What the world needs now...

Burt Bacharach offers some sage advice for players in the game of love

By Carl Kozlowski 05/08/2013

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One might expect Burt Bacharach — the legendary composer who has written more than 70 Top 40 hits and won three Oscars, eight Grammys and an Emmy in addition to receiving a Tony nomination — to be a total romantic in conversation. After all, he’s written dozens of the greatest love songs of the past 50 years, including “The Look of Love,” “This Guy’s In Love with You” and “What the World Needs Now.”

He’s been famous for his personal life as well, having been married four times to glamorous women, including bombshell actress Angie Dickinson and acclaimed fellow composer Carole Bayer Sager. But while recently speaking by phone from New York City, Bacharach advises that people should “abstain from marriage until they’re 45” if they want to be truly happy.

That openness carries over to his new memoir, “Anyone Who Had a Heart: My Life in Music,” which Bacharach wrote with the help of longtime music journalist Robert Greenfield. And it should also inspire a night of spirited conversation Tuesday, when Bacharach takes the stage of the Alex Theatre with acclaimed author Mitch Albom (“Tuesdays with Morrie”) to discuss his life as part of the LiveTalksLA conversation series.

“Writing a memoir was something I didn’t want to do, because I didn’t want to do too much looking backward, but rather live in the present and look forward,” Bacharach explains. “I definitely resisted it. But about two years ago, someone said what about the book and who’s going to know the stories if you’re not telling them?”

Bacharach, 84, was finally motivated to start the reflective process because he realized that his three children — sons ages 27 and 20 and a daughter who is 17 — had “no idea who their father was, with the pitfalls and blemishes.” He teamed up with Greenfield to write it, and would tell stories into a tape recorder in random order, vowing not to hold anything back before having Greenfield “piece it together like a puzzle.”

Bacharach was born in Kansas City, Mo., but spent most of his childhood in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills. The son of Mark Bertram “Bert” Bacharach, who was a popular syndicated newspaper columnist, Bacharach initially “hated” playing the piano.
“My mother pushed very hard for me to take piano lessons, but I think my dad would have been OK either way,” says Bacharach. “I hated taking piano lessons, having to practice a half-hour after school every day, and had no love for music — until a certain point of my life when I heard Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk, which opened that door and let me hear something other than heavy-duty classical. That other music sounded very beautiful and exciting. That made a big change.”

After studying music at three formal music programs and a stint in the army, Bacharach returned to New York City, where he became an in-demand pianist for numerous stars including Polly Bergen, Steve Lawrence and classic movie siren Marlene Dietrich. But he really hit the path to success upon meeting lyricist Hal David in 1957 at the Brill Building, a Big Apple office complex that housed dozens of pop-music composers who cranked out some of the biggest hits of the era.

Starting with their first No. 1 hit, the country smash “The Story of My Life,” sung by Marty Robbins, Bacharach and David wrote hundreds of songs together for radio, movies like the Michael Caine classic “Alfie” and the Broadway perennial “Promises Promises.” While they worked with numerous singers, their most fruitful collaboration was with Dionne Warwick, with whom they teamed up for 22 Top 40 hits over a 20-year period.

“Composing songs works two ways for me,” explains Bacharach. “I prefer having the lyrics first, and that was the case with ‘Alfie,’ because it had to tell the story of the movie. But more often we’d have an eight-bar or 10-bar musical phrase and a title, then our ideas would snowball and we’d take a couple days to do a song.”

There was one amusing exception to that rule: “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” from “Promises, Promises.” In fact, that song was written as a sarcastic battle of wits between David and Bacharach.

“I had just had pneumonia and had been in the hospital, but we needed to come up with a song for that play the day I got out,” says Bacharach. “Hal really wrote the lyrics as an inside joke about me being sick — ‘What do you get when you kiss a guy/You get enough germs to catch pneumonia/After you do, he’ll never phone ya/I’ll never fall in love again.’ The strange thing was it was the fastest song we’d ever written and became the biggest hit we ever wrote.”  

With the memoir following his and David’s reception of the 2011 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song by the Library of Congress, Bacharach could be excused if he chose to take it easy from now on. But he’s still composing for Broadway and touring the world, plus trying to be a good husband and father now that the fourth time has become the charm, as his current marriage is his longest one yet at 20 years and counting.

But the fitness fanatic is as feisty and opinionated as ever when it comes to sharing what he has learned about life and love over the decades.

“If you want a happy marriage, abstain from marriage,” says Bacharach. “Wait till you’re 40, maybe 45. You’ll get all the craziness out of your system and be ready to settle down because you’ll see what parts of romance are real and what parts are just made up.”
Burt Bacharach will discuss and sign “Anyone Who Had a Heart” with author Mitch Albom at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Alex Theatre, 216 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. Tickets are $22 to $70. Call (818) 243-2539 or visit alextheatre.org or livetalksla.org.

'Dead' on

Michael Rooker reaches for stardom on  TV’s hottest show

By Carl Kozlowski 03/21/2013

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Michael Rooker is easily the most famous person ever to emerge from Jasper, Ala. And he owes the wave of fame he’s riding now as a star of the smash TV series “The Walking Dead” to his combination of good ol’ boy charm and a badass ability to kill zombies. 

 

Despite the fact that he is easily the friendliest of the hundreds of celebrities I’ve interviewed over the past 16 years, Rooker is actually beloved for being one of the toughest character actors in Hollywood. Considering his first starring role was playing the title character of the horror cult classic “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer,” that might not be surprising. 

 

He’s taken that innate ability to intimidate people with his gravelly voice and thousand-yard stare to the bank in more than 100 film and television roles, including the rare distinction of playing villains against three of the biggest action stars in the world: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude van Damme. 

 

But his current role as Merle, the older of two zombie-slaying rednecks whose Machiavellian desire for survival can’t always be trusted, last week led to crowds of international fans swarming him at the corner of Hollywood and Vine in Hollywood during a recent photo shoot.

 

He doesn’t mind the attention, cackling as he’s surrounded by two actors from England, three women tourists from Colombia, even an utterly ecstatic man from Bangladesh, all of them wanting to pose for pictures with him and begging for inside secrets from upcoming “Dead” episodes. This is as clear an example of Hollywood’s power to shape world culture as one is ever likely to find. 

 

“Nobody ever saw it coming,” Rooker says later, leaning way back in a chair with a wide grin and sporting giant trucker sunglasses, a worn baseball cap with a cartoon of a beaver on the front and a sleeveless black leather vest over  a worn T-shirt. “We started out with only six episodes, and that means they’re not sure. But that first six kicked ass and blew up big time.”   

 

For the five or six people who may have not heard about or seen the show, “The Walking Dead” is an adaptation of a graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman, in which a former sheriff’s deputy named Rick awakes from a coma to find that most humans have been turned into zombies. Rick gets taken in by a band of human survivors and helps lead the charge in the battle for survival.

 

The series was created by Frank Darabont (“The Shawshank Redemption,” “The Green Mile”) and is executive produced by Pasadena’s own Gale Ann Hurd, who has overseen two power shifts at the show in less than three seasons, sparking reports that the production is riddled with behind-the-scenes tension. 

 

Rooker declined comment on that aspect of the series, but in keeping with the idea that conflict can spark creativity, the show has not only met with wild critical acclaim but also the highest ratings in cable TV history, with nearly 13 million viewers. That easily places it among the top 10 series on TV, cable or network. 

 

“We make the show natural and easygoing, and it’s about the human condition and how people respond to emergency situations,” Rooker says when asked about the show’s massive appeal. “If you bring it to real life, it relates to how you would respond to a flood or an earthquake? What kind of human being do you become? Do you help others or run away? Every episode asks you to figure what you would do in that situation. 

 

“The show asks who’s right and who’s wrong and is there an answer either way?” he continues. “But I don’t care what people say. I just do it, get my payday and go home.” 

 

That laid-back attitude toward his busy career is surprising, considering Rooker is a highly trained actor who graduated from the elite Goodman School of Drama in Chicago, the city he moved to at age 13, when his parents got divorced. He admits that there are some movies “you pray will never be seen,” roles that he’s done “to pay the mortgage.”

 

But, ironically, his breakthrough role as a slightly fictionalized version of notorious serial killer Henry Lee Lucas attained notoriety because he and his director John McNaughton put extra care into the production. That meant that what was intended to be a cheap slasher film became more deeply psychological and disturbing, making it too brainy for horror audiences and too brutal for mainstream filmgoers. “Henry” sat on the shelf for four years before it was released in 1990 to rave reviews that instantly made Rooker a hot commodity. 

 

While he admits that his favorite way of dispatching the undead is by slicing them with his character’s knife (aptly named “Little Merle”), he personally owns and travels with a gun when he drives cross-country to distant shoots. 

In fact, so passionate is Rooker about guns that he co-owns the popular Angeles Shooting Ranges, in Angeles Forest, near Sylmar. As one might expect, he is not a fan of the government’s current push for gun control. 

 

“People who don’t use guns don’t understand guns and don’t know they are a tool,” says Rooker, the passion in his voice rising. “They don’t understand that there’s nothing wrong with hunting or being able to protect yourself and your family. They’re fighting against the Constitution, the very document they’re sworn to uphold, and that has got to stop.” 

Rooker smacks the palm of his hand onto the table as he makes that argument, but a moment later he’s back to his usual wide grin and upbeat spirit as he sums up his attitude toward zombies and the success they have brought him.

 

“All that the zombies are wanting to do is to eat, walk around and maybe find a TV to stare at for awhile, so give them a break,” he says, a grin slowly returning to his face. “I think all of it is too much for TV, but I love action and horror, and when you combine the two it’s the best thing in the world. The fan base is amazing. We have little kids who are major fans. It becomes a family affair. I don’t know how their kids are, but they’re not afraid.” 

Gale force wins

‘Walking Dead’ producer and Best of Pasadena winner Gale Anne Hurd receives a star on the Walk of Fame

By Carl Kozlowski 10/10/2012

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October is proving to be a very big month for prominent Pasadena resident Gale Anne Hurd, as her twin passions of wine and film have both been richly rewarded. Not only did Hurd receive her own star on the landmark Hollywood Walk of Fame on Oct. 3, in honor of her four-decade career of such iconic films as “The Terminator” series, “Alien Nation,” “The Incredible Hulk” and “The Abyss,” but she also learned that her popular nightspot Vertical Wine Bistro was named a multiple winner in this week’s Best of Pasadena issue. 

Vertical won Best Place for a First Date and Best Wine Selection in the annual readers’ poll, reinforcing its status as one of Pasadena’s most popular social venues. 

With her smash-hit AMC TV series “The Walking Dead” launching its third season this Sunday night, Hurd took a moment to reflect on the impact that Pasadena has had on her career. 

“Pasadena is just close enough to Hollywood for me to engage daily in the entertainment industry, but far enough away for me to maintain a sense of balance,” says Hurd. “Living here keeps me rooted in real life rather than fantasy — and that perspective makes my work even stronger!”

Weekend at Vroman's

Actor Andrew McCarthy of Bernie's fame talks about his new life as a world-traveling writer at Vroman's Saturday

By Carl Kozlowski 09/27/2012

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Throughout most of the 1980s, it seemed the world was at Andrew McCarthy’s feet. As part of a group of young and extremely popular actors dubbed “The Brat Pack” by the media, he played a heartthrob with soul in hit movies like “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “Pretty in Pink”, and mixed that image up with the role of a lovable doof in the two “Weekend at Bernie’s” films.

While those four­ movies in particular have stood the test of time, continuing to run frequently on cable boxes and DVD players to this day, A-list roles eventually proved hard to come by for McCarthy. So, while he continues to receive a steady stream of supporting roles and TV movies, he has taken on an additional career in recent years as a world-class travel writer that literally puts the world at his feet.

In an unlikely twist of fate, McCarthy has received his greatest acclaim yet for those travelogues. The Society of American Travel Writers named him their 2010 “Travel Journalist of the Year” and awarded him their 2011 “Grand Award” in addition to his winning the 2011 “Grand Award” from the North American Travel Journalists Association. He is also the editor-at-large for National Geographic Traveler and has written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate, Travel + Leisure, Afar, Men’s Journal, Bon Appetit, National Geographic Adventure and other elite publications.
McCarthy’s also released his first book, “The Longest Way Home: One Man’s Quest for the Courage to Settle Down,” which chronicles his quest to tame his restless nature and marry his longtime fiancé. In the process, he guides readers through both his relatable, emotional journey and his adventures in such far-flung places as Mount Kilimanjaro and Patagonia.  

“Travel really changed my life. I see myself and see what I’m doing well when I’m away out there, and I gain insight into who I am and what I need to be doing, because I don’t meditate at home,” says McCarthy, calling from New York City. “There’s a lot of that dilemma: ‘I love you but I’ve got to go,’ and asking, ‘Why?’ I was sad to be leaving, but at the same time I was thrilled to be going off on my own, yet wanting to be close to a loved one. It’s about coming to terms with that dilemma.”  

McCarthy grew up in New Jersey and was studying drama at New York University when he landed the plum role of a college student who’s seduced by his best friend’s mom in the 1983 film “Class,” opposite fellow new star Rob Lowe. From there, he was riding the rollercoaster of fame, with “St. Elmo’s Fire” establishing the “Brat Pack” brand in 1985 and a strangely iconic turn as the boyfriend of America’s Sweetheart Molly Ringwald in 1986’s “Pretty in Pink.”

“It’s funny, I remember very distinctly doing it and thinking at the time ‘This is a silly movie about a girl going to a dance, will anyone see it?’” he recalls. “I don’t think anyone realized it would strike such a chord and continue to, and now it’s on a second generation. It captured something for a lot of people, and when you get lucky to be part of a film that becomes such a phenomenon, you just get out of the way and enjoy it.”

One might assume that McCarthy would choose not to discuss “Bernie’s” now that he’s an erudite, published writer, but, in fact, he loves the films and even credits them with saving his life. That’s ironic, considering that the films were about a man whose employees try to make him look alive for a weekend after he dies.

“Who doesn’t love Bernie?” he laughs. “It was amazing how he kept a straight face. He never lost it once. We made a lot of it up on the set. What if he lost a toupee and we staple it to his head? Or what if I play Monopoly with dead Bernie? I was in Zimbabwe on my own once and turned down a street no outsider should have been on, with people looking threateningly at me until one of them recognized me and yelled, ‘Bernie?!’ and everyone became friendly.”
McCarthy’s acting gigs inspired his decision to become a travel writer, as he started writing a detailed journal while spending time on sets in foreign locales for a decade. He then decided to write actual stories about people and places he encountered and asked a travel magazine editor to give him a shot.

“If my writing wasn’t good, they wouldn’t have to pay me,” he says. “But thankfully he did, so it all grew from that first story. I didn’t plan it to be a career, but it was a passion, like acting, that grew. Then, when you win awards, you’re legitimized so people came after me, and the curiosity of an actor doing this became a good curiosity instead of an odd one.”

Ultimately, McCarthy — who also works as a TV director — has found that it isn’t the adventure and potential dangers of exotic traveling that inspires him most. Rather, it’s the surprising human connections he’s made in unexpected corners of the globe.

“I was in Sudan, where there’s no tourist infrastructure, and had the most extraordinary experience with the most gentle people,” says McCarthy. “I’m not a danger junkie, but I found the world a much more welcoming place than we’re led to believe.” 

Andrew McCarthy discusses and signs his book, “The Longest Way Home: One Man’s Quest for the Courage to Settle Down,” at 5 p.m. Saturday at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. Call (626) 449-5320 or visit vromans.com. 

Comedy by the book

‘Reno 911’s’ Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant reveal secrets to success in ‘Writing Movies for Fun and Profit

By Carl Kozlowski 07/19/2012

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They may not be famous on a par with icons such as Robin Williams or Jim Carrey, but Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant have made plenty of people laugh uproariously over the past two decades, first as part of the influential comedy troupe The State, then as members of the creative team behind Comedy Central’s “Reno 911” and “Viva Variety!”
Yet — funny enough — their biggest successes have come not from television but as a screenwriting duo, namely as writers of the two wildly successful “Night at the Museum” movies starring Ben Stiller. Combined with six other films, among them the cult-classic ping-pong parody “Balls of Fury,” with Lennon starring alongside Dan Fogler, George Lopez and Christopher Walken, their work has generated more than $1.4 billion in worldwide ticket sales. With a slew of other projects in the works, that impressive figure will only grow.

Now they’ve written a screenwriting guide called “Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too!” a humorous yet informative how-to tome in which the cover features the words “Fun and” scratched out of the title. The comedic compatriots will be discussing and signing their new book at 4 p.m. Saturday at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena.

“Despite the jokey title, it’s all real,” says Lennon, who hails from the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. “So many books advise people on how to do creative writing, but we assume if you’re into trying to sell scripts, you’re already a creative writer. No one can teach creative writing. We’re teaching how to navigate all the business end of things with studios to survive.”

Lennon and Garant are proud they have written successful movie screenplays, a feat even extremely popular screenwriting guru Robert McKee hasn’t managed to achieve. They note repeatedly that their book only costs $15 and can be ordered online or purchased in any bookstore, while McKee rarely hits the same city or town with frequency and charges $800 for a one-day workshop.

But they’re also honest enough to note that studying the screenplays of one’s favorite movies is a great approach as well. In so doing, newbies can learn the beats of the writing and how major events correspond to certain time frames of a film, such as plot twists 30, 60 and 90 minutes into a two-hour film. The authors also save young writers countless worries with a very surprising — and perhaps dispiriting — piece of advice: Worrying about dialogue is pointless, because few filmmakers will care and the audience ultimately won’t notice.

“Many young writers get hung up on getting their dialogue perfect, but not one line of your dialogue is going to wind up the same in the movie,” says Garant. “Worry way more about, ‘Is this the kind of movie that’s in the theater right now? Is your script a ballsy, rated-R comedy with a normal guy in the middle of it? Next year, after ‘Ted’ being so big, there’s going to be 100 movies about a guy with a cartoon duck.”

The writing wunderkinds also discussed the sometimes odd perks of fame, particularly the bizarre experience of watching a porn-movie spoof of “Reno 911” at a charity event. 

“Not only did we see the film, but we watched it with the stars of it,” says Lennon, cringing even years later. “We hosted a benefit screening at the UCB Theater, but they all came to see it.  We had hoped they wouldn’t attend, so we could talk openly about how horrible it was, but there they had bought the entire front row. The girl who plays Weigel in the porn version is cute and the guy pretending to be me is just pounding away on her. I’m sitting and watching a guy playing me … pounding an actress who looks like my lifelong friend Kerri Kenney as I watch, well, with Kerry; Kenney the real Weigel herself beside me. That was weird and depressing.”

“Not to mention, their sets were better than ours,” adds Garant. 

That’s not the only low point the pair discussed, recounting their early days of poverty in Manhattan as The State grew in popularity from a sketch-comedy team of New York University students. Lennon recalls “watching $2 second-run movies surrounded by winos pleasuring themselves to any actress on screen, even though these were mainstream movies.” Garant remembers “sneaking in booze by making it look like I’m carrying Christmas presents.”

The State exploded — first in popularity, landing a hit MTV series, and then going down in flames as CBS offered them a prime-time special that was a disaster due to virtually nonexistent promotion. Next came the pair’s creation of “Viva Variety!” for Comedy Central, in the months after “South Park” became a monster hit and kicked open the doors to wilder programming. But their most lucrative and strangest break came when a project they’d written for Jackie Chan fell apart.

“We are huge Jackie fans and had this idea to create a ‘Sound of Music’ type movie for him as the nanny rather than Julie Andrews, but then he had a string of bad box office (productions),” says Lennon. “Next thing we know, we’re reworking the movie for Vin Diesel as ‘The Pacifier,’ and $200 million in tickets later we’re kid-movie writers, even though our entire history would never lead people to hire us for that.”

Similarly, the “Museum” movies came about as a fluke, as FOX asked them to adapt a Belgian children’s book about a museum that comes to life each night, leaving the guards sleepy each day as the crowds shuffle past. They took the slim picture book and ran wild with their imaginations, and hope to do yet another one soon.

“I recall the day we first thought, ‘Why not make a kids’ movie?’” recalls Garant. “We were driving to a pitch meeting and saw a billboard for the ‘Grinch’ movie and thought, ‘Why do kid movies all have to be awful?’ So we decided to take an idea we liked from when we were kids and update that, and we started ‘Herbie Fully Loaded.’ It didn’t turn out perfectly, but we got the ball rolling on making movies that kids want to see but won’t make their parents kill themselves, and that’s a good thing.” 

Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant discuss and sign “Writing Movies for Fun and Profit” at 4 p.m. Saturday at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. Call (626) 449-5320 or visit vromans.com.

MARVIN HAMLISCH"S LAST INTERVIEW EVER

They're playing his songs

Conductor Marvin Hamlisch leads the Pasadena POPS through an opening-night concert based on his own Broadway musical

By Carl Kozlowski 06/14/2012

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One can only imagine just how crowded Marvin Hamlisch’s fireplace mantle must be. Most people put up their kids’ soccer trophies or their Salesperson of the Year plaque. Hamlisch has to find space for three Oscars, four Grammys, four Emmys, a Tony and three Golden Globe awards.

To say nothing of his Pulitzer Prize for drama, Hamlisch is one of only 11 people ever to win all four of the biggest awards in show business — the Oscar, Tony, Grammy and Emmy. And for the second year in a row, Pasadena has had the honor of having Hamlisch wield the baton as the principal conductor of the Pasadena POPS, a role he will resume this Saturday as the popular musical ensemble kicks off its Summer Season 2012 opening concert at their new onstage home at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Gardens in Arcadia.

Their move to the Arboretum, from their last performance space outside the Rose Bowl in the Arroyo Seco, displaces the California Philharmonic from its longtime home. That ensemble will debut its own summer season, known as the Festival on the Green, at Santa Anita Park on June 30.

“Working with these musicians has been a total delight,” says Hamlisch, who also conducts POPS orchestras in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Dallas, Seattle and San Diego. “Since we’re so close to the movie industry, nearly all of our performers work in the studio orchestras creating the music for television and films.”

That fact could be the key to the success of this Saturday’s opening concert, which will be a special concert adaptation of Hamlisch’s classic Broadway musical “They’re Playing Our Song,” featuring guest artists singer/actress Lucie Arnaz and legendary comedian Robert Klein in the singing leads. “Song” featured a book written by Neil Simon, but Hamlisch composed the score while his former songwriting (and romantic) partner Carole Bayer Singer dreamed up the lyrics.
The original Broadway run of “Song” marked one of Hamlisch’s earliest career milestones, following a childhood in which he grew up surrounded by music thanks to his musician father as well as 13 years of his own training at the prestigious Juilliard Conservatory of Music. Hamlisch also fondly recalls being the main piano accompanist for Barbra Streisand during her breakthrough phase in New York.

“Her voice was just magical, and it was exciting to perform with her because you knew you were in the presence of something special that would become a world classic at any moment,” says Hamlisch. “And it’s been great to share a lasting friendship with her ever since as we each achieved our career dreams.”

While Hamlisch has become an indelible name in composing and songwriting, it’s surprising that he is quick to note that he modestly regards himself as “a gun for hire.”

“I’m not someone who always has a tune in his head just waiting to jump out,” says Hamlisch, known for such classic melodies as “The Way We Were” and the scores for “The Sting” and  Broadway’s “A Chorus Line.”

“When I go out to lunch, I don’t whip out a pad of paper and start singing ‘I’m having a lovely sandwich.’ I also don’t write the lyrics in the first place,” he says. “I need to read the book you want adapted, or see the footage you want scored. All my composing comes from reacting to and building on other existing material.”

The current POPS Summer Season has plenty of interesting material to work with as well. He and the POPS will play host to five-time Grammy-nominated pianist Michael Feinstein on July 21 as they back him on a tour of classics from the Great American Songbook. The evening of Aug. 18 brings the show “La Dolce Vita,” in which the POPS will back the pop-opera group Poperazzi as they sing songs by artists ranging from Frank Sinatra to the Stones in operatic fashion. And finally, the season comes to an end on Sept. 8, when guest pianist Kevin Cole teams with the orchestra to perform George Gershwin’s immortal “Rhapsody in Blue” as part of the season’s closing “Gershwin on the Green” concert.
“I’m very excited to bring this collection of music to the fans of the POPS, and in such a stunning venue as the Arboretum,” says Hamlisch. “You can’t beat the combination of beautiful music in a beautiful setting.” 

The Pasadena POPS open its Summer Season 2012 with “They’re Playing Our Song” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Gardens, 301 N. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia. Call (626) 792-7172 or visit pasadenasymphony-pops.com.                                                                            

WHAT GOES ON BEHIND THE SCENES WHEN THE TV CRITICS SUCK UP TO THE STARS

How stars are born

Star-struck reporters make even bad shows look good at the Pasadena summer TV conference

By Carl Kozlowski 06/07/2012

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Remember when summertime television programming was a wasteland of sitcom reruns, old films and remaining episodes of quickly-canceled shows? This was the time of year when NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX collectively raised their white flags and challenged viewers to do something — anything — other than watch TV.

But today, with cable stations creating programming of their own, things have changed, well, dramatically.
As basic cable networks, such as TNT, TBS, USA, FX, AMC, A&E, History and Syfy, began making original programs to high ratings and sometimes critical praise, the four old-school networks were forced to improve their games as well. As a result, one of the most frenzied spectacles in the world of entertainment journalism — the Television Critics Association (TCA) summer press days, which alternate annually between Beverly Hills and the Langham Hotel in Pasadena — was born.

Here, each network picks a day to take over the hotel’s meeting and dining areas and trots out their stars for interviews with TV reporters and bloggers, who are then fed lavish amounts of sumptuous food in an attempt to convince them to make the bad shows look good and the good shows look spectacular.

The Weekly normally doesn’t cover television, but NBC Universal has been kindly sending to the office DVD samplers of a seemingly endless stream of new USA and Syfy productions, along with attention-getting gimmicks, like a plush shark toy and DVD collection used to promote the upcoming Syfy movie “Jersey Shore Shark Attack” (whose catchphrase is “Your next fist bump could be your last!”)

So when NBC Universal invited us to come see their spring press day, we headed off to the Langham to witness how even the messiest of shows are made to seem magical.

“For a network like NBC, it’s a promotional thing for their summer slate of programs, which are largely reality programming,” explains Los Angeles Times TV Editor Martin Miller, who’s been covering TV for the past five years. “There are some excellent bloggers who attend these, but it’s not the White House press corps up there. Some of the people who show up to these are just glad to be there, covering stuff very lightly without a lot of skepticism.”

      Indeed, President Obama and Mitt Romney would be delighted to be faced with the kid-gloves treatment some of the 100 or more TCA scribes, who sat jammed next to each other in long rows with just enough space to set up a laptop, give these stars, who were asked more about their beauty regimens and dating habits than their shows.
Despite the fact that NBC has exactly one top show on its entire schedule — the hit singing competition “The Voice” — it was somewhat surprising that the day kicked off with the return of “Love in the Wild,” a dating show hosted by the nearly-forgotten ’90s super-bimbo Jenny McCarthy. The producers seem to take this show seriously, describing it as a way to get past the polite stages of dating and really get to know someone quickly by forcing them to bond while competing in a jungle.

For some reason, Emmy-winning actress Mariska Hargitay stopped by to represent “Law and Order: SVU,” instantly increasing the room’s already wanting dignity quotient. While Hargitay was inexplicably asked about her fitness tips, she tried to keep things relevant by noting, “The series used to be known for ripping the stories straight out of the news, but sadly there’s been a major reversal, and now the news stories almost seem ripped off from us.”
But for every award-winning juggernaut like “SVU” there was a “Ready for Love,” a new dating show co-produced by “Desperate Housewives” star Eva Longoria, who told reporters, “I made this show because I believe in love and I’m in love with love.”

Then there’s E!’s “Mrs. Eastwood & Company,” following movie icon Clint Eastwood’s wife and daughters as they try to manage a British boy band all the way to fame in America. Clint is not the star, but the promise of him wandering through the house scowling is perhaps the show’s greatest hope for ratings glory.

But even the prospect of Clint Eastwood acting crazy wasn’t enough to match the excitement shown toward the celebrity judges of “The Voice,” which features singer Adam Levine of the band Maroon 5, pop diva Christina Aguilera, producer/performer Cee-Lo Green and country star Blake Shelton each picking teams of singers relying only on the sound of their voices. Levine and Aguilera didn’t even bother showing up, leaving a clearly annoyed producer to say that they were “working.”

Add in a panel of everyone on “America’s Got Talent” except the overhyped Howard Stern, plus Emmy-winning former “Will & Grace” star Sean Hayes showing up as a producer of the show “Grimm,” a couple of stars from “Community” who weren’t Joel McHale or Chevy Chase and scrumptious samples from the new Bravo series “Around the World in 80 Plates,” and despite the surface madness of it all, this ultimately was a fun time.

For veteran entertainment reporter Fred Topel, the Pasadena experience is a big key to his success. “I think TCA is a fantastic way for us to do journalism,” says Topel. “We get great access to stars and creators of shows so we can write stories the rest of the year. To have it all this concentrated is great.”