The One-Man CBS Boycott … Lorne Michaels-J'Accuse!…Phyllis Diller's Still Workin' … A Kiss for Ellen

Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week

The first time I saw Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Howard Hawks' delirious 1938 screwball romantic comedy Bringing Up Baby [Saturday, May 16, TCM, 82, 1 P.M.] , I was pretty sure it was the wildest, most outrageously funny talking picture I had ever seen. To make certain, I saw it again later the same day and that convinced me: It was even funnier the second time. Of course, I did see it on the big screen, which always makes a huge difference, but even more so in this case because of the film's extraordinary speed and the often darkly lit scenes, both of which can prove exhausting on the small screen.

I once asked Hawks if the lighting wasn't inordinately dark for a comedy, and he drawled, with a grin, "Well, it was a complete tragedy for Cary, wasn't it?" He meant Grant's character, a paleontologist who has just lost a key bone to the brontosaurus he is assembling for a museum; he has lost it because of a supremely daffy society girl who's set her sights on him. She's played with dizzying charm by Hepburn in the single most likable performance of her career. Grant takes the thickly bespectacled absent-minded professor about as far as you can go, yet is always entirely believable and hilarious in his helpless reaction to this female force of nature. In her Cupid-like quiver, Hepburn has any number of pointed, if unknowing, assists from rich aunt, wealthy friends, aggressive dog and passive leopard; the "Baby" of the title, in fact, is a black leopard fond of music, in particular the song "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby," which Kate and Cary sing to it once or twice as part of the lunatic circumstances of this uproarious adventure.

At one point, a slightly daft psychiatrist tells Hepburn the essential theme of the movie: "The love impulse in man often expresses itself in terms of conflict," and the Hepburn-Grant relationship is the perfect illustration. For Hawks, the picture is really about the liberating humanization of a hung-up guy: a series of tests Grant must undergo to be worthy of a beautiful woman as adorable as Hepburn. Not a success in its day, and forgotten for years, Bringing Up Baby is among my most favorite pictures, and one of the great comic treasures of the American screen.

The Welles Watch: Perhaps the most difficult to see of Orson Welles' films–and his own personal favorite–is his amazing consolidation of the Falstaff sections of five Shakespeare plays into what Brendan Gill described (in The New Yorker at the time of its tiny 1966 release) as a brand-new play by William Shakespeare, for which Welles deserved our undying gratitude: Chimes at Midnight [Saturday, May 10, WNET, 13, 1:30 P.M., and Sunday, May 17, 11 P.M.] . Orson had been working on this project off and on for 30 years, having done versions of it twice on the stage before he went to Spain with a million dollars and directed, scripted and starred in the best, most human and touching Shakespeare movie ever made. As Henry IV, John Gielgud is regally heartbreaking; As Prince Hal/Henry V, Keith Baxter is the ultimate ambitious politician; and Jeanne Moreau is the most sensuously understanding Doll Tearsheet, especially memorable in the moving impotence scene with Sir John Falstaff, which Welles (heavily made-up and padded) does as the role he was born to play. There is a brilliantly shot and edited battle sequence that Welles cut by hand, frame for frame, into a terrifying, savage denunciation of war. The final wordless–on Falstaff's part–renunciation scene with Henry V is one of the few really tragic moments in picture history. If you want to believe again that movies are an art, for God's sake, tape this (I don't believe it's available on cassette) and run it every time you need reassurance.

Wednesday, May 13

Craig Kilborn is a smooth talker and he's very, very pretty and he does a nice job with The Daily Show over on Comedy Central–but should he really be the guy to replace ol' Tom Snyder in the post-Letterman slot on CBS? Do we really need a talk-show host who is to David Letterman what Whitesnake was to Led Zeppelin? That is, a botched clone who exaggerates the defects of the original while reproducing none of the original's charm? "Craiggers" is Dave without the torture, Dave without the deep respect for broadcasting, Dave without the self-loathing.…

Anyway, nobody was more upset with the appointment of Mr. Kilborn as the incoming savior of CBS late, late night than one Joseph Covais, who found the news "very vomit-inducing." Mr. Covais was a big Daily Show fan himself, but more for its head writer and co-creator, the pissed-off feminist comedian Lizz Winstead, than for Mr. Kilborn. Mr. Covais even started a Web site in Ms. Winstead's honor, and, no, he was not happy when Mr. Kilborn told Esquire magazine that Ms. Winstead would give him a blow job if he asked her to. Comedy Central pseudo-suspended Mr. Kilborn for a week after that comment (they were in reruns at the time), and Ms. Winstead ended up leaving the show and signing a gag agreement on her way out the door, so we've never gotten to hear her trash Mr. Kilborn in return for his remark.…

When Mr. Covais (who asked to be referred to as "the king of all Lizz Winstead fans") heard the news of Mr. Kilborn's promotion to a big network (come to think of it, is that really a promotion these days?), he sprung into action–calling for a boycott of CBS and David Letterman's production company, World Wide Pants! The only problem was, he found only one other person willing to join him in his anti-CBS crusade.…

"I concocted this boycott out of respect that Lizz walked out on her job on The Daily Show because of what Craig said in Esquire ," said Mr. Covais, a 21-year-old computer science major at Lehman College. "My boycott started on May 4 and abruptly ended on May 6. I got e-mail addresses from the news groups who were talking about Winstead and sent them e-mails with the subject, Would you let a sexist host a late-night show? I got replies from about half the people, but most were in favor of Craig. To tell you the truth, I only got one guy to say he would sign the petition. If it was successful, I would have presented it to CBS to show them that they shouldn't hire Craig Kilborn after what he did because this is not a good image to fill Tom Snyder's shoes. May I say that it was vomit-inducing news again?" Sure. But why are you so devoted to Lizz Winstead? "She is, what's that word I like to use to describe her?" (Long pause.) "Fecund! F-e-c-u-n-d. And a witty and highly intelligent human being. I'm sick and tired of hearing all these comedians getting their own sitcoms. Where is Lizz's sitcom?" …

Have you met Ms. Winstead? "I've seen her at Carolines [Comedy Club]. She was excellent. I met her after that show. And I met her at a couple of tapings of The Daily Show . She was sitting right behind me, smoking and eating celery and cottage cheese." …

Your fight is over, Mr. Covais, but the cause survives! Aux barricades! [Comedy Central, 45, 11 P.M.]

Oh, why'd they do that? Bailey and Sarah are getting together in tonight's season finale of Party of Five . [WNYW, 5, 9 P.M.]

Get thee to a cable network! That's where Ellen belongs. A steamy serious lesbian sitcom? Forget about it.…

It has become the conventional wisdom (which can best be measured by the tripe the celebrity pundits are spouting nightly, in the guise of outrageous opinion, on Politically Incorrect ) that Ellen was a lousy show that deserved its fate. But the show hasn't been lousy ever since Ellen DeGeneres leaped out of the closet. Once in a while, Ms. DeGeneres turned out one of those overly serious half-hours, à la the later years of Roseanne , but mostly the writing was crisp and Ellen was allowed to use her stop-start delivery (stolen from Bob Newhart) to good effect. Ellen made only one mistake–and that was its running commentary on the politics of TV programming. This kind of thing, within a sitcom about a bookshop owner, didn't work at all. It was a sign of the show's self-importance. It was crummy. It seems Ellen will be repeating this mistake tonight, in a meta-episode finale with plenty of preaching and guest stars. But only a nut or a pervert would consider the show's lesbian content to be over the top. [WABC, 7, 9 P.M.]

Thursday, May 14

Hey, kids! Tape tonight's Seinfeld finale. Tomorrow, you can sell it on the sidewalk. [WNBC, 4, 8 P.M.; final episode begins at 8:45 P.M. following 45 minutes of clips.]

Rodney Dangerfield, on Biography , versus the biggest TV show of the year. (Insert "no respect" joke here.) [A&E, 14, 8 P.M.]

Friday, May 15

South Park , all-night marathon. Ten episodes. Yeah, great show, but you'll want to shoot yourself if you watch all 10. [Comedy Central, 45, 11 P.M.]

Saturday, May 16

Phyllis Diller still works Las Vegas and Reno at 80–and you can still find her on TV in her ongoing role on The Bold and the Beautiful and, tonight, giving the queen ant her voice in the Pixar animated feature, A Bug's Life …

She made her first television appearance on You Bet Your Life with Groucho Marx, when she was 38 years old. "I wore the first sack dress ever worn on TV because New York had outlawed them," she said. "It was blue. I'm avant when it comes to fashion and style. It was my original face, and Groucho was terribly sweet to me, terribly pleasant. He was the old pro, you know. He was around 60. It was all supposed to look like you were just walking in off the street. The whole idea was the duck came down and hit you on the head if you got the answer right. I did a few lines from my act. And after I went to work at the 881 Club, a teeny little club on La Cienega." …

And then your career took off? "It takes more than one dumb shot on one dumb show. I kept working and working, but it was The Tonight Show that made my career take off, with Jack Paar in New York. It took a lot of shots on that. It takes them a long time to learn your name and if they don't know your name, they won't come and see you. I did finally make it and it only took me five years to get to Carnegie Hall, which I think is some kind of a world record." [WLIW, 21, 8:30 P.M.]

Sunday, May 17

Comedian, writer, actress Sarah Silverman makes her third guest appearance on The Larry Sanders Show tonight. She has also written a half-hour play that HBO is interested in producing. "Most people would rather go to the networks, but HBO is my first choice because there's a certain amount of freedom," she said.…

Ms. Silverman dropped out of New York University to test herself on the open-mike circuit. Soon enough, Saturday Night Live scouted her out at the Comic Strip in Los Angeles, but she got the boot after one year on SNL . "All the nightmare stories about being a woman on that show are completely true," she said. "There was some real sickness." Like? "It's a group of highly dysfunctional people put together in an atmosphere where reality doesn't exist, fathered by an executive producer who is the biggest baby of them all. I think he is the only reason that show isn't great. The truth is, I loved being there. I had a blast. In my mind, Lorne Michaels is the only weak link. I wish he wasn't, and I will always have respect for this wonderful show that he created and that all children dream about aspiring to. His ego is what fucked it up. Once I got fired, that broke me for, like, a year–but I wouldn't trade that experience for anything in the world. It made me so strong." …

The atmosphere at Larry Sanders is much different, she said. "The first time I went on the show, Gary Shandling said, 'Please change the lines to be like what you would say. They're there to be a point to get across and if you can get it across, I don't care if you say cucumber.'" Tonight: the second-to-last Larry Sanders . [HBO, 28, 10 P.M.]

Monday, May 18

Newsradio star Dave Foley has spent his entire career on the verge of cancellation. "I think Kids in the Hall was canceled every year," he said. He finds out today if NBC will shut down Newsradio . "I keep hearing rumors that [ABC executive] Jamie Tarses might save us if NBC cancels us, because she had something to do with the creation of the show." Mr. Foley, 35 and Canadian, is so smart that he's one of these Green Acres cultists. " Green Acres is just brilliant," he said. "Almost every episode was written by two guys and, essentially, they wrote a half-hour absurdist play every week. It was really disciplined, and they all did the deadpan beautifully. Every week, they would set up their reality and they would stick to it and never depart from the order that they set up in that episode." [NBC announces next fall's lineup today at Rockefeller Center; party at 10 P.M. at Match, 160 Mercer Street.]

Tuesday, May 19

Frasier ends its fifth season with two half-hour episodes. [WNBC, 4, 9 P.M.]