LOS ANGELES - Director Peter Jackson's first attempt to remake "King Kong" featured an Empire State Building constructed out of cardboard and a Manhattan skyline painted on an old bedsheet.
It was an amateur effort, but Jackson was only 13 at the time. He has a bigger budget now, at 43.
Jackson, who directed "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, said remaking "King Kong" has been a lifelong obsession.
The $150 million remake now in production is a respectful tribute to the 1933 original. Jackson approached Fay Wray, who played Ann in the first film, about making a cameo, but she died before it was possible.
"Obviously, there's a lot of criticism and apprehension about remaking any film, and it has the potential for pitfalls that are greater than 'The Lord of the Rings,'" he told the Los Angeles Times during a short break on the "King Kong" set. "But it's a dream come true. That's the reality of it."
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NEW YORK - Whatever happened to that ex-love you can't forget?
Donna Hanover, former wife of ex-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, recommends reconnecting with an old flame. She did, and married him. Then she wrote a book about it.
The book, "My Boyfriend's Back: Second Chance at Love," is due in bookstores Tuesday, in time for Valentine's Day. In it, Hanover talks about finding her lost love, Ed Oster, at a Stanford University reunion, some 30 years after they split up. The couple was married in August 2003.
She and Oster, an attorney, have two homes: in Newport Beach, Calif., and New York City, where Hanover is raising her children with Giuliani.
"People loved hearing our story," Hanover said in a news release promoting the book. "People often responded with their own stories of a cousin or friend who had reconnected with a long ago sweetheart and fallen in love."
Hanover, 54, the host of the nationally syndicated television program, Famous Homes & Hideaways, was divorced from Giuliani after 20 years of marriage in July 2002, following an ugly, public breakup.
The book includes the stories of 50 other couples, including actress Carol Channing, who at age 80 recently married her high school sweetheart Harry Kullijiam, and Suzanne Pleshette and Tom Poston, both veterans of "The Bob Newhart Show."
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NEW YORK - David Simon's HBO series "The Wire" - a fictional account of a police investigation of Baltimore drug dealers - allegedly had some real-life dealers taking notes.
While announcing a crackdown on Friday of a cocaine ring, police said their investigation was hampered by the suspects' habit of switching cell phones - a technique for evading electronic eavesdropping they picked up from TV.
"Believe it or not, these guys copied 'The Wire,'" one of the investigators, Sgt. Felipe Rodriguez, said at a news conference. "They were constantly dumping their phones. It made our job so much harder."
Police relied largely on wiretaps to infiltrate the gang, which made up to $15 million a year. The result: 12 arrests and seizure of 43 kilograms of cocaine, 18 handguns, $500,000 cash and five luxury vehicles.
While doing business by cell phone, the suspects often spoke to each other about "The Wire" after it aired on Sunday nights, Rodriguez said. Some of the officers listening to them also were fans.
"If we missed anything, we got it from them Monday morning," the sergeant said of the television show.
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DENVER - The person who dreamed up a TV series about Kirstie Alley's embarrassing battle with her weight and struggles inside the Hollywood fishbowl might be surprising.
It was Kirstie Alley.
"Actually, the show was my idea," she told the Rocky Mountain News in Saturday's editions. "It was sort of like I could either die - slit my throat, knowing that I could not work for a year or however long it would take to lose the weight - or I could make a series. You know, go with the flow and turn this into something fabulous."
Alley admits friends warned the former star of "Cheers" and "Veronica's Closet" that doing the upcoming Showtime series "Fat Actress" would be show-business suicide.
"I didn't listen. I believe that things will work out when you're honest about something and find humor in situations," she said. "The series is much more than just about coping with being fat. It's about the state of mind of women, while showing how easy it is to sort of prey upon women and their insecurities."
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LAUDERHILL, Fla. - When Harry Belafonte met the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1950s, he promised to always assist in his mission.
Thirty-seven years after King's death, the actor, singer and activist is still keeping his pledge.
Belafonte on Saturday met with a group of about 60 people, many of them children, during a celebration of King's life at a Boys and Girls Club. He said the 13 years he worked side-by-side with the civil rights leader were "the most important of my life."
"Each and every one of you has the power, the will and the capacity to make a difference in the world in which you live in," Belafonte said. "You should go through life knowing, 'I am somebody.'"
Freedom was the theme of many questions posed by the kids, and one query left the 77-year-old Belafonte particularly reflective. "How does it feel to be free?" asked 10-year-old Shawn Gordon.
Answered Belafonte: "When I get it, I will tell you."
Belafonte - famous for his blend of rhythm and calypso-inspired music - is well known for his role as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador and as a leader in the civil rights movement.
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SAN FRANCISCO - Samuel L. Jackson dies in his next huge film - but he does it in a really cool way.
Director George Lucas assured the actor that his Jedi knight character would go out in a blaze of glory in the forthcoming "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith," and the director apparently made good on his promise.
"It's rousing," Jackson told the San Francisco Chronicle in Sunday's editions. "It's a great light-saber battle with 102 moves in three big rooms."
For now, though, Jackson is enjoying the success of his "Coach Carter," in which he stars as a real-life high-school basketball mentor who shuts down the program to focus on his players' lagging academic education.
The film debuted as the top weekend movie with $23.6 million, studio estimates released Sunday show. But don't expect Jackson, 56, to get anxious about his shot for an Academy Award.
"I have a place that's pretty much cemented in Hollywood in terms of liability, box-office viability and everything else. The only thing an Oscar would do is jack my check up maybe $1 million," he said.
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LONDON - A new opera based on the life of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, featuring a rapper as Gadhafi and a chorus of all-female bodyguards, highlights the new season of the English National Opera.
The program of London's second-largest opera company will be the first season fully curated by the company's new artistic director, Sean Doran.
The Gadhafi opera, created by the dance-hip-hop collective Asian Dub Foundation, and an opera based on Rainier Werner Fassbinder's film "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant," are among new works scheduled.
Also, film director Anthony Minghella will direct a production of "Madame Butterfly," marking his first foray into opera.
The season runs from September 2005 to July 2006.
The Augusta Chronicle ©2012 Morris Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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