Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
On the Jazz - Vol 01 Issue 09
___ ____ ___ ___ _ ___ ___
/ / / \ / / /__ / /__ / /__\ / /
/__/ / \/ / / / /___ /__/ / \ /___ /___
The totally unofficial A-Team electronic mail newsletter
Submission address: onthejazz
Administrivia: Nicole Pellegrini
pellegri, nicpell
-------------------------------------------------------------
DATE: December 11, 1994
ISSUE: 9
VOLUME: 1
-------------------------------------------------------------
Hey all,
Another week, another issue. As always, my babbling
will take up the bulk of this week's topics, but I think
I've got some interesting things to bring up.
Administrivia first: This week's digest is the last one
for this year as I will be away and computerless after this week
until mid-January. Issue 10 will be sent out sometime around
the 20th of January.
Keep sending in your survey results and any other materials
during the break, my one bit of caution would be that you might
want to cc all mail directed to here to my other account,
pellegri, as AOL sometimes swallows mail
that hasn't been checked in x number of days.
Thanks go out to Jasper this week, who informed me that he has
uploaded all the old digests to his www homepage, this address
is http://dds.nl/~jmm/
I recently aquired some very interesting old TAT fanzines and
other materials, which I will talk more about in more length
in January. Most of the material consists of original stories
written by fans, some really excellent, some pretty bad, and
some just plain weird. Some of the more interesting stories
I will try to transcribe for our group's enjoyment; I see from
the surveys that have come in so far that there are more than
a few Knight Rider and Battlestar Gallactica fans here, so
one of the first stories I may include will be a crossover story
with The A-Team and Kinght Rider or BG. These are some of the
funniest stories.
Also, if anyone here feels especially creative and would like to
submit an original A-Team related story of their own, I would
definitely encourage you to do so! I will be working on
a few over winter break.
Finally, a while back (in one of the first digests, I think), Tony
asked for Dwight Schultz bio information. Well I finally have
located some! The following article appeared in US
magazine, sometime in '84. I thought you might all enjoy it.
All typos purely the fault of yours truly...
-------------------------------------------------------------
"WACKO: Dwight Schultz, 'The A-Team''s house schizophrenic, is
nobody's fool, even when he chokes in the clutch"
(Photos: full page shot of Dwight and Mr. T, from the "Range
Rider" episode; caption: "Schultz loves to needle his baleful
bete noir, the bejeweled Mr. T, with tales of an invisible dog.
'Turkey!' is T's retort." Smaller photo of Dwight, decidedly out-
of-costume; caption: "Howling Mad is every bit the speaker of his
house. He indulges in a bottomless passion for costly stereo
equipment.")
Article by Glenn Lambert
Howling Mad Murdock, The A-Team's daredevil pilot and refugee
from a mental ward, slips in and out of personalities as deftly
as a juggler tosses oranges. One moment he's a suicide squad
leader, the next, a "dese, dem, and dose" mobster, then an
uppercrust Englishman. His penchant for the perposterous even
wears down B.A., played by the formidable Mr. T.
It takes a while to realize that Dwight Schultz, 32, the
preppy-looking fellow with the serious expression, wearing a blue
blazer with gold buttons and rimless glasses, is the lunatic on
The A-Team, the most popular new show of the past TV season.
"As a child, I always loved sound and voices," Schultz says.
"Very early on, I'd go to a movie, come back and imitate
everything and everybody. I'd sit with a box of clay and make
monsters and people, and I'd do the voices for everybody."
The Baltimore native soon outgrew his attraction for clay
theater, but his attraction to acting increased. "For one year,"
he says, "I spent every night listening to Olivier's 'Othello'
just to learn how to speak." His admiration for Olivier
eventually led to an active exchange of letters between the two.
The subject? Theater, of course. Schultz treasures the products
of this spontaneous correspondence school course in the dramatic
arts.
Schultz did serious acting en route to the wacky A Team, a
sort of Robin Hood (George Peppard) and his Merry Men. He
earned a degree in theater arts from Towson State University in
Maryland, then worked in productions on and off Broadway. He
appeared in plays by Sam Shepard, Tom Stoppard, and David Mamet;
co-stars included Maggie Smith and Glenn Close. His zanier side
began to emerge in a cabaret act he tried out in 1978 in
Williamstown, Mass. An NBC talent scout saw him there and soon a
tape of Schultz impersonating writer Truman Capote and other
celebrities was on its way to Hollywood. "I later heard that the
tape was circulating at parties."
What kept Schultz out of circulation for a while was his
tendency to choke up in the clutch. "I'm the world's worst
auditioner," he says, though he did get parts on Hill Street
Blues and CHiPs.
When NBC's A Team came along, madman Murdock seemed like the
perfect part for Schultz, the man of a thousand faces: "I
looked at the character and said, 'My God, I could do anything
with this part!' It was fun, it was witty, and I laughed out
loud when I read it."
Howling Mad's invisible dog, Billy, first "appeared" when the
show's pilot was being filmed. "Billy began as an
improvisation," says the actor. "It just came out. It seemed
right that Murdock would have an imaginary pet."
In 1971, Schultz concentrated on other animals, not
necessarily the man's-best-friend species. "I worked for New
York's bureau of pest control." He was also a waitor, sold air
purifiers door to door and slept on a couch in a railroad
apartment. Then came The A Team, which debuted last Jan. 23.
"All of a sudden, business managers, press agents and other
people are coming after you because they follow the money. It's
so fast, and you're trying to figure out, What's happening?
Where am I? Who are my friends?
"You need time," sighs Schultz, who took time to marry actress
Wendy Fulton, 24, last June. They met a few years ago in New
York, and, says the bridegroom, "It was love at first sight.
"It's a fairy tale," he adds. "One year we were poor. The
next year I was on The A Team and Wendy was in Bare Essence. She
played the part of Muffin. A friend of ours was a story editor
on St. Elsewhere, so the three of us had back-to-back series on
the same network on the same night."
Says prime-time's most popular certifiable lunatic: "I've been
very lucky. I'm ecstatic about the part. I couldn't have asked
for a better TV role. Murdock can do anything. He can be
crazy. He can be serious." But probably not as serious as
Schultz is about Murdock's craziness.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Anyway, whew, that's more than enough from me here, I *do*
have finals to prepare for now that I've been avoiding studying
for (and typing in articles instead! ;-)
until next year everybody...
nicole
-------------------------------------------------------------
Quote of the Week:
"...Is this another one of your piece of cake jobs, supposed to
go down 1, 2, 3? But remember, there's always 4, 5, and 6!"
--B.A. in "There Goes the Neighborhood"
-------------------------------------------------------------
Subj: looking for an episode
Date: Mon, Dec 5, 1994 11:42 AM EST
From: nifo
X-From: nifo (James South)
To: Onthejazz
Hi-
My wife is a big Man from U.N.C.L.E. fan and I'd love to get
her a copy of the A-Team episode that featured Robert Vaughn and
David MacCallum. If anyone could help, drop me a note.
Thanks
James
--
-------------------------------------------------------------
James,
I can help you out with that, it just so happened that episode
aired here in Philly last week!
Seriously, if anyone else needs any A-Team on video, I'm more
then happy to copy them for you, I'm up to about 60 episodes
right now, mostly I'm just still missing the 3rd season, half the
1st and half of the 5th. It just gives me an excuse to watch
my tapes again :-)
--nicole
-------------------------------------------------------------
Subj: A-Team music
Date: Mon, Dec 5, 1994 12:48 PM EST
From: C643686
X-From: C643686 (Tony Friedman)
To: Onthejazz
I just wanted everyone to know that i came across a very rare CD while I was
on Thanksgiving break in Memphis, TN. I visited a store named Planet Music
and they had everything you could ever imagine. I was browsing through the
soundtracks and one of the first ones i came across was The A-Team
soundtrack. It cost me $16.00, but was worth it. It features all
all instrumental music from the show composed by Mike Post. There are 15
different pieces in all, and the total time of the CD is about 40 minutes.
If anyone would like a copy on cassette, e-mail me privately and we can
work something out.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Subj: Yes
Date: Thu, Dec 8, 1994 1:33 PM EST
From: ipcjmm
Sender: ipcjmm
Reply-to: ipcjmm
To: ONTHEJAZZ
I N T E R O F F I C E M E M O R A N D U M
Date: 1994-Dec-08 16:12 CDT
From: Jasper Molenmaker
IPCJMM
Dept: Inf. Systems & Process
Control
Tel No: 03402-75679
TO: Remote Addressee ( _INET"""ONTHEJAZZ""" )
Subject: Yes
Yes,
Finally the television bosses have come to their senses, all A-team episodes
are
broadcast again on Dutch television. Every weekday at 17:45 the team shoots,
runs, drives, flies, explodes, fights and jokes again on my TV.
Thanks, Nicole for the little piece about the A-team visiting Holland. I can
remember the pictures from the TV-news again. It was really crowded on
Schiphol
Airport with fans. The team made a tour through Holland by helicopter. And on
each landing spot the same pictures, thousands of fans.
I haven't had time to search for newspaper articles about that event, maybe
in
the upcoming Christmas vacation.
Jasper
-------------------------* End *------------------------------------
