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Jake and Anne Laugh It Up at Another Lovely Premiere

Allie Merriam — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 07:45:00 PST

Anne Hathaway picked a white Valentino dress last night to pose with Jake Gyllenhaal, in Burberry, at a screening of their Love and Other Drugs held in NYC's Directors Guild of America theater. The duo laughed as they posed with director Ed Zwick and were joined by other celebs like Peter Facinelli, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, and a newly short-haired LeeLee Sobieski. Anne and Jake were also together on Monday, when they joined forces for a Variety Q and A session. They've had whirlwind travel schedules over the past few weeks to promote the film in London and LA, and Anne's set to stay busy as she gears up to host Saturday Night Live this weekend. She was able to let off some steam last night, however, at the afterparty with her designer pal Valentino.

To see more photos of Jake and Anne at the premiere, just

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Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway Spread Their Love in LA

Allie Merriam — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 07:45:00 PDT

Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway got together last night to premiere their Love and Other Drugs during the AFI Film Festival in LA. The duo posed on the red carpet with director Ed Zwick, as well as alongside Hank Azaria and Michelle Monaghan. The good times carried over to the afterparty at the Roosevelt hotel, where Jake and Anne kept the hugging coming. Anne's boyfriend, Adam Shulman, wasn't photographed there with her, and likewise, Jake's rumored girlfriend, Taylor Swift, didn't attend as she had to promote her record-setting new album in Canada. Vogue cover girl Anne spent the evening in a tight white Antonio Berardi dress, proving that her clothes don't always fly off when Jake's around.

To see more Jake, just

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Images include: Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Ed Zwick, Michelle Monaghan, Luke Perry, Matthew Morrison, Hank Azaria, Molly Sims

Quarterlife Already Canned by NBC, Moving to Bravo

BuzzSugar — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:29:54 PST

Well, now we can put Quarterlife in the vault previously reserved for shows like Anchorwoman and Emily's Reasons Why Not. After just a single episode, NBC has yanked Quarterlife from the schedule after its premiere got the network its lowest ratings for a 10 p.m. time slot in 17 years. But Quarterlife apparently has at least three lives: It will get to show its remaining five episodes on Bravo.

We'll never know whether the premiere got such poor ratings was because the show, from My So-Called Life creators Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, had already aired on multiple online platforms and MTV, had a boatload of obnoxious and false-sounding technology references, just plain wasn't that compelling, or some combination of the above. Herskovitz, for his part, said he knew it was a failure the second he saw it on NBC, which seems to me like he's trying to duck the blame, but I do tend to give the guy who brought me Angela Chase a little slack. (He then issued a statement saying he was still trying to find the show a home on cable, and within hours, Bravo had picked it up.)

I've seen a later episode of Quaterlife and, while it was much better than the premiere, I'm not sure it was enough to keep people watching. But at this point, I'm curious to know how the show fares on Bravo – even though the backstory has now become more compelling than the show itself.

Meanwhile, at least one pretty excellent parody of the show, 2/8life, has sprung up online. The episodes I've watched are spot-on - and it's made better by using the original MSCL character names - so to check out the first installment, just

Photos courtesy of NBC

Marshall Herskovitz and Bitsie Tulloch Talk Quarterlife

BuzzSugar — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:35:09 PST

Quarterlife, the drama about a 20-something magazine editor who seeks freedom by documenting her life online, came together through a series of unlikely coincidences. The show - which is from Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, the team behind My So-Called Life- started its life as a rejected pilot for ABC. Years after that attempt, it surfaced online with a new focus, a new lead character (Dylan) and actress (Bitsie Tulloch, whom Herskovitz met at random in jury duty), and a new social network to support it. And tonight, the series starts its new life on NBC.

Quarterlife - which debuts at 9 p.m. before moving to its regular Sunday time slot - will air like a traditional hour-long drama. But there's little else traditional about the show. NBC doesn't have control of the show; instead, it's being hailed as a new model for TV, one where the producers fully own their product. (Fun fact: Devon Gummersall, aka Brian Krakow, is one of the show's writers.)

The move to NBC was something Herskovitz "had mixed feelings about," as he said in a recent call with reporters - and I'm not sure about it, either. I found parts of the first episode insufferable; from the way Dylan acts much of the time, it's hard to believe Herskovitz and Zwick have ever seen a blog. But there's still something comforting in the rhythms of their language and the earnestness of their characters, and I know I'll be hooked for the whole six-episode run, no matter how much it occasionally makes me want to hurl pillows at my TV.

Herskovitz and Tulloch recently chatted with reporters about the series, and here are some of the highlights of the chat.

On being worried about the stereotypes of "an Internet series":
Bitsie Tulloch: When Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick say 'Will you play the lead in my series?' it doesn’t matter what platform they’re doing it on. You don’t say no. . . . The other reason I really wasn’t nervous about it is that I, myself, tend to watch TV shows that I have missed on TV on my laptop. So if I was doing it, and I have friends who do it all the time, then I had no misgivings about thinking that it would be successful at all."

Lots more from Tulloch and Herskovitz, so

On how blogging has affected a generation:
Bitsie Tulloch: "First of all, we seem to really define ourselves by our creativity in a way that other generations maybe didn’t - not because they couldn’t, but because they didn’t have access to this incredible, far-reaching platform. . . . It’s the first generation that grew up on the Internet, when you think about it. I mean, I was a freshman in high school when I had my first email account. . . . There’s this strange, sort of ambiguous thing that goes on a lot with the blogs, you know, particularly with my character, where Dylan is sort of simultaneously inviting people in while at the same time keeping them at a distance because at the end of the day, she’s still talking to a computer screen. She’s not talking to a living, breathing human being."
On what makes Quarterlife different from a normal series:
Marshall Herskovitz: "We love television. The problem we’ve had with television is that the business has changed so much and that the networks exert too much control over the producers. And the fact that we’re coming to NBC with complete creative control of our product and that we are delivering them completed episodes - they haven’t even seen the scripts. They don’t even know what the stories are about until they get the episodes. That’s never happened literally in the history of television."

On how the show changed from the original, rejected ABC pilot:
Marshall Herskovitz: "Honestly, we really picked the wrong characters to write about for the ABC pilot. We talked about seven people who all lived in a house together who were all lost and confused and didn’t know what to do with their lives. And I think we missed something because . . . if you talk about people in their 20s today, one thing you do see is that a lot of these people do know what they want to do and are very passionate about it. . . . There are a lot of different aspects of this generation that we kind of missed in that pilot. And the sum total was that even though I loved the cast and it had a nice feel to it, you didn’t have any emotion at the end of it. And so we realized that we had to start all over again and that’s when this character, Dylan, sort of just appeared full-blown in my mind one day - this sort of semi-difficult, amazing, intelligent, slightly feral, vulnerable, contradictory person."
On becoming the self-conscious, insecure Dylan:
Bitsie Tulloch: "Initially Marshall was sort of like, 'I don’t know. You might be too cute to play Dylan. She’s supposed to sort of fade into the background.' And my attitude was, you know, I can do this. I desperately want to give this character integrity but it did come down to really layering it, down to coming up with a walk, a very childish, kind of almost boyish walk for Dylan based on - you know, I had seen the movie French Kiss. And I always remembered that there was a scene where Kevin Klein said to Meg Ryan, 'You know, you walk like a little girl.' And she said, 'No I don't,' and of course saunters off childishly. I always remembered that and I tried to sort of do something similar with Dylan. She’s very fidgety, and the walk is just kind of all over the place. And she can't sit still."

Soapbox: Is Quarterlife a Synonym for Selling Out?

BuzzSugar — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 07:15:00 PST

For most of my TV-watching life, I've defined myself as a fan of Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the producing team behind Relativity, Once and Again, and, of course, My So-Called Life. I remember reading about their latest project, Quarterlife, several years ago, back when it was still an ABC pilot awkwardly titled 1/4life. I was bummed when it didn't make the network's schedule, and I was happy to hear the show was finally surfacing online.

So the news that NBC has picked up Quarterlife should thrill me. Instead, I'm confused and a little annoyed.

My problems have little to do with Quarterlife itself. I don't think the show is great - some of the stilted dialogue makes it clear that the show is written by folks who don't spend much time around twentysomethings - but it's good enough to keep me watching. What bugs me is Herskovitz and Zwick's attitude about the whole thing: promoting themselves as revolutionary and anti-TV, then running back as soon as TV called. There's more to my thinking - including a potentially good side to this arrangement - so just

I believed Herskovitz's recent Los Angeles Times op-ed, where he wrote that television was a poisoned environment that stifled all creativity. I was excited to see how two respected producers could shake things up by working outside the system. And then, the system beckoned, and they fell into its arms. The most cynical part of me thinks it seems like suspiciously convenient timing, what with the writers' strike knocking so much other programming and limiting the networks' store of original, quality series.

But there's another side, though it's harder for me to believe it right now. It's the one Herskovitz pointed out recently: They're still doing something unprecedented. NBC shouldn't have anything to do with editing Quarterlife; the network is supposedly buying it to air as-is, leaving Herskovitz and Zwick - who are continuing to work as producers during the strike - in complete creative control.

Really? I guess we'll see when the TV version of Quarterlife starts to air, which could be as soon as this spring if the strike continues. Maybe this really will be a new era where shows stay in the hands of the people who make them. Or maybe I'll look back and think these two producers just sold out.

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TV Today: Quarterlife

BuzzSugar — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:30:00 PST

Quarterlife, the Web series from My So-Called Life producers Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick that premieres on MySpace TV today, is being hailed as the series that could help bring Web-only programming into its own. The show was originally written as a pilot for ABC, but when the network turned it down, they decided to take it to the Web - while sticking as close to network-caliber production as possible.

In interviews, the two have sounded almost evangelistic about their choice to leave traditional TV for the Internet; Herskovitz even wrote an op-ed for the LA Times about how the current television environment is poisonous to creativity. So I guess there's a little irony in the recent stories that the show could end up on TV after all, with NBC reportedly looking to air it as soon as February.

All of that, though, just makes me more curious to check out the show, about a 20-something video blogger whose penchant for putting her life online drives a wedge between her and her friends. As I noted when I first watched the trailer, I'm not sure if the sorts of quasi-deep lines that were so meaningful to me in My So-Called Life are only going to strike me as hollow and cheesy now that I'm older. But the episodes are just eight minutes long, so I figure I can give a few of them a try. To watch the trailer for Quarterlife, just

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"MSCL" Producers Go Online with New Series

BuzzSugar — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 14:27:56 PDT

What if Angela Chase were a 20-something video blogger? She might look a lot like Dylan, the main character of "Quarterlife," a new online TV series from "My So-Called Life" producers Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick that focuses on the trials and tribulations of the quarterlife crisis generation. "A sad truth about my generation is that we were all geniuses in high school," Dylan says in one voiceover, "but apparently the people who deal with us never got our transcripts."

"Quarterlife," which consists of 36 eight-minute episodes that will premiere Nov. 11 on MySpace, has an interesting history. It was produced three years ago as a pilot for ABC, but the network passed on the show. The producers ultimately decided to put the show online, and they're also launching a social networking site for creative 20-somethings.

Twentysomethings are the one age group we haven't really seen Herskovitz and Zwick take on, not counting the short-lived "Relativity," and as a 20-something myself, I want to see how well they reflect the hopes and neuroses of my friends and me. But I'm also nervous that they're going to miss the mark, in the same way I worry that if I were to watch "My So-Called Life" now, it would sound more navel-gazey than insightful. I also think it's a little risky to launch a show about a video blogger on a social network full of them, especially when the trailer includes the angsty line "Why do we blog? We blog to exist."

Nonetheless, Nov. 11 is now marked on my calendar. To check out the trailer and let me know what you think, just

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