Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

From WFAA.com:

Larry Hagman was reluctant to be on a new TV show called “Dallas” when he first read the script in the late 1970s, figuring there wouldn’t be any money in it.

But his wife persuaded him to give the role of conniving oil baron and cattle rancher J.R. Ewing a shot, saying they could “renegotiate” and that the job might pay off.

It did, eventually earning Hagman a reported $100,000 or more per episode. And now fans from across the world are paying as much as $1,000 apiece to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the debut of what became one of the most popular prime-time soap operas in TV history.

“People are crazy,” Hagman said Thursday. “I guess it’s a TV show people identify with.”

On Nov. 8, J.R., Bobby, Sue Ellen and other Ewing kin will mark the anniversary with a reunion and barbecue at Southfork Ranch. Viewed panoramically in the show’s introduction, the ranch is in the Dallas suburb of Parker, about 25 miles north of the flashy downtown skyscrapers also featured in the opening scenes.

Fans from Japan, Australia, Europe and across the United States have plunked down anywhere from $100 to $1,000 for the tickets. The more one pays, the greater one gains access to cast members including Hagman, Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy.

“This thing is going to be a lot of fun,” said the 77-year-old Hagman, seated in the formal living room of the Southfork mansion, a trademark cowboy hat on his head. “It’s the first one we’ve ever done with fans. They’re coming from everywhere.”

Along with the barbecue, there will be country music, dancing, fireworks and a laser light show.

“This is a chance to live like and be a Ewing for a day,” said Jason Hardison, the event’s executive producer. “We’re going to celebrate the excess and success of the 1980s, at least the oil boom, and the money that surrounded Dallas.”

Given the various story lines and characters in each hourlong episode, Hagman said he saw Dallas as more of a cartoon and “had fun with it.”

Hagman, who grew up in Weatherford, west of Fort Worth, said he patterned J.R.’s twang, persona and family views after a businessman he worked for in high school who supplied oil drilling equipment.

But those close to Hagman say he’s the antithesis of the scheming, arrogant head of the wealthy but dysfunctional Ewing clan.

Hagman, a former vegetarian and outspoken nonsmoker who gave up alcohol after his 1995 liver transplant, is now an avocado farmer. He and Maj (pronounced MY), his wife of nearly 54 years, rise with the sun and are often asleep by 7:30 p.m.

Their 44-acre spread in Ojai, Calif., is all-organic. Their home runs on solar power, which Hagman said knocked their electric bill from $40,000 a year to $13.

He remains close to a few “Dallas” cast members, hunting and fishing with Duffy, aka brother Bobby, each month. And he and Maj often dine with Gray, who played his trophy wife on the show.

Maj Hagman recalled that when her husband first got the “Dallas” script, he was out of work. The couple were in New York, where Hagman’s mom, actress Mary Martin, was doing a show with Ethel Merman.

He was busy reading a script for a half-hour comedy while Maj reviewed the “Dallas” proposal.

“Woo! Larry, this is it!” she shouted. “There’s not one redeeming character in the whole show.”

She said it was right down his alley.

“But Maj,” he replied. “The money is terrible.”

She said: “We’ll renegotiate.”

After the “Who shot J.R.?” cliffhanger that concluded the 1980 season, when it was unclear whether J.R. would live, Hagman bargained hard with producers and landed a huge raise.

“That’s chutzpah,” Hagman said, explaining that the writers could have easily killed off his character. “But I made millions and they made billions. Everybody did well.”

Today, Hagman said the question people most often ask him as a conversation opener is, “Who shot you, J.R.?”

When he tells them it was Bing Crosby’s daughter, Mary, who played his sister-in-law and pregnant mistress on the show, they say, who is Bing Crosby?

“It’s a different generation,” Hagman said.

Two Dallas area mothers have taken their passion for cooking and created an international sensation… and they’re making money too.

A Frisco home is the kitchen studio for www.ShowMeTheCurry.com. Friends Hetal Jinni and Anuja Bal Subramanian were looking for something to keep them busy after their kids started school last year.

But it didn’t take long before their small idea became a much bigger project: An internet based cooking show. They bought cameras, lights and practiced their delivery.

Now, about once a week, Anuja and Hetal tape podcasts, each with a new Indian recipe for their viewers to try at home.

Each segment details the ingredients you’ll need, and viewers get step by step instructions on how to prepare the dish.

They edit everything into a ten minute podcast and post it on the internet. In one year, they’ve produced dozens of segments and through the reach of YouTube, they have cultivated an international following.

Anuja and Hetal say they’re having a blast, and they’re also making money through advertising on their Web site. The more people log on, the more their revenue goes up.

Anuja and Hetal say they’re working on other money making additions to the show, including product placements and product endorsements.

The Dallas County district attorney’s office use of preserved DNA evidence to help free innocent people will be the subject of a TV documentary.

Dallas County commissioners have approved a request from District Attorney Craig Watkins to allow filming, in his offices, for the Discovery Channel program.

The contract, approved Tuesday, will be with a company based in England — Touch Productions Ltd.

Watkins established the conviction integrity unit so prosecutors, aided by law students, can examine hundreds of old cases where convicted criminals have requested DNA testing.

Details were not immediately available on when the planned two-hour program will air.

Talk radio host Russ Martin went back on the air Monday and is expected to stay on the radio for the foreseeable future, according to David Henry, the general manager of KLLI-FM (105.3).

Martin was arrested July 18 on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in connection with a July 14 altercation involving a 27-year-old woman at his Southlake home.

The woman, whose name has not been released, says she was engaged to Martin. She told police that he became enraged after phoning home and learning she had failed to follow up with an IRS agent about a package delivery.

Martin and his attorney have declined to comment on the substance of the allegations against him.

He left the airways after his arrest. He was originally scheduled to return last Tuesday, but the station decided to hold him off the radio.

Monday, he returned to the air, speaking primarily about local news events. A co-host joked about his arrest, but Martin did not comment about his legal troubles.

Except for people from East Texas, it is doubtful many have heard of the city of Center.

But now the town, southeast of Longview, has become pretty well known after a local bank surveillance camera captured an astonishing accident and the video has gone viral in a big way.

The driver was able to safely escape from his truck before the canopy crushed his car.

You’ve got to watch this video:

Take this fun questionnaire at the Dallas Morning News website.

P.S. I didn’t know Brad Pitt was on “Dallas”!

Note: This fantastic article about the legacy of the Dallas TV show is copyrighted and was written by Jake Batsell of The Dallas Morning News.

He hangs his hat almost 5,000 miles from Southfork, but Colin Hunter has rounded up a huge herd of fans still infatuated with Dallas.

Never mind that the iconic television show has been off the air since 1991. Each day, some 23,000 people visit UltimateDallas.com, the fan site Mr. Hunter produces out of his north London home.

“There are people from everywhere — Romania, Japan, the U.S., Indonesia,” Mr. Hunter, 36, said in a telephone interview. “We’ve got this whole new fan base, some people as young as 12 and 13.”

Three decades after J.R., Sue Ellen and company began bickering on prime-time TV, Dallas remains an unstoppable force in popular culture.

The show that epitomized American grandeur and greed during the Reagan years is still syndicated in dozens of countries. Southfork Ranch in Parker draws more than 300,000 visitors a year. Diehards and new fans devour episodes on DVDs and cable soap channels.

“Dallas is not a phenomenon of 30 years ago, but actually is continuing to bring in new viewers,” said Janet Staiger, curator of Dallas: Power & Passion on Primetime TV, a new exhibit at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.

The exhibit, which runs through Sept. 14, chronicles how the show’s memorable characters, scandalous storylines and TV firsts — most notably the “Who shot J.R.?” cliffhanger — spawned a global juggernaut that continues to fascinate legions of fans.

Boosters of modern Dallas, meanwhile, often cringe at the show’s over-the-top stereotypes and the lingering perception that the city remains a mecca for big hair, 10-gallon hats and cutthroat capitalism.

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” said Phillip Jones, president and chief executive officer of the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The show’s persistent popularity makes it more challenging to promote Dallas as a progressive, ethnically diverse city with plentiful options for culture, dining and commerce, Mr. Jones said.

On the plus side, he said, “everywhere you go in the world, people know Dallas.”

“The curse is, everywhere you go in the world, people know Dallas from 30 years ago,” he said. “People think if they come to Dallas, they’re going to see J.R. Ewing walking down the street.”

First of its kind

When the show first aired on CBS in April 1978, Dallas chiefly was known as the site of the Kennedy assassination. The Dallas Cowboys, fresh off their second Super Bowl victory, weren’t even America’s Team yet.

Then came the TV series, which suddenly recast Dallas as a glitzy universe of shimmering skyscrapers, slick oil barons and gorgeous women clad in fur coats and showy jewelry.

“It was, of course, not a totally accurate image,” said Dr. Staiger, a professor of film and television studies at the University of Texas at Austin. “Not all women dress as beautifully as beautifully as Pamela Barnes and Sue Ellen did when they went to lunch. But it gave Dallas an image of richness.”

By the end of the second season in spring 1980, the show gave America its first prime-time cliffhanger when an unknown assailant gunned down J.R. Ewing in his office.

The scheming, sharp-tongued oilman — played by Fort Worth native Larry Hagman — had a long list of enemies. A prolonged actors strike forced fans to wait eight months before finding out the answer to the now-historic marketing slogan: “Who Shot J.R.?”

In November 1980, roughly 360 million viewers worldwide finally discovered who pulled the trigger. At the time, it was the most heavily watched event in television history.

The success of Dallas also elevated the soap-opera plot formula — serial narratives featuring multiple, intertwined story lines — into prime time.

“Now, you can hardly find a drama on prime-time that doesn’t have this format,” Dr. Staiger said.

The show inspired a crush of merchandise, some of which is on display at the Austin exhibit — puzzles, albums, even J.R. beer in pull-top cans.

Hollywood’s efforts to remake Dallas into a movie have sputtered. Janis Burklund, director of the Dallas Film Commission, said studio executives recently told her that the project is still alive but on hold as writers rework the script.

Actors still pleased

Susan Howard-Chrane accepts that her public persona will always be intertwined with her Dallas character, Donna Krebbs.

George W. Bush, then governor, appointed Ms. Howard-Chrane to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission in 1995. During her confirmation hearing, the room went silent when Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, accidentally called her Donna.

“It wasn’t any big deal,” said Ms. Howard-Chrane, a Boerne resident who now serves on the Texas Commission on the Arts and is still constantly recognized by Dallas fans.

“I am never offended by someone calling me Donna — ever,” she said.

Ms. Howard-Chrane said viewers kept tuning in to Dallas because they related to the personal stories of each character — a rare occurrence in today’s prime-time lineup of reality shows and crime dramas.

“It was probably the last of its kind,” she said. “It primarily was a show to entertain, and to showcase actors and pretty clothes and attractive people and relationships. It was entertainment. I think we’ve kind of gotten away from that.”

The show’s success surprised actor Steve Kanaly, who played Ray Krebbs, Donna’s husband and the Ewings’ ranch foreman. Mr. Kanaly, who now grows avocados and citrus crops in Ojai, Calif., said he expected a quick exit after filming the first five episodes.

“I never believed the show had a chance to be successful,” he said. “I did five shows with everybody and thought, ‘Well, this is great; it’s been fun working with you, see you later.’.”

In retrospect, Mr. Kanaly said, the show may have caught on because it provided an escape from real-world issues like inflation, unemployment and the Iran hostage crisis.

“There were a lot of negative things going on,” he said. “And then this show pops up that doesn’t have anything to do with anything except a bunch of rich people in Texas and their crazy, mixed-up lives.”

Worldwide reach

Shady deals, boozy carousing and messy family politics may have been off-putting to some, but the program showed the world that America was a land of big dreams, Cadillacs and swimming pools.

Just ask Tomas Spilacek. During a visit to Southfork last month, Mr. Spilacek remembered watching Dallas in communist Czechoslovakia 20 years ago.

“Every person was watching this movie because Dallas is like all life in the U.S.,” he said. “Over there, communism. Over here, Dallas. Every Saturday night watching this movie is beautiful.”

Sally Peavy, the ranch’s tourism sales manager, hears stories like that all the time. Roughly two-thirds of the visitors who show up to tour Southfork are international.

“I would’ve thought that maybe it would have died down by now,” Ms. Peavy said. “But it’s amazing to me that people are still intrigued about the show, want to come see it, want to come experience it.”

Colin Mallon, a Southfork visitor hailing from Kent in the United Kingdom, said he got hooked on Dallas in the 1980s because “the storyline was brilliant, had a good laugh in it. It’s just something that made you watch every week.”

“Some of the things that happened in the show were just kind of bizarre,” added Angie Green of Wapakoneta, Ohio. “You couldn’t wait until the next week to see what was going to happen with J.R. and Cliff and all the characters.”

Still holds up

On UltimateDallas, the Web site Mr. Hunter started with two friends in 1997, fans interview the show’s stars, debate old plot twists and answer poll questions like: “Which forbidden love would you have liked to see?”

Mr. Hunter runs the site and attached fan forum with help from fellow fans in London, Canada and the United States. He said interest in the show has endured because its human storylines held such universal appeal.

Viewers could relate to Bobby and J.R.’s sibling rivalry, Sue Ellen’s alcoholism, Pam’s insecurity about her inability to have children and the family squabbles between the Ewing and Barnes clans.

“It was a character-driven show in a way we don’t tend to get now,” Mr. Hunter said. “It still kind of holds up, even nowadays.”