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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 5, 1999)
WB network takes a walk on the adult side with ‘Angel’ By Chelsea Carter The Associated Press LOS ANGELES — The network known for making teen angst a television commodity with series like “Felicity” and “Dawson’s Creek” is taking a walk on the adult side. Well, sort of. Spinning off the WB’s oldest character — a 244-year-old vam pire in the form of a 29-year-old hunk — on its cult hit “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the network is taking a chance on a decidedly dark, more adult show in “An gel,” which follows its predeces sor at 9 p.m. EDT Tuesday. “There’s another story to be told.... It’s the big, bad world of being twentysomething, finding a career, finding romance,” said show creator Joss Whedon, who started the now-widespread teen television craze three years ago with “Buffy.” But while nearly all the new shows star always-good-looking youngsters who live in too-good to-be-true apartments for people just starting out in New York City (Hint: ABC’s “Wasteland” and WB’s “Jack and Jill”), the vampire story is set in the underbelly of Los Angeles. Yes, its lead characters are still beautiful people who wear great clothes, but the apartments are awful. Combining with wry one-lin ers, a fun cast of monster charac ters and a fast pace, “Angel” pro vides a television alternative for viewers under 30. Angel (David Boreanaz) is a vampire cursed with a conscience and pining for a woman he can never have — Bully. So he leaves the vampire slayer’s fictional town of Sunnydale and sets up shop in Los Angeles. There he meets Doyle (Glenn Quinn, who played the not-so bright son-in-law on “Roseanne), a disreputable spiritual guide with a face only a mother could love: a spiky countenance remi niscent of Pinhead in the horror film “Hellraiser.” They are joined by former Sun nydale resident Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), a snobby rich girl with a sharp tongue who provides a human balance to the other-world lead characters. Together, the three set about trying to save lost souls from monsters, vampires and other not-so-nice beings, all set to a pumping soundtrack typical of many WB shows. But make no mistake, this is not “Buffy, Part II.” The show’s debut episode distances itself from “Buffy” in the first few minutes. “Get involved. Look, high school’s over. You’ve got to make with the grown up talk now,” Doyle advises Angel. The language is saltier and the tone is darker, taking on poverty, domestic violence and murder in the first episode. “It allows us to separate our selves from ‘Buffy,’ but at the same time be continuous as far as the flavor of writing that Joss has,” Boreanaz said. “Even though it is an extension.... it’s go ing to add something new and unique and flavorful for those people who may not necessarily have jelled with Buffy and may see something different in Angel that they understand.” With 13 episodes ordered and another nine pending, the weight of the show is falling on the shoulders of 29-year-old Bore anaz, a fairly new arrival to the scene with a storybook career — discovered one day walking his dog and cast the next day on “Buffy.” Interviewed on the set recently, Boreanaz tried to put the pressure of being the leading man in context. “There are days when it can be come very stressful, but you breathe out the moment and you use it,” he said. “You go into the belly of fear rather than shy away from it, which is hard some times.... When I go home at night I don’t think about the show as just Angel. I think about it as an en semble cast.” But he also knows what’s at stake. After a week of 16-hour workdays, he was the only one of the three cast members willing to tackle an interview. Boreanaz credits his can-do atti tude in part to his father, a weath erman at a Philadelphia news sta tion. “He keeps giving me pointers today — just smile and continue to be as happy as you can possibly be. He told me to enjoy what I do,” Boreanaz said. Talk radio show strives to offer insight on books, authors By Minerva Canto The Associated Press SANTA MONICA, Calif. — The two men could be best friends sitting in a college cafe, chatting about the merits of a book and laughing as they talk of life, love and writing. Except that these are not typi cal guys and their talk is any thing but the usual banter. Novelist Salman Rushdie and host Michael Silverblatt sit across from one another at a small table in KCRW-FM’s basement offices at Santa Monica College. They wait for their cue as the show’s theme song plays, “You are a hu man animal. You are a very spe cial breed, for you are the only animal who can think, who can reason, who can read!” Silverblatt nods to his guest and begins “Bookworm,” the na tion’s only syndicated literary ra dio show, broadcast to nearly half a million listeners at more than 40 radio stations nation wide. The half-hour show features interviews with a roster of au thors, from literary icon Norman Mailer to Pulitzer-prize winning author Toni Morrison to ac claimed contemporary fiction writer Lorrie Moore. For more than 10 years, “Book worm” has weathered the uncer tainties that come with the finan cial instability of public radio. And it has thrived in Los Ange les, a town that has long battled a lowly reputation for its arts and culture. “To be honest with you, the first time we presented the show to a station in New York, they were like, ‘A literary show from Los Angeles? Are you kidding?’” said Silverblatt, 46, a graduate of State University of New York in Buffalo. The secret to the show’s en durance is providing literary in sight that few other radio shows can offer. “I think most of us who do the book tour circuit look forward to coming on Michael’s show be cause he asks thought-provoking questions,” Rushdie said. Silverblatt prepares for each show by reading not only the book he plans to discuss, but the author’s entire works. The daunt ing research sometimes calls for reading more than a dozen books in a week, but allows Silverblatt to lead an incisive discussion rare in a media world dominated by sound bites. “There really isn’t anyone like Michael. He’s just completely im mersed in literature and so knowledgeable that he really doesn’t have any competition,” said Pamela Henstell, West Coast promotion director for Alfred A. Knopf publishers. “I think he’s got a very casual interview style,” said Trey Giles, publicity director of the Los An geles bookstore Book Soup. “I think people become relaxed around Michael. They go to areas where they might otherwise not go-” Ruth Seymour, KCRW-FM’s general manager, discovered Sil verblatt, a former film industry publicist and freelance writer, at a dinner in Los Angeles for enter tainment industry figures. She re calls being so captivated by Sil verblatt’s talk about Russian poetry that she offered him his own radio show on the spot. “I think it’s his intelligence, coupled with his humor,” Sey mour said. “He is a literary per son, but he’s not an academic per son, so that makes him accessible and he’s genuinely charming.” get paid to surf the web www.AIIAdvantage.com
