THE SIMPSONS 500TH EPISODE

The characters, which began as droopier versions in 20-second cartoons on “The Tracey Ullman Show,” have evolved, as creator Matt Groening and star Dan Castellaneta discuss in a long and very rare interview. First, though, consider some numbers. Now in its 23rd season, the show has won 27 Emmy Awards, is seen in more than 100 countries and has 37 million likes on its Facebook page.
Guest stars have included Buzz Aldrin, Anne Bancroft, Tony Blair, Rodney Dangerfield, Bob Denver, Stephen Hawking, Michael Jackson, Jack Lemmon, Jack LaLanne, Paul Newman, the Ramones, J.K. Rowling, Elizabeth Taylor and John Updike. It’s in the Guinness Book of Records for having the most guest stars.
Before they worked together, Groening loved Castellaneta’s improv work, and Castellaneta read Groening’s “Life in Hell” comics; the two still get a kick out of each other.
Question: Did you have any notion “The Simpsons” would have such a life or that it would provide your livelihoods?
Groening: I thought the show would be a hit. It was always defined even when they were 20- second cartoons on “The Tracey Ullman Show.” It was designed to be a TV series. However, I didn’t think it would be that successful. Maybe we would get it on the air. I didn’t think we would have it on the air 25 years later. I have been working with Dan since ’87, and I still can’t believe those voices come out of his mouth.I am always reminded of when Dan and I were in New Orleans and walking around the French Quarter, I would throw out ideas to Dan, and one was an idea (that has not been done) when the Simpsons get a pet baboon, and it’s very aggressive, and the Simpsons have to live on the first floor of the house.
Castellaneta: (In Homer’s voice) Stay there, Coco! Don’t play with that! That is the remote. That’s mine. I am beginning to think this is not a good idea.
Q: What are your favorite lines?Groening: My favorite line you ever said on the show was in the ill-fated monorail episode. The control panel opens up, and a mother possum is hanging by [her] tail, and Homer says, “I call the big one Bitey.” He doesn’t understand it is a possum. And he is perfectly happy that it bit him.
Q: Who have been some of your favorite guest stars?Castellaneta: Harvey Fierstein is really great. He played Homer’s assistant, secretary. It was a really interesting character, who basically would fall on a bomb for Homer. I thought it was pretty cool to meet a lot of these rock and roll stars that we had guest on the show, and going to London and meeting the Who.
Groening: The high point of my life was watching Dan crack up Mick Jagger.
Castellaneta: Mick Jagger said, “Homer, we want you to come to the concert.” But Homer thought he would play in the band. And Mick Jagger said, “We just need you to check the mic.” Homer said, (in Homer’s voice) “Can’t you do it?” Groening: No one ever said that to Mick Jagger. Q: Who would you still like to have on the show? Groening: Off the top of my head, it would be cool if Bill Cosby came on the show. … I would love to get Tony Bennett back. I think we could write an anthem for Springfield. Castellaneta: He was our first big name.
Q: Any other stories from guest stars? Groening: When Paul and Linda McCartney guested on the show, we made Lisa a vegetarian, and Paul said he would do it as long as Lisa
remained a vegetarian, not a vegetarian of the week, and it has given us a great deal of material.
Q: Are either of you ever surprised by what you can get on TV? Castellaneta: [Anchorman] Kent Brockman was on [the air]. The town split in two, and they drained the river and found gold at the bottom, so we can buy water so everyone can be taking golden showers. And Kent Brockman was snickering, and I thought, “That is never going to make it on.” And some of the most innocuous — you can’t show Homer’s butt crack more than twice. That’s because we don’t want anyone to get too turned on.
Q: When you’re clicking through stations, will you stop and watch? Castellaneta: I will watch. Groening: When you are working on these episodes, you are trying to make them as good as possible and spend long hours trying to make it look tossed off. To then be able to look at it years later, generally I find I like them more than I did at the time. Q: Why is the show a legend? Castellaneta: Certainly the length of the show, how long it has run. The show carved out new territory. I feel it has influenced a lot of movies and other television shows. You even think some Simpsons were blown up into movies. I have seen some plots of movies, and I have said, “Wait a minute, we did that five years ago.” But I am not saying “The Hangover” was taken completely from “The Simpsons.” Groening: It is fun to know that you entertain people over a long number of years, and some kids have grown up, their world has always been a world in which “The Simpsons” are always on TV. And that we have done this comedy that is basically a checklist of all of the different ways there are of doing jokes, parodies and homages to older movies and silent movies and cartoons and many autobiographical elements of whoever wrote the scene. w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-GRAMMYS

Ex-Degrassi Drake leads Canada’s 2012 Grammy Pack

 The Grammy Awards celebrate not only a given year’s recordings but the history of music in general.

So, there will be tight races in the many categories for contemporary music — such as the best rap/sung collaboration category where hip-hop phenom Drake is Canada’s best hope for a 2012 Grammy when Global and CBS air the 54th Annual Grammy Awards from Los Angeles’ Staples Center on Sunday, Feb. 12.

Rihanna, Coldplay and Foo Fighters join Sir Paul McCartney as 2012 performers.

Drake — a six-time nominee in the past — is one of two Canadians with a trio of nominations, the other being DJ-producer Deadmau5. Drake will be up against some stiff competition — including himself — in the three categories where he is nominated. The nominations include Best Rap Performance (“Moment 4 Life” with Nicki Minaj) and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (DJ Khaled’s “I’m On One” and “What’s My Name” with Rihanna).

The 25-year-old Drake, whose full name is Aubrey Drake Graham, got his show-biz start playing Jimmy Brooks on the TV series “Degrassi: The Next Generation.” Success in the music world seems not to have cooled his acting ambitions. Interviewed recently while appearing at the Sundance Film Festival he told an interviewer that he wants to play Barrack Obama in a movie.

“I hope somebody makes a movie about Obama’s life soon because I could play him,” he said. “That’s the goal. I watch all the addresses. Anytime I see him on TV, I don’t change the channel, I definitely pay attention and listen to the inflections of his voice. If you ask anyone who knows me, I’m pretty good at impressions.”

Drake says that often he is offered roles as a rapper or basketball player, but that he is looking for something else that goes beyond what people would expect him to play.

Montreal’s DJ A-Trak also has received a nomination, along with his partner Armand Van Helden (together they are Duck Sauce), for Best Dance Recording. Their international breakout hit “Barbra Streisand” charted at No. 1 in over 12 countries and racked up 65-million YouTube views with arguably the biggest viral video of all time; a quirky, star-studded homage to New York’s downtown scene.

Toronto singer Melanie Fiona received two nominations: Best Traditional R&B Performance and Best R&B Song for her “Fool For You” collaboration with Cee Lo Green. Other Canadian nominees include Sum 41 for a hard rock/metal performance and Vincent Morisset for Arcade Fire’s Scenes From The Suburbs recording package.

As a counterpoint to the Grammys’ competitive excitement, several Lifetime Achievement Award recipients are named each year by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences. Country-pop crossover star Glen Campbell will be one of them.

“It tickles me,” Campbell says of his latest Grammy honor, after winning two for “Gentle on My Mind” and another two for “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” all in 1967.

“They’ve really been nice to me throughout my career. I just think you do your job, and you try to do it the best you can and try to think up some new things. That’s really what I’ve done.”

Now on a farewell concert tour as he deals with the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, Campbell is part of an impressive Lifetime Achievement class that also includes fellow country star George Jones as well as Diana Ross, the Allman Brothers Band, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Gil Scott-Heron and the Memphis Horns.

“I guess when you get old enough, they lay all those accolades on you,” muses Campbell, who also will team musically with nominees Blake Shelton and the Band Perry on the Grammy stage.

With such hits as “Wichita Lineman,” “Galveston” and “Rhinestone Cowboy” in his catalog, Campbell also has made marks in television (“The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour”) and movies (the original “True Grit” with John Wayne). He deems country music’s current state “great. I don’t know if I’d call it ‘country rock’ or ‘crock’ or what, but if you put a song out there, people know whether it’s good or not. That’s the way I always did it.”

Among this year’s Grammy nominees, Foo Fighters are back with six bids, with “Wasting Light” in contention for album of the year (their second time in that category) and best rock album (their sixth time).

“It’s been a really good year,” frontman Dave Grohl reflects. “I think we finally hit our stride in that confident, 17-year-old-band way. I don’t know what it is, but the shows got longer, and the audiences got bigger.” Grohl maintains that “you never really expect that kind of recognition” when it comes to the Grammys. “It feels good to be appreciated for what you do, but the group lives in such a simple little world. It’s right in the middle of the San Fernando Valley in an industrial section where nobody would expect us to be. Within that studio, we do everything, so we exist within this little bubble and don’t pay too much attention to what goes on outside it.”

Which isn’t to say Foo Fighters haven’t appreciated every nomination they’ve gotten. They’ll perform at this year’s Grammy Awards, and Grohl reasons the organizers “see us as guys who play instruments in a rock band — and these days, that is getting harder and harder to find. I never got into this for a career. I was a high-school dropout stoner who worked at a furniture warehouse and loved playing music on the weekends.”

The frontrunner from this year’s nominees is Drake mentor and friend Kanye West who leads the pack with an impressive seven nominations including Song of the Year and Best Rap Album.

The event has a host for the first time in seven years: rapper and “NCIS: Los Angeles” star LL Cool J. w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-MESSING-SMASH

MESSING hopes for A ‘Smash’ – BUT WITH LIFE BALANCE

Combine Emmy and Oscar winners, an “American Idol” finalist, one of the top names in screen entertainment, and a programming chief who has switched networks.

What do you get? A “Smash,” they all hope.

Some may see it as NBC’s answer to Fox’s “Glee,” but considering Steven Spielberg’s involvement as an executive producer — plus such talents as producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (“Chicago”) and composer Marc Shaiman (“Hairspray”) — the peacock network clearly is aiming for more as it debuts its own musical-drama series Monday, Feb. 6.

The backstage turmoil of launching a Broadway show fuels the program, with “Will & Grace” Emmy recipient Debra Messing top-billed as Julia, the lyricist and co-writer of a musical about legendary screen siren Marilyn Monroe. Christian Borle (Broadway’s “Legally Blonde” and “Mary Poppins”) is seen as her writing partner, “Idol” veteran Katharine McPhee as favored Monroe portrayer Karen and Oscar winner Anjelica Huston (“Prizzi’s Honor”) as the maritally troubled producer.

The series also has impressive guests lined up: In a rare television appearance, Uma Thurman does a multiple-episode arc as a movie star interested in playing Monroe, and Tony Award winner Bernadette Peters appears as the Tony-winning mother of another contender for the Monroe role, Ivy (Megan Hilty, “Wicked”).

Additional “Smash” regulars include Jack Davenport (also a Messing co-star earlier in the movie “The Wedding Date”) as the musical’s director, Brian D’Arcy James as Julia’s husband and Raza Jaffrey as the McPhee character’s politically connected beau.

“It’s been a dream, honestly,” Messing says of making the show. “The moment I finished reading the [pilot] script and put it down, I called my representatives and said, ‘I have to be a part of this.’ Cut to my being offered the part, cut to our doing the pilot and having the time of our lives with the most thrilling creative team. Now we’ve all picked up and moved to New York (where the series is filmed), and it’s been an experience that has far exceeded my expectations.”

The same goes for McPhee, who claims “Smash” is fulfilling any Broadway performing ambitions she has, at least for now. The fifth-season “Idol” runner-up recalls that when she first heard about the show, “I didn’t know if there would be a part for me, but I said, ‘There has to be a part for me!’ My then-manager quickly calmed me down by saying, ‘You’ve got some time, but we just wanted to let you know it’s in the pipeline.’

“Every six months or so, I’d think, ‘I wonder what happened to that pilot.’ It came up again last year, and I just couldn’t wait to get my hands on the script. I kept turning the pages, and I think the actual product turned out even better than what was written.”

“Smash” has had a longtime champion in NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt, who brought the project with him when he moved over from Showtime. He’s credited with having “developed” the show after the initial pitch from Theresa Rebeck (“Seminar”), whom Messing deems “a genius. I’ve followed her career as a playwright forever, but her voice and her command of all of these characters is astonishing.”

Columbia Records will release songs performed on “Smash” by McPhee, who also has a solo deal with the label, and others. Many are crooned at various Big Apple sites, prompting Messing to term the show “a love letter to New York. We’re allowed to shoot all over, from Harlem to Washington Heights to Brooklyn to SoHo to Times Square. It’s really been exciting.”

“Smash” was held purposely until midseason so it could be teamed on Mondays with the singing competition “The Voice,” which begins its sophomore season a night earlier, immediately after NBC’s telecast of Super Bowl XLVI. Declaring herself a “Voice” fan, Messing finds it “very encouraging” to have that show paired with hers. “I couldn’t think of a better lead-in.”

As someone of notable voice herself, McPhee also likes the scheduling. The opening scene of “Smash” is of her character auditioning, but she maintains that filming it didn’t give her any “American Idol” flashbacks.

“It’s funny, I never once thought about that. There are hundreds and hundreds of auditions I’ve been on, and obviously, that was one that people remember because it was broadcast on national television.

“Reality show auditions are a little bit different,” McPhee adds, “because they’re kind of made for television. The ones I’ve been on the past four or five years, trying to get acting jobs, were the references I used.”

“Will & Grace” was very much an ensemble piece for NBC, where Messing has returned along with fellow Emmy winner Sean Hayes (an executive producer of “Grimm”), alias Jack to her Grace. “Smash” is a much bigger ensemble situation, though, and the actress says that’s why she’s able to be in it.

“I did one hourlong drama (ABC’s ‘Prey’) before I had a child,” Messing says, “and before ‘Will & Grace,’ and just from that experience, I knew I wasn’t built for that kind of schedule. The balance of my personal and professional lives is something I’m always struggling to maintain. Originally, this was going to be a cable show with 13 episodes a year … so I was like, ‘This is perfect for me!’

“Then it moved with Bob to [broadcast-]network prime time, where it could potentially be 24 episodes a year. That made me very nervous, but luckily, Theresa is also a mother, and everyone involved seems to respect my concerns.” w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER- ‘LUCK’ WITH HOFFMAN

After bringing the worlds of late 19th-century South Dakota gold miners and 21st-century Southern California surfers to HBO, David Milch follows up “Deadwood” and “John From Cincinnati” with a multilayered, multifaceted portrait of the world of Thoroughbred racing.

Going beyond just the horses to trainers, jockeys, veterinarians, shady quasi-criminal types and degenerate gamblers, “Luck” creates a canvas of intense desperation, burning ambition, devastating peril and staggering beauty, all set against the lush backdrop of Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif., near Los Angeles.

After a sneak preview that aired on Dec. 11 following the season finale of “Boardwalk Empire,” “Luck” – which pairs Milch’s acclaimed writing and storytelling with the producing and directing talents of Michael Mann (“Thief,” “The Last of the Mohicans,” “Ali”) – launches its regular run on Sunday, Jan. 29.

Dustin Hoffman tops the huge cast as Chester “Ace” Bernstein, a man with a questionable past who gets out of prison and embarks on a career as a covert Thoroughbred owner, with his loyal driver, Gus Demitriou (Dennis Farina), acting as his frontman.

Ace is a careful, deliberate man who plays things close to the vest. For Hoffman, that came out of choices made in preparing for the role.

“It wasn’t a conscious decision,” he says. “What you’re wearing or not alters you. It doesn’t take much. You learn your lines, you’re told a few things. They say, ‘Do you ever wear your hair straight back?’ ‘No.’ ‘Will you try that?’ And Michael Mann says, ‘Hey, I like it with your hair straight back.’ ‘Let’s see what suit you’re going to put on.’

“He has an image of the character, and you’re going with that image. You learn the lines, then they just come out a certain way, and you’re altered.”

Among those followed on the backstretch are trainers Walt “The Old Man” Smith (Nick Nolte) – inspired by, Nolte says, legendary trainer Jack Van Berg – and Turo Escalante (John Ortiz), who has more than a professional relationship with his vet (Jill Hennessy). There are jockeys on the way up, such as Irish Rosie (Kerry Condon), and those trying to come back, such as Ronnie Jenkins (played by jockey Gary Stephens).

On the fringes of the track life are the degenerate gamblers, including one group – whose most socially adept member, Jerry (Jason Gedrick), also has a weakness for cards – struggling to find a way forward after a life-altering bet.

Although Milch has followed racing most of his life, owned Thoroughbreds and laid down more than a few bets, it took him a long time to get around to writing about it all.

“Certainly,” he says, “I had an adequate exposure to it. I did a lot of research, but the deepest truths of that world – I won’t say that they had eluded me, but there’s an expression, the ripeness is all, and I finally was ripe enough.

“These are not characters who let themselves be easily known, and a lot of them are composites. … It takes a little while for the world to fully declare itself, but I hope they will hang in, because it’s definitely worth the trip.”

For Mann, who’s more familiar with racing cars than horses, it was a foray into a new reality.

“The thing that surprised me the most,” Mann says, “was the first time I was in a vehicle, and we were doing a tracking shot, and I was three or four feet away from a racehorse going full out – and it’s stunning.

“David talked quite a bit about a sense of nature and the spirit of being that close, involving yourself with the animal, like a trainer does, like Escalante would do – but when you’re actually up next to what feels like a 1,500-pound jack rabbit, that’s a whole different thing.

“The athleticism of it, the spirit … it’s not like you have to encourage them to race; you have to repress the instinct to race. All they want to do is race.”

But these days, the slow romance of race day, with its long pauses and brief explosions of action, is fading in a world of instant gratification.

“The pity is,” says Nolte, “that horse racing is losing the imagination of the public. The mythology and the connection of man and horse is being lost. Gambling’s taken over. They want to turn horse-racing tracks into casinos.” W

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-‘MARK BRAND’

Gambling on the ’hood in Gastown

 Even if you’ve been in Vancouver only a short while, you probably know the city’s Downtown Eastside area, often spotlighted in documentaries and news programs to demonstrate some of Canada’s most glaring inner-city problems with crime and drug addiction.

But while others saw this zone primarily as a sociological petri dish of problems, visionary social activist and entrepreneur Mark Brand saw something else: a neighborhood worth saving. And he’s put his money, time and energy where his heart is, most recently in the high-risk renovation of the historic Save-On-Meats building, a project chronicled in “Gastown Gamble” Wednesdays on OWN Canada.

“I moved to Vancouver around 2006, and the Downtown Eastside at that point just fascinated me, strictly from sort of a social aspect,” Brand explains. “It played a large part in my life in the last five years, in terms of where I lived and where I worked. Gastown itself has had this amazing history of highs and lows. There’s not a lot of density as far as people living there, but it has this wonderful feel and history and character. It’s one of the few places in Vancouver that hasn’t been developed heavily.”

But it was the residents of Gastown, not mundane real estate factors, that propelled Brand into tackling the Save-On project, as he calls it. “It’s one of those unique aspects of the neighborhood that inspires you so that you want to work harder,” says Brand, who also owns and operates several other businesses in Gastown. “It’s such an incredible blessing to be able to work there in the Downtown Eastside and then witness good change, if you know what I mean.”

Brand says he envisioned the renovated half-century-old diner and butcher shop as a lynchpin of a broader revitalization dream, a building that would be a tribute yet also something far more basic: a home.

“We wanted to make this space somewhere you could come and eat and frequent with dignity regardless of your station,” he says. “That was the most important thing to me. I wanted to make sure that it was comfortable for all ages and all people from all neighborhoods, essentially. Functionality was important, of course, but I really wanted to make sure it didn’t intimidate people who knew it before but also be inviting to people who never had been there.”

Reaction to news of the project was mixed. “People were actually quite nervous for me, but also what it was going to give to that block,” Brand says. “I think people took a harder look at me in general as a businessperson and wondered what my real motivation was. I had to answer those critics and also proponents of the neighborhood for the entire time we were building, in person. It was a wonderful experience. When you take on a task that you really, truly love, it’s a great thing.”

As Brand and his team were about to start work on the Save-On project, former CTV programming executive Louise Clark approached him about documenting the work in a series by Lark Productions, her new company. Brand agreed, but laid down some strict ground rules. “I said, ‘There can’t be any exploitation. There can’t be any script, and we need to have final say about what is going on if we are going to do this,’ which was very arrogant on my part because them wanting to do this to begin with was very flattering,” he recalls. “But, my major concern stays with the neighborhood and how it is portrayed.” W

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-ARCTIC AIR TAKES

For a country with such a strong northern mythology, it’s amazing how little use our TV and filmmakers have made of the place.

For example, take Ian Weir, executive producer and creator of “Arctic Air.” Until he was contracted to write the pilot episode for the series, which airs Tuesdays on CBC Television, he’d never been north.

“I’m not a northern guy,” he says. “So this was a chance to immerse myself in the world of Yellowknife. And I found it was a totally wonderful place.”

Like most of us, he says, he had some ideas of what the North was like, and a lot of them were wrong. “The first thing that took me aback was how cosmopolitan Yellowknife is,” he says. “I figured the cultural mix would be white European and First Nations. I discovered that you can walk down Franklin Street and hear Caribbean accents. The first taxi driver I dealt with was South African.”

“Arctic Air” may be the first fictional series set in the Far North since CBC’s “North of 60” back in the 1990s. The series is set mostly in Yellowknife and deals with a small airline that flies bush planes and Second World War vintage DC-3s to remote locations around the Arctic.

That would ring a bell for fans of History Television’s “Ice Pilots NWT,” a reality series about Buffalo Airways, which serves remote northern communities with a fleet of Second World War vintage DC-3s, DC-4s and C-46s. “Ice Pilots” and “Arctic Air” are made by the same production company. Buffalo Airways provided the DC-3 that is used in exterior shots (the interiors are done in an on-set mockup), airline personnel provided expert advice on the series, and Buffalo Airways owner Joe McBryan did some stunt flying in the DC-3.

“In Episode 4 … there’s wonderful footage of Joe doing an aborted landing on a DC-3,” Weir says. “And my God, that man can fly a plane. It’s absolutely thrilling footage.”

However, the similarities between the two series are completely superficial, Weir says. “We’re in the same geographical region, and we’re using a DC-3 in the Arctic Air fleet. But the fleet is more broadly based than the Buffalo Air fleet. And, of course, our cast of characters is quite different from the ‘cast of characters’ of ‘Ice Pilots NWT.’ ”

“Arctic Air” stars Adam Beach as Bobby Martin, an aboriginal businessman who has been living in Vancouver and has come home to take over his 25 percent stake in the airline.

“When I read the pilot episode, I was drawn to Bobby Martin and who he was, his struggles,” Beach says. “His reconnection with home, family and friends, and the fact that he wants to use the talents he has to better his family and the company, Arctic Air. He’s been out in the world. He’s studied. He’s achieved. He moved fast up the ladder.”

In other words, he’s a lot like Beach, who left his impoverished northern Manitoba reserve to pursue a career in acting, which led from stage roles in the West to Canadian films and television and such Hollywood movies as “Windtalkers,” “Cowboys & Aliens” and “Flags of Our Fathers,” where he worked with Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood.

One of Beach’s early roles was a recurring character in “North of 60,” which was shot in Calgary.

“Arctic Air” shoots interiors on a soundstage in suburban Vancouver, but the exteriors are shot in and around Yellowknife. “I haven’t been that far north before,” he says. “Yellowknife is beautiful. A very small city, where everybody knows everybody. But the landscape speaks for itself. You can’t help but feel surrounded by Mother Nature.”

Co-starring with Beach in the series is Pascale Hutton as Bobby’s childhood friend and love interest, Krista, the daughter of the crusty old bush pilot (Kevin McNulty) who runs the company.

One of the bonuses of working in the series, Hutton says, was getting to fly around in the co-pilot’s seat of a Buffalo Airways DC-3, getting a feel for the ancient warhorses. “We have learned a lot from flying with the pilots of Buffalo Air,” she says. “Not so much in terms of personality, because ‘Arctic Air’ characters are unique to our

show. But seeing the way they fly the DC-3s and being up with them was very informative, especially for Kevin McNulty, Adam Beach and me.”

Like Beach and Weir, the farthest north Hutton had been was Edmonton, where she went to university. And like them, she says she was astonished at just how cosmopolitan and lively the city is.

“Yellowknife is incredibly culturally diverse, which I don’t think many people know,” she says. “There are lots of First Nation people, but we also met a lot of people from Somalia and Ethiopia.

“There are lots of opportunities to make a lot of money, and that brings people from all over the world.” w

WHATS-ON-IN-VANCOUVER-GRISHAM’S-“THE-FIRM”

 John Grisham is a brand name. Whether audiences have experienced “The Client,” “A Time to Kill” or “The Pelican Brief” in print or on film, the novelist’s law thrillers have had lasting impact. Now there’s fresh evidence: Almost 20 years after spawning a popular Tom Cruise movie, Grisham’s “The Firm” is the basis for a series that has a two-hour premiere Sunday, Jan. 8, on Global Television Network before settling into a weekly slot the following Thursday.

Grisham is an executive producer on the project being made by Entertainment One (“Rookie Blue,” “Haven”) in association with Sony, with Josh Lucas shifting from movies (“Sweet Home Alabama,” “J. Edgar”) to weekly television by assuming the former Cruise role of attorney Mitch McDeere.

The show picks up 10 years after the original story with McDeere believing he’s safe after a nemesis dies in prison, so he emerges from witness protection with wife Abby (B.C.’s Molly Parker) and their young daughter (Natasha Calis) and relocates to Washington, D.C.

Having barely survived his time with a corrupt Memphis firm, the attorney finds himself dealing with another law office apparently steeped in sneaky dealings. Tricia Helfer (“BattlestarGalactica”) plays the chief of that practice, which aligns with McDeere’s smaller office on cases he tackles with his ex-con brother Ray (B.C.’s Callum Keith Rennie) and street-wise assistant Tammy (Juliette Lewis, in the part that first gained Holly Hunter an Oscar nomination).

Thanks also to international sales, “The Firm” has a 22-episode guarantee, something very rare for a debuting series now.

Grisham’s “The Client” was turned into a 1995-96 show, and the author admits in a conference call that situation “certainly gave me great hesitation” about turning another of his books over for series purposes.

“It was such a dreadful show and painful experience, I didn’t want to do it again for a long time; I forgot about [doing] television over the years, though I never really forgot about film. The films have become difficult to make for a number of reasons, and I didn’t really think about ‘The Firm’ as a TV show until [fellow executive producer and former prosecutor] Lukas Reiter appeared on the scene and showed me a script. I thought it was very good, and I got excited about the idea of a weekly drama.

In becoming television’s McDeere, “Firm” star Lucas considers Grisham the viewer he must satisfy most. “There is a reason John Grisham is the massive-selling author he is,” the actor says on the show’s principal set near Toronto, “which is that he seems to have a literary respect that comes out of his iconic men. They have their failings, but their integrity is unwavering.

“There’s usually a great family sense to his stories as well, but consistently, the thing about his work is that it’s thrilling. That’s a difficult thing to drive forward in the world of procedural-based network television, and I pray that we do.”

If there’s any question Lucas is serious about his “Firm” work, consider the research he did for “The Lincoln Lawyer,” last year’s movie in which he starred with Matthew McConaughey (once a Grisham screen lawyer himself, in “A Time to Kill”).

“I went to the courthouse that was right near my house and just watched cases,” Lucas recalls, “and I really became fascinated, deeply moved a number of times.

“There’s such an extraordinary sense of life and death, it’s like the ultimate stage in so many ways.”

Meg Tilly-Bombshells

 Of women, bombshells and a world at war

Meg Tilly was living happily as a wife, mother and novelist on Vancouver Island — until she told her agent she’d like to dabble in acting again.

What she had in mind was the occasional play, she says — such as the role of Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” that she did at Victoria’s McPherson Playhouse last summer.

The last thing the Oscar-nominated (for Norman Jewison’s “Agnes of

God”) actress had in mind was committing to a series on the other side of the country.

But when she read for “Bomb Girls,” she says, she was hooked almost immediately by the script and by co-producer Adrienne Mitchell’s directing style.

“I had no intention of doing film or TV,” she says. “When I thought of TV I didn’t expect — even in film, lots of times you don’t get directors who have deep, deep insight into the characters.

“By the time we finished, I was so happy I had gone, because I met somebody who I thought was an incredibly talented director, who gave me a deeper understanding of the character.”

The series, debuting Wednesday, Jan. 4, on Global Television Network, tells the story of a group of women working in a munitions plant in Toronto during World War II.

The story opens in 1941, when women were being hired en masse to staff Canadian munitions plants being set up to replace the ones that had been bombed in England.

“If it hadn’t been for our munitions factories, Britain would have fallen,” Mitchell says. “When we start our series, that factory has been in service for only about five months.”

Tilly plays Lorna, a 40-something shop matron who has to ride herd on an assembly line staffed by inexperienced young women.

The large ensemble cast includes Jodi Balfour, Charlotte Hegele, Ali Liebert and Anastasia Phillips as the women on the line; Peter Outerbridge (“ReGenesis,” “John A: Birth of a Country”) as Lorna’s embittered World War I veteran husband; and Antonio Cupo as a factory worker who is banned from joining the armed forces because he was born in Italy.

The series was created by Mitchell and Janis Lundman, best known for co-producing the dark, stylish cable drama “Durham County.”

“It was an incredible time,” Mitchell says. “Women went from extremes.

The transition they made in entering the work force was incredible.

“Suddenly they were thrust into a situation where they had their husbands’ and sons’ lives in their hands. And the responsibilities, the sacrifices they had to make, and the thrill of having this kind of responsibility and freedom that they never had — it’s an incredible world to explore.”

“Bomb Girls” follows the rush to replicate the “Mad Men” formula of stylish nostalgia blended with social commentary, which saw the experiments last fall with “The Playboy Club” (now canceled) and “Pan Am” (at this writing rumored to be on its way out).

However, unlike those series, and like “Mad Men,” this taps into something fresh and real. “Bomb Girls” is a story whose time is long overdue. This may be one of the last great, unexploited dramas of World War II.

Also, like the 1960s, the ’40s were a period of great upheaval and great energy, when many of the social rules were being rewritten, particularly about gender relations.

“It was a real culture shock for both genders,” Mitchell says. “If it hadn’t been for the women’s work force, those munitions factories wouldn’t have been up and running, and those bombs wouldn’t have been made.

“Yet the men couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t believe these women could do the job. It was mind-blowing to them.”

And Tilly’s character, Lorna, is right in the middle of it. She has a husband who is disabled and two sons who are fighting overseas. And she has suddenly been ripped from her home and thrust into a world she finds exciting and frightening at the same time.

“Women came from all over Canada to work in these factories,” she says. “Normal was you were born in a town. You were raised in the town. You were married in the town. And you died in the town.

“It was a challenging time, but it was a wonderful time, and some women have said those were the happiest years of their lives, because they realized what they were capable of, and it busted preconceptions of what a woman could do.”

Tilly admits that her situation isn’t completely removed from Lorna’s.

She’s a successful writer with four novels for young adults published and a screenplay in the works. Yet, like a lot of women with grown children, she’s re-entering the work force — as an actor.

“I guess I’m not primarily anything now,” she says. Then, she adds with a laugh: “You know what? I’m primarily Meg.

“The overwhelming sense I had when I was shooting ‘Bomb Girls’ is, ‘Oh it’s so much more fun this time around.’ ”

‘DOCTOR WHO’ XMAS SPECIAL A TREAT FOR FANS

Author Clement C. Moore was referring to St. Nicholas when he wrote of “a right jolly old elf” in his famous poem. But he just as easily could have been referencing a certain peripatetic, centuries-old Time Lord who zips freely through time and space yet holds a special place in his heart(s) for Earth humans, especially children.

That probably explains, at least in part, why “Doctor Who” and Christmas have become synonymous in the show’s U.K. home base. And now, for the second consecutive year, Space: The Imagination Station carries this year’s Christmas episode

Series star Matt Smith, who currently plays the 11th incarnation of the Doctor, couldn’t be happier about it.

“I think there is a sort of magic and scale to the Christmas episode,”

says Smith, (who also starred in the BBC’s “Party Animals” on Knowledge Network) who at 29 is the youngest actor yet to take on the role. “The Doctor and Christmas go hand in hand. In many ways, he treats every day like it is Christmas, so when it really is ‘that day,’ he’s like, ‘Whoa! Here we go!’ Also, it was just great fun to have snow in September.”

The actor is talking about the fall production in Wales necessitated by the special’s holiday premiere date, with crews transforming a real forest into a winter wonderland for exterior scenes. Smith says that put him into a holiday mood faster than almost anything else.

“It was completely exciting,” Smith says. “Ever since I saw Jim Carrey filming ‘The Grinch’ in September or whenever it was, I thought, ‘Wow, that must be so much fun!’ And it is. What was amazing was the snow in all the pine trees, because we were in that real pine forest, and that brings back all those sense memories, because it’s not really Christmas, is it, without that scent?”

“Doctor Who” fans watching at home will have to furnish their own scent-sations to the experience, but there’s plenty of traditional holiday sentiment in the story, which opens on Christmas Eve 1938, as Madge Arwell (guest star Claire Skinner) rescues an injured “Spaceman Angel” who promises to repay her kindness anytime she decides to make a wish. Three years later, a distraught Madge and her two children, Lily and Cyril (Holly Earl, Maurice Cole), flee war-torn London for a ramshackle house on the coast, where her efforts to give the kids their best Christmas ever get a boost from a madcap caretaker (guess

Who?) whose mysterious Christmas gift leads them into a magical wintry world.

As fans may notice, the story doesn’t accommodate an appearance by the Doctor’s current companions, Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and her husband, Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill). Smith admits that he misses the pair on a personal level, just because they’ve become friends with whom he enjoys spending time, but the new characters in this Christmas episode offer rewards of their own.

“We’ve got new characters in this one: Lily and Cyril, the children, who are just brilliant, and Madge Arwell, the mom, and all these other wonderful characters, which makes it easier to bear, I suppose,” he says. “That’s one of the great things about this job: We keep getting all these wonderful guest actors: the Michael Gambons and David Walliamses and James Cordens. It’s like a wonderful master class for me.”

 

 

— set in World War II England — on Sunday, Dec. 25, the same date it airs in both the United Kingdom and the United States.

ETALK: TEN YEARS IN THE FAME GAME

The stars have been aligning for Ben Mulroney and Tanya Kim for almost a decade now. As co-hosts of “etalk,” weekdays on CTV, they have endured an apparently endless round of films, music, celebrity interviews and red carpets.
Now, heading toward its 10th anniversary, the show is celebrating its celebration of celebrity with an hourlong special, “etalk: 10 Years of Stars, Scandals and Life on the Red Carpet,” airing Monday, Dec. 19.
The show is a look back to when the show was a little, ambitious project with aspirations, to now, as the most-viewed entertainment show in Canada.
“We’re looking at what makes the show the show,” Mulroney says.
That will include past interviews, highlights of the show and the entertainment scene over the past decade — and a look at how the hosts have evolved with “etalk.”
Looking back, Mulroney says, he sees an awkward guy in a suit that was too big. “I didn’t know what to do with my hands,” he recalls. “I couldn’t memorize scripts the way I can now. I get very uncomfortable watching myself from years past. Everyone tries to explain to me that it’s funny, but I just get very uncomfortable.”
Co-hosts Mulroney and Kim have been with the show from its beginnings. Mulroney joined right out of law school, he says, admitting that his name got him in the door and into an on-the-job learning experience that has paid off handsomely. His first gig was as one of the hosts of the little-watched “The Chatroom,” which ran on the old talktv specialty channel, which has since become MTV Canada.
“I got really lucky,” he says. “I came into television at the dawn of digital cable, when we went from 30 channels to 300 overnight, and there just wasn’t enough content to fill those channels. So for the first time ever, not having any TV experience was entirely acceptable. There just weren’t enough people for the jobs.”
The way it worked out, he says, he was able to gain just enough experience to be ready each time “etalk” moved to a new level. “I got called in because I wasn’t afraid of the camera. And I was able to start on a show very few people watched, and get on-the-job training.”
Like her co-host, Kim started with “The Chatroom” in 2000, and stayed with “etalk” when it was spun off that show as a weekly. “I’d come on ‘The Chatroom’ Tuesdays and talk to Ben about the new releases that were coming out that day,” she says. “So that’s how I started, just talking about music.”
In September 2002, “etalk” went daily as a daytime show, and it moved to its present evening slot in the summer of 2003. It was that same year that Kim moved into the co-host job, when Mulroney’s previous co-host, Thea Andrews, left.
And over that time, Kim has gone from being “punk rock” to “a little more classic,” and something of a Canadian fashion icon.
“There’s a big difference — or at least I hope there’s a big difference,” she says, laughing. “Back then, I was more crazy. I had red streaks in my hair. I was a fan of Manic Panic, and the wardrobe was a little out there. I think that’s one of the things I really appreciated about CTV. They let me be who I was at the time.”
Both Mulroney and Kim say the biggest change they’ve noticed over the past decade has been the growth of the Canadian star system. When the show first went on the air, Mulroney says, the producers and correspondents approached the 30 percent Canadian content quota with a bit of trepidation. But they soon learned that there were all kinds of Canadians out there doing interesting things. It’s just that no one was calling them stars.
“If you don’t know how to tell a good story, you’re going to think, ‘Oh gosh, we’re going to have to talk about Anne Murray and Wayne Gretzky every day.’ But there are a lot of people doing great TV, movies, film, art, fashion, cooking. You name it, there are great Canadians doing that work.”
Contrary to the popular belief in much of the Canadian media that no one in this country cares about homegrown stars, Kim says the Canadian items play as well with the audience as the Hollywood ones do.
“I love that ‘etalk’ supports, fosters and encourages the talent we have in our backyard, as opposed to letting them slip through our fingers, go someplace else to get noticed — and then we do stories about them. We’re Canadiana, and we appreciate that Canadian stories are often more relevant than what happens in Hollywood. I like that we showcase that.”

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