Steven Van Zandt Brings His New Project to SAG Conversations For Viewing and Q&A

I raced to SAG headquarters where they were having a screening of Steve Van Zandt's new series "Lilyhammer" on Netflix and a Q&A with the man himself. Lilyhammer was well-written and quite funny but I won't be recommending it to anyone because of the totally unnecessary scene where he kills a wolf. The wolf was only being a wolf and trying to survive. And we don't need any more people giving justification to the rich to have their sport of gunning down wolves from helicopters like the cowardly pseudo hunters they are.

But the talk with Stevie was fascinating. What an extraordinary life he's had. We all know about E Street Band and Sopranos but he is so much more than that. He took an 18 year hiatus from the E Street Band because he got heavily involved in political actions and didn't want to involve others in potentially career-ruining activities.

His political activities started on a rock-n-roll gig in Germany when a young boy came up and asked him why he was putting missiles in his country. Though he told the boy he was only a musician and wasn't responsible, the conversation stuck with him and he realized that he was also an American and responsible for what his country did. That led to him reading up on what our country was doing around the world and to his political activism for Native Americans and South Africa.

Having considered rock-n-roll dead when he left Bruce Springstein and the band, he then discovered garage rock and realized that they were getting no exposure on air. So he bought a bunch of stations and became a DJ to help get these garage bands exposure. He also bought a country station because the young country artists weren't getting heard either.

Sopranos came about in a weird way. He pushed to get the band 'The Young Rascals' into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame. He ended up doing the induction speech and it was the first year they televised the event so he did a 5-minute schtick on New Jersey.

Apparently David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, was channel surfing, landed on it and watched it, loving all things New Jersey and the E Street Band and the Young Rascals. After that Chase approached him to not only be in The Sopranos but to play Tony Soprano. He came out to LA to do the audition but as far as Chase was concerned, Stevie had the role.

HBO didn't see it that way. They were investing 30 million dollars to get into the series business and they didn't want to chance it on a non-actor. He was fine with that because he never sought to be an actor -- his wife was the actor in the family.

Feeling bad, Chase offered him any other role in the series, but Stevie, having now done the table read with high caliber actors and having thought about it, didn't want to take a role from a real actor. So Chase offered to write him a new role so he didn't have to take one away from an actor. The character Silvio was based on a character that Stevie had written in a script, changed by Chase of course to fit Chase's needs.

So he was doing Sopranos and DJ'ing at the same time, since he could do that from his hotel room wherever, and then Bruce called, wanting to get the Band back together.

Chase said they'd work the character's shooting around the touring needs. And so he wound up doing Sopranos, DJ'ing and E Street all at the same time. The only thing he regrets about that is that Silvio got shortchanged in terms of the storylines. Since they couldn't count on him being back in time when they needed him, Silvio tended to be thrust to the side a lot, so it wouldn't ruin anything if Stevie didn't get back in time.

It was an awesome discussion with him.

SAG Awards Viewing Party

Today, I went to my first SAG Awards viewing party at SAG headquarters as a SAG member. This was very exciting for me.

It was also the first year I was eligible to vote in the SAG Awards as I joined too late last year.

Unfortunately, only a couple of my choices won this year. But it was quite something to view the Awards show on the big screen with a room full of actors, cheering for their favorites.

They also supplied us with a nice lunch... turkey wraps and fruit salad. Popcorn and strawberry twists. Diet cokes, cokes, water and coffee.

They also had raffle tickets for SAG swag, but as is usual, I didn't win anything.

SAG President Ken Howard twice gave us a video message about how SAG and AFTRA boards had voted merger. Something everybody in the room knew. It seemed a heavy handed way to push it down our throats since everybody reads the trades in some form and this was supposed to be a viewing party. There were many boos at his speeches.

On our way out, we were given little duck plushes which if you squeezed, said "Aflack."

Then on the sidewalk, there were guys handing out flyers against the merger. This will be interesting as in all the coverage and Ken Howard's speeches, there is nothing about what we'll have to give up in this merger.

Video Clips from Merlin's Third Episode of Season 3

According to the press release for Friday January 20, 2012's episode of Merlin on Syfy, destiny calls for Merlin and Arthur. This third episode of the fourth season is called "The Wicked Day" and it is indeed for Merlin, Arthur and all of Camelot.

The first video supplied as a teaser by FremantleMedia is called "The Mind of a Child".

The second video is called "Knives":




Remember, these clips are copyrighted to FremantleMedia and are used here with permission.

Video Clips from Merlin's Second Episode of Season 4.

According to the publicists for Merlin, last Friday's fourth-season premiere attracted the biggest-ever first-episode audience in its Syfy history, with viewership 29% higher for Season 4 than Season 3. The new season continues this Friday, Jan. 13, at 10 p.m. ET/PT with "The Darkest Hour, Part 2," the epic conclusion to the two-part season-opener.

However, since Suite101.com isn't set up to post video clips, I wanted to give my readers a chance to see them so I'm posting them here.

Once again, these are the property of FremantleMedia and are used here with permission. Please do not copy elsewhere.

This clip is called Balance of the World:




This clip is called Dragon:




The third clip is called: Morgana and Agravaine:



Thanks to John Singh and Gary Miereanu for Fremantlemedia.