Hard Sell: Healthy Food for the Writers

Los Angeles — WE TV vice president and general manager Kim Martin had a tough job Jan. 8, kicking off the cable portion of the Television Critics Association meeting here by selling writers, who normally subsist on energy drinks, cookies and fatty snacks from the minibar, on a show devoted to healthy eating.

Martin said she understood the critics often gained weight during the multiweek, twice-annual meetings with network talent. Hence the low-cal lunch — naked salad, grilled chicken, brown rice and veggies, fresh fruit — a helping hand.

“I can tell everyone is excited,” she quipped to laughs.

The healthy food was a prelude to a pitch for the channel’s latest original, I Want to Save Your Life, featuring diet guru Charles Stuart Platkin. Writers questioned whether the “ambushes” in the show were an example of “humiliation TV.” The issue was raised because clips show Platkin stalking subjects before introducing himself to them. In one, he follows a subject through a burger drive-through and orders the same fatty meal as his subject. Another time, he confronts the woman he will counsel coming out of a Starbucks and throws away her whipped-cream-topped treat.

Platkin stressed participants in the show applied to be featured in the series so the “ambush” comes as no surprise, which was affirmed by participants on the panel, one of whom, Micah, has already lost more than 70 pounds from his top weight of 400.

Martin also told scribes if they were tempted by treats at subsequent panels, writers could send an e-mail to calories@dietdetective.com to find out the calorie count in their sweets, and how many miles they’d have to go to walk it off.

Uh-oh, buzzkill!

Support for the series, debuting April 25 at 10 p.m., includes exclusive content at WeTV.com.

Sir Howard Plays Tom Hanks’s Foil

Las Vegas — Tom Hanks gave his sometime-employer Sony a not-so-gentle ribbing in his appearance during chairman and CEO Howard Stringer’s International CES keynote address last Thursday.

Hanks — star of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Angels & Demons, the Da Vinci Code sequel set for May release — delivered a warmup routine during which he mocked the script he’d been asked to deliver.

He began by jokingly expressing regret that he had picked VHS instead of Sony’s Betamax years ago: “What a different world this would be if I had chosen differently!”

Things went downhill from there.

Before delivering the canned intro, Hanks said: “I will now read the lines some low-level marketing executive at Sony has written for me.”

Hanks was supposed to marvel that Sony’s ubiquitous brand is everywhere he turns, whether on TVs, cameras or “when I boot up my computer.” That last one particularly gave Hanks pause. “I should have read this before I came out,” he deadpanned, adding at another point, “They write the lies, I tell the truth.”

Hanks later griped to Stringer about requiring such event appearances in his contracts. “Will you release the hold on my check for the movie now, Howard?” he said, feigning (we think) indignation.

After Hanks exited stage left, Stringer grimaced a bit and told the audience: “On the whole, a plus, I think.”

Critics Tour Scenes: Bugs, Bollywood

Los Angeles — Isabella Rossellini is host of the lasciviously titled Green Porno, which will launch its second season this year on Sundance Channel. The series is about the sex lives of creatures.

Given the titillating title, a cheeky writer urged her to “give us something scandalous.” On her second try she came up with this nugget: earthworms are hermaphroditic, and breed in the 69 position. Too much insect information.

• A what-if question was posed of the band members of IFC’s Z Rock: Who’d win in a battle between the quartet and, say, the Jonas Brothers? The rockers didn’t quite answer the question, but show guest star John Popper suggested his band, Blues Traveler, would step up for a throw-down.
  
  Noting Popper has a bum leg, the Z Rockers said they’d jump at the chance. “I’d kick that cane out — Boom! You’re down,” one member said triumphantly. Popper may be sorry he gave them any ideas.
  

• One way to rouse writers from their post-lunch stupor: bring in an Indian drummer and dancers undulating to what sounded to these untrained ears as Far Eastern hip-hop. That was the lead in for Chris Kattan, star of the upcoming Bollywood Hero, also on IFC.

• Writers remarked on the lack of notice for Breaking Bad during 2008 by factions usually quick to castigate a show that depicts methamphetamine production and other anti-social behavior. “I didn’t set out to blow up a shit storm” with the show, creator Vince Gilligan said, suggesting he ducked the naysayers because the first season of the show was shortened by the strike by the Writers Guild of America.

• Officials at National Geographic Channel have scheduled a two-hour special on Mother’s Day featuring remarkable, in-womb depictions of gestating animals. The clip shown included the factoid that sharks, in utero, devour their weaker siblings for sustenance. “What can be more perfect on Mother’s Day?” general manager Steve Schiffman quipped.