Update -
5/24/05:
From Ivillage: "A dark show
about a team of FBI agents hunting serial killers - just the thing for
summertime viewing.
That, at least, is what FOX is hoping for 'The Inside,' a crime
drama from Tim Minear and Howard Gordon. 'The Inside' has taken a twisty path to its premiere. It began life in
spring 2004 as a '21 Jump Street'-esque pilot about a young FBI agent,
played by Rachel Nichols, going undercover in
a high school. The creators of that pilot, Todd Kessler and Glenn
Kessler, eventually left and Minear was brought in to rework it.
Nichols stayed on and still plays a young FBI agent, only now her
character is a new member of the bureau's Violent Crime Unit in Los
Angeles, hired by the unit's leader (Peter Coyote) because
of a secret from her past."
And here are some photos of
Peter in NYC last week attending the Fox Upfront event at the Boathouse
in Central Park.
Update - 5/17/05:

Back in the fall of 2003
David S. Marfield was on a five-week shoot in a small town in Vancouver
directing his first feature film, a psychological thriller, called
Deepwater.
In casting his movie, Marfield admits that Lucas Black and Peter Coyote
were always his first choice. "I had been interested in
Lucas since his performance in
Sling Blade, and Peter Coyote still haunts me to this day after his
awe-inspiring role in Bitter Moon." Come June
9th the Seattle International Film Festival will be screening
Deepwater and the story of how it became one of the festival's
selections this year makes for interesting reading. The News Tribune
ran an article yesterday called "Films Run Gantlet for Seattle".
SIFF co-founder and longtime former festival
director Darryl Macdonald's had the opportunity to
view the film and gave it high marks. “This film made me stop and
pay attention almost from the get-go,” he said. Charged up about his new
find, Macdonald fired off a set of enthusiastic notes to the Seattle
office about Deepwater. Seattle programmers grade candidates, and
Macdonald gave Marfield’s movie a B+, the only picture of the batch it
came in to receive that high a grade. So when the video arrived back in
Seattle, other programmers were eager to see it and
they agree that its element of surprise was terrific. Read the
full article
for this great story!
Film
critic Steven Rea of The Philadelphia Inquirer recently
reviewed
Le Grand Role- "A comedy about friendship, faith and
the acting life, Le Grand Role is unabashedly corny and
tear-jerking - and still quite likable. Freiss, Bejo, a goateed,
scene-stealing Coyote, and the guys playing the best friends make for a
handsome, engaging cast, and the melodrama is bittersweet and
sophisticated." Next month the film will be shown at Boston's
Museum of Fine Art followed by a screening at the St. Louis Jewish Film
Festival.
Update - 5/12/05:
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Finally, after months
of waiting, the new Fox series, "The Inside",
will make its debut on Wednesday, June 8th at 9 pm (EDT).
Here's a new photo showing the cast. Looking good! In the
pilot episode, Danny/Elizabeth's (played by Nichols) drug
investigation is sidetracked when her high school
"boyfriend" is murdered. She must confront the pressures of
getting personally involved in the lives of her classmates,
while working to solve the murder and put the drug
investigation back on track – all without blowing her cover. For more information, visit
"The
Inside". |
Cast:
Jay Harrington, Rachel Nichols, Nelsan Ellis, Adam Baldwin,
Katie Finneran and Peter. |
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The
IMDB is now showing a limited October 7th release for Ellory Elkayem's
upcoming Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis. Jim
Diggins from Movies Online had the chance to watch a work print
and rates this camp-horror flick as wonderful comedy. He absolutely
loves how Peter plays Charles Garrison, the mad scientist. So far I have
to say that Return of the Living Dead (1985) is my all-time
favorite, starring Clu Gulager and James Karen (Pathmark Supermarket
spokesman). Rent it sometime - It's a gem.
There
are five more completed movie pages -
Jagged Edge,
The People vs. Jean
Harris,
Echoes in the Darkness, Living a Lie,
and
Baja Oklahoma.
Enjoy!
Since
"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" premiered at the Sundance
Film Festival back in January and was released theatrically on April
22nd, it has garnered rave reviews. This insightful 110-minute
documentary, narrated by Peter, demonstrates how top execs Kenneth
L. Lay, Jeffrey K. Skilling and Andy Fastow were not only greedy and
arrogant but supremely confident that they could shuffle the corporate
ledgers - until their Texas-based energy-trading company completely
collapsed. Based on the best-seller by Fortune magazine reporters
Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, writer/director Alex Gibney delivers
this polished and well-researched look at America 's largest corporate
bankruptcy. On the Tomatometer, it scores 96% fresh, and that certainly
equates to a highly successful film. As usual, Coyote's narration gets
high marks with the NY Times describing his voice as "sober,
ever-so-slightly sarcastic." Remember the name of this film because it's
sure to receive awards in the future!
And
speaking of awards, "Dreaming of Tibet", which originally
premiered at the 2003 Mill Valley Film Festival, won the Audience Award
at the Amnesty International Film Festival earlier this year. This
60-minute documentary, directed by Will Parrinello, tells the
heartbreaking story of Tibetan refugees driven from their mountain
homeland by the Chinese occupation. It is narrated by both Peter and
Michael Tucker with appearances by Goldie Hawn, Richard Gere and
mountaineer/author John Krakauer.
Update - 4/01/05:
On
March 23rd old and new generations of Hollywood stars, which
included Coyote, descended on the Armani Casa shop in
Beverly Hills in order of the 10th Annual Gen Art Film
Festival. Gen Art is one of the leading entertainment
organizations dedicated to showcasing up-and-coming talent
in film, fashion, visual arts, and music. The actual film
festival takes place from April 6-12 in NYC. |
 |
French
director Steve Suissa's film Le Grand Role has been on the
film festival circuit since October when it premiered in France. The
film tells the touching tale of a group of French actors who have spent
most of their years waiting for a big break. It finally arrives when a
major American director, Rudolph Grichenberg (Coyote) taps Maurice to play the part of Shylock in a Yiddish
rendition of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Maurice’s fortune,
however, quickly reverses when he learns his wife is seriously ill. What follows is a tragicomedy about
love, friendship, role-playing and art. The film is in French with
English subtitles and is scheduled to begin a commercial run in NYC at
the Quad Cinemas on May 6th. For more info and photos, visit the
film page.
Aurora
Entertainment has launched its
official web site
for the two sequels, Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis
and Rave from the Grave, which were shot back to back in
Romania last summer. Coyote stars as "Uncle" Charles Garrison, a shady
science entrepreneur. Both films will be screened at the Cannes Film
Market next month. Here are a few shots of Coyote:

The
only information I can give on Peter's new TV series, "The
Inside", is that Fox may be waiting to air it in their
Fall season. The studio is committed to 13 episodes, and number 6 called
"Point of Origin"
was taped a week ago.
Previously
I had only featured an excerpt from Peter's article, "Outlaw
Politics and the Spanish Anarchists", that appeared in
the January 2004 issue of High Times magazine. The entire article
has now been posted.
It
was twenty years ago - March 23, 1985 - that the first Independent
Spirit Awards were given at a kudos luncheon held at Los Angeles eatery
385 North. Jamie Lee Curtis and Peter were the guest hosts. First called
"Findie" awards, they were renamed the Independent Spirit Awards
the following year. Today the
ceremony is televised in millions of homes and covered
internationally and has become the vanguard
event in independent film. Here are some photos of
Jamie and Peter. (Two years later the pair went on to play husband and
wife in a film co-starring Greta Scacchi. Know it?
Answer
here)

Update - 3/11/05:
 Coming in June 2005 - a new
audiobook narrated by Coyote! It's Rich Shapero's first novel - "Wild Animus".
From the inside book flap - "How far would you go to find yourself? In Rich Shapero's
provocative debut novel, a young man rejects a normal life to follow a wild, inner
calling. Sam Altman, disillusioned with the world of the 60s, has fallen deeply in love
with the mysterious Lindy, a young woman who inspires him to seek the foundations of his
heart... Sam's unleashed and increasingly unhinged imagination drives them north to the
remote Alaskan wilderness. On the unforgiving ridges of Mt. Wrangell, alone with his
wayward ideas, Sam, who has renamed himself Ransom, gradually transforms himself into a
ram - prey to a pack of strangely familiar wolves. The mad pursuit leads from the wilds to
civilization and back again. And when Ransom and Lindy return to brave the perilous
mountain together, the truth behind his imagined transformation emerges. What they
discover in those frozen heights threatens their love as well as their sanity and their
lives."
Peter's
fans can also enjoy his reading of award-winning
author Alice Blanchard's literary thriller, "Breathtaker".
Promise, Oklahoma, may not be much, but it is ground
zero for storm chasers, an eccentric mix of meteorologists, amateur
scientists, and plain-old crazies who stalk tornadoes like kids stalk
ice-cream trucks. Police chief Charlie Grover is assessing the damage
from a recent storm when he discovers the Pepper family. Husband, wife,
and teenage daughter all killed, presumably
storm victims, but Grover suspects a serial killer among the storm
chasers. In the background is widower Grover's struggle with single
parenthood and his new romance with a scientist fascinated by violent
storms. From Audiofile - " Peter Coyote
fills the shoes of Charlie Grover, a tortured small-town cop with burn
scars over a third of his body. Coyote’s performance is supported by
occasional dramatic sound effects, added with a careful touch by
production supervisor Dennis Kao and his team at Time Warner. Although
she hasn’t been an avid audiobook fan up to now,
author Alice Blanchard admits, 'They
did a great job with it. I greatly admire Peter Coyote as an actor, too,
and I think he’s just brilliant.'"
Still
no word for an official premiere date of the new Fox series, "The
Inside" though it's supposedly scheduled for late March/early April.
Coyote has been putting in long hours at the studio filming the 13
episodes, but he's also having some fun as well in the Santa Monica
area. He describes his character, Virgil "Web" Webster, as "a legendary
FBI profiler, a man with an uncanny sense of a killer's psychology that
he gleans from studying the crime scene." He says, "I have a crew of
three people, each of whom has some dysfunction which would have kept
them out of the FBI, but for my intervention. I use them skillfully to
solve the cases. The show is dark - a cross between Silence of the
Lambs and The X-Files." Besides Coyote, the cast includes
Rachel Nichols, Adam Baldwin and Jay Harrington.
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