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The totally unofficial A-Team electronic mail newsletter
Submission address: [email protected]
Administrivia: Nicole Pellegrini
[email protected], [email protected]
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DATE: December 11, 1994
ISSUE: 9
VOLUME: 1
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Hey all,
Another week, another issue. As always, my babbling will take up the bulk of this week's topics, but I think I've got some interesting things to bring up.
Administrivia first: This week's digest is the last one for this year as I will be away and computerless after this week until mid-January. Issue 10 will be sent out sometime around the 20th of January.
Keep sending in your survey results and any other materials during the break, my one bit of caution would be that you might want to cc all mail directed to here to my other account, [email protected], as AOL sometimes swallows mail that hasn't been checked in x number of days.
Thanks go out to Jasper this week, who informed me that he has uploaded all the old digests to his www homepage, this address is http://dds.nl/~jmm/
I recently aquired some very interesting old TAT fanzines and other materials, which I will talk more about in more length in January. Most of the material consists of original stories written by fans, some really excellent, some pretty bad, and some just plain weird. Some of the more interesting stories I will try to transcribe for our group's enjoyment; I see from the surveys that have come in so far that there are more than a few Knight Rider and Battlestar Gallactica fans here, so one of the first stories I may include will be a crossover story with The A-Team and Kinght Rider or BG. These are some of the funniest stories.
Also, if anyone here feels especially creative and would like to submit an original A-Team related story of their own, I would definitely encourage you to do so! I will be working on a few over winter break.
Finally, a while back (in one of the first digests, I think), Tony asked for Dwight Schultz bio information. Well I finally have located some! The following article appeared in US magazine, sometime in '84. I thought you might all enjoy it. All typos purely the fault of yours truly...
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"WACKO: Dwight Schultz, 'The A-Team''s house schizophrenic, is nobody's fool, even when he chokes in the clutch"
(Photos: full page shot of Dwight and Mr. T, from the "Range Rider" episode; caption: "Schultz loves to needle his baleful bete noir, the bejeweled Mr. T, with tales of an invisible dog. 'Turkey!' is T's retort." Smaller photo of Dwight, decidedly out-of-costume; caption: "Howling Mad is every bit the speaker of his house. He indulges in a bottomless passion for costly stereo equipment.")
Article by Glenn Lambert
Howling Mad Murdock, The A-Team's daredevil pilot and refugee from a mental ward, slips in and out of personalities as deftly as a juggler tosses oranges. One moment he's a suicide squad leader, the next, a "dese, dem, and dose" mobster, then an uppercrust Englishman. His penchant for the perposterous even wears down B.A., played by the formidable Mr. T.
It takes a while to realize that Dwight Schultz, 32, the preppy-looking fellow with the serious expression, wearing a blue blazer with gold buttons and rimless glasses, is the lunatic on The A-Team, the most popular new show of the past TV season. "As a child, I always loved sound and voices," Schultz says. "Very early on, I'd go to a movie, come back and imitate everything and everybody. I'd sit with a box of clay and make monsters and people, and I'd do the voices for everybody."
The Baltimore native soon outgrew his attraction for clay theater, but his attraction to acting increased. "For one year," he says, "I spent every night listening to Olivier's 'Othello' just to learn how to speak." His admiration for Olivier eventually led to an active exchange of letters between the two. The subject? Theater, of course. Schultz treasures the products of this spontaneous correspondence school course in the dramatic arts.
Schultz did serious acting en route to the wacky A Team, a sort of Robin Hood (George Peppard) and his Merry Men. He earned a degree in theater arts from Towson State University in Maryland, then worked in productions on and off Broadway. He appeared in plays by Sam Shepard, Tom Stoppard, and David Mamet; co-stars included Maggie Smith and Glenn Close. His zanier side began to emerge in a cabaret act he tried out in 1978 in Williamstown, Mass. An NBC talent scout saw him there and soon a tape of Schultz impersonating writer Truman Capote and other celebrities was on its way to Hollywood. "I later heard that the tape was circulating at parties."
What kept Schultz out of circulation for a while was his tendency to choke up in the clutch. "I'm the world's worst auditioner," he says, though he did get parts on Hill Street Blues and CHiPs.
When NBC's A Team came along, madman Murdock seemed like the perfect part for Schultz, the man of a thousand faces: "I looked at the character and said, 'My God, I could do anything with this part!' It was fun, it was witty, and I laughed out loud when I read it."
Howling Mad's invisible dog, Billy, first "appeared" when the show's pilot was being filmed. "Billy began as an improvisation," says the actor. "It just came out. It seemed right that Murdock would have an imaginary pet."
In 1971, Schultz concentrated on other animals, not necessarily the man's-best-friend species. "I worked for New York's bureau of pest control." He was also a waitor, sold air purifiers door to door and slept on a couch in a railroad apartment. Then came The A Team, which debuted last Jan. 23.
"All of a sudden, business managers, press agents and other people are coming after you because they follow the money. It's so fast, and you're trying to figure out, What's happening? Where am I? Who are my friends?
"You need time," sighs Schultz, who took time to marry actress Wendy Fulton, 24, last June. They met a few years ago in New York, and, says the bridegroom, "It was love at first sight.
"It's a fairy tale," he adds. "One year we were poor. The next year I was on The A Team and Wendy was in Bare Essence. She played the part of Muffin. A friend of ours was a story editor on St. Elsewhere, so the three of us had back-to-back series on the same network on the same night."
Says prime-time's most popular certifiable lunatic: "I've been very lucky. I'm ecstatic about the part. I couldn't have asked for a better TV role. Murdock can do anything. He can be crazy. He can be serious." But probably not as serious as Schultz is about Murdock's craziness.
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Anyway, whew, that's more than enough from me here, I *do* have finals to prepare for now that I've been avoiding studying for (and typing in articles instead! ;-)
until next year everybody...
nicole
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Quote of the Week:
"...Is this another one of your piece of cake jobs,
supposed to go down 1, 2, 3? But remember, there's always
4, 5, and 6!"
--B.A. in "There Goes the Neighborhood"
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Subj: looking for an episode
Date: Mon, Dec 5, 1994 11:42 AM EST
From: [email protected]
X-From: [email protected] (James South)
To: [email protected]
Hi-
My wife is a big Man from U.N.C.L.E. fan and I'd love to get her a copy of the A-Team episode that featured Robert Vaughn and David MacCallum. If anyone could help, drop me a note.
Thanks
James
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James,
I can help you out with that, it just so happened that episode aired here in Philly last week!
Seriously, if anyone else needs any A-Team on video, I'm more then happy to copy them for you, I'm up to about 60 episodes right now, mostly I'm just still missing the 3rd season, half the 1st and half of the 5th. It just gives me an excuse to watch my tapes again :-)
--nicole
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Subj: A-Team music
Date: Mon, Dec 5, 1994 12:48 PM EST
From: [email protected]
X-From: [email protected] (Tony Friedman)
To: [email protected]
I just wanted everyone to know that i came across a very rare CD while I was on Thanksgiving break in Memphis, TN. I visited a store named Planet Music and they had everything you could ever imagine. I was browsing through the soundtracks and one of the first ones i came across was The A-Team soundtrack. It cost me $16.00, but was worth it. It features all instrumental music from the show composed by Mike Post. There are 15 different pieces in all, and the total time of the CD is about 40 minutes. If anyone would like a copy on cassette, e-mail me privately and we can work something out.
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Subj: Yes
Date: Thu, Dec 8, 1994 1:33 PM EST
From: [email protected]
Sender: [email protected]
Reply-to: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
I N T E R O F F I C E M E M O R A N D U M
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Date: 1994-Dec-08 16:12 CDT
From: Jasper Molenmaker
IPCJMM
Dept: Inf. Systems & Process
Tel No: 03402-75679
( _INET"""[email protected]""" ) | | |
