Friday, June 23, 2006

Being Denis Leary

I'm going to be tied up for most of today transcribing and then writing up a very interesting phone interview I did yesterday with Leary and Peter Tolan about The Incident from this week's "Rescue Me." (Much good debate is still taking place in the comments section of the original post.) The story will run Monday, and depending on how ambitious I'm feeling, I may post the complete transcript here. While I don't agree with a lot of what the guys said, I give them credit for being willing to defend their positions in a reasonably non-hostile manner.

In the meantime, some interesting links:
  • Matt reviews AMC's Robert Duvall/Walter Hill/Thomas Haden Church cowboy joint "Broken Trail" in today's column. Not surprisingly, he loves it. I've only seen the first half so far, but I'm inclined to agree.
  • "Futurama" lives!
  • Poor Chicken George is still trying to turn his stint on the first "Big Brother" into a new career as an entertainer. I have to confess a certain fondness for that inaugural season, which was so mind-bogglingly awful in every single way that I was mesmerized in a way that the generic "Survivor"-in-a-house format of the Arnold Shapiro years have never done for me. Bring back Will Mega! Bring back Jordan the stripper!
  • Body image issues: Evangeline Lily hates her body, and "American Idol" helped Katharine McPhee kick bulimia. I am so not looking forward to the gaunt, sunken-eyed version of the McPhee that I'm sure we'll get once Clive Davis' minions are done "improving" her look.

Have a good weekend, everybody. Back Monday with the usual "Deadwood" and "Entourage" reviews, plus the Leary/Tolan extravaganza.

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7 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:22 PM, June 23, 2006

    Did you ask Tolan about posting on TWoP (if that was actually him)?

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  2. Alan Sepinwall1:27 PM, June 23, 2006

    Yeah, that was him.

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  3. Anonymous2:03 PM, June 23, 2006

    I hope the psychos over at TWoP haven't scared him off internet fans in general. I think some of the bullies from the RM thread have infected your blog because I wouldn't call some of those comments "good debate," but more like ramming the "It was rape because I said so!" viewpoint down other people's throats. Hopefully they'll go away soon.

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  4. Anonymous2:08 PM, June 23, 2006

    Alan wrote: "I am so not looking forward to the gaunt, sunken-eyed version of the McPhee that I'm sure we'll get once Clive Davis' minions are done 'improving' her look."

    Oh God no... please no. In the words of the Negro National Anthem (i.e., "Baby Got Back"): "You can do side bends or sit-ups, but please don't lose that butt!"

    These white chicks have got to keep some meat on them bones. I just saw a photo of Kate Bosworth (the new Lois Lane)... you can see her damn collar bones! Hillary Duff destroyed her body the same way. Maybe I'll get up a petition...

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  5. Anonymous2:21 PM, June 23, 2006

    Lohan is the saddest example. Oh, to go back to Sept. '04...

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  6. Tosy And Cosh3:17 PM, June 23, 2006

    Hollywood has been doing its darndest, to, to turn Linda Cardellini from a beautiful young woman into a skeletal starlet. (sigh)

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  7. Brent McKee12:02 AM, June 24, 2006

    The thing about that first season of Big Brother isn't that it was so awesomely bad (it was), it's that this was exactly the same format that every other Big Brother series in the world - and there are like 15 or 20 different countries that run the show, or so it seems - uses. Why didn't it work in the United States? If you want a theory I'd suggest that it didn't work because it aired in the same summer as Survivor and a host of reasons the cast on Survivor, and indeed the whole concept, was more compelling than Big Brother. Maybe that explains why the American series unlike all the other Big Brother series in the world is a Survivor clone.

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