Keith Olbermann! Who Wants That Kind of Headache? Say Show's Producers
HOLLYWOOD (AFA NewsWire) To quell the wild rumors of Keith Olbermann replacing Charlie Sheen while the Two-and-a-Half Men star goes through rehab, CBS has officially announced that the remainder of this season's episodes will consist entirely of cast members performing dramatic readings of Chuck Lorre vanity cards.
Traditionally a studio or production company logo — such as the MGM Lion, Fox's Searchlight, Ubu Productions' "Sit, Ubu, Sit" clip — that appears briefly after the closing credits, Lorre's vanity cards feature instead an offbeat essay or witty observation in tiny typewriter print.
"Everybody loves Chuck's wacky vanity cards," says Bryce Boyd, CBS vice president of programming, "But they go by so fast you can't read the whole thing," adding, "Unless, of course, you go to Lorre's website where they're all posted, but nobody ever does that."
Boyd admits that temporarily replacing Sheen, then building a story arc (arrival of long-lost uncle/cousin/guy who once saved Charlie's life) that could be ejected as soon as Sheen returned was discussed, and that casting the Dos Equis Most-Interesting-Man-in-the-World guy was seriously considered, but casting Olbermann was not. "That suggestion," says Boyd, "Came out of a room full of comedy writers terrified that they'd now have to go out and get real jobs."
One of the solutions they will own up to was for different actors from the 80s Brat Pack to successively play Sheen's character over the remaining episodes, in the style of Todd Haynes' film I'm Not There in which six performers — men and women — each portrayed Bob Dylan. Unfortunately, what the producers saw as an "homage," Mr. Haynes' lawyers saw as "actionable."
Instead, Jon Cryer, Angus T. Jones, Holland Taylor, Marin Hinkle and Conchata Ferrell will read the vanity cards to a studio audience from the Two and a Half Men set.
"It was the cheapest of the proposed solutions," explains Boyd, "And," he added, "Considering the likely drop in ad revenue after the first one of these airs, the only one we could afford to sign off on."
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