#donald p bellisario

[nerds-yearbook]

Quantum Leap premiered on March 26, 1989. In New Mexico in 1995, Dr Sam Beckett fearing he would have his project shut down made a test run of his time machine. He "leaped" into the body of test pilot Tom Stratton in September 13, 1956. ("Genesis", Quantum Leap, TV Event)

[filmpenance]

Last Rites (1988)

Donald P. Bellisario 1h 43m [Day 12, 2024 - Trashy Tuesday]

"You are all witnesses! The wop started it!" - O'Bannon

Last Rites is what happens when you want to make a cool mafia film, but plot, good casting and assured direction are incidental. But still, it will be so cool!

Packed with Italian American cliches, this movie has more cheese than a Kraft factory.

It essentially follows a film noir framework, with all of the gravitas of Chef Boyardee.

Tom Berrenger plays mafia connected priest Father Michael Pace (pah-chay), who smokes, drinks, and bullies the other priest in his parish.

Word spreads quickly through the Italian mob community that underboss, Geno has been taken out. But who killed him?

It was mafia daughter Zena, Geno's wife who shot him - catching him in the arms of his Mexican mistress Angela (Daphne Zuniga), doing it against a lot of curtains.

Angela narrowly escapes the gunfire, and with possibly the least convincing Mexican accent of all time, finds herself at church in a confessional spilling the beans to Fr. Pace.

Angela doesn't know it, but Zena is Fr. Pace's sister.

He vows to keep her safe, despite his ties to Zena (Anne Twomey - giving her best Anjelica Houston impersonation). He also vows to keep it in his pants.

Fr. Michael is not great at the whole "keeping your vows" thing.

I still viscerally remember how much Roger Ebert hated Last Rites, calling it, "easily the most offensive big budget picture of 1988". I waited decades to experience what he was talking about. And it is so wonderfully, unintentionally funny. *

The film draws from some great inspirations. A little Scarface, some Fatal Attraction. It had me wondering if Jonathan Demme or Brian De Palma could have done something with this material. I think the first thing they'd do is rewrite it.

It's terrible. I'll probably watch it again.

Pair with / watch instead: Prizzi's Honor, Married to the Mob

TRAILER:

* So sidenote...

I was really trepidatious about watching Last Rites. I kept pushing it off. I remember the terrible Siskel & Ebert review - Ebert went in hard and it stuck with me. I was worried it would be terrible and I wanted it to be awesome. In my mind, there could be nothing more appealing than this Berenger/ Zuniga pairing. Before watching, I get to imagine everything this movie could be and watching it locks in a specificity I sensed I would find distasteful, like nationalism or spaghetti straps. But I had to confront it. Just watch it and accept history as it is and not the poster. Sort of like Electric Dreams.

Siskel & Ebert: https://youtu.be/u9gCiLZtpZI?si=elYoIq3c4sHlMb5P

[gameofthunder66]

-(finished) watchin' Season 2- 5/26/2023- 3 stars- on CBS (Paramount+)

LUCY & JESSE| NCIS HAWAI'I

Jesse being Lucy’s confidant about her relationship with Kate.

[unionjackpillow]

Today "Quantum Leap" series creator Donald P. Bellisario joins Ars Technica to answer once and for all the lingering questions we have about his enduringly popular show. Was Dr. Sam Beckett really leaping between all those time periods and people or did he simply imagine it all? What do people in the waiting room do while Sam is in their bodies? What happens to Sam's loyal ally Al? 30 years following the series finale, answers to these mysteries and more await.

Transcript from the website under the cut:

00:03 [mysterious music]

00:04 [Ziggy] Theorizing that one could create

00:06 a time-travel series set within his own lifetime,

00:10 Don Bellisario created a groundbreaking television series,

00:13 Quantum Leap.

00:14 Now nearly 30 years later,

00:17 Don finds himself answering

00:19 the unsolved mysteries of Dr. Sam Beckett's journey

00:22 striving to put right what once went wrong

00:25 and hoping each time

00:27 that his next answer will be the leap home.

00:31 [gentle techno music]

00:42 Oh boy.

00:43 [Ziggy] Was Sam really leaping or was he imagining it all?

00:47 Wasn't in Sam's mind.

00:49 He was actually leaping.

00:50 That's what I felt, anyway.

00:52 It wasn't something he was imagining.

00:54 It was real.

00:56 [Ziggy] What do people in the waiting room do

00:58 while Sam is in their bodies?

01:00 It's interesting to think about the waiting room.

01:03 The waiting room came from a novel that I had read

01:09 that had a waiting room in it,

01:11 different sense of Quantum Leap,

01:13 but in Quantum Leap, people in the waiting room

01:17 would be a little disturbed

01:19 by what had happened,

01:20 would not understand what was going on, of course.

01:23 Their interactions with each other

01:25 would have been interesting.

01:27 I don't think that they know

01:29 or remember anything that Sam felt

01:31 when he was in their body,

01:33 but I think that they leap back into their body

01:36 and remember being in the waiting room

01:40 and don't understand what has happened.

01:43 At one point, I thought about

01:44 maybe that's where all the stories come from about aliens,

01:48 that people felt there were aliens when they came back.

01:51 I think that when Sam leaps into someone's body,

01:55 doing his thing, when he leaps back out

02:00 and they are there left without Sam,

02:03 they don't remember what Sam did,

02:06 but they do have a sense of confusion

02:09 about what's gone on with them

02:12 during the time that the leap happened.

02:16 It could drive somebody crazy,

02:18 now that I think about it.

02:21 [Ziggy] When did you decide that Sam was married?

02:25 Did adding Donna to the series

02:27 create complications for the characters moving forward,

02:31 besides me?

02:33 Adding Donna created complications for Sam

02:36 because suddenly he has a wife

02:38 and that's complicated in itself.

02:40 Donna was very much in love with Sam

02:43 in a way he could do no wrong.

02:45 She understood what was going on with his leaping.

02:49 She wasn't very happy with him sleeping with other women,

02:51 but she understood why.

02:53 Sam was the love of her life

02:55 and I think she went on and lived her life

02:58 but she didn't hook up with anybody again, Sam was it.

03:03 And I think she always hoped that Sam would return,

03:07 but Sam was too busy helping other people

03:10 than to help his own wife.

03:13 [Ziggy] What were your touchstones

03:14 in designing the future?

03:16 Lights in blue boxes

03:18 and red boxes and yellow boxes [laughing]

03:21 work very well for the future.

03:24 The technology in the future was, of course,

03:26 far in advanced of where we were.

03:29 Sam designed Quantum Leap, that was his baby.

03:33 Al was part of it.

03:34 [Ziggy] You always have answers, Don.

03:37 When designing the near future,

03:39 why does everyone wear glowing lights?

03:42 Well, it was the future.

03:43 So you had to have something glowing,

03:46 like here in front of me now.

03:49 And in the very first episode Sam's accoutrements,

03:53 I had some part of it glowing and flashing.

03:57 [Ziggy] We know Al spends much of his time

03:59 covering for Sam.

04:01 But when, or if the details ever got out,

04:03 would the Quantum Leap project be considered a success?

04:07 The government see it as a success?

04:09 Well, they kept financing it.

04:10 So it had to be successful to the government on some level.

04:16 Al was very good at raising funds from Congress

04:20 and he had to explain Quantum Leap to them

04:23 on a level they could understand.

04:25 And he had to put out some teasers

04:28 that in Quantum Leap uncover something

04:31 that would be very positive

04:33 for the government and for the country.

04:35 He kept on that track when he met with Congress

04:39 and that's how he got the money.

04:41 He was a good talker

04:42 For $43 billion he could at least

04:45 have altered the results of the last presidential election.

04:49 I didn't tell any stories

04:50 where he would radically change history

04:53 because we know what goes on in history.

04:56 And that would have been as if the show was a pure fantasy,

05:01 which, I didn't want the audience to feel that way.

05:04 I wanted the audience to feel

05:06 that there really was Sam out there leaping through time.

05:10 There were certain things,

05:11 he could only leap into people that were ordinary.

05:15 That was what we started off with, that rule,

05:18 which I broke a couple of times later in the show.

05:21 The reason he could only leap into his own lifetime

05:23 was to make the show believable.

05:26 I didn't want it one day he'd leap into Rome

05:29 and Caesar's time.

05:31 I didn't want that.

05:32 I wanted every show to feel like it could really happen.

05:35 And that's why it had to be contemporary.

05:38 [Ziggy] What kind of challenges did you face

05:40 in producing a show that relied heavily on guest actors?

05:45 The show was an opportunity to use a lot of actors.

05:50 I never found that to be a challenge,

05:52 I found it to be an opportunity.

05:53 I liked the idea of being able

05:56 to pull different actors in from the acting pool.

05:59 The stories that we wrote gave us that opportunity,

06:03 which I think was very positive for the show.

06:06 [Ziggy] Is it true that the format of the show

06:08 was intentional and allowed you to use

06:11 existing resources, sets, and costumes?

06:14 Because we could leap into

06:16 just about any place in any time

06:19 we did use a lot of the sets that existed at Universal.

06:23 We'd drive around and see a set and think,

06:25 how can we put that into a story?

06:28 And we did it quite often.

06:30 It gave the show production values

06:32 that it would normally have,

06:34 using sets that had been paid for by another show.

06:39 My favorite set was the bar.

06:42 What d'ya got on tap?

06:43 By the way, my dad had that bar,

06:45 that bar was exactly replicated from the bar I was raised in

06:49 until I was 18 years old and went off to college,

06:52 including the beer taps, which were from my dad's bar,

06:56 which was a real time trip for me,

06:59 to be standing on that set

07:01 as if I was standing at home 18 years or 20 years before.

07:05 [Ziggy] How controversial was it

07:07 to produce the Lee Harvey Oswald episodes?

07:10 First of all when I created the show

07:12 I wanted to use ordinary people

07:14 because if you use ordinary people,

07:17 you can't, you're not changing history

07:20 with somebody famous.

07:22 But I got to the point where

07:23 I wanted to do Lee Harvey Oswald,

07:25 because I had served with Lee Harvey Oswald

07:29 in the Marine Corps.

07:30 And I knew Lee Harvey Oswald.

07:32 There were so many stories about multiple shooters

07:36 and multiple people behind it

07:39 that I believe that Lee Harvey was the only guy that did it.

07:42 And I knew that his type would react that way.

07:47 So I decided to do the show.

07:49 That episode was a little different for me

07:51 because I started the same way I do any episode,

07:54 I just start writing and something comes out,

07:57 but here I knew I was going to use Lee Harvey Oswald,

08:00 and I knew that he was going to

08:01 kill Kennedy in his lifetime.

08:03 So I had to work around all that.

08:06 It was an interesting episode to write,

08:08 dealing with somebody who actually lived,

08:11 killed the precedents.

08:13 [Ziggy] Was the evil leaper storyline

08:15 planned from the beginning?

08:17 Evil leapers were only in, I believe,

08:20 about three episodes.

08:22 I didn't have any plans to continue them.

08:25 They were put in an episode by another writer.

08:29 And so I let it go on for the three episodes,

08:32 but I never really felt comfortable with the evil leapers.

08:36 That's just a personal thing.

08:37 I don't know why I didn't feel comfortable with them,

08:39 other than they were evil.

08:41 So maybe I'm not too comfortable with that.

08:44 It didn't feel the same as the other episodes to me,

08:48 it felt different and it was different.

08:50 And I don't know that it was different in a good way.

08:53 Alia is not gone.

08:58 [Ziggy] What were some of your ideas

08:59 for a potential season six?

09:01 I didn't have a plan for season six.

09:04 It was going to be the same thing,

09:05 to tell all the stories that we could tell.

09:08 Quantum Leap had the great ability

09:11 to tell any kind of story.

09:13 There was no a running line that you couldn't get away from,

09:17 you have to just go with whatever story was being told.

09:21 I just planned to do a lot more individual stories

09:24 [Ziggy] Was Bruce McGill intentionally cast

09:26 in the series finale, Mirror Image,

09:28 as a callback to the pilot episode, Genesis Part I?

09:32 Bruce was an actor that I loved working with

09:35 and I wanted to work with him again.

09:38 And so that final episode I put Bruce in it.

09:42 He was in the first one

09:43 and put him in what turned out to be the last one.

09:46 It was a, he's a delight to work with.

09:49 Purely the producer's desire to have him in the show.

09:53 [Ziggy] How would you envision

09:54 a modern reboot of Quantum Leap?

09:56 I think if I did Quantum Leap today

09:58 I'd do it just the same way I did it decades ago.

10:02 I would tell the same type of stories,

10:04 doing stories of individuals, their challenges.

10:08 I would be able to use more sets from other shows

10:13 and more modern sets,

10:15 but it would basically be the same show.

10:17 What made the show great was the stories

10:20 and the interaction of the people,

10:22 not the sets or the costumes or anything.

10:25 How today's audiences would view the show,

10:27 I don't think that view it any different

10:29 than they did when we created it.

10:32 It's the stories that were so good.

10:35 And the people that I cast in the roles

10:39 that made the show come alive.

10:41 And I think the same thing would happened today.

10:43 Wish I could do it again.

10:45 I wouldn't serialize it.

10:47 I got away from that.

10:50 Never did it in the old show

10:52 and I wouldn't do it in doing it again.

10:55 I'd follow the same format.

10:57 [Ziggy] What happened to Sam after the finale?

11:00 Will he live forever, leaping at will,

11:03 or will he eventually die?

11:05 If he dies, what happens to his body?

11:08 I think Sam went on leaping through time.

11:12 I don't think he ever went home.

11:14 When that last episode ended

11:18 and the show went off the air,

11:20 fans were of two sections.

11:23 One section was that Sam went on leaping forever.

11:27 And the other section was that no, Sam leaped home

11:30 and they wanted him to leap home.

11:32 The fans have wanted him to leave home were upset with me.

11:35 I got a lot of, not nasty,

11:37 but I got a lot of negative letters from fans like that

11:40 because I said that he went leaping on.

11:44 Sam leaping on is the way the story has to go.

11:47 Can't stop, it's his life work.

11:50 He's making a choice to leap on

11:52 because he has so many people to help,

11:55 which every episode he helped somebody

11:58 and he had to keep doing that.

12:00 So he made a very conscious choice to keep leaping.

12:04 He could have chosen to leap back home,

12:06 he had that ability.

12:08 I'd like to think that Sam could live forever

12:10 but I doubt that would happen.

12:12 I don't think anyone can live forever.

12:14 So I think at some point his life had to come to an end

12:18 but maybe along the way,

12:21 Sammy Jo, daughter that he had,

12:24 [Sam] What's yours?

12:25 Sammy Jo.

12:27 There's a 91.9% chance

12:29 that Sammy Jo Fuller is your daughter.

12:33 She could take up the mantle and it would continue.

12:36 She has an IQ of 194.

12:40 So she got her brains from her father.

12:42 Potentially I saw that,

12:44 that Sammy Jo could take his place

12:46 and it would be a different show,

12:48 but she would keep leaping the same way that Sam did.

12:51 But I couldn't have done it

12:53 because Scott Bakula was so integral to the character

12:59 and so important to the show

13:02 that without him

13:03 I don't think the show could have gone on.

13:06 [Ziggy] What do you think happened to Al

13:08 when Sam was left leaping forever?

13:10 Well, that's an interesting question.

13:12 What happened to Al? [laughing]

13:14 I hadn't thought what happened to Al.

13:17 Dean Stockwell probably did.

13:18 But I think Al would have been traveling along

13:22 into the future along with him,

13:24 would still be there as a sidekick.

13:28 It would have to continue the storylines just as they had.

13:31 Sam's connection to Al was like an umbilical cord.

13:36 I don't think you could separate the two.

13:39 Where Sam went Al would follow.

13:42 Al wouldn't pass away, it's television.

13:45 It's a dirty job,

13:48 but somebody's got to do it.

13:50 Thank you for all the questions.

13:52 Hopefully someday Dr. Beckett will return home,

13:56 but probably not.

13:58 Quantum Leap, may it come back again.

14:04 [bright music]

[alltrekvarnews]

'Magnum P.I.' terminará con la temporada 5 Parte 2 en NBC.

[internationalnewspod]

This week special guest and presidential expert Eric Krug returns for a Donald P Bellisariosance special feature on Jan Michael Vincent, and the guys talk presidential assassinations from history including…who REALLY killed JFK! (Spoiler: It was Oswald.)

Hosts: Kevin Harrison, Mike Wiebe, Brian Camp

Producer & Music: Mark Ryan

Announcer: Nancy Walker

Graphic Designer: Mike Tidwell

Check out Eric Krug’s Substack: https://erickrug.substack.com

Merch: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/79908204

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/internationalnewspod

[spontaneousellipsis]

Quantum Leap always worked in service of the mysterious and beautiful ways in which human beings are connected, but all the government sees is a scapegoat for their bad policies and poor choices. Time travel changes things, so they’ve somehow convinced themselves that we changed things for the worse.

QUANTUM LEAP | season one created by Donald P. Bellisario, developed by Steven Lilien and Bryan Wynbrandt

[miamarie1960]

Ali’s speech, it begins 27 minutes into the feed.

[koschei-the-ginger]

Hey Donald P Bellisario, can you do me a favour? Can you fucking shoot me?

[nerds-yearbook]

The last episode of the original run of Quantum Leap aired on May 5, 1993. Almost everyone in the episode appeared in previous episodes or reference previously mentioned characters. In theory, Sam lept into himself in August 8, 1953 in a mining town, but it appeared he had actually lept into some kind of limbo possibly meeting God. It was implied that Sam was the one controlling his leaps. Sam went on to alter Al's life. A title card at the end revealed that Sam never returned home again. ("Mirror Image", Quantum Leap, TV Event)

[ncisfranchise-source]

Mark Harmon is sharing behind-the-scenes secrets about his time on NCIS and how he may not have starred in it if things -- including his character's name -- had been slightly different. 

Harmon, 72, recently sat down with ET's Kevin Frazier to promote his new book, Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. 

The actor discussed the novel before the conversation turned to NCIS, the long-running CBS drama in which he starred as Leroy Jethro Gibbs for 19 seasons.  

His participation in the show, however, may not have happened for a number of reasons including where he was at in his personal life when the script and auditions first came around.

"I didn't expect to like the script as much as I did when I first read it," Harmon said. "I was reading other things and I was also trying to stay home -- young family and I wanted to try and be home more." 

What hooked the actor? It was the character's name, he shared. 

"I read 'Leroy Jethro Gibbs' and thought, 'Huh, I like that name,'" Harmon said of what initially piqued his interest. "And then for a brief second when I decided that I liked the idea of the project, the name changed." 

The name that Gibbs almost had was far less interesting and certainly a dealbreaker for the veteran actor who had come off of projects like Freaky Friday, The West Wing and JAG before NCIS began airing. 

"Bob Johnson or something like that. And I went, 'No, no, it's gotta be Leroy Jethro Gibbs.' The creator said, 'No, you can't play a guy named Leroy Jethro Gibbs,' and I said, 'Why not?'" the actor and writer continued. "And then it went back and I was happy about it."

He also confirmed that it was not the network but the creator -- Donald P. Bellisario -- who wanted to change the name. 

Harmon left the show in 2022 after 19 seasons to the shock and sadness of fans. He told ET he is still grateful for every episode and all of the success the show has seen. 

"As an actor, you don't think in those kinds of terms," Harmon said in response to being asked about the series' 20th anniversary. "You're thinking, 'TV series, if it does three years, we're gifted.' But they've done well and they've worked hard and so it's a really good group of people." 

"I don't know that any of us thought that the show was going to be around as long as it's been around," he continued. 

The series went on to become so popular that it spawned numerous spinoffs including NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: Hawaii and the latest to join the bunch, NCIS: Sydney. 

"We talked about this a lot ... over the years and I always thought that this show had characters, and it had humor, which made it different," Harmon said. "It had a case, but the case isn't what drove it -- I think that's still true." 

Amid its monumental anniversary, Harmon -- who appeared in more than 430 episodes -- said he still understands why viewers come back week after week. 

As for whether or not he would make a return to the show, he's not completely ruling out the possibility that viewers will see Gibbs again. 

"He's probably sitting in a stream up in Alaska fishing," Harmon joked. "Is he going to get out of the stream? I don't know. But if he is, I don't know about it." 

Harmon's book, Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, is roughly about the start of the real-life Naval Criminal Investigative Service. 

"When I first got the role in the show, I tried to google NCIS to figure out what it was -- I never heard of it -- there wasn't much information. And if you google it now, there's like 25 pages of information," he said, describing why it was important for him and Leon Carroll -- a longtime NCIS technical adviser -- to write it. 

According to the book's description, it tells the tale of Douglas Wada, the only Japanese American agent in naval intelligence, and Takeo Yoshikawa, a Japanese spy sent to Pearl Harbor to gather information. 

Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor is available now wherever books are sold. 

[storyofmychoices]

Calli (VOS) MC is cousins with Lilah (COP) MC and I just decided Calli goes to Penn State to study journalism. Do you know what school that is?

Donald P Bellisario College of Communications

Why is that entertaining to me?

Lilah's FC is Troian Bellisario

Love that little connection!

[ctrl-salt-delete]

i'm convinced NCIS will never be cancelled. we are on season 20 and the ratings are as high as they have ever been. donald p bellisario has truly cracked the code on what the american public wants to consume, and it is a cop show where the cops are also the troops.

[levysoft]

Today "Quantum Leap" series creator Donald P. Bellisario joins Ars Technica to answer once and for all the lingering questions we have about his enduringly popular show. Was Dr. Sam Beckett really leaping between all those time periods and people or did he simply imagine it all? What do people in the waiting room do while Sam is in their bodies? What happens to Sam's loyal ally Al? 30 years following the series finale, answers to these mysteries and more await.