For Immediate Release on Entertainment Drive
Released By Beck/Smith

Cat Fight Thrills Producer
Hollywood -- March 18, 1996 -- "Central Park West" creator-producer Darren Starr is thrilled with the footage collected last week in New York's posh Four Seasons restaurant -- where Raquel Welch and Lauren Hutton engaged in a cat fight that ended in the decorative pool of the famed eatery. "We had been looking for a classic New York place for their squaring-off. At one point, we were thinking about a snowball fight -- but the snow from the blizzard melted too soon." There's been no cat fighting between Lauren and Raquel off camera, he wants us to know. "They're both total pros, and had a good time playing the conflict between their characters." That conflict: fighting over Gerald McRaney, a media tycoon in the revamped "Park." Lauren loves him, but Raquel, his ex, has her fingernails embedded in him, figuratively speaking. It'll be a while before viewers get to see the Four Seasons femme fracas. CBS isn't bringing "Central Park West" back until summer, and the sequence won't be seen until the closing episode of the season. By the way, Starr assures that although the new version of the series focuses on powerful families, there's still plenty of action centered on the younger crowd in the saga.

Rotten Time Had By All
Hollywood -- March 19, 1996 -- Sure, it's only Tuesday, but we think there's already a lock on honors for the bizarre showbiz event of the week. That is, yesterday's London press conference announcing the return -- and world tour -- of the Sex Pistols. Our source on the scene relates that at the conference there were transvestites serving jellied eels -- jellied eels are a working-class delicacy, in case you didn't know. And, of course, Johnny Rotten and the other Pistols went out of their way to make everyone in attendance very uncomfortable. Here are some sample exchanges: One of the gigs they're going to play in England, June 23, is at Finsbury park, which is essentially a large field. The press asked, "Do you think your older fans are going to be there?" Rotten replied, "I hope it rains and all the geriatrics' wheelchairs get stuck in the mud." On another front, a reporter asked if the group was reuniting for the money. Rotten said, "I don't really need the cash. Well, maybe just a little bit more. The tax man will make all the money anyway." Rotten told press people who harped on the money issue: "You never attack all your pop stars here who are making all this money, just because the Sex Pistols emerged from the working class, are you trying to suggest that we're not authentic because we want money?...The working class fucking deserves to make money!" The name of the tour is "Never Mind the Sex Pistols, Here's the Filthy Lucre," which is British slang for ill-gotten gains. They reportedly called the tour what they did because it takes away the sting that anyone could accuse them of doing it for the money -- but obviously, that plan wasn't foolproof. The Sex Pistols begin their U.S. tour in July for six weeks. No opening acts have been set as yet, but you'd better believe they'll be hotly contested.

Chaos Part of Process on "NewsRadio" Set
Hollywood -- March 20, 1996 -- Dave Foley, who stars as the news director on "NewsRadio," reveals, "Chaos continues to be a big part of our creative process. The writers and actors are constantly trying to improve the material. Everyone is changing things to the last minute -- sometimes even during shooting. It's not unusual for the producer or the writers to change something while we're taping. So everyone has to be sharp." With such a system, taping of the half-hour show can take hours -- literally. "Sometimes taping takes five hours -- which is too long for anyone to be forced to watch a TV show. I think the U.N. should step in at that point." The average taping time for the sitcom, says the former member of the Kids in the Hall comedy troupe, is about two hours. As far as reports that he's estranged from the old troupe, he says, "We don't have time to see one another. We're all working solo careers. The group went its separate ways, but then we didn't really get together socially since we started out working clubs and would hang out together."

Berenger's Substitute Drama
Hollywood -- March 21, 1996 -- Tom Berenger, who has decades of credits in productions including "Platoon" and "Gettysburg," says that the April 12-debuting feature "The Substitute" was among his most unforgettable experiences in making a film. The Live Entertainment feature casts Tom as a former mercenary who becomes a substitute teacher of an inner-city high school after another teacher is incapacitated in a gang shooting. They used 26 kids in the movie who had formerly been Miami gang members,with ages ranging from 17 to 20. Berenger agreed with the film's director that it was vital to prep their young cast. "We did two or three weeks of rehearsals and costumes and all that....Every morning we did acting classes with them." Berenger focused on warning the group about the chores of making a film. "I told them, 'The days are going to be extremely long, at least 12 hours.' I wanted them to be prepared that the process would probably be more grueling and grinding than they might expect...maybe 120 setups in a day, doing each scene over and over and over and over again." He also told them, "The windows will be closed as much as possible to keep the noise out. The air conditioning will be turned off because we can't have the sound on the soundtrack. And the lights will pump up the heat, so it could get to be 110 degrees in here. You are going to get tired. You should try not to wear yourselves out at the beginning of the day; pace yourselves. The 10th and 11th hours will really get grinding..." What was the response? "They listened, they were quiet," Berenger says. And when the camera started rolling? "They were pretty good, I have to admit, for rambunctious young kids....Actually, they were pretty wonderful. And they were fun. They got me laughing quite a few times. It was different for me." Despite Berenger's warnings and the arduous work itself, several of the novice actors have apparently been bitten by the thespian bug -- and have gone on to more theater arts training, auditions, etc.

Animator Up for Triple Oscar
Hollywood -- March 22, 1996 -- Double Oscar winner Nick Park, up for Academy Award honors again for his "A Close Shave" animated short film, is now poised to make the move into a full-length animated feature. The Englishman, whose charmingly quirky fare usually involves his man and dog characters named Wallace and Gromit, says he's leaving the two behind for the 90-minute film. "I've been doing them on and off since my college graduation film in 1983. It's time to work on something else." He doesn't want to give away his feature storyline -- "It's top secret" -- but will go so far as to say it's about animals. Park considers the forthcoming Disney release "James and the Giant Peach" potentially helpful to him -- if it's successful. "James" will help get audiences used to stop-motion animation, although, as he points out, "We use clay as opposed to latex and cloth, the materials they used. But both techniques involve figures with metal skeletons that are moved in an excruciatingly painstaking process." Adds Park, "As an animator you begin to appreciate what a second really is, and how much can be put into a second." On a day in which he's moving very quickly, "we can do maybe 3 seconds' worth of filming in a day. It sounds very little, but for animators it's very good."

Copyright (c) 1996 Beck/Smith Ent.


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