News

Before The Social Network began filming, Jesse Eisenberg tried to meet Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg – but then a producer intervened…

Released in 2010, The Social Network wasn’t exactly a flattering portrait of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. In the hands of writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher, the Harvard student who became a billionaire by building a social media empire is roundly portrayed as reclusive, vain and quietly vengeful.

It’s little wonder, then, that The Social Network’s makers weren’t exactly keen to have Jesse Eisenberg – the actor cast as Zuckerberg – to meet the film’s subject in person.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, however, Eisenberg recalls that he was so keen to meet the figure he was playing that he decided to drive over to Facebook’s headquarters in California. He didn’t have an appointment booked, but hoped that Zuckerberg...

The 1991 spoof Hot Shots! found itself to a small degree mirroring the front pages of the newspapers – and 20th Century Fox was worried.

Save for a few sporadic examples – the first Scary Movie, for instance, and more recently The Goes Wrong Show on the BBC – it feels like the era of the successful screen spoof came to a juddering halt in the 1990s. In 1993, we had the second of two Hot Shots! films, and in 1994 the Naked Gun trilogy came to an end. After those? It was slim pickings.

There were further attempts to breathe fresh life into the spoof – Spy Hard, Jane Austen’s Mafia!, Wrongfully Accused – but nothing that could live up to some of the movies we got in the 80s and early 90s.

In 1991 in particular, the spoof was a box office draw. This was the year when many big budget Hollywood productions came in well below box office expectations.

Jim Abrahams, part of the writing-directing-producing team behind such comedy touchstones as Airplane!, the Naked Gun films, and Police Squad!, died Tuesday at his Santa Monica home. He was 80.

His son, Joseph Abrahams, confirmed the news to our sister site The Hollywood Reporter.

Along with brothers David and Jerry Zucker, Abrahams also was behind laugh-inducing — and often intentionally groan-inducing — comedy films including Top Secret! and the Top Gun spoofs Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux. Students of the Mel Brooks School of Anything for a Laugh, the trio paired absurd situations with deadpan lines and fueled Leslie Nielsen’s unlikely rise to leading man after 30 years in the business.

The trio got their big-screen start writing The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), a series of decidedly un-pc vignettes directed by John Landis that ranged from silly to uproarious to “what the hell?!” and back. Sample: A TV news anchor deadpans from...

Jim Abrahams, a film director and writer behind hit slapstick comedies like “Airplane!,” “Hot Shots!,” the “Naked Gun” series and more, died Tuesday, his son Joseph confirmed to Variety. He was 80.

With his childhood friends Jerry and David Zucker, Abrahams formed the filmmaking trio, called Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, and popularized the spoof genre of the 1980s.

“Jim Abrahams redefined the boundaries of humor through groundbreaking works like ‘Airplane!’ and ‘The Naked Gun’ series. Together with Jerry and David Zucker, he transformed satire into an art form, inspiring generations of comedians and filmmakers and leaving an indelible mark on the world of comedy,” said the National Comedy Center executive director Journey Gunderson in a statement.

With the Zucker brothers, Abrahams founded the The Kentucky Fried Theater while they all attended college together at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1971. That led to them making their film debut with the indie sketch...

Well, it’s only taken thirty-six years, but we’re finally, Finally getting a sequel to Beetlejuice, with Tim Burton and Michael Keaton returning for Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice (read our review here). With the sequel bound to introduce a new generation to the Tim Burton classic, now’s the perfect time to look back at the movie and figure out why it stands the test of time. So, here are 10 Reasons Why Beetlejuice Is Still The Ghost With the Most!

10. A Timeless Tale:

There’s a reason why Beetlejuice still resonates all these decades following its initial release. From the time we mere mortals realize that our time on earth is limited, we become preoccupied with the afterlife. Beetlejuice tackles the theme with unusual aplomb, imagining the afterlife as just another stop in our soul’s journey to its final resting place, with our heroes, Alec Baldwin’s Adam and Geena Davis’s Barbara,...

Exclusive: Paul Walter Hauser’s hot streak continues. After seeing New Line lock up rights to the authorized Chris Farley biopic in which he’ll star for director Josh Gad, the actor has signed on to the untitled Naked Gun reboot from Paramount Pictures.

Hauser joins an ensemble that also includes Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson, as previously announced. He’ll take on the role of Ed, Frank Drebin’s partner, which was inhabited in prior Naked Gun films by George Kennedy, and in the preceding series Police Squad! by Alan North.

Akiva Schaffer is directing and exec producing the comedy, slated for release in theaters on July 18, 2025. Dan Gregor and Doug Mand wrote the draft script along with Schaffer, with whom they partnered on the Emmy-winning film Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers. Seth MacFarlane and Erica Huggins are producing via Fuzzy Door, with Daniel M. Stillman also serving as EP.

The best things come in threes, especially stories. In Western nations, we like a three-act structure in which we set a status quo, watch our heroes fall, and then see them return to greatness. Some of these stories cannot be held within a single movie. For those epics, those monumental narratives, the movie trilogy was born. Trilogies represent some of the best that cinema has to offer, movies that changed the culture and the art form. The trilogy might vary in quality from film to film, but together these three films tell a story that cannot be ignored.

Before we get too far, let’s lay out our criteria. The trilogies chosen here are those intended to be a trilogy, either from the outset or by the end of the third film. Thus we’re including things such as the Toy Story and Indiana Jones trilogies, even though those continued on with further entries.

Liam Neeson is going to try out a different particular set of skills. The “Taken” star will take a pratfall into slapstick comedy in an upcoming reboot of “The Naked Gun,” the supremely silly parody franchise about cops. On Wednesday, Paramount set a July 18, 2025 release date for the movie, Variety reports.

The film, which is currently untitled, will be directed and executive produced by Akiva Schaffer, Emmy-winning director of “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers” and member of the musical comedy group The Lonely Island. Schaffer wrote the script with “Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers” writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand. Seth MacFarlane (“Family Guy”) and Erica Huggins (“Ted”) are producing through their company Fuzzy Door.

“The Naked Gun” franchise was created by the comedy team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker with the 1982 TV series “Police Squad!”, which starred Leslie Nielsen as a dimwitted detective named Frank Drebin.

Paramount Pictures has set a release date for its much-delayed The Naked Gun reboot, which will now land in theaters on July 15th, 2025, per Variety.

Starring Liam Neeson, the currently untitled remake will be directed and executive produced by The Lonely Island’s Avika Schaffer, who co-wrote the script with the writing duo of Dan Gregor and Doug Mand. Seth MacFarlane and Erica Huggins are producing the film through their company Fuzzy Door. Not much else is known about the project at this time.

“It’ll either finish my career or bring it in another direction,” Neeson previously joked to People (The TV Show) about the role. “I honestly don’t know.”

Born out of the short-lived 1982 crime spoof series Police Squad!, The Naked Gun franchise originally centered around the late Leslie Nielsen as the bumbling police sergeant Frank Drebin. It began in 1988 with the first film, From the Files of Police Squad!

Remember the famous pottery scene with Patrick Swayze in Ghost? Demi Moore still has those pots over 30 years on.

You really had to be there to appreciate just what a phenomenon Ghost was in 1990. Almost from nowhere, the mid-budget supernatural romance became the biggest hit of the year, shrugging off some of its more dismissive reviews (Roger Ebert wasn’t a fan) and raking in over half a billion dollars at the box office.

Ghost’s centrepiece was its saucy pottery scene, in which Patrick Swayze’s boyfriend Sam canoodles with his lover Molly (Demi Moore) as she caresses a clay pot into shape. Cut to the Righteous Brothers’ version of Unchained Melody, it was one of those moments that was endlessly parodied elsewhere – perhaps most famously in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear.

Over 30 years later, Demi Moore has been sharing her recollections of working with Patrick...

The joke that makes The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear great is relatively subtle. In fact, as a child, watching this movie over and over again, it went over my head. Only recently, after releasing the episode of Revisited dedicated to the original Naked Gun and discussing the sequels with a friend, did he clue me in on why the sequel is so funny. The whole point of the movie is that the bad guys, a conglomerate of nuclear, coal and oil industry baddies, want to prevent Richard Griffith’s Dr Meinheimer from presenting a speech to the president urging a change to the country’s oil policy. Meinheimer is kidnapped and replaced by a double to stop this speech from happening. Our hero, Leslie Nielsen’s Frank Drebin, has to save Meinheimer so he can present his speech, which he eventually does. But, the best...

Summer isn’t over yet but HBO and its streaming arm Max are already moving on to fall. With its list of new releases for August 2023, Max is focusing on football! The American kind, mind you, not the actually footy kind.

August 2023 sees the release of two major football documentaries on HBO and Max. The first is the premiere of Hard Knocks on Aug. 10. The new season of long-running NFL training camp docuseries will center on the New York Jets, new employers of legendary quarterback Aaron Rodgers. On Aug. 23, Max will air the aptly named Bs High. The doc tells the stranger-than-fiction story of high school football team Bishop Sycamore, which pulled off one of the more notable sports scams you’re likely to ever hear about.

Not of the football variety but in keeping with the North American sports theme will be season 2 of Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty on Aug.

DeVaughn Nixon, Quincy Isaiah, and Delante Desouza in ‘Winning Time’ season 2 (Photograph by Warrick Page/HBO)

Hard Knock‘s new season focusing on the New York Jets and the second season of the original drama Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty join Max’s August 2023 lineup, along with Tracy Morgan’s latest comedy special. August’s schedule also includes the season finales of And Just Like That… and Warrior.

Rap Sh!t season two premieres on August 10th, and the new half-hour young adult animated series Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake arrives on August 31st.

Series & Films Arriving On Max In August 2023:

August 1

A Hologram for the King (2016)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child...

James Winburn racked up around 80 credits during his career as a stuntman, but for genre fans there is one credit that really stands out from the pack: Winburn was the stunt double for iconic slasher Michael Myers in director John Carpenter‘s 1978 classic Halloween (watch it Here). In the moment where Dr. Loomis shoots Myers six times, sending him tumbling off a balcony, that’s Winburn performing the stunt. Sadly, it has been reported that Winburn passed away at the age of 85.

Winburn’s manager Peter DeLorme confirmed the news to TMZ, saying he passed away this past Saturday, November 19, in a Los Angeles hospital after a short illness. It was quite short, because Winburn attended a convention in the United Kingdom just three weeks ago. The company that put on that convention, which was called For the Love of Horror, said Winburn “was an absolute pleasure to work with...

After being an action star for decades, Liam Neeson revealed that an upcoming “Naked Gun” reboot may threaten his “Taken” persona for good.

“I’ve been approached by Seth McFarlane and Paramount Studios to maybe resurrect the ‘Naked Gun’ films,” Neeson told “People (the TV Show!)” February 7. “It’ll either finish my career or bring it in another direction. I honestly don’t know.”

The “Naked Gun” trilogy starred Leslie Nielsen as a gullible detective in a police procedural parody. The original film premiered in 1988, with subsequent sequels — “The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear” and “Naked Gun 33 1/2: The Final Insult” — debuting in 1991 and 1994, respectively.

Neeson, who currently stars in “Blacklight,” previously said on the “Today” show (via People) that the current action roles he is being offered are written for a lead “29 years of age” — almost 40 years his junior.

“I turn 70 this year, so I’m still getting away with it,...

Anthony James, the lanky actor who frequently appeared as bad guys in films such as “In the Heat of the Night” and “Unforgiven,” has died at 77. James died of cancer on May 26, according to an obituary announcement from a funeral home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

James’ first film role was in the Best Picture winner from 1967 “In the Heat of the Night,” where he played Ralph, a mischievous and racist diner clerk alongside Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier. His final film role was then in another Best Picture winner, playing Skinny Dubois in Clint Eastwood’s 1992 Western “Unforgiven.”

His villainous roles were so distinctive that Hollywood took to calling similarly creepy and skinny roles as needing an “Anthony James type.” He also starred in films such as “High Plains Drifter,” “The Naked Gun 2 1/2” and “Vanishing Point.”

Also Read: Marge Redmond, Who Played Sister Jacqueline on 'The Flying Nun,...

Anthony James, an instantly recognizable character actor who often played the creepy guy including in Best Picture Oscar winners In the Heat of the Night and Unforgiven, died May 26 of cancer. He was 77.

James had made a single brief appearance on a TV series before Norman Jewison cast him as the killer Ralph in 1967’s In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. The film went on to win five Oscars, including Best Picture.

He would bookend his career with a key role in Unforgiven as the slimy brothel owner Skinny Dubois, who ends up on the losing end of Bill Munny’s gun. That 1992 pic starring and helmed by Eastwood won four Academy Awards, including the marquee prize, and would be James’ final screen credit.

It was the second time an Eastwood character would dispatch James in a revenge Western. Two decades earlier, his Cole...

Netflix was doing pretty good for itself as it was, but when the coronavirus pandemic shut down worldwide production of film and television, business began booming like never before. With so much extra demand, the streaming service is sifting content at an even higher pace, which entails the removal of some great titles that you should watch now while you still got the chance.

Perhaps the saddest loss subscribers will suffer in June is that of Bob Ross’ Beauty is Everywhere. Why exactly the streamer thought it would be a good idea to get rid of the painter’s therapeutically soothing voice and encouraging words in the midst of a nerve-wrecking crisis is a mystery. Fortunately, the deleted episodes are available online for free on Ross’ YouTube channel, which recently launched a respectable reboot of the infamous Joy of Painting series, too.

Fans of Canadian comedian Mike Myers are also in for a tough time,...

Netflix has been the saving grace of millions during the quarantine that has forced everyone inside in the midst of our ongoing global pandemic. As a matter of fact, Us Netflix subscribers are averaging 3+ hours a day on the streaming service, indicating that a fairly substantial part of everyone’s lives is catching up on movies or binging their favorite shows. The virus has even caused an all-time high for Netflix stocks, resulting in the company becomeing worth more than Disney. If that doesn’t blow your mind, nothing will.

That said, it’s been up to Netflix to ensure everyone continues to receive quality content to keep them entertained, and so far, they’ve been doing a really great job. May has seen an influx of fantastic films and shows, and there are sure to be plenty more to come when June rolls around.

Unfortunately though, as always, the...

Amazon is out with its list of new additions coming to Prime Video next month, and you’ll want to mark your calendar for the epic musical finale of “Transparent,” coming Sept. 27.

“Chris Tall Presents…” — the first unscripted German Amazon Original which features six episodes of the comedian performing stand-up and introducing his friends as guests — will premiere at a date still to be determined. The same is the case for “Family Man,” a new Amazon Original series which, according to the streaming giant, tells the story of a middle-class man who works for a special cell of the National Investigation Agency.

Other Prime Originals include the first seasons of “El Corazón de Sergio Ramos,” about the Spanish soccer player, and the animated series “Undone.” “Rango,” “Legally Blonde” and “Saturday Night Fever” are among some of the already released movies that will now be available on Prime.

Amazon Prime Video has confirmed that several of its original shows will be debuting new episodes on the streaming service in December, including the second season of the Emmy-winning comedy “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and the lavish costume drama “Vanity Fair.”

Likewise, there will be plenty of movies making their first appearances on Amazon Prime Video including those featuring Oscar-winning turns by Kevin Kline (“A Fish Called Wanda”) and Timothy Hutton (“Ordinary People”).

Unlike Netflix, Amazon does not disclose the shows and movies leaving the service in any given month. We’ve done some digging and unearthed a few titles that will be exiting Amazon Prime Video in the first week of December. News of these is detailed at the bottom of this post.

See Netflix schedule: Here’s what is coming and leaving in December

Available December 1

“A Clockwork Orange”

“A Fish Called Wanda”

“A Fistful of Dollars (Per...

We take a look back at 1988's The Naked Gun, its timeless brand of comedy, and Leslie Nielsen's superb performance...

Detective Frank Drebin's outside his Los Angeles police precinct, squeezing off shots into the receding backside of his own car.

How this came to happen almost defies description. Having driven his Ford Crown Victoria into a couple of bins outside the building, Drebin stumbles out, seemingly oblivious to the airbags going off inside. One airbag knocks the car into drive and off the vehicle goes, almost running Drebin over as it rumbles downhill.

As an orchestrated bit of comedy cinema, it's the knockabout equivalent of the famous scene in The Untouchables, where Brian De Palma expertly wrings every drop of suspense from a pram thudding down a flight of stairs at a train station.

On the spur of the moment, Drebin comes to the conclusion that there's a criminal...

Just the other day, Joey published his review of Mississippi Grind, a gambling film that debuted at this year's Sundance Film Festival. He seemed to enjoy the movie, and I know he'd get a kick out of this supercut from MovieClips of gambling on film since that's one of his favorite genres. Seeing this makes me want to watch Rounders again. Here's the list of films featured in the supercut:

48 hrs.

Anchorman 2

Blue Chips

Cheap Thrills

Cruel Intentions

Dirty Work

Don’t Be A Menace in South Central While Drinking the Juice in the Hood

Dr. No

Fast Five

Four Rooms

Indecent Proposal

Lost in America

Margot at the Wedding

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear

Passenger 57

Rounders

Sanctum

She’s All That

Some Kind of Wonderful

Superman II

Swingers

The Gambler

The Sting

The Wood

Treasure of the Sierra Madre

H/T: LaughingSquid...

The Hangover star is to take on the role of the bumbling detective following the death of Leslie Nielsen in 2010

"Cheer up," Frank Drebin advised someone in Naked Gun 33⅓. "This is not goodbye. It's just I won't ever see you again."

Following Leslie Nielsen's death in 2010, the odds lengthened on the possibility of a return to the big screen for the bumbling cop, but Variety reports that Hangover star Ed Helms has signed on to take over the role in a franchise reboot first mooted earlier this year.

Writers Thomas Lennon and R Ben Garant - who also wrote the upcoming Baywatch for Paramount - will inherit screenplay duties from the Zucker brothers.

Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker created the character in 1982, for the spoof TV show Police Squad!. The three movies - The Naked Gun (1988), The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) and Naked Gun...

The Naked Gun will be rebooted with Ed Helms taking on the role of Detective Frank Drebin.

Night at the Museum screenwriters Thomas Lennon and R Ben Garant are behind the new movie, which will be released by Paramount.

News of the Naked Gun reboot was broken by Variety.

Leslie Nielsen originally played the Drebin character in the short-lived TV series Police Squad!, and the character made the leap to the big screen in the 1988 movie The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!

Video: Watch a classic scene from 'The Naked Gun'

Two sequels - The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear and Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult - followed and the series made $350 million at the worldwide box office.

Helms is best known for playing The Office's Andy Bernard and Stu from The Hangover trilogy.

The actor recently starred in We're the Millers and...

It's been more than a decade since the 1990s ended, yet the Internet can't seem to go a day without a reminder of the neon slap bracelets that may have been banned from your school.

Yes, we get it. Times are tough and there's comfort in reflection, but enough is enough.

Below, a final goodbye to the 90s to end the nostalgia once and for all. (We're not kidding. There are 1990 items below.)

1. Scrunchies

2. "The Wild Thornberries"

3. Dawson and Joey

4. "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys"

5. Mr. Feeny

7. MTV playing music videos

8. Snick

9. The premiere of "Freaks and Geeks"

10. Levar Burton

11. "Daria"

12. "Arthur"

13. "The Powerpuff Girls"

14. "Smart Guy"

15. Comedy Central globe logo with buildings

16. "The X-Files"

17. Rosie O'Donnell

18. Bill Nye

19. "Dawson's Creek"

20. The Mighty Ducks"

21. "Are You Afraid of the Dark"

22. Cornholio

23. Rachel Green

24. Tim Allen

25. "All That"

26. "Beverly Hills 90210"

27. "Step by Step"

28. "The Ren & Stimpy Show"

29. "The Famous Jett Jackson"

30. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer...

While modern audiences will remember Richard Griffiths as Uncle Vernon Dursley in the Harry Potter franchise, the 65 year-old actor was also one the most highly respected stage actors of his generation. He passed away on March 28th following complications from heart surgery.

While stage work was where he learned his craft, he made the successful transition in the early 1970s into television. In the early 80’s he began a string of supporting roles in films like Gorky Park, but it was his role in the 1987 cult film Withnail and I, where he played lecherous Uncle Monty that, that would bring him more recognition to a wider audience. He parlayed that into other supporting roles in Hollywood like King Ralph, The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, Guarding Tess and Sleepy Hollow.

In 2001, he debuted as Uncle Vernon in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, a role he would reprise five more times,...

Irvin Kershner dies at 87 years of Age!

The director of one of my favorite movies of all time has passed away today. The AP reports that Kershner, renowned for making the second Star Wars film, “The Empire Strikes Back”, has died in Los Angeles, his goddaughter Adriana Santini told the AP on Monday. He was 87 years old. Kershner, who besides the 1980 sci-fi epic also directed Sean Connery as James Bond in “Never Say Never Again” (1983) and Peter Wellerin “Robocop II” (1990), died at home after a long illness, said Santini, who lives in France. Born in Philadelphia in 1923, Kershner trained as a musician and in photography before starting making documentaries and then feature films.

Irvin was a graduate of the University of Southern California film school, and he was one of the first directors to be mentored under Roger Corman with his 1958 directorial debut Stakeout on Dope Street. Social alienation and...

Canadian actor whose reputation was transformed by his deadpan comic persona in Airplane! and the Naked Gun series

Few people watching the career of the tall, husky and fair-haired Leslie Nielsen, who has died aged 84, could have predicted that the stolid actor who specialised in authority figures would become known as a comedy star after two and a half decades in show business. His reputation was transformed by playing Dr Rumack on board the threatened airliner in Airplane! (1980) and Frank Drebin, the hilariously inept plain-clothes cop, in three Naked Gun films.

What the writer-directors Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker saw in Nielsen, silvery grey and in his mid-50s, was his previously po-faced persona. "They spotted me for being what I really was, a closet comedian," he said. "And how lucky can you get? It's like they said to me, 'Leslie, come out and play.' Thank God for them.

Leslie sadly passed away Nov. 28, but his memory will live on through these hilarious quotes!

We remember Leslie Nielson as one of Hollywood’s funniest actors, but did you know he didn’t come out of his serious persona until his mid-50s? The actor will always be known as Dr. Rumack in the 1980 classic Airplane, the break-out role that lead to years of success in comedy. Check out his top quotes from some of his most memorable and hilarious roles!

From ‘Airplane’:

Rumack: Can you fly this plane, and land it?

Ted Striker: Surely you can’t be serious.

Rumack: I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley.

***

Rumack: You’d better tell the Captain we’ve got to land as soon as we can. This woman has to be gotten to a hospital.

Elaine Dickinson: A hospital? What is it?

Rumack: It’s a big building with patients,...

Leslie Nielsen, the adored television and movie comedic actor, passed away today at the age of 84 from pneumonia. Nielsen was born on February 11, 1926 in Regina, Saskatchewan ,Canada. He begin his professional career as a radio disc jockey in Canada before enrolling in the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto, Canada. While attending school, he was offered a scholarship from the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse, an acting school in New York. Nielson moved to New York, and later attended the renowned Actors Studio. The rest of Nielson’s career is Hollywood history. In a career spanning over six decades, Nielsen appeared in 100 films and 1,500 television shows. During the early part of his career, he was known more as a dramatic actor than a comedic one. But all that changed when he was cast in the 1980 comedy classic, Airplane, where he played Dr. Alan Rumack. Neilson’s lines, “I am serious.

Kenny Kerman, who parlayed a love for motorcycles into an acting career, died Sept. 9 of a heart attack while on a ride near Mena, Ark. He was 73.

Kerman appeared in more than 20 films, including "House of Sand and Fog" (2003) and "The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear" (1991) and was seen in more than 50 TV shows and numerous commercials.

Kerman began his acting career in 1986 when, as a special sergeant with the police department in Englewood, N.J., he was hired to do a motorcycle stunt on the film "Highlander" at age 50.

In 2006, Kerman retired to Fort Worth, Texas, and recently appeared with his wife, Lisa Dalton, on an episode of the Food Network's "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives."

In addition to Dalton, Kerman is survived by his son, Marc; daughter Melissa; and four grandchildren.

A celebration of his life is set for 3 p.m. on Nov. 8 at the Aqua Lounge in Beverly Hills.

Actor and singer Robert Goulet, who shot to fame as Lancelot in the original Broadway production of Camelot, died Tuesday morning at a hospital in Los Angeles while awaiting a lung transplant; he was 73. A singer with matinee-idol good looks and a deep, powerful baritone, Goulet was born in Massachusetts but moved to Canada at an early age, prompting TV host Ed Sullivan to dub him the "American baritone from Canada." Though he co-hosted the Canadian TV show C.G.E. Showtime, it was when he starred opposite Richard Burton and Julie Andrews in the 1960 stage musical Camelot that he became a star, known for singing the ballad "If Ever I Would Leave You." He continued to make many television appearances, mostly on The Ed Sullivan Show and won a Grammy award as Best New Artist in 1962. Mainly a stage actor who appeared in innumerable stage productions and won a Tony award in 1968 for The Happy Time, Goulet also performed in Las Vegas and appeared in the films Underground, Atlantic City, Beetlejuice, The Naked Gun 2 1/2. In 1999, he provided the singing voice for Wheezy the Penguin in Toy Story 2, belting out the Randy Newman song "You've Got a Friend in Me." He is survived by his wife of 25 years, Vera, and a daughter and two sons from his first two marriages.