BuzzSugar

Rewind: This Week's Buzz

BuzzSugar — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 07:30:48 -0700

CBS learned a big lesson this week: Britney equals ratings gold. I learned you should never mess with the fanboys of Fanboys.
The Oliver Stone Bush biopic cast is quickly filling out. I wonder who's going to play Dick Cheney? Which reminds me, all that horse-loving talk aside, I'm starting to think Kristy Lee Cook is an evil genius.
This is one of those weeks where TV news makes a lot of sense and then none at all. I can understand why there is interest in shows about escorts after the Spitzer scandal. But a show that's just people falling? Really?
More good stuff came out of the Paley Festival in Los Angeles this week, including the goods on Gossip Girl, Damages and Dirty Sexy Money.
Well it's the end of the road for the March book club, thanks to everyone for reading along! I'm really excited about April's book, The Life Before Her Eyes. I hope you can hunt down a copy for yourself this weekend and join in. And don't worry, I can confidently state the new editions of these books will never be selected.
Axl Rose, if you're listening, please finish up that that album so America can toast you with Dr. Pepper!
Can you guess which rock songs these lyrics belong to? Also, can you guess what TV show I'm recasting based on these lyrics? "What would we do, baby, without us? Sha-la-la-laaaa. . ."

Photo courtesy of CBS

PaleyFest: Mad Men and X-Files Close Out the Week

BuzzSugar — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:30:01 -0700

The Paley Festival has officially wrapped up its two-week stand in Los Angeles, closing out its run with panels featuring the creators of The X-Files and the cast and creative team behind Mad Men. While I'm sorry I couldn't be there for myself, at least there are video highlights to share!

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson didn't attend Wednesday night's X-Files panel, but that doesn't mean there wasn't scoop to be had about the upcoming movie. A new trailer premiered during the panel, but it's since been pulled down from YouTube (come on, Fox, please?). E! has interviews with producers Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz. The Futon Critic has a liveblog of the event, and The Hollywood Reporter has its own account. A couple of tidbits:

The movie doesn't have a title yet - or rather, Carter knows what he wants to call it, but whether that becomes the official title is still in Fox's hands.
The producers just kind of figured out the show's mythology as they went along. The movie, meanwhile, will be more "monster of the week," less aliens.
The issue of whether Scully's baby is normal "will not go unconsidered" in the movie.

For a video clip and some of the highlights from Mad Men, just read more.

Mad Men closed out the festival on Thursday, and The Futon Critic gamely produced yet another liveblog. The Hollywood Reporter, meanwhile, wrote that the panelists seemed giddy about their success. Even the show's creator seemed a bit taken aback by all the praise his series has received. Some highlights:

Try as I might, I can't get used to seeing Jon Hamm anything less than completely clean-shaven. He proudly said (as you can see in the video below) that his show's not a guilty pleasure; it's just a pleasure, period.
The biggest spoiler that show creator Matthew Weiner was willing to reveal about the second season: "It's still in the 60s." Heh.
Weiner also talked a lot about how some of the magic in the show lies not in revealing things but in intentionally not revealing them - whether secrets or cleavage.

Here are videos from the panels:

The X-Files:

Mad Men:

Photos and videos courtesy of The Paley Center

PaleyFest: Scoop from Damages and Dirty Sexy Money

BuzzSugar — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 08:30:16 -0700

I may be back in sunny San Francisco, but the Paley Festival is still going strong in LA. This week kicked off with panels for Damages and Dirty Sexy Money, with more to come from The X Files and Mad Men.

I was worried that neither the Damages nor the Dirty Sexy Money events would be very well-attended, because last week I got an e-mail from the Paley folks offering up free tickets to either panel. Sure enough, The Futon Critic reported that the crowd for Damages was "surprisingly thin." Who turns down a chance to chat with Glenn Close?

Still, it sounds like the Damages panel was well-received by those who were there - including TeamSugar's own Phasekitty, who wrote up a great rundown of the night's discussions and revelations. Among them:

Damages is the first legal show ever to air on FX, because the network had never before found one that fit its brand. That said, the creators said this is more a drama about the "social dynamic of power in the workplace" than a legal show; in 13 episodes from the first season, only part of one scene took place in the courtroom.
FX initially suggested Close for the lead role because of their good experience with The Shield. That got Ted Danson to pay attention, and he was looking for a different sort of project anyway. As you'll hear him say in the video clip below, he didn't want to do another half-hour comedy because he'd even ceased to amuse himself.
David's stalker, Lila, was always intended to be a red herring, never the actual killer.
The show has been renewed for two more seasons, and while the creators said they want to make it easy for new viewers to jump in, they also like the mystery format. The base of the show will always be the relationship between Patty and Ellen.

For some of the highlights from the Dirty Sexy Money panel and videos from both events, just read more.

Once again, the crowd was small for Dirty Sexy Money. I wish I could have been there for that one, as I've really enjoyed Peter Krause's return to TV. If I'm being honest, though, Donald Sutherland is my favorite part of the show, and he wasn't there, so I suppose I'll live.

Both The Futon Critic and TV Squad were there, though, so I'll leave most of the talking to them. Just a couple of things that jumped out to me:

Billy Baldwin didn't merely know about his character's relationship with Carmelita, his transsexual lover, before he took the role - it was a reason for him even taking the role in the first place.
Spoilers or teasers about the second season were hard to come by, but there were some hints that Dutch's murder would be solved in the upcoming season, and had the strike not happened it would have been solved in the first season.
The show is apparently incredibly expensive to produce. Hey, all that jewelry doesn't come free.

Here are video highlights from both panels:

Damages:

Dirty Sexy Money:

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PaleyFest: More of the Gossip Girl Gossip

BuzzSugar — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:31:58 -0700

Earlier today, I shared with you a few of the highlights from the Gossip Girl panel at PaleyFest. Well, that's not all the cast and creators had to say. Read on for some more funny bits and stories from how this group of ridiculously attractive people came together for the show:

With apologies to FabSugar, my fashion awards for the panel: Snazziest Blazer Award to Ed Westwick, Tallest Heels Award to Taylor Momsen, Best Emo Hair award to Chace Crawford, and Best "Oh, I Just Threw This On" Award to the casual-chic Lively.
Speaking of styling, Entertainment Weekly's Tim Stack, who moderated the panel, really could not stop complimenting Lively's hair, at one point calling it "the best head of hair in Hollywood." I know Molly would agree.
Speaking of Lively, executive producer Josh Schwartz said that when they started casting the series, they found a lot of fan sites for the books that mentioned her as a choice for Serena if the series were ever made into a movie or show, which convinced them to go meet her.
Penn Badgley, meanwhile, had done three other WB series before Gossip Girl and wasn't keen on doing another, but he'd worked with executive producer Stephanie Savage on The Mountain (which got scattered cheers from the crowd; Savage attributed the clapping to her mom and sister) and decided to give it a shot.
On what should happen with Rufus and Lily: "It's 2008," said Matthew Settle. "I think they should have a double date with the kids!" He then let loose with an extended ode to Rutherford: "I look at you and I feel warm . . . my wife can't see this, right?"

Lots more - including what Gossip Girl series author Cecily von Ziegesar first thought when she heard the folks from The OC were adapting her work - plus some video from the panel if you read more.

Von Ziegesar said she was "overwhelmingly happy" with the way Schwartz and Savage had adapted her books but admitted that her expectations were incredibly low. She said that, never having seen The OC, she imagined that the OC folks' version of Gossip Girl would have Serena as a beach volleyball player, Nate as a lifeguard, and Blair as "a teen mom by day and a stripper by night."
While the idea of making a series out of Gossip Girl would seem like a slam dunk, apparently it wasn't so easy: The material had been developed twice before, once as a movie and once as a pilot for Fox. Obviously, neither attempt was successful. The big difference with this adaptation, the producers said, was that Schwartz and Savage gave Serena more drive.
On filming in New York: Producers said it can be a pain to have crowds stopping to gawk at the shoots, and Kelly Rutherford said she gets nervous about paparazzi darting in front of cabs to get their shots. Lively and Leighton Meester seemed most annoyed about the photographers eating food from their craft service table.
Speaking of Rutherford, she's so Lily van der Woodsen, it's scary. I had a hard time remembering she wasn't in character.
Will Blair and Chuck ever reconnect romantically? Meester said there will probably always be some sort of tension between the two because in a way, they're perfect for each other. "He understands her like nobody else does," she said.
If the show goes on for years, Schwartz and Savage have a plan for continuing it without making everyone be 25-year-old high schoolers. "New York is more of the franchise of the school than high school is," he noted - and Savage pointed out that school is such a small part of the show, they don't even have a classroom set.

The Paley Center's official highlights are still to come, but you can watch almost the whole panel on YouTube. Here's a clip:

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PaleyFest: The Goods on Gossip Girl

BuzzSugar — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 06:30:11 -0700

Hey, Upper East Siders. BuzzSugar here, with all the dish from Saturday night's Gossip Girl panel at the Paley Festival in Los Angeles. The sold-out crowd got some hints about what's coming up when the show returns with five new episodes starting April 21 and some of the scoop straight from the set - including the truth about Blake Lively's Guitar Hero skills, the plot lines that Gossip Girl series creator Cecily von Ziegesar would like to see included in the show, and how the fictional Gossip Girl blogger got her voice.

The evening started with a clip of the "Angela + Jordan = total sex in his car!" scene from My So-Called Life, which was greeted with appreciative cheers from the crowd - which was split pretty evenly between the MSCL demographic and the current teenage set. If not for the strike, we would have then gotten to see a new episode of Gossip Girl, but because none had been completed, we got a package of highlights from the season instead - including a mini gag reel of screw-ups from the set. (You know how every show seems to have that one cast member who can't help but drop an f-bomb every time he flubs a line? That's Penn Badgley.) The whole cast slipped into the auditorium to watch after the lights went down, so there was a lot of whispering and clapping going on in a row just to my left.

After clips, the cast and creative team took the stage. All of the main cast attended, along with creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, author von Ziegesar, and two of the show's other producers; the only obvious missing stars were Connor Paolo (Eric van der Woodsen) and Nicole Fiscella and Nan Zhang, who play Blair's dress-alike sidekicks Isabel and Kati. (Zhang apparently headed back to college during the strike, a fact Josh Schwartz said he only learned when they got back on set). Lively seemed to get the most applause, but there were plenty of squeals for Ed Westwick and Badgley, too.

Of course, the juiciest part of the evening was getting hints about what we'll see come April, so for the scoop (and update: here's part two!), just read more.

The biggest thing we'll be seeing: more Bad Serena! A lot of that will be thanks to the arrival of Georgina Sparks (Michelle Trachtenberg), a key figure from Serena's past and someone Blair fears.
Teased Lively: "Maybe the fact that [Serena] slept with Nate isn't the real reason she left, dot dot dot . . . "
Also, Serena and Chuck are getting used to the idea of being siblings, Dan is going to get dirtied up a little, and Blair and Jenny are going to war. Jenny will still be the queen bee when we return, just "learning her power," Taylor Momsen said.
Serena and Eric's father is going to show up eventually, though nobody would say when. Also, the five episodes will be building up to a wedding, Schwartz said. Hmm, who's getting married - Lily and Bart Bass, perhaps?
We'll also be seeing a lot more Vanessa - and not just in the Serena and Dan story. She's going to be getting some plots of her own, possibly including a little something with Nate.
Speaking of Vanessa, finding Jessica Szohr to play her was something of a happy accident. Schwartz and Savage were having a tough time casting the role, but then Szohr turned up with some mutual friends at a barbecue at Schwartz's house. "I had to go home and IMDB her to make sure she was actually an actress," Savage said.
One of the other great casting stories was Leighton Meester's. She was blonde when she auditioned, which proved to be a sticking point for the CW. "The network was like, 'She's great, but she's blonde,' Schwartz said. "We were like, 'She can also be brunette!'" But asking an actress to dye her hair during pilot season is a stretch, so Meester tried wearing a brown wig, which didn't work out so well. Eventually, she did take the plunge and dye her hair.
Lively's requirements for signing on to a series: no having to be locked in a cage, no being brainwashed by an old lady, and no pet monkey. "I would love to be a part of the show," she said she told Schwartz, "but I can't act with a monkey." Thus, Chuck lost his pet monkey - a shame, according to von Ziegesar, who said the monkey just makes Chuck "gayer and gayer and gayer" in the books. Hmmm, could he be the guy coming out of the closet?
The moderator (Entertainment Weekly's Tim Stack) asked Lively if she's as good at Guitar Hero as she was when Serena kicked ass at a party earlier this season. "I'm actually much better," she replied, revealing that she goes to tournaments in Brooklyn, covered in fake tattoos. She takes this stuff seriously: Originally, she was supposed to lose Guitar Hero to Vanessa, but she pleaded with the writers: "Let her get the guy, make her more beautiful, make her more talented, make her better in every way - but don't take away Guitar Hero!"
She then revealed she can actually only play well on medium - though she can apparently spin the guitar around her neck.
How did they pick the voice of Gossip Girl? Kristen Bell declared herself for the role, Savage said. But everyone was vague about whether we'd ever see the blogger in the flesh.
Noting that all the parties on Schwartz/Savage shows seem to end in fisticuffs and tears, Stack asked the two to explain what happened to them at parties that so scarred them for life. Savage: "Every party I ever went to ended in fisticuffs and tears." Schwartz: "I was never at one."

Here are the rest of the goodies from the GG panel. xoxo . . .

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PaleyFest: More Goodies from the Buffy Reunion

BuzzSugar — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:30:08 -0700

Earlier today, I told you about some of the greatest moments from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reunion at the Paley Festival in Los Angeles. There were so many good moments (and a few awkward ones) that they couldn't fit in one post, so here are a few more of the highlights:

Please, everyone, do me a favor. If ever you get a chance to ask a question at a panel like this, don't make it "Could you all tell me your favorite movies and what's on your iPod?" That's how the Q&A started, and it definitely sucked some energy out of the room. The panel played along gamely (Sarah Michelle Gellar's favorite: South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut), but at some point, moderator Matt Roush interrupted to ask if we could please have a question that was actually about Buffy.
One of the most awkward moments came when a fan asked Amber Benson to explain why she'd decided to leave the show. She initially tried getting out of it with a joke ("I was having sex with Marlon Brando . . . "), then fumbled around and blamed it on scheduling and availability, and finally turned it around to say that the important thing was the Tara and Willow relationship.
Speaking of which, the only time Joss Whedon ever threatened to quit was when his bosses asked him if he could maybe not show the Tara/Willow kiss.
Also, Whedon apparently liked to take people for walks and tell them they were fired, and then say "ha, just kidding!"

Some more - including the chances of a Buffy movie or Broadway show - plus a video clip from the panel if you read more.

Emma Caulfield hd one of the night's funniest moments when she told the story of a fan asking her what she was thinking about during Anya's monologue from "The Body." She said she'd told the fan the truth - that she was really hungry and had to pee - and then realized she'd pulled an Anya, talking without thinking.
Whedon said he's spent time daydreaming about taking a Buffy musical - not "Once More, With Feeling" but a different Buffy musical story - to Broadway, but at the moment those are just dreams. When asked for a show of hands for who would join him, almost everyone on stage volunteered - except Gellar, who emphatically shook her head no.
Gellar admitted that season six, which made Buffy less kick-ass and more mopey, was hard for her because she'd always looked up to her character and wanted her to be strong. Whedon said he once said to Marti Noxon, "Buffy's been gone for too long," and they started to pull her out of the rabbit hole.
In terms of a movie someday, Whedon didn't dismiss the possibility but said the stars would all have to align for the right people to be available for the right project. That said, he said working with the cast again would be "really cool."
Random fun fact: Noxon's brother is the music supervisor of Weeds and is married to that show's creator, Jenji Kohan. Fun family!
Whedon was actually a little late to the panel because he was filming his Web musical, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Gellar is getting ready to start filming the indie film Veronika Decides to Die, James Marsters is filming Dragonball and is still appearing on Smallville and Torchwood, and Benson is writing a series of young-adult fantasy novels.

Here are some of the goodies in video form:

PaleyFest: The Buffy Cast Reunites!

BuzzSugar — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:30:14 -0700

Buffy, Tara, Spike, and Xander, together again! A large part of the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer took the stage Thursday night at the PaleyFest in Los Angeles, revealing some secrets from their eight years of working on the series and taking questions from appreciative fans who often credited Buffy with shaping their whole lives.

And when I say appreciative, there really should be a capital A. This crowd of more than 800 cheered at everything - from the opening clip of one of Sarah Michelle Gellar's 1994 scenes on All My Children to the introduction of the panel's moderator. (In terms of cast members, James Marsters seemed to get the most applause, but show creator Joss Whedon was the only person to get a standing ovation.)

In attendance: Whedon, writer/producers Marti Noxon and David Greenwalt, and cast members Gellar, Marsters, Amber Benson (Tara), Nicholas Brendon (Xander), Emma Caulfield (Anya), Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia), Seth Green (Oz), and Michelle Trachtenberg (Dawn). Both Eliza Dushku and Alyson Hannigan were listed in the program, but neither showed - bummer. But the others kept the conversation lively - especially Green, who had a one-liner for everything, for better or worse.

The night really got going with a screening of the musical episode "Once More with Feeling" (not a sing-along, sadly). The episode proved to be a perfect starting point for talking about what's made Buffy so enduring, so for the scoop (update: here's part two of my report), just read more.

Noxon introduced the episode screening by saying that, frankly, the writers had some doubts about whether Whedon could actually pull off a musical: "We were - not nervous, we just hadn't ever seen him write a song before," she explained. For his part, Whedon said he was actually more terrified to put together "Hush," the mostly silent episode.
One theme that kept coming up was the way Buffy consistently pushed the envelope, whether by shifting the formats of its episodes, killing off beloved characters, or even taking Buffy herself into a deep, dark hole during the sixth season. Gellar cited the opening shot of "The Body," which was done in one long take, as another example. "We were constantly doing things that had never been done," she said. "We were constantly doing things that challenged both the audience and ourselves.
This is probably not news to anyone who's ever been to a Buffy event, but Nicholas Brendan talks so much like Xander, it's creepy.
Gellar on the initial reaction to getting the role of Buffy: "All of my friends felt sorry for me because I'm on a midseason replacement on a network nobody had heard of, based on a movie that wasn't all that."
Marsters had a great description of what went into the writing of Buffy, saying the writers took the worst things that happened to them in high school and "put fangs on it." Whedon said he and Greenwalt used to call Gellar "Jimmy Stewart" because she picked up his baton of having to deal with tremendous pain on film.
One of the biggest bursts of applause in the entire evening was when the moderator (TV Guide's Matt Roush) mentioned that the Spike/Buffy sex scene had recently been named the steamiest TV scene of all time by his magazine. Gellar noted that the way Buffy shows up on those lists, and the way the fan community has reacted to the show over the years, means way more to her than any Emmys the show could have won.
Gellar said she had no idea until five minutes before the panel took the stage that Buffy had gotten it on with slayer Satsu in the latest comic book. Trachtenberg also had no idea what had happened to Dawn in the comic series. "If these guys were real nerds," Whedon said, "we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Click here for more, including video highlights.

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PaleyFest: Scoop from Chuck, Friday Night Lights

BuzzSugar — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:30:54 -0700

I'm so excited to get down to the Paley Festival tonight, where the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer will be reuniting! While the Buffy panel was one of the hottest tickets in town, there's been lots of other great TV action all week, including panels with the stars of Chuck and Friday Night Lights.

The coolest revelation from the Chuck panel was that Chuck was originally supposed to have a girlfriend when the season started; then his relationship with Sarah would have been more like a love triangle right from the get-go. But the writers ultimately realized that having Chuck juggle two girls and be a spy might be a bit much, so Kayla was cut. You can watch a video clip of Josh Schwartz talking about saying farewell to the character after the jump. The Chuck writers are back at work now, and the show will start filming again in May. Yay!

Meanwhile, news about whether FNL will be renewed should be coming in a couple of weeks, but it certainly sounds like the cast and writers were feeling hopeful at Paley. And if (or when) the show comes back, the writers have a few things on their minds: making football a bigger part of the story again and possibly introducing new characters so the supposed seniors don't stay in high school forever. And if the show returns, we'll get to see Smash's transition to college football, which was a particularly moving storyline this season.

To watch that Chuck clip, as well as some video from the FNL panel, just read more.
Chuck:

FNL:

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PaleyFest: Any Questions for Your Favorite Stars?

BuzzSugar — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:30:49 -0700

The 2008 Paley Festival, a big ol' convention for TV stars, writers, and fans, kicked off over the weekend in Los Angeles. This year's 25th annual festival includes panels for several Buzz-approved shows -Pushing Daisies, Chuck, and Friday Night Lights, among many others - and I'm pleased to report that I'll be heading down to LA for two of them: Thursday night's Buffy the Vampire Slayer reunion and Saturday's gab-fest with the cast of Gossip Girl.

If you've got questions for those folks, feel free to leave them in the comments - or, better yet, pass them on yourselves! The festival organizers are taking questions from fans for the upcoming events. Awesomely, they're also posting video highlights and, eventually, photos from each panel - and the Gossip Girl panel will be streamed live in full on Saturday.

The festival really got started over the weekend with the Pushing Daisies panel; check out reports from TV Guide and fan site ThePiemaker for what went down. And to watch a video with Chi McBride demonstrating his very Emerson Cod-esque wit, just read more.

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Buffy Cast to Reunite For Festival

BuzzSugar — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 07:30:34 -0800

From the results of the latest recast, it's clear we've got some Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans around here. So here's some news just for you: The cast of the show will be reuniting in March for the Paley Festival in Los Angeles. The festival features panel discussions with the cast, writers, and producers of various television shows, and the Buffy reunion is set to be one of the highlights of this year's event.

There's no word yet on which specific cast members will be attending; I'll keep an eye out for that when the full Paley schedule comes out Feb. 4. But for the moment, let's speculate: Which cast members would need to show up for you to feel the Buffy reunion was complete?

This year's Paley Festival, which will be held from March 14 to 27, sounds fantastic all around. Here are some of the other events already lined up:

Panel discussions for Mad Men, Pushing Daisies, Gossip Girl, Chuck, Dirty Sexy Money, and Dancing with the Stars.
An evening with Judd Apatow.
A tribute to Elvis' 1968 comeback special with Priscilla Presley.

I love that so many of my favorite shows will be represented this year. Live in LA or think Buffy's a good reason to go? Check out this site for more information.