio, not Streisand, owns the rights.
During the fall of 2012, when they were unable to secure Streisand in writing–couldn’t make a deal–the trio of Wiersma, Levy and Yellen brought on indie director Drake Doremus (“Like Crazy”). The producers, I’m told, offered Streisand a chance to be a producer on the film without the hassle of directing. Streisand’s reps said she would only do it if her contract read “producer for life.” She was still smarting, they say, from losing out on directing and producing “The Normal Heart” after being involved with it for 30 years.
The “Skinny” trio declined. I’m told what happened next was the threat of legal action against them from a litigator representing Streisand.
Last week, an item appeared on the blog deadline.com that Streisand would direct a movie about Bourke White and Caldwell, financed by Russian backed Aldemisa Films. There was a lot of confusion. It turns out, that movie, whatever it is, is not “Skinny and Cat.” Streisand, they say, has found a new script about this historical literary couple, and is developing it herself.
Only one problem there: the new script for the other movie cannot in any way use material from 30 years of drafts of “Skinny and Cat.” There are voluminous files of letters, snail mail, email, and drafts of the script as it changed. Bourke-White and Caldwell, names probably completely unknown to anyone under 50, are probably getting a kick out of all this attention wherever they are.
“Skinny and Cat,” meantime, is only absent a director, since Doremus is gone too. Otherwise it’s ready to be filmed. Firth and Weisz would be a sensational combination. Someone on imdb.com should change the info, including the budget, which was “never” $50 million. “Skinny and Cat” is an indie film with a $12 million budget at best.
And Streisand? She’s about to start a sold out tour with dates in Europe and Israel this June. She also has a monumental project coming up with the musical “Gypsy” for film. She’s also receiving the prestigious Chaplin Award from the Film Society of Lincoln Center on April 22nd.
Alan Alda, former Network Star, Now In Tug of War Between HBO and Showtime
BY PAULA SCHWARTZ –– Alan Alda, who most people still think of as Hawkeye Pierce from the television series M*A*S*H on CBS for a dozen seasons, is King of Cable this month. On Showtime, he’s Laura Linney’s oncologist in “The Big C.” On HBO tonight, he’s the narrator a new documentary called “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus,” a Holocaust story by first-time director Steve Pressman. It airs tonight at 8pm. Last week Alda was at the movie’s premiere at HBO’s luxurious offices in Times Square to pose for photographs and talk about the film.
The documentary, which feels like an action thriller, tells the story of Eleanor and Gilbert Kraus, an upper middle class Jewish couple with movie-star looks – Gilbert was a lawyer – who left their own children and comfortable lives in Philadelphia to rescue Jewish children in 1939 Nazi-controlled Austria and bring them back into the U.S. Eleanor’s memoirs, which are read by actress Mamie Gummer, give a first person account of the dangers the couple faced in entering Nazi-controlled Austria, where their luxury hotel room was searched every day by the authorities. They never knew if they would be arrested or even killed but they persevered in their mission.
Alda, now 77, looks and sounds great. He told me he wanted to get involved after he heard the story and thought it was really interesting. “People putting themselves in danger, this American couple, for a specific number of people,” he said. “They had to try to get them visas from this country, which at that time was not easy to do, and they had their own children they had to leave behind while they put themselves in danger. That’s an amazing kind of courage and responsibility they took, and a story like that I really think needs to be told.” He added, “There’s a lot of tension in it because you really don’t know that they’re going to make it out. The fact that they’re children givens it an extra wallop.”
In addition to acting, Alda has written five feature films, including “The Four Seasons” and “The Seduction of Joe Tynan,” along with a carton-full of television scripts. He’s passionate about science and has written his first play, which is about Marie Curie. He told me the play, entitled “Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie,” had a “beautiful” production in Los Angeles back in Nov. 2011, which starred Anna Gunn, the wife from the cult series “Breaking Bad.” He’s still tinkering with the play he told me.
Alda also just wrapped a couple of shows with Laura Linney in the final series of “The Big C: Hereafter,” which begins airing its final four episodes on Showtime April 29. It is the show’s final season, and despite the subtitle he wouldn’t tell me if Linney’s character lives or dies. “I’m her doctor, who’s a little rough on her.” Why? “That’s just the way I am,” he laughed.
Sheila Nevins, the savvy and brilliant President of HBO Documentary films told me she met Alan Alda 40 years on a project, and she thought of him when she decided she needed a familiar and revered voice, one that was “noble” and “mature. This is an older person’s film, and I’m an older person and he’s an older person, let’s call him.” She added, “He doesn’t get involved in anything that isn’t in his heart. He didn’t need to do it. He didn’t’ need to be here. He’s not even Jewish,” she laughed.
“The great thing about being able to tell this story,” Pressman told me, “is that this is a story that has essentially been hidden for 76 years because Eleanor and Gilbert never talked about it, as shocking as this this sounds.” Pressman, who was a longtime print journalist, knew a good story when he heard one. He’s also married to Liz Perle, one of the Krauses’ four grandchildren. The reasons the story was unknown was that once the Krauses saved the children they continued with their lives as did the 50 children he told me. “If it was not for the fact that Eleanor some years later sat down and wrote out this memoir that described what she and her husband had done, and that was only really intended for the family, this story would still be hidden.”
Perle told me she knew her grandparents story because two of the rescued children lived with them. “But they never talked about it.” After Eleanor’s death Perle went through her mothers documents and found her manuscript along with a lot of the passports of the children. “When I was a kid I didn’t appreciate how fabulous this was and how courageous.”
“Mad Men” Returns: Death Is Everywhere– Roger Sterling: “This is My Funeral”
“Mad Men” just finished up its two hour premiere of Season 6. By Monday afternoon we’ll know many people watched. Was it the biggest audience ever? In the meantime, “The Doorway” was all about death– Roger Sterling’s mother, the unseen shoeshine guy, Don’s dreams and his suicide- looking ad for Royal Hawaiian.
It’s the Christmas week of 1967, and Megan is now on a soap opera called “To Have and to Hold.” Jeff Hunter– the famed William Morris agent- represents her. (He’s a real person, a famously great agent, and he is very much alive in 2013.) Megan and Don are visiting the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu. Don stands up for a private getting married and the two men accidentally swap Army lighters. The PFC is named Dinkins, and now Don has once again traded away his identity.
I don’t want to give too much away. But Don is reading “The Inferno” on the beach. The ad he comes up with for Royal Hawaiian suggests someone has committed suicide by walking into the water. “A Star is Born” is mentioned. This is clearly a riff on how Don feels about Megan’s success. And we see later that Don has not changed his old ways. I’m afraid to say that he will never change his bad ways. He is still smoking, boozing, and philandering. It doesn’t look so good for him.
Elsewhere Roger Sterling’s wealthy 91 year old mother dies. She’s been living in grandeur likely on Fifth or Park Avenue. John Slattery remains astounding as Roger, who doesn’t cry until almost the end of the show. He’s also seeing his shrink. And makes a Freudian slip at his mother’s service when he exclaims, without irony, “This is my funeral.”
But it’s more like Don’s funeral. He vomits after too much drinking at the Sterling home, realizing his existential curse– after two wives and three children he is still alone.
Some notes: Don makes a friend of a Jewish doctor. The doctor’s knockout wife is played Linda Cardellini, wow, from “ER” and “Freaks and “Geeks.” She’s a keeper. January Jones’s Betty shocks Henry with dirty talk, ignores her own child, but seems to be chasing her own youth in the East Village. Peggy is doing very well at her new firm. It doesn’t look like she’s coming back. And as someone– maybe Liz Smith– mentioned recently–it seems as though Peggy might be on her way to becoming a version of Mary Wells Lawrence, the first woman who was a titan in advertising.
“Mad Men” always begins slowly, and these two episodes were no exception. Matt Weiner is laying his foundation. And for 1968, we needed to know where everyone was. Because a lot happens in real life, and he can draw from it all.
PS I still have my Koss headphones circa 1970. They were heavy but great, and countless hours were spent between them listening to lots of stuff, especially the Mahavishnu Orchestra. These days, I have two pairs of Grados, a 60 and an 80. But all that talk about Koss made me nostalgic.
RFK Daughter Kerry Kennedy To Speak at Hollywood Scientology Salon
This is just about as weird as it gets. I’ve just been sent a copy of an invite to top Scientology couple Anne Archer and Terry Jastrow’s Hollywood home. It seems as though on May 1 the Jastrows are hosting a salon at which Kerry Kennedy, daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy Jr and ex wife of New York governor Andrew Cuomo, will address the crowd. Kerry Kennedy is the featured speaker.
The other hosts are all Scientologists including composer Mark Isham and actress Kelly Preston (aka Mrs. Travolta). Archer and Jastrow have held this kind of salon before, and I’ve reported on it. The invitation says it’s for a group called Artists for Human Rights, which is a Scientology group. Kennedy is coming a spokesperson for the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation, named for her late father.
The story was first reported by the indefatigable Tony Ortega on his website, www.tonyortega.org.
Kennedy is still awaiting word about her car crash last July 2012 in Westchester County. She claimed she’d mistakenly taken an Ambien and had fallen asleep at the wheel of her car. It hasn’t been determined yet whether will she stand trial. You would think Kennedy savvy would have steered her clear from Scientology. Archer’s son, Tommy Davis, was the chief celebrity wrangler at Scientology for years. But in the last couple of years, Davis and his wife–Katie Holmes’ former Scientology minder Jessica Feshbach–have disappeared from day to day operations.
Kennedy could easily had read Lawrence Wright’s new book, “Going Clear,” or the new book by Jenna Miscavige Hill– niece of the cult’s leader, David Miscavige– to understand the countless acts against human rights perpetuated by the organization. Why she’s going, and carry the RFK Foundation name with her, remains a mystery. As a devout Kennedy Catholic, she may have some questions for these Scientologists about Thetan, the afterlife, aliens, and where the others who’ve disappeared have gone.
New Tom Cruise Movie “Oblivion” Opens in 35 Countries Before U.S.
It always intrigues me how the major studios keep shielding new Tom Cruise from bad or poor reviews. The latest, “Oblivion” will open here in the U.S. on April 19th. But between April 10th and the 19th, “Oblivion” will hit screens in roughly 35 countries. They include Belgium, France and Sweden on the 10th, Argentina, Australia, and South Korea (which loves a Tom Cruise movie) on the 11th, and all the others through the 18th. Then finally, after doing as little press as possible, Cruise will open “Oblivion” in the US.
“Oblivion” has already red carpet premieres in Moscow, Dublin, London and Taipei. Dublin was its actual premiere. New York and Los Angeles will get short shrift on this movie.
This is designed to minimize the impact of bad reviews overseas, where no one cares if an action movie makes sense just so long as it has a star. Also, Cruise is still smarting from the Katie Holmes debacle. She ambushed him in June – July 2012 and left with little Suri. What Cruise and his people don’t want is some press person saying, “Katie left you while you were filming this movie. How did that feel?”
So there will be limited exposure for him in the States, same as he did with “Jack Reacher” a few months ago. Just lots of photos with the big smile, signing autographs for fans behind barricades, and loads of waving. But little talking.
PS Cruise’s female co-star in “Oblivion” is the beautiful Olga Kurylenko. She’s been dating Danny Huston, star of “Magic City” and brother of Anjelica Huston, for some time. Yet I’ve seen some strained attempts to link Cruise to her romantically. LOL as they say.
Bill Cosby Takes the Train, Leaves No Carbon Footprint
Imagine my surprise Saturday night when I stepped off the Amtrak train from Boston to New York in Penn Station. There, standing nose to nose with me on the platform was a familiar face: none other than the legendary Bill Cosby. That’s right, 10:30pm, and Bill Cosby is standing there with a female porter and a helper from the station, ready to get in the business class car. “What are you doing here?” I asked him. The Cos replied: “I just did a show in Queens. Now I’m going to Philadelphia.” He said the porter was his daughter, and she was going to graduate college soon. The woman blushed.
People were backing up around us, making it hard to exit the train for the up escalator. Cosby got on the train by himself. He has a show in Philly Sunday night, then embarks on a fairly tiring tour. But he leaves no carbon footprint. He could have had a driver take him home to Philly. Or he could have flown from La Guardia. I did not tell him the train car was freezing, or the WiFi was very disappointing. By now, he knows all this. But sure nice to run into a nice guy after two days in windy, frigid but sunny Beantown.
Steve Carell, James Gandolfini: “Bone Men” from our September 2012 Story
Deadline.com keeps getting “exclusives” out of our old stories. Can’t Nikki Finke teach her people to use Google? First it was the Barbra Streisand story about her directing her first feature since “The Mirror Has Two Faces.” (I will have more on that on Monday.)
Now it’s Deadline’s “hot scoop” that James Gandolfini and Steve Carell are planning an HBO feature called “The Bone Men.” They’ll play Civil War era paleontologists.
This is no surprise to yours truly since I reported it in September 2012. http://www.showbiz411.com/2012/09/24/james-gandolfini-expectant-dad-plans-film-with-steve-carell
It’s not so hard to find out if a story has already been written. I do it all the time. I use a new search engine called Google. That way my only exclusives are ones that I report myself. Like this one. And many others that have wandered away and found new bylines. And this Google thing is free, too!