Friday, October 26, 2012

Happy 30th Birthday, St. Elsewhere!

One of TV's most innovative series made its debut on this day in 1982.

The original cast of St. Elsewhere, 1982.
As St. Elsewhere celebrates a milestone anniversary, I would wager to say the series has received more attention from the media in the last few days than at any time since its legendary series finale in 1988. When have time tomorrow, I will be posting links to more of the tributes that have been popping up around the web.

One of the reasons I started this blog was because I wanted to share the richness and depth of the series with those who remember watching it with as much zeal as I did, and because I felt that the magic that viewers got to experience by following the people of St. Eligius for six seasons and watching them grow and evolve simply was not represented online like I felt it could be.

Put a show like St. Elsewhere on now, and it would have a small-but-rabid online community that obsessively chatted, tweeted and forum-ed about every episode. It would have been perfect for today's niche-driven television market.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

St. Elsewhere in Entertainment Weekly, on Good Morning America

Entertainment Weekly's "Reunions" issue brings together twelve cast members for a group interview featured on Good Morning America.

Tommy Westphall (Chad Allen) dreams up another episode.
With the 30th anniversary of the debut of St. Elsewhere fast approaching, the show is in the news. Here's a link to Entertainment Weekly's feature on St. Elsewhere in their third annual "Reunions" issue, titled "'St. Elsewhere' cast reunion: 'It was a show that changed television'." That quote comes courtesy of David Morse, from the cast interview with Good Morning America's John Quinones, which you can watch here.


Update, November 7, 2012: Here's the video from ABC on YouTube:

Sunday, October 14, 2012

More Work on the Cast Page

I managed to do some drudge work this weekend... I knew it was going to be a big pain in the ass, but I finally bit the bullet and added the necessary code to set up tables to house the future images on the "Cast" page. That required an awful lot of repetitive, meticulous work to make sure that the code was accurate and tidy, but fortunately, I'm good at slogging away at such tasks.

There are a bunch of new images there, and even if the additions and modifications aren't dramatically new and special, it still brings me pleasure to look at the fruits of my labour. The other neat thing I discovered was that you can easily create a custom "favicon", which is the little logo that appears in the title bar of your browser next to the page title (at least on Chrome and Firefox). I wanted something simple, distinctive and iconic, so I went with a capture of the face of  Mimsie the MTM cat in surgical scrubs.

As always, there are a few posts in the works. Also--the 30th anniversary of St. Elsewhere's debut is coming up, on October 26.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

An Impromptu St. Elsewhere Reunion from 2011

An article with photos of a get-together at Art's Deli in Studio City, California featuring several of St. Elsewhere's cast and crew.

Abby Singer and Ed Begley, Jr. at Art's Deli, 2011.
Here's a link to an article from StudioCityPatch from August 20, 2011, featuring photos of an impromptu gathering of former St. Elsewhere cast and crew members at Art's Deli in Studio City, where legendary production manager Abby Singer is a regular. Gathered at this occasion were Singer, Ed Begley Jr., Ellen Bry, Eric Laneuville, associate producer Bethany Rooney (credited on St. Elsewhere as Beth Hillshafer), property master R.J. Visceglia, producer John Tinker, Matt Tinker, first assistant director Sara Fischer.

Check out the four photos and see how everyone's looking these days. Nice to see that they keep in touch!

Monday, October 8, 2012

New Domain Name

Finally got around to setting up a custom domain -- www.stelsewhereweb.com.

I'd been meaning to get around to this for a while, and I finally bit the bullet, spent the $10, and got myself a custom domain name for this blog. I went with www.stelsewhereweb.com because I want this blog to be ultimate repository for all things on the web related to St. Elsewhere, a web of links pointing to as much material on the show as I can find. The old address, stelsewhereexperience.blogspot.com, redirects to the new domain, so old links will still work. There are one or two floating around out there.

I also added a contact page, courtesy of the good people at Kontactr.

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