Beck/Smith Hollywood

Martin Mull in "Oliver's Ghost" Hallmark Channel photo

Fans of the comedy shows “Fernwood 2 Night,” “Forever Fernwood” and “America2-Night,” get ready.  Martin Mull and Fred Willard, who kept audiences laughing with those classic nighttime talk show parodies, are in meetings about launching a new chat fest for public TV.  “Fred has agreed and I’ve agreed.  That would be in January,” reveals Mull.  He also lets us know, “I haven’t talked about this before.”

It’s so new, in fact, the two funny guys haven’t even decided whether they would do the Cleveland-based show as themselves or their Fernwood characters, Barth Gimble and Jerry Hubbard.  “It would be a ball,” says Mull.  “We’ll see if we get a groundswell of support.”

Mull certainly has a full plate even without the proposed Fernwood redux.   He’ll materialize Saturday (10/22) as the title specter on the Hallmark Channel’s  “Oliver’s Ghost,” with Rhea Perlman.   

“I was telling Teri Garr, first I played her young boyfriend, then her husband, and then she and I were grandparents.  What comes after grandparents?  Dead.  So it’s age-appropriate,” notesMull. 

His character is “a fellow whose unresolved issues with his daughter cause him to haunt this house.  Then he encounters this 11-year-old boy, and, there’s an idea there — it’s kind of about recognizing someone, with the metaphor of a ghost.”  He adds, “It’s my second movie for Hallmark and it was fun, a breeze.  You know going in, you’re not going to be doing Ibsen, but it’s nice to do something on television that’s not the Real Housewives of Somewhere.  It’s a movie.  It’s a good little film.” 

MEANWHILE: Mull is also continuing his role as Russell the pharmacist on “Two and a Half Men.”  At least, “They haven’t mentioned anything about my not coming back” — as the Ashton Kutcher, post-Charlie Sheen era continues along.  “I think they’re still kind of testing the water as to where I fit in….Chuck Lorre and I go way back, to ‘Roseanne,’”Mull reminds.  “He’s a very good friend, and it’s such a fun show to work on.  I’m also a fan of Ashton’s.  We did a movie called ‘Killers’ that came out a couple of years ago and I got to know him and admire him.  He’s a terrific actor.”   Still, he adds, “I think the bottom line of anything on television is the writing.  It’s the writers’ medium.”

Charlie Sheen

Duh!  Of course Charlie Sheen had ulterior motives for acting like a stand-up kind of guy at the Emmys and elsewhere the last week or so. 

He’s in the process of getting his “Anger Management” series set up — something that wasn’t about to happen if he ran about naked in hotel lobbies, hitting women and lobbing nasty remarks about his former employers.  With Deadline Hollywood’s Nellie Andreeva now reporting that showrunner Bruce Helford (“The Drew Carey Show,” “George Lopez”) has signed on for Sheen’s planned series for Lionsgate, it’s all too obvious.  Next, if his “Two and a Half Men” legal action is indeed settled, the way will be clear for the new show.   (Anybody want to take bets on whether Helford will live to regret this?)

Charlie Sheen

Do you think that Charlie Sheen’s condition as he rants against Warner Bros. TV and producer Chuck Lorre over radio, TV and internet makes the $100 million wrongful termination lawsuits his attorneys have filed into a lost cause?  Think again.

Leading entertainment litigator Mitchell Langberg notes that there is more to Sheen’s case than is apparent at first blush.  “In my experience, the studios in these employment things are at least mostly wrong.  You have artists who are artists, and studios that are businesses.  When something happens to make it personal on the business side, then it devolves into all kinds of issues.”

Langberg’s firm, Brownstein/Hyatt/Farber/Schreck, has represented stars and companies through the years, so he’s well versed in both sides of cases involving high-profile entertainment firings.  The company represented Aaron Spelling back when Farrah Fawcett quit “Charlie’s Angels” — as well as Valerie Harper, back when she was fired from her own series.

” In this case, you have a studio that knew about it,” he says, referring to Sheen’s drug-fueled carousing.  “They even renegotiated with him after it was happening.   They can point to their morals clause or their felony clause, but it would appear that as long as the ratings were high and the money was rolling in, his behavior was acceptable to them.

Mitchell Langberg

“Now, it could be that it got so out of control it got to be a danger and was starting to effect the show,” continues Langberg.  “I’ve read the 11-page termination letter, where they talk about his missing his marks and leaning against things and such.  It could be that, or it could be that it got real personal.  The timing of when he was first suspended from the show was two days after Charlie made his first public comments against Chuck Lorre,” notes the attorney, referring to the “Two and a Half Men” creator/producer that Sheen termed “a clown” and “Chaim Levine.”

Langberg points out that reports of Sheen’s wild behavior are nothing new.  He’s “been on Howard Stern’s show and other shows making comments about prostitutes and drugs before now.  Did they weigh their morals clauses then?  What changed?  That is what the case is going to turn on  – whether or not they can prove that something different was effecting his peformance, or the safety of his performance happening.”

What happens if Charlie gets 5150′ed?  “If the family gets him committed, even temporarily, it will confirm what seems readily apparant to anybody who watches the internet or television.  And maybe it will make it more pursuasive for the studio,” Langberg observes.

“I remember sometime in the late ’90s, when Charlie first publicly had these  problems.  Martin made it ovious he would do whatever it took to save his son,” adds Langberg, referring to comments the elder Sheen made to  reporters as Charlie recovered from a 1998 drug overdose — “whatever he’s able to do.”

Charlie Sheen

Why, Chuck Lorre, why? With Charlie Sheen’s series-ending public rant last week, Lorre has to have attained some sort of new Guinness world record for dealing with out-of-control, out-of-their-minds, self-destructive TV stars.

In case you missed it, Sheen referred to the “Two and a Half Men” creator as a “clown” whose “tin can” writing Sheen claimed to have been “effortlessly and magically converting…into pure gold” for nearly a decade.
Lorre’s used to unappreciative stars, to say the least. Consider: the esteemed writer/producer first whetted his sitcom chops working on “Roseanne” back in the early ’90s. Behind-the-scenes fights on that show became an everyday part of the job, as the star wrested more and more control out of creator Matt Williams’ hands and launched a frenzy of frequent firings. Before it was all over, tales of screaming tyrannical behavior emanated from the set regularly and Roseanne let it be known that she suffered from multiple personality disorder.

Roseanne

But that show was likely a better experience for Lorre than the first show he personally created – the 1993-1998 “Grace Under Fire,” starring Brett Butler. The comedian, once thought to be the female answer to Lenny Bruce, exhibited demonical diva ways including verbal abuse and sexual harassment, according to Lorre’s suit over profits from the sitcom. Her nastiness led staff, including writer Alan Ball, to talk about the show using terms such as “the gulag.” Lorre left.

Brett Butler

Butler confessed to painkiller addiction and the production became subject to her rehabs and relapses — but due to high ratings, the team carried on (sound familiar?) until at last ABC got fed up with Butler missing tapings and abruptly pulled the plug.

Then there was Cybill Shepherd, a decided improvement. Nevertheless, she was accused of megalomania during production of her “Cybill” show of 1995-1998. Whoever did what to whom, clearly, it wasn’t fun. Lorre was fired after five episodes despite creating the show. (A phalanx of other writers quit or were fired as well.)

First, though, Cybill had Lorre banned from the set, reportedly because she hated it when he and another producer, Jay Daniel, sat watching her performances on the monitor and critiquing them. Imagine producers doing such a thing!

Small wonder that in 2008, Lorre relished the assignment of cowriting a “CSI” episode entitled “Death of a Sitcom Diva.” As “CSI’s” Robert David Hall put it, “I think Chuck is working off his aggression in this script.”

By then, “Two and a Half Men” was already a long-standing hit, and it looked like taking a gamble on seemingly-reformed hellion Charlie Sheen was a good idea. Considering the show’s long running success, it still looks that way. But as every reader of pop psych tomes and women’s magazines knows, if you keep getting into the same kind of toxic relationships over and over again, you have to recognize that it’s your responsibility and make changes. Lorre’s apparently-harmonious “Big Bang Theory” and gratitude-infused “Mike and Molly” casts suggest he’s found the healthy truth: there are talented, funny, creative people out there who manage to do terrific work without all the pain and suffering.

Goodbye, Charlie Sheen. Ahh.

Dennis Hopper and Eric Roberts (photo from Starz)

Eric Roberts tells us, “I hope to retire young, in the next year and a half or maybe two years.”  For real?  “I probably will.  Unless someone offers me my own series and it’s incredible, I think I’m going to hang it up in about a year and a half – because, you know, Hollywood is run by lawyers not by artists, and I don’t find that terribly appealing.”

But in the meantime, he’s certainly not showing any signs of slowing down.  Right now, he’s busy filming Starz’ “Crash” series, in which he’ll debut next month playing a billionaire entrepreneur who has designs on bringing an NFL franchise into Los Angeles.  He also just finished his role on Sylvester Stallone’s big-screen “The Expendables.”  The movie shot in Brazil, L.A. and New Orleans, and Roberts describes production on the action picture as rigorous and then some.  Or, as he puts it, “It was a $#@%!! every day.”

Roberts did a lot of his work with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin in the picture that also features Stallone himself, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Terry Crews and a cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger — in a tale of mercenary soldiers on assignment in South America.  “I’m telling you, Steve Austin is one of the greatest cats on the planet.  He’s my new best friend and I mean that.  I love that guy to his bone marrow,” Roberts says.  “He’s the coolest, nicest most generous man I think I might have ever worked with.”

The series has him working with the also cool Dennis Hopper, “an old, dear friend,” says Roberts — as well as Ross McCall, “an actor I’m crazy about.”  “Crash” will keep him working in New Mexico for the next seven weeks.  He likes the people, but “every day around 1 o’clock it’s 105 degrees or more,” he points out.

No wonder visions of retirement are dancing in his head.
Says the actor, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in the 1985 “Runaway Train,” “Ever since they gave my Oscar to the wrong guy, I keep working as hard as I can because I realize, I’m a workaholic.  It makes me happy.  That’s what I do.”

ON THE PERSONAL SIDE:  It’s been all over the news that Candy Spelling chose not to attend her granddaughter’s first birthday party upon discovering that it was being set up for daughter Tori’s Oxygen reality show, “Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood.”

To hear Tori talk about her life on TV, however, is to get the impression that  having the cameras around is no big deal to her – and it’s the same with her offspring.

“Liam figured it out pretty early on in his life.  For one, he’s bonded with all of the cameraman,” she tells us.  “Even with the paparazzi, he’d play with the camera, but now he’s over it.  Now Stella has stepped in and is hamming it up.”

While some might get tired of the lack of privacy, Spelling says it’s not as bad as people think.  “People always say to me, ‘Is it weird having cameras in your face 24 hours a day,’ and it’s not.  It’s not what people think.  It’s not like a regular television show,” she explains.  “It’s reality so it’s a very small crew and they become like family to you.  They’re more like flies on the wall so I forget they’re there.  I just go about my life.  And they’re obviously not there 24 hours a day.  We have down time alone with our family.  I really have enjoyed the experience.”

WOMAN ON THE SCENE: “Two and a Half Men” is set to return Sept. 21 and this season we’ll be seeing a lot more of Charlie Sheen’s onscreen love interest.  Actress Jennifer Taylor, who plays his fiancé Chelsea, has been made a series regular, so does this mean marriage for his bachelor character?  “I hope.  I’d love to be there forever,” says Taylor, who has had various small roles on the show since the pilot.  “I think it’d be interesting if they got married.  People could see Charlie’s character stumble along through everything that it entails.  I think that’s more interesting than being the same thing over and over again.  You can still preserve the essence of his character but in a committed relationship.”

No matter what happens, though, Taylor is just excited to be a more permanent member of the popular show.  “I never thought when I had a small part on the pilot that it would lead to me being a regular seven seasons later.  When I heard, I thought maybe it was a joke because they told me on April Fools Day. I was pleasantly surprised,” she says.  “I’ve kept different journals over the years and one time I wrote that I wanted to be a regular on a Chuck Lorre sitcom after working with him on a pilot like 10 years ago.  It’s literally a dream come true.  I feel like the pressure is on, though.  Now I have to earn my keep!  I’m just going to take everyday I’m here as a gift and just hope it keeps going.”

ASTUTE OBSERVER: Legendary writer Budd Schulberg, who died last week at age 95 leaving a legacy of great work (“On the Waterfront,” “The Harder They Fall,” “A Face in the Crowd,” etc.) was truly one of a kind.  The Oscar winner gave us a great many insightful comments through the years.  Marilyn recalls his observation that society had changed so much that the hot, young up-and-comers in Hollywood bought copies of  his “What Makes Sammy Run” because they considered the unethical central character Sammy Glick a hero — and wanted to be just like him.

With reports by Emily-Fortune Feimster