A little known fact: We, the world, owe the existence of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to Will Smith’s financial difficulties. In the heady late 1980s, Smith had squandered his earnings from his rap career and was in deep trouble with the IRS when he was approached by a WB executive about starring in a new show, loosely based on his own persona. Smith’s compromise was our sitcom gain: who can deny the hilarity of the smooth-talking Prince’s dancing or his constant goof-ups with partner-in-crime Jazzy Jeff? Over the six years of the show, Fresh Prince was not only fun, it was culturally relevant. A Young Kathy Griffin had her first television break on the show; and the program hosted numerous big name guests, from Oprah Winfrey to Chris Rock. After the jump, our roundup of some of the best guest stars on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
As part of last night’s Comedy Central telethon, “Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Concert for Autism Education,” Chris Rock joined a bewigged Tracy Morgan on stage for a performance of “Scarborough Fair.” And then Paul Simon showed up to tell them that they needed to work on their harmonies a bit. Click through for Tracy and Chris’ expletive-laced reaction, and be sure to stick around for the hilarious auto-tune action at the 2:50 mark.
Questioning the notion of beauty, German photographer Martin Schoeller takes pictures of female bodybuilders, whose feminine heads seem grafted to muscular bodies, and close-up portraits of celebrities that show every pore and wrinkle on their famous faces. Following in the tradition of August Sander, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and Thomas Ruff, Schoeller prefers a stark reality to the realm of fiction. The bulging muscles and sculptural forms of his female bodybuilders are surreal, while the sagging chins and flawed skin of Clint Eastwood, Chris Rock, Paris Hilton, Kobe Bryant, Sarah Palin, Dennis Hopper, and other boldface names show that even the stars are less than perfect.
1. Check out the the trailer for Grown Ups, a new comedy starring Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider and David Spade. [Yahoo! via Pop Candy]
2. Watch Robbie Williams, Paul McCartney, and Lily Allen sing “Hey Jude” as part of the Children In Need Rocks gig at London’s Royal Albert Hall. [via NME]
3. Tate Britain welcomes its first female director, Penelope Curtis. [via Telegraph]
4. ABC is this close to ordering a pilot remake of Charlie’s Angels; Josh Friedman, who recently adapted the Terminator franchise for Fox, will write/executive produce. [via Variety]
5. David Lloyd, the sitcom writer responsible for the funniest episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show ever, has died at 75. Watch the clip and say it together with us: “A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down the pants.” [via The Awl]
Chris Rock has just convinced us to watch the next episode of The Jay Leno Show. As last night’s guest, Rock came on to promote his new documentary, Good Hair. Along the way, he gave his thoughts on the Roman Polanski scandal (“People are defending roman Polanski because he made . . . good movies 30 years ago. Even Johnny Cochran don’t have the nerve to go, ‘Well did you see OJ play against New England?’”), dogs (“dogs have never been good to black people”), and the potential for Leno-Rock wife swapping (“We switch up, c’mon!”). Check out the hilarious interview after the jump. Read More »
Today I noticed that the only clocks that I’ve seen that seem to tell the correct time in all of Park City are the ones I carry on my person. In our condo, on the street, in restaurants and shops, all the clocks are stuck at various times or are just ticking away on some alternate reality time of their own. I think that’s a great metaphor for what I’ll call “Sundance Time.” No one ever seems to know what day it is. Despite the fact that today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and is a holiday, and tomorrow is the inauguration, for crying out loud, inevitably someone still says, “Wait — I thought it was Sunday!” about once an hour. It’s weird. Where do the days go? For that matter, where do the hours go? I’ve been up since 7 a.m., and since then, it’s been a blur of brunch, lunch, screening, meetings, party wristband acquiring, art viewing, handshaking, and postcard exchanging.
This morning we hit the press preview for The Black List Project: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Elvis Mitchell, an exhibition of photographs of prominent African Americans (Serena Williams, Chris Rock, Colin Powell, Toni Morrison, Russell Simmons, Al Sharpton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Sean Combs, and many other A-listers from politics, the arts, sports, religion, and business) which opens tomorrow at the Brooklyn Museum.
You might have caught their HBO documentary Blacklist: Volume 1 when it aired back in August; if you didn’t, you can DVR it tomorrow night at 5 p.m. EST.
While we’ll be posting a video interview with Mitchell (a noted film critic whose show The Treatment has aired on KCRW since 1996) later, after the jump check out a review of the exhibit from Laval Bryant, a cashier for visitor services at the museum.
