- Title: USA : FILM PREMIERE OF RON HOWARD'S LATEST FILM "ED TV"
- Date: 26th March 1999
- Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (MARCH 16) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF PREMIERE THEATRE TELEVISION CAMERAS MARTIN LANDAU HUGH GRANT AND ELIZABETH HURLEY DENNIS HOPPER (SOUNDBITE) (English) DENNIS HOPPER SAYING "What a wonderful movie though. Great people in it. Ron Howard's a great director. It's terrific. I had a great, I only, I had a day, I think. It was wonderful." (SOUNDBITE) (English) RON HOWARD SAYING OF SIMILARITY WITH "THE TRUMAN SHOW "There's really no similarity whatsoever. "Truman Show" being more of a drama and science fiction and ours being comedy, contemporary, edgy and reality-based." (SOUNDBITE) (English) HUGH GRANT SAYING OF HURLEY'S LOVE SCENE WITH MCCONAUGHEY "I enjoyed it too, but, maybe that makes me unhealthy in some way." WIDE SHOT OF RED CARPET (SOUNDBITE) (English) ELIZABETH HURLEY SAYING OF FIRST TIME SHE REALIZED SHE WAS FAMOUS "Yeah, I think that was exactly it. I was in South Africa making a movie and I stepped out into the mall and it was the first time all my Estee Lauder pictures started to run and they were all life-size, massive images, and it freaked me out! It was really, really bizarre and I thought I can't get away from myself anywhere." ELLEN DEGENERES AND ANNE HECHE MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY (SOUNDBITE) (English) ELLEN DEGENERES SAYING "If I could be a television executive, things would turn around in this town. Things would change. We would have totally different programming. It would be, people would treat each other nicely. It would be all just a big love-fest. Yeah, no road rage, everything would change, there would be no Y2K problem if I were in control." MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY SPEAKING WITH REPORTERS (SOUNDBITE) (English) MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY SAYING "Ed's rolling with it, but, check it out, man, he laughs at a lot of stuff. I learned to laugh at some things that I didn't laugh at earlier because of Ed." WOODY HARRELSON SPEAKING WITH REPORTERS WIDE SHOT OF RED CARPET AT PREMIERE
- Embargoed: 10th April 1999 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: SAN FRANCISCO AND LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES AND FILM LOCATIONS
- Country: USA
- Reuters ID: LVABHLUTKPDXKLX6SXACDWOUI2TN
- Story Text: Director Ron Howard's newest comedy 'Ed T-V' opens in the United States Friday (March 26th).About an ordinary man whose life is put on live television 24 hours a day, it features an all-star cast including Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Ellen Degeneres and Elizabeth Hurley.
The stars joined with the director for the film's world premiere in Hollywood on March 16.
McConaughey plays the title character of Ed, a boyish, goofy, thirty-something guy from San Francisco who is recruited to put his every waking moment in front of live television cameras for the sake of a new television show called "Ed T-V."
Former television star Ellen Degeneres plays Cynthia Topping, the network executive who comes up with the idea of Ed T-V and turns Ed into a sudden overnight superstar.
Degeneres' casting has a touch of irony to it because she had many public battles with executives at ABC over the content of her situation comedy "Ellen," in which she played an openly-gay character.
Other television veterans in the cast include Jenna Elfman, who plays Ed's girlfriend.Elfman recently won a Golden Globe award for her role in the hit comedy series "Dharma and Greg." Woody Harrelson also started out in television comedy, playing the dim-witted bartender in the long-running series "Cheers."
In "Ed T-V," Harrelson plays Ed's glory-seeking brother.
It's another stroke of brilliant casting, because both actors are from central Texas, they look alike and they share many of the same personality traits.Harrelson says he's never met anyone else in his life that seemed so much like a brother to him.
Elizabeth Hurley has a small role as a sexy aspiring actress who tries to hitch a ride on Ed's stardom for her own reasons.The role called for at least one steamy would-be sex scene that goes awry with comic results.Hurley admits that she actually enjoyed shooting this scene, and McConaughey was downright ecstatic about the chance to play with Hurley.
Other cast members include Oscar winner Martin Landau and Sally Kirkland as Ed's eccentric mother and stepfather, Dennis Hopper as his long-lost father, and filmmaker Rob Reiner as Degeneres' ruthless boss at the television network.
The film is all about the nature of fame and what happens when it's suddenly thrust upon you.All the cast members have had to deal with the subject in varying degrees.Perhaps the most sudden exposure to super-stardom happened to McConaughey.
In 1996, he became a huge star immediately after his first film "A Time To Kill" was released.He played lawyer Jake Brigantz in this film adaptation of the best-selling John Grisham novel, and during the film's first weekend in theaters, strangers were already calling out his name as he walked down the street.
McConaughey says he took the role in "Ed T-V" in part because it parallels his own experience with stardom so closely.
Even the director of "Ed T-V" has had to deal with the pleasures and pains of fame.Ron Howard has directed such films as "Apollo 13," "Splash" and "Ransom," but he started out acting when he was five years old in the television series "The Andy Griffith Show." He remembers the biggest challenge of stardom at that age was learning how to handwrite his name for autograph-seekers.
"Ed T-V" opens in theaters throughout the United States on Friday, March 26. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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