Michael Hopkins

I recently had the honor and privilege to work with living legend Miss Piggy for the BBC.  She is the hardest working blond I have ever met.  Oh, I’ve interviewed Madonna, Nicole Kidman, Hilary Clinton and Lauren Bacall, but I believe that even they would agree Miss Piggy is tops.  She delivered a perfect monologue on the balcony of a landmark hotel despite the rain and sleet.  She sat for hours on an uncomfortable piano to get a kick just right, and she even allowed our camera into her dressing room for a chat.  All this without so much as a single squeal.  The Muppets will always be an inspiration to me and getting the chance to spend a day working with the one and only Miss Piggy was a real treat.  I just wish she still had her own show.  I hope you agree we all Miss Piggy.       

  Sarah Jessica Parker is tough, she’s smart and she knows exactly what she wants. She says she named her new clothing line Bitten, because she believes we are all Bitten by something and it’s up to us to follow our passions.  For Sarah it was acting.  For me it is storytelling.  I hope you take the time to get Bitten!

  What is in a name? During the Christmas break I wandered into an antique bookstore and was immediately drawn to the magic of the children’s book section. For 81 cents I purchased a beat up copy of When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne. The book is dedicated to “CHRISTOPHER ROBIN MILNE or AS HE PREFERS TO CALL HIMSELF BILLY MOON.” Milne describes how Christopher Robin loved to feed a local swan in the morning and how he had come to name that swan “Pooh.” Wow. Imagine if those names stuck and Milne didn’t continue to develop his characters past this first book.   We might have grown up on the stories of Billy Moon and Pooh the Swan. Would it have mattered if Christopher Robin and Winne The Pooh went by Moon and Swan? I for one don’t think a swan is as easy to cuddle and laugh along with.  This little book is an inspiration to continue to push and mold my own stories.  One of the poems near the end of the book is called Teddy Bear and there he is for all to see, the bear who would be Pooh. Is there a swan standing in for your bear?

I was surfing You Tube today and found this old ET interview I did with Kate Beckinsale at the Van Helsing film junket in 2004. If you’ve never been on a junket it’s basically a movie quiz for stars and journalists. You go to see the movie the night before and cram on the way home to try to come up with interesting questions to ask for your allotted five to ten minutes. The stars in turn try to come up with interesting answers (or not) for those same questions that they are asked repeatedly throughout the day. When it comes right down to it, there is a formula for us and for them. The role, the co-star, the costumes, the kids (if they have any, or better yet are on their way to having any.) Finally, you throw out your one crazy question you’ve thought of, or that was given to you by your “news desk.” This interview with Kate is pretty much by the book. We talk chemistry, corsets, kids and stunt work. I think the reason this one lives on You Tube is that Kate seems genuinely engaged and she has such amazing hair.

eBay’s Grandma Grandma Gadget Makeover is another spot I wrote and directed for Guggenheim Productions and eBay. It was a treat to work with the Grandma we cast and Cat’s enthusiasm really helped sell the cheezy premise. Look for my Star Wars homage when Grandma walks to the door.

Plasti Dip is a webspot that I wrote and directed for Guggenheim Productions and eBay. Shawn Henderson was a total pro and I thank him for trusting me when I kept saying, “It’s gotta be cheesier!” If he had not been willing to make it so over the top it would have fallen flat.

The red carpet arrivals line for the Coen Brother’s new film “No Country For Old Men” included the great and grumpy Tommy Lee Jones. My own title for last night might be “No Arrivals Line for Old Men” because Mr. Tommy Lee Jones seems to despise doing press interviews. He is one of the biggest challenges for any interviewer. I wasn’t about to make small talk. I started with a hello sir and then asked what it was about the Coen Brothers that makes so many great actors want to work with them. Mr. Jones looked me in the eye and gave a half decent answer about their way of looking at things and how it’s different and interesting. I followed with a question about what he enjoyed most about playing his character in this film. Mr. Jones answered simply, “He’s an interesting guy.” After the room had cleared of reps and celebrities one of the newbie producers down the line asked me, “did you get a good sound bite from Tommy Lee Jones?” I laughed and shot back, “If you got him to talk at all you did your job.” Mr. Jones had turned the tables on this producer asking if by chance she had an actual question for him before he walked away. Maybe “he’s an interesting guy” is a good sound bite, as well as a perfect way to describe Mr. Jones.

A crowd is an amazing sight. The power of a group of people all concentrating on one thing, be it a performance or a person is extraordinary. I was sent with a crew to cover the opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s new season and was surprised by the beauty of the crowd in Times Square, as they sat in silence and enjoyed a night at the opera. This sight reminded me of the final scene in King Vidor’s Oscar winning 1928 film The Crowd. It begins with a close-up of a family in their home and dissolves into a second close-up of them sitting in a theatre watching a vaudeville show. They are caught up in the magic of the performance and forget that they are in a crowded theater within a crowded New York City. The camera pulls away from their row to reveal the other theatergoers who are sharing the experience until they disappear in a sea of laughing faces in the audience. They cannot escape the crowd, but they can become lost in the magic of a shared experience. Sometimes it’s ok to get lost in the crowd!

Thursday September 20th 2007

Tonight I covered the Sean Combs party for his new scent Unforgivable Woman. As the producer for Entertainment Tonight I am charged with always making sure my crew is in first position on the red carpet arrivals line. In the past I have had to deal with other shows trying to stake a place in front of us on the line, but tonight was a whole new game. It took several different PR representatives and a lot of explaining to get the crew from myspace.com to understand that the internationally syndicated and most watched entertainment show in the world Entertainment Tonight required first position on a red carpet. It turns out Sean Combs had a deal with myspace.com to cover his Unforgivable Party live on the Internet.

In the end we still got first position and Sean still gave us the first sound bite of the night. ET’s story of the day was that Sex and the City The Movie had just started shooting in New York City. So I asked Sean if he will make a guest appearance in the film and being a smart entrepreneur, he gave a perfect bite. He reminded me that Sarah Jessica Parker has her own scent on the market and told of how he will be meeting her on Madison Avenue for a spray off. He linked his story to the story of the day flawlessly.

I don’t know if Sean and Sarah will ever have their spray off, but the showdown has truly begun between old and new media. The day may soon come when the arrivals line is no longer ET, Access Hollywood, Extra and E! But rather Google.com, Myspace.com, Drudgereport.com, and Ebay.com.
Spray On!

I visited the set of Gossip Girl for ET before it became the latest guilty pleasure for many viewers including me. You never know if or when a new show is going to take off. I do remember that both Blake Lively and Penn Badgley had that certain “IT” quality that you can never quite put your finger on until you see it on the screen. Whatever “IT” is, it sure is working for these Gossip Girls.