Nia Vardalos - FishbowlLA

Nia Vardalos Has the Skinny on Adoption

Richard Horgan — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 07:50:29 +0000

Get ready to see and hear a whole lot of Nia Vardalos. In support of the April 2 release of her book Instant Mom, the actress-writer will be making a variety of appearances next week including The Today Show, Katie, BRAVO’s Watch What Happens Live and, perhaps most promisingly, Frank De Caro’s SIRIUS XM radio show.

Vardalos got a couple of nice advance blurbs from comedienne friends for her book about what went into her and husband Ian Gomez’s 2008 foster-care adoption of a three year-old girl. Kristin Chenoweth says Instant Mom is “pure, beautiful honesty” while SNL alum Rachel Dratch raves that she “certainly didn’t expect to laugh and cry on the same page.”

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USC Prof Offers Tips on How to Tame Industry Alligator

Richard Horgan — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 11:00:27 +0000

The first performing arts job that came Pen Densham‘s way involved riding atop a live alligator at age four for a short film made by his British parents. Lo these many years and Hollywood projects later, the USC adjunct professor has chosen to refer back to those beginnings for the title of his January 2011 screenwriting how-to book Riding the Alligator: Strategies for a Career in Screenplay Writing (And Not Getting Eaten).

The 63-year-old writer-producer has two Oscar nominations to his credit, for Best Short Subject (Live Action) in 1973 and Best Documentary Short Subject in 1980. On the TV and feature film side, his best known credits are the 1991 Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the sci-fi anthology remake series The Outer Limits.

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Girls On Film

Pandora Young — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:04:05 +0000

Actor, writer, and producer Nia Vardalos, whose film My Big Fat Greek Wedding received an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay, recently did a little blogging for The Huffington Post. Vardalos writes mostly about her new movie, but the part we found interesting was her account of a recent meeting with a studio executive:

A little-known fact: some studios recently decided to no longer make female-lead movies.

Lately, I’ve been in meetings regarding a new script idea I have. A studio executive asked me to change the female lead to a male, because… “women don’t go to movies.”

Really?

When I pointed out the box office successes of Sex and The City, Mamma Mia, and Obsessed, he called them “flukes.” He said “don’t quote me on this.” So, I’m telling everybody.

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Siegel Goes To Terminator For Closure

Dan Cox — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:56:13 +0000

Rick Siegel, founder and major domo for Marathon Entertainment, has taken his battle with the legal and governmental denizens over the ability for managers to represent clients and procure employment right to the top.

He’s filed a diatribe of a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, breaking down his ongoing appeal with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a federal lawsuit he filed against State Labor Commissioner Andrea Broadstreet.

Rick has been fighting this good fight for nearly 10 years solely with the intent of defending managers’ rights and allowing them to represent talent and writers and even producers without breaking the law. Currently, managers are not allowed to procure jobs for clients and supposedly are never supposed to be involved in any kind of negotiation for their clients’ work.

Of course, managers in Hollywood ignore these laws all the time. But Siegel got tired of it when he had a knock-down drag-out fight with Nia Vardalos of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” fame back in 2002 when the film broke all sorts of records and made tons of cash. As a result, Siegel reared his head and challenged the status quo of the management syndicate. He’s been at it ever since.

The Schwarzenegger missive is below:

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