L.A. Entertainment Column

[dragonsky]

Premieres: PM 9:30 Jan 7, 2007 NBC

"The Apprentice" moves to Southern California for season six of the unscripted series, leaving Manhattan for the first time in the history of the show. Trump will once again do the firing - and the hiring - as 18 enterprising candidates vie for the coveted title of "The Apprentice" and the career opportunity of a lifetime working for the legendary business tycoon.

Along with the new Southern California backdrop comes a whole new series of surprising twists and turns that will make this the liveliest and most challenging competition yet among candidates eager to become the next "Apprentice."

In a compelling social experiment of haves and have nots, contestants this season will have to earn the right to live like Trump. Each week, the contestants on the winning team will get to live in a luxurious mansion. But contestants on the losing team will have to sleep outside in tents in the back yard of the mansion with outdoor showers and port-a-potties, giving contestants more incentive than ever to win their tasks each week.

In another engaging new twist, the winning project manager each week will remain project manager until they lose, plus they will also sit in the boardroom and help advise Trump on who he should fire each week from their opposing team. Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. will return for several episodes, along with previous "Apprentice" winners, as boardroom advisors to their father.

"The Apprentice" is produced by Mark Burnett Productions in association with Trump Productions LLC. Mark Burnett, Donald Trump and Jay Bienstock are executive producers. Conrad Riggs, James Canniffe and Page Feldman are co-executive producers.

http://www.nbc.com/The_Apprentice_6/about.shtml

[rs913]

If they did this in the 2nd season (coming off what was a pretty good 1st season) I'd be eagerly awaiting it. But after 5 seasons, "The Apprentice" has just become unwatchable mess, IMO, with ridiculously obnoxious over-the-top trainwreck behavior by the contestants, and an increasingly unlikeable Trump in the middle of the circus. The new gimmicks being introduced this year - especially the "tents" thing - are pushing this thing even more into Jerry Springer territory. Though maybe we'll get a fistfight or something.

Trump? You're fired.

[dragonsky]

Collectors' additions




L.A.'s cultural life, as measured by the catalogs of its museums and libraries, got a bit richer this year. Here are some of the things to be thankful for.

By Christopher Reynolds, Times Staff Writer

CUE the "Addams Family" theme. Now lay out that old leather-bound Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on a sturdy table, keep the Calydonian boar clear of the African elephant tusks, and step right this way to check out Charles Bukowski's crude scribbles.

Yes, from these attractions it may seem that the Ringling Bros. Library of Congress Aesthetic Pleasure Faire has come to town at last. But all of these wonders, along with reams of duller, more important scholarly items, have joined the collections of museums and libraries in greater Los Angeles this year.

The original score for the "Addams Family" theme? Composed 42 years ago by Vic Mizzy, who donated the original score to UCLA in May.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo? That's the 19th century deal that added California to the United States. After two decades of searching for a first-edition copy, a USC librarian happily paid "four figures" for one this year.

The boar — actually, an oil painting of a boar, surrounded by hunters and nervous horses and painted by Peter Paul Rubens in about 1611 — now belongs to the Getty Museum, which bought it in April from a London dealer, price undisclosed. Rubens drew the image from an episode in Ovid's poetry, but the alarm in the animals' eyes seems immediate enough to provoke a PETA demonstration.

The tusks — real tusks, 8 feet long and 332 pounds together — were removed from their central African owner in 1897 and donated to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County last month by William Cherry, a dentist in the Lake Tahoe area.

As for the Bukowski scrawls, for now let's just say the stubbled bard of San Pedro never lived in a home as nice as the one now housing his papers.

Deals like these have made 2006 a lively year for donations and purchases throughout the region, curators and librarians say, but then, most years are. It's just that the rest of the world rarely notices.

Whether they are paintings, diaries, photographs, musical scores, old clothes or correspondence, most artifacts and archives land quietly, get swaddled in acid-free paper and alphabetically shelved, all without much public notice unless there's a big celebrity involved.

While you weren't looking, the Natural History Museum added not only the tusks but a rare 14.6-foot oarfish from Catalina, the "XX" armband from Charlie Chaplin's uniform in "The Great Dictator" (1940) and sundry mineral specimens from the mines of Bisbee, Ariz.

The Museum of Contemporary Art added more than 100 works, including half a dozen small Robert Motherwell ink-on-paper works, 13 Jennifer Bornstein prints and etchings, and Fred Tomaselli's "Hang Over," a contemporary work made with leaves, pills, acrylic and resin on a 7-by-10-foot wood panel.

The Hammer Museum added more than 100 sculptures, paintings, installations, photographs and drawings

The Norton Simon Museum added a pencil-and-ink portrait by Don Bachardy of, well, Norton Simon. (Simon died in 1993; this addition ties in with the museum's celebration of Simon's centennial in 2007.)

The Southwest Museum of the American Indian (now largely closed as its parent, the Autry National Center, shores up the bedraggled Southwest building and plans expansion in Griffith Park) added 37 Pomo baskets.

Reading the material

INDIVIDUALLY, Bisbee minerals and Pomo baskets may not inspire dancing in the streets. But a year's acquisitions, surveyed at once, can reveal plenty — not only about how culture endures, but about institutional ambitions.

For instance, the Getty — so mired in recriminations over its past deals that it has given four works back to Greece and offered 26 more to Italy — isn't buying so many ancient vases any more. And the Museum of the American West in Griffith Park, which was founded less than 20 years ago on the fortune and show-business artifacts of Gene Autry, hasn't been snapping up singing-cowboy memorabilia.

Instead, both institutions — the one with roots in Western civilization and the one with roots in western serialization — have lately turned to photography. Contemporary American photography in particular. In the last 12 months, in fact, both have bought works by living photographers John Divola and Jerry Uelsmann.

Of course, with the deepest pockets in all the museum world, the Getty could also afford the Rubens; a 14th century illustrated manuscript page by Pacino di Bonaguida; a 17th century Dutch drawing by Anthonie van Borssom; a 17th century painting by Spanish artist Juan de Valde's Leal; and a raft of further acquisitions by the Getty Research Institute.

At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, director Michael Govan arrived in April and spent much of his first three months on the job trying to quietly raise money to buy five Gustav Klimt paintings that had been seized by the Nazis in the 1930s, held by Austria for decades, then restituted to the surviving family of owner Adele Bloch-Bauer. But while the paintings were on view at LACMA, the behind-the-scenes bidding leaped beyond the museum's means. In the end, the works were sold individually to out-of-town or anonymous buyers, together fetching more than $325 million.

Still, LACMA's registrar had 320 acquisitions to log, the list topped by Jacques-Louis David's oil portrait of Jean-Pierre Delahaye, painted in 1815. With the Ahmanson Foundation footing the bill, the museum bought the painting at auction in Paris for $2.7 million from Delahaye's descendants in June. It went on public display for the first time in October.

Among the museum's other additions: a Tiffany lamp (donated by Richard and Nancy Daly Riordan), a 17th century Buddhist priest's mantle from Japan and a 1926 Johan Hagemeyer photo of grain elevators.

Sometimes, however, acquisitions aren't a matter of curators chasing down long-sought treasures. Acquisitions are also a matter of what's for sale, what donors have to give and what new possibilities a museum or library is ready to embrace. The result, especially at university special collections libraries, is a soup-to-nuts repast of artifacts to feed hungry grad students for generations.

Apart from the "Addams Family" score and its ripe-for-analysis lyrics ("they're all together ooky"), UCLA's Charles E. Young Research Library department of special collections has taken on dozens of European Renaissance manuscripts; papers from painter R.B. Kitaj and writer Susan Sontag (who died in 2004); and some 1,500 documents, photos and scarves from modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan (but not the scarf that fatally snapped her neck in a 1927 auto accident).

From Massachusetts neurosurgeon and pain-research pioneer William H. Sweet (who died in 2001), there's a set of gold-tipped operating instruments. From novelist and screenwriter Sidney Sheldon, who created the TV shows "I Dream of Jeannie, "The Patty Duke Show" and "Hart to Hart," there's a stack of manuscripts.

And speaking of screen work, the Mizzy contribution didn't stop with the family Addams. UCLA now also has Mizzy's scores for "Green Acres" and such films as "The Reluctant Astronaut," "The Ghost and Mister Chicken" and "The Shakiest Gun in the West." Somewhere, the late Don Knotts is smiling.

Not to be outdone, the special collections librarians at USC have acquired photos of the Hungarian uprising of 1956; correspondence of 20th century Chinese novelist Eileen Chang (a.k.a. Zhang Ai Ling); and the archives of composer Elmer Bernstein, whose five-decade career included scores for "The Great Escape," "The Magnificent Seven," "The Man With the Golden Arm," "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and "Animal House," among many others.

But the USC acquisition with the most political resonance may be its newly purchased first-edition copy of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. That war-ending 1848 document — signed under duress by Mexican leaders with U.S. troops occupying Mexico City — formalized American annexation of not only California but Nevada, Texas and Utah, along with parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming. For that territory, the U.S. paid about $18 million. For a first-edition copy of the document — one of just 17 known in American libraries — USC librarian for Iberian and Latin American studies Barbara Robinson was ready to pay up to $10,000.

"It's the document that establishes our border with Mexico," said Robinson, who began hunting for a copy for USC's Boeckmann collection almost immediately after her arrival at the university in 1985.

Alerted over the summer by a dealer to a copy coming up for auction, Robinson authorized the dealer to bid. He got it for less than Robinson's limit — she won't say exactly how much less — and today it rests under lock and key at USC, 55 pages, nearly mint condition, bound in leather and printed in English and Spanish.

"I think it's important for students who do a lot of online research to see what the actual documents look like, to see the artifacts themselves," Robinson said. "You see the paper, you see the print, and it transports you back to that time period."

As disparate as the additions at UCLA and USC may seem, however, the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino may have taken an even more diverse cargo aboard this year.

On one hand, there is the meticulous: the Huntington's new Burndy Library, 67,000 books on the history of science and technology over four centuries. Amassed by inventor and industrialist Bern Dibner, the collection was a gift, the library's largest single acquisition since magnate Henry Huntington founded the place in 1919.

Then there's the sublime — the Charles Bukowski papers, from the late hard-drinking, plain-spoken poet and novelist of "Barfly" fame. His widow, Linda Lee Bukowski, donated a trove of his resolutely unrarefied writings (one manuscript poem considers farts and foghorn blasts), which now rests more or less alongside the library's Gutenberg Bible and its rare editions of Shakespeare and Chaucer and papers from Jack London and Christopher Isherwood.

"This would tickle my husband," said Linda Lee Bukowski at the June announcement of the donation. "It would crack him up."

[ferneynism2]

Woohoo..... very informative thread

[dragonsky]

Get the drop on New Year’

Learning from last year's New Year's Eve soakings, event promoters are back, wiser and with bigger celebrations planned, from downtown L.A. to Orange County.

By Kevin Bronson, Times Staff Writer
December 28, 2006




New Year's Eve offers the opportunity to look forward, to greet the future with a toast and a smile, to party for the possibilities.

But nobody could blame a trio of Southland event promoters — and some of their patrons — for looking over their shoulders at the ghost of New Year's past. One year ago Sunday, rain precipitated the eleventh-hour cancellation of two major celebrations, Giant Village in downtown Los Angeles and Gridlock LA at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, sending ticket-holders scrambling. Another, the inaugural OCNYE "Orange Drop" at the Orange County Fairgrounds, proceeded in citrus-y, pyrotechnic splendor even as its founder knew he was in for a financial bath.

"New Year's Eve can't be rescheduled," says Wayne Coyne, frontman of the psychedelic pop band the Flaming Lips, which were supposed to be one of the headliners last year at Giant Village. "People spend a lot of time and effort to be in a special place on New Year's Eve having their special year."

Indeed, with the echoes of what-if and oh-no still ringing, these events are back with bigger plans and better contingencies. Giant's street festival, called off the afternoon of Dec. 31 last year because of safety concerns, has been re-imagined as Giant Maximus, a three-ring dance-music circus in massive tents pitched in a downtown L.A. parking lot. Gridlock, canceled last year after the collapse of a stage on which the Pussycat Dolls were scheduled to perform, returns to the New York City-styled streets of the Paramount lot with the Killers as headliners — and the contingency that it can move to indoor soundstages in case of inclement weather. And OCNYE reemerges in Costa Mesa with a retooled promotional team, a deeper lineup anchored by Blondie and, organizers say, the kinks from its freshman year worked out.

With Giant Maximus sprouting a couple of blocks away from Staples Center, there are three major New Year's Eve events within a three-mile radius of downtown. The others? The dependable dance-music festival Together as One goes off at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, and the Flaming Lips join Gnarls Barkley and Cat Power for a concert at the USC Galen Center.

Sound like more fun than Dick Clark, Ryan Seacrest and Christina Aguilera on ABC? Carson Daly and Panic! at the Disco on NBC? MTV's parade of Fall Out Boy, Gwen Stefani, Lady Sovereign and Nas?

The forecast as of Wednesday calls for lows in the mid-40s on Sunday night, with a 10% chance of rain. If you're not one to celebrate on your couch, here's a rundown of major Southland events (and, please, party safely):

Together as One

If nothing else, the ninth annual installment of this bash from Go Ventures and Insomniac Events asserts the steadfast popularity of dance music. "The music is universal," says promoter and DJ Reza Gerani. "There are no racial barriers, no language barriers; it makes for a perfect celebration."

Thousands agree. Together as One attracted a crowd of 18,000 last year (Gerani expected 15,000, but Giant's cancellation gave him a late surge at the door), and more than 20,000 are expected this year. Big numbers? Gerani says more than 30,000 flocked to this year's edition of his Halloween blowout, Monster Massive, so you can forgive the hyperbole when he boasts: "We have the No. 1 DJ in the world at the No. 1 party in the world with the No. 1 promoter in the world."

The first of that troika is the least arguable. Together as One will be headlined by the 35-year-old titan of techno, Paul Van Dyk, with a supporting roster of DJs that includes Deep Dish, Marco V., Christopher Lawrence, Danny Howells and Steve Angello providing the Sports Arena's multiple dance areas with a mix of trance, house and drum-and-bass. The music will be augmented by a laser-light show, other visuals and what the promoter calls "the biggest indoor fireworks show we've ever done."

"The crowd we're going for are the real dance music people," Gerani says.

And isn't that the same crowd as Giant? His reply: "There's room for everybody."

Together as One, L.A. Sports Arena, 3939 S. Figueroa St., L.A. 7 p.m. $40 to $100. (323) 960-5155; www.newyearsevela.com.

OCNYE's Orange Drop

As he watched the rain last Dec. 31, promoter Rich Goodwin had the feeling he was going to get soaked. "A half an hour before the event, I thought to myself, 'I've got insurance; I could go hide right now and lose only half of what I might,' " he recalls. "But I saw everybody who had worked so hard setting up and the people lined up outside the gate and said, 'Let's roll with it.' "

Most attendees didn't feel as if they bought into a money-loser. There were the foibles you might associate with a first-time event: Staffing problems caused occasionally long beer lines, sight lines weren't always optimal and some in the crowd were caught unaware when the 10-second countdown began. Still, the event attracted almost 15,000, and special-effects guru Dennis Condon's pyrotechnics-loaded orange dropped as scripted, setting the Orange County Fairgrounds aglow.

The sophomore event, co-promoted by Folgner Entertainment (the Coach House and the Galaxy Theatre), figures to offer more bang for the buck: higher fireworks, a longer countdown, a more dramatic orange drop and, thanks to new permits, the sale of mixed drinks. Promoters are hoping for a crowd of 20,000.

The music lineup, spread over six stages, might read like the roster from a year-end countdown a decade or two ago, but talent buyer Roger LeBlanc says it largely fits "the kind of bands that the O.C. demographic wants to see."

Blondie will be on the main stage at midnight, preceded by the Violent Femmes and the English Beat. Soul Asylum, Everclear, Bret Michaels (of Poison), Thomas Dolby, Buckcherry and Berlin are among the others, with a side stage showcasing promising newcomers such as American Eyes, the Colour and the Randies.

"It's not a concert, it's a New Year's Eve party. We're trying to make that distinction," LeBlanc says. "These are the kind of bands people want to enjoy at a party."

OCNYE's 2007 Orange Drop, Orange County Fairgrounds, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. 6 p.m. $85 to $300. (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster); www.ocnye.com.

Giant Maximus

For Giant, the veteran promotions outfit behind some of L.A.'s most popular weekly club nights, the cancellation of last year's street festival because of safety concerns left a wound that still festers, with scattered complaints about no or slow-arriving refunds.

"There's a sting for me still," Giant director Dave Dean says. "We've done our best to refund the ticket-holders or offer them make-up packages."

Giant bounced back, establishing Giant Village as a summertime event and drawing 9,000 to Wilshire Boulevard in July. Now comes what Dean describes as a "crazy carnival circus meets Giant club night," staged in and around three massive tents in a seven-acre parking lot at 8th and Figueroa streets.

"It's impossible to do an outdoor event that's completely weatherproof," Dean says, stopping himself to interject, "Gosh, it sounds like we're doing this in Anchorage."

Hence, the tents.

The ringmasters of Giant Maximus' three-tent circus will be the heavyweight DJ talent for which the promoter is known. Sasha & John Digweed will team up for a six-hour set, with Ferry Corsten, Armin Van Buuren and Sander Kleinenberg also getting top billing. Circus performers will entertain throughout the midway, which includes a Ferris wheel; capacity is about 10,000.

The carnival atmosphere "is very tongue-in-cheek," says Dean, who plans to bring live bands back into the mix next year.

"Since there are no street closures, we have three days to set up. We can pay a lot more attention to detail."

Giant Maximus, 831 Francisco St. (8th at Figueroa), L.A. 8 p.m. $80 to $150. (323) 464-7373; www.giantclub.com.

Gridlock LA

Charles Lew makes no secret of his aspirations for his event at the Paramount Pictures Studio Lot. "We want to get this televised," he says. "We want this to be the event with the Dick Clark feel ... , to produce something synonymous with L.A."

There, the CEO of Hardball Productions might have his tongue in his cheek. After all, Gridlock will be staged in the area of the Paramount lot built out to look like New York City streets, so his headliner — popular Las Vegas rockers the Killers — will perform their headlining set at "Times Square."

The Killers? How did an event that was aborted in its inaugural attempt last year get the Killers?

"A lot of money," Lew says with a laugh.

Gridlock sold (and then refunded) 3,500 advance tickets last year, says Lew, who expects the Killers, combined with the celebrity cachet of countdown host Carmen Electra, to help the event reach its capacity of 6,000 this year. With five stages of entertainment and circus-like accouterments (including a Ferris wheel), there will be enough music to go around.

"My friends in Florida and on the East Coast would always ask me, 'What's going on New Year's Eve?' " says Lew, who moved to L.A. in 1997 and has been in the club and restaurant business since. "It was the same story every New Year's — it was never anything grandiose.

"There needs to be something so crazy that people everywhere will be talking about it."

Gridlock LA, Paramount Pictures Studio Lot, 5555 Melrose Ave, L.A. 9 p.m. $125 to $250. (323) 571-4000; www.gridlockla.com.

Flaming Lips at the Galen Center

As memorable as the costumed crazies of the Flaming Lips, Gnarls Barkley and their fans figure to make this night (See ), the concert is also notable because it punctuates the emergence of USC's new arena as a music venue.

"We're aggressively promoting it for concerts," USC spokeswoman Donna Heinel says. "We always knew it would be a multipurpose facility."

The Galen Center seats 10,258 for basketball; crowds for live music will be slightly smaller.

The Flaming Lips, Gnarls Barkley and Cat Power, USC Galen Center, 3400 S. Figueroa St., L.A. 8 p.m. $55. (213) 480-3232; www.goldenvoice.com; www.ticketmaster.com.

[dragonsky]

Trojan bombardment: USC dominates Rose Bowl

Booty throws for four second-half touchdowns as the Trojans pull away.
By Ben Bolch, Times Staff Writer
3:00 PM PST, January 1, 2007




Suddenly, a place that had held only heartache for USC the last two times it had played there turned into a bastion of smiles, hugs and high-fives.

The Trojans forced a pair of Michigan turnovers in the third quarter and turned back a Wolverines mini-rally with a pair of scoring strikes by quarterback John David Booty in the fourth en route to a 32-18 victory in the Rose Bowl on Monday in Pasadena.

Booty completed 27 of 45 passes for 391 yards and four touchdowns, two to Dwayne Jarrett in what might have been the junior receiver's final college game before turning pro. Jarrett caught 11 passes for a career-high 205 yards.

Booty and Jarrett hooked up on a decisive 62-yard touchdown pass that gave the Trojans a 25-11 lead with 11:18 remaining after Michigan had pulled to within eight points early in the fourth quarter. Jarrett caught the ball at about the Wolverines 30-yard line and scampered into the end zone down the left sideline.

"It seemed like every time he touched the ball tonight he was doing what he does best, and that's making plays," Booty said in a television interview afterward. Jarrett said he would "sit down and go over all the facts and make the best decision" with his family regarding his future. Booty said he had already lobbied Jarrett to stick around for his senior year.

"When they took us out of the game toward the end of the fourth quarter, I was already working him," Booty said. "I said, 'Hey, man, we need to do this one more time. Let's go next year.' After a performance like he had tonight it might be tough to persuade him to come back, but I'm definitely trying."

After a grind-it-out first half that ended with the score deadlocked at 3-3, the Trojans went to the air in the third quarter in hopes of erasing the memory of recent developments at the Rose Bowl. USC (11-2) had lost its previous two games in Pasadena, against Texas in the Bowl Championship Series national-title game last year and against UCLA in its regular-season finale last month.

"We just thought we had to come out and throw the ball," said Booty, who threw only 16 passes in the first half. "We thought we could make some plays down field on them, and that's what we came out and did."

The Trojans defense also came up big in the second half, with defensive end Brian Cushing forcing a fumble and fellow end Lawrence Jackson intercepting a pass to help transform a tight game into a one-sided affair.

"It really felt good to be on the attack on the defensive side of the ball," USC Coach Pete Carroll said in a television interview. "We got off to a great start, and it gave us a chance to get some momentum once the offense picked up."

But Michigan (11-2), seeking to avoid a third consecutive Rose Bowl defeat, made things interesting early in the fourth quarter. Quarterback Chad Henne completed six of six passes for 62 yards during a drive that culminated in an 11-yard touchdown pass to Adrian Arrington.

Running back Mike Hart, who had been bottled up all afternoon by the Trojans defense, ran in the two-point conversion to pull the Wolverines to within 19-11 with more than 13:25 remaining.

But Jarrett's second touchdown reception a little more than two minutes later extended the Trojans' cushion, and Booty's eight-yard touchdown pass to Steve Smith with 6:52 to go erased any remaining doubt. Smith caught seven passes for 108 yards.

Michigan receiver Steve Breaston hauled in a 41-yard touchdown pass with 1:09 left to set the final margin.

Booty's second scoring pass, a 22-yard connection with Jarrett, had given the Trojans a 16-3 lead with 5:17 left in the third quarter, and USC kicker Mario Danelo's 26-yard field goal--his second of the game from that distance--late in the third quarter extended the Trojans' advantage to 19-3. Cushing, who had three sacks and was selected the defensive MVP, set up the latter score when he knocked the ball away from Henne, with Jackson recovering.

Receiver Chris McFoy had given the Trojans a 10-3 advantage midway through the third quarter when he hauled in a two-yard touchdown pass from Booty. Jackson made the score possible by intercepting a Henne pass at the Wolverines 38-yard line.

The defenses ruled a first half in which the Trojans sacked Henne five times and the Wolverines thwarted a USC drive by forcing a fumble deep in Michigan territory.

USC drove inside the Michigan 25-yard line twice in the first half but came away with only Danelo's first 26-yard field goal late in the first quarter. The Trojans had a first down at the Wolverines 21 late in the second quarter, but Michigan linebacker Shawn Crable stripped the ball from Booty and defensive tackle Alan Branch recovered.

"We felt like we should have had about 21 points going into halftime," Booty said. "We were in the red zone several times."

Michigan couldn't establish its running game--Hart gained only 21 yards in nine carries in the first half--and Henne was constantly scrambling away from Trojans defenders in the Wolverines backfield. Henne completed eight of 12 passes for 85 yards in the opening 30 minutes.

The Wolverines gained only one first down on their first two possessions before driving inside the Trojans 30-yard line the third time they had the ball. On third down, Henne's pass hit USC free safety Mozique McCurtis in the back of the head for an incompletion, and the Wolverines were forced to settle for a 43-yard field goal by Garrett Rivas that tied the score at 3-3 early in the second quarter.

Carroll acknowledged that it was difficult to think about what could have been considering that the Trojans were a victory over UCLA away from playing Ohio State in the BCS championship game for the national title.

"It's a little disappointing because we can play with anybody and we knew that," Carroll said. "But to have an opportunity to play in this Rose Bowl that we cherish so much … it's just awesome."

[WesTheAngelino]

Anyone else watch the Bravo show "Top Chef"? It's by far one of my faves. Season 1 was in SF. This current season is in Los Angeles, and the chefs in the competition are housed in a downtown L.A. loft building. Anyone watch the show and know which building they're in?

[dragonsky]

The Apprentice: Los Angeles

Watch the first twenty minutes of the Season Premiere right now!

http://www.nbc.com/The_Apprentice_6/

[dragonsky]

'The Apprentice' has its work cut out for it in L.A.
Can Trump's show regain its blockbuster status with a shift to the West Coast?
By Martin Miller, Times Staff Writer
January 7, 2007



RELOCATING from his show's New York base for the first time, Donald Trump free associates in tonight's opening episode about the new home for the sixth season of "The Apprentice," Los Angeles.

L.A. is sex, movies and cars, Trump tells his 18 would-be protégés — another stellar collection of Harvard grads, real estate developers and Internet entrepreneurs, who are largely beautiful, sycophantic and backbiting. None of the aspiring Donalds argue with their new boss' take on the city picked to renew interest in the slumping franchise.

Notably, the quintessential New Yorker left television off his top three City of Angels list — though, clearly, a forceful case could have been made that sex and cars are better represented in other American cities. And given his penchant for bluntness, it's somewhat surprising that smog, traffic and earthquakes didn't crack his list either.

Maybe if his show regains its blockbuster status, the feat would remind The Donald to at least mention the medium that has probably made him as famous as his real estate or his hair. But even with the West Coast bling and glare, the show faces an uphill struggle to regain its former ratings glory.

In its first-season finale, "The Apprentice" drew an audience of about 28 million. In steady decline since then, the show attracted just over 11 million viewers with its Season 5 finale in June.

But any time Trump is in the game, it's hard to count out the captain of industry and self-promotion. Just in time for this season's inaugural show, Trump came out from under his hair to free associate — in this instance with Rosie O'Donnell. Some descriptors for the co-host of "The View" that struck Trump were "fat," "loser" and "disgusting."

In a media blitz of the entertainment news outlets, Trump blasted O'Donnell for claiming he'd gone bankrupt, was worth millions, not billions, and had somehow been bailed out of trouble by his father's considerable fortune. Trump's wealth, which he won't divulge, is a touchy subject.

"I'm going to sue Rosie, and it's going to be fun," Trump told a news crew, adding: "Rosie is very lucky to have her girlfriend and she better be careful or I'll send one of my friends over to pick up her girlfriend."

That's the way The Donald rolls.

The public Trump-O'Donnell spat is meant to crank up the buzz around the show, which after changing nights for the third time, could use it. Tonight's 90-minute episode begins at 9:30, but thereafter the show will return to its usual time slot at 9 p.m.

The show's new time on Sundays pits it against the formidable "Desperate Housewives," which like "The Apprentice" scores some of its best ratings in the coveted 18-49 demographic.

As ever, Trump, in a phone interview, remained confident. "I'm not worried about the 'Housewives,' " he said. "Our audience is young, smart kids of great ambition. We'll be fine."

Trump admitted his show was hurt by "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart," which aired in fall 2005. The Stewart spinoff performed poorly in the ratings and was not renewed, though network officials maintained it was intended only as a one-season installment anyway.

"I was never in favor of Martha, but being the wonderful team player I am, I said, 'OK,' " said Trump. "People were so angry that such a piece of garbage would get the name of 'The Apprentice.' That show was a real disaster."

If Trump's feud with O'Donnell brings viewers into the tent, his show's new twists are meant to keep them there. As if the carrot of a job with Trump weren't enough, the show has a new stick with which to beat its contestants — sleeping in tents.

A team loss in one of Trump's appointed sales tasks means being banished to the backyard, where the losers must use outdoor showers, portable toilets and tents. Meanwhile, the winning team enjoys the luxury of a mansion off Mulholland Drive.

"It's so brutal," said Trump. "They are lying out there in the grass, then it rains. It gets real sloppy. Let me tell you after five weeks, it's disgusting and you really want to get into the mansion."

Far from the backyard muck will be Trump's children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, who will again be employed by their father. Both Trump progeny attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and will make appearances in the dreaded board room where they'll advise their dad when to say, "You're fired."

But don't get too attached to L.A., said Trump. The show will relocate again, probably to Miami, Las Vegas or Chicago — cities that are rumored to hold their own with L.A., at least in the sex and cars department.

[dragonsky]

Cape Cod on Mulholland
'Dreamgirls' producer Laurence Mark's Georgian Colonial home, with its East Coast vibe, is a far cry from the Modernist designs that define one of L.A.'s most iconic roads. That's just the way he like
By Janet Eastman, Times Staff Writer
January 18, 2007



MULHOLLAND DRIVE, that rope of road winding through Hollywood and the Santa Monica Mountains, is famous for the cantilevered Modernist dwellings that hug the hills. For the last six decades, R.M. Schindler, Richard Neutra and other architects embracing the barebones International Style were drawn to this storied thoroughfare, so close to the stars. Here they built their glass houses, transparent and expansive — visions of the future delivered for the present.

But then one comes to a flat lot where a new Georgian Colonial house sits, as if teleported from Connecticut, gables and all.

Leave it to "Dreamgirls" producer Laurence Mark to reinterpret the Mulholland fantasy. He bought the one-acre property with an aging ranch-style house for around $1.6 million in 1999. He liked the address ("Mulholland is easy to remember"), the location ("It's as far away from civilization as you can get while still being practical") and the hint of the East Coast, where he grew up (the original house's exterior was Cape Cod blue).

At first he thought he would remodel it, but then he and Santa Monica interior designer Michael S. Smith — two traditionalists with an informal bent — hatched the idea to erect a new Connecticut-style house inspired by the one Katharine Hepburn lived in with her pet leopard in the 1938 comedy "Bringing Up Baby."

The home is easy to miss from the street. Only a small sign with an address, barely visible among the scrappy trees, signals the turn up a strip of asphalt to the ridge of a canyon. Pull up to the front of the house — gray brick with small-paned windows and wood shutters — and the buttoned-up facade gives no hint of the views behind it. Looking out at the protected slopes from his covered backyard porch, Mark boasts: "I see Mother Nature, not one of those stilt houses."

At the end of his workdays keeping budgets and production of his movies on track, Mark wants to escape Hollywood. He doesn't even want to see a palm tree. He retreats to what he calls his country home. "I'm not completely isolated but I feel that way here. It just gives me a feeling that I'm combining the best of California with the East Coast."

MULHOLLAND today is lined with new, maxed-out Mediterraneans and Moderns with front-to-back views, says architect Brad Clark, who designed Mark's house. "Left to our own devices, we'd be doing contemporary," he says of his Los Angeles firm, Kovac Architects. "Larry's house with a colonial New England look is unusual for us and for that area."

Homes along Mulholland have long been defined by the surrounding sawtooth topography. In the 1920s, developers pushed to have the hilltops paved and soon private lanes were springing from the two-lane road leading past overgrown shrubs to odd-sized lots. Small cottages came first, followed by Spanish-style mini-mansions, ranch-style houses and then soaring glass-and-steel pads.

"Mulholland Drive is mythic," says Kevin Starr, a USC professor of history and the author of a series of books on the California dream. "Drive up the hill. Come into this enchanted place, with hidden gardens, hidden homes. The people who live there can be in their Hollywood-style residences, overlooking their audience, consumers who are happily in tract homes watching their work on DVD. By just being up there, it tells them who they are in case they happen to forget that day."

Marlon Brando hid away for years in a compound here, thankful that his staff could drive down to fetch whatever he needed. Jack Nicholson still lives here. But few would know it. Privacy is created by gates and landscape, and in some canyons, down-sloping lots conceal caissoned cliff-hanging houses.

It was only natural that multilevel houses would be adopted in this unlevel land, says architect Ted Wells, who is on the advisory board of the Southern California chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians.

"The terrain doesn't lend itself to historically flat architectural styles like a Georgian Colonial," he says. "It wasn't a big leap to adopt Mediterranean styles on Mulholland Drive that were designed to step up Italian and Spanish hillsides. The Modern style worked on multilevels too. John Lautner designed his Chemosphere house off Mulholland to sit on a single column that raised the house so as not to disturb the sloping lot. Function and expense drove these solutions."

Blame director David Lynch's edgy movie "Mulholland Drive" if our image of twisted Mulholland does not embrace a house like Mark built with pitched roof and dormers, a style first popularized on the East Coast centuries ago by wealthy colonists.

"That would be a distinctive approach for a new home there," says social historian Starr after being told of Mark's house. "This just shows the power of architecture to suggest and create place, especially for someone who grew up in the East Coast. Your home tells the story you want to tell."

MARK'S 5,179-square-foot house with a two-car garage could have been larger.

The original ranch-style house was U-shaped, built around a front courtyard with a towering silk tree with greenish gray bark. Mark wanted to keep the flowering tree in the courtyard as well as preserve the large front and back yards.

As for the house itself, architect Clark says the lot size allowed for it to be triple the original footprint. Mark kept the same footprint but added a second story to one wing. "I don't want to have to use a megaphone to talk to friends in my home," jokes Mark, who moved into the house in 2002.

"If you saw Larry's house standing next to another house on that same street, without any walls around it, it might look out of place," Clark says. "But because it wraps around an entry courtyard and has a nice, human scale, it makes sense."

Step inside and the small entry with its rugged hardwood floor and painted panel walls seem designed for unloading winter coats — and Hollywood expectations of a movie producer's house. Across from the stair hall is a cozy dining room with blue-gray hand-blocked English wallpaper, an 18th century American mahogany table for eight and a white fireplace mantel seemingly plucked from "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir."

Most of the furnishings came from Mark's previous Hollywood Hills house. He says designer Smith usually deals with "royalty" — the English banking Rothschilds, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, director Steven Spielberg, supermodel Cindy Crawford and others who aren't concerned about cost. But Mark is. It's his profession.

"Once in a while Michael would have to announce the price of something and I would say, 'Oh, dear' or 'Oh, fine,' " says Mark, who adds that whether it's for his house or a movie, he'll say no unless he believes that something is absolutely worth the money.

Framed black-and-white photographs by Ansel Adams and Bruce Weber that Mark has collected for 20 years hang on walls in the entrance, living room and bedrooms. He splurged to have a darkroom installed near the laundry to develop his own photographs.

"It's a home hobby that also serves as a bit of a vacation from the hubbub of Hollywood," says Mark, who lives alone. "When you have a sense of calm about you it hopefully puts you in touch with the real world and keeps things in perspective."

Mark grew up in Manhattan's affluent Sutton Place, attended Connecticut boarding schools and earned a master's in film at New York University. He worked his way into publicity, marketing and production at the big studios, before heading his own production company since 1986. "Working Girl" was one of his first hits, followed by "Jerry Maguire," "As Good As It Gets" and "I, Robot."

Days before Mark accepted the Golden Globe Award for "Dreamgirls" as best motion picture (musical or comedy), he was hanging out in his living room, facing a white-painted mantel that bears none of the award statues he has collected over his career. (He keeps them at his production office.)

On this day, Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" was playing over the vintage jukebox in the adjacent TV room. Near his side was his British harrier dog, named Rizzo after Stockard Channing's character in "Grease." In his book-lined home office overlooking the canyon, he was fielding calls to arrange an European tour for "Dreamgirls."

He says he prefers to watch award shows in his flop-down TV room with a dozen of his friends sitting on pillows on the floor, eating takeout Chinese. But it won't happen this year. The Producers Guild of America has nominated him for "Dreamgirls" and on Tuesday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce this year's Oscar nominees. "If that happens, I guess I'll have to go," he says, not trying to sound convincing.

Mark, an energetic man in his late 50s, walks the red carpet for his work, but when he's home, he slides in socks on unpolished hardwood floors. He has risen to the top of his spotlight-seeking profession, but uses Tinseltown's fabled route to psychically and architecturally disconnect from its clichés and trappings.

"When a dinner cancels," says Mark, "I'm happy to come home."

[dragonsky]

L.A. airports fly high with film shoots
TV and movie action at area facilities keeps hundreds of jobs in place and fills city coffers with sales tax revenue, study says.
By Tony Barboza, Times Staff Writer
January 22, 2007

The television drama "LAX" nearly ended up being shot in Dallas.

The short-lived NBC series, starring Heather Locklear and Blair Underwood as competing airport managers, was originally to be called "Hub" and take place at a fictional Southland airport. The show's pilot episode was shot at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

But Los Angeles International Airport officials persuaded the series' producers to switch to the hometown facility for the 13-episode season, making it a part of local airport filming that has kept hundreds of jobs in the area and helped fill city coffers.

"We felt like they really ought to film that in Southern California," said Paul Haney, deputy executive director of airports and security for Los Angeles World Airports.

From the now-canceled "LAX" to movies like "The Terminal" and "Catch Me If You Can," film shoots at Los Angeles' airports generated $590 million in wages and other revenue for the L.A. region between 2002 and 2005, according to a study to be released today by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

The report also credits airport filming with providing 4,800 full-time jobs that produced $280 million in wages and $1 million in city sales tax revenue. The study was based on a survey of the L.A. airport agency's filming permits at its four airports: LAX, Van Nuys, Palmdale and Ontario. The survey arrived at its results by amassing all direct and indirect business revenue in L.A. County associated with film production at those airports.

Agency officials called for the study after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when airports nationwide stopped granting access to film crews for security reasons.

"We were under enormous internal pressure and pressure from the film industry to bring back film activity," Haney said. They soon did, in January 2002, and today's study was meant to examine the economic effects of the policy change. Researchers say it highlights the importance of making airports available to filmmakers and TV producers.

Filmmakers regularly seek out airports to shoot curbside, terminal and runway scenes, according to the study. But they also make use of sand dunes on LAX property and empty buildings under the airports' care. Portions of "The Terminal" were shot in 2003 in a giant hangar at the Palmdale facility, Haney said.

Television programs accounted for more than one-third of productions at the airports, according to the study, and feature films less than 10%. Some TV shows have spent several weeks at a time shooting on airport property, though relatively brief shoots of two or three days are the norm for movies, commercials and music videos.

Los Angeles airports are attractive to filmmakers because of their proximity to Hollywood's studios, production companies and actors, according to the study. Those factors give the area a "critical mass" that favors film production within Los Angeles.

"This validates the importance of the efforts we put in to support the film industry," Haney said. "LAX is the most-filmed airport in the world. Every single day of the year, somebody is shooting a commercial, a television program or a major motion picture at one of our airports."

But airports' accessibility to the entertainment industry, which officials call their "film-friendly" policy, is being challenged by other states and countries seeking the economic windfall film production brings. Filming that used to be done almost exclusively in California is now seeing competition from outside the state, where filmmakers enjoy government subsidies, tax credits and other incentives, the report said.

The study cites Britain, New Zealand and Canada as countries with newly developed post-production facilities and industry-friendly policies that are wooing films away from L.A.

"There are large and quite lucrative incentives for film producers to shoot their films elsewhere. For the most part, Los Angeles and California don't have that," said Gregory Freeman, vice president of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. and lead author of the study. "We largely compete by having a large infrastructure already in place."

Though filming at airport locations accounts for less than 1% of total production days in Los Angeles, the survey found, the availability of the facilities may have a ripple effect, leading crews to stay in Los Angeles for an entire project instead of opting for an out-of-state set.

"To the extent that we can keep even a part of the filming here, often the rest of the shoot will stay here," Freeman said. The study represents "a tremendous understatement of the overall positive impact that a film-friendly policy has on the L.A. economy," he added, stressing that the study considered only the impact of days shot on airport property.

Not everyone is thrilled with the prospect of more filming in and around the region's already busy airports.

When the Bruce Willis action move "Live Free or Die Hard" was being filmed next to LAX last fall, area residents, air cargo businesses and others raised concerns over the producers' intermittent closing of portions of the 105 Freeway and Imperial Highway. But the project went ahead, although with somewhat shortened shooting time.

[dragonsky]

Rage Against the Machine will reunite for Coachella
Red Hot Chili Peppers and Björk also top the bill for the three-day music festival.
By Geoff Boucher, Times Staff Writer
January 22, 2007



Rage Against the Machine, the seminal L.A. band that made heavy music into political manifesto, will reunite after a seven-year lull for one show as the headliners at the 2007 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

Sources say Rage, which played the main stage at the first Coachella in 1999, will be joined by other familiar faces for the eighth edition of the festival, which covers three days this year and begins April 27: Red Hot Chili Peppers, which headlined in 2003, are back, as is Björk, who topped the bill in 2002.

Organizers were mum this weekend and it was not clear which day Rage or the other acts were slotted to play; that announcement is expected in the next few days. Other acts expected in the eclectic lineup: Arcade Fire, Interpol, Willie Nelson, the Roots, Manu Chao, the Decemberists, Arctic Monkeys, Sonic Youth, Crowded House, Air, Tiësto and Kings of Leon.

Tickets go on sale Saturday, via Ticketmaster. Three-day passes will cost about $250 and there will be a limited number of single-day passes available.

The headliners are not novel, but they are potent. The Peppers are up for their first best album Grammy right now, and Björk remains a mesmerizing figure to fans of avant pop. But in Southern California rock circles, there is very little that could compete with the excitement of a Rage Against the Machine reunion. The quartet's hybrid of funk, rap, metal and leftist ideology was as subtle as a Molotov cocktail; in the 1990s, its aggro-anthems made it the only band that mattered to a fan base that included East L.A. protest kids as well as those in Hollywood punk circles, college dorms and mainstream rock festival mosh pits, where politics were secondary to the group's feral energy.

The band is vocalist Zack de la Rocha, guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk. Their split came amid rumors of bad blood between De la Rocha and his mates, who went on to work with Chris Cornell in Audioslave. However, Morello and De la Rocha appeared together at a 2005 rally for the urban farmers of a South Los Angeles community garden.

[dragonsky]

'24' gets a lesson in torture from the experts
By Martin Miller, Times Staff Writer
February 13, 2007



Hollywood is notorious for its meetings, but even by L.A. standards this one was unusual.

A few steps away from the CTU set of Fox's "24," an unlikely alliance of human rights activists, the dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and veteran interrogators with experience stretching from Saigon to Abu Ghraib gathered around two tables in mid-November. The group was there to meet with some of the creative forces behind "24," one of television's most successful serialized dramas, famous for its relentless derring-do depiction of an American counter terrorism unit.

The East Coast crowd didn't fly into town to pitch another quasi-military action series, but rather to advance a simple plea -- Make your torture scenes more authentic.

By that, they did not mean bloodier or more savage. Instead, they wanted "24" to show torture subjects taking weeks or months to break, spitting out false or unreliable intelligence, and even dying. As they do in the real world.

"We're not opposed to having torture on television, but 98% of the time when it is shown it's 'Bing, bang, boom,' and it works," said David Danzig, director of the Prime Time Torture Project for the New York-based organization Human Rights First. "Frankly, it's unrealistic and it's kind of boring."

More troubling, the disparate group told "24" writers and executive producers, are the social and political consequences of television's current version of torture and who is performing it. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, prime-time television has seen a surge of torture sequences.

From 1996 to 2001, there were 102 scenes of torture, according to the Parents Television Council. But from 2002 to 2005, that figured had jumped to 624, they said. "24" has accounted for 67 such scenes during its first five seasons, making it No. 1 in torture depictions, according to the watchdog group.

The increase in quantity is not the only difference. During this uptick in violence, the torturer's identity was more likely to be an American hero like "24's" Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) than the Nazis and drug dealers in pre-9/11 days. The action-packed show, which drew a hefty 13.6 million viewers last week, was among the first and certainly the most prominent to have its main character choke, stab, or electrocute — among other techniques — information out of villains.

"It's unthinkable that Capt. Kirk would torture someone," said Danzig.

While hardly alone in the entertainment universe of television and movies in portraying torture, shows like "24" and later ABC's "Lost" were sought out by the human rights activists because of their immense popularity, both here and around the world. Even in Iraq, such series can sometimes substitute for or trump military training, and transmit a dark message to soldiers.

"Everyone wanted to be a Hollywood interrogator," said Tony Lagouranis, a former U.S. Army interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq who spoke to the creative teams from "24" and "Lost." "That's all people did in Iraq was watch DVDs of television shows and movies. What we learned in military schools didn't apply anymore."

At the infamous Iraqi prison for almost all of 2004, Lagouranis soon left the military and went to the media to detail the torture, largely ineffective, which was visited upon the inmates. He said that his actions -- sleep deprivation, hypothermia, dietary manipulations and use of dogs, all illegal according to American and international law -- were relatively mild compared to what else was being practiced.

"It's an ugly thing," said Lagouranis. "You don't get neat, tidy answers like you do on television."

The Hollywood meeting, a spirited back-and-forth discussion with its moments of defensiveness by most accounts, lasted a couple hours and was followed by an Italian lunch. For the "24" team, the afternoon served as a rare opportunity for them to debrief real world interrogators, but it also stirred up television's age-old tension between entertainment and social responsibility.

"The meeting was an eye-opener," said "24" executive producer Howard Gordon. "We hadn't really thought a lot about torture as anything more than a dramatic device."

As a result, Gordon has been filmed for a Humans Rights First video about torture that is expected to be used next fall at West Point and perhaps other military organizations as well. Executive producers from "Lost" also agreed to be in the video, which was shot last month.

Human Rights First, a nonprofit group with an annual budget of about $7 million, plans to continue pushing the point. They are in talks with the Writers Guild of America to bring in their team of former interrogators to discuss real-world experiences with Hollywood writers.

It's typically a cold, snowy day in Hollywood when time-pressured, well-moneyed producers concede to face-to-face talks with a nonprofit human rights group armed with an agenda inherently critical of their shows' themes. But like most successful Hollywood ventures, relationships and serendipity played a big part in bringing the sides together.

Last year, Human Rights First was contacted by David Zabel, an executive producer of NBC's "ER," who was fact-checking a show story thread about the crisis in Darfur. The connection ultimately proved fortuitous. Zabel knew his counterparts at "24" and "Lost," whose ensemble includes a sympathetic torturer named Sayid, and introduced them to the human rights group.

Meanwhile, Danzig, whose father was former Secretary of the Navy under the Clinton administration, helped recruit military interrogators and West Point's dean, Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan, to travel to Hollywood.

"I was pretty skeptical to begin with," said retired Col. Stu Herrington who worked U.S. Army interrogations from Vietnam to the first Gulf War. "I mean these guys have a load of Emmys, a top show. Why should they listen to us? Their business model is based upon a shtick where Jack tortures the hell out of someone and they save the world."

The "24" team immediately challenged that view with openness and candor. It's true that Jack Bauer has tortured suspects, but he's no cartoon character, Gordon argued. "Our opinion is Jack Bauer hurts people and whether right or wrong, he's suffering for it," said Gordon. "It's not glorified."

Bauer, himself the victim of horrible violence, clearly is traumatized by what he's forced to do to others in the name of national security. In one instance this season, while in pursuit of information on the whereabouts of a suitcase nuke in Los Angeles, Bauer didn't have the stomach to torture a suspect. Later, however, the action hero recovered his steely nerve, and put a plastic bag over the head of his evil brother for information.

To Gordon and the "Lost" producers, it's almost absurd that they should have to make clear that the fictionalized torture events that jack up America's adrenaline are intended for anything other than entertainment.

" '24' is a television show with its own dramatic requirements which are reductive and unreal," said Gordon. "And to that extent, we would like to participate in any way we can with disabusing young kids in the military of any confusion over that."

CBS' "The Unit" is another successful prime-time show that revolves around an American counter terrorism unit. However, the show has consciously avoided having its "good guys" torture.

"We've tried to show the futility of it and how it hurts both parties," said Shawn Ryan, an executive producer of "The Unit" which has devoted a couple episodes on the topic. "But I realize that safety comes first for people and things like civil freedoms can become endangered in times of war and fear. And we live in a time of war and fear. I mean, how much useful information was pulled from Abu Ghraib? Probably none. But how much damage did it do to America around the world?"

In extremely rare instances, torture may actually work, said Herrington, who notes it's still practiced in many other countries. But what is far more likely to happen in such cases is the torturer will receive unreliable information — or will lose their suspect completely.

"A human being isn't a light switch," said Joe Navarro, a former counterintelligence agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "We don't really know when someone will go into shock or when they will faint or even die."

Real life interrogations are much more about building trust or staging psychological games to induce a subject to talk — and keep talking, added Navarro.

Sympathetic with the human rights group's agenda, producers for both "24" and "Lost" agreed to be interviewed on camera for an educational video for the military. Taping a public service message is one thing. Tinkering with the fragile, almost mystical, insides of a hit television show is another.

Producers for both shows balked at saying whether story lines would actually shift as a result of their discussions.

"It's a lot more dynamic to see somebody tortured than to win someone's trust," said Carlton Cuse, an executive producer of "Lost." "Particularly in the framework of an action/adventure show like 'Lost' and '24.' "