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On the Jazz - Vol 03 Issue 01
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ONTHEJAZZ! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ONTHEJAZZ! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ONTHEJAZZ!
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/ / / \ / / /__ / /__ / /__\ / /
/__/ / \/ / / / /___ /__/ / \ /___ /___
The totally unofficial A-Team electronic mail newsletter
***** Now in it's THIRD year of publication !! *****
Reflector submission address: onthejazz
Administrivia: Nicole Pellegrini
PLEASE use the following address for subscribe/unsubscribe
and back issue requests (do NOT send them to onthejazz!!):
*** pellegri ***
Also use that address if you wish to change your subscription status
to receive the newsletters only (or go from newsletter to news + reflector).
The A-Team Homepage: http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~pellegri/ateam.html
*The A-Team On the Web: http://www.xs4all.nl/~jmm/a-team/
*The A-Team Hawaii Page: http://www.poi.net/~dcover
*Homes of the On the Jazz Newsletter Archives
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DATE: October 6, 1996
ISSUE: 1
VOLUME: 3
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THE EDITOR SPEAKS...
Greetings, everyone and welcome to the THIRD ANNIVERSARY EDITION of
ON THE JAZZ!!! That's right, 2 years ago (October 9, 1994, to be exact)
the very first edition of the onthejazz newsletter went out to a select group
of perhaps 20 A-Team fans. We didn't even have a real time mailing list
yet - that would be many months away - and we did our best what little
information we had on the show and the guys to pull something together.
Today, our subscriber's list is huge - about 90 people on the newsletter
list, and 130 on the full list, and membership is in a real upward trend as
of late, with the fX network graciously showing the A-Team every night and
allowing countless fans to enjoy the show once more (or, for the first
time!) We have people on the list now that have been involved in A-Team
fandom since "the early days", and many who have only discovered the show
in syndication. It's great to see so many different people on the list and
that we can have a lot of fun discussions about the show.
2 more years, and we should be discussion the A-Team feature movie!
Here's to ensuring we're still around in 1998, and beyond that!
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NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
DIRK BENEDICT IN TV-MOVIE, THIS MONDAY! October 7, Dirk Benedict will
appear in the TV movie "Abduction of Innocence: A 'Moment of Truth' movie",
on NBC at 9 PM EST. The plot summary in the TV Guide reads: "In rural
Oregon, an FBI investigation of a kidnapping raises gnawing suspicions that
the teenage victim-the only child of a strict multimillionaire-may have
planned the crime herself."
A-TEAM PHILLY FEST - NEXT SATURDAY! Yes, next weekend it's definitely
happening, here in Center City Philadelphia. Come on and come all to enjoy
the festivities, starting noon, October 12, and going however late people
can endure. Kyle will probably insist on us watching some Galactica along
with A-Team ;-), and who knows what else will make its way onto the
television (I'd vote for a late-night screening of "Alone in the Dark").
Please RSVP with me as soon as possible if you expect to attend.
THE A-FILES: ALMOST HERE, HONEST! Yes, we're in the really, final stages
of putting this 'zine together, and there will *definitely* be a final
announcement about it by the next newsletter. I've gotten a lot of
volunteers for proofreading assistance on our other upcoming 'zine titles,
but do we have any good artists out there? Please, please, let me know if
you might be interested in illustrating for any upcoming A-Team 'zines -
and of course, new writers are always welcomed! PLANS SCAMS AND VANS 3 is
already looking to have a great mix of authors, new and old, but there's
plenty of room for more people to contribute still...
CONVENTION NEWS - I read a usenet post that Dwight Schultz actually did NOT
appear at the recent Trek convention in the Netherlands; he annd Robert
O'Reilly were both replaced with other guests at the last minute. So,
those of you who couldn't make it, looks like you didn't miss much! No new
news on the status of Dirk's appearance at the Cult TV con in England later
this year.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY! - Last but certainly not least, October 1st would have been
George Peppard's birthday (although there seems to be conflicting dates
given for the birth*year*).
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ARTICLES & TRANSCRIPTS, ETC.
Last week, we had a pre-A-Team interview with Dirk Benedict, this week,
continuing the trend, we have a pre-A-Team interview with Mr. T...
>From CINEMA ODYSSEY Vol 2 No 1 (1982)
Mr. T Goes The Distance. He's clean, he's mean, he's a wreckin' machine,
and he caused a sensation as Clubber Lang in Rocky III. They call him Mr.
T, and don't you rorget it!
From the moment he bursts upon the screen, a one-man demolition
team bent on destruction, Clubber Lang is brutally mowing down contender
after
contender.
It doesn't take long to realize that these snippets of fight film
aren't
just window dressing. This guy's in for the long haul, and everything about
him spells trouble.
The character is Clubber Lang, a lean mean fighting machine with
the will to win. But that of the person behind the persona? The power
behind the
punch?
His name is Mr. T. And while ROCKY III may be this heavyweight's first
big shot at an acting title, he's no newcomer to the bright lights of show biz.
In the world inhabited by the shakers and movers of big time sports and
entertainment, Mr. T's reputation is well established. Widely considered
to be "the bodyguard", his client roster has included such names as Leon
Spinks,
Muhammmad Ali, Michael Jackson and LeVar Burton. "I'm the best bodyguard
there is," says Mr. T, with the confidence of a man who would challenge
anyone to prove him false. "I'm not the biggest, the baddest, the roughest
or the toughest," he says. "I'm the best." The reason he's so good? Bottom
line - he goes all the way. "If I'm in a room protecting you," he says,
"and somebody has a gun, I'm going to put my body around you. I take the
bullet. If there's a knife, I get stabbed. If there's poison, I take
it...I'm like a kamakaze pilot.
They're dedicated to their country, I'm dedicated to my client...my card
reads, 'Mr. T - Bodyguard Extraordinaire'. There's none better than me."
An original rags-to-riches, only-in-America story, Mr. T's climb to
the top rivals that of Rocky himself. Born Lawrence Tero, he was the tenth
child in a family of eight boys and four girls. Home was a cluster of
high-rise apartments for low-income tenants, a concrete jungle on Chicago's
South Side. Raised by a mother on welfare, the family subsisted on faith
rather than funds.
"I come from the area where they say nobody ever makes it," says
Mr. T, a glaring exception to the unwritten rule. "That's why I gotta try
so damn hard," he continues. "'Cause when I make it, the people back in
the
ghettoes make it. And every time I give an interview and say, 'I'm from
the Projects, I'm from the Welfare, I'm from a broken home,' you know what
that does to people in those situations? It makes them straighten up. A lot
of people
think they're just by themselves. That they're the only ones to have a
hardship, or whatever. So by me overcoming it, that'll make them overcome
it."
Even in the early days, long before ROCKY was a twinkle in MGM/UA's
corporate eye, Mr. T was already rising through the ranks, distinguishing
himself from the crowd. At Chicago's Dunbar Vocational High School, Tero
made his mark as a three-time city wrestling champ. His overall record was
90 wins, one loss. "When you speak of my school," he says, "you
automatically gotta talk about Mr. T." His record as a high school football
halfback was equally spectacular. The 35 touchdowns he scored earned him a
scholarship to Prairie
View, where he played for three years. After serving with honor as a
military police officer in the Army, Mr. T was invited to try out for the
Green Bay Packers. When a knee injury forced him to leave the Packers'
camp, the strapping 275-pounder turned to the security guard profession.
Fortunately, Mr. T has no regrets about his aborted football career.
"This way I can reach more people," he says, "I'm invited to more banquets.
I speak at more lectures at colleges and universities." Mr. T credits the
success of his speaking engagements with his surprisingly inspirational
presentations. "A lot of people just talk and say nothing," he comments.
"They figure I'm the kind of guy who gets up there and says, 'Uh, er, uh,
er, football, hit low, hit hard,' you know? Then they see me and say, 'This
guy can speak. This guy is heavy,' People think it's unbelievable that I
can quote Socrates, Aristophanes, Euripides, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, Mark.
They're stunned, like I hit them with a couple of jabs...That's the biggest
joy I get from this tour, watching people
change when they see how I really am."
An active member of Reverend Hardy's Cosmopolitan Church, Mr, T
"acknowledges God in all that I do." "When I was small I was baptized," he
says, "but I sorta went astray." In 1978, Mr. T was baptized for the second
time, and began his increasingly serious involvement with the church. "I
haven't looked back for nothing. Haven't worried about nothing. I've been
in fights and come out on top. Why? Not because I'm tough. I've been in
fights where guys jumped me from the back. I got cut, but it wasn't that
bad. Why was that? Some people say, 'Well, you sure are lucky. That was a
miracle.' Well, God gives miracles every day. All you have to do is have
faith and believe."
When it comes to the perlrs of his new found career, Mr. T relies
heavily on that faith, refusing to be seduced by the power and the glory.
"I'm
not gonna run out and buy a Rolls-Royce or stuff. They say, 'You're going
to make a lot of money. Get down.' So they try to blow my mind with
limousines. I've been in limousines before. They say, 'We'll give you a
suite in the hotel.'
I've seen all that before, so that don't excite me. I'm honored,but they
can't, you know, mess me up. Those guys that get hooked on drugs, they're
looking for happiness in the wrong place. They think they can impress me
with bringing a girl to my suite or having a girl meet me at the airport
limousine. That won't excite me. I don't want that. I don't even want to be
caught up in things like that." His family is equally reticent about his
good fortune, determined to keep it all in perspective.
"I was successful a long time ago," Mr. T says, referring less to his
bodyguarding exploits than the achievement of personal goals, "A lot of
people determine success in different ways. My life would be in vain if all
I wanted were material things - diamonds, girls, and all that. Life would
be too shallow. I'm at peace with myself. I'm content with myself because
God is with me. When I meet my Maker, God's not gonna be concerned with how
many rings I got, or how many movies I made, or how many Oscars I won; but
did you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, administer medicine to the sick,
try to comfort the
heartbroken, were you concerned? Did you try to do those things? 'No, I was
trying to get every dollar I could. I was a billionaire, God. I got a lot
of money. I got four mansions.' 'Go to hell, you gotta' be concerned.'"
The transformation from Lawrence Tero to Mr. T was an important
one, and
the security guard-turned-actor is candid about his feelings. "I changed my
name to Mr. T because I got tired of white people calling me 'boy'. That
comes from the old slavery thing. 'Hey boy, clean this out, get my shoes,'
this and that, I changed my name to Mr. T so that the person had to call me
Mister - the sound of respect."
Yet there are those who refuse to recognize the change. "They don't
like
to call me 'Mr. T,'" he says. And although a rose by any other calling card
would smell as sweet, the former bodyguard's nsw name is the official one.
"It's on my birth certificate now, it's on my passport, my driver's
license; it's on everything. But the people still say, 'Well, you wasn't
born Mr. T. On your birth certificate it wasn't Mr. T.' And I say,
'"Nigger" wasn't on my birth certificate either, but I been called that.' I
say nobody questions that fact about the Pope. He wasn't born Pope John
Paul the second. He took the name from two dead Popes. But nobody questions
that. You know, a black man comes along looking like me, fighting like me,
calling himself Mr. T. 'Who're you joking!' they ask. 'What's your real
name?'"
Playing the man everyone loves to hate is not always an easy task, but
Mr.T seems to understand and sympathize with Clubber Lang better than
anyone. He even compares Glubber to Rocky in his pre-championship days.
"He's hungry," Mr.
T comments. "He's got to do things to make people take notice." But
according to Mr. T, Clubber Lang has no real animosity toward Rocky. He's
simply a man working toward a dream, and his anger lies in the fact that
he's being avoided, ignored, "It's not really Rocky's fault," comments
Mr. T. "It's his manager Mickey that's keeping us apart. He says, 'Rock,
you can't win, you ain't been hungry since you won that title.'" Mr. T
recalls a similar real life situation: "That's why Leon Spinks beat
Muhammad Ali the first time. Ali wasn't hungry. Leon was. I say in my
book, if you've ever seen Rocky, you've seen Leon Spinks. He is the
real-life Rocky. He wasn't even ranked, Rocky wasn't ranked. Apollo Creed
gave an unknown a chance. Leon was vicious and mean and took everything Ali
had, knocking him out. At least, the first time."
Although only a newcomer to motion pictures, Mr. T has already
developed
a dim view of those who make their living by criticising films, especially
when they're criticizing Stallone's films. "People don'i like Stallone
because he came up the unconventional way," he comments. "Stallone didn't
have an uncle in the business. All he had was a script. He borrowed money,
and on and on. They told him, 'We like the script, but we don't like you,'
So then ROCKY's a smash, an Academy Award winner. They say, 'Do more
ROCKY.' Then they say, 'We're tired of ROCKY,' so he can't win. When Rocky
vins, they identify with him; and they hate the loser, because in the loser
they see themselves. But if Rocky always
wins, they can't identify with him no more. Success breeds hatred, misery
loves company. So what the critics are saying is they're tired of Stallone
making millions of dollars off ROCKY, and then they get madder because the
movies come out good." Fortunately, there is a moral to Mr. T's story:
"People don't give a damn what the critics say anyway."
Mr. T, however, is quite candid about voicing his own critique of ROCKY
III. "This one is the best," he says. Why? "Because I'm in it...I have to
be honest about it. I trained and worked damn hard for that. I'm still
grateful to God, though." Of his role in ROCKY III, Mr. T comments, "It's
the most exciting assignment I've ever had. I've always admired fine actors
and enjoyed
films. It's been a real challenge to give it a try." Although already
well-known in motion picture circles, Mr. T came to Sylvester Stallone's
attention through exposure of a different sort - a professional bouncers'
contest. Winner and champion two years running, it was Mr. T's aggressive
performance that earned him the coveted role of Rocky Balboa's newest
adversary. Mr. T himself admits that his attitude during the contest was
very much like the one displayed by Clubber Lang in the film. "I had to be
hungry to win," he says. "It wasn't a game to me. When I say in the movie,
'I will destroy any man who tries to take what I got,' that was my feeling
in the second bouncer contest."
Although he'd had no previous acting experience, when it came to
playing
the role of Clubber Lang Mr. T was a natural. Says Sylvester Stallone, "You
don't rehearse him, you just turn him loose. He has a certain street rhythm
that would be a crime to tamper with." Mr. T adds, "I never acted before. I
never studied lessons before. I won't study lessons. Not because I think
I'm so good, but because I have this God-given talent. I can play a Pope or
a Priest in a movie. I can be a cook. I can be a black Apache, I can be
everything." This confidence, this unyielding belief that he can do
anything he truly wants to do, is an attitude that pervades every word Mr.
T says, every move Mr. T makes. "If I wanted to swim the English Channel,"
he comments, noting that he never swam distance before, "I would train to
do it. See, I don't believe in the word 'can't'." He adds, "I'm a very
positive person."
Along with this upbeat confidence comes a certain self-discipline that
parallels the "give it all you've got and then give it some more" message
of the ROCKY films. "Every day you've got to prove your worth," he asserts.
And how do you do that? In the world according to Mr. T, the answer is
quite simple. Just be "the best". "I can't be no ordinary anything," he
says. "Dr. King said, 'Be a bush if you can't be a tree, If you canlt b a
pine on top of the hill, be the strongest one in the valley. If you can't
be a highway, just be a trail. Go out and sweep the street the way
Michelangelo carved marble, like Beethoven wrote music, like Shakespeare
wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that folks in heaven would have to say,
'Here lived a great street sweeper.'"
Rererring to the challenges presented by his newly-adopted career,
Mr. T
comments, "I want my characters to come alive. I want to entertain, but I
also want to deliver a message on the screen. I want the audience to feel
sorrow and joy." Unfortunately, Clubber Lang was not a vehicle for
soliciting many positive emotions. "He's the opposition. Hets the opponent.
If he's the opponent, he's the enemy. The enemy has to be destroyed."
However, the fledgling actor is quick to acknowledge that, as Clubber Lang,
he played a pivotal role. "I entertained," he says. "I am poverty. I am the
landlord on your case. I am everything, all the things they (the audience)
hate; so that when I get beat, it makes them feel
good. They feel like Rocky. So if I can make them feel happy for just a few
minutes, I did what I set out to do. I entertained."
Entertainment is exactly the quality that Mr. T hopes to bring to
future
film projects. "I did a good movie," he says, "but the next one has to be
good. A high quality movie." Although he agrees that the early black
exploitation films were successful because they broke new ground, Mr. T has
no ambitions to be the next "Shaft, Slaughter, Super-Fly, black man kills
and takes over Harlem." "If I'm gonna' make a black movie," he says, "it's
gotta' have a
positive story." Unsurprisingly, he thinks his own climb to the top would
make pretty good viewing. A movie version of his upcoming biography, THE
BODYGUARD, is in the works.
<the end>
-----
TRIVIA TIME
Last issue's question was:
>What was the name of the cook at the POW camp the Team was held in during the
>war?
Irene was the first in with the correct answer (Michele only moments
behind!), which was Lin Duk Coo.
This week's question, for the truly trivially minded:
>What was the inscription on the watch Murdock gave Face as a farewell present
>in 'Alive at Five', and who had given Murdock the watch?
-----
Well, that's all for this issue - until next time - stay on the jazz!
nicole
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Quote of the week:
"The sky is so big and my plane is so crummy - please don't
let me eat it!"
- Murdock in "Where is the Monster When You Need Him?"
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Nicole
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Ten years ago a chemical engineering group was denied funding for a research
proposal they didn't submit. Today, still unemployed, they survive as
private consultants. If you have a problem, and no one else can help, and
if you can feed them, maybe you can hire . . . The E-Team.
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