LIFE

Annette O’Toole savors ‘Virgin River’ role as real, freeing

Published

2 years ago

September 26, 2022

LOS ANGELES — Annette O’Toole is reveling in her “Virgin River” role as the unpredictable mayor of a small town whose woodsy, peaceful setting belies its residents’ roller-coaster lives.

Her character is older but not always wiser, including in love. That goes against Hollywood’s tendency to view midlife-plus as past the sell-by date for nuanced storytelling, and O’Toole counts herself fortunate to play Hope McCrea.

Make that doubly lucky. When the actor chose to stay with her 97-year-old mom during the worst of the pandemic, that meant Hope was largely absent last season. The fourth and current season is a comeback for both, thanks to series creator Sue Tenney.

“She called me and said, ’You’re in the hospital. You had a terrible car crash,” Tenney said of Hope’s in-limbo status. When O’Toole asked if Hope lives, Tenney let the actor decide: Did she want to return to the series, which stars Alexandra Breckenridge and is based on Robyn Carr’s novels?

“Are you kidding?” O’Toole replied. Such eagerness is characteristic, as proven by her resume that includes few gaps and some 100 film and TV credits (“Superman III,” “Nash Bridges” and “Smallville” among them). She earned an Emmy nomination for playing Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy in the 1990 miniseries “The Kennedys of Massachusetts,” a role she took on shortly after the birth of her second daughter.

She’s also emphasized theater work and, with husband Michael McKean, is a songwriter: several of their tunes were in “A Mighty Wind” — the film by McKean’s longtime friend and collaborator Christopher Guest — including the Oscar-nominated ballad “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow.” Then there’s her Spinal Tap back-up singer bragging rights, most notably at a London benefit concert including actor-writer McKean, Guest and others in the faux band of satiric movie fame.

O’Toole, 70, was breezily good-natured in a phone interview with The Associated Press during season-five filming in Vancouver, which stands in for Northern California on “Virgin River.” There’s more “emotionally at stake” than ever and the town is “really going to be unified,” she said of next season.

There were no spoilers dropped, but O’Toole candidly discussed how her character is portrayed, Hope’s relationship with Doc Mullins, played by Tim Matheson, and the luck in finding the right partner in McKean, her second husband. Remarks were edited for clarity and brevity.

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‘Virgin River’ isn’t sci-fi or fantasy, it’s simply human drama. Was that the appeal?

O’TOOLE: Exactly that. It’s about people and their issues and in a beautiful community. And Sue Tenney was so generous because this character is not really in the books very much, so we kind of had a blank slate to draw this person together. You don’t do it (a project) because you want it to be a big success. The chances of that happening are so slim. You do it because you want to, and you like the people. And at this point in my career it’s doing something that I haven’t quite done before. That’s why this character was attractive, because I could help form her into something a little more real than than a lot of the stuff I read for characters my age, grandmothers and the sweet kind of homebody. That’s boring, I’ve done that.

What did you want to see in Hope instead?

O’TOOLE: I just wanted her to be complicated, a woman who even at her age doesn’t have the answers. She doesn’t have, at the beginning, a relationship that is steady. It’s very rocky. That’s interesting to me, somebody who has gone through most of her life and hasn’t figured it out yet. She’s impulsive and headstrong, and also very generous and can be very kind and loving. She’s just a person. I just wanted a full person.

It’s a screen rarity for older characters to be shown other than in a long and loving marriage or widowed. Hope and Doc’s story isn’t the show’s central relationship, but it’s a focus.

O’TOOLE: How interesting that he was unfaithful early in their marriage and she cannot let him go. She never divorced him. She never said, well, that’s it. Tim is fantastic and we’ve come up with a whole full life that they’ve had together. It’s not been a normal marriage at all. The way we look at marriage, I love that marriage can be whatever you want it to be or not be.

Hope is an attractive woman who doesn’t bother to hide her age behind hair dye or heavy makeup. Given the demands on women to be eternally youthful, how is to play a character who says, ‘Here I am world, an older woman?’

O’TOOLE: It’s wonderful. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had because when I started out, I was really young and I was sort of the ingenue, and then I was the leading lady in some things, and then you start to age. Now I just find it so freeing. I don’t worry about it, and that’s in life, too. So Hope and I feel the same way about it. It’s like, who are we trying to kid? Especially an actress, they can look you up (online) and see how old you are, see all the things you’ve done, look at all your pictures.

You and Michael have been married for more than two decades, impressive for any couple and considered especially so in the entertainment industry.

O’TOOLE: We’re really good buddies. He just left, he’s been over in London doing another Netflix series, ‘The Diplomat.’ COVID was so terrible, but we were very lucky because it was the most consecutive days we had ever been together in our marriage. I realize we’re always saying goodbye. It was very hard because we’d been together so much, and we talked about the first time we said goodbye, and we talked about luck. We both really lucked out finding one another. I cannot imagine what my life without him, and he says the same thing about me.

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LIFE

conic Smiths bassist dies aged 59

Published

12 months ago

May 21, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

The bassist with legendary English rock band The Smiths, Andy Rourke, has died at the age of 59, the group’s former guitarist Johnny Marr has announced.

“It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Andy Rourke after a lengthy illness with pancreatic cancer,” Marr wrote on Twitter on Friday.

“Andy will be remembered as a kind and beautiful soul by those who knew him and as a supremely gifted musician by music fans,” he added.

Mike Joyce, who was drummer for The Smiths, described Rourke as “not only the most talented bass player I’ve ever had the privilege to play with but the sweetest, funniest lad I’ve ever met.” The musical legacy of his former bandmate is “perpetual,” Joyce said in a tweet.

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Rourke was with The Smiths from 1982 to 1987, performing on all four of the band’s studio albums: ‘The Smiths’ (1984), ‘Meat Is Murder’ (1985), ‘The Queen Is Dead’ (1986), and ‘Strangeways, Here We Come’ (1987).

He also had an impressive career after the group split up, playing with Smiths’ frontman Morrissey on his solo projects and with the likes of Sinead O’Connor, The Pretenders, Dolores O’Riordan, Badly Drawn Boy, Killing Joke, and guitarist Aziz Ibrahim.

In 2005, Rourke put together a supergroup called Freebass with fellow bassists Peter Hook, who previously played with New Order and Joy Division, and Gary “Mani” Mounfield of the Stone Roses and Primal Scream. Among other things, he also worked as a DJ on the popular British rock radio station XFM, now known as Radio X.

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LIFE

Village People demand Trump stop using their music

Published

12 months ago

May 17, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

A viral video emerged last week of Donald Trump dancing to a Village People song at his Florida estate

Village People, the disco act best known for 1970s hits like ‘YMCA’ and ‘Macho Man,’ has issued Donald Trump with a cease and desist order to stop using the band’s music at political events without express permission, according to a legal filing. The former US president has frequently played Village People songs at campaign rallies throughout his political career.

Last week, a video emerged online showing Trump dancing to a Village People tribute act during a poolside dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida – leading to the band’s management issuing Trump with a legal request to abstain from using Village People intellectual property at any future events.

“The performance [in the viral video] has, and continues to cause public confusion as to why Village People would engage in such a performance. We did not,” wrote the band’s manager Karen Willis, the wife of singer Victor Willis.

Willis added that Trump’s use of Village People music was previously “tolerated” by the band but that it has decided to issue legal proceedings to prevent further use of its popular songs, for fear that it could be construed as an “endorsement” of Trump’s political ambitions. She also explained that the video had created confusion among fans who mistakenly thought that the real Village People had performed at Trump’s Florida estate.

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Trump’s legal team has issued a withering response to the band’s cease and desist request. Attorney Joe Tacopinca told TMZ on Monday that, “I will only deal with the attorney of the Village People, if they have one, not the wife of one of the members. But they should be thankful that President Trump allowed them to get their name back in the press. I haven’t heard their name in decades. Glad to hear they are still around.”

Village People music, particularly the song ‘Macho Man’, has been a regular soundtrack to Donald Trump’s political rallies in recent years.

Singer Victor Willis indicated in a post on social media two years ago that while Village People music is intended to be “all-inclusive,” its use by Trump has been problematic. “We’d prefer our music be kept out of politics,” he wrote in February 2020. Willis later requested that Trump stop using his band’s music in June 2020, following reports that then-President Trump intended to use the US military to stamp out Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the United States.

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Hollywood star pulls out of hosting awards show amid strike

Published

12 months ago

May 5, 2023

The San Francisco Telegraph

Drew Barrymore is stepping down as host of this year’s MTV Movie & Music Awards, due to be held on Sunday, in solidarity with the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA). The actress has agreed to host the ceremony next year instead, Variety reported.

Although the MTV awards are set to go ahead without a host, Variety said that arrangements for the show are in constant flux as producers are unsure which of the presenters, nominees, and guests will be willing to appear.

Organizers have already scrapped the red carpet as well as interviews that were supposed to take place before the ceremony.

In a statement quoted by Variety, Barrymore said she had “listened to the writers, and in order to truly respect them, I will pivot from hosting the MTV Movie & TV Awards live in solidarity with the strike.”

The actress added that “everything we celebrate and honor about movies and television is born out of their [writers’] creation,” and revealed that she is “choosing to wait” until a solution is reached on fairly compensating writers for their craft.

Although Barrymore will not be present at the live event in Santa Monica, California on Sunday, she is likely to appear in several pre-recorded short films created for the telecast.

Unions representing writers working in Hollywood and beyond officially began a strike on Tuesday. The move comes amid a dispute with major studios such as Paramount and Universal over working conditions and the shift brought about by the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon.

Hollywood writers go on strike

The WGA has complained that its members are being “devalued” and have received reduced pay despite significantly more movies and TV shows being in production than ever before thanks to streaming.

Aside from increased pay, the WGA has issued a list of demands to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents Hollywood’s major studios. Among them is a request for guarantees that scripts would not be generated using Artificial Intelligence, and that writers would not be asked to edit or rewrite screenplays generated by such technology.

The current strike is the first work stoppage in the US entertainment industry in 15 years. The previous writers’ strike in 2007 lasted for 100 days and ultimately cost Hollywood an estimated $2.1 billion.

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