Elf. Buddy the Elf says that elves “try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup.” While portraying Buddy, Ferrell ate so much sugar—particularly in the scenes where Buddy eats huge plates of spaghetti covered in chocolate syrup and candy chunks—that he routinely suffered migraines throughout the filming of the movie.
These glitzy, glamorous, song and dance spectaculars were dominant TV format in the 1960s and ‘70s. Featuring big production numbers, colorful costumes, comic sketches, and banter between the hosts, extravaganzas Sonny and Cher, Donny and Marie, and The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour dominated ratings. By 1980 they were simply passé, as the garish ‘70s gave way to the sleek ‘80s. In 1987, ABC attempted to revive the variety show with what seemed like a sure thing. The network signed singer/actress Dolly Parton to a two-year, $44 million contract to star in Dolly. It flopped, and the network bought out Parton’s contract and cancelled the show in less than a year.
In the 1992-93 TV season, Aniston starred on a short-lived sketch comedy show on Fox called The Edge. Not very many people watched the show (it was cancelled after 18 episodes), but producers at Saturday Night Live must have. Aniston was asked to audition for that show, and she was asked to join the cast for the 1994-95 season. Aniston turned them down, feeling that the pilot she’d just shot for an NBC sitcom called Friends had some promise.
The house, placed in a quiet neighborhood in a suburb of Las Vegas, was later given away in a contest, but the winner opted for a $75,000 cash prize instead of the house. More than 30,000 people visited the house in 1997 (including Simpsons creator Matt Groening who signed one of the walls with purple paint), but neighbors weren’t too pleased with all the tourist traffic. The house was repainted and most of the details related to the show were removed before it was sold in 2001.
Doctor Who premiered on England’s BBC One on November 23, 1963, and has aired almost continuously ever since (although new episodes weren’t produced between 1989 and 2005), making it by far the longest-running science-fiction program on television. With 798 episodes and counting, it’s among the longest-lasting prime-time dramas as well.
In the 1970s, it was one of the first British series to air on American TV and became a cult hit. And in England, it’s a popculture phenomenon—it’s spawned radio series, novels, and several tie-in movies. Eavesdrop for long enough in any British pub, and you’ll hear patrons arguing over who the best Doctor was. In both countries, Doctor Who has had a substantial influence on television. Here’s a primer: The premise. The Doctor (who is known only as “the Doctor”) is the last of a race called the Time Lords, who are near-omnipotent, hyperintelligent, and keep a strict non-intervention policy—a law the Doctor breaks when he sets out to explore the universe. Along with a human companion (usually a teenager or young woman), the Doctor travels through time and space.
• The Millers is a hit new comedy for CBS on Thursday nights. It starts Will Arnett and Margo Martindale, who are best known for, respectively, the Emmy-winning comedy Arrested Development and the Emmy-winning drama Justified. Neither of those shows ever brought in a huge audience. The premiere of The Millers attracted 13.09 million viewers, which is more than the most-watched episode of Arrested Development (7.98 million) and the most-watched episode of Justified (4.16 million) combined.
• Super Fun Night is a new comedy hit for ABC for two reasons: 1) It stars Rebel Wilson, from Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect, and 2) It’s on immediately after Modern Family. This show has been in the works for almost two years. Wilson created the series and filmed a pilot in late 2011, which ABC turned down. They asked Wilson to try again, so she rewrote the script and filmed another pilot in 2012. The network didn’t like that attempt either, but still picked up the show to series and filmed a third pilot episode. That one wasn’t very good either, because ABC refused to air it. The first episode of Super Fun Night was actually the show’s second installment.
While co-starring as a tough guy on the TV western Rawhide in 1962, the tough guy actor, Clint Eastwood, recorded an album called Rawhide’s Clint Eastwood Sings Cowboy Favorites. The songs on the album weren’t pop or rock songs—they were story songs about cowboys and outlaws of the Old West, similar to what Marty Robbins might record. The album was not a hit and failed to expand Eastwood’s fanbase into the younger demographic. Eastwood gave up singing, but not music. He’s composed the score for eight of the movies he’s directed, including Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby.
In 1983, George Lucas released Return of the Jedi, the final movie in the Star Wars trilogy, one of the most financially successful and popular film series of all time. But how would he follow it up? In 1985, Lucas announced that he was producing a movie adaptation of the Marvel Comics cult comic book Howard the Duck.
Today, Marvel movies are hot Hollywood properties—this year’s Iron Man 3 and last year’s The Avengers are among the top 20 highest-grossing films of all time. But the very first Marvel property to be made into a movie was Howard the Duck. It was about a humanoid duck from outer space living on Earth, and he was crass, rude, and sexist. Lucas had been trying to get a movie of it made since the mid-’70s, but no studio was interested. After the success of Star Wars, Lucas could make whatever he wanted and Universal readily agreed to distribute Howard the Duck. They needed a big movie for the summer of 1986, and they were still smarting from passing on the Indiana Jones movies, which Lucas had produced and which were distributed by rival Paramount.
Atari’s 1982 E.T. video game, based on the smash hit movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is probably the most spectacular failure in video game history.
Here’s what happened. E.T. the movie was released in June 1982. The tender story of a lonely boy befriended by a lost alien creature was an unexpectedly massive hit, spending its first six weeks at #1 at the box office. It was late July by the time Atari, the most popular video game brand in the world at the time, secured the rights to make an E.T. video game. However, the company gave designer Howard Warshaw just six weeks to create the product, so it could be on store shelves by Christmas. End result: a terrible, nonsensical game, even by early 1980s standards. Bearing little resemblance to the movie, players had to control a thing that sort of looked like E.T. as it collected pieces of a phone to “phone home.” E.T. mostly fell in holes, or encountered one of the game’s many bugs.
It’s graduation season, but if you can’t find a job in your field, don’t worry—you could always just shift gears and be a movie star. Here are some celebrities who got a college degree before they became famous for doing something else. Still, it’s nice to have a “fall back.”
Are you all ready for Donald Duck Day? Have you carved Donald Duck’s face into a pumpkin? Are your Donald Duck stockings hung by the chimney with care? Is there a frozen duck thawing in your sink right now?
Okay, so these aren’t real traditions, but yes, Virginia, Donald Duck Day is a real thing. It occurs every June 9. Why that date? Because that’s Donald Duck’s “birthday”—that’s the day of the release of the foul-mouthed fowl’s first animated short, Walt Disney’s “The Wise Little Hen,” in 1934. That means this year is Donald’s 79th birthday.
Recently, actor Will Smith told the British newspaper The Sun that his 14-year-old son Jaden, star of movies like The Karate Kid and the upcoming Will Smith movie After Earth, was looking into joining the ranks of other celebrity emancipated minors. It’s usually used to declare minors legal adults to either help teenagers escape abusive homes, protect financial assets or, as we’re guessing is the case with Smith, be able to work long hours on movie sets without violating child labor laws. The elder Smith seems cool with this. After all, he’s a guy who used to win Grammys for complaining about his parents.
There look to be some surefire hits on the way—ABC’s spinoff of The Avengers called Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and NBC’s The Michael J. Fox show both got a positive response. But you’ll be seeing those soon enough—what about the rest? Here are some of the more “out there” shows that were up for a spot on the fall schedule. Most of these didn’t make it…but some did!
Elf. Buddy the Elf says that elves “try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup.” While portraying Buddy, Ferrell ate so much sugar—particularly in the scenes where Buddy eats huge plates of spaghetti covered in chocolate syrup and candy chunks—that he routinely suffered migraines throughout the filming of the movie.
