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Entertainment
Monday, January 13, 1997
Deaf actress struggles to find satisfactory roles
NEW YORK — Deaf actress Marlene Matlin, who won an Oscar, still finds it tough to find quality roles. But she won't complain about it.
"It's hard to find roles, period, regardless of whether I'm deaf or a woman," Matlin said. "My deafness is obviously an added difficulty, but you try to break whatever barriers you can."
Matlin, who won an Academy Award for Children of a Lesser God, is currently starring in the HBO film Dead Silence, a hostage drama about a deaf teacher trying to save a busload of captive students. She's also had roles on Picket Fences, Reasonable Doubts, Seinfeld and the made-for-TV movie Bridge to Silence.
Gumbel tours newsroom of MSNBC, meets Gates
II'm frustrated about it," Matlin said of her casting difficulties, "but I've managed to work — I haven't disappeared off the face of the earth."
REDMOND, Wash. — Considering his next career move, former Today host Bryant Gumbel toured the MSNBC newsroom and met Microsoft mogul Bill Gates.
MSNBC is a joint venture of the software giant and NBC.
Merrill Brown, MSNBC editor in chief, said the purpose of Gumbel was to gain Internet savvy and to understand Microsoft and MSNBC.
Microsoft wouldn't say what Gumbel and Gates talked about Thursday. News reports have said that Gates wanted Gumbel to play a major role in the news venture.
"We did a little demo for him. We let him sit through the news meeting, and he had stimulating things to say about the news and what we may or may not do about it," Brown said.
—The Associated Press
Film captures dark American dream
The People vs. Larry Flynt is raw, thought provoking
By Jeff Ruby
Kansan staff writer
Holy lives sure make entertaining films.
Uglly lives sure make entertaining films. An existence as messy as Larry Flynt's, Hustler magazine founder, screams out to be made into a movie, and it's a good thing savvy filmmaker Milos Forman decided to take it on in the insightful The People vs. Larry Flynt.
Lake Oliver Stone's epic JFK, one is left to wonder how much of Forman's saga on hard-core pornography and freedom of speech is fact and how much is fiction. And, similar to Stone's 1991 masterpiece, The People vs. Larry Flynt makes an American hero of a man who is more likely a paranoid fanatic.
In this case, Larry Flynt is as much of a redneck sexist as a champion of the First Amendment.
Forman's film traces Flynt's outrageous life from his tattered, moonshine-soaked Kentucky upbringing through an endless maze of sex, drugs, parties and outlandish courtroom battles.
Throw in a phase of born-again Christianity, a stint at a mental institution, a wife who died of complications of AIDS, and a shadowy assassin's paralyzing bullet, and you've got yourself a captivating movie.
Forman (Amadeus, One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest) steers the audience through Flynt's complex exploits with ease, culminating in a landmark Supreme Court case brought by Jerry Falwell. Forman is not afraid to show the sleazy, unglamorous moments of a life filled with squirmity situations.
Woody Harrelson, an interesting actor who seems to specialize in playing hicks, portrays the lovably disgusting Flynt.
He becomes Flynt so totally that it's hard to believe he's the same guy who gave Norm free beers at Cheers and mutilated half of the Southwest with Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers.
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Harrelson's let-it-all-hang-out performance of the despicable man once called "America's pimp" somehow manages to make the audience root for a man who wore an American flag as a diaper, threw oranges at judges and gave an emphatic thumbs-up for a photo spread of the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion gang-raping Dorothy in the pages of his magazine.
Courtney Love, in a performance critics have dubbed Oscar-worthy, gives a realistic portrayal of Flynt's drug-addicted, ex-stripper wife Althea Leasure. She probably isn't doing much acting at all.
The actual Larry Flytnt plays a judge presiding over a case in the movie The People vs. Larry Flytnt. Flytnt's character is actually played by Woody Harrelson in the movie.
Baby-faced Ed Norton, who plays Flynt's idealistic lawyer, is solid as the voice of reason in a Flynt's world of libido and wealth gone mad — particularly when one realizes
Not surprisingly, Love looks a little too comfortable with a syringe, snugly fitting into the role of a woman addicted to her husband's painkillers.
he plays a man who is dedicated to a client whose cause he may not believe in.
A movie this overtly sexual seems an unlikely candidate to be so thought provoking.
But Forman manages to keep us wondering whether Flynt's over-the-top pornography enterprise — which got its start by showing nude photos of Jacquelyn Onassis
in the end, the question is irrelevant. Flynt has lived a fascinating life. And Forman's straight-forward, distinct storytelling is raw and entertaining, effectively capturing the dark, desperate side of the American dream.
was an intentional test of American freedoms or old-fashioned objectification of the female body.
ABC uncertain if Ellen will come out this spring
The Associated Press
PASADENA, Calif. — A much-umored episode about the TV character Ellen letting her audience know she's a lesbian is in the works.
Ellen is ready to come out, but will the episode ever air?
see whether the episode will be shown.
Jamie Tarses, president of ABC Entertainment, said Thursday that an episode revealing Ellen Degeneres' character as a lesbian is being worked on. However she said it's wait-and-
"We are very seriously considering about going in the direction that everyone's speculating on," she said at the semiannual Television Critics Association meeting.
There has been much hype since the start of the fall season when it was leaked that Degeneres' quirky character, Ellen Morgan, may come out as a lesbian.
The decision to air the episode
"We are all taking this pretty seriously, and if we're going to do it, we need to do it well," Tarses said.
Ellen is produced by Disney, which also owns ABC. But Tarses said that wouldn't be a factor in any decision.
March and April so that the show's 8:30 p.m. slot on Wednesday can be used to introduce the as-yet-untitled romantic sitcom starring Arsenio Hall.
Tarses denied that Ellen was being taken off the air while the lesbian episode is being considered. She said that it would have been all Ellen repeats during those two months anyway.
Ellen will go off the air in
will be made by several people, including herself, Tarses said. Discussions will be held to determine how the show will evolve once the character comes out.
Ellen will return for the May sweeps period, and Hall's show, if it does well, will be moved to another time slot, Tarses said.
"We are all taking this pretty seriously and if we're going to do it, we need to do it well."
Jamie Tares president of ABC Entertainment
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