The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 111

SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2007 STYLE WEEKLY TELEVISION PAGE K3 1 Canadian filmmaker tastes success in Spielberg's reality show ife MM Danger Zone, a comedy of errors at a test lab that was filmed in one fluid shot after 48 takes. "To have Carrie Fisher say she wanted to give me her daughter, that was, um, different," Lipovsky said with a wry laugh. "To have her bow down in front of me and say, 'I'm not that was pretty good." Lipovsky hails from the hit-the-ground-running guerrilla school of indie filmmaking in Vancouver "the independent film community in Vancouver is just amazing" where highly trained crews work round the clock on big-budget U.S. productions, and then apply their knowledge and filmmaking acumen to their own, homegrown projects. Lipovsky says the process isn't getting any easier now that he's reached the final 15 contestants, but that was to be expected.

He has confidence in his own abilities, but his fellow aspiring filmmakers have talent to burn. "Every round, the filmmakers are only getting better and better," he said. "It's tough to be singled out as the one to beat." On the Lot's format dictates that the remaining filmmakers will have to work together as they get closer to the end, but that doesn't mean the contestants are bickering and quarreling as they jockey for final position. "Filmmakers are a collaborative bunch," Lipovsky said. "We're very much about getting strength from each other, shooting ideas around and elaborating.

We all come from indie films, and in that environment no one can do it alone you have to help each other out." Perhaps that's why On the Lot has been a tough sell with TV viewers more used to reality-TV's predilection for conflict and verbal battery. Spielberg wanted On the Lot to be more about the filmmakers and the filmmaking process than hot bods squabbling in the hot tub, Lipovsky said shortly after his 11-minute short film Crazy Late was chosen over some 12,000 entries to make the final field. Lipovsky wants to win, he says, so he can finally move out of his mom's house and fulfil a passion for filmmaking that began when he was in elementary school. The filmmaking bug pursued him through his high school years. He gravitated toward the indie scene because he shied away from formal training, college and union ap- BYALEX STRACHAN Zach Lipovsky is getting a lesson in popular entertainment.

It's just not the lesson he was expecting. The 23-year-old Vancouver visual-effects editor and sole Canadian left in On the Lot, Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg's reality-TV competition to find "the next great filmmaker," thought he would learn a lot about moviemaking from his experience. And he is. The aspiring filmmakers are being handed weekly film projects, which are critiqued by writer-directors such as Garry Marshall, Carrie Fisher and Michael Bay. Lipovsky has learned things about himself he didn't know such as his ability to perform under pressure, work with unfamiliar film crews and meet seemingly impossible deadlines.

What he wasn't expecting was a crash course in the vagaries of TV scheduling. On the Lot stumbled out of the gate in the ratings, precipitating a dramatic revamp of the show's format, as well as when and where it airs. On the Lot has been moved to Tuesdays, where it will air weekly all summer. That's the plan for now. If Hollywood studio movies are judged by their box-office results, TV shows live and die by their ratings.

No ratings no TV show. A lot is at stake for the filmmakers the grand prize is a development deal with Spielberg's DreamWorks film studio worth an estimated $1 million U.S. Spielberg has kept a low profile during the making of On the Lot, but he had a say in which filmmakers made it to the TV-show stage. "He's super busy, but he's watching the show," Lipovsky said on the phone from Los Angeles. "He's watching it with his family.

He's excited about it. "He's very much in charge of what's going on, though. He's happy with the way it's going, and the work we're doing. It's all positive." As for the low ratings, Lipovsky says he doesn't think about what he can't control. On the Lot has averaged a modest 550,000 viewers for CTV, opposite the recently concluded NHL playoffs, but recently peaked at 860,000.

Lipovsky is focused on his weekly film assignments, in any event. He wowed the judges in his first week with his 60-second film short, -JLU Zach Lipovsky on the set of On the Lot: He's learned many things about himself, including how to perform under pressure. On the Lot, 8 p.m., Tuesday, CTV and Fox old regurgitated garbage. And they're all bad. They're not even continuing a good theme." Of course, looking up at the silver screen and thinking "I can do better" is one thing.

Proving it is another. "Everyone here is good at what they do, but everyone got here for a different reason. Some people are here from commercial filmmaking, some are here from music videos, some are from ski shorts. "I come from an indie film-effects background. We are 15 completely dif ferent filmmakers, and it's kind of cool." the one that gave him nightmares, anyway was Jurassic Park.

He has been singularly unimpressed by the studio movies he's seen this summer, however. "I like originality," he said, "something I've never seen before, something I never thought about before. I'm turned on by something completely new." On the Lot's remaining filmmakers trouped off as a group to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Lipovsky says, and it didn't go over well. "I'm of the mind that all the sequels this summer are just the same prenticeships. The self-described "skinny, shaped-like-a-question-mark" guy "stuffed loosely into jeans and T-shirt" names Monty Python's Always loofc on the Bright Side of Life as his personal theme song.

His perfect film, he says, is one that will have the audience leave the theatre with "half a bag of uneaten popcorn." His favourite childhood movie For Hidden Palms star, success is hard work Boston Legal cast undergoes major shakeup Taylor Handley set out on his own at 18 in bid to develop acting career A 1 id 'Chirrs Big changes are happening at the law offices of Crane Poole Schmidt. John Larroquette will join the cast of ABC's Boston Legal next season as a regular, while guest star Christian Clemenson has been upped to a regular on the David E. Kelley production. In addition, Tara Summers is joining as a regular. Meanwhile, the options on four cast members Julie Bowen, Mark Valley, Constance Zimmer and Rene Auberjonois to return as regulars have not been picked up.

However, it's understood there is a possibility that any of them could appear next season in a recurring or guest-starring role. Larroquette who won an Emmy in 1998 for a guest role on The Practice will portray a senior partner from the New York offices of Crane Poole Schmidt who transfers to Boston. Clemenson won an Emmy last year for his guest turn on Boston legal as Jerry "Hands" Espen-son, a fellow lawyer and friend of Alan Shore's (James Spader) who has Asperger syndrome. Summers will portray a young law associate. TTie Hollywood Reporter had a friend, and his mother became my manager and took me down to an agency.

And the third audition I ever did I booked Jack Frost, which was a Warner Bros. film. From there it just kinda snowballed," he shrugs. For five years his parents drove the 90 miles from Santa Barbara to L.A. for Taylor's auditions, rehearsals and performances.

His dad worked with a clothing company and then ran a vitamin business, and his mother "had an accounting thing going," so their schedules were flexible, says Hand-ley who has twin half-brothers, 16 years his senior. Finally, when he was 18, Handley decided to take matters into his own hands. "I graduated from high school and checked myself into Santa Monica City College and moved down there after high school and lived by myself," he says. "I did a couple of classes, worked a few jobs, and here I am. It was difficult because my friends were still in my hometown and hanging out and going to parties.

But I always thought in the back of my mind, 'There's always going to be time to play. If I don't work now, I'm just going to be working harder So I kept going strong through the whole thing." Handley wasn't fooling. lie's been studying with a drama coaches since he was 13. 'I think going to school and learning the business is good, but I think if you really want to learn the movie industry you have to work on a set. You just have to be there," says Handley, who's dressed in a plaid, cotton shirt, jeans and clunky motorcycle boots.

In spite of appearances on such shows as Cold Case, CS1: BY LUAINE LEE PASADENA, CALIFORNIA Taylor Handley, who plays the mysterious Johnny Miller on the CW's Hidden Palms, learned two important life lessons early on. Starting as a child actor, he observed other kids in the field who stumbled into adulthood. "Save your money and keep going to acting class," he says in the deserted lounge of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here. In spite of successful turns on Dawson's Creek and The O.C. and the feature film September Dawn, Handley has clung to those rules.

He still drives the Dodge Durango he had when he moved to Los Angeles from his home in Santa Barbara, California, four years ago. And he still takes acting workshops on weekends. Though neither of his parents was in the field, he first thought about acting when he was six years old. "I think it was when I was playing one of the wolves in a Jungle Book play. I got to run around like a chicken with my head cut off howling.

I said, This is fun. If I could probably do this for a living I could have an interesting he says. "I've been always mesmerized by it, the screen as well. My dad taking me even to the R-rated movies when I was younger, but I loved it. I loved seeing the action, the drama.

I remember seeing Magnolia when I was 10 or 12 and I remember seeing the artistic side come out in movies. That was what I was drawn to." Handley performed in school plays until he slipped into his teens. "When I was 13 1 looked at my dad and said, "I Icy, man, when are we going to get this thing So I i iia.i 1 m.mni tiwitt --in m.m gfTif nri nJT rm im-fri I'm in in il i I nitmmKmnKmmmmimmmtmmunmi 11 i um Vwm mil ill" fr -iir Tru Biirfi iiim Hm J'-T i n-i hit 'v I. Mil i -li iiiiinn Taylor Handley, shown with Hidden Palms co-star Amber Heard, says his visibility climbed when he played Oliver Trask on six episodes of The O.C. at a point when the show was quite popular.

4. if Hidden Palms, 8 p.m., Wednesday, WPIx i -1. agent gets my audition, I have to go in there and get it and then after that if they want to go further, then it's a joint effort between my team and I to make it work. "The thing you have to know about auditions is once you do it, you just have to let it go 'cause it's out of your hands. You do the best you can and it happens.

You get the job, go to work. If it doesn't happen, 'Okay, what's next?" Shaking his head, he says, "My life hasn't been too hard. When I moved and lived by myself in Santa Monica I'd drive home every weekend. My home was only an hour and 10 minutes away. I became comfortable with myself." Capturing the role of Oliver Trask on six episodes of The O.C.

boosted his visibility, Handley thinks. "At the time I was on it, it was a really popular show." He mannucd to smut the r.irt Miami and NYPD Blue, there was a nine-month period when I landley, 23, didn't work at all. "(It was) the transition from 17 to 19 when the business kind of treated me rotten," he volunteers. "I'd book something and then something would come up. I would not get the )ob there's just a lot of bull (stuff) that comes in between it." munns John Larroquette will be joining the cast of Boston Legal.

the usual way, he says My McClakhy-TYibuneNcws.