Last laugh for 'Friends' as production ends on the highly rated TV show
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Friends had the last laugh Friday.
The final episode of the hit NBC series, which ends its 10-year run in May, was being filmed at the Warner Bros. studio Friday night.
Series stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox Arquette, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer were to trade their last quips and inevitable hugs around midnight.
Friends tended toward long production days and, with emotions running high and an extended, hourlong finale to film, a quick finish was unlikely on Stage 24, the sitcom's longtime home.
The mood this week has been "deeply emotional, very sad," Peter Roth, president of Warner Bros. Television, said Friday. "But beyond the sadness, I think there is an enormous sense of accomplishment."
The cast, which shared real-life friendships as well as highly productive salary negotiations, talked with reporters last week about the series' end.
"We're like very delicate china right now," said Aniston, who plays single mom Rachel. "And we're speeding towards a brick wall, inevitable pain."
Said Kudrow: "Looking back on all the fun ... is not going to help me leave. I mean, that's exactly what I can't be thinking about because that's the saddest part for me."
The actors have the chance to drown their sorrows at a wrap party Saturday, being held at a secret location in the Los Angeles area.
Friday's studio audience was limited to "a very special, invited guest list," Roth said. Measures were taken to safeguard plot leaks, according to the show's producers.
"There are elements that the audience will not be seeing that we'll be shooting before the audience comes in," series creator and executive producer Marta Kauffman said last week. "And then you just keep your fingers crossed that everybody lives up to what they say that they will."
However the May 6 finale plays out, will Friends fans be satisfied?
"As one of the show's biggest fans, I am enormously satisfied with it. I was enormously satisfied with the script, and I certainly hope fans will be satisfied as well," Roth said.
The top-rated comedy for the last six seasons, Friends is going out in style. Thirty-second ads for the show are reportedly fetching $2 million US, close to Super Bowl prices, according to Horizon Media, an ad buying firm.
In its 10 years, Friends received six nominations for best comedy series and won the award once, in 2002. Joey, a spinoff starring LeBlanc, is set to debut next season on NBC.
TV's Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan, Dies at 76
BOSTON (Reuters) - Bob Keeshan, who enchanted millions of American children as television's grandfatherly Captain Kangaroo, died on Friday in Vermont after a long illness, his family said. He was 76.
The easy-going television personality and his posse of sidekicks, including Mr. Green Jeans and Bunny Rabbit, neatly blended entertainment and education on the "Captain Kangaroo" show, which first aired on CBS in October, 1955.
As the mustachioed host -- whose pouch-like jacket pockets gave the character his marsupial name -- Keeshan captured the hearts and minds of everyone from baby boomers to Generation Xers during more than three decades on the air.
"Our father, grandfather and friend was as passionate for his family as he was for America's children," his family said in a statement. "He was largely a private man living an often public life as an advocate for all that our nation's children deserve."
A Marine during World War II, Keeshan began his career working as a page at NBC.
Things began to take off when he joined "The Howdy Doody Show" and created the character Clarabell the Clown, who communicated by honking horns and squirting a seltzer bottle, usually at host Buffalo Bob Smith.
Years later, after he had gone his own way as Captain Kangaroo -- a more sedate, nurturing character -- he credited Smith's influence on his creative and professional life.
"One of the reasons that Captain Kangaroo was such a success is that it ran so smoothly, and that happened because I ran that show with all the talents that Bob Smith taught me," Keeshan wrote.
"He is my father in the business," he said. "I put what he taught me to work on Captain Kangaroo and we ran for thirty years."
Although children loved the program, CBS eventually jettisoned "Captain Kangaroo" to make room for a morning news program with the hopes of challenging NBC's "The Today Show."
Keeshan's show migrated to public television, where it remained on the air until 1993.
CBS Chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves called Keeshan "a true pioneer in children's television whose legacy goes unmatched," while Bozo the Clown -- whose real name is Larry Harmon -- mourned his passing, calling it "a big loss to generations of American kids."
It was the second such loss in less than a year, following the death last February of Fred Rogers.
In their later years, both men bemoaned the state of children's entertainment.
In a 1999 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Keeshan expressed frustration with the lack of creativity in children's television -- something he blamed on corporate bean-counters -- and increasingly violent video games.
"When you play some of these games, the only way to win is to be skilled at violence. If you want to be conciliatory or to mediate, you're going to lose," he said. "You take a game like Mortal Kombat, the conditioning of violence involved, it's sickening."
Famed German Photographer Killed in L.A. Car Crash
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - German-born photographer Helmut Newton, whose stark, often sadomasochistic portraits of nude women in chains and bonds won him acclaim and revulsion, was killed in a car accident in Hollywood on Friday, police said.
Newton, 83, was pulling out of a parking lot at the Chateau Marmont Hotel just off Sunset Boulevard at about noon when he lost control of the Cadillac he was driving and crashed into a wall, Los Angeles Police Department officer April Harding said.
The car sustained major damage, and Newton died of his injuries a short time later at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, she said, adding the accident remained under investigation. No one else was reported hurt in the wreck.
The accident brought to an abrupt end a celebrated photography career spanning eight decades.
Born in Berlin in 1920 to Jewish parents, Newton was apprenticed to a society photographer in 1936 and fled Germany two years later for Singapore, then settled in Australia, where he served in the army and worked as a fashion photographer before returning to Europe in 1957. After making his home in Paris for many years, he moved to Monte Carlo in 1980.
Admittedly color blind, he once joked that his difficulty distinguishing yellow from green and green from blue was "why I take very good color pictures."
But it was the often shocking, coldly stylistic nature of his images, printed in Vogue and other fashion magazines, for which Newton was renowned.
His specialty was sharply focused female nudes, often Amazonian women with hints of sexual deviancy, danger and fetishism. He photographed women wearing dog collars, chains and even saddles.
In one notorious shot that outraged Italian jeweler Bulgari, he photographed their diamonds and sapphires on the wrists of a model engaged in dismembering a chicken.
Men in his photos typically appeared in servile roles, as waiters, chauffeurs or mere onlookers.
His work outraged many and feminists protested one of his exhibits by throwing paint on his photos.
Grealis, 74, ran RPM, sired Junos
Walter Grealis, long-time supporter of the Canadian music industry, founder of the trade publication RPM and one of the inspirations behind the Juno Awards, died Tuesday.
Mr. Grealis had been diagnosed with lung cancer which later spread to his liver, said a close friend, broadcaster Dave Marsden. He was 74.
Born in Toronto on Feb. 18, 1929, the former policeman entered the recording industry in 1960 and soon became the Ontario promotion manager for London Records before establishing RPM magazine. The publication promoted Canadian singers and musicians for 37 years before folding in November, 2000.
In 1964, RPM initiated the Gold Leaf Awards, which evolved into the Junos. In 1975 it also established the Big Country Awards along with the Canadian Academy for Country Music Advancement.
Grealis received a people's award at the 1976 Junos and had a Juno for industry figures named after him. In 1993 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
BENNIFER'S GONE BUST
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have officially called it quits.
"I am confirming the reports that Jennifer Lopez has ended her engagement to Ben Affleck. At this difficult time, we ask that you respect her privacy," said a statement from her rep.
According to Us Weekly, Lopez broke off their engagement January 20 but the decision to split was allegedly mutual.
Dennis Miller Courts Viewers to CNBC Show
LOS ANGELES - Dennis Miller will do almost anything to get people to tune into his new CNBC show.
Including hiring a chimpanzee.
And he's not kidding.
Miller said when he was a kid he used to watch Dave Garroway on the "Today" show and he had J. Fred Muggs, the chimp, with him.
So Miller thought if he ever had his own news show, he'd have a chimp on it, too. "Just to see him scamper through the foreground of a shot (makes me) laugh out loud," he told reporters.
"If I was watching at home and I was doing an interview, (and) in the back you saw a chimp swinging from a light standard; I don't know about you, but I would call my wife and say, 'Honey, they've got a monkey on this show!'"
Miller said people who watch his new show will realize he's still the same guy from "Saturday Night Live," although the hair's different.
"My boys seem to watch 'Comedy Central' now, my sons," he said. "And I see the old me on 'Saturday Night Live.' When I get pass the Billy Ray Cyrus mullet that I'm wearing, I notice one thing: That my humor hasn't seemed to have changed since I first started there. I don't see where I have this wide range that I can change what I do. My monkey trick is my monkey trick."
Miller, who was in ABC's "Monday Night Football" booth as an announcer for two seasons, said often times the people who don't agree with him will watch him and that adds to the audience.
"I can't tell you how many people would watch football and come up to me and tell me they dislike me, it was about equal to the amount who liked me," he said of his 2000-02 stint. "Oh, I see, they kind of like disliking you. Because it defines their parameters. Don't you watch somebody at home who bugs you once in a while? And you say, 'Why am I watching him?' Because they bug you and it makes you feel superior."
Miller is fine knowing his style is an acquired taste, but there is little doubt as to his popularity. His HBO weekly series "Dennis Miller Live" won five Emmy Awards and three Writers Guild Awards.
"The way I do it, everything I've ever done, there's 50 percent of the country (that) hates me and 50 percent likes me," he said. "When I was younger I used to rail against that. I wanted more to like me. Then I got older, (and) there's a real career to be made keeping it within one or two points of 50-50."
The "Dennis Miller" show debuts Monday.
Dancer-Actress Ann Miller Dies at Age 81
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Ann Miller, the whirlwind Hollywood hoofer and comic actress who co-starred with such dancing greats as Fred Astaire in "Easter Parade," Gene Kelly in "On the Town" and Bob Fosse in "Kiss Me Kate," died on Thursday at age 81, a spokeswoman said.
Miller, whose last screen performance was her featured role as the landlady Catherine "Coco" Lenoix in David Lynch's bizarre 2001 mystery "Mulholland Dr.," died of lung cancer at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, her longtime publicist Esme Chandlee said.
"She was a much better actress than people gave her credit for because she was always singing and dancing," Chandlee told Reuters.
While never quite reaching the lofty star status of contemporaries like Ginger Rogers or Cyd Charisse, the leggy, raven-haired Miller established herself as a second lead in a string of memorable Hollywood musicals during the 1930s, '40s and '50s.
Her film career faded by 1956, but she continued to perform in nightclubs, on television and on stage into the 1990s. In 1969, she became one of the stars to succeed Angela Lansbury in the title role of "Mame" on Broadway, and returned to the Great White Way a decade later with Mickey Rooney in the musical "Sugar Babies."
Born and raised in Texas, Miller began dancing at age 5 as therapy for a childhood case of rickets, and signed her first Hollywood contract with RKO as a teenager in the 1930s.
Winning notice as Ginger Rogers' dancing partner in the 1937 film "Stage Door," she landed supporting roles in a string of movies through the remainder of the decade, including "Room Service" with the Marx Brothers in 1938.
In the early 1940s, she set a record for the fastest tap dancing, producing more than 500 tap sounds per minute. In 1948, she signed with MGM and danced with Fred Astaire in her first film for that studio, "Easter Parade."
She co-starred with Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Betty Garrett the following year in "On the Town" and played Lois Lane "Bianca" in the 1953 film version of "Kiss Me Kate," the musical adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew," co-starring Bob Fosse, Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel.
Miller remained active in show business well into her 70s, playing Carlotta Campion and belting out "I'm Still Here" in a 1998 Paper Mill Playhouse revival of "Follies." The following year, she took a part in the Lynch-directed TV pilot for "Mulholland Dr.," which was turned into a feature film and released in 2001 after ABC passed on the series.
Nintendo Gets Back in the Game
TOKYO (Reuters) - Only a few months ago, it looked like it was 'game over' for Nintendo.
Its mainstay GameCube console was losing ground toMicrosoft's Xbox and Sony, which had already ousted the company from the top slot in the home market, announced plans for a hand-held game machine to challenge Nintendo's Gameboy Advance.
Nintendo answered with a series of price cuts that rejuvenated GameCube demand and sent holiday sales up more than 70 percent from a year ago. It is also launching a new, hand-held game machine that is not as high-tech as what Sony and Microsoft plan to roll out but still breaks new ground in the gaming world.
Investors are starting to sit up and take notice.
"It's undergoing a bit of a reconciliation and if you stop forecasting worst case scenarios, it looks quite cheap," said Jeremy Hall, a fund manager at Henderson Global Investors.
The stock had a dismal 2003, tumbling to a six-year low in May and losing 10 percent in a year when the Tokyo stock market posted its biggest rise since 1999.
Analysts say that was an overreaction, especially given Nintendo's solid finances.
"If you consider that its balance sheet is ridiculously strong and there is so much in cash and assets...then I don't think the company's valuation has been formally recognized," KBC Securities analyst Hiroshi Kamide said.
It has 660 billion yen ($6.18 billion) in cash and carries a price-to-book (PB) ratio -- a favorite indicator for value investors -- of 1.6, compared with valuations of 7.9 for software competitor Electronic Arts and 1.8 for Sony.
If Nintendo's PB ratio rose to 1.83, the average level for all the companies included in Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 N225> , the stock would reach 11,880 yen. That is 15 percent above Thursday's closing price of 10,370, which was up four percent from the start of the year.
SIMPLE IS BEST
Sony and Microsoft are developing microprocessors to power the next generation of game machines, but Nintendo seems to be heading in the opposite direction -- so much so that one high-ranking Sony executive recently joked that Nintendo's next new product might be a deck of cards.
The comment was a dig at the company's humble origins as a maker of playing cards, but also a reference to Nintendo's notion that video games should be fun and simple, like toys.
With that in mind, Nintendo has unveiled details of a new, portable video game system, codenamed "Nintendo DS." The hand-held device, due for launch later this year, will feature two LCD screens, one above the other.
"It's going to be a challenge for Nintendo to compete with Sony and Microsoft technologically, so it behoves Nintendo to try different forms of gaming, such as the "DS" product," said Credit Suisse First Boston analyst Jay Defibaugh.
It already has one hand-held product in the Gameboy Advance, which controls almost the entire portable gaming market, but Nintendo says the new "DS" is unlike any existing game system.
The dual screens might allow the user to view the game from two angles at once, in racing games for example.
Nintendo's new product might still be overshadowed by Sony's PSP, an advanced hand-held gaming device set for launch by the end of the year.
Sony's PlayStation guru, Ken Kutaragi, has said the PSP will be the "Walkman for the 21st century" and it will play not only games, but music and movies as well.
PS2 RULES
The "simple is best" strategy has not helped Nintendo in the home console market, where the company is neck and neck with Microsoft for second place, way behind Sony, whose PlayStation 2 (PS2) controls roughly two-thirds of the market.
But Nintendo has seen a surge in sales in the United States after it slashed GameCube prices to less than $100, a 40-percent discount to PS2 and Xbox.
Nintendo officials now say it will "easily" meet a target for the year to March to sell six million GameCubes, a goal that looked very much in doubt when it sold less than a million units in the first six months of the business year.
"You can explain almost all of the recovery, the renaissance in GameCube interest with the price cut," said CSFB's Defibaugh.
One concern is Nintendo's exposure to currency fluctuations since it generates over 70 percent of its revenue overseas and foreign profits will be cut in yen terms by the yen's strength.
Goldman Sachs analyst Ken Uryu wrote in a note to clients Last week that if the dollar stayed around its current level of 106 yen until the end of March, there was a danger that Nintendo would suffer a currency-related loss of 65 billion yen.
Nintendo based its net profit forecast of 60 billion yen for the year to end-March -- which would be down 11 percent from last year -- on an assumed dollar rate of 114 yen.
Analysts say this does not affect the company's intrinsic value but the yen's strength will have an impact on earnings because Nintendo holds almost $5 billion of dollar-denominated assets that are revalued in yen terms every six months based on prevailing currency rates.