LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Mira Sorvino and Jim Gaffigan are getting hitched. At least on the small screen.
“The Replacement Killers” star Sorvino has signed on for Gaffigan‘s CBS comedy pilot. as the comedian’s wife.
The as-yet-untitled, single-camera pilot stars comedian Gaffigan as a happily married and harried New York City father of five (as, perhaps not coincidentally, he is in real life). Sorvino will play Jeannie, a super-wife and super-mom of five who has a sixth child in the form of her husband, Jim.
Gaffigan and “Rescue Me” creator Peter Tolan are writing and executive producing the pilot, which comes from Sony Television in association with Fedora Entertainment. Michael Wimer and Alex Murray are also executive producing.
Sorvino had previously been cast in the TNT pilot “Trooper” from Jerry Bruckheimer, a procedural drama about a recently divorced mother of three and state trooper who takes an unconventional approach to her work.
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The proposed Dell buyout may be motivated more by fear than greed.
Dell’s founder, Michael S. Dell, and the investment firm Silver Lake are offering to take the company private in a $24.4 billion deal. One interpretation of the offer is that savvy investors, using cheap loans, see a nice opportunity to unlock the value from a company that has fallen out of favor with stock investors. The fact that large shareholders are opposed to the deal, thinking it is priced too low, supports the idea that Dell is a diamond in the rough.
But there is an opposite interpretation: The buyout is a last-ditch effort to revive the company. To some, taking Dell private is what’s necessary to implement the sort of bold measures that could prevent the steady decline of a company that has been left behind in many of its markets. And like many acts of desperation, the risks are high that going private will fail.
This viewpoint starts with Dell’s cash flows. How much actual money a company makes each quarter is always an important metric. It’s especially critical at firms that go private in leveraged buyout deals. Once private, Dell would have a lot more debt – and it would need divert more cash to service it.
Going private may allow the company to slash costs, which preserves cash. But management may also feel liberated to spend more on initiatives it feels enthusiastic about, which would use up cash initially. In a botched buyout, management’s plans fail to produce results and a dangerous cash crunch occurs.
And there are some signs that Dell’s cash flows are weakening going into the deal.
The cash flow metric that matters is called free cash flow, which takes the money generated by Dell’s operations and then subtracts what the company spends on capital expenditures. Through the end of its latest fiscal year, which ended in February, Dell’s free cash flows were $2.77 billion. That is well below the $4.85 billion reported in the prior fiscal year. And the recent cash flows may have gotten a boost from financial moves that might be hard to repeat. In the most recent quarter, Dell generated a lot of cash from taking longer to pay its suppliers.
It’s easy to paint a grim picture from these numbers. A privately held Dell might have an extra $700 million to $1 billion of extra interest a year, which could in theory take annual free cash flows below $2 billion. That provides little margin for safety if Dell’s operations run into serious trouble, even if the company does decide to dip into its large pool of overseas cash.
But there are some reasons to believe this analysis is overly pessimistic.
First, the cash flow numbers probably don’t fully factor in how much cash can be generated by Dell’s recent acquisitions. Just as a couple of items helped bolster cash flows in recent quarters, others used up a lot cash, and may not do so in the future. For instance, Dell had a $450 million cash drain in the last fiscal year just from the “deferred income taxes” line. That could be the result of a one-off action rather than a recurring trend.
With all its acquisitions contributing, optimists might contend that Dell can produce $3.5 billion of free cash flow a year. If investors paid seven times that, the company would be valued at the $24 billion, which is where it is valued today on the stock market. Other shareholders think Dell is worth a lot more than $24 billion, and has the cash flows to justify it.
But right now, Dell’s cash flows are weakening. And if they continue to wane, Mr. Dell may soon have a tough job ahead of him. He may already know that — looking at those cash flows.
It isn't easy sometimes to be an ordinary person in Los Angeles, so near to and yet so far from the city's glamorous events.
You hear about the grand Oscar parties, but you will never be invited. The award ceremony may be taking place minutes from where you live, but you watch it at home, on TV, in your sweat pants — and you might as well be in Dubuque.
Rodeo Drive too can make you feel like a scrap on the cutting room floor. As you stroll the wide and immaculate sidewalks of Beverly Hills' iconic shopping street, you pass by boutiques you'd feel self-conscious walking into. In the windows are baubles and trinkets you could never in three lifetimes afford.
Which is why it is rather nice to be invited to make a private appointment at the house of Bulgari, the fine Italian jeweler that opened its doors in 1884.
Elizabeth Taylor loved Bulgari jewels. Richard Burton, whose torrid affair with her began during the filming of "Cleopatra" in Rome, accompanied her often to the flagship shop on the Via Condotti. He liked to joke that the name Bulgari was all the Italian she knew.
So it is fitting that starting Oscar week, the jeweler is celebrating the Oscar-winning star with an exhibit of eight of her most treasured Bulgari pieces.
They are heavy on diamonds and emeralds — of rare size, gleam and value.
And Bulgari knows their value well.
After Taylor's death, it reacquired some of the gems at a Christie's auction. One piece, an emerald-and-diamond brooch that also can be worn as a pendant, sold for $6,578,500 — breaking records both for sales price of an emerald and for emerald price per carat ($280,000).
That brooch, whose centerpiece is an octagonal step-cut emerald weighing 23.44 carats, was Burton's engagement present to Taylor. He followed it upon their marriage (his second, her fifth) with a matching necklace whose 16 Colombian emeralds weigh in at 60.5 carats. Bulgari bought the necklace back too, for $6,130,500.
They are in the exhibit, along with Burton's engagement ring to Taylor and a delicate brooch — given to her by husband No. 4, Eddie Fisher — whose emerald and diamond flowers were set en tremblant so that they gently fluttered as Taylor moved.
The jewels are not for sale.
On Tuesday night, actress Julianne Moore wore the Burton necklace, with pendant attached, at a gala for Bulgari's top clients. At the dinner hour, guests were escorted along a lavender-colored carpet to a nearby rooftop that had been transformed into a Roman terrace.
Those honored guests, of course, got private viewings of Taylor's jewels.
But so did Amanda Perry, a healer from West Hollywood who arrived the next morning for one of the first appointments available to the public.
Someone had emailed news of the collection to the 35-year-old Taylor fan. She walked in off the street Tuesday, when the exhibit was open only to press — and Sabina Pelli, Bulgari's glamorous executive vice president, fresh from Rome, was taking sips of San Pellegrino brought to her on a silver tray between back-to-back interviews that started at 5 a.m.
The camera crews were long gone when Perry came back Wednesday. She had the exhibit, and handsome sales associate Timothy Morzenti of Milan, entirely to herself.
In a black suit, still wearing on his left hand the black glove he dons to handle fine jewels, Morzenti whisked Perry off via a private elevator to the exhibit on the second floor. The jewels stood in vitrines mounted high off the ground. Behind them were photos and a slide show of Taylor, bejeweled.
"Which piece would you like to see first?" Morzenti asked her as a security guard stood by. "I personally love the emerald ring."
Then he proceeded at leisure to explain Bulgari-signature sugar-loaf cuts and trombino ring settings, while tossing in occasional Taylor stories.
Prison Visiting Room Backdrop, Woodbourne Correctional Facility, New York
Antoine Ealy, Federal Correctional Complex, Coleman, Florida
Darrell Van Mastrigt, State Correctional Institution - Graterford, Pennsylvania
Prison Visiting Room Backdrop, Shawangunk Correctional Facility, New York
Brandon Jones, United States Penitentiary, Marion, Illinois
Kimberly Buntyn, Valley State Prison for Women, Chowchilla, California
State Correctional Institution, Houtzdale, Pennsylvania
Steven Boyd, United States Penitentiary, Atlanta, Georgia
Victoria Williams, Valley State Prison for Women, Chowchilla, California
Prison Visiting Room Backdrop, Otisville Correctional Facility, New York
Robert RuffBey, United States Penitentiary, Atlanta, Georgia
Roy King, Federal Correctional Institution, Terra Haute, Indiana
Prison Visiting Room Backdrop, Shawangunk Correctional Facility, New York
Adam Litwin, Boyer Road Correctional Facility, Carson City, Michigan
Lynette Newson, Correctional Institute for Women, Corona, California
Prison Visiting Room Backdrop, Wyoming Correctional Facility, New York
We expect brightly colored scenes of sun-kissed beaches and snowcapped mountains from cheap calendars and Trapper Keeper binders, but in visiting rooms throughout American prisons, idealized scenes like these serve as backdrops to countless portraits.
Prison Landscapes, a six-year project and new book by artist Alyse Emdur, throws light upon this unexpected phenomenon. The garish murals — and more recently digitally printed backdrops — function in exactly the same way as backgrounds in commercial portrait studios. Aesthetically, they are almost indistinguishable.
“If you weren’t familiar with prisons, you might think these were prom photos or made in community centers,” says Emdur of her collected portraits. “They’re very ambiguous.”
The precise history of the backdrop as a common feature of prison visiting rooms is largely unrecorded. Clearly, they grow out of the prison mural tradition — a famous example of which would be the six frieze murals in the dining hall at San Quentin State Prison that depict parts of California’s history. Murals in Oregon and Washington State include the Cascade Mountains; Gulf Coast prisons feature beaches; and in New York State prisons — where the majority of prisons are upstate but the prisoners are from New York City — are murals of the Big Apple skyline.
In a digital age, however, murals done in acrylic and enamel paint are slowly being replaced by large, store-bought printed screens.
“In Otisville, New York (10th image), we can see a painted scene of the Statue of Liberty, but in front of it is a digital backdrop of the same scene,” says Emdur. “The inmates prefer the photo backdrop to the painted backdrop.”
Prison administrators claim the backdrops are for security purposes — using them for portraits obscures any details about the prisons that might be used for escape. The murals spare prisoners and families the indignity of a never-changing prison setting; the murals at least offer an alternative. They’re so common that many prisoners have never even thought about the backdrops and that they had even forgotten they were there.
Emdur’s interest in prison visiting room portraits began in 2005 when she unearthed a Polaroid photograph of she and her sister posing with her incarcerated older brother. She recalls, even as a 5-year-old, her discomfort posing for the camera with a tropical beach scene to her back.
In order to research prison portraiture, Emdur contacted more than 300 prisoners and explained her intent to collect and decipher this widespread but invisible vernacular form of photography. Just over 150 prisoners agreed to be part of her project and 100 portraits made it into the book. During this time, Emdur wrote and received hundreds of letters.
“My act as a photographer is not from behind the lens but as a collector of images,” says Emdur. “I see myself as a mediator. These are people who have had no relationship with the outside world so while Prison Landscapes might be a very small gesture, the people who chose to be involved in this project want to be seen; they have their own agency. They want the outside world to know they aren’t the criminals they are stereotyped as.”
Relatively late in the project, Emdur resolved to visit prisons herself to photograph backdrops at a wider angle. In the space of two weeks, she gained access to 10 prisons on the East Coast. Her photographs offer context to the portraits she had already collected. In informal interviews, Emdur was able to get the perspective of the prison administrations, psychiatrists, superintendents, guards – “people who enriched my understanding,” she says.
“Prison portraits are very intentionally framed to exclude the surroundings,” explains Emdur. “They are hiding what the visiting room actually looks like. For me it is very important to show the viewer, who maybe hasn’t been in a prison visiting room, the details, and to place the backdrops in a context.”
In their simplest interpretation, prison visiting-room portraits are about familial connection. Emdur’s thoughts returned time and time again to the estimated 1.5 million children in America with incarcerated parents.
“These photographs reflect the image that many children will have of their parents,” says Emdur. “The collateral damage of — and how families are damaged by — mass incarceration is not an aspect that is at the forefront of people’s minds when they think about prisons.”
The photos are emblematic of a cultural disassociation from the prison system itself. Just as these backdrops allow prisoners and their families to avoid documenting their own reality of incarceration, so does the U.S. avoid most public discourse about policies and attitudes that allow the country to lock people up at six times the rate of the next most punitive industrialized nation (the United Kingdom) and quadruple the prison population over the last 35 years. At the heart of the enabling is the tendency to reduce each person in prison to a one-dimensional, almost inhuman, caricature of a “prisoner” — something Emdur hopes her project combats.
“Clearly prisoners are more than their crime,” says Emdur “I’m not saying they’re not criminals; they are in prison because they were convicted and proven guilty. I am not going around that but it is important to look at these images and consider the rise of the prison industrial complex. The portraits reveal a system and how individuals fit within that system.”
Prison Landscapes, published by Four Corners, London is now available. Alyse Emdur is very grateful that Four Corners will donate books to each of the individuals whose portraits feature in the book, and to 100 prison libraries in the U.S.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Platinum-selling rapper Ja Rule was set to leave an upstate prison on Thursday after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession but head straight into federal custody in a tax case.
The rapper, who had been in protective custody at the Mid-State Correctional Facility because of his celebrity, has some time remaining on a 28-month sentence for tax evasion, correction officials said. His sentences were expected to run concurrently.
Ja Rule may have less than six months left and may be eligible for a halfway house, defense attorney Stacey Richman said. An order to pay $ 1.1 million in back taxes is one of the main reasons he wants to get back to work, she said.
“Many people are looking forward to experiencing his talent again,” Richman said.
Ja Rule scored a Grammy Award nomination in 2002 for the best rap album with “Pain is Love.” He also has appeared in movies, including “The Fast and the Furious” in 2001 and “Scary Movie 3″ in 2003.
Ja Rule, who went to the prison in Marcy in June 2011, is getting out at his earliest release date, state correction spokeswoman Linda Foglia said. He had two misbehavior reports for unauthorized phone calls in February 2012 and had work assignments on lawn and grounds crews and participated in education programs, she said.
In the gun case, New York City police said they found a loaded .40-caliber semiautomatic gun in a rear door of Ja Rule’s $ 250,000 luxury car after it was stopped for speeding, and he pleaded guilty in 2010.
He admitted in March 2011 in federal court that he failed to pay taxes on more than $ 3 million he earned between 2004 and 2006 while he lived in Saddle River, N.J.
“I in no way attempted to deceive the government or do anything illegal,” he told the judge. “I was a young man who made a lot of money — I’m getting a little choked up — I didn’t know how to deal with these finances, and I didn’t have people to guide me, so I made mistakes.”
Richman said the 36-year-old rapper, whose real name is Jeffrey Atkins, is looking forward to his daughter’s graduation.
“He’s a devoted father,” she said.
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MIAMI — Gov. Rick Scott of Florida reversed himself on Wednesday and announced that he would expand his state’s Medicaid program to cover the poor, becoming the latest — and, perhaps, most prominent — Republican critic of President Obama’s health care law to decide to put it into effect.
It was an about-face for Mr. Scott, a former businessman who entered politics as a critic of Mr. Obama’s health care proposals. Florida was one of the states that sued to try to block the law. After the Supreme Court ruled last year that though the law was constitutional, states could choose not to expand their Medicaid programs to cover the poor, Mr. Scott said that Florida would not expand its programs.
Mr. Scott said Wednesday that he now supported a three-year expansion of Medicaid, through the period that the federal government has agreed to pay the full cost of the expansion, and before some of the costs are shifted to the states.
“While the federal government is committed to paying 100 percent of the cost, I cannot in good conscience deny Floridians that needed access to health care,” Mr. Scott said at a news conference. “We will support a three-year expansion of the Medicaid program under the new health care law as long as the federal government meets their commitment to pay 100 percent of the cost during that time.”
He said there were “no perfect options” when it came to the Medicaid expansion. “To be clear: our options are either having Floridians pay to fund this program in other states while denying health care to our citizens,” he said, “or using federal funding to help some of the poorest in our state with the Medicaid program as we explore other health care reforms.”
Mr. Scott said the state would not create its own insurance exchange to comply with another provision of the law.
His reversal sent ripples through the nation, especially given the change in tone and substance since the summer, when he said he would not create an exchange or expand Medicaid.
“Floridians are interested in jobs and economic growth, a quality education for their children, and keeping the cost of living low,” Mr. Scott said in a statement at the time. “Neither of these major provisions in Obamacare will achieve those goals, and since Florida is legally allowed to opt out, that’s the right decision for our citizens.”
Mr. Scott now joins the Republican governors of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota and Ohio, who have decided to join the Medicaid expansion. Some, like Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, were also staunch opponents of Mr. Obama’s overall health care law.
Shortly before his announcement, the governor received word from the federal government that it planned to grant Florida the final waiver needed to privatize Medicaid, a process the state initially undertook as a pilot project. Mr. Scott, who is running for re-election next year, has heavily lobbied for the waiver, arguing that Florida could not expand Medicaid without it.
Mr. Scott’s support of Medicaid expansion is significant, but is far from the last word. The program requires approval from Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature, which has been averse to expanding Medicaid under the health care law. The Legislature’s two top Republican leaders said that before making a decision they would consider recommendations from a select committee, which has been asked to review the state’s options.
“The Florida Legislature will make the ultimate decision,” Will Weatherford, the state House speaker, said. “I am personally skeptical that this inflexible law will improve the quality of health care in our state and ensure our long-term financial stability.”
Medicaid, which covers three million people in Florida, costs the state $21 billion a year. The expansion would extend coverage to one million more people.
Mr. Scott’s reversal is sure to anger his original conservative supporters.
The governor “was elected because of his principled conservative leadership against Obamacare’s overreach,” said Slade O’Brien, state director for Americans for Prosperity, an influential conservative advocacy organization. “Hopefully our legislative leaders will not follow in Governor Scott’s footsteps, and will reject expansion.”
During his announcement on Wednesday, Mr. Scott said his mother’s recent death and her lifetime struggle to raise five children “with very little money” played a role in his decision.
“Losing someone so close to you puts everything in a new perspective, especially the big decisions,” he said.
Michael Cooper contributed reporting from New York.
Deal-making in the oil patch continued on Thursday, as Linn Energy agreed to buy the Berry Petroleum Company for about $2.5 billion, expanding its presence in oil-rich shale formations.
Under the terms of the deal, an affiliate of Linn, LinnCo L.L.C., will issue 1.25 million new common shares for each Berry share. That amounts to $46.24 a share, a premium of roughly 20 percent to Berry’s closing price on Wednesday.
LinnCo will then transfer Berry’s assets to Linn in exchange for additional ownership units in its sibling, which is structured as a master limited partnership. Including the assumption of debt, the deal is valued at $4.3 billion.
By purchasing Berry, Linn will significantly bolster its oil production and increase its holdings in California and the Permian Basin in western Texas. The company estimates that its newest acquisition will increase its proven reserves by 34 percent and its production capabilities by 30 percent. And Berry’s reserves are estimated to be about 75 percent oil and liquids, considered to be significantly more valuable than natural gas, given current prices.
Linn cited the growth promised by the deal in announcing an increase in its quarterly distributions to unit holders, to 77 cents a unit from 72.5 cents.
“Berry’s assets are an excellent fit for Linn, and we believe this transaction generates significant accretion to our distributable cash flow per unit,” Mark E. Ellis, Linn’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We have great respect for what the Berry management team has accomplished and consider the Berry employees to be an important part of this transaction.”
To help defray the tax consequences LinnCo will take on in the deal, Linn will pay its affiliate $6 million a year through 2015.
LinnCo was advised by Citigroup, while a conflicts committee of its board was advised by Evercore Partners and the law firm Locke Lord. A conflicts committee of Linn’s board was advised by Greenhill & Company and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
Latham & Watkins served as legal counsel to both Linn and LinnCo. Berry was advised by Credit Suisse and the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
At least 16 people were hurt and a popular wine bar was destroyed by an apparent natural gas explosion and ensuing fire at an upscale shopping district in Kansas City, Mo., Tuesday evening.
Residents reported smelling natural gas and seeing utility crews in the area before the conflagration. A strong scent of gas hung in the air afterward.
“Early indications are that a contractor doing underground work struck a natural gas line, but the investigation continues,” Missouri Gas Energy, a natural-gas provider, said in a statement.
The Kansas City Fire Department said the incident was under investigation. “It does seem to be an accident,” Fire Chief Paul Berardi said during a late-night news briefing.
JJ's Restaurant and wine bar, just off Country Club Plaza, had apparently been partially evacuated before the blast occurred about 6 p.m.
"This was happy hour at the restaurant. There were patrons in the restaurant," Berardi said.
No fatalities were reported, but officials brought in cadaver dogs to check the rubble. The Kansas City Star reported that one JJ's employee was missing.
The fire raged for two hours, with thick smoke visible for miles. Victims streamed to hospitals; at least four people were in critical condition.
Initially, police said a car had hit a gas main, but officials later discounted that explanation.
Witnesses described a chaotic scene.
"I was sitting in my living room folding laundry, and felt in my chest -- and heard -- an explosion," said Jamie Lawless, who lives about two blocks from JJ's. "I started freaking out, and I was looking around, and then I saw other people walking outside. You could see giant black smoke billowing up from the plaza area, and nobody really knew what it was."
Sally McVey, who lives across the street from JJ's, said the fire "was growing exponentially, incredibly quickly. It was not like a fire I’ve seen before, where it takes a long time to spread.”
A crowd gathered to watch firefighters battle the blaze. At an apartment building on JJ's block, a woman on a top-floor balcony called down to onlookers. "'Is my building on fire?' and everybody says, 'Yes, come down!' " McVey said. "She’s like, 'Oh my gosh,' and a lot of people come out of that building with their computers and dogs. She did too.”
JJ's owner, Jimmy Frantze, was out of town, said Kansas City Mayor Sly James, who used to be a fixture at the restaurant. The business, which boasted a selection of 1,800 bottles, had been on the site for 28 years.
“It was 28 years of a great restaurant, and then it has to end like this,” Frantze told the Kansas City Star while driving back from Oklahoma. “I want to make sure to check on my employees to make sure they are all right.”
Kansas City Police Department's bomb squad and officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were expected to investigate the accident after the search dogs finished looking for victims, Berardi said.
matt.pearce@latimes.com
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Thanks to motion-triggered digital camera traps, scientists have a powerful tool for studying reclusive animals in remote, inaccessible areas -- and also for generating animated .gifs of gorillas scratching their stomachs.
Okay, perpetually looping scratching gorillas aren't the point of camera-trap research. But they're a very fun byproduct, along with up-close-and-personal photographs of animals glimpsed in unguarded moments.
The jaguar above, filmed in Peru's Manu National Park, represents the 1 millionth image gathered by camera traps belonging to the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring Network. Managed by Conservation International, the network has deployed camera traps across 16 sites in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
At each site, the traps collect up to 60,000 images every year, a data deluge that's led to new statistical methods for turning aggregated photos into rigorous assessments of regional species health and biodiversity trends, or what they call an early-warning system for nature. The researchers hope camera traps will provide near-real-time feedback of changes that would otherwise take years or decades to quantify.
On the following pages, Wired takes a tour of our favorite photos and animations from the project.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Few people have more experience hosting the Academy Awards than actor Billy Crystal, who was the master of ceremonies for the movie industry’s highest honors for the ninth time last year.
As “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane prepares to host the Oscars for the first time on Sunday, Crystal, 64, spoke to Reuters about his own experiences and offered some tips.
Q: What is the secret to being a good Oscar host?
A: “Anytime I’ve been asked by new hosts – Chris Rock called me, Jon Stewart called me – I always say the same thing: ‘Whatever your approach, the world is a rough room. And it’s a big room. Not everybody is going to like what you have to say. But when you’re up there, look like you want to be there. You’re the captain of show business that night. That’s your job.’”
Q: Is there a particular way to handle the audience?
A: “You’ve got the first five rows of people who are all nominated actors. They are really nervous. The women are in uncomfortable dresses. The men aren’t used to wearing tuxedos. For most of them, it’s the end of a really long awards season. The lights are bright, it’s usually really cold in there and there are cameras running everything to get reaction shots. So make them feel relaxed. And you have to be funny.”
Q: In those conditions, that sounds like a pretty tall order.
A: “It’s a really difficult job because it goes against everything you want to do as a performer and I always found that hard. As a performer who loves his job on stage, I don’t really like to see the audience, I like to feel them. So I try to encourage (new hosts) to understand that it’s not going to be what they’re used to.”
Q: Do you have a favorite year of all the ones you hosted?
A: “Definitely my first one (in 1990) because it was the first and it went really, really well. Then the one I almost didn’t do (in 1992) because I had pneumonia. I had a 104 temperature and was so sick. I came out as Hannibal Lecter in a mask and was wheeled out on a gurney and went out into the audience and talked to Anthony Hopkins. It was the year Jack Palance won for ‘City Slickers‘ and did the one-arm push-ups. That set me up for an evening of just running jokes about him.”
Q: Any mishaps that you recall needing to step in and save?
A: “At the (1992 ceremony) I introduced Hal Roach from the stage. It was his 100th birthday. He wasn’t supposed to speak, only wave. But he started speaking, holding himself up by the seat in front of him. You could barely hear him. It went on and on. You could feel people getting restless. Lines were racing through my head and I thought, ‘How do you get out of this?’”
Q: And how did you?
A: “I hit on a line and just looked at the audience and said: ‘It’s only fitting, he got his start in silent films!’ It got a big cheer. For me, I could look at that one little moment and say, ‘I was okay then. I was a good comedian that night.’”
Q: Did hosting the Oscars ever get old for you?
A: “If it ever gets old hat, you shouldn’t do it. The nervous part for me was when we had a good show, trying to top it the next year. It was putting that self-imposed pressure on myself. We were fortunate enough to have some good shows and some not as good as others.”
Q: Do you have one particular moment that will always stay with you?
A: “I came up with this idea of putting me in the nominated films. The last piece was ‘The English Patient‘ where I’m walking in the desert. David Letterman had a rough time (when he hosted the Oscars in 1995), so I said, ‘What if Letterman is in the plane and he’s coming after me because I’m hosting?’ So we did that and I thought, ‘What if I come through the screen?’ So they built a screen and I ran on film and then popped right through the screen and suddenly I was live (at the theater).”
Q: So was that your favorite moment?
A: “Here’s my singular favorite moment: My mother was in the audience that night. It was the only time she saw me host the Oscars in person. When I popped through the screen, she and I made eye contact. We just looked at each other … so that was the greatest moment.”
Q: Would you host again if asked?
A: “Today with social media, everybody who can press ‘send’ is a critic. There’s a lot of good ones, but the mean ones are really mean. If you have a thin skin for that it makes it hard … For me if the show is good, it’s expected. If it’s a bit off, you get creamed. And I don’t feel like getting creamed anymore.”
(Editing by Jill Serjeant, Patricia Reaney and Stacey Joyce)
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