The Michigan Daily - Wucc ,te e*. - Thursday, December 7, 1995 - 10B
New show'Nowhere Man' going somewhere fast
The Washington Post
Where is "Nowhere Man"? Ah, a
question with many answers. One re-
cent day, Bruce Greenwood, who plays
the show's nowhere guy, Tom Veil,
was filming the UPN dramatic series
60 miles outside Portland, Ore., work-
ing 18 hours in a Pacific Northwest
rainstorm.
The show itself these days is found
only intermittently in TV listings, giv-
ing way to December holiday fare or
reruns. Searching for the series in the
Nielsen ratings? Check toward the bot-
tom.
But if you're looking for a worthy
series to feed your "X-Files" tastes
and make you reminisce about "The
Prisoner" and "The Fugitive," then
the channel carrying UPN shows
should be your next stop. For those
unfamiliar with the series - and the
ratings would suggest such folks are
legion - a word about the show.
In the first episode of "Nowhere,"
viewers were introduced to documen-
tary photographer Thomas Veil, en-
joying a moment in the spotlight at the
opening of an exhibit of his work. It
included a disturbing photograph of an
execution in a Third World country,
apparently overseen by military men.
Later in the evening, dining with wife
Megan Gallagher at a favorite haunt, he
steps into the men's room and returns to
find her gone. And no one in the place
has ever seen him before.
From then on, every shred of identity
has been stripped from Veil. The ATM
machine sucks up his bank card; friends
treat him as a stranger. Meanwhile, the
photograph has been stolen, and Veil
flees from this suddenly alien world,
the photo's negatives in his clutches.
The travails of Veil have gone rela-
tively unnoticed by males who view
Monday as a football night. The show's
producers hope to give the series ajump
start with that crowd in January.
The pilot episode, one of the
season's best, will be rebroadcast Jan.
8. "January's episodes are contingent
on having seen the pilot," said Joel
Surnow, the series' supervising pro-
ducer.
The program has some of the same
appeal of Fox's "X-Files," revolving
around a lingering mystery, with the
program's principals put in jeopardy
as they search for answers.
"We have to deliver a certain number
of clues each week," said Surnow, "but
at the same time continue to dangle a
carrot."
But there is a prime difference.
"We're trying to stay away from the
paranormal," said Greenwood, "and
let what's disturbing and disquieting
be completely believable. The idea is
that the organization or government
out there is so powerful they could
undo someone's life in a convoluted
way. We don't need space ships com-
ing to be frightening."
A number of viewers have found the
show so unsettling that they've written
Greenwood to share their own scary ex-
periences, or maybe just their paranoia.
"As I read stories people send in, if
what they say has happened is true, it's
horrifying," he said. Too strange even
to repeat. The mail, Greenwood said,
brings everything from "offbeat pro-
posals to offers of chances to repent, to
letters that begin, 'You think your show
is crazy, listen to this."'
Greenwood and wife Susan, both na-
tives of Vancouver, British Columbia,
have little trouble coping with rainy
Portland, Ore., but Greenwood's hours
leave little spare time. "There's not
much time left to phone your mom," he
said.
He did find time before the season to
film "Danielle Steel's Mixed Bless-
ings." The Monday night NBC movie
deals with three couples facing first-
time parenthood, although his wife,
played by Gabrielle Carteris, is having
difficulty conceiving. Director Bethany
Rooney is a friend, he said. And be-
sides, he's seen this fear close-up.
"It happened to a friend, where the
pursuit of a child destroyed a mar-
riage," said Greenwood. "It put a huge
breach in the relationship and de-
stroyed the marriage."
Ah. Something to fear indeed.
Bruce Greenwood may be a "Nowhere Man," but he sure is purdy.
,,
Slips of the tongue provoke public outrage
Stern just the latest transgressor in an long and not-so-illustrious media tradition
Los Angeles Times
Some people should get better grips
on their lips.
For example, that stickler for pro-
priety Ann Landers has to apologize
for calling Pope John Paul II a
"Polack."And CBS golf commenta-
tor Ben Wright, a civil-sounding
Britisher who speaks like he was born
in a bowler, is reproached for alleg-
edly saying that lesbian golfers harm
the sport and that "boobs" hamper the
female golf swing.
The big mystery is what hampers
the brains of boobs who utter slurs.
You'd want to include in that crowd
Howard Stern, the present toast of
Los Angeles literati. The book-pro-
moting Stern spent some of last week
in Los Angeles wooing TV reporters
and other amnesiacs who appeared to
have forgotten that only last April he
was saying on his national radio show
that fans of slain Latina singer Selena
"live in refrigerator boxes ... like to
make love to a goat and ... like to
dance with velvet paintings and eat
beans." For good measure, on the day
of her funeral he played her music
with the sound of gunfire in the back-
ground. It was Stern being Stern, but
when protests from Latinos were too
plentiful to ignore, he apologized -
in Spanish.
Stern is hardly unique in getting
heat for making clumsy remarks that
many interpret as racist. Sportscaster
Howard Cosell once caught it big time
for saying on ABC that a black run-
ning back scampered like "a little
monkey." In 1981, "60 Minutes" star
Mike Wallace was in San Diego pre-
paring for a segment on the plight of
mostly poor Californians, including a
black and a Latino, when he was cap-
tured on tape saying about the com-
plexity of reading some sales con-
tracts: "You bet your ass they are hard
to read ... if you're reading them over
the watermelon or over the tacos."
Wallace later said he was joking.
Meanwhile, it was his comments
about blacks on "Nightline" that cost
Al Campanis his job as the Los Ange-
les Dodgers' general manager.
Bumbling Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder
was fired by CBS Sports for what he
said about blacks in an interview. And
in 1990, CBS briefly suspended "60
Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney
for dicey statements attributed to him
in a magazine interview about blacks
(he denied saying those) and gays (he
didn't deny saying those).
It's difficult knowing just when the
tongue and brain are - or are not -
in sync, for you can't see what's in a
person's heart.
It's also noteworthy that, twisted
by our own biases, we often read what
we want to read and hear what we
want to hear, regardless of the reality.
The following anecdote applies:
Not long ago, ABC's "Nightline"
came to Los Angeles for a couple of
"Viewpoint" town-meeting telecasts
on the just-ended O.J. Simpson trial
and its media coverage. As one of
many locals on the program, I faulted
some of the city's TV stations for
preempting regular programs for live
coverage of a Simpson juror's news
conference while not airing live the
same day's arrival of the pope in the
United States.
Although the pope lacked the fol-
lowing of Geraldo Riveral added,
sarcastically (and, of course, inaccu-
rately), "He's not exactly chopped
liver."
The next few days brought a batch
of calls and letters lambasting me for
supposedly ridiculing the pope when,
in fact, my point was that he, not a
Simpson juror, was the one deserving
of live coverage, and that he'd been
victimized by TV news priorities.
Could viewers possibly have be-
lieved, moreover, that by saying the
pope wasn't chopped liver, I was ac-
tually comparing him unfavorably
with a traditional Jewish dish? Yes,
they could. Yes, they did.
APF ILE PHOTO
Howard Stem, now out promoting his latest book, appeared in drag at a recent
media affair.
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