A HOLLYWOOD COCKTAIL OF GLAMOUR AND INSANITY!

What’s a reality series without a few dozen weirdos? As if she’s determined to make sure the second season of her show about life in L.A. gets in the requisite number, Carla Collins kicks things off with a cattle call for crazies. One of the criticisms of the first season of “Carlawood” was that it wasn’t strange and creepy enough. Well, with the start of season two Monday, May 31, on TVTropolis, we find the Ontarion-born comedian holding open auditions for an assistant.
And in a city the size of Los Angeles, if you want wackos, all you have to do is advertise. So Collins did, and 200 people showed up …
for a job as assistant to an unknown Canadian comic. Of course, she says, the fact that the auditions were going to be televised helped to draw a crowd. “You have to remember that everyone here is a performer,” she says. “My doctor does acting on the side. Most of these people wanted to show their talents rather than their assistant skills. And we chose the craziest for the show.”
Applicants ranged from would-be comedians to one nut case who thought it would be hilarious to threaten to come back and “gut” Collins “like a fish” if he didn’t get the job. For the most part, “Carlawood,” is a fairly lighthearted show about two quite normal people – Collins and her second husband, Tyrone Power Jr. – making a living in Hollywood.
Collins is a comedian, so a lot of the show is about comedy. Yet as she says, the thing about doing a reality show is that you’re committed to the thing regardless of what happens in your personal life. And toward the end of this season, life intervened to give a light, irreverent series an unexpected dose of pathos.
“Real life does happen,” Collins says. “Something heartbreaking happens towards the end of the season, and we had to incorporate it. I don’t want to give anything away, but it was something that just about finished me off.”
It’s not as if Collins hasn’t been making headway since she arrived in Los Angeles. She’s been appearing regularly at comedy clubs, she’s had several TV and film auditions, and she joined the all-female comedy troupe the Hot Tamales, founded by Kiki Melendez and Eva Longoria Parker. “I’m the token white girl,” she says.
And she has completed a book of humor, “Angels, Vampires & Douche Bags,” neatly dividing the world up into those who give, those who suck you dry and … well, the last one is self-explanatory.
Collins and Power have moved to the movie colony of Malibu, which she says has something of an old-fashioned, small-town feel about it.
“People say hello, and they leave the doors unlocked,” she says. “It’s about feeling safe and knowing all the neighbors and all the people who work at the market.”
Collins was born in Sault Ste. Marie and raised in Guelph, Ont. Her mother is Franco-Ontarian, so she speaks fluent French and even studied for a time in France. And, she says, she remains a small-town girl at her core.
“I don’t think that ever really leaves you. I like to joke that the Soo and L.A. are similar in that they’re both one-industry towns. All my uncles worked at Algoma Steel. And all my friends here work in show business.
“Both places rise and fall with one industry.”
Collins got her start on TV as one of the on-air personalities at The Weather Network before leaving to try stand-up comedy. In the early 1990s, she was co-host of “Entertainment Now,” the prototype of CTV”s “eTalk Daily.”
After the short-lived sketch comedy series “Chez Carla,” she branched out into acting with roles in such films as “Universal Soldier II” and “When Husbands Cheat” as well as a recurring part on the spoof soap opera “Paradise Falls” in 2001. Two years ago, she married Power — son of the movie star  and moved to L.A. And, of course, that was what begat “Carlawood,” which Collins says will run for “47 seasons.”
“It’ll keep going until I’m playing lawn darts. Until it’s ‘Cocoon
III: Return to Denny’s,’ ” she says.
Moving to Los Angeles has caused her to reconsider her ideas of what is funny. “They don’t get sarcasm. I don’t know if it’s a part of British humor they can’t connect to, or if it’s that everything seems to be possible.
“It makes it hard to write a joke here. You can say something outrageous like ‘I have to get home to feed my five monkeys.’ And someone will ask, ‘What are their names?’”

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE BLUES

A modern-day blues tragedy with a gospel chorus. One of the oldest and largest black communities in Canada, Halifax’s African-Canadian population is at the center of the hourlong TV movie “The Gospel According to the Blues,” airing Tuesday, June 1, on Vision. The story is adapted from “Gideon’s Blues,” the stage play by Halifax-born playwright George Boyd, and filmed by Thom Fitzgerald (“3 Needles”).
The draw of the play was “the sentimentality of something very close to home,” Fitzgerald says.  “I’ve lived in the neighborhood for 20 years,” he says. “I was very attracted to George Boyd’s writing.  His anger was really interesting to me.”
“The Gospel According to the Blues” is set in North Halifax, an area where much of the African-Canadian population resettled after Africaville was torn down in the 1960s. As such, it shows a side of the Maritimes not often portrayed on TV or in film. “Nova Scotia has a substantial African-Canadian population,” Fitzgerald says. “But it’s not necessarily the way the rest of the country sees the province.”
The film tells the story of Momma-Lou (Jackie Richardson), an elderly gospel singer who is outraged by the drug-induced rot that has set into her community. To add to her pain, her son, Gideon (Richard Chevolleau), has become one of the drug barons preying on the local youth. With its deeply disturbing ending, harsh morals and interludes featuring Richardson and a gospel choir playing the role of the Chorus, the film has something of the structure of a Greek tragedy.
Richardson originated the role of Momma-Lou on the Halifax stage in the 1990s. Dividing her time between singing and acting allowed for the addition of the gospel chorus.
The theme is the struggle to preserve some nobility in a subtly racist environment.  In this world, the strength of being able to bend to survive is misinterpreted as weakness, and the weakness of taking the easy route of crime to wealth is confused with strength. “The play focused a lot more on Gideon’s criminality,” Fitzgerald says. “And I thought those were things we saw more frequently on-screen. I wanted to focus a little bit more on what I thought was the great strength of the piece: Momma-Lou’s moral dilemma.”

TCM GOES EASTWOOD

It’s a career that dates back to a rather inauspicious screen debut in “Revenge of the Creature.” Happily, in the 55 years since, Clint Eastwood has kept himself a major factor in Hollywood in a number of ways:  redefining several screen genres through his distinctive style of acting; establishing himself as a famously economical director with a keen sense of casting and topics; taking bold chances with his image where many of his peers might have chosen not to; and continuing an active work pace at an age when retirement is a definite option for others. Eastwood gets a big salute from Turner Classic Movies on Monday, May 31 with a full day of his films capped by the premiere of “The Eastwood Factor,” a documentary written and directed by film critic and historian Richard Schickel. Narrated by sometime Eastwood colleague Morgan Freeman (last directed by him in “Invictus” and guided to an Oscar by him in “Million Dollar Baby”) and generous with clips, it features many on camera comments — and a touch of piano playing — by Eastwood himself.
Also boasting an entertaining trek with its subject into a closet of his past movie costumes, “The Eastwood Factor” will be released on DVD the next day by Warner Home Video, which included an abbreviated version in the box set “Clint Eastwood: 35 Films, 35 Years” earlier this year. That set mainly catalogued Eastwood’s output for Warner Bros., long his home studio, but he also has done notable work for other companies. The good, current news for Eastwood fans is that he’s not done yet. He’s currently in post-production on his latest directing venture, the melodrama “Hereafter,” reteaming him with “Invictus” co-star Matt Damon and due in theaters this fall. Long after he played that nondescript “Revenge of the Creature” lab worker, then, Clint Eastwood remains a major factor.

‘LOST’ & ‘24’ REACH THE END

If you’ll feel lost without “Lost” — and/or “24,” for that matter — brace yourself. As the TV season draws to a close, two of the medium’s most original and acclaimed series are leaving the broadcast network landscape for
good. “24”
After eight seasons over nine years, the clock is stopping. “24,” finishes its Monday run appropriately on the 24th of May. Emmy-winning star and executive producer Kiefer Sutherland — whose counterterrorism agent character, Jack Bauer, has suffered more than his share of bruises, both emotional and physical — considers the end of “24” a mixed blessing.
He certainly can use some rest, at least from a role that has been so taxing year after year, but he’ll also miss a concept and a crew that helped make him one of the home screen’s top stars. “This is a group of people I still call every day and ask what they’re doing,” Sutherland says more than a month after production of “24” ended. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel displaced, though that doesn’t mean there aren’t great opportunities in front of me. I’m very conscious of doing really different things, largely out of respect to the character (Bauer) and what he’s meant to the audience, but also out of my own self-interest.”
The demands of “24” have been unique, with Sutherland referencing its “running-and-gunning” style that forced its makers into a quick and constant pace. “If I wanted to train as an Olympic runner,” Sutherland reflects, “I would run every day, and you don’t get that opportunity very often as an actor. I had it with ‘24,’ so it enhanced my ability to break down a script and realize quite quickly what would and wouldn’t work, and why. Those have been invaluable lessons for me, but probably most importantly, eight or nine years of doing something like ‘24’ does a number for your confidence that is extraordinary.”
Sutherland isn’t saying goodbye to “24” forever, thanks to the long-rumored, finally confirmed feature film version that’s in the works. “We really feel we’ve ended the series on a high note and set up the film very well,” he says. “It won’t be in real time. It’ll be a two-hour representation of a 24-hour day, which we’ve never done before, even with the prequel we did to the seventh season (‘24: Redemption’). We can go off and engage a crisis, as opposed to having  the crisis come to us … and as simple as that sounds, it’s a massive
shift of dynamic.”

“Lost”
On Sunday, May 23, “Lost,” whose large cast includes Matthew Fox, Naveen Andrews, Evangeline Lilly and Jorge Garcia, comes to a close with a two-hour retrospective titled “Lost: The Final Journey” and a two-hour finale. Unlike many other TV series, this show’s finale was planned a long time ago, allowing producers to craft a story arc. This was a big deal for ABC as well, since it has to willingly let go of a successful show.
Here are related comments from Suzanne Patmore-Gibbs, Exec VP of programming for ABC. On setting an end date: “This decision helped crystallize things for the creators, who at the time felt like they were being forced to swim in place. Every episode since has really forwarded the story line, driving towards a very specific, and hopefully very satisfying,
conclusion. Ultimately, it was the right creative choice.”
On what the show taught ABC: “It opened our minds to the upside of serialized drama. It expanded our palette in terms of tone. We used to be afraid of ‘dark.’ Well, there is some really screwed-up stuff that has happened during the course of this show, but the lows make the highs — like Sun and Jin declaring their love for one another at the end of season two — that much more satisfying. “We used to regard sci-fi with trepidation. Now we are more open to it when it comes from a more emotionally grounded place. We learned a lot about audience limits with regards to teasing versus providing
answers. We learned the importance of including an element of comedy,
romance and hope amidst the danger and the value of leaning into the wish fulfillment of reinventing oneself and the exploring the road not taken.
“The show also broke so many TV taboos that were prevalent at the time
across the board. At that juncture, serialization was frowned upon. So were soap opera, subtitles, flashbacks … all of which Damon and Carlton employed with abandon, liberating other shows to do the same.”
On the influence of “Lost” on the future: “This show is unique. There is no formula to replicate. It succeeded precisely because no one had seen anything quite like it. It inspires us to continue to think outside the box, search for writers with vision and swing for the fence posts now and again.”

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN COOK…

Food Network has signed on Mark McEwan, one of Toronto’s most
celebrated chefs, as head judge for the premiere season of “Top Chef
Canada” launching spring 2011 on Food Network.
With Mark McEwan on board, the search for the country’s top culinary talent is on. The nation’s best and brightest up-and-coming culinary stars, aged 19 years and older, are encouraged to visit foodnetwork.ca to download the application form.  In addition to the online form, applicants must create a short video of themselves in action, showing off their cooking ability and on-camera personality. Applicants will be selected to compete for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be crowned Canada’s Top Chef and a $100,000 prize.
As the owner of three of Toronto’s top restaurants: ‘North 44,’ ‘Bymark’ and ‘ONE,’  ‘McEwan Fine Food Store,’ plus a catering company, Mark’s expert experience ranges from the start up and running of successful businesses, to high-quality food preparation, restaurant service and catering. He is well versed in the high-intensity of a professional kitchen and has mastered working under immense pressure. Mark also has the know-how to perform on
camera with three seasons of the Food Network series, The Heat, and a season of Superstar Chef Challenge under his belt. All information on how to apply to be on Top Chef Canada is available at
www.foodnetwork.ca/topchef

SUMMER’S COMING FIRE UP THE GRILL

Victoria Day is the official start of summer in this country, and that means two main things: gardening and grilling. For those of us who are dreading the first and smacking our lips at the prospect of the second, on Monday, May 24, Food Network is airing a back-to-back run of “Dear Food Network” episodes focusing on the fine art of the barbecue.  The four shows dish up a range of grilling recipes that drag fine cuisine out of the kitchen and slap it down on
the patio. Keep a pen and paper beside you, and fire up the PVR because a lot of these recipes are keepers.  There’s one for Italian lamb chops that looks like something to die for — smothered in rosemary and olive oil and then dipped in a spicy sauce. And a formula for turning frozen shrimp into a barbecued seafood and corn salad looks amazing. For the really adventurous there are such concoctions as red snapper tacos and flank steak marinated in tequila.
And if that doesn’t grab you, the patio and beach settings are worth watching in themselves. Of course, the main problem with this sort of thing is that it depicts happy, mostly slim beach bums who seem to spend half their lives creating fine dining  – and the other half, presumably, exercising off the  calories most of these recipes involve.
Still, there’s a lot of useful information here, especially for those of us who consider the barbecue a fast way to fry a steak or a hamburger without messing up the kitchen. These are people who treat barbecue as a religious experience. They mostly cook on charcoal, and their marinades and sauces are works of alchemy. And if you pressed your spatula on a hamburger while they were around, they’d probably cut your hand off.

SCIENCE GUY

Alan Nursall talks about taking science to the street. While most of the world sits bored to death in cubicles and offices, wishing we were somewhere else, Alan Nursall is outside blowing stuff up. Or he’s making test tubes disappear,
bouncing eggs off a basketball, riding a bobsled down an icy track or piloting a diesel-powered classic Porsche around a racing circuit.
Like most people in science, Nursall has found a socially acceptable way to avoid growing up and getting boring like the rest of us. He takes science to the street every Thursday for the “Alan Nursall Experience” segments of Discovery’s weekday series “Daily Planet.”
For the biodiesel-powered Porsche, and other goodies such as a wood-burning car — Nursall was in Watkins Glen, N.Y., for the Green Grand Prix.  “DP” has already run one item from the trip, and another is scheduled for Thursday, May 27.“There were all sorts of vehicles,” he says.
“Hybrid people and home handymen, with their special vehicles.”
Nursall goes into an explanation of the wood burning car: It burns wood, captures the gases and runs the engine on them; there were 500,000 running around Europe at the end of the WWII; the apparatus looks like a big still stuck on the back of a car; the technology is commonly used in cooking stoves in Africa … .
This is a guy who loves his work.  Nursall grew up in Edmonton, one of three children. His father was a marine biologist and his mother a physiologist, so science was the family business. His sister, actress Catherine Mary Stewart (“The Last Starfighter”) has referred to herself as the black sheep because she went into show business. But then, so did her brother — and he took science with him. Nursall started as a climatologist. He was working on his Ph.D. at the U. of T. when Science North, the museum in Sudbury, offered him a job as a program planner. Nursall stayed at Science North until 2007, becoming science director before leaving to start his own company, which creates science exhibits for museums and exhibitions.
He and his wife raised two kids, who grew up with a ringside seat for their father’s experiments. He laughs as recalls the day a neighbor called the police because he and the kids were firing a potato cannon in the backyard.
Nursall has been on “Daily Planet” since 1996 as The Science Guy, who pops up in malls and on street corners and engages the public in guerrilla science.
Though he’s never blown himself up, Nursall says there have been a few
experiments that went sideways.  Like the time he did something about
breaking a stick, and he couldn’t do it — but an old man could.
Nursall figures he’s done more than 200 on-the-street experiments, and
it’s getting tougher and tougher to dream up new ones. That’s one reason he branched out into doing reports such as Watkins Glen.  “I get that a lot: ‘There’s The Science Guy,’ ” he says. “That’s one of the reasons we decided to change ‘Science and the City’ to ‘The Alan Nursall Experience’ — so The Science Guy could have a name.”

MERKERSON EXITS ‘LAW & ORDER’

Walking a few blocks to a pub, S. Epatha Merkerson is stopped four times.  An actor gushes over her.  A woman asks to have her photo taken with her. And a man leaning against a building says, “The show won’t be the same.”
The show is “Law & Order.” For 17 years Merkerson  has played Lt. Anita Van Buren. On Mon., May 24, she exits. “It was time,” Merkerson says.
Though her character and the actress both approach life with a steely honesty, Van Buren, who wears a wig of processed hair, conservative clothes and plain accessories, is prim. Merkerson’s hair is natural, in short twists; she wears large hoop earrings, a couple of charm bracelets, silver rings, an anklet, a scarf, and a black skirt and blouse. She drops the F-bomb with aplomb and laughs often and easily. Merkerson is now the longest-tenured black actress in a prime-time drama.  “They give me a sendoff,” is all she’ll reveal of her finale.
Like others who became regulars, Merkerson began as a guest star. That
episode, “Mushrooms,” in which she played the mother of a slain child, remains her favorite.
It was 1991, and Merkerson, as usual, was in a play. She mentioned the audition to a friend, who gave her a video of the program.  “When I heard that bo-boom, I thought, ‘Damn, even the music is cool!’ ” she says. “Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty) lost a case he had no business losing.  They actually had the hero lose.  Then I got this gig. It covered so much in 47 minutes.” she continues. During her “L & O” tenure, Merkerson married, divorced, won an Emmy, an SAG, and acted in movies.  She received many deserved accolades and had her moment at the Emmys when she lost her acceptance speech in her cleavage. When the show was on hiatus, she worked in films, on Broadway and off. “L & O” usually has a strong Broadway contingent.  Merkerson beams as she talks about one former co-star and Broadway trouper, the late, great
Jerry Orbach. Just as Merkerson was gracious with each person who stopped her on the street, being in public with Orbach, who played Detective Lennie Briscoe, was like being with the mayor of New York -except Orbach was always popular. Once she dared grumble that fans did not allow him to eat his lunch. “‘Kid, these are the people who will keep you going,’” she says, quoting him. Orbach was shocked that Merkerson could not tell a joke. One night
after a late shoot, Orbach taught her three jokes, which shared two
punch lines. The next day, Orbach quizzed her; Merkerson was blank. “He was so exasperated,” she says. “If I would do anything over, I would remember those jokes.”
This past season, Benjamin Bratt, who played Det. Rey Curtis, one of Orbach’s partners, returned as a guest star. The story had them in a cemetery, and they learned Orbach was buried there, so they walked to his tomb.
“It was an amazing moment,” she says, “that both of us were there together, and we just stood there, looking at each other and crying.”
The best part of the show, she says, has been making lasting friendships with many, including Dennis Farina, Jill Hennessy and Jesse L. Martin.
It’s a couple of days after the set closed for the season. The enormity of her decision to leave hadn’t hit yet. Just as she’s had during other breaks, Merkerson has a project. She’s working on a documentary about benevolent societies in the South. Former slaves created them to take care of their own; some societies became insurance companies. “At 57 I am still learning new things,” she says. “I will continue acting, and learning about filmmaking. If it falls apart, I’ll do something else. I have many interests.

SARAH TRANSFORMS A FARMHOUSE IN ONE DAY

TV often seems full of tool-wielding supergals who restore an old chest in the morning, paint the bathroom in the afternoon then landscape the yard after dinner. Sarah Richardson wants to make one thing perfectly clear: “That’s not me.”
The Toronto designer has just finished a third season of “Sarah’s House,” which airs a marathon Mon, May 24, on HGTV. In it, she makes over a farmhouse a couple of hours north of Toronto. That is, she has the ideas. She hires others to do the work. Richardson started her career in lifestyle TV a decade ago with “Room Service,” in which she would show how fabric, paint and imagination could work miracles on interior design. Coming out of that she was afraid she had given the impression that she was a one woman show. “It was ‘Sarah does this, and Sarah does that.’ It was like the Martha Stewart mentality: Martha does it all. That show evolved into “Design Inc.,” which showcased Richardson’s design firm. “I wanted everybody to know I had a whole team.”
Three seasons ago, “Sarah’s House” was launched. “What if you’re doing an entire house? And how do you think about that? For me, there has to be a level of consistency, attention to detail and a consistent look.”
Each season, Richardson buys a house and renovates it. When the job is done, she puts it up for sale.  Though the show reveals each home’s purchase price and resale value, Richardson says it isn’t “about flipping.” Mainly, she says, it’s about presenting a series of ideas and solutions that anyone can apply. “People say, ‘Oh, well, it’s a $1 million house,’ ” she says. “But I can’t make 13 episodes out of a $250,000 house. You’re not going to watch. This is not about ‘Trading Spaces’ — 24 hours, five bucks, a glue gun and a stapler. This is about the best solutions for design. And what I hope people take away is some idea, one concept: finding a $100 vanity, for example.”
In the first two seasons of the show, Richardson and her “design sidekick,” Tommy Smythe, redid a downtown Toronto Edwardian era house and a 1950s suburban backsplit. Having done urban and suburban, Richardson says, she wanted to tackle something rural, where she could “explore more traditional styles.”  So she and Smythe gutted a century-old red-brick farmhouse and redid it from the inside out. “I wanted to build something,” she says. “And
I knew I could never afford to build something in the city.”
One of the things that has made “Sarah’s House” one of HGTV’s most popular shows is Richardson and Smythe’s relationship. They banter and tease as only close friends can, and the audience responds to that. They have known each other since high school  -  in fact, Smythe was a close friend of Richardson’s husband. “It’s kind of like being paid to spend every day with someone you have a great time with,” Richardson says.

MICHELLE WIE AT LPGA CLASSIC

Watch out Mobile. Michelle Wie is coming to town next month. Ranked 8th in the world, Michelle Wie is definitely a crowd favorite in any tournaments she plays. This will be Wie’s first time in the Bell Micro LPGA Classic. In 2009 she tied for second in the Navistar LPGA Classic, also on Alabama’s Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail. She later won the Lorena Ochoa Invitational Presented by Banamex and Corona Light and also was on the winning Solheim Cup team for the U.S. Wie is a student at Stanford and has been creating buzz on golf courses since an early age. Wie has been sponsored by Nike and has recently added deals from McDonald’s and Kia. She tied for 6th in the Kia Classic Presented by J Golf this year. Wie also tied for 27th in the Kraft Nabisco Championship in April.
“This makes this tournament by far, the best field that we’ve ever had in Mobile,” tournament director Jonathan Romeo said. “Making her first trip to Mobile, this is going to have a big impact on the tournament.”
Romeo said the increase in traffic on the tournament’s Web site and in ticket and volunteer inquiries is obvious since Monday’s announcement. He said he expects ticket sales to continue to increase.

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