Jonathan Storm: Fellow comic: NBC's move with Leno is a 'desperate' act
Jonathan Storm is hanging with the suits, stars and would-be stars at the Television Critics Association winter press tour in Los Angeles.
Richard Belzer is happy for his fellow comic's success, but he's still upset about NBC's idea to run a Jay Leno show weeknights at 10 next TV season. Belzer calls it the act of a "desperate network."
You may know Belzer as Detective John Munch, a character he has played on a record eight TV series. (Can you name them all? Answer below.)
Belzer, who currently plays Munch on NBC's Law & Order: SVU, appeared at the critics' gathering to discuss PBS's presentation of the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize Feb. 4. Belzer is one of the performers who will toast George Carlin, receiving the award for American humor posthumously. I asked him if everything was cool with his cop show.
"Fortunately, Special Victims Unit is the only hit dramatic series left on the Big Peacock," said Belzer, who was wearing shades and the coolest black-and-white wingtips, "so I'm not worried, frankly. We're very lucky. Starting our 10th year. We've been renewed. We'll be moving to 9 o'clock, obviously.
"Jay Leno, of course, is going to be on every night, meaning that thousands of people will be out of work, actors, producers, writers, wardrobe people. It may be good for comedy in a limited way, but it's a terrible, terrible trend for network television. . . . I'm already signed, so they can't really [do anything].
"It could turn out to be brilliant in terms of finances. But in terms of actors, writers, producers, and all these people, I think it's a tragedy, frankly."
PBS's Masterpiece (thanks, guys, for dropping Theatre, so we don't have to worry anymore whether it's -er or -re) is going heavy into Dickens this winter and spring. There's a new Oliver Twist Feb. 15 and 22, a rerun of the Bob Hoskins-Maggie Smith David Copperfield in March (in which Daniel Radcliffe, before he got all wizardly as Harry Potter, appears as young David), and another rerun - The Old Curiosity Shop - May 3.
But the big news, in so many ways, is Little Dorrit, eight hours, March 29-April 26, another adaptation from Andrew Davis, who made such a sterling Bleak House in 2006. (Remember the magnificent performance from The X-Files' Gillian Anderson?)
At the press tour, the networks aren't supposed to give critics a bunch of free stuff. Books, DVDs and CDs are excepted because they're supposed to help you do your work. PBS, naturally, comes up strong on the books, four hardbacks and two trade paperbacks this time around, including all 860 pages (tiny type, not including appendices) of the Penguin edition of Little Dorrit.
Claire Foy, fresh out of Oxford School of Drama, plays the young daughter of a debtor. A dead ringer for Alexis Bledel, who played Rory on Gilmore Girls, Foy proudly announced to one and all that she had actually read the book, which weighs almost as much as she does.
She started it after the first (of three) casting callbacks, she told me after the Masterpiece session, and kept reading "forever till the end of time," even though, she acknowledged, they have CliffsNotes in Britain, too.
Let that be a lesson to you, kids: Plum parts go to the diligent.
A cornucopia of chuckles awaits: PBS's Make 'Em Laugh starts Wednesday and continues on the following two Wednesdays, two hours each night, outlining all the professional funny people in America since the beginning of time - almost. More than 100 interviews! It's history! It's biography! It's entertainment!
From Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton to Cheech & Chong and Chris Rock, this is the mother lode of laughs. A few of the luminaries to come under the show's gaze: W.C. Fields, Mae West, Andy Kaufman, Dick Van Dyke, Larry David, Richard Pryor, Will Rogers, the Three Stooges (hooray!), Groucho Marx, Mel Brooks, Jonathan Winters, Lucille Ball, Stephen Colbert, and now I'm laughing so hard, I can't list any more.
David Sedaris' sister Amy narrates. She spoke to the critics, who politely didn't ask why the show didn't include Eddie Murphy or Jerry Seinfeld or Steve Martin. Amy's also working on the show's Web site.
Somebody asked if she'd met the person (fan? stalker?) who runs the tribute site www.amysedarisrocks.com.
"I've been to her house," said Sedaris, adding that the woman seems nice, but that she, Amy, stays away from the Web site. "I just trust she likes me, and so she's probably writing nice things. I don't need to go on there to read about myself. I'll go to the bathroom stall."
Answer to our John Munch question above: Munch originated on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1993. In addition to being a regular character on SVU, he has also appeared in The X-Files, Law & Order, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, Arrested Development, The Beat, and The Wire.
Contact Jonathan Storm at jstorm@phillynews.com or 215-854-5618.
Richard Belzer is happy for his fellow comic's success, but he's still upset about NBC's idea to run a Jay Leno show weeknights at 10 next TV season. Belzer calls it the act of a "desperate network."
You may know Belzer as Detective John Munch, a character he has played on a record eight TV series. (Can you name them all? Answer below.)
Belzer, who currently plays Munch on NBC's Law & Order: SVU, appeared at the critics' gathering to discuss PBS's presentation of the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize Feb. 4. Belzer is one of the performers who will toast George Carlin, receiving the award for American humor posthumously. I asked him if everything was cool with his cop show.
"Fortunately, Special Victims Unit is the only hit dramatic series left on the Big Peacock," said Belzer, who was wearing shades and the coolest black-and-white wingtips, "so I'm not worried, frankly. We're very lucky. Starting our 10th year. We've been renewed. We'll be moving to 9 o'clock, obviously.
"Jay Leno, of course, is going to be on every night, meaning that thousands of people will be out of work, actors, producers, writers, wardrobe people. It may be good for comedy in a limited way, but it's a terrible, terrible trend for network television. . . . I'm already signed, so they can't really [do anything].
"It could turn out to be brilliant in terms of finances. But in terms of actors, writers, producers, and all these people, I think it's a tragedy, frankly."
PBS's Masterpiece (thanks, guys, for dropping Theatre, so we don't have to worry anymore whether it's -er or -re) is going heavy into Dickens this winter and spring. There's a new Oliver Twist Feb. 15 and 22, a rerun of the Bob Hoskins-Maggie Smith David Copperfield in March (in which Daniel Radcliffe, before he got all wizardly as Harry Potter, appears as young David), and another rerun - The Old Curiosity Shop - May 3.
But the big news, in so many ways, is Little Dorrit, eight hours, March 29-April 26, another adaptation from Andrew Davis, who made such a sterling Bleak House in 2006. (Remember the magnificent performance from The X-Files' Gillian Anderson?)
At the press tour, the networks aren't supposed to give critics a bunch of free stuff. Books, DVDs and CDs are excepted because they're supposed to help you do your work. PBS, naturally, comes up strong on the books, four hardbacks and two trade paperbacks this time around, including all 860 pages (tiny type, not including appendices) of the Penguin edition of Little Dorrit.
Claire Foy, fresh out of Oxford School of Drama, plays the young daughter of a debtor. A dead ringer for Alexis Bledel, who played Rory on Gilmore Girls, Foy proudly announced to one and all that she had actually read the book, which weighs almost as much as she does.
She started it after the first (of three) casting callbacks, she told me after the Masterpiece session, and kept reading "forever till the end of time," even though, she acknowledged, they have CliffsNotes in Britain, too.
Let that be a lesson to you, kids: Plum parts go to the diligent.
A cornucopia of chuckles awaits: PBS's Make 'Em Laugh starts Wednesday and continues on the following two Wednesdays, two hours each night, outlining all the professional funny people in America since the beginning of time - almost. More than 100 interviews! It's history! It's biography! It's entertainment!
From Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton to Cheech & Chong and Chris Rock, this is the mother lode of laughs. A few of the luminaries to come under the show's gaze: W.C. Fields, Mae West, Andy Kaufman, Dick Van Dyke, Larry David, Richard Pryor, Will Rogers, the Three Stooges (hooray!), Groucho Marx, Mel Brooks, Jonathan Winters, Lucille Ball, Stephen Colbert, and now I'm laughing so hard, I can't list any more.
David Sedaris' sister Amy narrates. She spoke to the critics, who politely didn't ask why the show didn't include Eddie Murphy or Jerry Seinfeld or Steve Martin. Amy's also working on the show's Web site.
Somebody asked if she'd met the person (fan? stalker?) who runs the tribute site www.amysedarisrocks.com.
"I've been to her house," said Sedaris, adding that the woman seems nice, but that she, Amy, stays away from the Web site. "I just trust she likes me, and so she's probably writing nice things. I don't need to go on there to read about myself. I'll go to the bathroom stall."
Answer to our John Munch question above: Munch originated on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1993. In addition to being a regular character on SVU, he has also appeared in The X-Files, Law & Order, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, Arrested Development, The Beat, and The Wire.
Contact Jonathan Storm at jstorm@phillynews.com or 215-854-5618.
