July 08, 2005 |
Hulk Hogan Pins Down Reality TV
TVGuide.com: In 1987, you became the first man to beat Andre the Giant. What do remember most about that bout?
Hulk Hogan: Just that he weighed almost 700 lbs., and I had no idea what was going to happen. Andre could either be the nicest man in the world or the mean giant, and it was one of those nights where he was feeling his oats. Halfway through the match, he goes, "Body slam me!" I said, "What?! I can't!" But he scared me to death, so I just picked him up and did it. TVGuide.com: How much credit for your success do you give to Sylvester Stallone, who cast you as Thunderlips in Rocky III?
Hogan: Stallone was a 100 feet high in the public's eye, so when he gave me a chance to work with him, it kind of changed the perception of what a wrestler was about. I give him a lot of credit for that. TVGuide.com: Stallone attended your recent induction into the WWE Hall of Fame. What perks come with that honor? A full 25 percent off at GNC?
Hogan: It's just the period at the end of the sentence for the career. Even though wrestling is, some people say, "an exhibition," in my mind it was a long, hard haul. The Hall of Fame showed me that it was all worth doing. TVGuide.com: Let's talk about The Hogan Family. (No, wait, that was a Sandy Duncan sitcom.) I mean, Hogan Knows Best. Who in your clan was most resistant to this idea?
Hogan: I was the most resistant. I didn't want to have my home invaded by cameras. The person who wanted it the most was my [14-year-old] son, Nick. He thought that he could use it as leverage to meet girls. TVGuide.com: How would you liken it to The Osbournes?
Hogan: We're the anti-Osbournes. We run a real tight ship. No drugs. No rehab. But we are kind of crazier than them in our own way. TVGuide.com: In the first episode, you use a GPS device to keep tabs on your daughter while she's out on a date. Reality-show flourish or real-life parenting tactic?
Hogan: Well, brother, look at it this way: How many Amber Alerts have you heard about? It has been a nightmare, Brooke turning 17 and looking the way she does. I can't imagine any father who has the resources not [using] some type of tracking device [as I did]. TVGuide.com: What else will viewers be surprised to learn about you?
Hogan: For 25 years, I've been coming into your home going, "Hey, brother, let me tell you something!" A lot of people think of Hulk Hogan as a bald, screaming wrestler, but I'm also a good father and family man. And we have problems like everybody else, with the neighbors, the city.... TVGuide.com: What beef do the neighbors have with you?
Hogan: Well, we've got a couple too many animals. Too many dogs, and we're in a neighborhood where we're not supposed to have a rooster. TVGuide.com: After doing this for four-and-a-half months, have you found that Hogan, in fact, knows best?
Hogan: Hogan's wife, Linda, knows best, if you want to know the truth. [Laughs] She runs a tight ship. TVGuide.com: Yeah, in the show's press kit, she's described as "the rock of the family." I'm surprised you're okay with any Hogan being described as "the Rock."
Hogan: Oh, I actually like the Rock, so they can refer to her as the rock. The name works in this case. |
Without a Trace's Lady Killer
The scene isn't working. Not because the lead actors, Without a Trace star Poppy Montgomery and David Sutcliffe, aren't gelling. They are. But this moment in their Lifetime TV-movie Murder in the Hamptons — airing Monday at 9 pm/ET — needs more juice. The story, based on actual events, is practically Shakespearean: Ted Ammon, a fabulously wealthy Manhattan financier, and Generosa Rand, an attractive, demanding real-estate agent, meet cute, marry in 1986, adopt 4-year-old twins from Russia and live like royalty in England and East Hampton, N.Y. But by the time of this scene, Generosa is pitching fits, paranoid that Ted is having an affair. In 2001, he would be found bludgeoned to death in his bed, and she and her boyfriend, electrician Danny Pelosi (Summerland's Shawn Christian), would be the prime suspects. Two years later, she, too, would be dead — of breast cancer — and in 2004 Pelosi would be convicted of second-degree murder. In the scene, Generosa is halfway to hysteria. She's supposed to give the kids to Ted (Sutcliffe) for the weekend; instead, she accuses him of attempted kidnapping. Director Jerry Ciccoritti told Montgomery she needed to hit him. "Poppy was like, 'Oh, I don't know if I could do that,'" Sutcliffe recalls. "But as soon as I turned my back, she was just pounding me, boom, boom — and for the subsequent 10 takes." He laughs. "It was what the scene needed. And she went for it." Montgomery, 30, has a long history of going for what she wants. In her native Sydney, the young Aussie was expelled from six private girls' schools, then dropped out of public school the moment she hit legal age. "Fourteen years, nine months," she says. "I didn't like to conform. I was very outspoken. Like, I thought it was stupid that we had to wear regulation underwear when no one could see it." At 18, when her own father fired her from a waitressing job, she followed a boyfriend to Florida. "I didn't like the guy, so I got on a Greyhound to L.A.," she says. She's barely stopped working since: In 2001 she played Marilyn Monroe (one of her idols) to great acclaim in the CBS miniseries Blonde; since 2002, she's played FBI agent Samantha Spade in Trace; in Murder, she's in practically every scene. Sutcliffe, Christian and Ciccoritti all use the same words to describe her: focused, intense, committed, fearless. "You can see crazy in the girl — I mean that as a compliment," Christian says. "I'm so opinionated, that's their polite way of saying no one can get a word in edgewise," Montgomery says. "But I believe in doing things right." So much so that today, the second-to-last day of shooting, there is palpable tension on the set, with crew members warning one another to stay out of her sight line or else. In the midst of a confrontation scene with Christian, she stalks off the set to take an unscheduled half-hour break in her trailer. A week after the shoot ends, Montgomery is more relaxed. "Every scene that day was highly emotional," she says. The actress shouted so much that she ended up losing her voice. "That's always good," Montgomery says with a grin. "Look, I just want to convey the layers of this person. It's so easy to say, 'Generosa equals monster.' But everyone has qualities of bad and good. I don't think anyone's one thing." Certainly not Poppy Montgomery. |
Dispatches from Into the West
Some Native American extras from TNT's hit 12-hour miniseries — airing Fridays at 8 pm/ET — recently alleged in a television trade publication that they were underpaid and overworked in frigid weather during the show's arduous four-month shoot in New Mexico last year. Executives at TNT and DreamWorks refused to elaborate on the allegations, saying the Steven Spielberg production — which included 15,000 extras (many of whom were Native American) and a half-mile wagon train — "treated everyone with care." And that "we take these specific complaints seriously and will look into them immediately." Irene Bedard, who plays Margaret Light Shines Wheeler, the daughter of a Lakota and a settler, confirms that weather on location was awful. "Snow and mud and wind... we were all cold," she says, adding that the low temperatures were harder on the Native American actors, who were wearing skimpier costumes, than on the white actors in settler garb. But Bedard says there was one perk to the awful weather: It intensified the authenticity of the performances because "the situation was like the situation faced by the people at the time." Now for the good news. Despite the controversy, the first two episodes of Into the West drew more than 11 million viewers. The series has also been heralded for its stellar cast of Native American actors — one of the largest ever assembled. "You can go all over Indian country and meet somebody whose family has been part of [West]," says Bedard. "It's kind of like a family reunion." |
|
|
|
