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Zayn UPDATE: “Too Much” Anemic Single Sales Now Up to 2,000 Copies Since Last Week

Roger Friedman
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Zayn UPDATE: “Too Much” Anemic Single Sales Now Up to 2,000 Copies Since Last Week

So here’s a real time update on Zayn and his “Too Much” single.

Through Sunday, sales are now 2,200 copies total. The original 13 copies were sold last Thursday. The 19 more were from Friday through Saturday. Another 1,900 registered on Sunday.

The single is still not in the iTunes top 100. Tomorrow will be one week. There’s no sign that anything is happening at all.

The numbers come from BuzzAnglePro, which measures sales, streams, downloads. I’m not inventing the numbers, and I’m not reporting them to be mean. I’m trying to show you what happens when there is no plan in place.

Don’t attack the messenger!

 

Yanked: Johnny Depp Biggie Smalls Murder Movie “City of Lies” Won’t Open Sept. 7th as Planned

Roger Friedman
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Yanked: Johnny Depp Biggie Smalls Murder Movie “City of Lies” Won’t Open Sept. 7th as Planned

Johnny Depp just got some more bad news. “City of Lies” about the Biggie Smalls murder has been yanked from the schedule by its distributor.

Global Road has suddenly pulled the film, which co-star Forest Whitaker, from its September 7th window. No reason was given.

The film directed by Brad Furman has 20 producer credits. It’s unclear whether the cancellation has anything to with Depp’s problems or something about the film itself.

“City of Lies” is based on a book by Randall Sullivan called “Labyrinth: The True Story of City of Lies, the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. and the Implication of the Los Angeles Police Department.”

Depp and Whitaker play detectives who investigated the murders of Christopher “Biggie” Wallace and Tupac Skakur.

Depp needs a good movie right. His career is a mess other than “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. He hasn’t had a non-Pirate hit in years. His resume is littered with utter flops. To offset the problem, he’s taken a role in the sequel to “Fantastic Beasts” coming this fall. But it’s not the lead, or the second role.

“City of Lies” is either so bad that it can’t be released, or there’s suddenly some legal problem. Stay tuned…

MacKenzie Astin, One of Patty Duke’s Actor Sons, Posts Touching Tribute to Charlotte Rae: “She was squishy”

Roger Friedman
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MacKenzie Astin, One of Patty Duke’s Actor Sons, Posts Touching Tribute to Charlotte Rae: “She was squishy”

Mackenzie Astin, the acting brother of Sean and son of John Astin and Patty Duke, has posted this lovely remembrance of Charlotte Rae. He was 10 years old when he appeared on 21 episodes of “The Facts of Life.” He remembers her as being “squishy. Good squishy. Cookie dough squishy. It was comfortable in that embrace. Safe.”

Robert Redford Says He’s Retiring from Acting At Age 81, One Last Film Coming this Fall

Roger Friedman
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Robert Redford Says He’s Retiring from Acting At Age 81, One Last Film Coming this Fall

Robert Redford says he’s retiring from acting. He’s making good on a comment he offered two years ago that the end was near.

He tells Entertainment Weekly that he may still direct. He won an Oscar in 1981 for directing “Ordinary People.”

His last film, “The Old Man and the Gun,” will be released at the end of September.

Redford has never won an Oscar for acting. He was nominated just once in 1974 for “The Sting.” One problem is that he’s not a campaigner– he’s never put much stock in soliciting awards. But he has plenty of films for which he should have been nominated, from “The Candidate” and “Jeremiah Johnson” to “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Way We Were,” “Three Days of the Condor,” “Out of Africa,” “All the President’s Men,” and even more recently, his brilliant work in “All is Lost.” He was also excellent as Dan Rather in the little seen “Truth.”

Redford’s not going away. He still runs the Sundance Film Festival and all its organizations. He’s a vocal environmentalist. And maybe he will direct again, too.

 

No Direction: Zayn Malik’s Second Single in Two Weeks, “Too Much,” Not Enough, Fails to Chart, Sells 32 Copies

Roger Friedman
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No Direction: Zayn Malik’s Second Single in Two Weeks, “Too Much,” Not Enough, Fails to Chart, Sells 32 Copies

UPDATE MON AFTERNOON: The total number now is 32 according to Buzz Angle. The 13 was from last week. Another 19 have been added. I’m writing this not as a knock agains Zayn or his records, but as a cautionary message to him and his management. You can’t keep releasing music without backup support. This is the result.

EARLIER What the heck is going on?

Two weeks ago, One Direction’s Zayn Malik released his fifth single from a still unreleased album. None of them had charted. The same went for “Sour Diesel,” a funky crunchy song that came with a video featuring an orgy. “Sour Diesel” went sour over night, and failed to chart. It’s sold around 10,000 copies.

This past Thursday, without warning, Zayn released another single, called “Too Much.” This one features Timbaland, the producer who’s brought magic to a lot of records particularly by Justin Timberlake. From Thursday through Saturday, according to Buzz Angle, “Too Much” did not enough. It sold 13 copies. I watched it hit 45 on iTunes for an hour, drop to 85, and then drop off completely.

On amazon.com’s digital music chart, “Too Much” is around number 2,200. No one bought it or listened to it.

The only good news is 2.5 million views on YouTube. “Sour Diesel” has around 3 million views on YouTube cumulatively. But it’s not clear what that means. So dog and cat videos.

Something weird is going on here. Clearly, there’s no coordination, management, etc. And why is RCA going along with no strategy?

 

 

Toldya: “Murphy Brown” Will Revive The Wolf Network, Parody of Fox News, for Reboot

Roger Friedman
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Toldya: “Murphy Brown” Will Revive The Wolf Network, Parody of Fox News, for Reboot

I suggested back on February 14th that “Murphy Brown” should revive the Wolf Network for its reboot. That’s the Fox News-like place where Jim Dial went to work when he had a fight with “FYI” and its own CBS network 20 years ago.

So it turns out that Murphy’s son Avery will have a job at the Wolf Network as the “liberal voice” — whatever that means. This will make for outrageous satire, as it did back in the day. Only back then Fox News was only a tenth of its current awfulness.

If anyone has a clip of that show, please email me at showbiz411@gmail.com.

Meantime, here’s my favorite “Murphy Brown” clip. Stuart Best was fired from “FYI” before the show became a hit. His name was a nod to Stu Sutcliffe and Pete Best, the Beatles who left the group early on. Stuart, a weasel, is now a congressman played by Wally Shawn, and he has special interests:

Beyonce is on the Cover of September Vogue, She Interviewed Herself Because “No One Else Can”

Roger Friedman
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Beyonce is on the Cover of September Vogue, She Interviewed Herself Because “No One Else Can”

Beyonce is on the cover of September Vogue. She interviewed herself because no one else can, according to an interview Anna Wintour gave to BusinessofFashion.com. Well, it’s an as-told-to. You know, we’re not in the journalism game here. This about fantasy.

What we don’t know yet is how big the issue is–did Wintour’s clever whisper campaign about whether she might leave Vogue help drive in ads? BoF doesn’t divulge.

We do know that 23 year old Tyler Mitchell took the pictures and he’s the first African American photographer who’s shot a Vogue cover. (He put a lot of things on her head, and she looks uncomfortable. Carmen Miranda wore it better.)

Wintour, for all her superficial trappings and unwarranted haughtiness, is to be heralded for being very pro-active about putting black models and celebs on the Vogue cover when other magazines have balked.

So we’re not going to learn much about Beyonce, whose image is controlled with a whip and chair.

Here’s a little insight:

“I come from a lineage of broken male-female relationships, abuse of power, and mistrust. Only when I saw that clearly was I able to resolve those conflicts in my own relationship. Connecting to the past and knowing our history makes us both bruised and beautiful.

I researched my ancestry recently and learned that I come from a slave owner who fell in love with and married a slave. I had to process that revelation over time. I questioned what it meant and tried to put it into perspective. I now believe it’s why God blessed me with my twins. Male and female energy was able to coexist and grow in my blood for the first time. I pray that I am able to break the generational curses in my family and that my children will have less complicated lives.”

 

 

Ruth Wilson’s Character, One of the Principals of “The Affair,” Killed Off — Actress Complained About Pay Parity

Roger Friedman
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Ruth Wilson’s Character, One of the Principals of “The Affair,” Killed Off — Actress Complained About Pay Parity

Ruth Wilson’s character, Alison, was killed off in a major surprise last night on Showtime’s “The Affair.” The show was recently renewed for a fifth and final season next year.

Alison was part of the show’s main quadrangle with Dominic West, Joshua Jackson, and Maura Tierney. Wilson won a Golden Globe award for the role.

But in February Wilson complained about pay parity on the show when she discovered how much more West, her scene partner, was paid. She told Radio Times:

“I definitely get less money than a male in my situation would. Definitely.”

On whether she is paid less than West, she replied: “Yeah. I think so. Certainly when I signed up to that project, I would have got paid less. Then they [the producers] might argue, ‘Well, he’s already done a major American TV show [The Wire] so he’s already got a level.’ But even after a Golden Globe I’m not going to be on parity.

“So he definitely gets more than me. I mean, I don’t know what the figure is, but I’m sure he does.”

Wilson said she hadn’t spoken to West about the matter of equal pay. “It’s sort of funny,” she said. “It’s quite hard to bring that up in a way. But it needs to be an open discussion and men need to help us out.

“I don’t want more money, I just want equal money. Which means men have to take less.”

In the Hollywood Reporter, the producer of the show, Sarah Treem, only says Wilson asked to leave the show. Of course, THR didn’t bother to ask Treem if that had anything to do with Wilson’s pay parity declaration– if Treem had decided to kill her off, or what happened.

But when actors complain about their shows, the EPs have been known to be vindictive. Is Wilson’s sudden departure a coincidence? I doubt it. I mean, she didn’t even get to film a farewell– she just disappears and later we see she’s dead. From suicide, no less– not even a plot point, not heroic. Just fast. At least on “Grey’s Anatomy,” Shonda Rhimes gave Patrick Dempsey a wave.

It’s a tough business, kids.

 

“Facts of Life” TV Star Charlotte Rae, Two Time Tony Nominee, Dies at 92 After Announcement of “Facts” Reboot

Roger Friedman
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“Facts of Life” TV Star Charlotte Rae, Two Time Tony Nominee, Dies at 92 After Announcement of “Facts” Reboot

No kidding. This morning NBC announced it was going to reboot the terrible 80s sitcom “The Facts of Life.” The news has apparently killed actress Charlotte Rae, 92, star of the hit back in the day.

Seriously, what a weird juxtaposition. Before she got started playing Edna Garrett on a bunch of different NBC shows in the 80s, Charlotte Rae was a widely respected character actress. In the 1960s she was nominated for a Tony as Best Actress in a Musical and in a Play. She was also nominated for an Emmy in the famous TV movie, “Queen of the Stardust Ballroom” with Maureen Stapleton and Charles Durning.

Rae was also nominated once for playing Mrs. Garrett, probably because of the goodwill she’d engendered in show business. It was not a great role or a good show, but Rae made the best of it. She’d been a constant on the small screen since the 50s, starting with “Car 54 Where Are You?” Charlotte Rae was funny and likeable, and you knew behind the screwball stuff she was delivering there was a real comedy intellect.

Her last role was in Jonathan Demme’s “Ricki and the Flash,” a movie I quite liked, with Meryl Streep. A lot of people had forgotten she was still around, but she still had “it.”She published a very readable memoir that year called “The Facts of My Life.” She says of the late child actor Gary Coleman, “his parents worked him like crazy.” In her younger days she was great pals with Cloris Leachman– they were roommates in New York– and Charlotte also talks about the Black List.

A great life, a great career– and a sentimental goodbye to Charlotte Rae!

Chubby Checker Finally Gets His Revenge: Billboard Names “The Twist” Number 1 Record of All Time

Roger Friedman
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Chubby Checker Finally Gets His Revenge: Billboard Names “The Twist” Number 1 Record of All Time

Chubby Checker has gotten his revenge against the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Billboard has named “The Twist” their number 1 record of all time.

The Billboard list crunches all their top 100 charts for the last 60 years. So whatever money was paid, however it was worked out for certain records to soar or fail, it now all comes back to haunt us.

And the list, while weird, is exactly as I would have imagined, knowing the charts particularly for the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The top singles were all phenoms, records that hit number 1 and held on for dear life. Some, like “Hey Jude,” made sense. Others, like “You Light Up My Life,” were clearly crazy when they were happening in real time.

Congrats to Diane Warren. LeAnn Rimes’ cover of “How Do I Live Without You?” is the fifth biggest hit of all time. Diane still doesn’t have an Oscar, but this is pretty good nonetheless.

What else makes the list cool is that records like Bobby Darin’s “Mack the Knife”– from 1959– weren’t forgotten. Also, number 47 is a true masterpiece– Tommy Edwards’ “It’s All in the Game.”

Also congrats to Carly Simon. “You’re So Vain” made number 92. There’s no James Taylor in the top 600. Go figure.

The Beatles scored two notches in the top 100– “Hey Jude” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” They have a few more below 100. The Rolling Stones have none in the top 100, but a few down the list.

Remember– this isn’t ‘the best’–it’s how they did on the Billboard charts. It’s a very particular thing. There aren’t a lot of old soul hits, for example– no Aretha, very little Motown. They didn’t have the money or power to buy bulleted positions. Keep that in mind.

As for Chubby Checker, he’s 76, and he deserves this satisfaction. His version of “The Twist” went to the top of the charts twice– in 1960 and 1962.

 

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