Beck/Smith Hollywood

Hector Elizondo, Tim Allen ABC photo by Peter "Hopper" Stone

Will Tim Allen’s long-awaited return to series TV, “Last Man Standing,” still be standing by the end of the season? The show launches tomorrow night (10/11) amid a hail of critical arrows. But it’s getting better and better — to hear Hector Elizondo tell it.

“Like all these shows, it’s a creature that’s creating its own path while walking. We’re figuring things out,” says the debonair actor, who plays Tim’s boss and pal on the new show, in which Nancy Travis plays Tim’s wife and the mother of his three daughters. “We have all the right pieces. It always takes a season with these. If the network gives us a chance, this will be a very successful show.”

Elizondo tells us that Allen’s involvement was the primary inducement for his joining “Last Man Standing.” “I always admired his acting. Not a lot of people think about that. The movies he’s done — I see the chops there, not too hidden under the surface, either. They’re taking advantage of that more and more,” he says of the show’s writers. It’s leading to “more and more real comedy.”

The one-time “Chicago Hope” lead admits he “didn’t want to get back up on the horse” when it came to launching a new TV series. The premature death of his last such effort, the beautifully-crafted “Cane” drama with Jimmy Smits, was a heartbreaker for all involved. Ironically, it shot at the same studio as “Last Man Standing.”

Elizondo and Garry Marshall

“That one hurt, and left me in a deep, deep funk,” he says. “I said, ‘That’s it. I can’t take another disappointment like that.’ It was a damn good show, a quality show. The production values where high, it had content — that world of Florida and the Caribbean is so economically viable, so important…We were all emotionally involved in it. There was a great feeling of Caribbean warmth on the set. There was good Cuban coffee, dancing between takes. Then the writers’ strike hit for three and a half months, and we couldn’t hold on.”

Elizondo played shrink to Adrian Monk on “Monk” for a season after that, and made films.  He has buddy Garry Marshall’s “New Year’s Eve” coming up Dec. 9.

And now, here he is, back at Radford Studios, fully emotionally invested in a series again.  He has to be, he says. “It’s always good and always dangerous. You’ve got to dive in in the raw.  We’ve got a commitment of 12 to do.  I would think with this caliber of talent, we’d get a full season.  They’ve been wooing Tim for awhile.”   He adds, “We’ll know after three or four are on the air.”

Adam Hicks, Blake Michael, Bridgit Mendler, Naomi Scott, Hayley Kiyoko Disney Channel photo

Will tonight’s Disney Channel Original Movie, “Lemonade Mouth” establish the next generation of Disney Channel stars?  That is the hope of producer Debra Martin Chase, and you’d better believe, it’s the network’s hope as well — especially now that the stars of the “High School Musical” franchise, “Camp Rock” and “Hannah Montana” have all grown up and moved on.

If Chase’s track record with fresh talent is any indication, the new gang will be well worth following.  Her “Princess Diaries” movies gave us Anne Hathaway and Chris Pine.  “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” introduced Blake Lively and gave America Ferrera a teen following.  Lucy Hale,   so hot in “Pretty Little Liars,” got an early career boost in “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2,” as did “Grey’s Anatomy’s” Jesse Williams.

What does Chase hunt for?  “I hate to sound like a cliche, but you really do look for that ‘It’ — that very special quality that makes someone stand out.  Sometimes I call it, people have light in their eyes, something that shines from within, coupled with intelligence,” she says. “They need to be attractive, but an interesting attractiveness.  They need to have some soul and depth to them, you know?  That’s how it happens, they just come in and you say, ‘Okay. that person is special.’”

As Chase points out, both Bridgit Mendler (“Good Luck Charlie”) and Adam Hicks (“Zeke and Luther”) are already Disney Channel stars.  Other members of the title high school band of “Lemonade Mouth” are starting to take off as well.  Hayley Kiyoko has opened for Justin Bieber.  And, “Subsequent to the filming of our movie, Naomi Scott was cast by Steven Spielberg as one of the leads in his new Fox series, ‘Terra Nova,’” points out Chase.  “She has already shot the pilot in Australia.”

Heartthrob-to-be Blake Michael “is really the Cinderfella of this whole thing.  He sent in a self-made tape with his mother reading lines with him in Atlanta.  The tape just popped.  We knew we had to have him,” Chase recalls.

Casting was a three-month process that made good use of new technology.  Rather than going city to city looking at candidates for the roles, Chase and her team viewed video posted to their website.  British actress Scott “auditioned via Skype.  That’s the first time we’ve done that.”

As for whether there will be a “Lemonade Mouth 2″ — Mark Peter Hughes, who wrote the popular novel, is writing a sequel now — Chase smiles.  “It all depends on how we do Friday night.”

TRAFFIC ADVISORY:  L.A residents who want to catch a glimpse of a classic style pop superstar mob scene can drive over to Sunset Blvd.’s BookSoup book store in West Hollywood tomorrow (4/15) around three p.m..  (Others, take note and avoid.)  Janet Jackson will be there to sign a few hundred copies of her No. 1 best-selling book, “True You,” and it doesn’t take much imagination to predict what the scene will be like.  Miss Janet will have to tear herself away to perform at Universal City’s Gibson Amphitheatre in the evening.  All three of her concerts there sold out in ten minutes.

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW:  Tim Allen’s pilot is sounding like a better and better prospect now that Nancy Travis is aboard as Tim’s wife, and Hector Elizando’s in the mix, playing Tim’s boss at a demolition company — at least for awhile.  (The character steps down, moving Tim’s character up.)  Elizondo automatically confers quality upon anything in which he appears, as his buddy Garry Marshall would be first to agree.  Garry insists on using Hector in all his movies as his good luck charm.

Sounds like HBO’s planned television treatment of Femme Fatale magazine will be sexy stuff.  The producers (who have “NCIS” and “Castle” in their collective credits) put out a casing call for a “hot ethnic woman in her twenties, a hot ethnic woman in her thirties, a hot caucasian woman in her twenties” and four good-looking guys in their twenties and thirties.  Nudity required for everybody.

Tim Allen

More details are emerging about Tim Allen’s already-highly-anticipated ABC series pilot.  Looks like his character will have a teenage son to relate to, though there are certainly more females around him in this sitcom incarnation than in “Home Improvement.”  Among those females, we hear, will be a Japanese exchange student who Tim’s character thinks is male — ’til she shows up — and who speaks no English.  The pilot storyline has Tim’s character launching into a rant that gets posted on YouTube and becomes viral.  Sounds fun.

Things are looking a lot different for Tim than a year ago, when he was getting over the disappointing fate of his acting-directing vehicle, “Crazy on the Outside” — and when he talked to this column about his dismay over Disney pulling the plug on his “Wild Hogs 2″ movie.  Now, the star not only has a new sitcom on the way, he also has the movie that will put him together with his “Toy Story” colleague, Tom Hanks — their planned live action feature based on the Disneyland Jungle River Cruise ride.

Tim Allen

Tim Allen seems to have moved beyond the disappointing fate of his highly star-studded (Sigourney Weaver, Ray Liotta, Tim himself…) comedy “Crazy On the Outside” that debuted and quickly fizzled a few months ago.  Tim produced and directed it himself.

“It’s a wonderful movie with tons of great actors,” he tells this column. “It came out right when the stock market crashed.  I didn’t want to shelve it so Target partnered up with us.  It’s available only at Target.  This is the modern Hollywood.  It’s a different way to do things.”

‘Course, there won’t be a need for such creative marketing with his next picture, the highly-anticipated June 18 “Toy Story 3.”

“I can’t tell you about it but it’s absolutely wonderful,” says Tim.  “It’s everything you want from an exciting and big movie and it really pulls at your heartstrings.  I’m very grateful to be a part of it.”

– Emily-Fortune Feimster

Tim Allen

Tim Allen tells us he was all geared up to start filming “Wild Hogs 2” in a few weeks and he’s disappointed by Disney’s decision to put the movie on hold.

“This is Hollywood; we don’t know why they put it on hold.  Disney is going through a top management reshuffle.  They’ve reshuffled seven of their big movies. You’ll have to ask Disney because none of us know why,” he says.  “We were supposed to start June 1. The crew and the rest of us were ready to go so everybody was very disappointed.  I think Disney has their own reasons and I try to stay out of that.  The economy may be a part of it.  You just think, ‘Boy, what’s that about?’”

For now, Allen can be seen hosting the TV Land Awards airing Sunday (4/25). The fun show honors the casts of “Glee,” “The Love Boat,” Charlie’s Angels” (including a special tribute to Farrah Fawcett), “Everybody Loves Raymond” (complete with Brad Garrett cracking jokes about his buddy and former boss, Ray Romano), and “Bosom Buddies,” featuring the reunion of Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari.  Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, Betty White and Billy Crystal are among the stars who grace the show as well.

“It’s not something I would normally do, but I really dug it. I was nervous because I wasn’t sure if I could do this,” admits Allen.  “It’s a tough group. The audience is there to get awards.  They’re not really there to laugh so I had to work that audience.  They weren’t giving it up easy.  You had great comedians up there like Bob Newhart sort of going like, ‘What?’”  Luckily Allen was able to win the crowd over in other ways. “I love big openings and it’s a big opening.”

In true TV Land fashion, the show ends on a big note as well.  “It has a very emotional ending.  They did a ‘Glee’ sendup with television stars who have great voices” – including Joyce DeWitt, Jimmie Walker, Marion Ross, Marilu Henner, David Hasselhoff, Shirley Jones and more.  However, in the process, we happened to find the one person in America who’s not familiar with the hit Fox show.  “I do not watch ‘Glee.’  I made a joke there where I said, ‘I wish I could say I’m a big fan of ‘Glee.’’  The glee club was not something I was in any way involved with.  It just wasn’t my gig.  I was more of a shop guy.”  Boy did that pay off!

Helena Mattsson

GETTING TO KNOW YOU:  Gorgeous Swedish actress Helena Mattsson seems to be taking her “Desperate Housewives” murder this week at the hands of serial killer Eddie (Josh Zuckerman) in stride.  “When I learned about it, I thought it was going to be really cool because it was so unexpected.  I was excited to shoot it,” says Mattsson, who played Felicity Huffman’s gold-digging wannabe daughter-in-law, Irina.  Mattsson says she had a blast on the campy serial, “one of the few shows I actually followed from the beginning.  It was surreal to join this series where I felt like I knew everybody by their characters already.”

The Stockholm-born 26-year-old blond beauty came to L.A. at age 19, having been singled out in London casting sessions as a contender for a Warner Bros. pilot – and she stayed.  “I was all alone when I came here.  I had a backpack and that was pretty much it.  I didn’t speak English and I didn’t drive, so I took the bus.  It was pretty rough.  I’ve learned a lot since” – including how to speak English with an American accent.  Mattson, who has racked up credits in episodic TV shows and movies like “Surrogates,”  adds, “My passion has been driving me.”

She’s just finished an independent film, “Audrey,” and is doing voice work on a 3D animated film based on a Scandinavian fairy tale at Warner Bros.  And next, she’ll be seen in Robert Downey, Jr.’s summer biggie, “Iron Man 2” – which does take the sting out of that “Desperate Housewives” strangulation thing.

NEW TALENT TIME:  Robert Rodriguez has a tough act to follow – his own – as he prepares to shoot “Spy Kids 4: Armageddon” with new kids in the title roles, now that Alexa Vega and Daryl Sabara are no longer kids.  We hear that for this “reboot” of the popular and ingenious film series, he’s been seeing girls and boys to play 10-year-old twins, a brother and sister who are very competitive.

And casting is underway for DreamWorks’ modernized remake of  “Fright Night,” with principal characters Charley, Amy and Evil Ed still to be filled.  They’re going for teens up to 21 years of age for this one.  The actors in the original were a little older, playing teens.

With reports by Emily-Fortune Feimster

Tim Allen

Enough already! blasts Tim Allen of the Tiger Woods scandal.
The comic is referring to the endless media coverage of the story that started with the golfing champ’s crashing his car near his home in the middle of the night to allegations that he has been involved in numerous extra-marital affairs.

“This is a horror,” declares Allen. “This is a family in deep pain. I have very good friends who can’t stop talking about the story, going over detail after detail. But I feel, who am I to judge? It’s just the human way, I suppose, to build people up and then tear them down.”

Allen found himself in danger of the latter situation when, some 20 years after he served 28 months in jail for possession of cocaine in the late 70s, someone threatened to make the story public. Tim retaliated by having his publicist tell USA Today about the case, and, once the story was out, says Tim, “That was the end of it.”

Ironically, Tim portrays a man fresh out of prison in “Crazy on the Outside,” the upcoming movie he self-financed, directed and in which he co-stars with Sigourney Weaver, Ray Liotta, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Kelsey Grammer. “Like me, my character straightens out his life,” says Allen.

He goes on to say that the brother-sister comedy went through three studio regimes before he picked it up and that, “I’ve been holding secret screenings around the country” and, “it’s being very well received.”

He does concede that getting the picture made meant considerable sacrifices. “Instead of costing $60 million, like one of my major studio films costs, we had to bring it in for under $20 million. And, instead of doing a page a day like I did with John Travolta, we had to grind out three or four pages a day to stay within budget.”

THE VIDEOLAND VIEW: Benjamin McKenzie tells us it’s been frustrating waiting to find out the fate of “Southland,” but he feels good about the show’s future, now that it’s found a new home at TNT.

“It was obviously unfortunate the way it went down. Shows do get canceled. We didn’t see it coming, so it was a bit of a shock for all of us,” admits McKenzie about NBC greenlighting a second season and then abruptly canceling it. “It’s frustrating when you’re in the middle of that.

“You get angry and impatient because we had to sort of sit around for the last couple of months while they went through the process of selling it. But, if the end result of this whole process is that we end up on TNT and we have a home there for years to come, and we can make the show that we want to make that we weren’t able to make on NBC, then that’s a great outcome,” he notes.

TNT will begin airing the entire first season starting January 12 and then they will air six episodes that have already been shot for season two. “TNT needs a little time, obviously, to gear up to promote the show. I’m excited for people to see not only the new version of the pilot, which has additional footage in it, but these new episodes which I think are some of the best we’ve done.

I think fans of the show will be rewarded for their patience,” he says. “Now that we’re on cable, we don’t have to deliver as big of a number as we did on NBC. If we get that core audience to follow us to TNT, then I think we could be around for a while.”

In the meantime, McKenzie plans to take it easy during the Christmas holidays. “I’m just going back home to Austin, Texas, where I’m from, to spend time with my family. I’ll eat some good food, get some gifts, and just enjoy my time off.”

BURNED YULE LOG: Don’t feel too bad if your holiday doesn’t quite measure up to expectations. It can happen to anyone — even celebrities.

Donald Faison admits he and girlfriend Cacee Cobb had a less than memorable Christmas last year. ‘Last Christmas, plans had fallen through for me and my girlfriend. We wound up spending Christmas day at IHOP. That wasn’t necessarily the worst Christmas in the world, ‘cuz them pancakes is delicious, but I don’t think that’s what Cacee had in mind for Christmas.”

Jeff Dunham says, “There was one year when I was in college where I went to a party with my parents in Dallas. Tom Landry, who was the coach of the Dallas Cowboys, was at the party, so it was one of those Dallas elite, nice parties. I sat there on the couch eating some kind of cooked pecans.

“Apparently, they didn’t agree with me overnight, so on Christmas morning, I was in the bathroom throwing up for five hours. It was definitely my worst Christmas and my mom later told me that was her worst Christmas, too.”

With reports by Emily-Fortune Feimster