In Memory Of ...

[GeekBoy3]

Bill Walton, who was one of the best college basketball players ever, won the 1978 NBA MVP award and a two NBA championships with the Portland Trail Blazers and Boston Celtics, has died Monday at the age of 71. Walton passed after a prolonged bout with cancer, the NBA announced.

Bill Walton succumbs to cancer at 71

On a personal note: back in 1983, I happened to be in line behind him at Space Mountain at Disneyland. He was very nice when my mom asked if he'd mind taking a picture with me. When we got to the front of the line, they had to pull around a special train to accommodate his size. My brother later worked with him at Westwood One Radio and told him that story, and he remembered it! RIP Mr. Walton.

[ghost2509]

Tony Lo Bianco, actor who played tough guys and a famed mayor, dies at 87

msn.com
Story by Harrison Smith
June 13, 2024

Tony Lo Bianco, a New York cabdriver’s son who brought a gritty realism to his portrayal of cops, boxers and all manner of tough guys, memorably playing a mobster in “The French Connection” and starring as one of his hometown’s most irascible mayors, Fiorello La Guardia, in a one-man show that he performed around the world, died June 11 at his horse farm in Poolesville, Md. He was 87.

He had prostate cancer, said his wife, Alyse Lo Bianco.

A former Golden Gloves fighter who grew up near the Brooklyn waterfront, Mr. Lo Bianco was attending vocational school, daydreaming through his classes, when one of his teachers encouraged him to enter a declamation contest. He won, and went on to launch a six-decade acting career in which he appeared in Broadway plays and more than 100 movies and television shows, typically in macho parts where he flashed a sly smile — along with a gun — while operating on the wrong side of the law.

For his breakthrough role, in the acclaimed crime film “The Honeymoon Killers” (1970), he oozed what New York Times journalist William Grimes described as “a thrillingly disgusting smarminess,” adopting a Spanish accent to play a con man who targets single women while going on a murderous rampage with his partner (Shirley Stoler).

The next year, he appeared in “The French Connection” as Sal Boca, who uses his Brooklyn diner as a front while helping a criminal syndicate smuggle heroin from overseas. Starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider as a pair of morally questionable police detectives, the modestly budgeted movie became an unexpected sensation, winning five Oscars, including best picture and best director for William Friedkin.

“‘The French Connection’ was my second film,” Mr. Lo Bianco told the website Pop Entertainment, exaggerating slightly. (He had bit parts in a few earlier movies.) “I was always fortunate to get a job. I was fortunate to have been from Brooklyn and to have surroundings that made me understand the human condition. That’s the story of my life, actually: watching and learning and pulling from history.”

Mr. Lo Bianco continued to play crime figures in movies including “The Seven-Ups” (1973), which reunited him with Scheider; “F.I.S.T.” (1978), starring Sylvester Stallone; “City Heat” (1984), with Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds; and “Nixon” (1995), as a gangster acquaintance of the titular president (Anthony Hopkins).

He found a wider range of roles on the New York stage, winning an Obie Award in 1976 for starring in Jonathan Reynolds’s one-act comedy “Yanks 3 Detroit 0 Top of the Seventh,” as an aging big league pitcher attempting a comeback.

The play, which was directed by Alan Arkin and ran for months at the American Place Theatre, allowed the sturdy, 5-foot-10 Mr. Lo Bianco to show off some of his athletic abilities. He had been an all-star first baseman while in high school, earning a tryout with the Dodgers at a time when the franchise was still based in Brooklyn (according to the Times, “he suffered a nosebleed the instant he walked onto the infield”), and continued to play ball for years, occasionally declining acting roles that interfered with his softball games in Central Park.

While the play was in rehearsals, he pitched a perfect game in softball with his left hand. He threw with his opposite hand onstage, noting that the character was supposed to be a right-hander. “I like the idea of keeping with the script,” he explained.

Mr. Lo Bianco started out in the theater, making his Broadway debut in 1964 with a small role in Arthur Miller’s wartime drama “Incident at Vichy.” The next year, he was offered a supporting part in an off-Broadway revival of Miller’s “A View From the Bridge.” He turned it down and missed the production, by his account, after declaring that he should play the lead — a role that brought him a Tony nomination nearly two decades later, when he played it on Broadway in 1983.

Reviewing the production for the Times, theater critic Frank Rich had his reservations about the play but was overwhelmed by Mr. Lo Bianco’s performance as Eddie Carbone, a Brooklyn longshoreman with a destructive love for his 17-year-old niece. “Volatile one moment, totally withdrawn the next, the actor travels within a cloud of impenetrable turbulence that visibly buffets all around him,” Rich wrote.

The production was shaped in part by the memories Mr. Lo Bianco had of his Brooklyn childhood, down to the pattern of linoleum he recommended for the set.

“Growing up in that neighborhood, it gets to be in your blood,” he said. “You know a lot of the things people do and how they think and act.”

The second of three sons, Anthony LoBianco (he later added a space to his last name) was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 19, 1936. His grandparents had emigrated from Sicily, and his mother looked after the home while his father worked as a cabbie.

Mr. Lo Bianco studied at the Dramatic Workshop, a New York acting school, and in 1963 he co-founded the Triangle Theater, where he produced and directed plays at the Church of the Holy Trinity on the Upper East Side.

Before long, he was also acting on television. Mr. Lo Bianco guest-starred on the NBC crime drama “Police Story” (he directed a few episodes as well), played a Roman officer in Franco Zeffirelli’s all-star miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth” (1977) and drew on his teenage boxing experience to play Rocky Marciano, the undefeated heavyweight champion, in the TV movie “Marciano” (1979).

His first two marriages, to Dora Landey and Elizabeth Natwick, ended in divorce. In 2015, he married Alyse Best Muldoon, a writer and health counselor.

In addition to his third wife, survivors include two daughters from his first marriage, Yummy Helmes and Nina Landey; two stepchildren, Tristan Hamilton and Lanah Fitzgerald; a brother; and 10 grandchildren. Another daughter from his first marriage, Anna Avila, died in 2006.

Mr. Lo Bianco remained a prolific screen actor, appearing in movies including “Bloodbrothers” (1978) and, most recently, “Somewhere in Queens” (2022), in which he played Ray Romano’s father. But late in his career, he was perhaps most closely associated with a stage role, that of La Guardia, the firebrand three-term mayor who led New York from 1934 through the end of 1945.

Mr. Lo Bianco, who got in character by putting on weight and raising the pitch of his voice, first portrayed La Guardia in a one-man show, Paul Shyre’s “Hizzoner!,” that ran in Albany, N.Y., in 1984 and ran on Broadway for two difficult weeks in 1989. (Mr. Lo Bianco had to shuffle around the stage after breaking his foot during previews. He reportedly slid too fast down a fire pole, during a scene that reflected the mayor’s abiding love of the Fire Department.)

The play, which imagined La Guardia’s last day in office, was extensively reworked by Mr. Lo Bianco, who wrote and directed a subsequent version called “The Little Flower.” He took the show on the road, performing at universities and community colleges as well as cities in Russia and Italy, and stored parts of the set in his home, at times keeping the desk and vintage telephone in the living room of his Manhattan apartment.

Interviewed by the Times in 2015, he called the show “a vehicle to express my concerns for the public and the political mess that we’re in, which we continue to be in I think, and try to relate answers to failure.”

“The beauty of it is it appeals to both sides of the aisle,” he added. “Democrats and Republicans both believe I’m talking to them.”

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Jerry West, One of Basketball’s Greatest Players, Dies at 86

He was a sharpshooting, high-scoring Hall of Fame guard for the Lakers and later an executive with the team. His image became the N.B.A.’s logo.

nytimes.com
Bruce Weber
June 12,2024

Jerry West, who emerged from West Virginia coal country to become one of basketball’s greatest players, a signature figure in the history of the Los Angeles Lakers and a literal icon of the sport — his is the silhouette on the logo of the National Basketball Association — died on Wednesday. He was 86.

The Los Angeles Clippers announced his death but provided no other details. West was a consultant for the team in recent years.

For four decades, first as a player and later as a scout, a coach and an executive, West played a formidable role in the evolution of the N.B.A. in general and the Lakers in particular, beginning in 1960, when the team moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles and he was its first draft choice.

He won championships with several generations of Laker teams and Laker stars and was an all-star in each of his 14 seasons. But except for his longtime teammate, the great forward Elgin Baylor, who retired without a championship, there may have never been a greater player who suffered the persistent close-but-no-cigar frustration that followed West for the bulk of his career on the court.

During his tenure, the Lakers buzzed almost perpetually around the championship, but West had the misfortune to play while the Boston Celtics, with Bill Russell at center, were at the height of their indomitability — they beat the Lakers in the finals six times.

It wasn’t until the Lakers acquired their own giant, Wilt Chamberlain, that they triumphed, but even that took four seasons — and a seventh defeat in the finals, to the Knicks in 1970 — to accomplish.

The 1971-72 Lakers won 69 games, a record at the time — the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls won 72 and the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors won 73 — including a streak of 33 in a row that remains unequaled. When they avenged their loss to the Knicks, winning the 1972 championship, West spoke after the last game with a colossal sense of relief, recalling that his thirst for the ultimate victory began before he entered the pros. In 1959, his junior year at West Virginia University, his team made it to the national finals against California, only to lose by a single point.

“The last time I won a championship was in the 12th grade,” West said after he scored 23 points as the Lakers beat the Knicks 114-100 to capture the series in five games. He added: “This is a fantastic feeling. This is one summer I’m really going to enjoy.”

As the Lakers general manager, West succeeded more often. He led a team that included Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson and James Worthy to a championship in 1985 — sweet revenge against the Celtics at last — and again in 1987 and 1988.

In 2000, as executive vice president (his role was as a super-general manager, with the authority over personnel), he won again, having acquired Kobe Bryant in a trade and signed Shaquille O’Neal as a free agent. West left the Lakers after that season, but the team built largely on his watch won two more championships in a row.

As a long-armed sharpshooting guard, West, who played from 1960 to 1974, is on anyone’s short list of the finest backcourt players in the history of the game. At 6-foot-2 or 6-foot-3 and well under 200 pounds, he wasn’t especially big, even by the standards of the day: His great contemporaries Oscar Robertson, John Havlicek and, a bit later, Walt Frazier were taller, brawnier men adept at posting up opposing guards. (Havlicek also played forward.)

But West, who routinely played through injuries — his nose was reportedly broken nine times — was a quick and powerful leaper with a lightning right-handed release, all of which allowed him to get his shot away against taller, stronger defenders.

He wasn’t the finest dribbler in the league, but he was among its finest passers, averaging nearly seven assists per game, and his nearly six rebounds per game was better than average for a guard. He had quick hands on defense, enormous stamina, a relentlessly active presence on the court — a quality now often described as a great motor — and superior court sense.

Excelling Under Pressure

He was probably best known, however, for excelling in tough situations and big games, for wanting the ball when the game was in the balance, and for making shots under pressure.

In the 1970 finals against the Knicks, West made one of the most memorable shots in league history. With the Lakers down by two and the clock ticking down, his buzzer-beating heave from beyond half court tied the game. The three-point shot was not yet in effect — the N.B.A. didn’t adopt it until 1979 — and the Lakers lost in overtime.

“If it comes down to one shot,” West said once, “I like to shoot the ball. I don’t worry about it. If it doesn’t go in, it doesn’t go in.”

West led the N.B.A. in scoring in the 1969-70 season with 31.2 points per game; he scored more than 30 points per game in four seasons; and he averaged 27 points during the regular season for his career, the eighth-highest figure in N.B.A. history and third-highest at the time of his retirement (behind Chamberlain and Baylor).

But he was even better in the playoffs, when he averaged more than 30 points a game seven times, including 40.6 in 1964.

In the 1969 finals against the Celtics, he averaged 37.9 points, including 42 in the final game, in which he also had 13 rebounds and 12 assists and led a fourth-quarter comeback that fell, heartbreakingly, a bucket short. He was named the Most Valuable Player for the series, still the only time a losing player has been the finals’ M.V.P. Afterward the Celtics were agog with praise.

Bill Russell called West “the greatest player in the game,” and Red Auerbach, the renowned coach who was then the Celtics’ general manager, called West’s performance in a losing cause one of the most brilliant he’d ever seen.

“The guy I felt sorry for in those playoffs was Jerry West,” John Havlicek told the writer Terry Pluto for his book “Tall Tales: The Glory Years of the N.B.A.” (2000). “He was so great, and he was absolutely devastated. As we came off the court, I went up to Jerry and I said, ‘I love you and I just hope you get a championship. You deserve it as much as anyone who has ever played this game.’ He was too emotionally spent to say anything, but you could feel his absolute and total dejection over losing.”

Zeke From Cabin Creek

Jerry Alan West was born in Chelyan, W.Va., on May 28, 1938, and lived in several towns in the area southeast of Charleston along the Kanawha River, including Cabin Creek, the derivation of one of his later nicknames: Zeke from Cabin Creek. (With the Lakers, he was also known as Mr. Outside — Elgin Baylor was Mr. Inside — and Mr. Clutch.)

West was the fifth of six children of Howard and Cecile Sue (Creasey) West. His mother (her first name was pronounced Cecil) was a store clerk, and his father was a machine operator for an oil company and worked in the electrical shop at a coal mine. A fierce union man and a rigid disciplinarian, the elder West was portrayed in a 1960 article in The Saturday Evening Post, while Jerry was starring for West Virginia, as a “a salty man of strong convictions” and small-town country habits who was “inclined to brag more about his front porch — ‘biggest front porch in town, wouldn’t trade it for a pair o’ Missouri mules’ — than about his all-American son.”

Jerry West, who grew up shy and introverted — “an intelligent, intense, complicated young man of 21,” The Post wrote — was most affected by what he later said was a chilly household and the death of an older brother, David, in the Korean War. In a harshly introspective memoir, “West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life” (2011, with Jonathan Coleman), West spoke of being beaten by his father and “raised in a home, a series of them actually, that was spotless but where I never learned what love was.”

He played basketball at East Bank High School, and when the team won the 1956 state championship, the town renamed itself West Bank for a day.

Over three years at West Virginia University, he averaged nearly 25 points per game, shooting better than 50 percent and grabbing more than 13 rebounds per game. He was twice named player of the year in what was then the Southern Conference and twice picked as a consensus all-American. He was paired in the backcourt with Oscar Robertson on the gold medal-winning American Olympic team in 1960.

In his 14 pro seasons, West was named to the all-N.B.A. first team 11 times. But injuries finally caught up with him.

“With my different noses, my wife has been married to nine different guys,” he said. He missed the 1971 playoffs with a torn knee ligament and agonized through his final season with a persistent abdominal strain.

He had had salary squabbles with Jack Kent Cooke, the Lakers’ owner, and after saying he would play a 15th year, he decided on retirement shortly before the 1974-75 season, a move that exacerbated an already strained relationship.

In the spring of 1975, West sued, saying Cooke had failed to honor a $1 million, five-year agreement that covered both a playing contract and post-playing years. The Lakers countersued, saying West’s abrupt last-minute reneging on his promise to play doomed the team to a poor season. (They finished at 30-52.) Both suits were dropped a year later after the two men reconciled — to some degree; they saw eye to eye on very little — and Cooke hired West as the Lakers’ head coach in 1976.

In his first season as head coach, West led the Lakers to the N.B.A.’s best record, 53-29, with Abdul-Jabbar as the league’s most valuable player, but they lost in the playoffs to the eventual champions, the Portland Trail Blazers, led by Bill Walton, who died last month. Two years later, Los Angeles once again lost to the eventual champs, the Seattle SuperSonics.

West’s won-lost record over three seasons as coach was 145-101 — a creditable résumé, especially given that he’d had no previous coaching experience at any level. But it was not a rewarding experience.

Among other things, he had been through two troubling incidents. In one, Abdul-Jabbar broke his hand when he punched the opposing center, Kent Benson of the Milwaukee Bucks, after Benson had elbowed him in the stomach. Several weeks later came one of the most shocking and upsetting episodes in league history: On Dec. 9, 1977, when an on-the-court melee broke out between the Lakers and the Houston Rockets, the Laker forward Kermit Washington delivered a punch to the head of the Rockets’ Rudy Tomjanovich that nearly killed him.

Becoming an Executive

In a 2010 biography of West, Roland Lazenby wrote that “West is certain that talent supersedes coaching in the business of basketball,” and even though Cooke sold the team after the 1979 season and the new owner, Jerry Buss, wanted West to stay on, he didn’t care for being on the bench. West did, however, have an interest in player evaluation and in having an executive role on the team, and in 1982, following a season that had brought the Lakers, led by Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, their second championship in three years, Buss named him general manager.

West was an active team builder His draft picks included several players who became Laker stalwarts: James Worthy (No. 1 overall in 1982, ahead of Dominique Wilkins), A.C. Green in the first round in 1985, and, to replace Abdul-Jabbar, who retired after 20 years as the game’s dominant player, Vlade Divac in the first round in 1989.

In a six-player deal with the San Diego Clippers (now the Los Angeles Clippers) in 1983, West traded a popular guard, Norm Nixon, and added Byron Scott. When Magic Johnson retired in 1991 after revealing that he had tested positive for H.I.V., West sought to create another one-two punch on the order of Abdul-Jabbar and Johnson or Chamberlain and West.

In the space of a week in 1996, he finally managed it, trading Divac to the Charlotte Hornets for a recent draftee just out of high school — Kobe Bryant — and signing a big man who had recently become a free agent, Shaquille O’Neal. The result: Over 20 seasons, from 1982 to 2002, the Lakers reached the N.B.A. finals 10 times, winning five championships and missing the playoffs just once.

After leaving the Lakers, West spent five seasons, from 2002 to 2007, with the Memphis Grizzlies, a team that had never won as many as half its games in its seven previous seasons. In West’s second year at the helm, the Grizzlies were 50-32, the first of the three consecutive seasons in which they qualified for the playoffs.

He later joined the board of the Golden State Warriors, who were league champions in 2015 but who, after a record-setting regular season, lost in the finals the next year to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Following that defeat, West was reportedly involved in acquiring the all-star free agent forward Kevin Durant.

West’s first marriage, to Martha Jane Kane, whom he met in college, ended in divorce. He married Karen Bua in 1978. West had five sons: David Mark, Michael, Ryan and Jonnie. Complete information on his survivors was not immediately available.

In recent years West’s personality became the object of some scrutiny. Both Lazenby’s biography and West’s own book depict him as a troubled perfectionist and a relentless, pitiless self-examiner — someone who, in West’s own words, was “aloof and inscrutable,” possessed of “a demon-filled mind” and unable to fully enjoy his many successes.

In 2022, the HBO show “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” portrayed West (played by Jason Clarke) as an irrationally relentless and tantrum-throwing executive still brooding over past disappointments. In a statement after the show’s premiere, a lawyer representing West demanded a retraction and an apology in a statement that described his characterization in the show as “deliberately false,” “egregious” and “cruel.”

HBO defended the show, saying in a statement, “The series and its depictions are based on extensive factual research and reliable sourcing.”

West acknowledged that he had complicated personality. “I am not a conventional person or thinker, not someone who walks a straightforward line,” he wrote. “I am too rebellious and defiant for that, always have been. I am, if I may say so, an enigma (even to myself, especially to myself), an obsessive, someone whose mind ranges far and wide and returns to the things that, for better or worse, hold me in their thrall.”

West added that he wrote the book to “explain the mystery of that person” who is suggested by the logo of the N.B.A., which was created in 1969 and has a peculiar murkiness to its history. It shows a figure in white silhouette against a red and blue background, a slender player facing forward in midstride, dribbling with his left hand, his body angled gracefully.

The league has never acknowledged officially that it is West. It resembles him enough, however, that some critics have grumbled that the logo is out of date, and that because the league is mostly Black, the figure should be identifiable as a Black star, like Michael Jordan.

In 2010, The Los Angeles Times interviewed Alan Siegel, the man who designed the logo. Of course it’s West, he said, but he hadn’t chosen West as the model; he chose a photo of West that captivated him.

“It was perfect,” Siegel said. “It was vertical and it had a sense of movement. It was just one of those things that clicked.”

As for West himself, he told The Times that he felt awkward commenting, but that if he was indeed the model, it would be flattering. He recalled that when he first saw Siegel’s drawing, he thought, “That looks like somebody familiar.”

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Donald Sutherland, veteran actor known for roles in ‘M*A*S*H,’ ‘Klute’ and ‘The Hunger Games,’ dead at 88

CNN
By Brian Lowry and Elizabeth Wagmeister
June 20, 2024

Donald Sutherland, a veteran actor known for roles in “M*A*S*H,” “Klute” and “The Hunger Games,” has died, according to a statement from his agency CAA.

He was 88.

Sutherland died Thursday in Miami after a long illness, according to his agency.

“With a heavy heart, I tell you that my father, Donald Sutherland, has passed away,” Kiefer Sutherland, Donald Sutherland’s son, wrote in a post on Instagram Thursday. “I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film. Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly.”

Kiefer Sutherland continued to write that his father “loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that. A life well lived.”

Decorated resume

Tall, distinctive and known for his intensity on screen, Sutherland earned an Emmy for his role as a Soviet official in the fact-based 1995 TV movie “Citizen X,” as well as a pair of Golden Globes. His career spanned more than 60 years and nearly 200 film and TV credits, including recent roles in the limited series “Trust” as oil tycoon J. Paul Getty and HBO’s “The Undoing.”

Sutherland’s big break came when he was cast as one of “The Dirty Dozen” in the star-studded 1967 film, which became a major hit. He followed that with another war movie, “Kelly’s Heroes,” before playing the wisecracking doctor Hawkeye Pierce in the movie version of “M*A*S*H” and opposite Jane Fonda in her Oscar-winning portrayal of a high-class “call girl” in the crime mystery “Klute.” (Fonda and Sutherland also had an off-screen relationship around the time that they made the film.)

Reflecting his ability to play all sorts of roles, Sutherland’s 1970s resume included a chillingly effective remake of the horror film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and a memorable turn as a pot-smoking professor in the National Lampoon comedy “Animal House.”

He also starred opposite Julie Christie in director Nicolas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now,” a 1973 movie that became somewhat notorious for the raciness of its sex scene, which had to be trimmed in order to avoid an X rating.

A steady stream of roles followed in a wide variety of genres, from a small but pivotal part in Oliver Stone’s “JFK” to supporting work in “Ordinary People” (which won the Oscar for best picture), “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Backdraft” and “The Italian Job.”

Sutherland also starred as the legendary lover for director Federico Fellini in “Fellini’s Casanova.” Many younger filmgoers, meanwhile, will likely remember him as the evil president in “The Hunger Games” movies.

Beginnings

Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Sutherland endured several bouts of ill health as a child, including polio. He attended the University of Toronto, where he studied engineering before gravitating toward drama and appearing on stage, graduating with degrees in both.

The 6’4” actor met his first wife, Lois Hardwick, in college, and the two married in 1959. He moved to London, where he found some stage work, and eventually to Hollywood in the 1960s, where “Dirty Dozen” and “M*A*S*H” put him on the map.

In the mid-1960s he divorced, marrying actress Shirley Douglas, whom he met while filming the horror movie “Castle of the Living Dead.” They had two children, actor Kiefer and Rachel, who also works in film as a post-production supervisor. That marriage also ended in divorce, and in 1972 Sutherland wed his third wife, actress Francine Racette, with whom he had three sons.

In a 2020 conversation with “The Undoing” costar Hugh Grant for Interview magazine, Sutherland said that he was always so nervous when a movie began shooting that he threw up the night before. He also discussed subtly altering his dialogue, as he put it, to “try to make the lines that I’ve been given fit my mouth.”

Family connections

Sutherland appeared in three films with son Kiefer, beginning with the “24” star’s small part in the comedy-drama “Max Dugan Returns” in 1983, followed by the John Grisham adaptation “A Time to Kill.” The two didn’t perform in a scene together, however, until the 2016 western “Forsaken.”

“It was a memory and an experience that I will treasure for the rest of my life,” Kiefer Sutherland told “Good Morning America” at the time, saying he spent years looking for something that the two could do together.

Asked what advice he would give young actors, Sutherland told Reuters in 2019, “Try and be as truthful as you possibly can, read, read a lot, learn, memorize things, enjoy your artistry, study dancing, be a circus performer, learn how to juggle, so many things, but mostly you have to observe.”

Sutherland received an honorary award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences board in 2017 and was honored with the Order of Canada.

In 2022, Sutherland appeared alongside Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson in the space thriller “Moonfall” and in the Roku TV mini series “Swimming with Sharks.” His final credit came in 2023, with the actor starring in the Paramount+ western drama “Lawmen: Bass Reeves.”

[SynchroDub]

Shifty Shellshock, Crazy Town Singer, Found Dead at Home: Report



According to the*Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s website, Shellshock — whose birth name was Seth Binzer — died at his residence on Monday.

Shifty Shellshock, the frontman of rap rock band*Crazy Town*who sang the hit song “Butterfly,” has died. He was 49.

According to the*Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s website, Shellshock — whose birth name was Seth Binzer — died at his residence on Monday. A cause has not yet been disclosed.

Shellshock met his Crazy Town co-founder, Bret Mazur, in 1992. They first began making music under the name the Brimstone Sluggers, but by 1999, their moniker was changed to Crazy Town and the band had added members Rust Epique, James Bradley Jr. (aka JBJ), Doug Miller, Adam Goldstein (aka DJ AM) and Antonio Lorenzo “Trouble” Valli. Crazy Town’s debut album, “The Gift of Game,” released in November 1999 and the band supported the Red Hot Chili Peppers on tour shortly after.

In October 2000, Crazy Town released “Butterfly” as the third single from “The Gift of Game.” The song samples the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Pretty Little Ditty” and features Shellshock’s laid-back rapping style — “Come my lady, come-come my lady, You’re my butterfly, sugar baby” — seamlessly blending the two genres. The track reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for two non-consecutive weeks and became the band’s biggest hit.

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Martin Mull, actor from 'Clue' and 'Arrested Development,' dies at 80

Story by Variety
NBCNews.com
June 28,2024

Martin Mull, the comic musician and actor who started with 1970s TV series “Fernwood 2 Night” and went on to appear as Colonel Mustard in “Clue” and on “Arrested Development” and “Roseanne,” died Thursday. He was 80.

His daughter Maggie announced his death on Instagram, writing “I am heartbroken to share that my father passed away at home on June 27th, after a valiant fight against a long illness. He was known for excelling at every creative discipline imaginable and also for doing Red Roof Inn commercials. He would find that joke funny. He was never not funny. My dad will be deeply missed by his wife and daughter, by his friends and coworkers, by fellow artists and comedians and musicians, and—the sign of a truly exceptional person—by many, many dogs. I loved him tremendously.”

Mull was nominated for an Emmy in 2016 for his guest role as political aide Bob Bradley in “Veep.” Most recently he had made guest appearances on “The Afterparty,” “Not Dead Yet” and “Grace and Frankie.”

He guested in 2015 on NBC comedy “Community” as George Perry, the father of Gillian Jacobs’ Britta Perry, and on CBS’ comedy “Life in Pieces.”

Mull had a recurring role from 2008-2013 on “Two and a Half Men” as Russell, a pharmacist who uses and sells drugs illegally and attended Charlie’s funeral in the Season 9 premiere episode. The actor also recurred on “Arrested Development” as a rather incompetent private investigator named Gene Parmesan who has a habit of showing up in inane disguises.

Mull was a series regular on Seth MacFarlane’s single-season Fox comedy “Dads,” starring Seth Green and Giovanni Ribisi as the owners of a video-game company, in 2013-14, playing the father of Ribisi’s character.

In 2008 he guested on “Law & Order: SVU” as Dr. Gideon Hutton, whose denial of the existence of AIDS leads to his conviction for willful negligence in the deaths of several people.

Mull’s film and television career really all began with his stint as talk show host Barth Gimble on the wickedly satirical, Norman Lear-created TV series “Fernwood 2 Night,” which was later renamed “America Tonight,” in 1977 and 1978. The mock talk show also featured Fred Willard co-starring as Gimble’s dimwitted sidekick Jerry Hubbard. These shows were spin-offs from Lear’s seminal soap opera sendup “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.”

Willard and Mull reteamed on the 1985 HBO mockumentary “The History of White People in America.” Mull played Roseanne’s gay boss Leon Carp on her same-titled ABC sitcom from 1991-97, and he was reunited with Willard for a 1995 episode of the show in which the two were featured in what was certainly one of television’s first gay weddings.

On the Ellen De Generes sitcom “The Ellen Show” (not to be confused with the earlier “Ellen”), which ran for 18 episodes on CBS in 2001-02, Mull was a series regular as Ed Munn. He recurred on “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” as Principal Willard Kraft from 1997-2000.

From 1998-2004 Mull was a regular on game show “Hollywood Squares” in a run of 425 episodes, many of them as the center square.

Martin Eugene Mull was born in Chicago to a mother who was an actress and director and a father who was a carpenter. The family moved to North Ridgeville, Ohio, when he was 2; when he was 15, they moved to New Canaan, Connecticut. He studied painting and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts in painting.

Mull first broke into show business not as an actor or comedian but as a songwriter, penning Jane Morgan’s 1970 country single “A Girl Named Johnny Cash,” which peaked at No. 61 on Billboard’s country charts. He began his own recording career shortly thereafter.

He composed the theme song for the 1970 series “The 51st State,” and he was the music producer on the 1971 film “Jump.”

Throughout the 1970s, and especially in the decade’s first half, Mull was best known as a musical comedian, performing satirical and humorous songs both live and in studio recordings. He opened for Randy Newman, Frank Zappa and Bruce Springsteen at various live gigs in the early ’70s.

His self-titled debut album, released in 1972, featured noteworthy musicians including Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Levon Helm from the Band, Keith Spring of NRBQ and Libby Titus. Other albums included 1974’s 1973’s “Martin Mull and His Fabulous Furniture in Your Living Room,” 1974’s “Normal,” “Days of Wine and Neuroses” (1975), “No Hits, Four Errors: The Best of Martin Mull” (1977), “Sex and Violins” (1978) and “I’m Everyone I’ve Ever Loved.” According to a profile on the A.V. Club website, Mull earned “a hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with the single ‘Dueling Tubas.’ ” His early albums were recorded for Georgia-based Capricorn Records which was closely associated with the Allman Brothers and other Southern rockers of the era.

In the A.V. Club interview, Mull was asked how a painter found his way into acting, to which he responded: “You know, every painter I know has a day job. They’re either teaching art at some college or driving a cab or whatever. And I just happened to luck into a day job that’s extraordinary and a lot of fun and buys a lot of paint.”

“As far as the acting thing goes, I had a musical career on the road for about 17 years or so, I had bands and so forth, and it boiled down to just my wife and I playing big rooms in Vegas, and you couldn’t ask for more than that. There were limousines and suites and the whole thing. But I got sick of it. So I thought I’d try my hand at writing for television. And I had an ‘in’ to have an interview with Norman Lear, and I was a huge fan of ‘Mary Hartman.’ I went in and talked to him for, oh, I would say a good hour. We had a great chat. And afterward he said, ‘We don’t need any writers. It’s been nice meeting you. I’ll see you.’ And then six months later I got a call to come in and read for a part.”

After the attention he received for playing Barth Gimble on the syndicated series “Fernwood 2 Night,” he played one of the few lead roles of his career in the 1980 feature comedy “Serial,” a satire of life in Marin County.

Also in 1980, Mull had a supporting role in Tony Bill’s “My Bodyguard” as the hotel-manager father of Chris Makepeace’s protagonist Clifford. In “Mr. Mom” (1983), Michael Keaton was the stay-at-home dad, Teri Garr was the working mother, and Martin Mull “is the snaky president of the advertising agency, with plans for promoting Garr into his own life,” in the words of Roger Ebert.

In 1984 Steve Martin and Martin Mull teamed to create the sitcom “Domestic Life,” in which Mull starred as a Seattle TV commentator whose teenage son operates very successful businesses from his room and makes loans to his parents, but the CBS series lasted only 10 episodes.

The actor was part of the ensemble in Robert Altman’s satirical, little-known take on the lives of high school boys, “O.C. and Stiggs” (1985). That year Mull also played Colonel Mustard in “Clue,” an adaptation of the board game, one of the movie roles for which he is best remembered.

He starred in and wrote the screenplay for another little known film, the Robert Downey Sr.-directed “Rented Lips” (1988).

Mull tried series-regular television again as the star opposite Stephanie Faracy of NBC’s “His & Hers,” which disappeared after 13 episodes in 1990, and on “The Jackie Thomas Show” (1992), starring Tom Arnold and gone from ABC after 18 episodes.

The actor began his voiceover sideline with 1993’s “Family Dog,” an early series from Brad Bird in which he provided the lead voice.

Mull guested as himself on two episodes of Garry Shandling’s HBO series “The Larry Sanders Show” in 1992-93. He also had a supporting role in Robin Williams’ 1993 hit “Mrs. Doubtfire.”

Trained as a painter, Mull had practiced his art since the 1970s, and his work appeared both in group and solo exhibits. One of his paintings, After Dinner Drinks (2008), which is owned by Steve Martin, was used for the cover of “Love Has Come for You,” an album by Martin and Edie Brickell.

He is survived by his wife, the former Wendy Haas, an actor and composer whom he married in 1982, and his daughter Maggie, a TV writer and producer.

[SynchroDub]

Jon Landau, Oscar-Winning ‘Titanic’ and ‘Avatar’ Producer, Dies at 63

Jon Landau, the Oscar-winning producer of “Titanic” and both “Avatar” movies, died of cancer on Friday, July 5. He was 63.

Landau, a longtime producing partner to James Cameron, was behind three of the top four highest-grossing movies of all time. Landau helped make history with “Titanic,” the first film to cross $1 billion at the global box office. He topped that movie’s record-breaking grosses twice, with 2009’s “Avatar” and its sequel, 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water.”

Before his death, Landau was deeply involved in the production of the “Avatar” sequels. Cameron is planning to fill his blockbuster sci-fi franchise with five movies in total, with the fifth tentatively coming out in 2031.

Speaking to Variety at the “Way of Water” premiere, Landau recalled screening the movie for the principal cast. “When I saw them tearing up, I had to tear up,” he said.

At age 29, Landau became the executive vice president of feature film production at 20th Century Fox, where he oversaw films such as “Die Hard 2,” “Power Rangers,” “The Last of the Mohicans” and 1994’s “True Lies,” on which he worked with Cameron. When Landau left Fox, Cameron asked him if he wanted to read the script for a project with the code name “Planet Ice,” which Landau boarded and which eventually became 1997’s “Titanic.”

Landau would go on to work with Cameron for the rest of his life, becoming chief operating officer at Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment banner. He additionally was the architect of Lightstorm’s ancillary projects, such as Dark Horse Comics and Penguin Random House’s various “Avatar” print spinoffs. Landau also advised the creation of “Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora,” the well-received Ubisoft game that released in December, as well as an online multiplayer role-playing game from Tencent Games’ Level Infinite called “Avatar: Reckoning.”

Landau’s other producing credits include 1987’s “Campus Man,” 2002’s “Solaris” and 2019’s “Alita: Battle Angel.”

In a 2022 interview with The Talks, Landau said of his career in Hollywood: “I could never just sit at a desk and sign off on anything. Not just as a producer, but in life. I want to participate, I want to have a voice, I want to have an influence. I want to be able to inspire people to go beyond what they think their own capabilities are, for them to feel pride in what we’re doing. I think that’s a very big thing. I never want to be that guy just at a desk anywhere in life.”

He leaves behind his wife, Julie Landau, to whom he was married for almost 40 years, as well as their two sons, Jamie and Jodie Landau. He is also survived by his siblings, Tina, Kathy and Les Landau.

Those who worked with Landau offered tributes, including co-chairman of Disney Entertainment Alan Bergman, who said, “Jon was a visionary whose extraordinary talent and passion brought some of the most unforgettable stories to life on the big screen. His remarkable contributions to the film industry have left an indelible mark, and he will be profoundly missed. He was an iconic and successful producer yet an even better person and a true force of nature who inspired all around him. Our thoughts are with Jon’s wife, Julie, and his family and loved ones during this difficult time.”

Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, whose Wētā FX company was the visual effects house for the “Avatar” movies, also released a statement: “We speak for the entire Wētā FX team when we say we are devastated by the loss of Jon Landau. Jon was not only a monumental figure in the film industry but also a cherished collaborator and friend. Jon brought unparalleled passion to the projects he worked on and his influence will continue to inspire for years to come. Our deepest condolences are with Jon’s family and loved ones, as well as Jim and the Lightstorm Entertainment team.”

Joe Letteri, who was the VFX supervisor on the “Avatar” films, added in his own statement, “I am heartbroken at the loss of our friend Jon Landau. He was an amazing and generous man, and a world-class film maker who leaves a legacy that will last for generations. On behalf of all of us at Wētā FX, it was an honour to work beside him. His dedication to the art of filmmaking inspired us every day. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones.”

Stephen Rivkin, an editor on the “Avatar” films, said in a statement to Variety, “Jon was our hero. He is and will always be the greatest champion of the Avatar movies and the guiding light of the Avatar family who have worked and continue to work on these films. He was a one-of-a-kind giant in our industry. I am so fortunate to have known him and to have had him in my life, both professionally and as a dear friend. We will miss him beyond what words can express. He will continue to live in our hearts forever.”

“Titanic” VFX supervisor and collaborator Robert Legato wrote to Variety: “It absolutely breaks my heart to have to write this tribute to Jon. I was extraordinarily lucky to be involved in two of the biggest films ever made, and I could not believe my good fortune in getting a chance to work with a legendary figure like Jon. For me, loving film history as I do, it felt like working with David Selznick, Darryl Zanuck, Sam Spiegel, and Louis B. Mayer all wrapped into one. The highest-grossing films of all time, most Oscar wins—Jon is in that very small pantheon of the most successful producers this business has ever seen. Personally, he was a great friend, an encouraging colleague, and a master at making you feel like you were the most important voice in the room. He did this for everyone, and the collective contribution he fostered showed on screen as a gift for audiences the world over. The deep sadness I feel must pale in comparison to the loss felt by his wonderful and talented family that he just adored. We all just loved him.”

“Titanic” actor Frances Fisher paid tribute to Landau on X, writing, “Rest in Power Jon.”

Landau was born in New York, N.Y., on July 30, 1960, to Ely and Edie Landau, who were also both film producers. He attended USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.

[Lando Griffin]

Actress Shelley Duvall dead at 75

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[Lando Griffin]

Beloved fitness guru and pop culture icon Richard Simmons dies at 76

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[Lando Griffin]

Beverly Hills 90210 actress Shannon Doherty dies at 53 after battle with cancer

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