Media Whore D'Oeuvres

"Eccentric '30 Rock' star Tracy Morgan’s New Jersey home is filled with snakes, sharks, a sparkly Michael Jackson glove under glass and a custom-made last-supper mural featuring comics Lucille Ball, George Carlin, Bernie Mac, Richard Pryor, Charlie Chaplin, Lenny Bruce, Sam Kinison and Jackie Gleason as apostles. 'That is a black African python,' Morgan explained about one snake during a tour of his home in a new Rolling Stone cover story on '30 Rock.' 'She’s really nasty. Two years ago, one of those ate an 11-year-old boy in Africa.' Unpredictable Morgan also openly weeps on the NBC series’ set over its finale, pointing at a crew member and exclaiming tearfully, 'I spent more time with this dude than my own family! Good times, bad times, ugly times. Awards fun, looking forward to spring. It’ll never happen again. I can’t explain.' The piece also interviews series creator Tina Fey, Lorne Michaels and Alec Baldwin, who takes a dig at his brother Stephen’s recent arrest for tax evasion. 'I’m a very fastidious record-keeper of these kinds of things, so I don’t end up like my brother,' says Alec as he leaves a restaurant and 'carefully files' a receipt in an 'extraordinarily' fat wallet. Fey recalls the show’s ups and downs, including having to fire her 'SNL' pal Rachel Dratch after specifically writing the role of Jenna Maroney for her. Jane Krakowski took Dratch’s place on the show." (NYPost)

"Not that long ago, premiering a star-driven Sundance Film Festival movie on a video-on-demand channel was an admission of failure. But last year's festival produced two huge on-demand hits, Richard Gere's crime drama "Arbitrage" and Kirsten Dunst's wedding comedy "Bachelorette," which collectively generated nearly $30 million in revenue, mostly from VOD. With the nation's most prominent film festival kicking off Thursday in Park City, Utah, can history repeat itself? 'The last year has educated people that they can have a hit using alternative distribution platforms,' said Tom Quinn, the president of the Weinstein Co.'s Radius label, which released 'Bachelorette.' 'This Sundance we'll see how much everyone has learned.' After years of hype in the independent film business, digital platforms have finally begun to bear fruit. Last year's Sundance didn't yield the mega-deals that over the last decade have seen studios pay as much as $10 million to release low-budget productions such as "Hamlet 2" in theaters. But thanks to VOD, movies that were bought at Sundance last year for only about $2 million, including 'Arbitrage' and 'Bachelorette,' were breakouts. 'Arbitrage,' purchased by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions, has grossed $8 million at the box office but nearly $12 million on VOD; 'Bachelorette' has tallied less than $1 million at the box office but $7.3 million on VOD, according to their distributors. Several movies from Sundance 2012 did perfectly well following more traditional release plans centered on opening in movie theaters, bolstered by strong reviews: the Oscar-nominated "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "Searching for Sugar Man." Each year, scores of independent filmmakers come to the snowy Utah town looking for deals that will bring their movies to audiences." (LATimes)

"'Scandal,' now in its second season, has been a success for ABC. Last week the show had 3.52 million viewers aged 18 to 49 and 8.4 million total viewers. Among the group aged 18 to 34 it typically ranks first in its 10 p.m. Thursday time slot. A political thriller set in Washington, 'Scandal' has attracted some inside-the-beltway fans like the political strategists Donna Brazile and Roland S. Martin, who have both tweeted about the show. The show’s other sweet spot — one that network executives seem less eager to discuss — is its success among African-American audiences.According to Nielsen 'Scandal' is the highest rated scripted drama among African-Americans, with 10.1 percent of black households, or an average of 1.8 million viewers, tuning in during the first half of the season.

One reason for that success is the casting of Kerry Washington, who became the first African-American female lead in a network drama in almost 40 years. (The first was Diahann Carroll starring as a widowed single mother working as a nurse in the 1968 series 'Julia.' 'A second show, 'Get Christie Love,' starring Theresa Graves as an undercover cop, had its debut in 1974.)  Her casting has prompted discussion among academics and fans of the show about whether 'Scandal' represents a new era of postracial television, in which cast members are ethnically diverse but are not defined by their race or ethnicity." (NYTimes)

 

 

 

"Michael’s was its busy self despite it being a cold, dull grey mild winter’s day outside. Inside, it was it double decibel Wednesday self. I was lunching with Anita Sarko who occasionally writes for NYSD and besides being an associate of Society Photographer Patrick McMullan is a veteran DJ of the New York club scene. Anita is a downtown girl (to this uptown mentality). She’s encyclopedic about New York downtown nightlife. She grew up in Detroit. When she was a small child her mother and father loved to go to nightclubs to see major entertainers. That included New York and Las Vegas, and she’s been drawn to clubs every since. Although times have changed and so have the clubs. The subject now is: Where have all the clubs gone. Anita is always working, however. And always thinking too, so we had a lot to talk about and I had a lot to learn. The Michael’s list looked a little like this: Barry Frey; Andrew Stein with Nancy Ross; Marnie Darren; Jane Hartley with Judy Berg; Neal Boulton; Suzanne Grimes and Wendy Goldberg; Hugh Freund; Peter Price with Jay Snyder who has been rumored to be a candidate for an ambassadorial post; Rick Kaplan, who is launching Fuse News in February with his lunch guests Alexa Chung and Matt Babel as co-hosts, along with producer Audrey Gruber; Philippe Salomon; Stan Shuman; Rob Wiesenthal who’s recently moved from Sony to Warner Music; the mayor o’ Michael’s, Joe Armstrong with Dave Zinczenko ..." (NYSocialDiary)

"Lance Armstrong will face millions of Oprah Winfrey fans Thursday night in a play to restore his tarnished image. But Winfrey has as much to gain as the disgraced Tour de France champion cyclist.
Since conceiving the Los Angeles-based Oprah Winfrey Network five years ago, the former talk show empress has burned through $300 million and almost a dozen top managers trying to reengage the 10 million fans who long ago flocked to her daily daytime open house. Viewers have had trouble finding OWN on their TV and cable systems. Aside from a handful of high-profile interviews conducted by Winfrey, viewers have shown little interest in most of the network's programming ... From the onset, Winfrey's OWN has been vexed by missteps, ego clashes, a revolving door in the executive suite and anemic ratings. Originally envisioned as the television equivalent of Winfrey's O magazine, and an expansion of her hugely successful syndicated talk show, Winfrey found a partner and bankroll in cable powerhouse Discovery Communications, the parent of Discovery, TLC and Animal Planet. But during first months after the network's January 2011 launch, Winfrey was absent — consumed with ending her long-running daytime talk show in Chicago — while in Los Angeles her staff struggled to translate what they called the 'Oprah DNA' into compelling programming. In summer 2011, Winfrey interrupted her vacation plans to become the network's chief executive.
On an average night, OWN draws 329,000 viewers, according to ratings firm Nielsen — roughly a 10th of the audience of a popular cable show like A&E's 'Duck Dynasty.' Now, to boost the flagging network, Winfrey herself may be becoming more … Oprah." (LATimes)