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A Sheffer Runs Through It Things to know about One Tree
Hill:
- Poor Craig Sheffer
- Poor Moira Kelly
Craig Sheffer's career has been defined by two roles.
1) Norman Maclean, in
A River Runs Through It, a remarkable movie, intimate on
a grand scale.
2) Pretty much everything else.
Sheffer earned a fan for life after River, but
outside of that film, the 43-year-old actor has spent 20 years
in the business doing little better than his role as the nasty
boyfriend in the Lea Thompson-Eric Stoltz-Mary Stuart Masterson
time capsule, Some Kind of Wonderful.
Nevertheless, the power of River is such that when I
flipped channels after the Cubs-Braves game ended Tuesday and
saw his name on the opening credits of rookie WB drama One
Tree Hill, I instinctively paused. The presence of two other
favorites,
Moira Kelly (last seen vanishing from The West Wing
four years ago without a trace) and Barry Corbin (Maurice from
Northern Exposure) kept me on the channel for the full
hour.
Turns out, Sheffer's role on One Tree Hill is
metaphorical for his career - he's still One Role Actor.
Once again, the material is beneath his talent, and he's barely
visible on the show at that. One Tree Hill let Sheffer on
screen for just a few minutes, finding other ways to focus on a
melodramatic conflict between two half-brothers in the same
small town.
Central to the program is the fact that the father of the two
high-schoolers, Dan Scott (Paul Johansson) is as rotten a
domestic case as you'll find on commercial television. He
fathered a son named Luke with a woman named Karen (Kelly),
abandoned them, then fathered a second boy (Nathan), in whom he
is forcefully inculcating the lesson that selfishness is the key
to success. Nothing wrong with creating such a character - and
nothing wrong with him getting away with his cruelty for the
time being.
But like I said, he's central. Though the show is about the
Nathan-Luke battle, Dan is the true antagonist. With such an
obviously reprehensible character occupying such prominence, all
that's left for us is to see how other characters deal with his
destructiveness.
How do they deal? Uninterestingly. They brood, they fight, they
have sweet talks with people they are close to. None of it is
particularly surprising or insightful. There wasn't a twist in
Tuesday's episode, unless you're the kind of person who doesn't
expect an insecure young artist who trashes her wonderful
drawings to have her portfolio rescued by a young suitor.
Well, one thing is surprising: Moira Kelly, who is 35 years old
and who looks younger than anyone on, say, Friends,
playing the mother of a high-schooler. Conicidentally, Kelly's
career-making performance in The Cutting Edge was airing
on American Movie Classics (of all places) at the same time as
One Tree Hill. Maybe I didn't have enough teen pregnancy
in my life, but if the two roles were both cast today, I'd say
that Kelly is still better suited to play the young skater.
Kelly is game in her newest role, but as with Sheffer, One
Tree Hill just makes me sad about talent being wasted.
Article taken from:
http://tvthoughts.blogspot.com/
More Than Hoop Dreams Abound on
'One Tree Hill'
By
John Crook
Audiences who catch Tuesday, Sept.
23's premiere of The WB's drama "One Tree Hill" may feel a little
overwhelmed as they tried to wrap their minds around a large cast
of characters bearing a dizzying history among them.
Set in the small fictional town of
Tree Hill, N.C., the show focuses on teenage half-brothers Lucas
and Nathan Scott (Chad Michael Murray, James Lafferty). Lucas'
mom, Karen (Moira Kelly), has raised him on her own since Dan
(Paul Johansson), her high-school boyfriend, abandoned her to
pursue college and a career in professional basketball. Dan's
older brother, garage mechanic Keith Scott (Craig Sheffer), has
tried to serve as Lucas' surrogate father, while quietly carrying
a torch for Karen.
Dan's hoops career doesn't pan out,
so he has returned to Tree Hill with the well-to-do wife he met in
college and Nathan, the only son he publicly acknowledges. Lucas
decides he's ready to take on his arrogant half-sibling on
Nathan's own turf: the local varsity basketball court. Also at
stake: the romantic interest of Nathan's beautiful head
cheerleader girlfriend, Peyton Sawyer (Hilarie Burton).
"Yeah, that first episode kind of
said, 'I'm a pilot,' didn't it?" Murray says, taking a cigarette
break inside his dressing room trailer in Wilmington, N.C. "I
loved the way Mark [Schwahn, the series creator] just drops you
into the middle of this very complicated world, but yeah, it was a
lot to take in.
"This second episode is even
better, though. In fact, one scene toward the end made me cry --
and I do not cry when I read scripts," he adds, tapping a table
with his index finger for emphasis.
WB viewers may know the 22-year-old
actor from his recurring role as high-school rogue Tristan DuGrey
on "Gilmore Girls," his stint on "Dawson's Creek" or the title
role in an ill-starred 2003 pilot for a projected "Lone Ranger"
series.
On this rainy late-summer
afternoon, with a large, friendly dog aggressively competing for
his attention, however, Murray looks less like the golden boy from
WB promos than a serious young actor who recognizes a major career
break when he sees one.
It also helps that he feels deeply
connected to Lucas -- "Luke," to his mom and close friends.
"I was kind of an outcast in high
school," Murray volunteers. "I had no friends. I was a nerd, and I
was from a family with a history that a lot of people knew about,
and because I didn't have a lot of money, while everybody else was
getting into trends and fashion, I would wear Payless shoes, a
pair of jeans and a white T-shirt every day, which only kind of
excluded me further.
"I enjoyed the educational part of
it, and I did well in my classes, but I wasn't one of the guys who
thought, 'Wow, how great is high school.' Even then, I was looking
past it, wondering what was out there ... ."
If that isn't enough, Murray also
understands Lucas' most personal source of pain: a parent's
abandonment.
"My mother abandoned us when I was
10, so I grew up with just my father raising us," he explains. "I
don't think you can understand what it's like to be a kid who has
a parent just walk out of your life like that unless you've
actually been through it. I've lived it. In a lot of ways, Lucas'
story is my story."
"It must be a wonderful, freeing
opportunity for Chad to bring so much of his personal experience
to this part, use it and then let it go," says Kelly, Murray's TV
mom. "While I think the dynamic is maybe a little different in
that he grew up with just a father, as opposed to just a mother as
Luke did, it's obvious Chad feels very connected to this
character."
The actress, who is expecting her
second child in November, croons "Hide the bay-beeee" as crew
members artfully drape the shirttails of her costume to shield any
sign of her off-screen pregnancy. Kelly says viewers will see some
very different aspects of her character in the second episode.
"Karen seemed very strong in the
pilot, confronting Dan about the way he has ignored Luke growing
up. But in this next episode, you see more of her vulnerability.
You get a sense of what she's had to bear during those years of
raising Luke by herself, and a little of what those years have
cost her."
During a company dinner break in a
nearby church basement, Burton, best known to young viewers as an
MTV VJ, also says she loves the way Schwahn's new script delves
more deeply into the reasons for Peyton's feelings of discontent.
"Peyton is questioning a lot of
things in her life right now, and she doesn't share the same sense
of what's important as her friends," Burton says. "And I think she
picks up that same vibe from Lucas, which is probably why she
starts to look at him differently. In the pilot she was kind of
cranky about what was wrong with her life, and I like that in the
second episode you begin to see some of the things that she really
cares about, like her art."
Lafferty, freshly showered after
braving the local humidity for several takes of an outdoor jogging
scene with TV dad Johansson, says he thinks viewers are just going
to have to deal with Nathan's dark side for the time being.
"I can't really think about how the
audience feels about Nathan right now, because my first allegiance
is to the character. I hope we find that he has some redeeming
qualities down the line, but don't be surprised if he gets worse
before he gets better."
That tension will only make for
more compelling drama, Johansson says.
"I like the 'Dynasty'-like family
drama that goes on in [this show], the fact that people of the
same blood are so at odds with one another, because in life those
are often the people who are hardest for us to get along with," he
says.
The show's senior cast member,
Barry Corbin, who plays coach Whitey Durham, also thinks "One Tree
Hill" has a shot at attracting a wide audience.
"I might not normally watch a 'teen
show' like this one in some ways, but our show has enough balance
with the older characters that I think it can be enjoyed by both
younger and older people," he says. "Everyone I've shown it to has
really liked it."
Article taken from:
ZapTV
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