I think it was pretty lame how NBC handled the cancellation of Brooke Shields’ TV series, Lipstick Jungle. The cast, crew and fans were kept in the dark as the show’s fate sat in limbo for months. Without an official statement from NBC, Shields ended up breaking the news to all the fans late last month that the show was indeed canceled. It’s weird that NBC never came out and officially confirmed this, at least to my knowledge. I guess that goes to show how much of a priority the show was to NBC. It’s just as well since NBC is becoming more like the Titanic – with plummeting ratings and Jay Leno taking over the nightly 10pm slot.
So where will Shields go from here?
Nothing’s definite at the moment but she tells More Magazine (in the upcoming May issue) she’s resilient and she’ll make sure that she won’t be “a Hollywood casualty.”
Here’s a preview of the More Magazine cover story:
About Lipstick Jungle: “Shields and her costars ‘talk every day, saying ‘I hate this!,’ adding that she just sent NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman an e-mail asking, “What the fuck?”
About her mom: “She came from Newark, New Jersey, from the opposite side of the tracks. My dad came from the upper-crusty side of the tracks. The tracks weren’t even in his neighborhood. And my mother was always adamant about being perceived as having class, not having been born into it. It plagued her, and I think she didn’t want me to know the insecurity of being rejected. She didn’t want me to grow up as the daughter of someone from Newark. The flip side, though, is that she would constantly throw it out at me. She wanted me to not forget where I came from, and how she was a streetfighter.”
About feeling “complete detachment” from her looks: She recalls being in a jazz dance class and falling whenever she tried to turn. The teacher chided her that she never watched herself in the mirror. “She said, ‘Look at yourself,’ and I didn’t want to. What if I didn’t like what I saw? What if I didn’t look like I did in magazines?”
About how her pregnancy helped her face the mirror: “It was life, and my body had this purpose so far beyond just being there to look at, or tan or shave. Suddenly I realized how good it had been to me over the years, and what it had sustained. And I was in my thirties at the time.”
About the way she looks now: “I’m proud of my longevity more than anything else. There’s a lot to be said for endurance. I’m trying to find the beauty in the whole picture rather than the crow’s feet. Sure, I wish I had the face I had a decade ago, but I don’t. People say, ‘I love my wrinkles.’ I don’t love my wrinkles – come on! But when you see certain women that we knew when we were younger, like Angelica Huston and Isabella Rossellini, and they’ve grown older in the public eye, what you’re responding to is their whole life imprinted on them.”
About the roles she gets now: “For years, I’ve been the youngest person on the set, and it occurred to me recently that I wasn’t 26! I’d read a script and say, ‘Oh, that’s a great character, that’s something I’d love to do.’ And they’d say, ‘Um, no, we’re thinking of you for the mother.’ And then I’d say, ‘Oh, of course! Of course! I knew that.’”
About caring for her aging mother: “I’ve spent a huge portion of my life taking care of my mother anyway. As an only child of an alcoholic, you’re the caretaker; it just happens. Then you think you’re done with it, you have your family and priorities, and all of a sudden, I’m doing it a hundred percent all over again. There’s no martyrdom – it’s a pain in the ass but it has to be done. I just think, you’re only given what you supposedly can handle.”
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Read the Brooke Shields interview in its entirety in the May 2009 issue of More Magazine.
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(more…)
is what I consider a “beautiful mess”. Kaufman’s unique and ambitious story about a theater director’s midlife crisis is frustrating, confusing, touching, fascinating, maddening and thought-provoking, all at the same time. In his directorial debut, Kaufman presents an unconventional tale about the meaning of life through the eyes of a miserable man named Caden Cotard. Cotard takes on a monumental task of staging his life as it happens. Things get mind-bending as Cotard casts an actor to play himself who in turn hires an actor to play himself in the play within the play and so on. But the key is not to focus on the intricacies. The heart of the story is about loneliness, regret, death and of course, love.
Wednesday – Lost (ABC)
