The high-tech wheelchair in which Christopher Reeve spent his final years isn't good enough for the Smithsonian. According to the New York Post, when the Reeve fam offered the chair for display, the venerable institution put the brakes on the exchange, saying they wanted more, much more, to chronicle the Superman star's valiant fight. "We need the whole history of his experience," says the curator, who has since compiled a wish list, including Reeve's meds, exercise equipment, literature he collected and letters he wrote about his condition, "but never heard back" from the family. A rep for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation says they want the chair on display as tribute to "the most visible person with a spinal cord injury," but has balked at fulfilling the Smithsonian's shopping list.
read more
There probably isn't anyone on Earth who has produced more hours of morning television than Steve Friedman. In two stints and 10 years of producing NBC's Today, he worked with Tom Brokaw, Jane Pauley, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer. He devised the show's street-level studio in Rockefeller Plaza, which has become a major Manhattan attraction. He led CBS' effort to become a serious player in morning TV when he launched The Early Show with Gumbel and Jane Clayson in 1999. The show has never challenged Today or ABC's Good Morning America in the ratings, but it has become a significant profit center for CBS News. Friedman followed pal Gumbel out of CBS in 2002, but the network's current news president Sean McManus has brought him back — as vice president in charge of morning broadcasts — in the hopes that Friedman can take The Early Show to the next level. The Biz talked with him about how
read more
Question: On the show Knight Rider, what did K.I.T.T. stand for?Answer: Why, he and partner/driver Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff) stood for truth, justice and single-handedly lowering the auto-industry fleet's miles-per-gallon average by 10 miles or so. Weren't you watching?
Actually, K.I.T.T. stood for Knight Industries Two Thousand, the model name for the superpowered, computer-sentient car built by dying rich guy Wilton Knight. The hit series ran on NBC from September 1982 to August 1986, and as fans will know, Knight rescued undercover cop Michael Young, who'd been shot in the face while on the job. He paid for his plastic surgery, giving Young a new mug and a new name (Knight, which smacked of some ego, I thought) in the process. Then he handed his creation the keys to K.I.T.T., a black Trans Am with a
read more
Question: I was reading recently in your column about Sleuth and got to wondering: Wasn't it remade with Michael Caine as the author and Christopher Reeve as the younger man? Answer: Although Deathtrap (1982) isn't a remake of Sleuth (1972), there are similarities, first and foremost that it's also an adaptation of a stage play (by Ira Levin rather than Anthony Shaffer) and it focuses on the cat-and-mouse head games between a successful older writer (Michael Caine, who played the young buck opposite
read more
After four Superman movies in the '70s and '80s, the blockbuster film franchise got worn out. Hey, the first two flicks were fab. But Christopher Reeve trading one liners with Richard Pryor in Superman III? Oy. And Reeve's face off with Nuclear Man — a solar-powered Chippendale's dancer — in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace? 'Twas like kryptonite to Supes fans! In a promising turn of events, Brett Ratner (Rush Hour, Red Dragon) has been tapped to direct the newest installment, with
read more
