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Week of May 14 - 20, 2017 Robert De Niro stars as Bernie Madoff in Saturday’s new HBO movie “The Wizard of Lies.”
Robert De Niro engages in ‘Lies’ as Bernie Madoff in new HBO movie BY JAY BOBBIN © Zap2it
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quite right.” In making his debut in an HBO movie, De Niro also is an executive producer of “The Wizard of Lies,” as is
Show time What: The Wizard of Lies When: Saturday Channel: HBO his longtime production partner Jane Rosenthal. “We had looked at doing this as a theatrical before we brought it to HBO,” Rosenthal reflects, “and we realized that no studio wanted to make it. We would have had to go the independent-film route, and it was going to be a struggle to get that made. You’d have a much smaller audience seeing it as a theatrical, so as screens are all blurring and the business is so radically changing, this was the best place to make the film and to ensure that we would have an amazing audience for it.” Also an Oscar recipient for his direction of “Rain Man,” Levinson (a “Wizard of Lies” executive producer as well) readily embraced working with De Niro again. “Step by step, very slowly, this character begins to emerge,” the filmmaker notes of the actor’s process. “It’s somehow over that period of time of talking and going over things, it just keeps evolving. And then there’s that day when all of a sudden, there’s the character he’s going to play. I’m fascinated, every time, to see that inch-by-inch transformation that takes place.”
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A story can be so big, more than one television project vies to tell it. So it is in the case of Bernie Madoff, the financier and investment adviser whose client-bilking Ponzi scheme — using new investors’ money to pay returns to previous investors — inspired a Richard Dreyfuss-starring ABC miniseries last year. Now, fellow Oscar winner Robert De Niro reteams with his “Wag the Dog” and “Sleepers” director Barry Levinson to give their version of the saga (co-written by Levinson’s son Sam) as the HBO film “The Wizard of Lies” premieres Saturday, May 20. Based principally on the Diana B. Henriques book “The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust,” with added material from Laurie Sandell’s “Truth and Consequences,” the drama also considers the impact of the fraud on Madoff’s family life. Michelle Pfeiffer plays his wife Ruth, with Alessandro Nivola and Nathan Darrow (“House of Cards”) as their sons, Mark and Andrew. Kristen Connolly (also of “House of Cards” as well as “Zoo”), Lily Rabe and Hank Azaria (“Brockmire”) also appear. “What he did is beyond my comprehension,” De Niro says of Madoff, “There’s a disconnect somehow in him, and I still would like to understand. Some people just ... you can go so far (in playing them). You can do your interpretation. The only thing I do feel strongly about is that he didn’t tell his kids and he didn’t tell his wife (what he had done), but everyone around him probably had an idea. They just didn’t want to look too deeply, because
they knew something wasn’t
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A self-involved canine takes his issues for a walk in ABC’s ‘Downward Dog’ © Zap2it Every dog owner has at one time or other found themselves looking into the eyes of their pet and thinking, “If only they could talk.” A promising new comedy series debuting this week on ABC follows through on that idea. In “Downward Dog,” premiering with a sneak peek Wednesday, May 17, before settling into its regular time slot the following Tuesday, Allison Tolman (“Fargo”) stars as Nan, a Pittsburgh millennial trying to juggle a turbulent personal life and an ex-boyfriend (Lucas Neff, “Raising Hope”) who can’t let go with a stressful career and a self-obsessed boss (Barry Rothbart, “The Wolf of Wall Street”) who undercuts her at every opportunity. Her struggles are observed by Martin (voiced by series co-creator Samm Hodges), her philosophical and somewhat narcissistic mixed breed, whose ruminations on every aspect of his life — from the doggie door and the neighborhood cat to being locked in the bedroom during his owner’s sex ses-
sions — he shares in asides to the camera. But this isn’t your gardenvariety talking-dog sitcom. There is no set-up/punch line dialog or laugh track, and Martin doesn’t speak to the people or animals around him, just the viewers. And what this sensitive, introspective and rather neurotic canine has to say is quite amusing. In some ways, he’s more human than the humans around him. Based on a web series, it’s a fun, well-written comedy with potential. “It’s a talking dog show that’s not about a talking dog ...,” Tolman told a recent gathering of reporters in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s about humanity, and it’s about humanity through the eyes of this dog who can look at us and see things that we can’t say, and say things that we can’t say about each other. I think that’s what ultimately works so well.” Martin is a tormented soul. When he’s not fretting about Nan’s frequent absences to go to work and seeing it as a lack of respect, he’s wondering what’s going on with Jason, the ex, coming
in and out of their lives with no explanation. And then, of course, there’s the cat. One of the show’s most amusing elements is Martin’s relationship with the kitty, whom he views as an emotional terrorist. The feline stares him down through the window, scoots into his house through the doggie door and claws at him under the bed, basically playing an ongoing series of head games with him. The pooch even has nightmares about it. The star in all this is, of course, Martin, a young terrier mix with expressive eyes whose real name is Ned, who came from a rescue shelter in Chicago. “We wanted to do something that was the opposite of how talking dogs are usually done ...,” Hodges explains. “It was kind of like if a dog had all the modern anxieties of a modern human being, and ... putting (them) in a character who wants to matter and be remembered, and has a really big ego, into the mouth of a dog. And it kind of allows you to see very human anxieties in a different way. ... And I think that’s playing against his (type).”
Allison Tolman stars in “Downward Dog,” debuting with a sneak peek Wednesday on ABC.
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