Attention Deficit Delirium

A giant Golden Nymph.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

This year was the second time I attended the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, an annual event held in June that is like the Sundance or Tribeca of the European television community. Hosted at the Grimaldi Forum Monaco, the festival (held this year between June 6th and 10th) shines a light on international television programs and movies as well as popular Hollywood exporteds. It culminates with the Golden Nymph
Awards on the last evening.

Each year media from around the world descends on Monte-Carlo to view the latest television offerings, interview famous talent and attend the awards ceremony. Unlike the Emmys, which focus solely on American talent, the Monte-Carlo Television Festival recognizes talent from around the globe. Winners of the prestigious Golden Nymph Award this year hailed from Japan, Russia, Sweden and Qatar (part of the United Arab Emirates), among other countries.

As with my last journey to the festival, I came toting my Nikon D60 but this time around decided to snap shots of various actors I interviewed and some whom I happened to pass by. (Fellow journalist Lisa Finnegan grabbed a few, too.) There was a quite a cadre of talent from the States, and following are photos of some of the big names who attended. [Check here for coverage of the 50th anniversary party and the closing night awards ceremony.]

Outside of the Grimaldi Forum, the official venue for the Monte-Carlo Television Festival.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

The calm before the flashbulb storm on the red carpet.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Larry Hagman draws a crowd of shutterbugs in the atrium.
(Photo ©2010 by Lisa Finnegan.)

Vampire Diaries co-stars Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder are all broods in Monte-Carlo.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Aliens and humans unite outside of the V press conference:
(L to R) Morena Baccarin, Elizabeth Mitchell and Scott Wolf.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Lost's Jorge Garcia takes a photo op after an on-camera interview.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

NCIS: Los Angeles star LL Cool J poses for the paparazzi.
(Photo ©2010 by Lisa Finnegan.)

Caprica's Alessandra Torresani rockin' the pink...
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

...and charming the media.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Larry Hagman and Dana Delany chat with French television.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Fans watch with anticipation.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

A quick pic following a roundtable with Dana Delany,
promoting both Desperate Housewives and her new show, Body of Proof.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Private Practice co-star Taye Diggs is all smiles in Monte-Carlo.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Cougar Town's Josh Hopkins is relaxed and soaking in the ambiance.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Inside the press lounge at the Grimaldi Forum.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Vampire Diaries' Ian Somerhalder showing us his lighter side.
(Photo ©2010 by Lisa Finnegan.)

Vampire Diaries' Paul Wesley in a contemplative pose.
(Photo ©2010 by Lisa Finnegan.)

Dexter and No Ordinary Family star Julie Benz enjoys her press conference.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

V and Lost co-star Elizabeth Mitchell chats with Larry Hagman for French TV.
J.R. is still a babe magnet.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Saying a quick hello to Law & Order creator and executive producer Dick Wolf.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Law & Order: SVU star Ice-T is ready for his close-up.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999 star Barbara Bain is a pleasure to chat with.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Cougar Town's exuberant Busy Philipps strikes a pose.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Another photo op.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Brother & Sisters co-star Luke Macfarlane at ease after an interview...
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

...as is his castmate Emily VanCamp.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Ice-T is trippin' (his words) during his visit to Monte-Carlo.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

Outside of the lavish Hôtel Hermitage, Ian Somerhalder signs autographs,
poses for photos and bequeaths kisses to female fans.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

A mob of fans swarm around NCIS star Cote de Pablo outside of the famous Hotel de Paris.
Trust us, she's in there.
(Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)



Related Posts:

Partying Monaco Style: Celebrating 50 Years Of The Monte-Carlo Television Festival



Inside the 2010 Golden Nymph Awards





A typically edgy, tense moment on "Fringe".

It’s not easy to typecast actor Joshua Jackson. Known for three major roles — hotshot skater Charlie Conway in The Mighty Ducks movie trilogy, lovable underachiever Pacey Witter in Dawson’s Creek and enigmatic FBI consultant Peter Bishop on Fringe — he is equally comfortable in indie and studio films, and on the small and silver screens.

When Jackson spoke recently to ADD, the focus was on his sci-fi, horror and comic book interests, and the conversation proved to be quite illuminating as it also shifted to the concept of being an artist, the adaptive nature of storytelling and the future of television. (You can read Part One here.)


The father of your Fringe alter ego, Walter Bishop, is this wonderfully bizarre character. How hard is it for you to keep a straight face when he’s doing something like performing an autopsy and directing Astrid to make custard, or investigating a death in a restaurant and commenting on the seemingly delicious soup where the victim’s head landed? How hard is it for you not burst out laughing?
The great news is you don’t have to. When Walter is having these delusions or these inappropriate moments, you don’t have to keep a straight face. The story allows for us to react as humans would, and particularly Peter a lot of times is in the position of being the audience member. To an extent he’s still the skeptic. I don’t think there’s a reason for us as actors playing these characters to react exactly as you would [in real life]. Even if you knew Walter, some of the things he says are funny and are just so absurd. Part of what is funny about that is the reaction that he elicits from people around them. This guy has no concept of the world.

You've come a long way, Pacey.

You might say about scientists what people say about artists, that we have to be a little bit tweaked to do what we do. That there’s something about us that’s a little bit off. I don’t why that is, but in a way it’s true about many artists. That comes to light particularly when you date someone who’s not involved in the business or your art and doesn’t really get it.
I think to do anything that has any pretense of being an artist, you have to be passionate, and occasionally that requires being obsessed. If you’re trying to have a relationship with somebody who doesn’t understand or appreciate obsession, it’s going to be very difficult to explain.

Is your fiancée understanding of everything that you do?
Diane [Kruger] is also an actress, so we have the opposite problem, where we both get obsessed and don’t leave the house for a couple of days. It has to be engrossing. It just has to be. There’s too much good and too much fun and too much interest to be mined out of what I do for a living or what she does for a living to not be obsessed with it. There are just a lot of people who don’t enjoy themselves period. I find that people who have that type of baggage, it doesn’t matter. They can be flipping burgers or running companies — if you’re a naturally dyspeptic person nothing is going to make you happy.

If you weren’t an actor, what do you think you would be doing?
I have no idea at this point. I’ve been doing this job for 20 years. That’s two thirds of my existence.





Getting back to Fringe, Fox believed in it at the outset because they gave you longer episodes, meaning fewer commercials, during the first season. This season you’re not getting that, so you have to cut back on the content every week. But you were given a good edict at the beginning by receiving extended episodes.
There’s movement afoot, whether or not it happens fast enough, but the television business that existed when you and I were growing up is over. It’s finished. There’s a bit of the chicken little feeling in our world of, “Oh my God, it’s the end of storytelling.” That’s not true. People still want to have engaging stories told. It’s just that either the format or the media through which they are distributed, or perhaps just the distribution method, are going to change, and right now my show exists in the in-between time. I actually applaud Fox for doing what they did [in 2008] with “Remote Free TV”. They’re trying out new things. I don’t know that the advertising model works anymore. The audience is broken up amongst a bunch of different things, and truthfully the Standards and Practices for network television are extremely silly and also limiting. Just quality wise you look at cable shows, and they just beat the pants off of network television; also because we do 22 episodes and most cable shows do 13, so you take more time in crafting each one. So things are changing, but storytelling is not going to go anywhere.





One of the problems with the network television format is that you have to have little cliffhangers at the end of every act, which can be as short as a few minutes. Cable television shows are allowed to grow and expand a little more easily because many of them don’t have all of those commercial breaks.
That’s an interesting thing that you’re touching on because it doesn’t work great for straight drama because we no longer have faith in audiences to be able to pay attention through a two-minute break. Truthfully. If you go back and watch Columbo, that’s a procedural show, but it didn’t have a cliffhanger before the end [of every act]. They ran to the end of the scene, it faded to black, cut to Pepsodent commercial, cut back, the scene goes on. We live in an era where we feel like we have to pander pander pander to the audience, but something like Breaking Bad or Mad Men is the answer to that. We have to do our job and make the stories good and the characters compelling, but if you make something on the assumption that people are plenty smart to figure something out, you’ll find an engaged audience. Mad Men does not have a huge audience. It has a very loyal, small audience. Breaking Bad is the same thing. It is a great show. It does not have a gigantic audience, but it has an incredibly passionate, small audience who trusts and believes in those stories. I think Fringe is on the way to having that really passionate audience that just wants to watch it because they believe that these storytellers satisfy their desire for a well told story. That’s what we’re aiming for on our show.

Jackson goes on a journey of self-discovery in "One Week".

There are a lot of idiots out there, and people tend to call television the “Idiot Box”…
That’s bullshit. That’s terrified people who don’t have a better answer — the people who make decisions like that [think], “Make it for the masses because people are dumb.” Bullshit. The masses are not dumb. Not even my generation, but the generation that came behind me are so media savvy they smell a rat in a second. They’re not stupid at all about storytelling or about the complexities of storytelling because they’ve grown up saturated in media. They know all the tricks and know how it’s done. So if anything the people making the shows are stupid, not the people watching the shows. It is a copout to say that I made something too smart, people are too dumb to get it. You know what? If you’re not a good enough storyteller to explain your story, then it’s not a good story.

One of the Joshua Jackson films
that may have slipped by you.

Sometimes there are shows like Hack that have what seems a hokey premise — in that case, a disgraced former cop turned cab driver who helps people in need — and make it compelling thanks to a great lead and smart stories. That’s a talent.
That’s a huge talent. That is the P.T. Barnum skill. That is why people like J.J. [Abrams] are so richly rewarded for what they’re capable of doing. They take stories that are hokey by their very nature — or popular, however you want to term it — and Star Trek is the first example of this. I watched it in France, and within the first ten minutes most everybody was sniffling, if not outright crying, because you introduce these characters in the most intense, heartstring-pulling moment you can possibly imagine. A father, in the moment when his son is being born, sacrifices himself to save his wife and child for the greater good of all mankind. You can’t go any bigger in terms of scope than that. And he takes Star Trek — which is a wonderful sci-fi show but by its very nature hokey — and this futuristic ideal that died in the Sixties, then recapitulates it into something that a broad audience can understand and tells the story in such a compelling way that lots of people who wouldn’t naturally be able to enjoy that, enjoy it. And that’s what a popular storyteller does.

By the way, did you learn to skate for the Mighty Ducks, and can you still do the deke?
The triple deke, my signature move? Of course I can! It might’ve been a couple of years since I broke that particular one out, but I’m sure I could still pull it off. It’s not really all that technical. I learned how to skate better for the movie. I went to a hockey camp, so I was a much better skater when I came out.

No longer the student, now he is the master. Or is he?

Would you ever consider doing a Dawson’s Creek reunion?
[laughs] The children of Pacey?

Or the love children of Pacey? You never know!
How long has that show been off the air? Six years? In five or six more years you could get away with it. I could have teenage children.

Would you find that interesting?
We can’t do a reunion show with the original cast because we killed Michelle. So that’s off the table. [But] if they created the next generation, I would love to come back and play a broken down, fat, drunk version of Pacey. Joey left him. Her life was going places, and his restaurant failed, so he had to move back home and is working as a line order cook. [laughs] I’d like to believe that everything worked out for them because at the end of the series they left him off on such good stead. I think times got tough for Pacey after the show went off the air.

If you could do a superhero movie, which character would you play and why?
The one that’s out there now, but I didn’t get the job, would be Green Lantern. I’d love to play the Green Lantern. But then you have to choose which era of Green Lantern. They’re doing Green Lantern, but Green Lantern is three or four different guys. I’d have to think about that.



Joshua Jackson looks baffled by the latest "Fringe" science. (Photo credit: George Holz/FOX.)

Many actors are lucky to become famous for one role. Joshua Jackson is fortunate to be known for three: As young, hotshot hockey skater Charlie Conway in The Mighty Ducks movie trilogy; as the lovable underachiever Pacey Witter in the long-running television series Dawson’s Creek; and now as enigmatic FBI consultant Peter Bishop on Fox’s hit show Fringe. He has also amassed a horror film resume that includes Urban Legend, Cursed and the remake of the creepy Thai ghost flick Shutter. It’s not easy to typecast Jackson, who is as comfortable in indie and studio films, on the small and silver screens.

When Jackson spoke recently to ADD, the focus was on his sci-fi, horror and comic book interests, and the conversation proved to be quite illuminating as it also shifted to the concept of being an artist, the adaptive nature of storytelling and the future of television. (Part Two can be found here. And you can read my recent story on him and Fringe for American Way here.)


Don’t you think it’s interesting that many people who become sci-fi or horror icons didn’t anticipate it because they never thought that was the path that their career was going to go on?
I haven’t really planned much of my career period. There were three distinct phases now. I’m just in the third one. The first was as a kid being in the Mighty Ducks movie and the kid movie phase; the second being Dawson’s Creek and all the movies around that time; and the third being Peter Bishop. As much as I like horror, sci-fi was more my genre. I was much more of an X-Files fan than I was a Tales From The Crypt fan.

Were you more of a sci-fi fan growing up? Were you a comic book geek?
Yeah. Those were the cultural touchstones of my childhood, comic books and hockey cards.

Jackson and John Noble get their hands bloody on "Fringe".

What were your favorite teams and what were your favorite comic books?
With hockey cards, the teams are not so important. It’s about completing the set. And comics changed over the course of time. In the beginning, just the same ones as everybody else, but Batman instead of Superman. Spider-Man when Venom came around but not before and when there was less Mary Jane, but once the relationship took over it lost me as a teenager. Then the animated stuff on MTV led me to the darker stories that were popular, such as The Maxx. And as far as sci-fi, Lord Of The Rings was the first major entrée, and then Dune. I got into Piers Anthony and Isaac Asimov and branched out from that.

I used to read an author called John Brunner, but you can’t find his books now. Most of them seem to be out of print.
A lot of sci-fi stuff is out of print. I don’t know why, in an era when comic book heroes are so popularly accepted as mainstream, that science fiction has gone by the wayside. There is so much good science fiction from its heyday, from the late Forties to mid-Seventies, that you can’t get and is just not available anywhere.

The days of "Dawson" cute with Katie Holmes.

Hollywood produces a lot of schlocky sci-fi that reduces everything to hot babes, cool guns and crazy aliens. They miss the point of a lot of the stories.
What was always so engaging to me about science fiction — and the “gee whiz” is just the window dressing; the hot babes, cool guns, alien life forms or interplanetary travel — is that it’s just a parable for the life that we’re going through. Which is why I think it touches a chord so much particularly with teenage boys, because they need escapism. I’m sure teenage girls need escapism, too. I don’t know what it really is that they need to escape.

Twilight.
There you go. Truthfully, Twilight is something totally impenetrable to me. Well, that’s not true. I worked on Dawson’s Creek. I get it. [laughs] But young boys need to be transported into another world where it’s possible [to do other things].

In Fringe‘s season two opener, one definitive line for Peter emerges when he says to Olivia: “Walter thinks you went off to some sort of alternate dimension. Is that strange that I can say that and neither of us thinks I’m crazy?”
Right, and that’s one of those [writers'] hat tips to the audience. You’re probably sitting there going, “Come on, really? Alternate dimension?” We understand that it will take a second, but it’s okay, come with us along this journey, and we promise it’ll be rewarding as we go. Even if I wasn’t a sci-fi fan, the thing I like about working on Fringe is that everything in our world is possible. If the writers can dream it, we can do it. It has been an interesting journey for the first 30 stories in, and it should continue to be a very interesting place to work hopefully for the next couple of years.





How much do you know in advance? How many episodes down the line do you know what’s happening in the story?
As far as individual cases, whatever is happening that week, I find that out week to week. The writers give you broad strokes of understanding of what the stations of your character are for that week. But the individual specifics I find out weeks before you do.

About to bare his fangs (and fur) in Wes Craven's "Cursed".

I’ve interviewed cast members from Lost, and it can be frustrating for them sometimes because people are asking them questions that they just can’t answer because they don’t know or sometimes don’t want to give away any spoilers. I imagine there’s a similar quandry for the folks on Fringe?
We face a bit of the same problem. I don’t want to ruin the fun for an audience member about where the mythology is going, the changes for each one of the characters and who survives and who doesn’t. But it’s less dire for us because if I tell you that we have a kidnapping episode, that’s not going to reveal too much about what’s happening in the future. If somebody on Lost says so-and-so gets kidnapped, that unravels an entire year’s worth of storytelling.

Were you actually in The Changeling, the 1980 horror film with George C. Scott?
I guess technically I was in it. My mother was location manager or an A.D. on that movie, and they needed a “kid in a pram,” and I had just been born. But I don’t think I was actually on camera.

"Urban Legend": Part of the self referential slasher revival of the late Nineties.

That’s my favorite haunted house movie and one of my favorite horror movies of all time.
Really? My mother did work on it, so I’ve got some connection to it. I got a great education from mother.

I assume that while you were growing up she told you many great stories about the business?
I got a lot of great stories from her growing up, and the most valuable thing she was able to give me as I was starting out was [delineating between] people’s perception of what a set is — the Hollywood glitz and glamour idea — and what a set actually is. They’re very, very different things. I’ve certainly seen it over the course of my 20 years of doing this, that most people when they show up and are green have no idea what the job actually entails. Having a seasoned professional like my mom being able to say, “Okay, when they say hit your marks, this is what that means. When they say everybody to one, this is what that means. When they say we’re going into penalty…” Just somebody who can give you the inside information so that when you show up the first day you’re not panicked.

These days, because digital technology has made it easy for anyone to create something and think that they’re a photographer or videographer or musician with little effort, people have no concept of how much time actually goes into making something of quality.
I think that while the democratization of media is a good thing — and this is true of professionals as well as for laypeople — the scarcity of the resources sharpened people’s minds before, and I think that’s part of the reason that so much of what we do now is bad. The things we can achieve are light-years beyond what we could do 10 or 15 years ago, even when I was on television the first time. Not that Dawson’s Creek had much [in the way of] special effects or action stuff, but just the things you could dream of on TV were not even in the conversation, and the things that we can do on Fringe — if we can dream it we can do it, essentially. But in this world where digital technology makes the editing process simpler, easier and more expeditious, you take less time to think out the shots, how it’s going to be cut together and the look of the show because there’s this idea that you can just fix it later. And that is a problem.

The best special effect for teen TV and movies: Young hotties in love.

Also, if the stories are good it doesn’t matter how great your effects are. d I think it’s become an overriding issue in Hollywood. They think that by throwing money at something they can fix it. I’m hoping we’ll enter this era where the pendulum swings back the other way, and effects are used when they are needed and that you don’t notice them as much, rather than having these movies that bombard you with image after fantastic image that don’t actually serve any purpose.
And also, just like cotton candy, it loses its flavor after a while. You need to take the time to set up the story so when that characters are in that dramatic position it means something. If you don’t give a shit about the people on camera and the story’s not compelling, it doesn’t matter how many worlds are blown up or how many nuclear explosions there are, then it’s just a video game. I think there’s a bit of a theme park idea in effects now. If you look at something like District 9, which is using the best of the state-of-the-art but using it almost casually, that to me is when special effects become really cool. When it’s not the centerpiece of the whiz-bang. That will always look dated because the next year the next super cool thing will come out, and you will look back at that and be like, “Whatever.” Once you build a world where these fantastical things exist, then you’ve really achieved something with the special effects. Then you’ve heightened the experience and expanded the universe where that story takes place in.


In Part Two, Joshua Jackson talks about Walter Bishop and Fringe, making better television, his fiancée, if he would ever return to Dawson’s Creek and which superhero he would like to play.



Reiko Aylesworth, who plays Rachel Tobin on the new season of "Damages". (Photo ©2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

She’s played an intelligence agent on 24, a member of the Dharma Initiative on Lost and co-starred in AVPR: Aliens Vs. Predator – Requiem, among many other credits over the last 17 years. Now Reiko Aylesworth is portraying Rachel Tobin, a member of a Madoff-like family that is under siege from the public and Patty Hewes’ law firm on Damages. In late January a small press gaggle got to quickly chat up Aylesworth on the red carpet just prior to the Damages Season Three premiere, and here’s what we got.


How does it feel to play a blonde?
You know, I’ve been adjusting to playing a blonde for about six months, and I’m not used to it yet. I don’t think I’ll ever be used to it. But I had a breakup, and it’s break-up blonde. It was either shave it all off or go blonde.

So this wasn’t for the show, but for you?
Yeah, it was totally for me. So I’ll see how it goes.

Do blondes have more fun?
No, I just broke up.  But I’m on Damages, so I am having fun. As I go darker, you’ll see my heart’s mending.

Are we going to see your character get to tango with either Ellen or Patty?
Possibly. I’ve heard rumors. We’re only about midway through [shooting] the season right now, so I’m hoping. Both of them are such great actresses that I would love to do a little two-step [with them].

Aylesworth as Michelle Dessler on "24".

Who do you think would win in a battle, Jack Bauer or Patty Hewes?
That’s a good question. It depends on what the playing field is. I think Patty would drink him under the table. I think if it’s germ warfare it’s going to be Patty. If it’s heavy arms artillery, it’s going to be Jack. They’re bad asses. I think they could do a Hart To Hart series.

What is it like on set to see Glenn go from being in character as Patty back to her normal self?
It is weird, and almost creepier because she’s so nice that you’re thinking, “Where do you pull that from?” Not that her character is. Her character has a higher purpose. What I love about Glenn’s work is that you don’t know what’s going to happen because she hasn’t judged a character, so it keeps it a surprise.

Have you ever seen Glenn use the Patty Hewes look on set?
No, I haven’t, and I hope I never do. I never want to be in the way of that look. She’s amazing.

What’s it like to have all these comedians on the set of Damages? Are they cracking everybody up?
Yeah, they are. It’s funny because you’d think when you meet comedians in person that they would be serious or cranky, but they’re funny. They’re just naturally funny people and sweet as can be.

The show is very dark and serious, so what is the atmosphere like on-set?
It’s really fun. It’s the same with 24. You have such earnest characters that you have to crack up at it, and so it’s easy to laugh at, which makes it easy to shoot.

Who has the hardest time keeping a straight face?
Me.