Section B·Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Monday, October 9, 2000
Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet
NBC recruited a former Friends producer to take over on Cursed after its co-creators left with bad feelings. New writers were brought on, the show changed its name from The Steven Weber Show and a handful of episodes already filmed were thrown out.
First-time fall TV shows experiencing problems
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — A new fall television season is a lot like opening day in baseball. Some new television series seem to start their runs with two strikes against them.
The original producer leaves the series, miffed at the network's meddling. Half the cast is fired. The show changes its setting, or its title. Writers doctor the script.
The executive producer of Fox's Freakylinks left, citing creative differences, after he was ordered to inject more levity into the dark drama.
This year, the red flags are flying over four shows in particular.
NBC's The Michael Richards Show has received a complete makeover. After NBC discovered that the former Kramer on Seinfeld had trouble carrying a series on his own, it beefed up the cast with the addition of actors William Devane, Amy Farrington and Tim Meadows. Now, like Seinfeld, it's more of an ensemble.
Normal, Ohio features John Goodman as a middle-aged divorced man who comes out of the closet as gay. It was originally set in Los Angeles co-starring Anthony LaPaglia. But LaPaglia was axed, the changed settings to middle America and now it is more of a family comedy than originally envi-
sloned. Oh, and the title was changed from *Don't Ask*.
It's possible for a series to work through the bad times. The pilot for the current critical and commercial favorite Buffy, the Vampire Slayer was thrown out and some of the actors recast before the show got on the air, said Gail Berman, Fox's entertainment chief, who was in charge of Buffy when she ran Regency Television.
Every one of the shows she's been involved with has been revamped to some extent in the early days, she said.
"These are situations that have gone on always," Berman said. "It's just that we hear more about it because everybody is looking for a story."
There are few things more frustrating — and panic-inducing — to a network executive than the realization that a concept that looked good on paper isn't working on tape.
The Michael Richard's Show is "300 percent better" because of the extra work put in, said Garth Ancier, NBC entertainment president.
"I think it's going to be a decent "i" show," he said. "Decent to good. The most important thing is to put the best show on the air for the public to see. The last thing you want to do is go on the 'a' and say, 'Only kidding. We're going to go away for four weeks and do it differently."
The proliferation of choices for viewers means that a series has to be special to work. Ancier said.
"They can't just be good," he said.
"We're way beyond the period when
'Hello, Larry' was good enough to be
on the air."
Crossword
ACROSS:
1 Media prak
5 Puppetee Lewis
10 Promissory notes
14 Eastern nuier
16 Rabin 'kinn'
Microwave?
17 Island off Africa
19 Mishmish dish
21 Health resort
22 Hardy girl
23 _and tuck
25 Passover meal
27 Compelled to eat
28 Gaps
29 Vicities
30 Varnish ingredient
31 Bottle
39 Unit of electrical potential
40 Garrets
41 Avant-garde art movement
42 Individual
43 More rational
44 Shcraphooter
45 Repetitive
46 Petroleum homes
47 Petroleum plant
48 Hilkers 'shelters'
49 Victory
50 Barko or Lugosi
52 Caviar base
56 Butted
58 Manipulator
59 Star of the first Club*
59 Ship's pole
65 First public appearance
66 Call from the pews
67 Shove
68 West and Ant
69 Language subtility
DOWN:
1 Rope fiber
2 Khayvam
3 Adjutant
4 Picture of health
5 Actor Omar
6 Is down with
7 Circle pieces
10/9/00
$ \textcircled{c} $2000 Tribune Media Services, Inc. All rights reserved.
8 Harvests
9 Sharmir and Rabin
10 Top of the foot
11 Scifi-mileau
12 Small guitar, briefly
13 Stitches
14 Siskel and Wilder
15 Evita de Argentina
16 Ex-QB Manino
17 Express a bias
18 University of New town
19 Unstoppable
20 Siamese or Persian
21 Put off
22 Soft down
23 Frightening
24 Scatter
25 1954 Fellini film
26 Noisy disturbance
27 Male heir
28 Woman in the
Answers to Friday's crossword
kitchen?
46 Lack
48 initial ones
50 Did some
work
26 Collide with
15 Isaac's eldest
55 Corsica's neighbor
57 Lion's fare
58 lily garden
59 lily garden
60 unit of force
63 M-m good-m
Sloppy style mars Stallone's revised drama
The Associated Press
The credits for Sylvester Stallone's new movie Get Carter list three producers, three co-producers, six executive producers and one associate producer.
So what do these high-paid people do? Who's minding the store? How does a numbing mishmash of a movie like this get made?
This is the third time around for Get Carter. Adapted from Ted Lewis' novel Jack's Return Home, it first resulted in a smart, touching 1970 British melodrama directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Caine. Two years later it was converted to a blaxploitation film, Hit Man, with Bernie Casey and Pamela Grier.
The latest version opens with Stallone beating up a helpless man who failed to pay off his debt to a Vegas casino. He is a hired enforcer, though he prefers to call himself a "financial adjuster." He tells his victim: "My name is Jack Carter, and you don't want to know me."
By the end of the movie, the audience doesn't want to know him either, though he is on the screen most of the time. He might as well be the Man with No Name, who bursts in and out of people's lives, often leaving them disabled.
Carter has a mission. His brother, whom he hasn't seen in five years, has died in a Seattle car accident, reportedly having driven drunk. Carter needs to know more, so he leaves Las Vegas for Seattle, where most of the action takes place (though of course, because of money matters, the movie was shot in Vancouver). He travels by train, since his hardware wouldn't pass pre-flight inspection.
Arriving in Seattle (Vancouver), Carter attends his brother's funeral and is rebuffed by the widow (Miranda Richardson) for his long neglect. His niece (Rachel Leigh Cooke) is not much help either. He starts sniffing around the city and encounters an underworld type and old acquaintance (Mickey Rourke), who has entered the Internet world with a porno dot.com.
All of this might have made for passable melodrama if the plot had been presented in an understandable manner. But David McKenna's script seems like an unconnected series of vignettes, and the dialogue is standard tough guy with abundant expletives.
Much of the film's failure must be attributed to the director, Stephen Kay, whose only other feature was the forgettable The Last Time I Committed Suicide. Like many new directors, he seems determined to put his directorial imprint on the film. The result is quick cuts, slow motion, white flashes and other techniques long ago discarded. The excitement of two lengthy car chases is deadened by split-second editing, close-ups and other distractions.
actions.
Stallone has been a long time gone from the screen, and Get Carter is no way to get back in the flow. With a trimmed goatee, dark glasses and classy suits, he makes an impressive presence, as always. Happily, he has three more projects in the works, so maybe one will connect.