OK, Proles, you too may get to see Steve at the New Yorker Festival


From Emdashes, who knows everything New Yorker:

http://emdashes.com/2007/08/festival-the-sluggish-shall-in.php
August 28 2007
Festival: The Sluggish Shall Inherit the Held-Back Tix

Sara Nelson over at Publishers Weekly has some juicy Festival information in her essential industry column:

'So, what to make of the news that the New Yorker Festival, coming in October, has become so popular with “regular folk” that its organizers have decided not to make all the tickets available to readers of the magazine in advance; for the first time, the festival will hold back 10 percent of the seats to all events so that visitors can buy them on the fly on October 5, the day the festival begins. And this for a program that is literary by anybody’s lights: Norman Mailer, Martin Amis, Miranda July, and Orhan Pamuk are among the participants. So is Steve Martin, whose memoir, Born Standing Up, will appear later in the fall. And, yes, in a nod to so-called popular culture, there will also be an appearance by David Byrne; a panel on graphic superheroes (featuring fan Jonathan Lethem); and a screening of The Kite Runner, based on the Riverhead blockbuster.' [Boldface and link mine, obviously.]

Ten percent! So even if that event you simply have to see is all sold out, you may still be able to get in if you are willing to get there early and wait. But please, no trampling! OK, if you insist on trampling, we hear the place to do it will be the Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street (between 6th and 7th Avenues). Zap that data into your iPhone—apparently, it’s good with maps.

****
- posted by sookeyjane 8/28/2007 06:15:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve returns to film in Boston around Labor Day


http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2007/08/27/their_star_is_born_they_hope/
Boston Globe
Their star is born (they hope)
By Carol Beggy & Mark Shanahan | August 27, 2007

Like most of the more than 500 hopefuls at Boston Casting's open call for the Steve Martin movie "Pink Panther 2," Mitchell Crank went looking for a chance to ply his craft in Boston. The recent New England Institute of Art grad has already benefited from having more movies filming in town, including appearing in a scene with Kevin Spacey for the blackjack movie "21" and working for a few days on "The Great Debaters," the Denzel Washington-directed movie that filmed last month. Clark, who works as a waiter at Hamersley's Bistro in the South End, talked his colleague, manager Hillary Blank into going to Saturday's casting session. "They filmed 'Bachelor No. 2' right next door to us last week, so when this came up, I thought I would try," Blank told us. When "Pink Panther 2" starts filming in Boston after Labor Day, it will be the third major movie simultaneously shooting in town. (Dane Cook and Kate Hudson's "Bachelor No. 2" and "The Women," starring Meg Ryan and Annette Bening, have been filming for the last week.) And in other "Pink Panther" news, word out of Europe is that Oscar winner Helen Mirren is the latest star to be added to the flick currently filming in Paris.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/27/2007 04:16:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve shines in Baby Mama


http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2007/07/31/baby-mama-delivers-up-steve-martin/

‘Baby Mama’ Delivers Up Steve Martin
Published by Larry Carroll on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 at 12:01 pm.

Steve MartinNormally known as a leading man in movies like “Cheaper by the Dozen” and “The Pink Panther,” legendary comedian Steve Martin hasn’t appeared in a non-starring movie role since 1986’s “Little Shop of Horrors.” “Saturday Night Live” mastermind Lorne Michaels told us, however, that all that is about to change.

“We have a movie that Tina [Fey], Amy [Poehler] and Dax Shepard, Greg Kinnear, Steve Martin and a bunch of others are in called ‘Baby Mama,’” Michaels said of the flick, which has developed into something of an “SNL” reunion. “That movie should be coming out in the spring.”

The film stars Fey as a busy single gal who hires Poehler’s character to be a surrogate mother. The in-production flick features Kinnear as the local hunk who sparks up a romance with Fey, while “ER” veteran Maura Tierney has been cast as Fey’s supportive sister, a mother of two. The comedy also features Sigourney Weaver and Romany Malco, but it’s Martin’s rare supporting performance that seems destined to be the stand-out.

“He did a couple of days on it,” grinned Michaels, adding that the flick is aiming to be as funny as it is timely.

Michaels is currently preparing for the next season of “Saturday Night Live” (Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James was recently announced as the host of the opener), and will soon have the off-kilter flick “Hot Rod” in theaters, starring his latest “SNL” discovery, Andy Samberg. “Baby Mama” will mark the directorial debut of “Austin Powers” series writer Michael McCullers.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/27/2007 04:14:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Pics and video of filming PP2 in Paris


Apparently, this year the production company for Pink Panther 2 did not start off with a big news conference, perhaps because casting seemed to go right up to the last minute. So as things show up on filming, I'll post them.

There are several sites with video and pics of the second day of shooting of Pink Panther 2 in Paris. Two videos here give a good look at what filming is like.

Video and pics from Splash are here.

Blip.tv also offers a long video.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/22/2007 05:01:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

First hand account of filming PP2 in Paris


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/21/
AR2007082101671.html?sub=AR

Time Zones: An Hour on a Film Shoot in Paris
An Accent Coach, A Patient Crew, et Voilà! 'Pink Panther' Rolls Again
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, August 22, 2007; Page A10

PARIS, Aug. 21

Inspector Jacques Clouseau, the bumbling French detective of "Pink Panther" movie fame, wrote his first parking ticket at 9:15 a.m.

He rewrote it at 9:25. And again at 9:35.

His line never varied: "Nine centimeters too far! You must take ze ticket!"

Translation: The driver's powder-blue Citroen DS is parked too far from the curb.

By 9:40 a.m. and the fourth take, Steve Martin -- playing Clouseau in a bucket-shaped hat, a stiff black jacket and midnight-blue trousers -- was looking for a diversion. He spotted a woman across the street gripping the leash of a yellow Labrador retriever.

He slipped past the director, skirted the camera crew and crossed the street.

"Bonjour," he said in a heavy American accent. "What's your dog's name?"

"Sunny," replied the woman, taken aback.

"It takes hours and hours to shoot something that will be 90 seconds in a movie," said Scott Levine, the film's publicist, who stood beneath sycamore trees watching the morning's multiple takes. "It's not because of incompetence. They do it over and over from different angles, with different close-ups."

Clouseau's ticket-writing caper on Joseph Bouvard Avenue, the boulevard that gives tourist buses the best view of the Eiffel Tower, will be the opening scene in "Pink Panther 2," which is scheduled for release in the United States in February 2009.

By 9:55, the scene's background extras were again in position: artists in smudged smocks painting sepia-toned pictures of the tower, a vendor gripping a bouquet of brilliant balloons, children tossing a ball, a man in a beret casually reading a newspaper.

Branches of sycamore leaves were attached to the tops of tripods, ready to cast shadows where the natural trees didn't reach. A crew manned a giant fan, prepared to blow leaves across the scene on a windless day. An assistant wiped Martin's fingerprints off the windshield of the car with a wad of paper towels.

"Steve!"

Clouseau was summoned back to the curb.

A crew member yanked out a tape measure and nudged Martin a bit closer to the hood of the vintage 1950s car. A makeup artist dusted his face with a powder brush and combed the silvery white hair protruding from the hat.

Snap! went the clacker, the black-and-white signboard marking yet another take.

"Background!" shouted the director.

Random shouts of "Monsieur! Monsieur!" rose from a few throats. The artists began painting, the children commenced ball-tossing, the man in the beret shook out his newspaper.

"Nine centimeters too far! You must take ze ticket!" declared Clouseau.

Last year, 730 movies, documentaries and television shows were filmed on location in Paris, according to the Paris Tourism Office.

"Films are a key component of Paris advertising nowadays," said Sophie Potelet, the office's spokeswoman. "Films like 'Da Vinci Code,' 'Moulin Rouge' or 'Amélie' are still attracting tourists. Visitors want to see where successful movies have been shot."

Paris has become so popular with moviemakers that the city launched a Web site last year to help production companies obtain permits.

There's not much the tourism office can do about the weather, however. During the filming of "Pink Panther 2" at the elaborate Petit Palais museum this week, the leading lady, Emily Mortimer, wearing a backless pink-and-white frock, shivered in a cold, driving rain. Between takes, the crew -- clad in rain slickers and boots -- swaddled her in blankets.

But the city can grant permission for film crews to take over entire neighborhoods, clearing the streets of cars and the sidewalks of tourists in tennis shoes and backpacks.

The mammoth white Pink Panther vans lined the boulevard fronting the Eiffel Tower for blocks. One was marked "Dialect Coach."



That's to make sure everyone keeps their accents straight. Martin, an American, has to speak with a French accent. Cuban American actor Andy Garcia plays an Italian detective speaking English. Mortimer is a Brit playing a French woman speaking English. And then there are the French actors speaking English with a French accent.

In this Pink Panther flick, a master thief has stolen some of the world's most famous artifacts: the Magna Carta, the Shroud of Turin, the Imperial Sword of Japan and, of course, the Pink Panther Diamond. Great detectives from around the globe have converged on Paris to plot how to go after the bad guys and retrieve the priceless booty.

At 10:10, the bilingual call goes out again: "Quiet, please! Silence, s'il vous plait! Roll it!"

Take 6.

"Nine centimeters too far!" declared Clouseau. "You must take ze ticket!"

A pale young woman meandered among the 250 crew members and extras along the boulevard, offering triangles of hot pizza on toothpicks.

Only 2 1/2 hours and 14 takes to go.

Researcher Corinne Gavard contributed to this report.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/22/2007 05:00:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Filming PP2, with photo gallery


http://www.hellomagazine.com/film/2007/08/21/pink-panther-set-rai/
Steve back to his bungling best shooting new Panther flick
21 AUGUST 2007

France's most notorious bumbling policeman was back pounding the streets this week as Steve Martin reprised his role as Inspector Jacques Clouseau for Pink Panther 2.

Sporting Clouseau's trademark snooty demeanour, the 61-year-old actor got down to the serious business of dishing out parking tickets to the flashy sports cars that lined the streets of Paris.

The sequel to lasts year's comedy - based on the hit Peter Sellers films - sees Steve's on-screen persona joining forces with a squad of equally hopeless European detectives. Their mission? To stop a continent-hopping thief who specialises in stealing precious historical artefacts.

British actress Emily Mortimer has also been back on set this week to reprise her role as devoted secretary Nicole, while new cast members include Ocean's Thirteen actor Andy Garcia and Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai, who was spotted walking arm-in-arm with her new actor husband Abhishek Bachchan between takes.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/22/2007 04:50:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Casting call for Pink Panther 2, all you Bostonians


http://www.rifcfilms.com/announceblog/2007/08/open-call-for-pink-panther-deux.html
RIFC Announcements
Announcements from the Rhode Island Film Collaborative and their friends.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Open Call for "Pink Panther Deux"
Boston Casting is holding an Open Call on Sat. 8/25/07 for the film PINK PANTHER DEUX with Steve Martin. Open Call will be from 10-4pm @ Boston Casting, go to Bostoncasting.com for directions.

Please bring a headshot and resume. We will also need pictures of the following : european cars (Such as Puegots, Audis, Mini Coopers, BMW, etc.) and small (well behaved ) dogs. Photos only do not bring your dogs !

Open call is for adults only 18 & above!

The film is set in PARIS so we need all of our Boston Extras to look European. Please come to the Open call dressed as if you are european. No jeans, no sneakers, women in hats & dresses, men in jackets, etc...................

P.S. ladies if you are wearing heels, bring some flats to wait in line. Hopefully the wait won't be too long.

Please make sure you headshot and resume are up on our online service at Bostoncasting.com. It is a free service to you.

www.bostoncasting.com

This is not an RIFC Production.
posted by DEBBIE # 9:57 AM
- posted by sookeyjane 8/22/2007 04:49:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Bob Kerry is not a Reverend


Omaha World-Herald (Nebraska)
August 1, 2007 Wednesday
Wedding wasn't wild and crazy, and don't call Kerrey 'Rev. Bob'
NEWS; Robert Nelson; Pg. 01B


I've always been proud that my first journalism interview back in the late 1980s was with Bob Kerrey. I was a new journalism school student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the former Nebraska governor was entertaining the idea of running for U.S. Senate and, amazingly, he granted me an interview.

On Tuesday, I interviewed him again. You may have read that Kerrey, who represented Nebraska in the Senate for two terms, presided this weekend at the wedding of actor-comedian Steve Martin, 61, and writer Anne Stringfield, 35.

Lorne Michaels, executive producer of "Saturday Night Live," was the best man. Tom Hanks, Diane Keaton and Carl Reiner were among the screen legends on hand.

I mean, how cool are you when Steve Martin asks you to perform his marriage ceremony?

So I called Kerrey in New York, where he now serves as president of the New School.

I first asked him why his friends are cooler than my friends.

"Because they're my wife's friends," he said.

His wife of six years, Sarah Paley, was a writer for "Saturday Night Live." Her old friends, like Martin, became the couple's new friends and, as one thing led to another, Martin, Stringfield and Paley came up with the idea for Kerrey to perform the ceremony.

"When it was first mentioned, I figured I had to go online to one of those Web sites and get ordained to be Reverend Bob," Kerrey said. "But in California, as long as you have a properly executed marriage license, somebody who isn't a minister can perform the civil ceremony."

So no, he's not Reverend Bob.

(A side note: After we talked, I filled in an online form and, in two minutes, I became Reverend Bob of the Universal Life Church).

Kerrey said Martin's wedding was "a dignified ceremony" -- no pretend arrows through the head -- because "Steve wanted it to be serious," he said. "They're just very much in love and they wanted a nice ceremony. I guess they picked me because they wanted somebody they considered serious."

As he was preparing for his first stint tying knots, Kerrey said, he received a request to officiate at a wedding of his longtime friend and legitimate pastor, the Rev. Darrel Berg.

Berg, a former Nebraskan who now lives in Washington state, presided at both of Kerrey's weddings and at the baptisms of his three children.

Berg, 86, is getting remarried in October after a divorce.

(For his part, Berg said he picked his nonpastor friend to perform the ceremony to avoid having to choose among his many friends in the clergy.)

"This will be a sweeter ceremony, I think," Kerrey said. "You can feel like life has come to an end when you lose somebody at his age. This is just a wonderful thing."

Kerrey said he doesn't plan to preside over any more weddings, but he also said he wouldn't completely rule out doing it again.

Boy, if that doesn't sound familiar.

Which, of course, segued to the big question, the same question I asked him back in the '80s:

"So, are you going to run for Senate?"

"I'm not really thinking about that right now," Kerrey said of a potential run for Sen. Chuck Hagel's seat, which he has said he would consider if Hagel decides not to seek re-election. "But I haven't said no."
- posted by sookeyjane 8/20/2007 04:06:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

London Times expands on his father's role in his standup


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2284303.ece
From The Sunday Times
August 19, 2007
Violent father made me funny, says Steve Martin
John Harlow

THE self-proclaimed “wild and crazy guy” Steve Martin is to reveal the moment when he believes that his comic gift was born - at the hands of his violent father.

In his forthcoming autobiography, Martin says his childhood could not have been more different from the affectionate tussles and loving banter featured in his hit family films, such as Cheaper by the Dozen and Parenthood.

Encouraged to open up about his harrowing youth by his new wife, the writer Anne Stringfield, Martin, 62, has identified an incident in his childhood that he thinks not only led to fame and fortune but may also have contributed to bouts of depression.

He was nine and at home in Waco, Texas, when his father Glenn, an estate agent, exploded in anger. “He muttered something to me; I responded with a mumbled ‘What?’,” recounts Martin in Born Standing Up, to be published in November.

“He shouted, ‘You heard me’, thundered up from his chair, pulled his belt out from its loops and inflicted a beating that never seemed to end. The next day I was covered in welts . . . I swore with icy determination that only the most formal relationship would exist between my father and me, and for perhaps 30 years neither he nor I did anything to repair the rift.”

When he could no longer physically take him on, Glenn Martin, a frustrated amateur actor who had performed in Britain with US forces during the war, continued to snipe at him.

Even when the rising star won his first Emmy television award at the age of 23, writing jokes for a veteran TV act called The Smothers Brothers, his father advised him to go back to college in Los Angeles.

After Martin first appeared on the television programme Saturday Night Live to acclaim in 1976, his father wrote a scathing review of his son’s performance in an estate agent’s newsletter.

When they went out to dinner after the premiere of Martin’s first Hollywood movie, The Jerk, in 1979, a mutual friend asked what he thought of his son’s performance. He replied: “Well, he’s no Charlie Chaplin.”

The vitriol slowed only after Glenn Martin suffered several heart attacks and strokes during the 1980s. In 1997, as he was dying, the two men reached a rapprochement. Martin recalls how his father may have revealed the roots of his lifelong anger when he told him: “You did everything I wanted to do.”

“I said, ‘I did it because of you’, and it was the truth, although looking back I am sure that we both had different interpretations of what I meant.”

Martin believes that his depression is “situational” rather than clinical and describes “bad times” that followed the end of his first marriage to Victoria Tennant, the British actress: “I did not take any prescription drugs, just alcohol, and I found my way out from my blue period through writing.” He wrote Shopgirl, a study of a clinically depressed shop assistant filmed with Claire Danes. “And now I am in my rosy period,” he said.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/19/2007 12:46:00 AM PERMALINK 2 COMMENTS

 

Steve will be featured in the New Yorker Festival in October


http://www.nypost.com/seven/08182007/gossip/pagesix/far_flung_fest_pagesix_.htm
Page Six
Richard Johnson
August 18, 2007

Far-flung fest
HIGHLY eclectic is the best way to describe this year’s lineup for the eighth annual New Yorker Magazine Festival, set for Oct. 5-7. Among its components will be conversations with Steve Carell, Steve Martin, Bill Nighy and opera director Peter Sellars. Performers will include Fiona Apple, Rosanne Cash, Yo La Tengo and Iceland’s Sigur Ros. There’s also a panel discussion with TV masterminds Jenji Kohan (creator of “Weeds”), Ronald Moore (“Battlestar Galactica”), David Shore (“House”), David Simon (“The Wire”) and David Milch (“Deadwood”).

****
- posted by sookeyjane 8/19/2007 12:42:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve Nominated for Bluegrass Award


Steve has been nominated along with others for a Bluegrass Award.

http://winkscollectibles.blogspot.com/2007/08/bluegrass-award-nominees-announced.html
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Bluegrass Award Nominees Announced

The International Bluegrass Music Association announced the nominees for the 18th Annual International Bluegrass Music Awards. The ceremony will be held on Thursday, October 4 at the Grand Ole Opry and will be hosted by Sam Bush.
****
RECORDED EVENT OF THE YEAR

* Vassar Clements, Tony Rice & The Low Country All Star Band - Vassar Clements, Tony Rice & The Low Country All-Star Band
* Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular - Tony Trischka with Earl Scruggs, Kenny Ingram, Tom Adams, Bela Fleck, Noam Pikelny, Alison Brown, Scott Vestal, Steve Martin & Bill Emerson
* New Songs, Old Friends - Jerry Salley with Vince Gill, Doyle Lawson, Bryan Sutton, Oak Ridge Boys, Darryl Worley, Adam Steffey, Jamie Johnson, Lisa Shaffer, Rob Ickes, Del McCoury, Sonya Isaacs, David Talbot, Rhonda Vincent, Carl Jackson, Stuart Duncan, Larry Cordle, Keith Sewell, Wendy Sewell, Ben Isaacs, Alecia Nugent, Ricky Skaggs & Sharon White
* Ricky Skaggs & Bruce Hornsby - Ricky Skaggs & Bruce Hornsby
* Wow Baby - Hunter Berry with Tony Rice, Doyle Lawson, Dan Tyminski, Marty Stuart, Bobby Osborne, Bryan Sutton, Adam Steffey, Jason Carter, Buck White, Sally Sandker, Sonya Isaacs, Keith Williams, Rhonda Vincent, Buddy Spicher, Ronnie Stewart, Darrin Vincent, Bob Moore & Tom Roady

Posted by Vintage Vinyl News at 10:56 PM
- posted by sookeyjane 8/19/2007 12:37:00 AM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Happy Birthday, Steve


Today, Steve turns 62.

Happy birthday and many more.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/14/2007 06:35:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve's agent, Ed Limato, able to change agencies and take clients


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/business/media/14agent.html
Hollywood Agent Wins the Right to Join Rival
By BROOKS BARNES
New York Times
Published: August 14, 2007

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 13 — A Hollywood employment dispute ended Monday when an arbitrator decided that Ed Limato, a longtime agent for stars like Steve Martin and Mel Gibson, could leave International Creative Management for a rival and take his clients with him.
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Enlarge This Image
Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

Ed Limato, left, represented the comedian Steve Martin, right, and other celebrities at International Creative Management.

The arbitration, conducted by a retired state judge, was private but legally binding. The agency and Mr. Limato, its former co-president, were locked in a battle over whether the agency could block Mr. Limato’s departure after demoting him last month. The venerable agency no longer wanted Mr. Limato in a management role, but it wanted his roster of clients.

“The arbitrator’s decision to allow Ed to end his contractual obligations was based solely on an overly technical interpretation” of California’s labor code, Richard B. Levy, the talent agency’s general counsel, said in a statement.

Mr. Limato’s lawyers, Tom Hansen and Miles Feldman, could not immediately be reached for comment.

In the entertainment business, big contract battles come and go on a regular basis. But the legal wrangling between Mr. Limato and I.C.M. underscores how the financial retrenchment under way in Hollywood is upending the industry’s unwritten codes for conducting business.

Mr. Limato, 71, with his outsize personality, formal dress and lavish Academy Awards parties, has become something of a legend in the motion picture industry. In the past, he would most likely have been able to write his own ticket for as long as he pleased, because of his decades of service and the millions of dollars in profits his clients regularly delivered.

But as budgets for movies balloon and the Internet whittles away at box-office returns, the agencies have come under attack and are operating on tighter budgets. I.C.M. in particular, which sold a majority stake to Merrill Lynch and a Connecticut-based private equity group last year, is trying to control expenses.

The agency tried in recent months to move Mr. Limato away from daily management and into an emeritus-type position, something that would have stripped him of certain perks, like multiple assistants, but would have allowed him to keep direct involvement with his clients. The move would also have consolidated the power of Mr. Limato’s co-president, Chris Silbermann, 39.

Mr. Limato refused, according to both sides.

So I.C.M., which last year paid $70 million to acquire Mr. Silbermann’s television agency, the Broder Webb Chervin Silbermann Agency, decided in July to demote Mr. Limato, couching the decision in a news release as “a restructuring of I.C.M.’s motion picture department to deliver long-term growth.” The decision to trumpet the move — agencies are notoriously tight-lipped — stunned the industry.

The legal spat turned on a California statute that dates to the era of Hollywood’s star system, a time when studios controlled actors under long-term contracts. Boiled down, the 1931 law says that a personal services contract may not be enforced beyond seven years. The actress Olivia de Havilland used the seven-year rule in 1944 to void her contract with Warner Brothers.

I.C.M. lawyers argued that they were seeking to enforce a new contract that Mr. Limato signed last year. Mr. Limato’s position is that a series of contracts without any break is the same thing as one long contract. Since he worked continuously at I.C.M. since 1988, parts of his contract were void under the seven-year rule, Mr. Limato’s lawyers argued.

The agency has much at stake. Although a powerhouse in television, I.C.M. is struggling to maintain a toehold on the movie side. As more powerful rivals lured clients like Julia Roberts over the years, I.C.M. failed to attract replacements of similar caliber.

I.C.M. is hopeful that at least some of Mr. Limato’s clients will stay behind. Although none have given hints of their plans, most have worked with Mr. Limato for the bulk of their careers and are expected to remain loyal to him.

Losing Mr. Limato’s clients could lead to the defection of other I.C.M. agents and actors and — because stars like to be around stars — would probably make it harder for the agency to rebuild its motion picture department.

The battle at I.C.M. has been unusually divisive in Hollywood, with factions lining up on both sides and blogs like Deadline Hollywood Daily chronicling the twists and turns in minute detail. In one corner are traditionalists who cite the industry’s habit of treating its atavistic executives with high respect, whether deserved or not. Others see a twist on “Sunset Boulevard,” in which a star agent cannot let go.

Generational shifts at Hollywood’s talent agencies are typically rancorous. In 2004, William Morris endured agent defections and firings after a rift on the board over the company’s direction. Creative Artists Agency, now Hollywood’s most pre-eminent talent representative, weathered a similar storm in 1995, when three of the agency’s founding partners left.
- posted by sookeyjane 8/14/2007 06:35:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Steve to appear in Jan, 08 in San Francisco


http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/235717/
Upcoming
San Francisco County
California / United States


Steve Martin at City Arts and Lectures
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
8:00 PM

Herbst Theatre
401 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, California 94102
37.7792, -122.42

Steve Martin recounts more than four decades as an actor, writer, and legendary performer in his new memoir Born Standing Up.

When he was ten years old, Martin sold guidebooks at Disneyland and was soon hired to work in the Magic Shop where for the next decade he developed as an entertainer, practicing magic, juggling and making balloon animals. Eventually, he was performing twelve original comedy/magic shows a week at the Bird Cage Theater in Knott's Berry Farm. Martin found work as a television writer in the late 1960s with The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. By the mid 1970s, Steve Martin was appearing regularly on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Saturday Night Live.

Aside from his comedy routine (which included the release of two hugely successful, Grammy-Award winning comedy albums), Martin began work on the screenplay that would become his first full-length film, The Jerk. His long and memorable film career include outstanding performances in Little Shop of Horrors, Roxanne, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Shopgirl, which was based on his novella of the same name.

Steve Martin is also a playwright, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, an enthusiastic art collector, and an avid banjo player.

To order tickets for this you need to call (415) 392-4400.
Homepage
http://www.cityarts.net/n.martin.html

Added by simulate on August 7, 2007
- posted by sookeyjane 8/14/2007 06:28:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS

 

Details on Steve's Wedding Music


http://www.cybergrass.com//modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3685
Cybergrass
News: Pete Wernick Shares a Secret about Steve Martin and Hot Rize

Music NewsBMNN wrote: on Aug. 13, 2007:
Pete (Dr. Banjo) Wernick has been holding something back and is now at liberty to tell the world. Wernick happily discloses his secret saying, "It's been hard to keep this under my hat, but now it can be told: Hot Rize performed July 28 at the wedding of Steve Martin to Anne Stringfield, at his home in Beverly Hills, California. Due to Steve's concern about disruption by paparazzi, we were asked to not discuss the event in advance."


Dr. Banjo continues saying, "Steve had contacted me some months ago about providing bluegrass music for the wedding. I asked if he wanted me to get some musicians from the area, or ask "whoever I want". He said to get whoever I want. When I asked, what would you think of having Hot Rize, he said, "I'd kill for Hot Rize." Thank goodness that wasn't necessary. Bryan Sutton, who generally plays guitar with us, was not available, so we got David Grier, who did just fine of course.

"Steve and his wife Anne gave a lot of thought to the music they wanted, and they took my suggestion to use Romance Is a Slow Dance, a great song of Tim's, to begin the ceremony. Then Tim fiddled a beautiful Irish air as the bride and her father came forward. The ceremony, performed by "Reverend" Bob Kerrey (former U.S. Senator), was followed by a rousing banjo tune.

"Steve had indicated that if Hot Rize was there, "it would be a sin" not to have us do a mini-set for the guests. He added, "as in, I would go to hell." So following dinner, Steve introduced us and we did five songs including Blue Night, High on a Mountain, and a song I wrote for Steve and Anne, This is Our Time. For the last two tunes, we were joined by Steve on banjo, and played Steve's tune The Crow and finished with Foggy Mt. Breakdown. We were very well received, with the guests applauding for solos and many nice comments afterwards. In attendance were such notables as Tom Hanks, Diane Keaton, Carl Reiner, Eugene Levy, and Martin Mull. Steve and Martin both participated in the jamming that went on into the night.

"Steve arranged that all guests receive a copy of the band's So Long of a Journey CD as a party favor. As they filtered out and the party wound down, we continued to play informally, with Steve and Anne asking for one more rendition of Romance Is a Slow Dance.

"The next morning we headed for LAX, and I made it all the way to Elkins, WV for Bluegrass Week at the Augusta Heritage program, which is where I'm writing this from!

"In closing, I'll say it is truly an honor for Hot Rize to be appreciated in such a high class way by such a respected figure of American culture as Steve Martin. People ask me what sort of person he is, and I can say in all honesty that he is one fine gentleman, with the wonderful quality of showing interest in other people and making them feel appreciated. Almost impossible to fathom that, given his irreverent style of humor, but it's true. I also am often asked about whether Steve might do one thing or another for "the bluegrass cause", and I can only say time will tell. Naturally if he has any desire to do that, I will be glad to facilitate!"
- posted by sookeyjane 8/14/2007 06:24:00 PM PERMALINK 0 COMMENTS