Back in 2008, I had the pleasure of chatting with Supernatural Producer/Director Robert Singer on the eve of "Monster Movie." The episode was a real departure from Supernatural's usual style but it turned out to be one of the most creative and entertaining episodes of the run. It's still one of my favorites.

Originally posted at SFUniverse, I'm bringing it back for your reading pleasure.

#       #     #

Tomorrow, Supernatural pays homage to the horror movies of the 30′s when Sam and Dean investigate a shapeshifter with a love for classic Universal monsters! It’s an all black & white episode filled with thrills, chills and a whole lot of laughs.

I got the scoop on how the whole thing came together from Supernatural executive producer, and director of Monster Movie, Robert Singer.

“We had a great time doing it,” says Singer. “[But the trick was] keeping it modern, while paying respect to James Whale and the way those guys shot those great black & white movies.”

In order to capture the look and particularly the tone of the era, Singer and crew had to make a few adjustments in their normal routine.

“The lighting is a little different that Serge did. We tried to emulate as much as we could that old 30′s movie horror lighting, which is very deep shadows and hot spots and people walking out of blackness into harsh lights and things like that.”

Singer also found that he had to vary his usual shooting style.

“My personal preference for close-ups is to shoot them with long lenses and throw the background out of focus. We didn’t do that very much. We were in the mid-range with lenses that were used in the 30′s and 40′s – like a 27-65 (for all you would be DP’s) would be the longest. That was odd for me to get used to.”

Singer also kept the simplicity of the early horror movies in mind when he staged the scenes, avoiding intricate camera moves, which are a staple on Supernatural, and sometimes by intentionally going with a low-tech solution.

“We have a thing with the Wolf Man and it’s a couple who are making out in a car on lover’s lane. Before I got [to the studio in Vancouver] they were looking for locations to do that scene and I said, let’s not have a real location like anyone would have nowadays. Let’s create our own lover’s lane on stage, have a backdrop with a moon on it, put the ground fog in and all that stuff they used to do. Let’s go for it. The result of that is you watch it and you get a smile because the reality of it is the reality of a 30′s movie.”

But still, Singer had to be careful not to let the spoofing take over the story.

SMILE FOR THE CAMERA

“I didn’t feel we ever got shticky. One thing about doing this is the boys can’t comment on what’s going on with a wink. The comedy from their point of view, the reaction, is very subtle, it’s got a wink in its eye but it’s never over the top. If Sam and Dean are accepting this then the audience will, too. I think my meter was in the right place.”

Singer’s “meter” was definitely in the right place when he directed last year’s laugh-a-minute episode, “Bad Day at Black Rock.” Though Jared Padalecki has said he feels more comfortable with the dramatic scenes than the comedic ones, you wouldn’t know it by his performance in this classic episode.

“If [Jared] had his druthers, the emotional stuff feels more in his wheelhouse, [but] he’s really, really, really, good at the physical comedy,” says director Singer. “He did stuff in “Bad Day at Black Rock” that had me cracking up. I’d sit at the monitor and watch it and he did some pratfalls that were fantastic and when he did the thing with the gum stuck to his shoe. . . I think he’s selling himself short.”

And the other half of the team?

“Jensen, he has facial stuff and eye rolls and long takes that are classic. Jensen is particularly fantastic at that, he can do Jack Benny takes with the best of them.”

Now that the show is in its fourth season, with the writers writing to each of the boy’s strengths, it’s easy to hit the ground running, says Singer.

MIXED BAG OF TRICKS

“They get it right away. We have a ten-minute talk before shooting and off we go.”

Which is probably the norm on shows such as CSI or Two and a Half Men where the tone and style is set from day one. Not so on Supernatural.

“The good thing about our show, because we’re doing a little movie every week, you shoot it in the way that’s appropriate to the text. Some shows are more languid and very long lensy and moody and other shows have more action and that’s a lot of cuts and handheld stuff. Comedy is wider, generally – you do more 2 and 3 shots, a lot of reaction shots.

“I’ve been lucky on this show that I’ve run the gamut in the ones that I’ve done and it’s nice to have those change-ups. You don’t feel like you’re getting into a rut because they’re all so different.”

And different is the perfect word for this week’s episode. Singer claims it’s the most fun he’s ever had directing the series but still, he’s not sure that the younger members of the audience will ‘get it.’

“It was the third one we shot, but I think that there was some part of it that scared the network. They thought it was early to be doing such an off-the-wall episode; they wanted to get a run at more traditional stuff before we launched this on the public and maybe they were right. I hope it’s well received. A lot of our audience is young, whether they’ll get the jokes, we’ll find out from the blogs. I hope they do and if they don’t, maybe they’ll say, ‘hey, what’s that all about’ and they’ll go rent some of those movies.”

But wait!

I couldn’t let Bob go without asking him about that one little fact that’s been bugging me since the season premiere. When Dean and Bobby showed up at Sam’s motel room and Kristy answered the door, was she Kristy, or was she already Ruby on the inside?

Says Singer, “You’re not supposed to know that it’s Ruby but she was [Ruby] at that moment in time. She was playing a part because she didn’t want Dean to know. The answer to how Ruby became Genevieve is coming up.”

And last but not least, he takes on my favorite question.

Captain Kirk vs. Captain Jack Sparrow?

“That’s a question? (laugh) Personally, I’m a Captain Jack Sparrow fan more than Captain Kirk. I was not a great Star Trek devotee. In retrospect, I find it so utterly campy that it’s fun but I don’t think it was meant to be at the time. But Jack Sparrow is one of the great characterizations.”

Want to know how others stars answered this question? Click here for my Kirk vs Sparrow page.

"Monster Movie" - Jensen Ackles as Dean, Todd Stashwick as Dracula, Jared Padalecki as Sam in SUPERNATURAL on The CW. Photo: Sergei Bachlakov/The CW ©2008 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Speaking about his new movie Ferocious Planet, Stargate Atlantis star Joe Flanigan says, "to just get back into some camouflage and run around and shoot things. Call me crazy. I know it sounds a little weird, but I felt right at home!"

As a matter of fact, there are so many similarities between the Syfy series and the new original movie, at a quick glance, it can be hard to tell them apart. Just look at the photo of Flanigan on the run with his movie co-star -- looks like Atlantis to me!

In Ferocious Planet, Flanigan plays a disgraced Colonel who has been assigned to babysit a couple of scientists working in a bunker next door to the IRS. Enter John Rhys-Davies, a borish Senator who threatens to cut off the project's funding if Dr. O'Hara (Dagmar Döring) can't convince him that she's doing something worthwhile.

Against her better judgment, she fires up the machine which creates a window into parallel dimensions. Unfortunately, things go sideways and the entire bunker is thrown through a portal and into a land that is inhabited by creepy creatures that skitter around your feet and big mama monsters who don't take kindly to visitors.

From there, it's non-stop action as Flanigan and his two teammates do all they can to protect the civilians while the Doctor and her tech work on a way to get them back home.

Like all Syfy Original Movies, Ferocious Planet surges forward with tongue firmly planted in cheek. That's not to say that it's as wild as Mega Piranha or Sharktopus. The parallel dimension plot makes the creatures much more believable, kind of like an episode of Primeval.

Flanigan plays the whole thing like a war-weary commando whose quick with a quip and more annoyed than fearful of being killed. Flanigan says his calm demeanor was less of a directorial choice and more about the fact that he was mislead in regard to the size of the monsters.

"I didn't think they'd be that big," he told reporters on a recent conference call. "When we shot this, we shot it Ireland, and we worked strictly on green screen, and we weren’t given much in the way of what it was going to look like. And that’s kind of interesting because on [Stargate Atlantis], we always knew what the Wraith were going to look like. And so, you had an idea of what you were looking at and what you were working with. [With Ferocious Planet], we weren’t entirely clear what these things were going to look like until after we shot it, so I was just hoping that our levels of appropriate fear were there."

Since Flanigan plays the stalwart leader of the group, charged with keeping even the most reckless among them safe, it's okay that he doesn't freak out at the sight of a horned monster with two sets of three eyes and jaws that can snap a man in two with one bite. He doesn't freak, but he does want to get back home while a few of the other characters think they should stay and be the first human beings to investigate this new world. I asked Joe if he would stay or would he go?

"I think it depends on what you left behind. I mean, you got a wife and kids left behind; you might want to run and go back. I think if you don’t, then I think it could be a nice permanent vacation.  In our case, it’s unclear - in the movie, it was kind of funny because all I really have to go back to is a boat. And really - you know in retrospect, that’s really not a hell of a lot of to go back to. Maybe I should’ve stayed. It might’ve been the lack of cold beer or something that [made me want to] run.

It does appear to be in Flanigan's nature to find the swiftest, easiest route out of a tricky situation.

"Our stunt guy on Atlantis (James Bamford) always had in his mind that I was some karate expert of some sort and would have these enormously like elaborate you know choreographed fights going on. And, I would say, “You know, I’m not that guy. I’m Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones. I just pick my gun up and shoot the guy.” I mean the path of least resistance. And it would frustrate him.  However, we were able to make it up with my character getting kind of beat to crap and getting thrown around. And I think it worked well for that character. And in this case, it’s not unsimilar. [In] Ferocious Planet, the guy gets kind of whacked around a good bit."

And from the sound of it, Flanigan gets 'whacked around a good bit" in real life, too.

"I sit here talking to you with a fully separated AC joint - third degree AC separation, a semi-chopped off finger, and it’s all from just nonsensical stuff like mountain biking. And, I’m actually sitting at the base of Aspen Mountain as we speak trying to figure out if I’m going to go cross-country skiing, snowboarding, or just down-hilling. I live for it. And that’s why I think I like action/adventures, because I just need to physicalize things, and it’s tough for me to be inside doing domestic-like acting."

Ferocious Planet is definitely not "domestic." It's an entertaining ride with a neat little payoff at the end.

Finally, Joe Flanigan had some words for the Stargate Atlantis fans.

"As you know, the franchise has been summarily closed.  That doesn’t mean that’s the end of the franchise by any stretch of the imagination, especially if I have my druthers, I’ll find a way to bring it back. I think the fans deserve to see some closure or at least some type of continuation. I think that - and especially in regards to my show, it was just unceremoniously closed and we need to do something about it."

To that, I say, "hear, hear!"

Watch the Syfy Saturday Original Movie Ferocious Planet, this Saturday, April 9, at 9:00 pm Easter/Pacific time, 8:00 pm Central.

Photo: Syfy

3-D movies, the ones that live on and on and why we watch the same movies over and over again. Here's part two of my interview with TCM's Robert Osborne.

Q: This past year we've seen a rise in 3D movies and even more advances in the field of special effects but can a technologically advanced movie win an Oscar or does all of that just get in the way?

Robert: I think they add to the movie experience a lot of times like with Avatar, the 3D did. And I think it's great showmanship and it helps to add to the box office and gets people excited about the movies for a while. But I think there's nothing more important than a good story, because every time it's the story that's going to hold people and bring them back to it again. You're watching Jaws, not for anything except the story, basically. That story is what grips you. How it's told and how it excites you and makes you gasp and all of that. If the story is not there then you it's a much riskier thing.

We've had a lot of movies with a lot of great actors in them and there's no story and it's not a very good film. You can have the most powerful actors in the world or the most attractive. If your story is not there, boy you're in trouble. A great example of that is a movie called Paris When it Sizzles with Audrey Hepburn and William Holden at the peak of their careers and they're absolutely wonderful, and it's one of the worse movie you'll ever see.

Q:  Why do you think that certain movies just resonate year after year?

Robert: I don't know what that is, but it's a miracle. One of the miracles for me is Gone with the Wind. The fact that it was made in 1939, it's frozen in time, frozen on film. Everything about the world has changed since 1939. Our morals have changed, the way we behave, the way we dress, the way we think, the way we operate. Everything has changed. That movie has not changed, and yet we react to it in the same way people did in 1939; and that's the magic of the movies. And you can't do that deliberately. You can't make a movie deliberately to last, because you don't know what the formula is. But it is interesting. What fascinates me also is that a film like say, The Heiress with Olivia de Havilland, which was a big success in its time, but then was totally forgotten until now. Olivia de Havilland let us know she gets a lot of mail in Paris, where she lives, about her films and she gets more and more fan mail about The Heiress then she does now about Gone with the Wind. All these years later and this film is having such an effect on people whose parents weren't even born when it came out. So it's just one of the miracles, I think of, that some resonate; and then some who were very popular in their time don't hold up at all. They're very dated.

Q:  What I always find fascinating is that there are certain movies, that I've seen a hundred times, like Jaws and To Kill a Mockingbird, yet every time I see it playing on TV I stop on the channel and start watching it.

Robert: And you can't leave it then.  I think there's something psychological about that. I can have a copy of Sunset Boulevard on DVD on my shelf. If it comes on television it's more magical to watch because I know other people are watching it at the same time. It's that old communal thing again. It's why movies are so wonderful to see in a theater, because you're enjoying them with other people. They all laugh at the same time you do. We lose that with the DVD experience and a lot of that because we see it by ourselves. So when you're watching Some Like It Hot or Sunset Boulevard or anything on TV, you know it's going out and there are other people watching it. That makes it a little more interesting to us, I think.

Q: Now it's time to get absurd. What's something you've hung on to since you were a kid?

Robert: Hung on since I was a kid? Well, actually a Mickey Mouse doll. Yeah. A little Mickey Mouse I had when I was a kid and I still got it. I really have it now because I think it's worth a lot of money. It was an original Mickey Mouse.

Q:  That's wonderful and so appropriate for you, I think.

Robert:  Maybe so because I have ears just like Mickey's.

You can catch Robert Osborne dolling out all sorts of great behind-the-scenes stories and movie trivia every night on Turner Classic Movies. If you missed part one of our interview, click here and be sure to check out TCM's 31 Days of Oscar festival which continues throughout the month of February.

Robert Osborne and John Badham at the 2010 TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, California. 4/25/10 ph: Mark Hill

Last year, I interviewed Kevin Parks, Supernatural's assistant director, as he prepared to go on a Ride to Conquer Cancer. With the help of the fans, Kevin was able to raise $10,000, $6,000 over his initial goal.

Now, Kevin is getting ready to ride again in honor of Kim Manners and others who have lost their lives to cancer and he's looking to top last year's donations. Less than a week into his quest, Team Supernatural already has more than $3,000 in the pot, but there's still a long way to go.

If you loved the work of Kim Manners, if you've ever known anyone touched by this dreadful disease, make a donation. You won't miss $10 out of your Paypal account, so pledge at least that much, but make it more if you can. This weekend, fans have paid large sums of money to see the Supernatural folks at the LA Con, that's a great show of support. But let's show them how generous this fandom really is, by pushing Team Supernatural up over that $10,000 goal.

Visit Team Supernatural's Ride to Conquer Cancer page.

Now here's last year's interview with Kevin Parks.

If you watch TV shows from the 80’s and 90’s, chances are you’ve seen the work of Kim Manners. Kim’s first gig as a director was on an episode of Charlie’s Angels. From there he went to direct for more than thirty different TV shows before he hit his first big claim to fandom fame - The X-Files. As both a director and a producer, Kim had a huge influence on the feel of the show and it became the jewel in his crown. So much so that he pretty much retired when the show was done. But then Supernatural came along. The new spooky series for what was then The WB, had some similarities to The X-Files, including the Vancouver shooting location. With a very green creator at the helm and two young actors as the only recurring characters, execs new the show would benefit from an experienced hand. As Manners tells it, he was lured out of retirement in order to get the show off to a good start. He never expected to still be there three years later and he didn’t expect to become the cornerstone that he became.

At the beginning of the show’s fourth season, in 2008, Kim Manners was diagnosed with lung cancer. He kept it a secret from nearly everyone around him and he kept on working as long as he could. He succumbed to the illness in January 2009.

At the time, series creator Eric Kripke released this statement:

“Everyone at ‘Supernatural’ is walking around in a daze, shocked and absolutely devastated.  Kim was a brilliant director; more than that, he was a mentor and friend.  He was one of the patriarchs of the family, and we miss him desperately.  He gave so much to ‘Supernatural,’ and everything we do on the show, now and forever, is in memory of him.”

And that’s one of the reasons why Kevin Parks is going on the ride of his life next month, doing his part to help conquer the disease that took away his friend and mentor. Listen in as we talk with Kevin Parks about his upcoming ride.

Why did you sign up for the BC Cancer Foundation’s Ride to Conquer Cancer?

Parks: My participation in this year’s ride is in honour of Kim Manners.  He was not only one of our Executive Producers and directors, but he was also a friend.  I had worked with Kim on The X-Files as well Supernatural where we became friends. As the year went on, more people that we worked with were passing away from cancer and then my aunt found out that she had terminal bone cancer.  In addition to Kim, I wanted to do this years ride to help anybody that could beat this disease.

You’re Team Supernatural – can you tell us about the Supernatural connection and how the fans have helped your efforts.

Parks: My wife, Jill and I are Team Supernatural.  I am riding and she is volunteering.  I have been with Supernatural since the very 1st episode, Season 1 in Vancouver as one of the 1st Asst. Directors.  Jill has worked freelance on the show, since Season 1 when we are in need of extra camera crew.  When we both decided to be part of the ride, and in honour of Kim Manners, we chose Team Supernatural as our name, with the support and encouragement from our producers, crew, fans and friends.  The fans have been great with their support of the us and the ride.  With just the fans support we raised $2500.00, the minimum amount of money needed to participate.  Now, we are about to surpass $8000 with the ride still a month away.  We can not thank the fans enough for their support.

The course seems pretty extensive. Can you tell us a bit about the where the journey will take you.

Parks:  The ride is a two day ride from Vancouver to Seattle.  There are 2500 registered riders, and a team of volunteers (medical, mechanical, caterers etc).  The 1st day we ride around 110km and the 2nd day we ride about 105km. The route makes it’s way from the farming suburbs of Vancouver,  through scenic western Washington to the town of Mount Vernon. Everyone overnights either at the camp set up by volunteers, or in hotels.  The 2nd day takes the riders into the University of Washington to finish and then everyone ( riders and volunteers ) are bused back to the start line.

How have you been preparing for the ride?

I think many people don’t participate in things like this because they don’t want to think about cancer. What are your thoughts on that?

Parks: Until someone is personally  affected by cancer, it is human nature to not want think about these diseases and how their life might be affected if it happened to them.  Getting involved with events like this, allows everyone to learn about people and their triumphs and tragedies that have happened because of Cancer.  It can be very emotional.  I think everyone needs to be ready to part take in an event like this or other causes and only that person will know when they are ready. In the end, people will save people and it is events like this that will help in that journey.

If you’d like to contribute to Team Supernatural, visit Kevin Parks’ page on the Ride to Conquer Cancer website. Let’s help him achieve that $8,000 goal and then some.

Chad Lindberg (Ash from Supernatural) is guest starring on tonight’s episode of NBC’s The Cape. In order to promote the show and a new DVD release, Chad made the press rounds last week and when he got here agreed to try something a little different. So here we have, an “Absurd” interview with Chad Lindberg.

I first saw you on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so let’s go girl on girl here – Buffy vs The Cape’s Orwell (Summer Glau).

Chad: Orwell. Buffy was my very first job when I moved here to Los Angeles, for that I’m very grateful and Sarah Michelle Gellar was very kind, but I think Orwell is sexier than Buffy.

Do you share any scenes with Summer in your episode of The Cape?

Chad: I have a scene with Summer and with David Lyons, who is very sweet and down to earth, couldn’t be a nicer guy and Pruitt Taylor Vince, who plays the other assassin hired by Fleming played by James Frain. I think he’s a great actor. And that voice of his!

Who is a fictional character that you’d like to go drinking with?

Chad: Let me think about that for a second. Hmm, can it be one of my own characters because I’d go with Ash from Supernatural. He’s a beer drinker and he’d probably put me under the table. And he’d probably want to fight me. Let’s work it out. Ash would be fun to have a drink with.

After all that drinking, you’ve had a nervous breakdown. Where are you going to recuperate?

Chad: A nice peaceful location, a cabin out in the middle of nowhere where there is nothing around but a lake and trees and no internet.

Would you survive very long without the internet?

Chad: I love the internet, who doesn’t love the internet these days? It’s hard to remember that we didn’t have the internet  -- even when I first came to LA. My roommates and I had one computer and it was like a dinosaur. Now, it’s so funny, you walk around and everyone is on their phones and they’re watching TV. It’s like what did we do before this stuff?

We used to read books.

Chad: Now we read them on our phone.

You Twitter. Do you ever think, man, this was a bad idea?

Chad: There’s caution involved. If you’re in a bad mood you gotta err on the side of caution. I Twitter to reach out to my fans, to let them know what’s happening, the occasional joke. There are times when someone will say something to me and I’ll get riled up and call people out a little bit and I have to check myself. It’s so easy, but then it’s out there. It’s interesting when you see that by the tip of your fingertips you could put something out there really damaging.

And you know Twitter. Once you say something it spreads like wildfire.

Chad: It’s crazy. I’ll Tweet something about The Cape, a new detail and 30 websites say Chad Lindberg tweeted. That cracks me up. But it’s a powerful tool and one of the tools that got me back on Supernatural. They killed me off on season two, but I did all these conventions afterwards and gained a lot of fans. The fans made petitions and videos and wrote letters to Eric Kripke and he heard the noise and they brought me back. It shows you the power of the web and the fandom.

Well, that’s the good thing about Supernatural, dead isn’t dead.

Chad: It’s true. In season five I’m talking to the boys saying you’ve died more than anyone I’ve ever met and I think it was an inside joke.

Personally, that whole thing about Ash dying and being ID’d by his watch was suspicious. I thought it was a clue and he was really still alive.

Chad: I know, I always thought Ash was a little smarter than that. He would have known what was coming but still didn’t make it out of the roadhouse in time. He shouldn’t have had that last beer. But now I’m in heaven and I’m hoping that they’ll bring him back maybe to help out Castiel, which I think would be hilarious. They wouldn’t know what to do with each other.

What does Ash keep hidden in his secret lair?

Chad: Everything is going on in there, his computers, his toys, it’s also a little bit of a love den. Ash likes female companionship. Lots of cans of beer laying around, his clothes are strewn about, as we know, he liked to work in the nude. He’s a karma sutra man, an eccentric fellow.

If you were Charlie who would be your angels?

Chad: Tough questions, I don’t know. I’ll come back to that one.

What’s something you’ve kept since you were a kid?

Chad: My mom has all that kind of stuff at home, a little blanket that I couldn’t go to sleep without, a few stuffed animals, that’s what mom’s house is for. She keeps all that stuff. She didn’t hang on to everything, but there are a few things that signify important times in your life. They’re in a box in the closet and you don’t look at it but there’re still there.

What I do regret not having any more that I had as a kid was all the Star Wars figurines that I sold at a garage sale when I was younger and man, I had them all, the classics.

What’s something you’ve done that  you will never do again?

Chad: When I was younger, some friends were going cliff jumping into the water and I’m deathly afraid of heights. It was a really big jump and a couple of people went before me. I did it and I barely cleared the rocks. When I got back, I was like, what was I thinking! If I climb up high somewhere my knees start to shake! So, I’d say, jumping off a cliff into water.

Last chance to answer the Charlie’s Angels question.

Chad: Let’s say Castiel. And let’s go with actresses I respect, not that they would be an angel in Charlie’s Angels but Chloë Sevigny and Anne Hathaway.

Works for me.

Catch Chad Lindberg on The Cape tonight, February 7 at 9:00 on NBC. You can also follow him on Twitter.

If you're in the Los Angeles area, Chad will be signing copies of his the new I Spit on Your Grave DVD release at Dark Delicacies. Here are the details:

WHEN: Tuesday, February 8th, 7:00pm

WHERE: Dark Delicacies Bookstore

3512 W. Magnolia Blvd.

Burbank, CA 91505

(818) 556-6660

WHO: Director Steven R. Monroe (2010); Producer Lisa Hansen (2010); Executive Producer (2010) and Writer/Director (1978) Meir Zarchi; 2010 Stars Jeff Branson, Sarah Butler, Rodney Eastman, Daniel Franzese and Chad Lindberg

DETAILS: Fans must purchase I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE DVD or Blu-ray at Dark Delicacies for signing. One additional item will be signed at celebrities’ discretion.

It’s Oscar month and that means it’s time for Turner Classic Movies' (TCM) 31 DAYS OF OSCAR festival. This year, TCM has grouped more than 340 Academy Award nominated and winning movies into trivia-inspired categories such as actors nominated for playing real life characters, the most nominations without a win and the rare times when a movie got nominations in all four major acting categories.

Robert Osborne, TCM’s resident movie historian will be on hand all-month long with hundreds of trivial tidbits that will delight any movie fan. Robert and I had a chance to sit down and talk about what makes a movie Oscar-worthy. Listen in:

Q: Saying, ‘let’s talk about the movies’ is sort of like saying, ‘let's talk about the history of the world.’

Robert Osborne: Right, but you know it's the great one universal language. It used to be music. That anywhere you went in the world, people kind of liked the same music, and it was a common denominator. But now, if you find another movie fan, you've got somebody that you can have a lively and good conversation, and time well spent.

Q: When it comes to the Oscars, are we looking for the same things in movies that we were looking for 30 or 50 years ago?

Robert: Well, I think basically we are. We're looking for relief. They're looking for really excellence in film making, things that are out of the ordinary. I do think that people in Hollywood take a nomination more seriously than the general public does. It's not necessary to win the Oscar for it to be a great honor to have been nominated. Nominations are made by people in your field. But in the final vote, everybody votes on everything. So you've got actors voting for sound recording. You've got film editors voting for acting. You've got whatever and they may not be the best judges of that. That's when it gets less pure than the award. I think, to get a nomination from the people that actually do the kind of work you're doing and they think you're one of the best, then I think that's the pat on the back everybody wants.

Q: This year’s TCM Oscar film festival is very unusual in the way it’s laid out. For example, movies that were nominated for Best Director but not for Best Picture. How can you be the best director but not have one of the best movies?

Robert: Well, maybe it has all those other accouterments but it didn't affect emotionally the people, like some of the other films did. It doesn't mean the acting was not good or the actors were doing the best they could, the costume designers and everything else but maybe it just didn't fit. Or maybe it was just terrific, but again for all those years when they only had five nominations, it only got to be number six or something and it didn't get on the list. It's a little fairer with the 10 because you have a lot more opportunities to have some of those borderline movies make the list.

Q: When you look at the movies that are nominated for Best Picture you often find movies that few people have seen, while many blockbusters never get nominated.

Robert: It's absolutely true, but I kind of like that. I kind of like that the Oscar voters kind of stay true. They are filmmakers, they kind of stay true to that original credo of the Academy; and that is to honor merit in motion pictures. So, they're not just going by box office. Because it would be terrible if the Oscar winners were all "Dumb and Dumber" and movies like that just because they made a lot of money. That say, "The Hurt Locker" ‑‑ I loved "Avatar" by the way, but I kind of love it that "The Hurt Locker" would win over "Avatar." ‑‑ Which was so enormously popular. "The Hurt Locker" was such a good film.

Q: And now with DVD and Turner Classic Movies, and all of that, people can see the films they missed when they were in the movies.

Robert: Yes, exactly. They're move accessible now than they ever have been which is great. And that's what our festival is all about, is the fact that you've got all these films that were either Academy Award winners or nominees. And the short subjects that we show are Oscar winners or nominees as well, and if you have the chance to see them again. It's great because they're like books. Movies used to be seen, and then when they were gone; they were gone forever. Nobody ever saw a film again. You didn't have televisions to show them on, and there was no Netflix, no Turner Classic Movies, no DVD's or anything. So they just disappeared, except maybe the Disney films, which are reissued every seven years; and "Gone with the Wind, " which was reissued every seven years. Otherwise, our movie was gone. But now they're evergreen, they're around, and will be around forever hopefully. That's just kind of a wonderful thing.

31 DAYS OF OSCAR begins tonight night, February 1, with Self-Made Men (Best Actor nominations who also directed), Love at First Sight (women who got nominations in their debut movie) and What a Character (three actors who were nominated for playing the same character in three different films.) Visit TCM.com for the full schedule and more movie trivia.

I'll have more from Robert Osborne, including his answer to one of our "Absurd" questions, later on this month.

Robert Osborne photo courtesy of TCM

They Talk!

This week, TCM's Moguls & Movie Stars moves into the sound era. Now, not only could movie stars talk, but they could sing, too. Musicals were studio staples at the time, but these days they're few and far between.

As the brand new musical Burlesque gets ready to open, I talk with documentary filmmaker and historian Jon Wilkman, about the cyclical nature of musicals in Hollywood.

"When you certainly look back over the history of the movies, you see that there are cyclical patterns and the fact that a movie like Chicago wins an Academy Award fairly recently, means that the musical’s not dead. It’s not the same excitement that it had with the sound era, obviously, when in a short period of time the studios produced 70 musicals and saturated the market. Then it was revived in the thirties with people like Fred Astaire to some extent and Busby Berkley and there’s a visual innovation that you can see and then it goes away again. Then it’s back again in the 50’s with color and that’s a different technology... a different result and then it dies off again. So these things return and come back.

"The problem today is that we have so many other competing things. We have television programs like American Idol that feature musical performances, we have MTV and rock videos that are very theatrical and musical, so that appeal of the musical and musical performance is tapped in other ways. Certainly, if you go to revival theaters, musicals are playing, Broadway has a revival of West Side Story right now, I just saw South Pacific in L.A. , it never goes away, but you know for example everyone in the 50’s were big fans of science fiction and then that went away and then it came back in spades with George Lucas. The western has been a continuous genre that has now gone away. And all those sword in the sand type epics that were the staple of all those Victor Mature movies in the 50’s , now they’re all coming back again, with 300 and the roman legions fighting in 3D and the digital effects. So I thing the core genres are always there, what I think as far as musical performances are concerned, I think there are so many other ways of getting that similar experience of musical drama, it means that it’s not demised but that it’s in a pause for a while, it’ll come back in."

Tune in to TCM, Monday night, November 22 at 8 pm for the next installment of this amazing salute to the filmmakers that made Hollywood great. Then stay tuned after the show for great films such as Little Caesar. On Wednesday, you won't want to miss Top Hat, Little Women and one of my favorite Marx Brothers movies, Duck Soup.

Here's the full line up from TCM.

Taking on the whole history of Hollywood in only seven hours is a crazy task, but  Jon Wilkman gets it done by focusing on the men (and a few women) who made Hollywood what it is today; from the early film pioneers like Thomas Edison, to the golden era of Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner to the rebels who brought politics, sex and violence to the screen in ways we had never seen before. You may think you know movies, but “Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood” is loaded with stories, photos and clips that have never been shown on TV before.

I talked to veteran documentary filmmaker, Jon Wilkman about how the series came together and he gave me a sneak peek of what we’ll be seeing in the weeks to come.

Let’s talk movies. Going back in the old Hollywood days of Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner, those guys were celebs in and of their own right. But these days I don’t think anyone could tell you who runs a studio.

Jon Wilkman: "That’s really the core of [the documentary], this founding generation who built the great studios and why it ended in 1969-1970. That’s when those great studios begin to morph into something else and these old founding moguls begin to die off. [Back then] it was a very personalized kind of Hollywood, it was a relatively small community of people and the studios really were these fiefdoms. Louis B. Mayer was the king of MGM. Jack Warner was the king of Warner Brothers, and Sam Goldwyn was the king of Goldwyn pictures. These are the guys who not only owned these operations; they created them to a great extent. These were their babies literally, and that’s not the case anymore because movie studios are part of enormous entertainment conglomerates and they’re managed as any great international businesses is managed by very smart businessmen.

The moguls were business men absolutely, they were in it to make money, but at the same time they really loved movies and they had a gut instinct, they had kind of a showman’s instinct for what would play and what would make them some money, and what kind of star would appeal to an audience. So this was a very personal kind of business for them. Certainly there are very many talented people and very smart people in Hollywood today, but it’s not the kind of personal business it was during that time we are talking about."

I understand you got access to photos and other items that have never been seen before. Can you tell us more about that?

Jon Wilkman: "We wanted to have the most credible storytellers possible, so we chose people who were very close to the main characters in our story. We talked to Sam Goldwyn junior, we talked to Richard Zanuck, we talked to Daniel Selznick, to George Stevens junior. These are people who know really well, and we talked to 101-year-old Carla Laemmle, the niece of Carl Laemmle the founder of Universal. Many of them have these family photos that they gave us. Maybe they were not ‘never seen before’ but they weren’t seen widely and it shows the connection, the depth of the research that we wanted to do. I always take research very seriously in the work that I do and we scoured a lot of these archives and found things that were little known if not unknown.

One of the things that we got from the Gaumont Pathé Archives in France is a picture of a pioneering woman director Alice Guy-Blache directing a sound movie in 1905. Another thing we show is that for many, many, years a very famous early Edison clip was of a man playing a violin, and a couple of men, Edison laboratory workers dancing, and that clip had been known for fifty, sixty, a hundred years. Very recently, maybe the last ten years or so, they were going through the archives and they found a cylinder which had a violin playing on it and someone thought, hey! And they put the two together and sure enough it was a 1896 sound film."

*    *    *    *

You’ll see both of those stories played out on “Peepshow Pioneers” the first episode of “Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood” which airs tonight on Turner Classic Movies at 8:00. After the episode, set your DVR for a full seven hours of films rarely seen on TV including the silent works of Thomas Edison, Georges Melies and DW Griffith. (A full list can be found at the end of this article.)

The series will continue next Monday and every Monday December 13, so come back next week when Jon Wilkman and I will talk about how everything old is new again.

In the meantime, please visit the Moguls & Movie Stars website on TCM for more information about this great new series.

Tonight on “Moguls & Movie Stars”

“Peepshow Pioneers” (Monday, Nov 1, at 8 p.m. (ET/PT))

As America was transformed by the arrival of millions of immigrants in the 1890s, the first generation of American filmmakers joined with other innovators and entrepreneurs to create a bright new entertainment form that would transform the world. Thomas Edison perfected a device called the Kinetoscope that made pictures move, for one viewer at a time. In France, the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière brought scenes of everyday life to the screen for a large audience, while the magician Georges Méliès created startling visual effects on film and Alice Guy Blaché became the first female film director. In the U.S., moviemaking in these early days was concentrated in New York, New Jersey and Chicago. Working for Edison, Edwin S. Porter created one of the first films to tell a complete story, The Great Train Robbery (1903).  In 1905 Adolph Zukor (later to found Paramount Pictures) and Marcus Loew (who would create a major theater chain) established theatres to show movies, called Nickelodeons.  Edison meanwhile joined forces with investors and equipment manufacturers, including Eastman Kodak, to establish the Motion Picture Patents Company and demand royalties from other filmmakers. Many defied this demand, including German immigrant Carl Laemmle, who formed his own production company, IMP, in 1909 and went on to establish Universal Pictures Company, Inc. in a rural hamlet of Southern California called Hollywood.

Misha Collins isn’t an angel, but he plays one on TV. For the last two seasons, he’s played Castiel, an angel sent down to Earth to help the Winchester brothers in their fight to stop the apocalypse on the CW series Supernatural. When he steps out from in front of the cameras Misha becomes a different kind of angel – the kind that gives his time, money and creativity to help those in need.

Now, we know that lots of celebs give to charity, but what’s particularly interesting about Misha’s quest is the way he has rallied his “minions,” aka, the fans of Supernatural. What started out as a joke on Twitter has grown into a true non-profit organization that has already built orphanages in Haiti and blessed many more people with random acts of kindness. Even Misha admits, he never saw it coming.

“I knew that there were a lot of intelligent, creative people with a lot of resources following me on Twitter just based on the responses that I got and websites that they would set up, the projects they would undertake. I mean, there was a lot of kind of enthusiasm and creative energy and so I knew I wanted to kind of play with that in some way and I had no idea how it was going to play out. I’m actually shocked that Random Acts has taken on such a coherent level of organization and structure, and it’s so official. We’re actually a proper 501, fee-free, non-profit, tax exempt organization and all that. It actually is quite an inspiration to me and far more than I expected to have happen in such a short period of time.”

They say that something good always comes out of something bad, and that was the case with the earthquake in Haiti. After it happened, Misha reached out to his fans on Twitter and asked them to donate to the cause. They raised $30,000 dollars which they used to help house and care for some of the more than 380,000 orphans in Haiti.

“I spent some time in Haiti and I know that it’s a place that is really, really, bad off. I have been in a lot of countries around the world, and from an economic standpoint, I’ve never seen the destitution that I’ve seen in Haiti anywhere else. And we also happen to have contacts with people who run these three orphanages there so it seemed like a good fit to keep on supporting them.”

But disasters continue to happen around the world, and so Misha and his crew have moved on to raising money to aide Pakistan.

Going The Distance

“I’m running to raise money. Its kind of old fashioned, collecting pledges. I’ve always liked the whole [idea]. I don’t like the dynamic aspect of not knowing quite how far I’m going to make it. It sort of puts a little more pressure on me to keep on hauling ass out there, so yeah I’m going to be doing a run on Sunday [September] fifth and I’m going to go as far as I can. I’m capping it at a measly 100 km so, I mean, I may keep running after that, knowing me I’ll probably do you know 200-250 km something like that but … umm that’s a lie. I’ve never run anywhere near [this distance]. I’ve run marathons and that’s it, so we’ll see how far I make it.”

We have no doubt that Misha will make it to the end of the race because he’s a guy who can’t stand to let a challenge lie there unaccepted. He made it to The White House as an intern and now he’s co-starring on a hit TV series. You wouldn’t know it to look at him but, as a child, Misha Collins was homeless.

“I have an amazing mother, but when I was growing up she didn’t always have a tremendous amount of material resources at her disposal. We were on welfare and very poor for some time and we were homeless for a while. When I was eleven, we were taken in by [friends who let us live on their] farm for several months. They were unbelievably generous with us. They gave us essentially room and board for months because they knew we didn’t have a place to go, and they enabled us to feel like we weren’t a burden there, by allowing me to work on the farm and to earn my keep. Of course at eleven, I was completely useless and probably more in the way than anything, but it was just like an extension of their kind act to allow me to think that I wasn’t a burden there, and so I would go out in the field and transplant leeks and rake hay into rows and things like that. It’s something that has stuck with me and there are other incidences in my childhood that have stuck with me, you know, a woman that gave my mother $100 when I was six so that she could buy me and my brother Christmas presents that year. I didn’t even know who she was, it was just this really generous act that made a huge difference in these small children's' lives and to my mother as well."

“Thirty years later I still remember that, and it still impacts on how I behave, not always . . . (laughs), but when it comes to my mind it affects how I behave and I think that that is kind of what I am getting at. It can be infectious and exponential. I mean, I probably wouldn’t be trying to do this random acts project if somebody hadn’t demonstrated that kind of kindness to me when I was young and likewise people who receive, who are the recipients of the random acts that we do now, will probably carry on that tradition later.”

The Random Acts program is something that’s just getting rolling for Misha and his minions, so it isn’t as well organized as some of their earlier efforts.

We're All In This Together

“Anybody who wants to be involved can be involved in the process of identifying recipients of random acts of kindness from our organization, so it’s very much a collective process. People wrote in suggestions and then we collectively made a decision on which ones to enact, and you know what we’ve done so far was very hasty and very poorly funded, it was just from money that I took out of my pocket. But moving forward I think that we will have a little bit more time and a little bit more resources at our disposal and it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves.”

In wrapping up my call with Misha Collins, I mentioned that we have a section on GlobalShift called ‘One Person, Big Difference.’ What do you think of that philosophy, I asked.

“Oh I don’t think one person can do anything, really. . . no, I’m just kidding, wouldn’t that be an awful answer? Yes! I can actually say that’s a big part of why I wanted to do random acts in particular, because I happen to very strongly agree with that idea that one person can make a big difference. I think that kindness and generosity are infectious qualities, that when you carry them out, you often inspire others to do the same, and that one small act can actually have an exponential effect. And this isn’t something that’s just the purview of statesmen and religious leaders. I think that it really can happen in very small and everyday ways, and still have a big impact.”

If you would like to pledge money for Misha’s run or get involved in his Random Acts program, visit the website at http://www.therandomact.org.

Photo: Misha Collins as Castiel in SUPERNATURAL on The CW. Photo: Jack Rowand/The CW ©2009 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Originally posted on Globalshift.org

Chatting with Leverage star Christian Kane is kind of like sharing a beer with a buddy at a honky-tonk in Nashville. He’s a laid-back good ole’ boy who speaks his mind but he’s also got that Southern charm that allows him to say, “no, thank you,” over and over and still sound like he means it.

His enthusiasm for both his acting work and his music simply over-flows and this week, he got to combine his two loves for a very special episode of Leverage. No, not “very special” in an 80’s sitcom kind of way, but how about Christian Kane singing one of his own songs before “duking” it out with special guest star John Schneider.

“I get to fight Bo Duke, my childhood idol, I get to fight him,” says Chris. “Schneider's become my golf buddy. He loved to be in here, and we've all become really good friends. And you've never seen him in role like this either."

Richard Chamberlain guest starred a few weeks ago as Parker’s mentor who inadvertently walks her into trouble, and coming up is comedian Bill Engvall in a NASCAR themed episode that should be a hoot. Christian says there are more big-name guest stars coming on board, but he's sworn to secrecy.

'It's going to be so much fun for people to get to see these guys putting on a different mask than they ever have. I know all these guys, and they come in, and they're nice guys in real life.  But to see them put that mask on, it's like wow, I think they're going to scare people.”

Talk about playing against type. . . how about surly Eliot Spencer picking up a guitar to sing?

Says Christian, “It was a little bit of my idea, but you know (John Rogers), we had talked about doing a music episode, taking down a record company for a certain reason.  I'd had some really great success when I sang on "Angel"  in the second season, and we developed such a big fan base out of that whole episode for my band, so John took note of that. And I think that it was me kind of egging him on, and then, of course, I got the fans involved, and I've got the best fans in the world.  So I think he just got tired of listening to them.

"So we did it. The song is a song I wrote a couple of years ago, I tried to put something that was going to be on the album that is coming out in October.  But I couldn’t find the song on the album that I really wanted to do this, and then I looked at this older song that I had, and I was like oh, this is it.  And so we've decided now to put this song on the album. And the great thing about this song is this song "Thinking of You", it’s actually going to be available on iTunes the night the episode airs.  So, if you like this song, you can go to iTunes and download it.  We're really excited about that.”

While you’re on iTunes, you can also download Christian's EP which features his most popular tune “The House Rules,” which will be heading for the radio this fall. If you’re in Portland, you can see Christian performing live at DANTE's (check their website for dates) and on September 3^rd, he and the band will being a tour across the US that begins at the Oregon State Fair.

These past few years have been exceptionally good to Christian Kane, he’s playing the role he’s always dreamed of on a hit TV series, found himself a group of fine people to work with and his music career is taking off. But juggling an acting career and a singing career isn’t easy. Even with Christian’s energy and enthusiasm, something’s gotta give.

“I don’t like to shut any doors, I like to take different avenues and stuff like that, you know,” says Chris. ”And I don’t need to be Brad Pitt or Kenny Chesney, I really don’t, I just want to be Christian Kane, I just really want to do what I love for the rest of my life.”

From here, that prospect is looking pretty good.

Watch Leverage, Sunday nights at 9:00 on TNT. And don’t miss “The Studio Job,” tomorrow, July 18 with special guest stars John Schneider and Alona Tal and the TV premiere of Christian’s song, “Thinking of You.”

Photos: Erik Heinila / TNT