WORLD STORIES/UPDATE
NEW YORK (AP) -- When the six stars of the exiting Friends sitcom were asked by Entertainment Weekly magazine -- months before the series has even ended -- whether they would be interested in a reunion, the answers split by sex. Courteney Cox Arquette, Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow were thumbs-down on the idea. "I think that would cheapen it," Aniston told the magazine. "Do you remember the Brady Bunch reunion show? You remember the Happy Days reunion show? Were they ever good? Cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap." The three men were at least more open, although Matthew Perry suggested, "Talk to me in 20 years. If I'm on really hard times, maybe I'll be pitching one." Matt LeBlanc, who's continuing with his character of Joey on a new show, said he would -- if everyone else did. "I hate the idea of the reunion show," said David Schwimmer, "but if it meant I get to revisit the relationships and work with those writers and actors again, then that would be a good thing." The last episode of Friends is airs May 6 on NBC.-CP
Photo: Andrew MacCarthy, left, and Bruce Davison appear in this scene from ABC's Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital. (AP /ABC, Michael Courtney)
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Stephen King still isn't sure whether he'll pop up in one of his Hitchcock-style cameos in Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital. "You can't call what I do acting. But if they find a cameo, I may do it because I've got a lot of sliced ham in my personality. ... A lot depends on how well I feel," says the horror genre master. "I feel a lot better than I did," he adds. "Finally my body seems to be winning." The 56-year-old King, seemingly recovered from his near fatal injuries from being hit by a van in 1999, was very hands-on when filming began last year on this 15-hour, 13-part ABC series airing in Canada on Global's CH channels. Then he was in hospital again with pneumonia and an intestinal infection. But next week -- after a brief detour to catch the Boston Red Sox in spring training -- he's heading from Florida back to Vancouver where filming continues on the humorous horror series, which premieres with a two-hour episode 9 p.m. ET on Wednesday. Kingdom Hospital was inspired by Riget (The Kingdom), a 1994 miniseries by Danish director Lars von Trier, who shares executive producer credit with King and Mark Carliner on this adaptation. King saw the original in 1997 and "was just amazed by it." He then hoped to adapt it for U.S. audiences, but was initially stymied because Sony/Columbia had the rights to make a feature film. The studio eventually made a deal with King to co-produce the miniseries in exchange for the rights to his novella, which has been adapted into Secret Window, the Johnny Depp movie that opens March 12.King wrote all but four episodes of Kingdom Hospital. (Richard Dooling wrote the rest.) His viewpoint on both the natural and supernatural aspects of a hospital environment was deeply enhanced by his own long bout in the ICU. He created an alter ego character, Peter Rickman (a heavily bandaged Jack Coleman), who is in hospital after being hit by a van. "His injuries are much worse than mine ever were. He's got head injuries and spinal injuries, because that makes the story work better," King says. This choice was also inspired by the thought processes of the bed-bound patient at the heart of Dennis Potter's 1986 black comedy The Singing Detective, which King believes is "The Citizen Kane of miniseries." But he remained faithful to von Trier's original, keeping "the really scary and really funny" but removing some of the confusing gothic, ghostly background. "We took away a lot of the clanking." Major characters he retained: Dr. Hook -- "the one doctor who is not a laggard, a layabout, an incompetent or a slacker" -- and the renamed Dr. (Steg) Stegman, who is definitely evil. Andrew McCarthy plays Hook; Bruce Davison is Steg. Diane Ladd portrays Sally Druse, who constantly checks herself into the haunted hospital to use her powers as a medium, while Ed Begley Jr. is the incompetent Dr. Jesse James. King, long an admirer of Davison (a supporting-actor Oscar nominee for 1990's Longtime Companion), insisted on his casting: "Nobody can smile and be mean the way Bruce can." Stegman does lab work with rats, which gave King the inspiration to write a scene that evokes the rat-infested Willard, Davison's 1971 cult hit.
"Steg represents so much of what's really wrong with this country. It's all about power and control and it's just run amok," says Davison, relishing this villain's role. "He's bad and he pays the price for it, too, because it's the sure way to insanity." Davison and McCarthy, briefly in Los Angeles to promote the series, seemed sort of cheerfully spooked by their duties on what Davison calls "Doctors Gone Bad!" "I think Stephen really appreciates everybody's quirks ... When I met him he was interested in the weird little things of my personality," says McCarthy, declining, with a grin, to reveal what they are. King, who has already created a synopsis for a possible second season of episodes, insists the show is "a bit different" from the mainstream." This is a little bit oddball, a little bit strange. It's not a CSI clone; it's not a Law & Order clone; thank God, it's not a reality show -- it's not about carrying a tiki torch up the side of a volcano. "And it's not like a regular series, he says, "which has a beginning, a middle, a middle, a middle, a middle ..."The promise that we make to the audience is the same promise that I always make. I will tell you a story and it will have a beginning, a middle and an end!"-Bridgett Byrne