Pilots take flight

From:NEWS.com.au
Date:March 28, 2006
By Peter Mitchell

US TV executives have their fingers crossed that some of Australia's best known actors, including Rachel Griffiths and Simon Baker, will lead their networks to ratings gold.

The US networks have just unveiled their plans for new TV series and it was largely bad news for the many Australian actors who travelled to the US to audition for roles during Hollywood's traditional pilot season.
In past years, Australian actors with little experience in the US have emerged with key roles in major new TV series, but the networks went with established American and Australian names this year. It continues a new trend in US TV where new series need a major star to launch the show.

There is also less of a stigma for movie stars to attach themselves to TV series.

Along with Griffiths and Baker, the other Australians who booked roles on new TV series were Melissa George, Alan Dale and Jonathan LaPaglia, younger brother of Anthony LaPaglia, who is the star of Without a Trace.

The American film stars turning to TV included James Woods, Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Jeff Goldblum, Ving Rhames and Alicia Silverstone.

"It was quite an extraordinary pilot season for Australians," Rob Marsala, a Perth-born talent manager in Hollywood and the president of the LA-based Australians in Film organisation, said.
"Usually there are a few Australian actors who are not well known in the US who score roles in a TV series, like Emilie de Ravin did for Roswell and Ryan Kwanten did for Summerland a few years back.

"This year it was Australia's better known actors who are established in the US who had the success."

A pilot is the first episode of a proposed TV series and pilot season runs in Los Angeles from February to March.

More Australian actors each year make the pilgrimage to LA to audition for the more than 100 pilots on offer.

But even if an actor wins a role on the pilot, there is no guarantee it will be picked up by a US TV network and turned into a TV series.

Of the 120 pilots produced last year, only 48 were picked up.

Already 15 have been cancelled after poor initial TV ratings and two other pilots might never air. It is usually only the successful US series that make it to Australia.

Griffiths, returning to TV after her successful stint on Six Feet Under, and Jonathan LaPaglia, scored two of the plum roles in the ABC network's new drama, Brothers & Sisters.

Brothers & Sisters has already created plenty of buzz in the US as it also marks the return to primetime TV of Calista Flockhart, best known for her Ally McBeal legal comedy-drama series which ran from 1997-2002.

George, a veteran of many pilots that never went to air, will star in NBC's Lipstick Jungle, a series based on the book by Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell.

The show, according to NBC, will follow "the sexy, funny, and dramatic stories of three friends balancing life and career, who also happen to be three of the most powerful and influential women in New York".

Former Neighbours star Alan Dale, best known to US audiences for the teen hit The OC, will star in the new TV drama Ugly Betty, which is set at a fashion magazine.

Baker, who has carved out a successful film career with LA Confidential, The Ring 2 and the upcoming The Devil Wears Prada and who starred in his own US TV drama, The Guardian, a few years back, returns to the small screen in the star-studded TV series, Smith.

Baker's co-stars are last year's best supporting actress Oscar nominee for Sideways, Virginia Madsen, and tough guy actor, Ray Liotta.

Other well-known actors in pilots include Friends' Matthew Perry in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Heather Locklear in Women of a Certain Age, Rhames in Aquaman, and Everybody Loves Raymond's Brad Garrett in 'Til Death.

From NEWS.com.au.

Plot, traffic thicken in city

From:PittsburghLIVE
Date:March 24, 2006
By Michael Machosky

It's a frosty morning in Pittsburgh, where steel-and-glass buildings Downtown reach to a gray sky.
Perfect setting for a heist.

Well, maybe not perfect.

The script for "Smith" -- the pilot episode for a CBS crime drama shooting this week in Pittsburgh -- calls for a robbery at a museum Downtown.

The museum they want is the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland, but no matter. That's what movie magic is for. When the pilot is shown, it'll look like the Carnegie Museum is Downtown.

The setting is supposed to be dusk, so the film crew Thursday morning set up a 20-by-20-foot black screen to "take off the top light," according to a worker moving metal poles.

In the diffused light, the tanned L.A. production team and the local crew building the set didn't look all that different -- except for the Steelers World Champions caps some were wearing.

"They were supposed to shoot this in Chicago," said Dawn Keezer, director of the Pittsburgh Film Office. "But the Chicago museum said no. The Carnegie Museum said yes. That's the real reason they came.

"They needed a real museum with beautiful works of art. They liked Pittsburgh because we have crew and all the other things that make it easy for them to come here and shoot."

Shooting for "Smith" will take place in Oakland from Sunday through Tuesday. It's Warner Bros.' policy not to talk to the press at the pilot stage, so not much is known about the program.

Betsy Momich, director of corporate communications for the Carnegie Museums, knows a little about what's planned for Monday.

"They're doing like a chase scene through this area," she said. "The guard is actually tied up. It's an art heist."

There's no guarantee a pilot will be picked up for a full series, but "Smith" has several things going for it.

"Smith" is a John Wells project. Wells, a 1979 graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, has a proven track record -- executive producer and co-writer of "ER" and "The West Wing."

And the cast is packed with well-known talent -- Ray Liotta ("Goodfellas"), Virginia Madsen ("Sideways"), Simon Baker, Amy Smart and Franky G.

Liotta's presence should be a thumbs-up sign for a crime show. He's getting to be a regular in Pittsburgh, having completed filming "Chasing 3000" here in October. Baker worked on the Pittsburgh-set series "The Guardian."

Keezer is excited about the pilot's local impact.

"They hired a ton of local crew, a ton of extras," she said. "Put a lot of people to work for a week. It actually ends up two weeks, because they were here for a week of prep."

This is only the beginning, she said. There will be other shows, other films in Pittsburgh this year.

"We're expecting a very busy summer," Keezer said. "But we don't have anything we can talk about yet."

From PittsburghLIVE.

CBS pilot episode hits the city's streets

Dawn Keezer, director of the Pittsburgh Film Office, talks with John Wells, writer and executive producer of "Smith," during filming on Liberty Avenue, Downtown.






"Smith" director Christopher Chulack talks with Amy Smart, who plays Annie, a professional thief, and Maria Diczia, who plays Nancy, during a break in filming on Liberty Avenue.






From:Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Date:March 24, 2006
By Rob Owen

A microphone operator points his boom into Downtown traffic to record street sounds.

Crew members greet and introduce themselves to one another.

Actress Amy Smart ("Road Trip," "The Butterfly Effect") takes a Taser-style stun gun to another actress in an alley.

Welcome to day No. 1 of production on "Smith," the pilot episode of a prospective CBS series written and executive produced by John Wells ("ER," "The West Wing").

Although the lead character lives in Los Angeles, "Smith" follows a crew of professional thieves who travel to various cities to stage heists, including Pittsburgh, where Oakland's Mellon Institute will play the exterior of the fictitious Tanner Museum. Thieves, led by actor Ray Liotta and including Simon Baker ("The Guardian"), will attempt to swipe two Rembrandts and a van Gogh.


Smart plays one of the crooks, too, filming her scenes yesterday, playing a distraction to the art theft who gets distracted herself.

Before chatting yesterday afternoon with students at his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, Wells looked on as director Christopher Chulack shouted "Action! Action! Action!" Background actors moved through their paces on the sidewalk as cameras on both sides of Liberty Avenue filmed Smart in a short sidewalk scene. Later, a scene in an alley with Smart, another actress and a stun gun was shot.

Wells explained "Smith" will focus almost entirely on thieves, with FBI agents arriving only in the closing moments of the pilot in a scene that explains the show's title.

" 'Smith' is a name the FBI will give to a person or persons unknown that they're trying to identify," Wells said.

"Smith" is the first pilot Wells, one of television's most successful and respected show runners, has written (as opposed to produced) in several years.

"The last pilot I probably wrote was 'Third Watch,' " he said, explaining he was distracted by "West Wing" duties after Aaron Sorkin departed that

With "Smith," Wells wanted to create a series that could shoot in different locales for a stylish look. He also wanted to steer away from the glut of cop and investigative shows currently on the air.

"I really like to look for pieces that work in the genre so we can write about characters -- how they interact, what their lives are like," Wells said.

Because of his production company's experience working on "ER" scenes in Chicago, "Smith" was initially set there.

"We had some resistance from The Art Institute, and there were only a few limited hours we'd be able to shoot there," Wells said. Ultimately, Wells and company decided the script would work just as well in Pittsburgh.

"Our locations are better here," he said. "The relationship of the roads to the river [helps us]. How low-lying some of the roads are will allow us to do boat chases along the river and run alongside it with equipment and a helicopter. A lot of things about it work better for us -- although Pittsburgh really needs a [non-red eye] direct flight from L.A. again."

A few scenes featuring explosions and fireballs will be filmed during the production's stay, which wraps up Tuesday.

"It won't be a sniper shooting pigeons again," Wells said, chuckling over the incident that shut down parts of Downtown Wednesday. "It'll be us."

Executive producer Brooke Kennedy, who previously worked with Wells on "Third Watch" and "Trinity" and filmed the 1990 Susan Lucci TV movie "The Bride in Black" in Pittsburgh, said she was happy to return.

"One of the exciting things about shooting on streets, you never know what it brings to you," Kennedy said as pedestrians traipsed past film cameras. "You've gotta embrace it all."

Though the show's thieves are not based in Pittsburgh, Wells and Kennedy said the production crew might return.

"What usually happens with shooting companies is once you've been to a place, you get to know people, and you say, 'Oh, we could go back,' " Wells said.

In addition to local exterior shooting, "Smith" will film inside galleries at The Carnegie Museum in Oakland. One interior gallery will be re-created on a soundstage in Los Angeles, recycling the White House East Room set from Wells' soon-to-conclude "The West Wing."

"We have to shoot it up a bit and we were getting ready to tear it down, so why not shoot it up?"

"Smith," produced by Warner Bros., is a pilot CBS will consider for its fall schedule. Every year around this time, the broadcast networks order dozens of test episodes of prospective series and choose from among these pilots to set their fall schedules. The fate of "Smith" won't be known until May.

This year, CBS ordered 11 drama pilots, according to The Hollywood Reporter. But looking at CBS's schedule and considering that most of its drama series already have been renewed, there appear to be few openings for new dramas, unless CBS scraps time slots currently devoted to sitcoms or its faltering Sunday night movie. (CBS will likely order a few back-up series for mid-season as well.)

Wells knows getting picked up is no sure bet, but he's not worried about following after other new thief shows (NBC's "Heist," FX's "Thief") when criminal investigators clog the schedule.

"When it comes to crime, criminals are under-represented and law enforcement is over-represented on the schedules now," he said.

If "Smith" gets picked up, viewers nationwide will see Pittsburgh playing itself. But if it doesn't, no one outside of Hollywood studio and network screening rooms will ever see this program.

"Smith" isn't the only TV project shooting in Pittsburgh this week. "Prison Girl," a Japanese TV movie for Nippon Television about a Japanese woman wrongly imprisoned in New York, is shooting at the former Western Penitentiary.

FromPittsburgh Post-Gazette.

CBS to film Simon Baker pilot here

From:Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Date:March 16, 2006
By Rob Owen

"Smith," a Pittsburgh-set CBS drama pilot told from the point of view of career criminals, will shoot in Downtown and Oakland for five days beginning next Thursday.


Executive produced by Carnegie Mellon University alum John Wells, the proposed series stars Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Amy Smart, Jonny Lee Miller, Franky G, Chris Bauer, Michelle Hurd and Simon Baker.

This marks Baker's third Pittsburgh-set project. He starred in the CBS drama "The Guardian" for three seasons and appeared in last summer's George A. Romero movie "Land of the Dead."

Liotta filmed the 1988 movie "Dominic and Eugene" in Pittsburgh.

"Smith" was originally set to shoot in Chicago, setting of Wells' "ER," but the production was unable to secure the locations needed to tell the story of thieves who steal a piece of art from a museum. A publicist for Warner Bros., which will produce "Smith," confirmed the pilot's filming location and setting has shifted from Chicago to Pittsburgh. Some scenes will be filmed in Los Angeles.

Wells wrote the pilot script; Chris Chulack ("ER," "Third Watch," "Homefront") will direct.

Pittsburgh Film Office director Dawn Keezer said her staff has been working with the production for the past couple of weeks to secure local filming.

CBS will announce its fall schedule -- and whether or not "Smith" will ever see the light of day -- in May. It could be an uphill battle: NBC's similarly themed "Heist" premieres next Wednesday.

From Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Coffee Talk with Simon Baker

From:IN STYLE USA
Date: March 2006
By Marisa Fox

Onscreen, Simon Baker is often an object of obsession
(as in the films SOMETHING NEW and the upcoming
THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA). So what does the
Australian actor, who is married with three kids,
obsess about in real life? Java.

Favorite U.S. cafe

Ruby's, 210 Mulberry St., N.Y.C.

What to order

"A strong, flat white. Translation: a double-shot latte with
no foam in a short cup."

Best beans to brew at home

"Toby's Estate in Sydney has a blend called Woolloomooloo,
the name of a suburb. It's dark and oily-looking."
(tobysestate.com)

Machine to use

A Bezzera (from $1,500; 305-557-6336)

Drinking on the job

"When I'm shooting I don't always want that endorphin rush,
not for a love scene. You don't want to overstimulate yourself."

I've had too much when ...

"I start pacing the way I'm doing right now. Once I had to
get up from the table because I'd had three strong coffees
in a row and thought I was having an anxiety attack."

Favorite ode to joe

"Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain': 'I had some dreams,
they were clouds in my coffee' -- I love that line!"

Simon Baker sees future in dark 'Sex' comedy

From:Hollywood Reporter
Date:Mar 8,2006
By Borys Kit

Simon Baker will star in "Sex and Death 101," a dark comedy about a man whose life is upended by a mysterious e-mail containing the names of every woman he has had sex with and, eerily, every woman he will have sex with in the future.

Baker, whose recent feature credits include the romantic comedy "Something New" and the horror "Land of the Dead," next appears in "The Devil Wears Prada," set for a June 30 release via Fox. The Australian received a Golden Globe nomination in 2002 for his starring role in the CBS drama "The Guardian."

From Yahoo! news.

The latest development news from Simon!

From:The Futon critic
Date: March 7, 2006
By The Futon Critic Staff

SMITH (CBS) - Simon Baker (Nick Fallin on "The Guardian") is the latest to join the cast of the John Wells-created project, a drama told from the criminals' point of view. He'll join the previously cast Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Chris Bauer, Frankie G., Michelle Hurd, Jonny Lee Miller and Amy Smart in the Warner Bros. Television-based hour, which Christopher Chulak is directing from a script by Wells.

FromThe Futon critic.

Baker smitten by CBS drama pilot 'Smith'

From:Reuters
Date:07 March, 2006
By Nellie Andreeva

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Simon Baker , who earned a Golden Globe Nomination for his role in CBS‘ short-lived 2001 drama "The Guardian," is returning to the network in "Smith," a drama pilot told from the criminals‘ point of view.

Also cast in the pilot is Jonny Lee Miller . He and Baker join the previously cast Ray Liotta and Virginia Madsen .

Baker, who most recently starred in Focus Features‘ romantic comedy "Something New," next will be seen in Fox 2000‘s "The Devil Wears Prada."

From Ruters.