The Official Clancy Brown Fan Club Screens:
"BREAKING NEWS"
and
"The Making of Daniel Boone"
Clancy Brown (back), with CBFC members:
Anne, Susan, Alice, Beth, Vikki, and Kathy
Great News!
"Breaking News" to air on The Bravo Channel
(*see details below)
Over the weekend of October 5-7, 2001, friends, fans, and family joined actor Clancy Brown in Sharonville, Ohio, for a special screening of his unaired television series "Breaking News."
The screening was free of charge, and was attended by approximately 30 people, over the course of three days.
Clancy and writer/director Randy Wilkins also offered the attendees the wonderful surprise of premiering their mock-umentary film, "The Making of Daniel Boone" on Sunday afternoon.
Both the "Breaking News" episodes and the movie, "The Making of Daniel Boone" met with a very enthusiastic reception, with the audience unanimous in its agreement on the high quality of the writing, directing, and acting involved with the projects!
Over $325 in donations was collected to buy needed supplies for the WTC recovery effort in New York City, as well.
The members of the CBFC would like to thank Clancy Brown for his generosity in offering the wonderful opportunity of this special screening, and for his continued kindness, support, and good humor. We would also like to thank Randy Wilkins for allowing us to be the first audience to see his hysterical new movie. Watch for it at a film festival near you! And special thanks to Clancy's parents, Bud & Joyce Brown, and his brother, Roy, for their amazing hospitality and help!
The cast of "Breaking News": Clancy Brown, Rowena King, Paul Adelstein, Tim Matheson, Myndy Crist (standing front), Gabrielle Miller (standing back center), Lisa Ann Walter, Scott Bairstow (seated front), Jeffrey D. Sams, Vincent Gale
BREAKING NEWS MAIN CAST
PETER KOZYCK --- Clancy Brown
BILL DUNNE --- Tim Matheson
RACHEL GLASS --- Lisa Ann Walter
JAMIE TEMPLETON -- Rowena King
JULIAN KERBIS --- Paul Adelstein
ETHAN BARNES -- Scott Bairstow
MEL THOMAS --- Jeffrey Sams
JANET LECLAIRE --- Myndy Crist
QUENTIN DRUZINSKI --- Vincent Gale
LAUREN SABUSAWA -- Lisa Butler
JACK BARNES -- James Handy
LLOYD FUCHS -- John Ritter
Episode 1: Pilot
Episode 2: "High Noonan"
Episode 3: "Rachel Glass & the Bad Day
Episode 4: "Spin Art"
Episode 5: "Wall to Wall Plane Crash"
Episode 6: "Victims"
Episode 7: "Dunne's Choice"
Episode 8: "Broadcast From Hell"
Episode 9: "The Story Vanishes"
Epsidoe 10: "My Suspect Vinnie"
Episode 11: "Bad Water"
Episode 12: "I-24 Gate"
Episode 13: "Karma"
*"BREAKING NEWS"
to air on BRAVO!
Beginning July 17th, 2002
Clancy Brown (as Peter Kozyck) and Tim Matheson (as Bill Dunne) in a scene from "Breaking News" (right)
Breaking News: Bravo Gets It
Linda Moss
Multichannel News
4/29/02 4:08:00 PM
TV INSITE
Bravo has acquired Breaking News, a dramatic series about a television news network that was originally created for Turner Network Television.
Bravo will debut the show -- which stars Tim Matheson and which was produced by New Line Television and Trilogy Entertainment Group -- in July. The network will kick it off by running two one-hour episodes back-to-back July 17.
'Smart, inquisitive audiences who are naturally drawn to the day’s events will also be drawn to this captivating drama,' Bravo senior vice president of programming Frances Berwick said in a prepared statement. 'It’s compelling, dramatic television at its realistic best, and we’re pleased that viewers will see it first on Bravo.'
New Line created Breaking News for TNT, its sister company at AOL Time Warner Inc. But when Jamie Kellner moved over to Turner Broadcasting System Inc. as president, making Garth Ancier executive VP of programming, the decision was made not to put Breaking News on the air.
Another original dramatic series -- this one about Wall Street hot shots -- that TNT did air for one season, Bull, was then canceled last year.
Ancier reportedly felt that both Breaking News and Bull were flawed in that their protagonists -- the press and investment bankers, respectively -- were figures that the general public wouldn’t sympathize with.
And some claimed that Breaking News -- about fictional cable news network 'I-24' -- was making people at Turner uneasy because of possible comparisons to Cable News Network.
Actor Ken Olin is executive producer, and sometimes director, of Breaking News. In a prepared statement, he said, 'Viewers will be surprised at how topical the story lines are -- almost prescient of today’s news events.'
Also Monday, Bravo said it will air all 12 episodes -- seven of which have never been seen -- of Dick Wolf series Deadline, which originally aired on NBC.
In that series, Oliver Platt stars as a columnist who works for a New York newspaper.
Deadline will air Wednesdays at 9 p.m., immediately after Breaking News, starting July 24.
Thursday, May 2, 2002
By JOHN LEVESQUE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER TELEVISION CRITIC
Bravo, the cable channel that isn't afraid of intelligent programming, has picked up a series called "Breaking News."
You probably never heard of "Breaking News" unless you were visiting this space last summer when I was deploring the fact that TNT, the cable channel whose ironic slogan is "We Know Drama," paid about 20 million bucks for 13 episodes of "Breaking News" and then decided not to air it.
Here's what I wrote at the time in a jab at network execs who were too in love with "reality" programming to notice quality drama when it passed under their noses:
"This doesn't mean it's not good, or that it wouldn't attract an audience of appreciative fans. It's exceptionally well-crafted, with performances that are still rattling around in my memory more than two weeks after I managed to cadge a tape containing three episodes. It's just that 'Breaking News' probably would not become a phenomenon -- can you say 'Sopranos'? -- so TNT ... has put it on the shelf and locked the cupboard door. (TNT did the same thing with 'Bull,' a Wall Street drama that got good reviews but was benched after half a season.)
"The problem is that there isn't a clear-cut hero in 'Breaking News.' It's about journalists who work at a CNN-style cable-news channel called I-24. Sometimes they do incredibly heroic things, sometimes they do the sorts of things that cause us to loathe TV news. The irony is that the series is compelling, authentic and beautifully written. The characters are flawed, the dialogue is wholly believable and the women don't dress like hookers. In short: a fat slice of reality, packaged as fiction."
It's been almost 10 months since I saw those episodes, so the images are a little fuzzy. I do remember an appealing ensemble -- including Tim Matheson, Lisa Ann Walter, Jeffrey Sams, Clancy Brown, Patricia Wettig, Scott Bairstow -- and honest scripts willing to take viewers beyond the white hat/black hat dramatic construct.
Gardner Stern, one of the show's creators, reconfirmed this in a brief chat Tuesday.
"Is there a character who's always right?" he said. "No. Which is why, ironically enough, Bravo is a better fit for this show than TNT. A lot of TNT's programming falls into a simpler sort of structure. There are good guys and bad guys, and the good guys always win. This is a little more thought-provoking."
Bravo will show "Breaking News" on Wednesdays at 8 p.m., beginning July 17. That's great news, but would it consider putting the series back into production?
"From what I've heard, Bravo is open to the idea," Stern said. "I would be thrilled. I've spoken to a few cast members and they've expressed interest in re-upping if that were to occur. ... Who knows? Wackier things have happened."
Stern heard right. Frances Berwick, senior vice president of programming and production at Bravo, says Bravo will consider producing new episodes "if the series is a big hit."
No indication what "big hit" means, but Berwick is clearly hoping to draw viewers who are engaged and informed.
"Smart, inquisitive audiences who are naturally drawn to the day's events will also be drawn to this captivating drama," Berwick said. "It's compelling, dramatic television at its realistic best, and we're pleased that viewers will see it first on Bravo."
Stern admits the events of Sept. 11 may have helped "Breaking News" get a second look.
"In the last six months the topicality of the news business is more pervasive than ever," he said. "There is an increased interest in the news media and not just because of momentous events that have taken place. ... There's interest in people who report the news, not just the news itself."
Truth is, the timeliness is eerie. Stern says one episode features a character whose appearance was patterned after Osama bin Laden. This, on a series that began production in October 2000 and wrapped a year ago this month.
While it's easy to dismiss TV newspeople as narcissistic knuckleheads when they say or do something stupid on the air, "Breaking News" offers ample evidence that they're not all so one-dimensional.
"Our characters are after telling the truth," Stern said, "but they're in a profession that demands an incredible amount of their time and their personal lives, and they're trying to keep up with that treadmill as it goes faster and faster."
You'd think the ethical wrestling match that arises when journalism collides with urgency would make for poignant programming. Obviously, TNT thought otherwise.
But New Line Television, a division of New Line Cinema, kept looking for a home and, to the delight of this viewer who's tired of the narcissistic knuckleheads looking to become famous on "reality" shows, it found one.
Bravo for Bravo.
Photos from the
"Breaking News"
Screening
Clancy's brother Roy,
Clancy, and their dad,
Clarence J. "Bud" Brown
We will add more photos, articles and comments to this website as they become available!
A Report From a "Breaking News" Screening Attendee
by Beth Blighton
This past weekend was the CBFC's special screening of all thirteen episodes of the unaired TNT series, "Breaking News."
Where to start...?
Susan from the UK flew in on Thursday afternoon and we drove from Michigan to Cincinnati together -- an adventure that entailed us getting lost at least eight times along the way and depending on the kindness of numerous strangers. (In the end, I think we only found Cincinnati because Clancy's mom is a lot more accurate and dependable than all the computer directions and maps we had in our possession!) Eventually, we made it to the Radisson Cincinnati-Sharonville, where we met up with our fellow travelers Anne, Alice & Thom, Kathy, and later, Vikki and Judy. We all went out to dinner, then settled into our HUGE section of the Radisson's main ballroom to watch the first two episodes of "Breaking News": the Pilot and "High Noonan."
Everyone was flabbergasted by how good the series was, right from the start! The pilot, of course, was used to introduce the large cast of characters. It also featured a good storyline about the Vice President being caught in an avalanche, and the debate about what I24 (the fictional 24 hour news network of the series), should do when some salacious gossip about the possibly dead VP unexpectedly falls into their laps.
With all the drama and action involved with the series, we were all surprised to find some really great comic relief provided by John Ritter's single episode appearance as the station's resident consumer affairs wacko, as well as a lot of witty repartee and tight writing between the main characters. Clancy's operating manager, Peter Kozyck, and Lisa Anne Walter's executive producer, Rachel Glass, had some terrific snappy exchanges and one-liners. All the characters seemed immediately well-drawn and left the audience really wanting to see what happened to them next.
On Saturday, we moved the screening to the more cozy Terrace Room. There we watched several more episodes, including, "Rachel Glass & the Bad Day," "Spin Art," "Wall to Wall Plane Crash," "Victims," "Dunne's Choice," "Broadcast from Hell," "The Story Vanishes," and "My Suspect
Vinnie" -- with breaks in between for lunch and dinner.
We were joined in the afternoon by Clancy's mom and dad, Joyce & Bud Brown. CB's folks could not have been kinder or more gracious to all of us. It was a total pleasure to have them with us, watching the series. They had only gotten the opportunity to watch a handful of episodes before the screening, so they were having as much fun (maybe even more), than we were, discovering the stories for the first time.
Some of the topics of Saturday's episodes included the sinking of a submarine (a la The Kursk), a high profile rape accusation, the discovery of a hidden DUI charge against a well-thought-of judge about to be named to the Supreme Court, a Jon Bonet Ramsey-style kidnap & murder, a Richard
Jewel-esque false accusation, and a terrible plane crash along the lines of the Value Jet accident. The real grabber, though, was an episode that included an almost spooky taste of things to come -- one that they could not have possibly forseen when they were shooting the episode -- that found anchor Bill Dunne (Tim Matheson), on a quest to interview an Osama bin Laden-type character who is bent on starting a holy war with the West.
We all agreed, Clancy's folks included, that the subjects of the episodes could not have been more timely! Even though the pilot of "Breaking News" was shot in April of 2000, and the rest between Oct. 2000 and March of 2001, the storylines were still absolutely fresh and topical, almost uncannily so! As Clancy put it in an interview, maybe writer/producer Gardner Stern had a little more Nostradamus than Shakespeare in him. There were a couple episodes that, when they ended, we all just sort of sat back off the edges of our seats, looked at each other, and said, "Wow..."
We knew after that day that "Breaking News" was a series that definitely had the power to make viewers laugh, cry, hold their interest, out-guess them at every turn, and hand them an extra kick-in-the-seat surprise when they least expected it. In other words, we were all really pissed by the time we were through watching the first handful of shows. There are just no words to describe what a terrible waste it is for TNT to not air this series!
On Sunday, we were joined by Clancy's father and his brother, Roy, as well as the parents, brother, and grandmother of Randy Wilkins (who is the writer/director of the independant film "The Making of Daniel Boone," which stars and was executive-produced by Clancy.) Of the approximately
thirty people attending that afternoon, we also had several reporters, a few Brown Publishing Co. folks, and a group of area fans who had read about the screening in their local newspapers.
Clancy Brown and Randy Wilkins arrived around 2:30 in the afternoon, and they had a special surprise up their sleeves!
Having watched the last of the "Breaking News" episodes, "Bad Water," "1-24 Gate," and "Karma," Clancy and Randy brought out the rough cut of their hysterical mock-umentary film, "The Making of Daniel Boone," and allowed us to be the first audience to see it!
The movie was a great treat and we all laughed our heads off at this tale of the "Hollywood-ization" of a serious author's book. Clancy plays Alan Kenton, an expert on Daniel Boone, who signs on as an historical consultant when his authoritative tome on Boone is turned into a big
budget Hollywood movie. He soon finds himself surrounded by a germ-phobic producer, a mad, self-indulgent director, and a much abused screenwriter (Earth 2's John Gegenhuber Wollner), who can't quite keep his historical periods or people straight. There's also a cell phone addicted actor, an exasperated art director, and various angry or toadying sycophants, whose place in the production team seems to change at every turn.
The movie is a great, biting satire along the same lines as "This is Spinal Tap" and "Waiting for Guffman." Clancy plays the type of character that we've never seen him portray before -- a bearded scholar, trying to keep his humor and his hopes up in the face of what he knows is fast becoming an embarrassing, career-ending fiasco.
"The Making of Daniel Boone" is supposed to play at the Sundance Film Festival, where Randy & Clancy hope it will find a distributor. So keep an eye out for it at a film festival near you!
After the last episodes of "Breaking News" and "The Making of Daniel Boone" were shown, Clancy very graciously answered questions, talked about both projects with reporters, signed autographs, and posed for photos with many of the screening attendees. There was a wonderful
family atmosphere surrounding the gathering, with so many friends, fans, and co-workers on the scene together. We were able to snap a few pictures of Clancy, Roy, and his dad together -- quite possibly the tallest collection of men this side of the New York Knicks! Clancy's father also kindly posed for pictures with the fans, and we all had a truly fun, friendly time.
The screening itself was free of charge, but over $325 was donated by the attendees to purchase much needed supplies for the WTC recovery effort.
We would like to thank everyone who attended the screening and all those who donated money to theWTC fund. We'd also like to thank Randy Wilkins for joining us and so generously offering to show us his new movie. Thanks also to the Ohio newspaper reporters who wrote articles
about the screening and let people all around the state know when & where it was being held. Special thanks to Clancy's parents and brother for all their help and their gracious hospitality. There is no way to describe how truly lovely, kind, and caring the entire Brown family really is. And most especially, thanks again and again to Clancy Brown for going out of his way to share his time, his talents, and himself with the fans. The screening was an amazing opportunity that none of us will ever forget!
Over $375 was donated by screening attendees to put together a package of needed supplies, to be sent to the WTC recovery site in New York City.
The CBFC would like to thank
all those who donated
to this effort.
What your donation bought...
1 night time safety vest
5 heavy duty flashlights w/ batteries
2 four packs of D batteries
2 packages of muscle rub
4 packages of menthol vapo-rub
4 packages of eye drops
2 pairs of steel-toed work boots
2 pairs of flexible kneepads
2 fabric-lined complete rain suits
1 professional grade respirator
2 sets of respirator filter cartridges
3 pairs of leather work gloves
Our donation has now been delivered directly to the NYC Ironworkers Union,
and will be disbursed by them to those working at Ground Zero. (See letter below.)
We wish to thank those workers who walk through the gates of hell there, every single day, and who battle to bring the fallen home...
To the Members of the Official Clancy Brown Fan Club:
On behalf of the Officers and Members of Local 580 I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their generosity shown to the Ironworkers at the World Trade Center disaster site.
You can be assured that all of the equipment will be put to good use. We appreciate all the support and good wishes, and we wish everyone the best for the holiday season in these most difficult times.
Sincerely,
Dennis A. Lusardi
Business Manager - FST
Local Union No. 580
The International Association
of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers
New York City Headquarters
The CBFC Screening makes the papers!
Articles about the "Breaking News" screening made the pages of several Ohio newspapers (see below.)
From The Cleveland Plain Dealer
A must-see show lost in a merger
by Tom Feran
10/05/01
A couple of companies merge, or one buys another. They talk about "synergy," which is supposed to mean that one plus one equals three. To send a message to Wall Street and boost the stock price, they take the fast route to improving the bottom line by cutting costs, trimming operations and jobs.
If the companies are media companies, the casualties typically include news bureaus and correspondents.Another odd casualty, when AOL completed its acquisition of Time Warner this year, was a television show that might have become one of the year's best - further demonstrating what the concentration of ownership in fewer hands can do to promises of choice we heard so much about.
Instead of a big network premiere, the show will debut this weekend in a hotel room in Ohio.
"I'm not trying to embarrass AOL Time Warner, I don't think that's possible," said Clancy Brown, the actor from Urbana, in west-central Ohio, who stars in the show and arranged the debut. "I'm not trying to make money off it.
"I've got friends and fans in Ohio who care about what I've been doing for the past year and wonder what happened to this thing I was so proud of. So I'm going to show them. My mom and dad were able to see it, and my brother. But there are others who care, and I'm so fortunate to be able to say that."
Brown might be known best from the movies "Highlander" and "The Shawshank Redemption" and for the NBC series "Earth 2." A Northwestern University graduate with a passion for Shakespeare, he's the son and grandson of former Ohio congressmen, is married to a news producer and sits on the board of the chain of small-town newspapers run by his brother.
His show is, or was, called "Breaking News," and it's a fast-moving drama about a 24-hour TV news operation, with a cast featuring Tim Matheson, Lisa Ann Walter, Patricia Wettig and Jeffrey D. Sams. TNT cable commissioned it as a weekly series. Thirteen episodes were produced for about $20 million.
"It's not the first time something of quality hasn't made the cut," Brown said. "But it was the first time one went into production, completed the order, and the entire investment was completely written off.
"I wouldn't mind if the show wasn't very good, but it had no weak links. And given all that's happened, a lot of the shows seem really prescient now."
One episode, for example, was built around Matheson's character scoring an interview with an "Osama bin Laden type" spewing rhetoric of holy war.
"We knew it was an amazing script when we first read it," Brown said. "But it made everybody at the executive level nervous. Network executives said it was unbelievable, not realistic."
The events of Sept. 11 didn't give TNT cold feet. "Breaking News" was dumped last summer. Brown traces the cancellation to the management shuffle as AOL and Time Warner completed their merger.
"Suddenly, the weekend AOL came in, the company line was there was not enough revenue to justify production," he said. "They said we need cuts across the board, to get lean and mean. It was a way to boost the stock price."
Sight unseen, the show became a write-off for accountants. The cancellation was buried in an announcement that TNT was buying 60 reruns of "Charmed" from one of its sister networks, the WB.
"It has nothing to do with quality of content, awards or even ratings. It's about Wall Street and the stock price," Brown said. "It puts the lie to all of the nice talk in corporations and networks."
"Breaking News" doesn't have enough episodes for another network to buy it. Showing it or selling it would diminish its write-off value. And networks like the shows they've killed to stay dead.
So Brown rented a room at the Sharonville Radisson, outside Cincinnati. Friends will screen five episodes of "Breaking News" tonight, and all 13 tomorrow and Sunday, when he expects to drop by.
"I don't expect thousands of people to show up - maybe 20," he said. "They'll sit down and watch and say it was worth doing."
From the Akron Beacon Journal
Breaking News': You must drive long way to see it
Actor's fan club screening show after it is yanked from telecast
By R.D. Heldenfels
You've got a chance to see a very good TV series this weekend -- if you're willing to drive a few hours.
Breaking News, originally planned for TNT, would probably be on a lot of best-new-show lists if the series had ever gotten on the air.
But someone at TNT or its corporate parent, AOL Time Warner, decided that the best use for a drama about a 24-hour TV news operation was to leave it on the shelf.
That has baffled the series' stars, among them Urbana native Clancy Brown.
``I would like to create a groundswell that would force them to put the show on somewhere,'' Brown said in a recent telephone interview. ``I think if it was on TV, it would be a huge hit.''
So Brown, whose credits range from The Shawshank Redemption to the voice of Mr. Krabs on SpongeBob SquarePants, is using a gathering of his 125-member fan club as a way of screening the show for people and building more enthusiasm.
At the Radisson Hotel Cincinnati-Sharonville, 11320 Chester Road, all 13 existing episodes of Breaking News will be shown from tomorrow through Sunday.
Showings will run from about 7 to 9 p.m. tomorrow and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday. (The Saturday showings will include meal breaks.)
The Sunday shows will start at 10 a.m. and be done by 8 p.m., said Beth Blighton, the Benton Harbor, Mich., resident who founded Brown's fan club. Brown himself is not expected at the shows before Sunday, and even that's not definite yet.
While other events sponsored by the 3-year-old club have doubled as fund-raisers for charities Brown supports, there will be no admission charge for the Breaking News telecasts.
This is not about collecting money, Brown said Tuesday morning while making breakfast in his California home. It's about getting a show seen that AOL Time Warner is determined to bury.
There's been a lot of speculation about why Breaking News hasn't aired, ranging from AOL Time Warner's executives' dislike of the series to the possibility that it might reflect harshly on CNN, another part of the AOL Time Warner empire.
Brown remains convinced that it was simply a financial decision in the wake of the merger of America Online and Time Warner in January.
He said the show ``was brilliant.'' Episodes about a reality-show scandal, terrorism and a startling airplane crash anticipated coming events.
``Maybe (producer) Gardner (Stern) has got more Nostradamus than Shakespeare in him,'' Brown said.
But the AOL-Time Warner deal went through in a slumping economy. The declining value of the companies' stock alone reportedly reduced the deal's value from $165 billion a year earlier to $106 billion when it finally happened. And almost immediately, the newly merged company began cutting jobs and other costs.
``We were all very confident (about the show) until AOL . . . needed a tax write-off to support its stock prices for a year,'' Brown said.
From The Springfield News-Sun
From The Urbana Daily Citizen
More about "The Making of Daniel Boone"
From The Urbana Daily Citizen
The Official Clancy Brown Fan Club
please visit: www.clancy-brown.com
Breaking News/I24 fansite
please visit:
http://www.clancy-brown.com/breakingnews/index.html
