stephanie
05-03-2007, 11:23 PM
:cuckoo:
By Tina Daunt, Times Staff Writer
May 4, 2007
SNIP:
all of this goofy article at...http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/celebrity/la-et-cause4may04,1,2006703.story?track=crosspromo&coll=la-headlines-entnews&ctrack=1&cset=true
- His run may ruin his reruns
Ronald Reagan became president even though he worked with chimps in B movies.
Arnold Schwarzenegger played a murderous robot, and that didn't keep him from becoming governor.
So can "Law & Order" actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) become the first presidential candidate with this credit? Thompson played a white supremacist, spewing anti-Semitic comments and fondling an autographed copy of "Mein Kampf" on a television drama 19 years ago.
His colleagues say that he was just an actor putting everything he had into playing the role of a charismatic racist, named Knox Pooley, in three episodes of CBS' hit show "Wiseguy" in 1988. "Do you call Tom Cruise a killer because he played one in a movie?" asked show creator and writer Stephen J. Cannell.
But in the age of YouTube, this performance could raise an intriguing political question: How does a performer eyeing a presidential run deal with a video history that can be downloaded, taken out of context, chopped into embarrassing pieces and then distributed endlessly though cyberspace? Some conservative political blogs are already considering the problem.
"Not only do politicians have to worry about getting comfortable with a crowd and saying something that might be caught on tape," said USC professor Leo Braudy, a pop culture expert, who has written extensively about film. "Now actors who have political aspirations will have to go through every single line of every part they played to make sure there's nothing they need to explain or apologize for."
The role is not something Thompson, who is in Orange County for a speech today, has talked a lot about in recent years. (His spokesman did not respond to several requests for comment this week.) In an appearance before the American Bakers Assn. in Phoenix last year, Thompson mentioned that he had a part on "Wiseguy," but he did not go into details. He summed up his acting career this way: "I played a CIA director, FBI director, an FBI agent, a senator, an admiral, a White House chief of staff, corporate execs and myself twice," Thompson said in the speech. "Some might say I was playing myself on each of these occasions. In each of these roles it seemed as if I had either known the guy I was playing or someone like him.
"So instead of studying admirals or generals, etc., I envisioned that I, Fred Thompson, had become an admiral or general and played myself…. The range was narrow, but I was establishing myself as the character actor for authority figures."
By Tina Daunt, Times Staff Writer
May 4, 2007
SNIP:
all of this goofy article at...http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/celebrity/la-et-cause4may04,1,2006703.story?track=crosspromo&coll=la-headlines-entnews&ctrack=1&cset=true
- His run may ruin his reruns
Ronald Reagan became president even though he worked with chimps in B movies.
Arnold Schwarzenegger played a murderous robot, and that didn't keep him from becoming governor.
So can "Law & Order" actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) become the first presidential candidate with this credit? Thompson played a white supremacist, spewing anti-Semitic comments and fondling an autographed copy of "Mein Kampf" on a television drama 19 years ago.
His colleagues say that he was just an actor putting everything he had into playing the role of a charismatic racist, named Knox Pooley, in three episodes of CBS' hit show "Wiseguy" in 1988. "Do you call Tom Cruise a killer because he played one in a movie?" asked show creator and writer Stephen J. Cannell.
But in the age of YouTube, this performance could raise an intriguing political question: How does a performer eyeing a presidential run deal with a video history that can be downloaded, taken out of context, chopped into embarrassing pieces and then distributed endlessly though cyberspace? Some conservative political blogs are already considering the problem.
"Not only do politicians have to worry about getting comfortable with a crowd and saying something that might be caught on tape," said USC professor Leo Braudy, a pop culture expert, who has written extensively about film. "Now actors who have political aspirations will have to go through every single line of every part they played to make sure there's nothing they need to explain or apologize for."
The role is not something Thompson, who is in Orange County for a speech today, has talked a lot about in recent years. (His spokesman did not respond to several requests for comment this week.) In an appearance before the American Bakers Assn. in Phoenix last year, Thompson mentioned that he had a part on "Wiseguy," but he did not go into details. He summed up his acting career this way: "I played a CIA director, FBI director, an FBI agent, a senator, an admiral, a White House chief of staff, corporate execs and myself twice," Thompson said in the speech. "Some might say I was playing myself on each of these occasions. In each of these roles it seemed as if I had either known the guy I was playing or someone like him.
"So instead of studying admirals or generals, etc., I envisioned that I, Fred Thompson, had become an admiral or general and played myself…. The range was narrow, but I was establishing myself as the character actor for authority figures."