Movies Made for Television 2005–2009 Alvin H. Marill The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK 2010 Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.scarecrowpress.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2010 by Alvin H. Marill All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Marill, Alvin H. Movies made for television, 2005–2009 / Alvin H. Marill. p. cm. Includes indexes. ISBN 978-0-8108-7658-3 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7659-0 (ebook) 1. Television mini-series—Catalogs. 2. Made-for-TV movies—Catalogs. I. Title. PN1992.8.F5M337 2010 791.45’7509051—dc22 2010022545 ϱ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America Contents Foreword by Ron Simon v Acknowledgments vii Introduction ix Movies Made for Television, 2005–2009 1 Chronological List of Titles, 2005–2009 111 Television Movies Adapted from Other Sources 117 Actor Index 125 Director Index 177 About the Author 181 iii Foreword Alvin Marill has had one of the longest relationships in media history. He has remained faithful to his object of affection, the television movie, from the very beginning starting in 1964. He has stayed true to the TV movie dur- ing the glory and lean years, loyally documenting every facet of change and development. I am sure sometimes Al must have questioned his absolute devotion, but his love has never diminished. And we, television scholars, are much richer for his not-so-secret obsession. I can think of no television historian who has charted a genre as assiduously as Al has. For every single TV movie, he has given us meticulous information, an accurate listing of the talent responsible for that production. Al is extremely diligent in making sure that this data is perfect in every way; a misspelling is a tragedy in the Marill universe. He not only records every movie, but also gathers any and all press information. Every entry in Al’s book is a thoughtful sifting through of all the evidence at hand to determine actual and reliable credit. Television movies are very different than series television; every production is unique, a gathering of talent that, except for an occasional sequel, will never be repeated. Al’s series of reference books, from the late 1970s onward, has been the official record for approximately 5,900 movies . and counting. Not only does Al provide an exhaustive mountain of information, but he also encapsulates the plot and impact of every movie in a few chosen and pungent sentences. I have relied on the truthfulness of his impeccable judgment many times over the years as I curate exhibitions at the Paley Center for Media on the television movie and its creators. His indexes of actors, writers, and directors have also proven invaluable, documenting how many of Hollywood’s talent pool have contributed to the growth of the TV movie. In his remarkable series of research books you feel as if you have the entire history of the telefilm in your hands. Al was at the forefront of television scholarship. His first volume signaled to professors and critics every- where that the television movie and miniseries was worthy of serious study. Since that pioneering first volume, he has continued his Herculean labors for more than a quarter of a century. Because of Al’s ongoing commitment, the television movie has been thoroughly documented, like no other genre. The television movie used to be the gold standard of the industry, the forum where Americans examined their history and most pressing issues of the day. It is impossible to think seriously about American popular cul- ture without referencing Brian’s Song, That Certain Summer, Roots, and Holocaust. Other notable events in the world of TV movies through the years, chronicled meticulously in Al’s compendiums, have been adaptations—great, good, and middling—of the works of Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald; of Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevski; of Robert Ludlum (The Bourne Identity, years before Matt Damon tackled it), Michael Crichton, Anne Rice, Frederick Forsyth, and Mary Higgins Clark; of Broadway’s Gypsy, Bye, Bye Birdie, The Heidi Chronicles, and Angels in America. Over the last two decades the TV movie has not achieved such a prominence in our national life, but efforts like John Adams and Recount remind us there is a lot of creative life in the form yet. But no matter whether the genre is in a peak or valley, Al’s scholarly skills remain at a very high level. His painstaking research helps us make the final historical determination of the TV movie’s place in the overall media universe. Anyone interested in the sig- nificance of television in American society will forever be grateful to the groundbreaking efforts of Al Marill. v vi Foreword Ron Simon is curator, Television and Radio, Paley Center for Media, as well as adjunct associate professor at Columbia University and NYU where he teaches courses on the history of media. He is a member of the editorial board of Television Quarterly and former chair of the George Foster Peabody Awards. Acknowledgments As usual a reference compendium of this sort requires valued assistance from various sources. I’d like to acknowl- edge those who helped make the whole shebang possible. They include Jani Klain and Ron Simon of the Paley Center for Media, Jon Young of HBO, and TV historian Vincent Terrace, along with Deanne Comer, Judy Marill (my sister), Steve Marill (my son), computer guru Matthew Ford, and the press departments of the assorted TV and cable networks. Also my editor Stephen Ryan. To them, and one or two others I might have overlooked, a doff of the old chapeau. vii Introduction In the aughts of the current millennium, in the world of movies made for television, several significant concerns in the medium—beginning with Survivor and The Amazing Race and Big Brother to American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, to say nothing of the Hollywood writers’ strike of 2006–2007—changed the programming landscape. So too the widely heralded Jay-Leno-five-nights-a week in primetime experiment. Fewer and fewer scripted shows were being aired on the networks. And that impacted dramas and comedies, mysteries and biopics. NBC and ABC, where memorable TV movie/miniseries like Roots, Holocaust, Sybil, Brian’s Song, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance, and many of the dramatized sagas of the Kennedys were produced, virtually stopped making the mainstays of the genre. Then, with a couple of exceptions—like the Hallmark Hall of Fames that continue to air around the card-giving holidays—CBS ceased scheduling them. Cable television now maintains the “tradition” basically on Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel, with the pe- rennially popular women’s drama with strong female leads on the former and basically feel-good, happy-ending family and faith-based dramas and lighthearted fare on the latter. ABC Family, the Disney Channel, and AMC, even ESPN, occasionally offered original made-for-television movies, and often get their production costs back by nearly rerunning them to death. Airing were biopics such as the ones in which the mature likes of Shirley MacLaine plays Coco Chanel months before Before Coco, Diane Keaton does her Amelia Earhart portrayal before Hilary Swank does hers, Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore serve up Big and Little Edie Beale straight—for example, without Broadway musical numbers, Cybill Shepherd as Martha Stewart (twice), Joan Allen as legendary American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, Susan Sarandon as tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Also British veteran Brendan Gleason in an Emmy-winning star- ring role is Winston Churchill, Paul Giamatti is founding father Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, another Brit, is the king in another Elvis biography (before impersonating a real Tudor king), James Brolin is Ronald Rea- gan several years before son Josh Brolin becomes George W. Bush on the little-seen theatrical production, Kevin Spacey is Ron Klain, one of the pivotal figures in the Bush-Gore election race, and John Turturro as the Bronx Bombers’ volatile general manager Billy Martin in the ’77 Yankees pennant race. Real-life dramatizations included a couple on Pope John Paul II and one each on runner Roger Bannister, conquering the then-elusive four-minute mile, and a young John McCain during his POW years at the Hanoi Hil- ton during Vietnam. Also a dramatized reenactment on its fortieth anniversary of the flight of Apollo 11. Stage musicals like Reefer Madness, Legally Blonde, and Once Upon a Mattress were restaged for television. So were off- Broadway plays that include the likes of Lackawanna Blues, Loving Leah, and The Exonerated as television movies. Stalwart Tom Selleck continues in the aughts with a handful of dissolute small-town cop Jesse Stone’s mys- tery adventures of the late author Robert B. Parker, similar to Peter Falk’s Columbo franchise of the previous decade or two. Empire Falls, from the book by Richard Russo, brought together again Paul Newman (in his final role) and Joanne Woodward. Kenny Ortega’s super-popular High School Musical and sequels and Camp Rock are among the basic Disney things carefully crafted to capture the “tween” audience of attractive—and talented—adolescents, the Shia LeBoufs and Miley Cyruses and Hilary and Haylie Duffs of the youth-oriented entertainment world.