Meet the woman who moves into Oprah’s studio this fall:

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You have to love freedom of speech, if for no other reason than how it allows us to see who these people really are.

Heckvua choice there, Oprah!

OWN is foolish to gamble millions on a woman who is obviously too full of herself and her own insane ideas — fire can’t melt steel – to sustain any kind of following on daytime talk again. Rosie shorted out sometime during this 1999 Tom Selleck interview and has only gotten worse in the decade since. She’s toxic to anyone not living within 4 square miles of downtown Manhattan and Los Angeles.  Unfortunately, the people who make most of our pop culture decisions never leave that bubble and are unable to grasp that Rosie is a slow motion train wreck already in progress and a long way from stopping.

OWN would be smarter to go with Charlie Sheen.

Wow. An intelligent, compelling, quiet drama about a an extended, fairly conservative family that prays together is beating all the high concept, edgy, post-modern, sexy, ironically detached hipster stuff both here at home and overseas:

It might not be the sexiest of this year’s new U.S. shows, but Blood Bloods has proved the most commercial at home and internationally combined. The Tom Selleck cop show has topped a chart of how this season’s freshman shows have performed. Blue Bloods has sold around the world, and not just to tiny channels but to big ones like Sky Atlantic in the UK, Australia’s Network Ten and Discovery Latin America. Armando Nunez, president CBS Studios International, has told TV trade Television Business International, “It’s perhaps not as sexy to talk about, but it has proven a success both on the network and in terms of global distribution.” TBI is due to publish its survey of U.S. network pick-ups Monday. Indeed, CBS’ strategy of showing procedurals might hug the shore creatively, but it has paid off globally. Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, another CBS procedural, is in second place. Says Nunez, “The road is littered with pilots and broken series and high concepts that didn’t work. We are in broadcasting.”

More here.

This police drama features a talented ensemble cast of Tom Selleck as Francis Reagan, the current New York City Police Commissioner; Donnie Wahlberg as his son, detective Daniel Reagan, Bridget Moynahan as his daughter, Erin Reagan-Boyle, Will Estes as rookie officer Jamie Reagan, and Len Cariou as the great-grandfather and former police commissioner Henry Reagan. Also providing solid and convincing roles are Jennifer Esposito (“Jackie Curatola,” Danny Reagan’s partner); Amy Carlson (“Linda,” Danny’s wife), Sami Gayle (“Nicky,” Erin’s daughter), and Nicholas Turturro (Sgt. Anthony Renzulli,” Jamie’s training officer). 

Wahlberg is believable and refreshing in any role he’s in, whether it’s Lieutenant Lipton in “Band of Brothers” or Duddits in “Dreamcatcher.” Selleck, though he tends to reprise his “Jesse Stone” character (without the alcoholism), is nevertheless always a joy to watch—probably even more so for the ladies. Esposito is at home as a cop, and Cariou looks like he could still wield a police baton. 

What makes “Blue Bloods” work is a well-worn interchange of a weekly action plot combined with an almost Waltonesque family life, usually including a family dinner at least once per episode and sometimes more often. At these dinners, the true moral and messages of “Blue Bloods” emerges, and it ain’t typical Hollywood liberalism. A common dinner discussion frequently turns into a debate between the (somewhat) bleeding heart Erin and the street-tough Danny, with Henry playing the role of out-of-style, head-knockin’, old-fashioned cop and Selleck moderating.

Adding to family tensions, Dylan Moore (“Sydney Davenport,” Jamie’s fiancee) got engaged to an up-and-coming big-shot attorney when Jamie felt the call of the family profession and abandoned the well-heeled life of a corporate lawyer to dodge bullets and chase drug-dealers. More often than not, the conclusion is that police are hampered by overly-protective measures for defendants; that the mayor and other politicians care only about good news instead of real results, and that there was something to be said for the “good old days” of law enforcement. 

A dark, subplot involves a secret police society called the “Blue Templar” that, Jamie is told when a pair of Internal Affairs cops try to recruit him, may have had a part in the death of his brother, Joe (also a policeman). But this has unfolded throughout the first season, and wisely the creative team has not jumped the shark with this story line. Moreover, because none of the family is caricatured, their infighting carries the mark of reality. More important, however, the series seems to avoid the modern temptation to “go dark” at every opportunity, both in terms of plot and camera work. The current obsession with scenes so dim that an screech owl would have difficulty spotting a caribou at thirty paces is becoming tiresome and has detracted from story.                       

One other endearing character to the series is the fact that even when the Reagans disagree, they all appreciate the special sacrifices and contributions made by cops. A recurring theme of justice being done graces this series, and is welcome in an age of “Brooklyn’s Finest,” where the only honorable and successful cop is the one who has just retired. And speaking of justice, if there is any, the producers will find a way to bring in Jon Voight as a special consultant to the NYPD.

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The opening scenes of the pilot episode establish a strongly positive view of the police, conveying a sense that the great majority go into the job with some amount of idealism, even if the system is prone to corruption. We meet the Reagan family, a multigenerational clan of New York City police officers, currently led by Police Chief Frank Reagan (Selleck). His son, Detective Danny Reagan (Wahlberg), is called away from a graduation ceremony for new police officers, where his Harvard-educated brother is one of the new-minted coppers.

All of this sets up the ideal against which the show then compares the reality of policing a major American city. The case to which Danny Reagan is called concerns a daylight kidnapping of a young girl off a New York City street. Reagan and partner Demarcus King (Flex Alexander) follow up on a meager allotment of clues, pressed hard by a pair of urgent deadlines: the awareness that the odds of recovering a kidnap victim unharmed raise exponentially with each passing hour, and, perhaps equally important in their minds, pressure from the mayor and other political figures to avert the inevitable public relations nightmare a killing would create.

Thus the pilot foregrounds the problems of politics, public skepticism toward the department, ethnic unrest, and police brutality. The latter is manifested in a scene in which Danny Reagan repeatedly holds a suspect’s head underwater in a toilet, in order to force him to reveal where the man has hidden the kidnapped girl. Reagan succeeds in getting the information, but at the cost of jeopardizing the possibility of convicting the man in a court of law because the coerced confession taints all evidence that arises from it.

In addition, new officer and Harvard grad Jamie Reagan is recruited into a top-secret investigation of an allegedly corrupt and violent group within the NYPD called the Blue Templar—who allegedly killed Jamie’s brother Joe. It sounds rather highly fanciful to me, but I’m no expert on secret societies, so I guess I can’t complain.

Some critics and viewers may inevitably worry about identity-politics implications, and there are some things in Blue Bloods to ponder in that regard. I don’t find the show to suffer from any clear bias toward either side of what passes for a political spectrum these days. The kidnapper is a Catholic who reportedly performs a perverse first communion ceremony during his killings. Yet the show doesn’t suggest that Christianity is for weirdos—the Reagans say grace before their Sunday dinner together, and it comes off as a sincere and appealing moment.

That dinner becomes very raucous shortly thereafter, as Danny and his sister, Erin, a public prosecutor, argue about whether torture can ever be justified, a debate which the rest of the family joins with the expected level of passion. The side arguing that whatever might save an innocent person’s life is justified seems to me to win the debate—rather surprisingly, given the way the subject is usually treated in the media.

The scene is emblematic of the show’s refreshing approach: balanced and realistic about the temptations of power, while recognizing that the rules shouldn’t serve the interests of wrongdoers and neglect to protect the innocents. Societies give great power to the police, out of necessity, and as Lord Acton noted, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The pilot episode of Blue Bloods dramatized this dilemma admirably.

The episode did very well with audiences on its premiere night two weeks ago, with Blue Bloods finishing as the second-highest rated new show, after Hawaii Five-0, garnering 13.0 million viewers.

Episode 2, “Samaritan,” which premiered last week, follows up on the pilot episode’s themes adds an interesting, broader look at how the justice system puts citizens in an awful dilemma by claiming a monopoly on the use of force, denying people the right to protect themselves from violence.

The episode deals with the search for and prosecution of a man who shot one of a gang of robbers and rapists on a subway train. The shooter and thugs are both of the same ethnic group, which removes that element from the story and puts the focus where it is most important:  on the vigilante aspect of the story and the way the system punishes people who protect themselves and others.

The latter is obviously a perversion of justice, but the producers wisely refrain from pushing the viewer to a particular conclusion about it. Instead, the let the viewer draw their own conclusion after another of the post-supper debates among the Reagan family that seem likely to become a regular occurrence in the series. One thing, however, is made very clear: the laws of the state and city put the “vigilante” in an impossible position. The city’s “no tolerance” gun laws made this honest citizen a criminal by making it illegal for him to do what any sensible person would strive to do: make sure that he can protect himself and other from violence.

The viewer is led to understand this truth but is allowed to draw their own conclusions about whether the trade off is worth making. As Benjamin Franklin said, those willing to trade liberty for security will have neither, but “Samaritan” refrains from forcing that conclusion on the audience. Bringing it to people’s attention, however, is a laudable thing. As is Blue Bloods in general.

Nolan will oversee the film’s production and is currently looking at a short-list of potential directors:

Making the list are “Unstoppable” helmer Tony Scott, “Let Me In” director Matt Reeves, “Battle: Los Angeles” helmer Jonathan Liebesman (who tapped for “Clash of the Titans 2″), Duncan Jones of “Source Code” and “Sucker Punch” guy Zack Snyder.

Expect news of a decision to come sooner rather than later because Warner Bros. and Legendary need to get the picture made by 2012 because of a rights ruling that went against the studio and favored heirs of Superman creator Jerry Siegel and takes effect in 2013.

Though we will never enter into the business of second-guessing Mr. Nolan, we are lighting candles for Zack Snyder.

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2. ‘Twas political correctness that killed “Sex.”

[Chris Noth] told New York Magazine: “It’s over. The franchise is dead. The press killed it. Your magazine f**king killed it. New York Magazine. It’s like all the critics got together and said, ‘This franchise must die.’

“They all had the exact same review. It’s like they didn’t see the movie.”

The artistically dreadful but stridently anti-American “Machete” scored a 73% at Rotten Tomatoes, the only marginally better Christian-bashing “Easy A” scored even higher with 85% – and so when Noth says the elite media killed the “Sex and the City” franchise, he’s exactly right. The sequel might not have been a perfect film, but it committed the mortal sin of having the balls to criticize and mock militant Islam. Among the Hollywood left, commandment number one is that you bow to multiculturalism, even if those you’re bowing before hold dear the most sexist, racist, homophobic, and theocratic agenda on the planet.

Worldwide, SATC2 made $288 million – more than all of those anti-American Iraq flops put together…

You know, the ones they keep making?

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3. Insufferably Precious But Still Confusing Celebrity Tweet of the Day: Deepak Chopra:

Don’t judge your life. Every life is a step toward unity with God.

Really, even Jeffrey Dahmer’s?

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4. More on Tom Selleck’s “welcome” return to network television here.

The LA Times sees a lot of potential in his new show:

If it pulls off what it seems capable of doing, “Blue Bloods” should be both a good cop show and an evocative family drama. So something for everyone, just like a good Sunday dinner.

“Blue Bloods” airs Friday nights on CBS.

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5. Lindsay goes back to jail.

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6. Just when you thought the Lindsay Lohan story couldn’t make you care less about something, along comes this.

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7. How many Emmys does William Shatner have to win, how many hit series does he have to star in before the jokes about his talent stop? How many, dammit?

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8. Send Big Hollywood money and for every dollar we receive, two cents will go to the poor — making us twice as generous and effective at ending poverty as Bono.

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2. Lame Celebrity Tweet of the Day: Seth MacFarlane:

I wonder if anyone called him “Andrew Breitfart” in high school.

MacFarlane, radio host actress Amy Holmes, and Breitbart will meet this Friday night at the roundtable on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher.”

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3. Fugitive child rapist attracts A-list cast

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4. “International human rights and climate change advocate” Bianca Jagger wants Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell to stop an execution. I’d listen to her. She is a international human rights and climate change advocate.

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5. The most rewatchable movie ever “Goodfellas” is 20 years old today and might become a television series. GQ takes a look back with the cast and crew, including director Martin Scorsese, Robert DeNiro and Ray Liotta:

“Do I Amuse You?” and Other Happy Accidents

Schoonmaker: [editor] Scorsese wanted to show that as [Joe] Pesci gets angrier and angrier, the men around him and Ray [Liotta] stop laughing, and you see the look of dread come on their faces. The key moment was how long we waited before Ray says, “Get the fuck outta here, Tommy,” in an attempt to break it. We kept screening it over and over again to get just the right beat for that one incredible moment where Ray knows if he doesn’t make this work, he’s going to get shot. [laughs]

Liotta: It was supposed to end when I say, “Get the fuck outta here, Tommy.” But you let it breathe, just to see what happens. And for some reason I said, “You really are a funny guy!” and he gets the gun. We made that up in the moment, literally.

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6. More details on the ’Matrix’ Filmmakers’ Gay Iraq War romance complete with assassination plot targeting George W. Bush:

The heroes are indeed a gay American soldier named (with little irony) “Butch” and an Iraqi soldier turned militant. Butch is endearing, young, and a ravishingly handsome Marine. Our spies tell us that he “just wants to fuck and kill everything” in Iraq — until, that is, he falls in love with the Iraqi. …

[T]ragedy radicalizes the pair and they become convinced that the only way to rid the world of evil is to kill the architect of the invasion, the then-president of the United States, George W. Bush. And so, during one of the president’s secret sorties to Iraq, they attempt to assassinate him.

Set in the future and told partly in flashback, the $20 million production is called “Cobalt Neural 9.” Both Arianna Huffington and Jesse Ventura will appear in the film. No one knows if it will really get made but the Wachowskis certainly have the cash to do it on their own.

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7. The new “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I” trailer:

“Harry Potter 7″ hits theatres November 19th.

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8. Interview with Tom Selleck about his new television series “Blue Bloods”:

“When I first saw the script, written by these terrific writers, Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green (“The Sopranos”), I felt New York could be a central character; the streets, the neighborhoods, things we don’t often see in a television series.”

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9. Turner Classic Movies weekend host Ben Mankiewicz counts down his top 25 favorite Bruce Springsteen songs and some bad choices are made due to their shared Bush Derangement Syndrome.

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10. Coming Soon: “Crazy Heart” with a sex change.

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11. Below are the trailers for the films the ”Smart Set” in the critical community have thus far chosen as this year’s top Oscar contenders:

“The King’s Speech” is scheduled for a November 26th release date.

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“The Social Network” hits theatres October 1.

Back in the good old days of television, there were really only three networks that provided most of the news and entertainment.  This meant that “Magnum P.I.” Tom Selleck only had to drive his Ferrari over James Naughton of “Trauma Center” and “Gimme a Break’s” Nell Carter to win his time slot.  Granted even the powerful car may have had problems getting over the, well, um…ample form of Ms. Carter, but Mr. Selleck managed to do it and charm his way to a ratings number of 22.4.  The success of the show, which had a lot to do with Tom’s massive appeal to the television audience, justified his $50,000 per episode price tag.  In today’s money that translates into over $100,000 per episode.  It is no longer 1983 though, and the times have dramatically changed. 

If Magnum P.I. were being produced today, it would not be competing against two other networks, but rather there would be over a dozen legitimate contenders for just about any time slot.  A diversified audience means that each show gets less than they did a couple of decades ago.  This is important when you consider that a ratings number is not just an ego booster that tells a producer they are winning a time slot.  A ratings number is a legitimate commodity that is converted to cash when advertising time is sold.  The bigger the number, the more money it is worth.  Ratings numbers are smaller today, but this connection between ratings and money seem lost on high profile stars.  Many still insist on premium salaries.  

Hugh Laurie makes about  $400,000 per episode for the show “House.”  That show usually pulls in a rating of about 8.5.  Charlie Sheen makes nearly $2 million per episode.  This is probably enough to support his ex-wife, his ex-wife to be, any future ex-wives, a sizable legal team to sort the whole thing out, and a new liver somewhere down the road.  Despite this huge salary, the best ratings number that Mr. Sheen delivered this year was a 10.5.  That is a lot of money for a comparatively small number and there is still the rest of the cast to pay. 

Dancing with the Stars, on average, scores a Nielson rating of 13.2 or higher.  This thumps the best rating that Two and a Half Men can deliver, but it is a much cheaper show to produce.  It was revealed that Kate Gosselin was receiving $100,000 per episode of DWTS that she appeared on.  If this was true of the rest of the cast and hosts, the entire show combined is paid less per episode than Charlie Sheen.  Seeing as every week a star, and their salary is eliminated from DWTS, the costs per episode go down.  Also, as the number of contestants goes down and the drama goes up, and the ratings get higher.  By the time the finale rolls around the show is costing less to produce, but raking in more money. 

The appeal of talent contest shows, reality television, and the like is the fact that you can be successful for less investment.  It also means that the director and producer don’t become servants to a high paid feature star.  Tom Wopat and John Schneider held the ratings of the classic show, the “Dukes of Hazzard,” hostage during some very ugly contract negotiations.  Replacing Tom and John with low-budget copies didn’t work, and in the end the producers gave in and paid the stars what they wanted.  This doesn’t happen with many of the reality shows. MTV offered the cast of “Jersey Shore” $10,000 per episode for the second season.  Had they not taken it, the producers would have just shrugged and found a group that looked just like them.  They could do this content in the knowledge that “The Situation’s” own mother probably doesn’t want him, and that a change in the cast would have almost no effect on the long term ratings.  

Finally, there are those producers who have an eye toward quality.  A big salary for an established television star just doesn’t work with an ambitious concept.  Estimates for what it cost to produce Battlestar Galactica range from $1.2 million to $1.5 million per episode.  While information on the budget for this program is hard to come by, it is pretty clear that the actors and actresses were not receiving the bulk of that money.  The guy sitting behind a Mac and creating CGI Cylons was probably on the same salary plateau with Edward James Olmos.  The producers assembled an ensemble cast of near unknowns (and in many cases absolute unknowns) and created something special.  Time Magazine, The National Review, Rolling Stone and New York Newsday agreed that this was the best show on television.  They did this for the cost of 1.5 “Friends” or approximately ¾ of Charlie Sheen.  Other shows like lost have also adopted this concept, and have not only been rewarded with ratings, but with lasting prestige as well. 

Money is the driving force behind television.  When a producer can get ratings without having to redirect the bulk of their budget to one or two feature stars, they are going to do it.  There will always be television stars, but as reality shows, talent contests, and high concept shows with ensemble casts take up more and more time slots, there will be fewer Jennifer Anistons taking up screen time.

The artistic pinnacle of his work in Hong Kong are his collaborations with John Woo filmed between 1986 and 1992. Those of us who equate the modern action movie to elder tales of heroic bloodshed such as The Iliad and the Norse sagas find these films to be sources of endless delight, and much of the credit for this feeling must go to Chow. In John Woo: The Films, author Kenneth E. Hall makes a trenchant point when he writes that, “Not much is usually said, in connection with Woo, about Chow’s contributions to character studies, but his efforts in A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard Boiled have created at least three memorable and distinct characters who are yet all of a piece, men of an essential integrity and heroism who rediscover or reaffirm their humanity in struggles with evil.”

This thematic tableau is red meat to conservative film lovers, the same stuff I was talking about when I wrote a piece on Taken here at Big Hollywood last year. But even to give Chow Yun-fat credit for all of this is selling him short — unlike many more muscle-bound action heroes, those Woo classics by no means delineate the limits of his talent or appeal.  Bey Logan, the HK film fanatic who authored the entertaining volume Hong Kong Action Cinema, insists that, in the wake of his collaborations with Woo, Chow became not just Hong Kong’s greatest action star but its greatest acting star. “Chow was the first Hong Kong thespian,” he notes, “to attain boffo box-office with vehicles as disparate as the tragi-comic Autumn’s Tale, the action-packed A Better Tomorrow and the slapstick Eighth Happiness. Chinese audiences just adore Chow Yun-fat in any of his many guises.”

As do many Americans.

Poverty is a theme running through the lives of both John Woo and Chow Yun-fat. Chow was born on Lamma Island, a blip in the ocean near Hong Kong, in 1955. He quit high school to get whatever work he could find to help support his family, and ended up auditioning for a place in the acting academy of TVB (Television Broadcasts Limited, a popular Hong Kong TV station). They ran a facility that performed the same task that the old studio system did in Hollywood: find new talent, whip them into shape, and put them under draconian contracts.

Chow’s contract made him an indentured servant of the studio for fifteen years, but it allowed him to build a following on TV in various soap operas and made-for-TV movies. A migration to feature films was inevitable, but like American stars like Tom Selleck, the movies didn’t quite know what to do with him, even after a performance in Hong Kong 1941 (1982) won him Best Actor at Taiwan’s version of the Oscars, the Golden Horse Awards. His even did a film with John Woo during these years, but as Woo was tied down to a formula their future magic failed to manifest itself.

But Chow’s screen presence stuck in Woo’s mind, and when Tsui Hark finally gave him the chance to follow his muse and make A Better Tomorrow, he fought hard to include Chow in a supporting role. His reasoning was simple: “Chow represents everything I value in a person: morality, friendship, honor, love. He is like an ancient Chinese hero who really cares about people.” This would seem to be a strange type of person to cast in the role of a death-dealing gangster, but Woo was working on a whole different level that the average action director. Samurai codes of honor, Christian elements of forgiveness and faith, and chivalric notions of brotherhood and honor were the coin of this realm, and as Chow puts it: “John Woo wanted someone who looks like a typical family man, but can really do all these things when he must. Not the typical kung-fu hero.”

Of course, turning the ordinary-looking Chow into a leaping, twirling, operatic knight-errant took some work. He didn’t possess the impressive acrobatics of a Jackie Chan or the kung-fu mastery of a Jet Li, but he did have a presence and a grace of movement, almost like John Wayne’s, that Woo could amplify with his unique editing style. Soon Woo discovered he was giving Chow a breathtaking dance of death all his own, and the effect was wonderful. Seeing the kind of film that A Better Tomorrow was becoming, Chow tore into the script and gave the part every bit of the emotion and passion Woo was striving for. “[Woo is a] very romantic and sensual director,” Chow says, “who puts a lot of himself in his films: love, human dignity, but also anger about the loss of tradition in the cities.” So just as John Wayne became John Ford’s mythical archetype and James Stewart became Frank Capra’s, so too did Chow Yun-fat allow himself to be molded into Woo’s image of a hero for the ages. As the director warmed to Chow’s portrayal, his part in the film grew exponentially until it had become a star-making turn to rival Wayne in Stagecoach and Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

A Better Tomorrow hit theaters as more than a movie — it was a grand coming-out party for a long-hidden talent that was destined to dominate the industry. Film Comment magazine put it best in a review that commented on Chow’s on-screen introduction in the film:

No scene exemplifies. . . star power more eloquently than A Better Tomorrow, when, simply by his way of eating street food, Chow tells us all we need to know about his character — we see this crook’s warmth, his cocksure humor, and the careless joie de vivre that will get him in the dutch later on. It’s a brilliant piece of screen acting — the kind that people emulate when they walk onto the streets after the movie.

Emulate they did — young men all over Hong Kong took to wearing Chow’s long Armani duster jacket, his dark sunglasses, and his suave mannerisms (the whole lighting-your-cigarette-with-a-$100-bill thing, strangely enough, failed to catch on in the same fashion). At the 1987 Hong Kong Film Awards Chow stood on the podium to accept the award for Best Actor, and the thirty-one-year old was soon in ferocious demand. He was now a bonafide superstar — but a Hong Kong one, not a Hollywood one. There’s a big difference between the two, as Chow discovered:

We don’t have very large budgets for the production, so the studio won’t pay a lot of money for hiring the star. So everybody wants to work hard for more money before 1997. Sometimes I’m so jealous that the stars here [in the USA] can take two, three years [between] movies. In Hong Kong, if you take three, four years [off], you die. You cannot survive like that. It’s tough, but it is the way that we treat ourselves to be a star. Sometimes everyone is proud of themselves when they make twelve films in a year, but on the other hand, there is a sadness, I feel shame that we have been working like a dog.

He had become, in his words, an “acting machine.” Hong Kong director King Hu remembers the frenzy that surrounded Chow in those years: “I was trying to get film financing from the Taiwanese distributors. All they wanted to know was: ‘Is there a part in your film for Chow Yun-fat?’ When I said there wasn’t, they asked: “Can you write in a role for Chow Yun-fat?’” In the wake of A Better Tomorrow, Chow made an insane ten films a year in an attempt to capitalize on his success. “My record was three days working without sleep,” he said at the time. “I know if I don’t slow down I’ll die.” It got so bad that, as Bey Logan tells it, “During his heyday, there was a joke that Chow was in demand by so many producers that, when he arrived at the studio, a crew from one film would shoot his face, another his hands, another his back. . . all for different movies!”

On the bright side, Chow was able to expand his artistic reach far beyond his breakthrough role in A Better Tomorrow. He experimented with a wide variety of genres, and found to his relief that audiences liked him in all of them. Chow’s Hong Kong box office during those years was nearly double what Jackie Chan earned in the same period, and in any given year he had no less than three films sitting in the Top Ten. A part of me wishes that we could get back to the same work ethic in modern-day Hollywood, with actors shooting far more movies but on lower budgets, where more artistic chances could be taken, and hence more movies like Hard Boiled could manifest themselves.

During these years of high-octane production and overwhelming success, Chow continued to make the films that would serve as anchor-points for his career — his collaborations with John Woo. The first order of business was a sequel to A Better Tomorrow. Chow’s character perished in the original, and yet it was unthinkable to forge ahead with a sequel without him. Woo solved the problem by making Chow’s new character the twin brother of the former hero. In 1989’s The Killer, Chow was back as another criminal with a code of honor and a heart of steel-tipped gold, in a film with a tragic and elegiac tone underlying the mind-boggling action set-pieces. “Intrinsic to the creation of this mood,” writes Michael Bliss in Between the Bullets: The Spiritual Cinema of John Woo, “is the acting of Chow Yun-fat, whose calm demeanor and soulful looks convince us that John has emotional depths that go beyond what is suggested by the film’s dialogue.”

It took their last team-up together, Hard Boiled, for Chow to finally appear on the right side of the law in a John Woo film, but even then his previous expressions of deeply conflicted morality were still in play. According to Kenneth Hall, Chow’s role as the rogue cop Tequila combines “basic integrity and compassion masked by a show of indifferent callousness,” as well as “a soulfulness expressed in his love of jazz music; an easy rapport with his fellow officers, making him especially popular with his subordinates. . . and, contrastingly, a kind of calculated but heated, almost out-of-control viciousness.” This is the stuff of Dirty Harry, Death Wish, Taken and other American classics of the genre.

“Tequila suffers guilt and fear throughout the film,” Hall notes. “Like ‘Dirty Harry’ Callahan or Wes Block, the Eastwood cop in Tightrope, Tequila is in danger of becoming his own worst enemy, of turning into the worst of what he pursues.” This subtext feels thoroughly American, which is perhaps one of the reasons that the later Woo-Chow films were far more successful in the States than in Hong Kong itself. “It’s the violence,” Chow maintains. “A lot of the [Hong Kong] audience can’t stand it. I, myself, don’t like violence. I don’t like gunfire. John Woo does. He loves the sound of the bullets. On the set, he never wears earplugs.”

Unlike so many other high-profile collaborations in the ego-drenched movie industry, the one between Woo and Chow developed into a warm relationship filled with mutual admiration. As Hard Boiled was wrapping up principal photography, both men were planning on making the jump to Hollywood, and so the picture was taking on the emotional resonance of their last hurrah in Hong Kong. Emotions were high, and Chow tried to think of a way to thank his friend for changing his life in so dramatic a fashion. He decided that the most fitting way to immortalize their sense of brotherhood was to recreate it on film.

“While working on Hard Boiled I never intended to appear in it,” says John Woo. “Chow Yun-fat is a very good friend of mine. On the last day of shooting he came to me with the idea that I do a cameo appearance. He wanted to create a scene between he and I that showed our true friendship to the audience. We made up dialogue and a character for me.” Woo was to portray a grizzled ex-cop turned bartender who, Obi-Wan Kenobi style, would offer advice and support to Chow’s Tequila. Woo says that “Chow Yun-fat wanted to show his respect so we made my character his mentor, someone who cared about him and gave him direction.”

Hard Boiled marked the end of the fruitful collaboration between the two men. As with most American director/actor teams you care to name, neither has been nearly as good alone as they were together. In Hollywood, Chow’s The Replacement Killers did OK, as did Anna and the King. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a major hit, making over $200 million, and he had a part in the third Pirates of the Caribbean film. Yet other films failed to make much impact. In one now-legendary near-miss, he was even close to signing onto the first Matrix in the Laurence Fishburne role, a perfect match given the influence of A Better Tomorrow on the film’s look. But he bowed out, and thus let a major coup slip through his fingers.

It’s been almost twenty years since Chow Yun-fat and John Woo have worked together in the old style. These days, they aren’t the hot new thing in Hong Kong anymore, they are aging Hollywood players who get together at their homes in the suburbs of Los Angeles with their wives and families, where they quietly barbecue together and remember good times. “Many of my favorite of my own films are not popular in the West,” Chow laments, but he is loathe to complain too much. At least he no longer has to make ten movies a year and work like a dog to survive. And he always has those magical years between 1986-1992 to look back on fondly, even if he does often wince at the violence his characters deal out on screen.

Next week, the production of Hard Boiled, and the innovative techniques that immortalized it as one of the greatest action movies of all time.

Previous posts in the series “John Woo, Chow Yun-fat, and Hard Boiled”

Part 1 | Part 2

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Chow Yun-fat receives the AZN Lifetime Achievement Award: American stars like Quentin Tarantino offer an overview of his career, and Chow gives a nice acceptance speech in English:

A 1993 Interview with Chow Yun-fat: A bit stilted in English (although his accent is surprisingly good), but contains a lot of interesting information that I hadn’t heard anywhere else:

A few more books on the films of John Woo and Chow Yun-fat. Here’s a pair of titles that contributed to the material in this installment. Both contain profound looks at the thematic subtext of what many might see as outrageous yet shallow action movies:

John Woo: The Films by Kenneth E. Hall

Between the Bullets: The Spiritual Cinema of John Woo by Michael Bliss

Of course, I’m hardly Rosie’s daily television show target demographic.  I work for a living instead of sitting at home staring slack-jawed at the succession of Sham-Wow commercials and ads for shyster lawyers promising big payouts for the imaginary injuries of their deadbeat clients that fill the time between inane segments of mindless yak.  And while the social parasite demographic seems to grow larger after every freebie, hand-out and pay-off the Administration and its Congressional flunkies issue in favor of their employment-averse constituents, Rosie O’Donnell still seems like a bad economic bet.

This is no longer the same country as it was back in 1999 when Rosie was honchoing her first daytime gabfest and hassling Tom Selleck over his support for the Second Amendment of the Constitution.  It’s not even the same country as it was in May 2007, when the former “Queen of Nice’s” anti-conservative bile culminated in her slandering American fighting men and women as terrorists on The View:

ROSIE O‘DONNELL, HOST, “THE VIEW”:  655,000 Iraqi civilians are dead.  Who are the terrorists?

ELISABETH HASSELBECK, “VIEW” CO-HOST:  Who are the terrorists?

O‘DONNELL:  655 Iraqis—I‘m saying you have to look—we invaded…

HASSELBECK:  Wait, who are you calling terrorists? 

O‘DONNELL:  I‘m saying that, if you were in Iraq, and another country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?

She also takes particular pleasure in attacking the Catholic Church and seems to consider anyone not buying wholesale into her radical agenda against traditional marriage and adoption as a contemptible bigot.  And let’s not forget her equally insightful foray into that moronic twilight zone known as 9/11 trutherism; it completes her personal trifecta of idiocy.  

Rosie’s backers for the new show seem excited at the chance to pick up Oprah’s viewers, whose departure will apparently leave them without a reason to live.  “Those 4, 5, 6 ratings points have to go somewhere,” one told Variety. “Something’s going to come in and fill that vacuum.”

But with the President’s approval ratings in freefall, and with Congress envying the polling numbers achieved by such public favorites as Kim Jong-Il, Vanilla Ice and syphilis, it is a new world.  Rosie’s kind of aggressive, grating, in-your-face liberal stupidity may well serve to alienate a substantial part of today’s potential audience.  Her partners seem to know it too, assuring Variety that:

“If Rosie wanted to just have a platform for her causes, she would go get a show on cable news . . . .  She’s a comedian, not a political pundit.”

Except no one is laughing – her Rosie Live! variety show was cancelled the first night after scoring an anemic 5.25 million viewers, though the presence of such hip, relevant and cutting edge guest artists as Alanis Morrissette and someone/something called “Ne-Yo” probably didn’t help. 

The fact is that Rosie O’Donnell is an unpleasant, smug and actively dumb woman who is unlikely to garner anything like the following she once had before embracing her personal jihad against the most deeply held and sincere beliefs of a significant majority of the country.  The stay at-home mommies I know are too busy to sit and watch television without a very good reason, and being bitched at by a sanctimonious harpy isn’t one of them.  Oprah likes Barack Obama, but (I assume) she doesn’t spend an hour a day telling her audience that they are the scum of the Earth for not agreeing with her.  Rosie probably couldn’t resist – and watching her show would probably make the Bataan Death March look like a week at Club Med.   

So, there are two possible reasons behind the resurrection of Rosie as a daytime talk show hostess.  The first is that the producers think they can make some money by harnessing what they believe to be her undeniable audience appeal.  Perhaps that’s true, but that seems like a triumph of hope over recent experience considering the unbroken track record of audience alienation and failure that has haunted her since she left her original talk show back in 2002 as well as the increasing polarization of the American public into liberal and conservative camps.  Does it seem smart to invest in a show that at the threshold flips the bird to at least 50% of the people who might be enticed to watch it?

The other possibility is that Rosie’s aggressive lefty political stance is a net positive for her backers, and that they believe she would provide a valuable, if only intermittently coherent, liberal voice in the vast wasteland that is daytime television.  And they may be willing to suck up the potential losses in order to let that obnoxious voice be heard.

The truth is probably somewhere in between.  It’s not unknown for Hollywood to try to mix business with leftism (*cough* The Green Zone *cough*).  Of course, that doesn’t always work real well. (*cough* The Green Zone *cough*). 

Will Rosie O’Donnell succeed with her career resurrection?  No one can know for sure, but just in case, I’m keeping a crucifix and some garlic handy.

The First Assassin is a historical thriller set primarily in Washington, D.C., at the start of the Civil War. Bestselling author Vince Flynn blurbs it on the front cover: “An excellent book–it’s like The Day of the Jackal set in 1861 Washington.”

The Day of the Jackal is a twofer: Both the book (by Frederick Forsyth) and the movie (the 1973 version) are excellent. But the book is still better. It’s super excellent.

Anyway, I started working on The First Assassin in 1996–more than 13 years ago. Yeah, that’s a long time. It was the project I kept setting aside when something more pressing came along, such as the birth of a child or a writing deadline that came with a guaranteed paycheck.

There were other challenges as well. I knew how I wanted the story to start and finish. Inventing the plot that would connect the opening pages to the conclusion was a different matter. One time, I wrote down every scene on an index card and spread them across a big table. I moved scenes around and invented new ones, trying to make chapters flow and events unfold in a logical and compelling progression.

Another time, I wanted to jump start my creative process. So I resorted to a trick that one of my English professors used in college when she hoped to spark a classroom discussion about an 18th-century play: What actors do you imagine on stage, performing these roles?

I went through my manuscript and tried to associate several of its main characters with well-known actors. Then I pinned their pictures on a corkboard next to my desk. For the mysterious hitman who stalks President Lincoln, I naturally thought of Edward Fox, the star of The Day of the Jackal. But I wanted someone less debonair. So I settled on Viggo Mortensen. Other actors with pictures on the corkboard included Halle Berry, Nell Carter, and Morgan Freeman. My wife would joke about the Halle Berry picture. Thank goodness she’s not a jealous person.

The First Assassin also has a femme fatale, though I never thought of an actress who seemed like a perfect fit for my character. I may have discovered one recently: Polly Walker, who played Atia of the Julii in “Rome,” the HBO series.

I also tacked up photos of historical figures with parts in The First Assassin: Lincoln, Gen. Winfield Scott, and Secretary of State William Seward. For the central hero, Col. Charles Rook, I used the picture of an actual Union officer, Charles Pomeroy Stone. Over time, however, I came to think of Rook as a good role for Tom Selleck. I’ve always liked Tom Selleck.

Did this technique work? Well, it didn’t exactly fail. Honesty forces me to report that it didn’t drive me toward completion as quickly as I had once hoped. It did influence the way I wrote, however. In that sense, it shaped the book.

Now I just need for someone to turn The First Assassin into a movie. The film rights are available. Does anybody know if Tom Selleck is looking for a project?