When a reputable British media outlet publishes a list of dumb questions posed for Sam Shepard with his less-than-truthful answers, it's a bit puzzling. When, how and where this opportunity arose is anybody's guess. If you know Mr. I-don't-like-to-answer-questions, you'll be able to quickly pick up the silly responses, such as "I am always relaxed".  Echoes of James Lipton here...

When were you happiest?
Before I was born.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?
That's a hard one. All of the great writers whom I admire have died. I guess the most recent one would be Márquez.

Property aside, what's the most expensive thing you've bought?
A horse.

What is your most treasured possession?
A horse.

What makes you unhappy?
The rain.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?
My shoes.

What is your most unappealing habit?
Picking my nose.

What would be your fancy dress costume of choice?
I don't attend costume parties.

What is your favorite smell?
Magnolias.

What is your favorite word?
"Extemporaneous".

If you could bring something extinct back to life, what would you choose?
Mastodons.

Cat or dog?
Dogs.

What do you owe your parents?
Nothing.

Have you said 'I love you' and not meant it?
No.

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Kate Moss.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
The words I overuse are all adverbs.

What is the worst job you've done?
Cleaning horse piss. I keep my horses out in the open, but when I was working the ranches, I had to clean the stalls. It was a horrible job.

If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Nothing.

If you could go back in time, where would you go?
To the 1400s. Historically, I think it would be interesting – it was a transitional time, like we have now.

How do you relax?
I am always relaxed.

What is the closest you've come to death?
I was shot in the wrist when I was a kid. Deliberately. I am not telling [by whom].

What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Maybe Kate Moss.

What keeps you awake at night?
Mosquitoes.

Where would you most like to be right now?
Where I am – in the Florida Keys, fishing for tarpon.

In the past week COLD IN JULY has garnered some great reviews since it was released on May 23rd.

Bob Grimm of the Tuscon Weekly writes, "Who knew Sam Shepard could be so damn scary? As a deranged father recently released from prison and seeking revenge, Shepard is just one of the many reasons to see 'Cold in July', a first rate Texas thriller from director Jim Mickle that stands as one of the better films of 2014 thus far... Killing Them Softly, Mud, Out of the Furnace, and a short but haunting appearance in August: Osage County reveal that the man with the golden typewriter has a whole lot of powerhouse acting left in him."

Though the film is presently showing a 90% rating on the Tomatometer, I have to disgree with the critics. After viewing it last night, I'm still having trouble swallowing its multitude of implausible plot developments and twists.

Since the screenplay was based on a novel, I had higher expectations but the script lacks cohesion as well as any sense of reality. I have a penchant for this genre - love "Blood Simple", "Red Rock West" and HBO's "True Detective" series. The audience is introduced to family man Richard Dane, played by Michael C. Hall, and he comes across as a rather sweet and  somewhat timid man. He's a loving husband and father and law-abiding citizen. His becoming Rambo with the decision to risk losing his family for a bunch of low lifes does not fly unless he's suffering from some kind of Jekyl and Hyde disorder. Sam was terribly miscast and barely exudes any danger or menacing presence. Throw in Don Johnson with that laughable boyish grin and you've gotten rid of all suspense. Such a disappointment!

On a personal aside, I previously mentioned that this movie was filmed in my backyard in upstate NY. It was once a strong IBM community with as many as 7100 employees back in its heyday. Upon reaching 25 years of service, an employee received a pendulum clock with a gold plated inscription. My husband's gift still has a prominent place in our living room. Obviously, the filmmakers took over an IBMer's home because the clock shows up in the film as seen in the photo below.            

Here are some paparazzi shots taken in NYC this month. The strange thing is they were all taken on Bowery Street. The first set shows Sam's daughter Hannah out shopping with her mom.

The second set  shows Sam with an unnamed woman. Since they're standing with the arms around each other while he gives directions, my guess is these two may be more than friends.

When San Francisco theatrical group Word for Word wanted to stage Sam's prose verbatim, he said he considered short stories a unique literary genre and when he wants to write a play, he writes a play. "Why should I let you do this?" he asked. Creator Amy Kossow admitted, "He liked the narrative voice of his prose and didn't want to lose it." Eventually Sam caved in with his blessing for the challenging project. "36 Stories by Sam Shepard" opened May 21st and will run through June 22. Kossow selected material from five Shepard books - "Hawk Moon", "Motel Chronicles", Day out of Days", "Great Dream of Heaven" and "Cruising Paradise". Personally, I love his short stories, especially when he reads them. My audiotape of "Cruising Paradise" is almost worn out! IMHO, to take bits of his prose and scramble them into something anew certainly dilutes the flavor and magic of each delightful story weakening its strength and continuity.

Robert Hurwitt, theater critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, agrees. He writes, "The pieces never cohere into a whole, narratively or tonally - which isn't surprising given the wide range of Kossow's sources. As engrossing as the actors make it in the moment, '36' leaves you not only without much of a story but with only a vague sense of Shepard's voice."

Variety is reporting today that COLD IN JULY will be among the 19 features set to screen next month in the 46th annual Directors' Fortnight sidebar at Cannes. It’ll be the second time director Jim Mickle has bounced from Park City to Directors’ Fortnight, as he did with his 2013 arthouse film, "We Are What We Are." Delegate general Edouard Waintrop says this latest Mickle thriller "plays with three subgenres of the cop movie — it’s a crazy and galvanizing movie."

Keys News has posted a few more details on the filming of the upcoming Netflix series, yet unnamed. Since the creators have not been able to come up with a title, we will presently refer to it as the "Black Sheep" series. As previously mentioned, Sam plays the family patriarch, Robert, whose 'black sheep" son returns home causing dark secrets from the past to surface.

American Theatre magazine celebrates its 30th anniversary this month. Sam graced the cover of its very first issue in April 1984. It featured an interview with the interview-shy playwright by a 19-year-old Amy Lippman, representing Harvard University's student magazine. The photograph was taken by Melinda Wickman.

You might blame some of Sam's responses on his being a young man but he was actually 41 years old at the time. He had won the Pulitzer Prize for "Buried Child" five years before. Surprisingly, but in hindsight, not surprisingly, he commented, "I've been in a few rodeos, and the first team roping that I won gave me more of a feeling of accomplishment and pride of achievement than I ever got winning the Pulitzer Prize."

The trailer for Jim Mickle's COLD IN JULY can now be seen online. The thriller is set for release across the UK on June 27th and will be available through VOD in the USA on May 23.

Discovery Channel has announced that KLONDIKE will be available on DVD on June 10. The six-part mini-series at 429 minutes aired in January and includes some major talent, beginning with Sam Shepard in his awesome role as a Catholic priest. Also bringing their respected older artistry to the Gold Rush drama is Tim Roth, Marton Csokas and Ian Hart. This adventure about the ruthless and cut-throat quest for gold in turn-of-the-century America takes its inspiration from Charlotte Gray’s book "Gold Diggers: Striking it Rich in the Klondike".

The series debuted in the UK this past week. Hugh David of Cult TV Times wrote, "Brit director Simon Cellan Jones does a fine job in clearly difficult terrain, as do the crew and cast. The locations clearly push everyone to a level of realism that it would be easy to waste, and he doesn’t. It helps though when the cast is this good. Fans of westerns and classic American historicals should give this a go, without hesitation." The Evening Standard describes Sam as a "feisty priest with startled hair." Love it!

I thought all the promotional artwork was fantastic and captured the essence and time period of the story. Photographer Kevin Lynch discussed the publicity shoot saying, "We had sometimes 15-20 minutes to get the shots with people like Sam Shepard and Tim Roth. I wanted to get the actors to be in character, and to comprehend what we were trying to convey. They have to look like they’re in character without overacting." For some of the posters, under-lighting in gold hues was used to add further drama to the images and it works as seen below.

First light
Miracle of morning
Peeling back night
Like a page in a book

Snails peek at the doors of their shells
Gold in their mouth
Shining
Astonishing light

Courage pounding at the cage of ribs
Yet stillness rides
The steaming backs of grazing bulls

An Ed Fisher cartoon in the January 6, 1986 edition of The New Yorker indicates how extensive Sam's popularity had become by that date.

Bob Dylan's '80s output doesn’t get a lot of love, but he was plenty busy during the decade, and some of his best recordings from that era are getting the tribute treatment from a diverse array of younger artists.

Titled 'Bob Dylan in the '80s: Volume One,' the new collection is due March 25 and, according to the press release issued by ATO Records, aims to shed new light on a large cache of Bob Dylan songs that have long gone ignored. Featured is comedian Reggie Watts, who offers a dancehall reprise of "Brownsville Girl," an 11-minute epic, co-written by Sam, that originally appeared on Dylan's 1986 LP, "Knocked Out Loaded". The song is a rerecorded version of an outtake from the Empire Burlesque sessions and was originally called "New Danville Girl". Click here for the lyrics.

In a 1987 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Sam described “Brownsville Girl” in the following way: "It has to do with a guy standing on line and waiting to see an old Gregory Peck movie that he can’t quite remember – only pieces of it, and then this whole memory thing happens, unfolding before his very eyes. He starts speaking internally to a woman he’d been hanging out with, recalling their meetings and reliving the whole journey they’d gone on – and then it returns to the guy, who’s still standing on line in the rain."

FYI, the "Rolling Thunder Logbook" page has just been posted with these photos of Dylan and Shepard in Massachusetts back in 1975. Up in my attic you'll find one of my first LP's - "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan", his second album released in 1963. Oh, what great songs!

IFC Films has announced that COLD IN JULY will have a limited theatrical release and become available on VOD on May 23. The movie premiered at Sundance in January with The Hollywood Reporter commenting, "Michael C. Hall's stunned intensity, flanked by wildly enjoyable character turns from Sam Shepard and Don Johnson, should lure a small but appreciative audience with a taste for unconventional action". J.R. Lansdale, the author of the crime noir novel the film is based on, has a small part in the movie and helped coach the actors in their East Texas accents. The film was shot last summer near my Woodstock, NY home. The photo below shows Michael C. Hall being photographed by fans while filming on North Front Street in uptown Kingston.

A 13-episode drama series, yet unnamed, produced by Sony Pictures Television, will be premiering on Netflix. Sam will play Robert, the patriarch of the family, with Sissy Spacek in the role of his wife. This will be their fourth collaboration having previously starred together in "Raggedy Man", "Crimes of the Heart", "The Good Old Boys" and "Streets of Laredo."

I checked out this film myself yesterday and I was definitely underwhelmed considering how much I admired Scott Cooper's previous film, "Crazy Heart". Many reviewers have compared the film to Michael Cimino's "Deer Hunter" but it sure lacks the gravitas to come anywhere close to that 1978 classic. The one glaring question I have is what was the purpose of Sam's character? He plays Christian Bale's Uncle Red, who has barely any dialogue and absolutely no purpose to move the story forward. Well, we all know he's easy on the eyes so it wasn't a wasted two hours. I will give praise for Masanobu Takayanagi’s stark cinematography and Dickon Hinchliffe’s evocative score. And the outstanding performances as well. Bale, Affleck, Dafoe, Whitaker, Harrelson and Shepard have either won an Oscar or been nominated and they confirm their artistic talent here. Casey Affleck blew me away. Wish we could see more of him.

FYI, another lawsuit has been filed against the filmmakers as well as the New York Post. The plaintiffs are eight Ramapough people who say the movie casts them in a "false light" and that it intentionally inflicted emotional distress. The defendants include producer Leonardo DiCaprio, director Scott Cooper and writer Brad Inglesby, of The New York Post, who wrote a review describing the hoodlums as "New Jersey hillbillies". This lawsuit comes weeks after a previous one was filed in December seeking $50 million from the makers of the film. The 17 Ramapough who filed the December lawsuit say they suffered ridicule and hatred after "Out of the Furnace" was released.

It appears that Premiere Props is trying to sell Sam's wardrobe for the film. Do you have $400? The Amazon.com description reads: "Tan oilskin with dark brown brushed collar 'Levis Strauss' jacket, burgundy heavy cotton long sleeve button front 'St. John's Bay' shirt, (size XL) and light blue denim 'Wranglers' jeans. (size 34)."

On Saturday evening, the Independent Spirit Awards were held in Santa Monica. The Robert Altman Award was presented to director Jeff Nichols and his cast. Sam was not in attendance.

On January 9th, Sam was caught by the paparazzi with son Walker as they left La Scala restaurant in Beverly Hills.

A Lie of the Mind:  Prescott Center for the Arts, Phoeniz, AZ - from March 6-16.

"This play needs music. Live music. Music with an American backbone. All I ask is that there be music. 'A Lie of the Mind' is a play not so much to be understood, as it is a play to be felt."   ...Sam Shepard

Fool for Love: Alter Theater, San Rafael, CA - thru March 9

"Sharp dialogue pours dizzyingly from Shepard’s pen, making this reviewer wish the 90-minute play could tumble around longer."  ...Cari Lynn Pace, Marinscope.com

True West:  Theatre Exile, Philadelphia, PA-  thru February 23

"The greatness in Shepard’s play lies in its dark side. Beneath the surface comedy is a play full of mournfulness and violence."  ...David Anthony Fox, Philadelphia City Paper

Ages of the Moon: Henry Clay Theatre, Louisville, KY - thru February 23

Valentine's Day and our playwright is spotted having breakfast at the Counter Culture Cafe in Santa Fe, NM.

The above photo was not taken today but it's funny that there is a man who resembles Sam but we know it's definitely not him because of the laptop. Here's a pic of Sam's desk at the Santa Fe Institute.

I found this b&w photo posted online and it was tagged "Out of the Furnace". I'm not sure it's actually a movie still (de-colorized) or was taken during filming. In any event, it's a cool picture.

Excerpt from "Motel Chronicles" by Sam:

"I remember trying to imitate Burt Lancaster’s smile after I saw him and Gary Cooper in 'Vera Cruz'. For days, I practiced in the backyard. Weaving through the tomato plants. Sneering. Grinning that grin. Sliding my upper lip up over my teeth. After a few days of practice, I tried it out on the girls at school. They didn’t seem to notice. I broadened my interpretation until I started getting strange reactions from the other kids. They would look straight at my teeth and a fear would creep into their eyes. I’d forgotten how bad my teeth were. How one of the front ones was dead and brown and overlapped the broken one right next to it. I’d actually come to believe I was in possession of a full head of perfectly pearly Burt Lancaster-type of teeth. I didn’t want to scare anyone so I stopped grinning after that. I only did it in private."    

A photographic exhibition is opening tomorrow at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. It's called "American Cool". What is cool? According to its creators, Joel Dinerstein and Frank Goodyear III, to be cool means to exude the aura of something new and uncontainable. Cool is the opposite of innocence or virtue. Someone cool has a charismatic edge and a dark side. Cool is an earned form of individuality. Each generation has certain individuals who bring innovation and style to a field of endeavor while projecting a certain charismatic self-possession. They are the figures selected for this exhibition: the successful rebels of American culture. From hundreds of actors, actresses, artists, musicians and writers, 100 were chosen. Can you guess some of their names? If you said Kerouac or Andy Warhol or James Dean, you're right. What about Sam Shepard? Yes, he's on the list! No surprise. Friend Patti Smith made the list as well.

Among the photographers featured in the show are Diane Arbus, Annie Leibovitz and Robert Mapplethorpe. The photo chosen for Sam is by Brigette Lacombe. It was taken in 1983 and the following two photos were also taken during Ms. Lacombe's shoot.

The Discovery Channel’s expensive gamble on KLONDIKE is paying off big time for the network, producing its biggest Monday prime-time numbers. The six-hour miniseries, which finished its three-night run last night reached 1.9-million viewers in Canada and 3.4-million American viewers. Reviews have been mixed, although it earned a respectable 73 per cent approval rating on metacritic, but those who enjoyed it were lavish in their praise.

The San Francisco Chronicle said, "With a cast headed by 'Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden, 'Klondike' grabs you with terrific performances, an unusually rich script, magnificently sweeping visuals of jagged mountains overlooking valleys of ice and snow, and such a convincing attention to period detail, you’ll believe you’re back in Dawson City at the end of the 19th century."

Vanity Fair's Krista Smith interviewed Sam while he was at Sundance. He told her how "Cold in July" was shot on an extremely low budget calling it "very much a handmade movie." Going into a big shoot-out scene, Sam was handed the cartridges for the prop gun and told: "Make sure you make each one of these count. It's going to be a big gunfight, but you only have three cartridges." Another scene with characters shooting bottles off barrels involved "a girl standing at the top of a ladder with a fishing pole and with fishing line, and she's popping each one of the bottles off as you shoot".

In regard to his "Mud" co-star, Matthew McConaughey, nominated for his first Oscar for his lead role in "Dallas Buyers Club", Sam said, "It's really great to see an actor find himself in his sojourn."

What's he currently writing? He replied a "book", explaining that he was determined "to sustain a piece of prose instead of having it all broken up into stories."

When asked about being recognized in public, Sam related a funny story how there have been times when a person would approach him and ask if he's Sam Shepard. When he would say "yes", the person would say, "No, you're not."

Asked about how he keeps his privacy, he replied, "I try not to be in situations where I'm being grabbed at. For the most part you can avoid them. Not here." What does he think of Sundance? "Chaotic. It's crazy."

He mentioned his next film project would be with "Mud" director Jeff Nichols. I'm not sure if he was referring to the current project now filming called, "Midnight Special", a sci-fi drama.

The photos below were taken at Sundance. The first photo was taken by Vanity Fair and the second one is a tintype shot by photographer Victoria Will for Esquire.

On February 26th, "August: Osage County" will be released in France with a different title. It will be called "Un été à Osage County" - "A Summer in Osage County". Couldn't they come up with the French word for August?

The Sundance deals are now moving faster as the festival heads toward its final weekend. IFC Films has just picked up North American rights to Jim Mickle's COLD IN JULY. The film premiered on Saturday evening to mostly positive reviews. Mickle announced, "Our whole team is ecstatic to be partnering with IFC Films. This is the perfect fit for our film." The distributor plans to release the film theatrically and on VOD this summer.

A few reviews of COLD IN JULY have surfaced from Park City, Utah, and it's all positive for our man. In an video interview with EW at Sundance, Sam shared that he wasn't sure he was up to the role of the revengeful Ben Russel. He kept vascillating between taking it or passing. Ultimately, he decided to jump in and the director conceded Sam did a great job. According to the first reviews, he nailed the "menacing" look. One critic said Sam seemed to model his personality on Robert Mitchum's turn in "Night of the Hunter". Interesting...

Here's a portrait from Sundance taken by the Hollywood Reporter.

Interview magazine spoke with actor Dermot Mulroney, also starring in "August: Osage County". He was asked about his thoughts on two famous playwrights - Tracy Letts and Sam Shepard.

I predicted on January 4th that there was a good chance Sam would show up at Sundance and sure enough, he did. COLD IN JULY premiered today [too early for any reviews] but you can check out several photos in the Sundance gallery.

Paste magazine interviewed director Jeff Mickle about his film, COLD IN JULY, which screened yesterday at Sundance. The conversation got around to casting. Mickle said, "We got Mike [Michael C. Hall] on board and then [I heard] Sam Shepard was interested. I flew out to New Mexico where he lives in Santa Fe - and my parents had just moved there - flew out, stayed with them and had breakfast with him one morning. That was an amazingly memorable experience."

Mickle was told he was quite brave sending something to Sam Shepard that he wrote, especially something about masculinity. Mickle replied, "I can’t tell you how any times we were like, 'You know, we want this scene to be kind of Shepardy.' The fact that it happened that way is amazing. At some point we really killed ourselves - we couldn’t figure out how to make this one scene that was really troublesome. I can’t say how many times we rewrote it over and over, sent it back and forth to each other, threw it in the trash, picked it up again, tried it again. And [at some point] he said, 'Oh, do you mind if I take a stab at this?' I was like, 'Oh hell yes,' and he went home on his typewriter in his hotel room and typed out the scene where he kind of reworked his dialogue. He brought it in and said, 'Is this okay? Do you mind? Is this something you guys are into? Should we run this by Nick first?' I was like, 'I think that’s totally fine!”' One page, hand-typed."

There are so few interviews with our playwright that when I came across a recent one published on an online UK film magazine site, I was delighted. Alas, what a disappointment. It boggles my mind that someone who wrote about an afternoon spent with Sam Shepard (the day of the La Cirque luncheon last month) would ultimately be more interested in writing about herself. It's one thing to have a super ego if you're a big-name celeb but as a journalist, humility is a must. I could imagine this kind of blather coming from say, Rex Reed, but not from this writer, a rather woeful  Joyce Carol Oates look-alike who mixes a love for wildlife with film. And it's so unprofessional when an actor's name is misspelled in the headline as in "STEPHAN Rea". Ultimately, this British journalist decided to store away her goodies leaving the reader with a few bread crumbs.

• In discussing Ireland, Sam remarked how folks play less with their phones and devices than in New York. People actually talk to each other.

• He admits that it still makes him feel uncomfortable to watch himself on screen.

• Presently, he's focusing on his writing, namely Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and deals with the devil. When asked what would be exchanged for all the pleasure in the world in a Shepard play, he responded, "His soul, of course." {Note that he says "his" and not "her" or "their")

• He once rescued a starving egret.

More than 125 film critics have had their say on AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY. The Tomatometer is measuring about 63%. Again, the concensus seems to be the problem of transferring dramatic theater to the big screen. I appreciated film critic Frank Swietek's comments:

"The makers of this adaptation of Tracy Letts’s award-winning play made a serious mistake in casting Sam Shepard as Beverly Weston, the Oklahoma professor and poet whose death brings his family together for his funeral- and a release of long-simmering hostility and long-held secrets. Not that Shepard is bad; indeed, he gives a fine performance as a tired man who, in all likelihood, takes his own life. It’s rather that his presence inevitably invites comparisons with his own plays about troubled families - works that are far richer and more compelling than 'August: Osage County.' Of course, screen adaptations of Shepard’s plays have by and large been disappointing, and wisely some of the best of them, like 'Buried Child,' remain unfilmed. The rare exception was the 1984 American Playhouse taping of 'True West' with John Malkovich and Gary Sinise, which was exceptionally fine. That’s because they’re extremely theatrical pieces that suffer when brought close-up; it’s the rare stage drama of this sort that can withstand camera’s glare. Once again, there is a major exception - 'Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?' But that 1966 film had the benefit of Mike Nichols’ brilliant direction, and on the evidence of  'August,' John Wells is no Mike Nichols."

And I loved what Wesley Morris of Grantland had to say:

"Nothing on the page of Letts's play goes that deep, but the further out the story goes, the stronger the undertow is. Some actors, like Mulroney, Breslin, and McGregor, drown in it. But Cooper, Martindale, and Shepard are expert surfers. To all the hipster filmmakers treating Shepard like a garnish, this is how you use him like a side dish: as a prevailing spirit."

On January 4th, I posted news that Sam was in California and yesterday he was in Pasadena helping to promote KLONDIKE at the Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour. Executive producer David Zucker told the press the hard part about recruiting the playwright for the new mini-series was finding him.

Zucker said, "We decided on a Friday we wanted to pursue him, which meant we had to get him a script. Well, he was out fishing, and he didn't have a phone. He also doesn't have Internet, so we couldn't email him. So what we had to do was find the nearest Kinkos to make a copy of the script and get it delivered. When he got back from fishing, he read it and called us back, and it worked out."

Sam said he liked the script and explained his lack of a phone by saying, "It's just another part of the insanity we carry around with us."

One journalist wanted to know if writer Paul Scheuring was intimidated writing for the actor-playwright. "I wrote it before I knew he was going to be Judge - it’s easy to write in a vacuum." he responded. That said, Shepard "was willing to collaborate; he had his thoughts," he continued, adding quickly, "It’s obviously an honor – he’s Sam Shepard!"

Sam didn’t think much of a question about the difference between wearing the "writer hat" and the "actor hat." "Hats look exactly the same. There’s no difference between The Writing Hat and The Acting Hat," he said dismissively.

A question about his "motivation" for taking on this role, and whether his motivation for accepting roles has changed over his long career, didn’t play too well either. "Yeah. I was out of work…the landlord was going to kick me out," he responded.

You know I've done Q&A's with actors Stellan Skarsgård and Peter Coyote but I would never attempt one with Sam Shepard. The man can be impossible. Here's what Canadian web site The Loop wrote:

"Shepard replaced Chris Cooper on Discovery’s project 'Klondike' when the latter suffered a minor heart attack, but while he was a star to the critics in the room, he wanted nothing to do with it. He kept his answers to less than a 100 words and gave the room pretty much nothing, even noting that he took the part because he was out of work. Later on at the Klondike-themed party, he was even more gruff, telling one critic that he already answered questions and grunting at another one. One critic even revealed that the horse parked outside the event gave her a nicer response than Shepard when approached."

Here's a description of Sam's role as Father Judge - "Like the other men who come to Dawson City, Father Judge has a burning ambition. But his quest is for the souls of the miners, not the gold in the dirt. In a town filled with greed, envy and a willingness to kill over a few ounces of treasure, Judge knows the risks he is taking. He establishes a church in the middle of Dawson hoping to attract wayward men and women in need of salvation. He gets his wish, but it’s not at all how he imagined."

In the Big Apple, someone snapped a photo of one of the city's two-decker tour buses with the side splashed with "Klondike" advertising, including Sam's face. Click here for photos from the TCA press tour.

For those of you who have a Netflix account, SAVANNAH is now available via DVD or streaming. The movie was an absolute bomb scoring an 8% on the Tomatometer. It doesn't get much worse. I checked it out and it was terrible, more like a Lifetime TV movie, but hey, it's always interesting to see Sam on the screen. Right? It wasn't easy finding actual movie stills released by the studio because most of its publicity seemed to be geared to production stills of Annette Hayward-Carter directing her cast. Rather strange...