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The totally unofficial A-Team electronic mail newsletter
Submission address: [email protected] (note the change!!)
Administrivia: Nicole Pellegrini
Please use the following addresses for subscribe/unsubscribe
and back issue requests:
[email protected], [email protected]
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DATE: August 21, 1995
ISSUE: 25
VOLUME: 1
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...Here we go again!
First, as always, I'll start with some announcements. As you can of course see, the umich site is up and running again, meaning automatic message-forwarding is back. Thanks to Robin for getting everything in order.
Second, as of now all the A-Team stuff on my web page has moved to it's very own site at
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~pellegri/ateam.html
So update your links, if you have any. Now that we have a spiffy new PowerMac and scanner in my lab I *promise* to get some A-Team pics up on my site in the next week or so, along with a few samples from the soundtrack cd and other stuff. What I did add over this weekend to this site is the completely unofficial and probably very incomplete
** A-Team Fan Fiction and 'Zine Index **
I'm trying to create a detailed reference index for all the A-Team related zines that have been produced in the past and A-Team stories that have appeared in multi-media zines, indicating which ones are still in print and available whenever possible. If you're into fandom, check out the page (or request an email copy of it from me if you can't get to the web.) I need help completing the information on it so if you have any 'zines that aren't on my list, let me know. (For instance, I need info on Issues 1-3 of the 'zine "Closed for Remodeling"...)
Final annoucement: could whoever sent me a copy of "A Killer Among Us" a while back email me and let me know how I can repay you? No, I haven't forgotten, I just don't remember who it was!
Trivia Time:
Last issue's question was
>Which 1st season episode borrwed a final climactic sequence from
>directly from a popular movie?
The first correct response came from [email protected]
(Lester Lim):
>It was the scene where the plane crashes into the airport
>building in the episode 'Beast in the belly of a Boeing', it
>was taken from 'Airplane'.
This week, something a little more challenging (hopefully). Below is a list of song titles. Can you name which A-Team episode each song was featured in?
1. "One Way or Another"
2. "Addicted to Love"
3. "Jumpin' Jack Flash"
4. "Super Freak"
5. "Roxanne"
6. "Louie Louie"
Finally, this week I'm starting on another article transcript. Yes, I know I said I would have something coming up on Stephen J., but I didn't get the chance to dig through the library yet so instead I've got another TV Guide article, from August '85 on George Peppard. I think it makes for some interesting reading so I hope you enjoy it.
"He Made A Lot of Enemies"
With his drinking days behind him, George Peppard of The A-Team is still living down his reputation as a difficult man around the set.
Article by Louise Farr, August 31, 1995 U.S. TV Guide
"George was before his time. Men were *sissies* then," Mr. T says. We're in his trailer dressing room in Culver City, Cal. It smells of vitamins and cologne. T gives one of his fierce looks. It's easy to see what he thinks of sissies. Won't find any of those on "The A-Team," NBC's hardy little band of prime time mercenaries led by George Peppard playing Col. John "Hannibal" Smith.
"George was seen as a troublemaker because he stood up for his rights," T declares. "Everybody would like to be able to say what they feel without kissing anybody's behind."
T is talking, of course, about Peppard's bad-boy reputation, which stems from his drinking days, and from his contract disputes with studios and squabbles with executives over directors and scripts. Hollywood can tolerate a certain amount of drinking. But it doesn't like the rest of it.
"George is my *leader*," T is saying. "Where there's unity there's strength. If George don't like it and I don't like it, then they're dealin' with--the *A-Team*."
As T strolls to rehearsal, he thumps on Peppard's motor home with a fist. "Is my *leader* there?" he yells. If he is, he's not answering. T raises both arms in a salute and strolls on.
It's a Friday lunch time in the Polo Lounge at The Beverly Hills Hotel. Soft-spoken executives consummate cuttroat deals over salmon and raspberries. And George Peppard, rosy-cheeked and freshly shaven, immaculate in navy blazer, his silver hair shining and perfectly combed, is in the middle of a silken-voiced monologue praising God and thanking "A-Team" executive producer Stephen J. Cannell for hiring him when he was a Hollywood untouchable. ("George is old school. He looks good. He's well manicured. He's *clean*," Dwight Schultz, who plays Howling Mad Murdock, has said on the phone. "Don't try to outfox him," he's added. "He sees everything in terms of strategies.")
In fact, within seconds Peppard has ousted me from his favorite seat in his favorite booth--the strategic one in which to see and be seen. But he's managed it gracefully. And now he's admitting that in the 1970s he was known around Universal Studios as "that sonofabitch Peppard." More politely, he was known throughout his career for being difficult.
"An appellation I really don't feel is entirely justified," he says, lighting a cigarette. "They think they're paying you a great deal of money and you should do as you're told."
That wasn't his style. Lurking beneath the image of the WASP gentleman was a rebel nurtured in the '30s on kelp and the idea of karma by Christian Spiritualist parents in Detroit. His style now is to speak of personal matters, if at all, with an ironic detachment. It's a mask, but so what? For a life that's been lived publicly and to a chorus of criticism, perhaps a mask is necessary.
"I learned a long time ago that if I was going to predicate my feelings on other people's opinions, I'd have no life at all," Peppard says. "So basically I do what I think is the right thing and let them think what they please."
He wanted simply to "make a good living" when he came to Hollywood in the late 1950s after training at the Actors Studio in New York.
And then in the 1970s he quit two Universal series, "Banacek" and "Doctors Hospital." "I've had worse experiences, but it wasn't easy," says "Banacek" executive producer George Eckstein, an old friend of Peppard's from his days in summer stock. Eckstein, whose own decision to leave "Banacek" ("because I was burned out") prompted Peppard's departure, remembers 3 A.M. calls from his star, who would demand script changes and complain about directors. Eckstein used to hang up swearing. But he says he was better able than other executives to tolerate Peppard because of their long friendship. "He made a lot of enemies in those days," says Eckstein. "He was always his own man and damn the consequences."
...to be continued.
Well, that's all for now. If this isuue is a bit short, well go see all the time I've put into/wasted on the A-Team web page this week and you'll understand :-)
stay on the jazz!
nicole
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Quote of the week:
"I love it when B.A. comes together...asleep."
(Hannibal from "Skins")
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