Alabama Journal from Montgomery, Alabama • 16

16 THE ALABAMA JOURNAL, FRIDAY, JULY 29, 1 988 3 Cable, regular networks compel for this year's Emmy awards show Show biz demands rewarding in long run By Joe Bob Brlggs Mvt mow critic rl- rp VWqi I 'Death Spa where everyone's fit to die nated as best guest performers In a comedy series in an episode from the show about four retired women living in the same house in Miami. The nominees for best comedy series, besides "FrarJc's Place," "Golden Girls" and "Cheers" were NEC's "Night Court" and ABC's The Wonder Years," a new show about growing up in the ISGCs, told from the perspective of a 12-year-old boy. Nominations for outstanding drama series went to "Beauty and the Beast," "Thirtysomethlng." "L.A. Law" and "St Elsewhere." In the outstanding min-iseries category, nods went to four shows based on real or historic events and one fictional account of a raffled old lawyer in London. The nominees are "Baby NBC's "Billionaire Boys Club" and "Gore Vldal's Lincoln," "The Murder of Mary Phagan," and PBS" "Rumpole of the Bailey." Actress Ann JiCian's movie about her battle with cancer, NBC "The Ann Jillian Story," was nominated as best drama or comedy special, along with CBS' "The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank," CBS "Foxfire," NBC's "Inherit the Wind" and NEC's "The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story" The Television Academy of Arts Sciences decided to allow cable programming to compete with regular broadcast television in this year's Emmy awards because cable shows are now available to a wide national audience.

The nominations were announced from more than 4,500 entries. "Beauty and the Beast" was nominated for best drama series and Ron Perl-man was nominated as best lead actor for his role as the half-man, half-beast who lives beneath the streets of New York and carries on a unrequited love affair with a beautiful woman lawyer. CBS "Cagney and Lacey" a previous Emmy winner that was recently canceled by CBS, received two nominations, both for lead actress for co-stars Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly. Both have won that award in the past The Golden Girls," winner in the past two years as best comedy series, was nominated again along with stars Rue McLanahan, Bca Arthur, and Betty White, all for lead actress. Estelle Getty, one of.

the stars of 'Golden Girls," was nominated for best supporting actress in a comedy series. Herb Edelman and Ger-aldine Fitzgerald were nomi wife came back from the dead, took over the body of your nerd brother-in-law, and started killing everybody in your health club that wears chartreuse Dan-skin leotards?" In fact, what if she, like, REALLY messed with the pool chlorine supply and turned up the tanning light like REAL high and set the resistance level on the Nautilus so heavy that it like rips people's ribs out the sides of their body? As you can see here, we've got the kind of messy Southern California breakup that not even Marvin Davis can save you from. William Bumiller is the jock health-spa owner trying to figure out why his dead wife, Shari Shattuck, keeps appearing in his dreams and telling him to kill himself so she can have him again. Brenda Bakke is his new girlfriend who would just as soon put some yarn on her ankles and Flashdance through the studio like normal, but she keeps getting zapped by haunted saunas and bloody locker rooms and most frightening of all flying bathroom tiles in the girls shower. And you know what the worst part of it is? All these people DYING in the health club, and the police hanging around all the time, means they might have to CALL OFF the Mardi Gras party this year.

Three stars. (The people that made it did a great job, but they don't really BELIEVE in it, like they're talking down to the horror crowd.) Joe Bob says check it out Now that I'm on cable TV all the time and millions of fans demand that I get a network game show so I can work three days a month for $45 million a year like Pat Sajak like I say, ever since I burst into show biz like a shooting star, nay, a virtual asteroid they make me go to El Lay all the time and breathe raw sewage and sit around on redwood decks talking about "concepts" like what would happen if you took "Fatal Attraction" and crossed it with "Ernest Goes to Camp." "Hell of a concept," I tell 'em. "Glenn Close gets a turtle stuck on her nose, Ernest falls in love, and REFUSES TO GO AWAY. In the end he has to shoot commodes out of a cannon to win her love back." Then they give me a thousand bucks and hire a director and grab the nearest cellular phone: "Herb, it's Norm. Can you call Stu and ask him if Alan Thicke is still looking for a project he can do with pet-store animals? No, we can't get Briggs to write it.

He's honoring the Guild thing, says he was on strike five years before they started. Also, Herb try to get Thicke to work in drag. I'll give you the plot later. Just get me the answer. Ciao." Then sometimes, on a clear day when you can put on sunglasses and see plumb to the next car's bumper, my new El Lay friends will put the top down on the car and take me over to Westwood to eat some 34-dollar appetizers with fried dolphin meat in 'em, and we'll plan all the new hit network TV series.

"Buddy Ebsen gets elected mayor of Cleveland, but his housekeeper, played by Valerie Harper, really runs the city. No, wait, I GOT IT I can't believe it, this is perfect, it's a REVERSAL concept. VALERIE gets elected mayor, and BUDDY is the housekeeper. He can DANCE while he's working the Hoover. We'll call it 'Fresh Sheets, Your No, that's not quite it.

I know! We make Buddy's eyesight bad. He's a HOUSEKEEPER but he can't SEE. SHE'S the Mayor but she has to pick up lint off the floor. We call it Get it? Her chambers and HIS chambers." "Hell of a concept," I say. "Or you could call it Dirty "Better! Joe Bob, do you need a little goat butter on that muffin?" And then they give me a thousand dollars.

I love this business. Only in America. Maybe you'd like to help me out on it. Send in all TV show ideas to P.O. Box 33, Dallas, Texas 75221.

Right now I'm looking for a cop-show concept that Donna Rice can star in with a family of mixed-race refugee children. Hurry, cause I need a thousand dollars. Speaking of the ultimate El Lay nightmare, "Death Spa" just came out, and it's the movie that asks the question, "What would happen if your paraplegic ex- O'Jays' perseverance paves road to current success CATFISH COUNTRY 30 years," Strain said in a recent telephone interview, "the O'Jays are finally finding out that everybody knows about us. We feel like the guy who has practiced playing tennis all of his life, making the same mistakes over and over again. Then, one day, you walk out on to the court and your game falls into place.

The thing is you have to hang around long enough to get there." Strain claims can be blamed on the factionalism that pop underwent in the early '70s. "Back when the Temps and the Tops were making all of their hits in the '60s," Strain said, "there was no such thing as a 'crossover' hit. They were part of that Motown mystique. They got played on the black and the white charts, no questions asked." The O'Jays Strain and fellow crooners Eddie Levert and Walter Williams know a good bit about endurance. From their early days as an group to this point in their careers, hits have been the constant.

Still, despite their successes and staying power, the O'Jays have never quite caught on in the same way that the Temptations or the Four Tops did, something that By the Lea Angeles TlmM-Washlngton Post NewjSoMc The road can be a grueling place for a pop star, the O'Jays' Sammy Strain admits, but its rewards have more than made up for the group's current 32-week tour, as well as the daunting prospect of a tour sometime in the future. "After being in the business for nearly LM a COUNTRY LUNCH BUFFET Over 40 items to choose from Meats, Vegetables Sirloin Sail 1 Salads Dessert 4.. A A -On -Tfifl 'Athlete' wants $1.3 million to undress Si: at the comer of 1-65 Southern ByPass 284-3458 SEAFOOD BUFFET FRI. Night Only Sunday-Friday Seafood Lunches 3" The Associated Ptbss Oysters on Half Shell Snow Crabs Boiled Shrimp Mr Hwy. 231 N.

ffW 271-1300 It- LONDON Britain's Olympic superflop Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards says it'll take $1.3 mil Robert Camilletti, 24, was arrested and booked for investigation of felony assault with a deadly weapon shortly after this week's incident, said police spokesman Lt. Fred Nixon. "He tried to kill me. He tried to run me over at a high rate of speed," said free-lance photogra- ALL YOU $-0 CAN EAT JLVI and much more! I I -v X. i IT'S RUDD'S lion to get him to pose nude for a Playgirl magazine spread, and not a penny less.

"That's what it will cost them if they want all of me," the 24-year-old plasterer from Cheltenham in pher Peter Brandt, 35. He would not elaborate, citing advice from his lawyer. Camilletti's attorney posted the $2,000 bail and Cher picked him up a few hours later at the police 111 MM, cess and has turned down an offer to be host of the daytime version of the show when Pat Sajak leaves. "I think America likes what I do," White said. "I'm a mystery to people.

They want to know more." The show's producer says she discussed the idea of White taking over as host, but White, 31, says she doesn't want a bigger role. "I think the fact that I don't do more has made me what I am," said White, whose largely non-speaking role on the popular game show turned her into a star. Sajak will remain as host of the nighttime version, the nation's top-rated syndicated show. But he will leave the NBC daytime version at the end of the year to be host of a late night talk show. Cher's beau jailed LOS ANGELES A photographer says Cher's boyfriend tried to run him down as the Oscar-winning actress' companion was driving a Ferarri sports-car outside the couple's home.

Edwards Cher station, reporters the inci- ft it Ji ff Cher told dent apparently resulted from southwest England said earlier this week. "I won't do it for a penny less." The British ski jumper soared to fame and failure in the Winter Olympics. Edwards finished last in two events in Calgary, Canada, but fans fell in love with his thick glasses, jutting chin and unflappable humor. White turns down offer LOS ANGELES "Wheel of Fortune" letter-turner Vanna White says mystery spells suc- While Supplies Last frustration at having photographers and reporters "camped out" in front of her home. "I have no privacy," she said.

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