If the new legal drama “Shark” fails to draw an audience, the salesmanship of actor James Woods will not be the reason.
Woods, cast as a bombastic defense attorney-turned-prosecutor on the series that airs this fall on CBS, spent Saturday promoting “Shark” to the nation’s TV critics like his mortgage depended on it. First he held forth at length the press conference for long stretches, then spent three solid hours that evening at the CBS party at the Rose Bowl, glad-handing critics on the stadium turf and talking a mile a minute into their tape recorders, sometimes hammy, sometimes deadly serious. As they say in sports, he left everything on the field. A sampling:
Why is he switching from movies to TV? “I’m always offered (films) to do,” Woods explains, “but I don’t want to play the middle-aged guy in a suit who is the head of the evil corporation.”
What does he think of lawyers today? “The California Bar Association has an ethics hot line — do you know about this?” he said, incredulous. “You need a hot line to tell you whether you’re right or wrong? You don’t have a conscience? How about a conscience? They’re cheaper.”
But, said a reporter, your character doesn’t care about right or wrong. He tells his attorneys that’s God’s problem, not theirs. “I believe, fundamentally, people know in their gut what is right and what is wrong,” Woods said. “But you’ve got to filter it through a very awkward judicial system, and that will be the drama.”
Does he think viewers are going to embrace a callous, self-absorbed jerk as a hero? “It’s a little bit like ‘House.’ I really like that character a lot. And you have to work to like that character a bit.”
Also overheard at the critics tour:
“They (‘American Idol’ producers) wouldn’t allow us to go on the Internet because they didn’t want you to see what other people were saying about you. But people from home could go on the Internet, and they would call and say, ‘They are saying that you are not good for kids.’ ” — Fantasia Barrino, who was a teenage single mom when she won “American Idol” in 2004. She plays herself in the upcoming movie about her life airing Aug. 19 on Lifetime.
“When ‘Cracker’ was sold to America, I really couldn’t give a damn about the standard of the remake. I wanted money.” — writer Jimmy McGovern about the 1997 ABC adaptation of his British series. A new “Cracker” (again starring Robbie Coltrane as the tortured sleuth Fitz) airs in October on BBC America.
“All the people we talked to (and) not one said that they thought that he would allow himself to be captured alive.” — Christiane Amanpour on the subject of her new special, “In the Footsteps of Osama bin Laden,” airing Aug. 23 on CNN.
“I think it’s very unfair to refer to Dexter as being sadistic. Really, (he) murders without sadism of any kind.” — Jeff Lindsay, author of several novels about a twisted vigilante who enjoys hunting down and killing murder suspects. “Dexter” the TV series airs this fall on Showtime.
“At the end of the day, these were absolutely the eight actors who were absolutely right for these parts.” — David Crane, who helped produce the all-white sitcom “Friends,” when asked why his new fall sitcom for CBS, “The Class,” is also all-white. (Crane promised that minority characters would be introduced later in the season.)
“They read a book.” — CBS entertainment chief Nina Tassler, when asked to reveal the ending of “Tuesday Night Book Club,” a reality show about wealthy housewives that was canceled after three weeks.
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