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By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Published on Thursday, Sep 04, 2008
If it's Thursday, this must be the mailbag . . .
Q: Just finished watching ''Catch and Release'' with Timothy Olyphant. He's hot. What else has he done and what can you tell me about him?
A: Born in Hawaii and brought up in California, 40-year-old Olyphant may be best known for playing lawman Seth Bullock in HBO's western series Deadwood. He was also the computer-genius villain battling Bruce Willis in Live Free or Die Hard and has joined the cast of FX's Damages for its second season, due in 2009. According to the Internet Movie Database, he is married and has three children.
Q: What can you tell me about the alleged movie in which Mike Myers is to play The Who's late, great drummer, Keith Moon? Will the film ever be made? And who would play Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Roger Daltrey?
A: I have seen reports going back six years about Myers starring in a Keith Moon movie. And it came up again when he was promoting The Love Guru. But the movie has not actually been made, nor have I seen any casting besides Myers. And Myers' box-office stock dropped precipitously when Love Guru flopped.
Q: Why do they produce so many versions of the same movie: theatrical, broadcast TV, cable, premium cable, VHS and DVD, etc? Not just ''editing for broadcast'' changes, but changes in point of view, sometimes background music, added scenes, deleted scenes?
A: As much as we would like to think movies are fixed, permanent things, they are not; a DVD set of Blade Runner, for example, includes five different cuts of the movie.
Music substitutions and deletions are often made because the filmmakers did not secure rights across all media. Since movies on broadcast TV have to meet different content standards than big-screen ones, sometimes alternate versions of scenes are shot for telecast.
Editing of a movie's image to fit the standard television screen, which is different from a movie's, can make things look very different. Scenes will sometimes be added to telecasts, or to home-video releases, so viewers think they are getting something different from what they saw at the movies. One famous example was The Godfather Saga, in which the first two Godfather films were reordered and re-edited into a TV miniseries in the late '70s.
It's mostly about commerce. Changes are meant to make a product more salable and profitable. But cuts may also be made because a movie's content is no longer considered politically correct. And some directors just like to tinker. In sum, movies can be like a famous comment about poems — never finished, only abandoned.
Q: What happened to the old Lily on ''As the World Turns''?
A: Martha Byrne left the series — Noelle Beck took over the role — after a falling-out over her contract. The show offered her a new one but Byrne told TVGuide.com this: ''Last year, I was asked to take a tremendous pay cut, and I did so willingly because I love ATWT and understood the financial situation the show was facing. . . .
''One year later,'' she continued, ''we go into this new contract negotiation and I had only one request. I thought it was only fair — and I wanted it on paper — that I would work the same amount of days this year that I did last year. . . . But I was told that this could not be put into my contract and, that same day, the show sent out a breakdown notice to recast my role.''
Do you have a question or comment about movies, TV and other popular culture? Write to rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com or the Akron Beacon Journal, 44 E. Exchange St., Akron, OH 44309. Please mark the note for Mailbag and do not phone in questions.
Letters may be edited. Individual replies cannot be guaranteed.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Akron Beacon Journal and in a blog at http://www.ohio.com.
If it's Thursday, this must be the mailbag . . .
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