July 19th, 2008
All the TV networks gathered late this week in Beverly Hills for the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, a ritual wherein the network heads make formal — and not-so-formal — announcements about what’s a head for their lineups. Showtime entertainment VP Bob Greenblatt was there and revealed the following tidbits.
First, the new stuff:
- L Word fans need not mourn it’s last season too hard. Creator Ilene Chaiken is working on a super-secret spin-off, centered around one of the show’s original characters. The actress doesn’t even know about it yet. The spin-off will start as an online feature, then move to Showtime if it’s a success.
- Weeds will continue for at least two more seasons after this one.
- A reality series filmed in a gun shop, Lock n’ Load, is on order. It’s all about how the customers make use of that great American pastime, the right to bear arms.
Now for the not-so-new stuff:
- As we reported this spring, Penn & Teller: Bullshit has been picked up for a seventh season. It’s now Showtime’s longest-running series.
- We now have a preliminary schedule for the new pilots we’ve told you about. The United States of Tara, starring Toni Collette as a woman with multiple-personality disorder and John Corbett as her husband, will air starting this winter. The Edie Falco pilot Nurse Jackie, featuring Falco as a New York nurse who’s addicted to painkillers, has a tentative air date of late spring.
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July 17th, 2008
Dexter may be Showtime’s best shot at primetime Emmy glory this year, though several other original series got the nod when the awards nominations were announced today. Dexter scored noms for best drama series and best actor for Michael C. Hall’s portrayal of Dexter Morgan.
Weeds‘ Mary-Louise Parker is up for best actress in a comedy series, based on her dryly funny turn as Nancy Botwin, and Ira Glass’ This American Life snagged a nomination for best nonfiction series. Kudos, all!
We’re not done yet, though. Catherine Keener made the list for best actress in a movie or mini-series for her lead role in the disturbing Showtime film An American Crime (co-starring the always amazing Ellen Page). The Tudors, Californication and Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union also scored noms for casting, cinematography, styling and the like.
Check out Showtime’s Emmy announcement here.
Click here for the full Emmy nominations list.
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July 15th, 2008
“No Man Is Pudding”
Wowzer. Terrific episode. We open with Guillermo’s crew leveling a gun at Celia, who cowers and blubbers on the warehouse floor. She makes no sense in response to Guillermo’s questioning, but mentions him by name. He’s interrogating her when Nancy steps up. She tells him Celia’s her back up for when his schemes get her in trouble. She acts pissed at Celia and tells her she should’ve stayed in the car. When Guillermo notices Celia’s camera and asks her why she’s taking photos, Nancy pistol whips Celia in the face, knocking out one of her front teeth. She orders Celia into the Prius and tells Guillermo she’ll go to the outlet mall later for her new assignment.
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July 14th, 2008
Weeds tonight was the funniest yet — totally bizarro and Nancy being crazy like a fox. I know some of you have found Season 4 a difficult adjustment, but this was a real triumph. We finally incorporate almost all of the regular characters into the plotline and the writers added such weird subplots (Coyotes, bees, marzipan pigs — the animal references alone will take up a good portion of my recap).
Off to relish the one-liners. Full recap tomorrow, friends. For now, enjoy some “marzipandy”:
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July 14th, 2008
Dexter’s third season is still a ways off, but attention for the series has ticked up recently as fan-boys and fan-girls prepare for San Diego’s Comic-Con.
The cast and creators will be on hand July 24 at the entertainment bonanza. According to the Comic-Con schedule, at the Dexter session Showtime will reveal “exclusives from the set of the highly anticipated third season,” delivered by stars Michael C. Hall and Julie Benz, and the executive producers.
For Comic-Con, Showtime commissioned illustrator Shepard Fairey to create an awesome poster to market the show. Check out the poster here, along with Fairey’s recent designs for Barak Obama and Kobe Bryant. Showtime will release a few signed limited edition prints, so keep your eyes peeled at the official site.
Those of us who can’t get to Comic-Con can still have some fun with Dexter. Bounce on over to TheDexterHitList.com to enter some details about your buddies, then send friends a video that shows you as the primary suspect in a copycat killing targeting them. Let the games begin…
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July 13th, 2008
Leisha Hailey, who we love as spunky social networking guru Alice on The L Word, has been busy in between seasons. She and bandmade Camila Grey are prepping for the August release of their debut album as the duo Uh Huh Her.
Their 2007 EP and sold-out performances across the county built buzz nationwide for the gals, who only started playing together in 2006. Their 11-song album, called Common Reaction, drops on Nettwerk Aug. 19. Hailey and Grey worked with producer Al Clay, who’s helped hone the sound of artists such as the Pixies, Blur and Pink.
They also rounded up video producers Draw Pictures for a surreal take on their first single, “Not A Love Song.” Among others, the Draw Pictures team has worked with Depeche Mode, The Bravery, Franz Ferdinand, and Mark Ronson. The video should drop soon.
As for the album, Hailey says we can expect infectious songcraft. As she and Grey were working on the record, she says, “we realized it went in a pop direction, but in a good way.”
The sixth and final season of The L Word started shooting early this summer in LA. It’s set to air in 2009.
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July 12th, 2008
As part of its Emmy build up, Variety is talking to the cast and creators of the shows likely to be nominated. Happily, that includes Californication and showrunner Tom Kapinos.
“Every character on the show is a sliver of my personality,” he says, adding that people tend to find the dark comedy accessible for just that reason.
When he started writing it, Kapinos imagined Californication as a movie, but as the story developed he said it felt more natural as a TV pilot, with a 70s-style anti-hero at the center.
“The show grew from my personal experience of coming to L.A. to be a screenwriter, getting a job on ‘Dawson’s Creek’ and making a lot of money and then discovering that I was miserable,” he says, because he didn’t connect with the characters he was writing about.
The series might never have made it to Showtime, though, if Kapinos hadn’t convinced David Duchovny he was right for the lead role. The network could’ve passed if it didn’t like the cast Kapinos assembled. Lucky for him, DD loved the script and signed on with it virtually unchanged.
Duchovny, at left with co-star Natascha McElhone, is the perfect anti-hero of today, Kapinos says: “Girls want to screw him, but guys don’t begrudge him because they think he’s cool.”
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July 10th, 2008
Sara Colleton, one of the exec producers behind uber-successful Showtime series Dexter, is slated to bring the network a screen adaptation of the comic The Exterminators.
The Hollywood Reporter has it that Colleton, pictured at left with fellow execs Bob Greenblatt and Clyde Phillips and Dexter star Michael C. Hall, will helm the drama based on a Vertigo/DC Comics franchise.
The comic centers on the main character, an ex-con named Henry James, and his adventures when he joins an extermination company only to find that the insects are way more dangerous than they first appear.
The comic’s writer originally conceived of the idea as a TV pitch but found it wasn’t Big Three network material, so it’s fitting that it’ll now find a home on a pay cable station. What’s more, creator Simon Oliver has said with The Exterminators he set out to create a story that was to the extermination business what HBO’s Six Feet Under was to funeral parlors. Guess who exec produced Six Feet Under? That’s right, Bob Greenblatt — the guy who now happens to be VP of entertainment at Showtime.
For more about The Exterminators, check out this interview with Oliver in which he explains how he researched the story and developed the plot. “I throw a pretty wide net so it’s a lot of fun to try and weave it all together,” he told CBR News.
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July 10th, 2008
Add this possible Showtime project to the list: Filmmaker Rod Lurie has pitched a series about a woman who’s an LA vice cop during the week and a Nevada prostitute on the weekend. She can do both jobs legally, because brothels are fine by the Nevada government.
The show, titled Hillary Jones, is a bit of a departure for Lurie, who’ll write and direct. He’s known for delivering projects such as The Contender and Commander-in-Chief in which powerful, clever women try to run the world.
It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Hillary Jones, the main character, explains her career choices to audiences’ satisfaction. Did she go undercover at a whorehouse and discover she loved it? We have Belle, of Secret Diary of a Call Girl, as a model for a self-sufficient, sex-loving woman who has no qualms about her profession. But would it be as convincing if she carried a badge and a gun in her day job? Not so much.
“I imagine feminists will have us in their cross hairs, but once they see it, they will realize it is very warm and humanizing,” Lurie told The Hollywood Reporter.
He added that Weeds’ success was the reason he brought the idea to Showtime. Mary-Louise Parker made Nancy so ‘likable’ in spite of her character’s questionable morals and that’s what Lurie said he hopes to accomplish with Hillary.
That goal will depend a lot on casting, points out TV Squad. Will Lurie find a leading lady with the acting skill to carry the show? We’ll reserve judgment till we see the cast list.
Photo: Newscom
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July 9th, 2008
Whew! This week’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl was hotter and funnier than ever. Belle must be such a fun character to play — but actress Billie Piper says the role cost her the sweetheart/girl-next-door image she built as a teenaged star in the UK.
Piper recently spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about the sexual underworld the show portrays, what it’s meant for her career, and how she feels about filming the explicit sex scenes. Oh, she also admits to keeping some of the frilly lingerie from her wardrobe on the show — not for use at home, but because she thinks it’s beautiful.
As for the sex scenes, she says, “You can emotionally disconnect from the clumsy, awkward scenes. The intimate emotional sex scenes are really tricky. Basically, you hold your breath and go for it. . . . I really wanted to play the role. I knew there was going to be a certain level of sex and intimacy because I was playing a prostitute, so I had to go with it early on.”
Photo: ITV2/Showtime
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