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Robert Trebor, a character actor who recurred as Salmoneus on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess and played “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz during his long screen career, has died. He was 71.

His obit at Legacy.com did not list a cause, date or place of death, but he had been struggling wqith side effects from a stem-cell transplant for leukemia several years ago..

Born on June 7, 1953, in Philadelphia, Trebor had a few bit roles before his career got going in the 1980s with small roles in such movies as Gorp, Turk 182 and Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo. His breakout role was as notorious “Son of Sam” serial killer Berkowitz in the 1985 CBS telepic Out of the Darkness, which starred Martin Sheen as the NYC detective who track him down.

The following year, Trebor had a key role opposite Roy Scheider and Ann-Margret...

Robert Trebor, who portrayed the serial killer known as the Son of Sam in a CBS telefilm and the scheming merchant Salmoneus on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and its sister series, Xena: Warrior Princess, has died. He was 71.

Trebor died March 11 at Los Angeles Medical Center of sepsis, his wife, Deirdre Hennings, told The Hollywood Reporter. He was diagnosed with leukemia in 2012 and had a stem-cell transplant a year later, she said.

On the big screen, the clever character actor worked in films including John Frankenheimer’s 52 Pickup (1986), Susan Seidelman’s Making Mr. Right (1987), Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio (1988) and the Coen brothers’ Hail, Caesar (2016), for which he played a movie producer in his final onscreen role.

In his breakout year of 1985, Trebor appeared as a reporter in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, as a copy boy in Bob Clark’s Turk 182 and as the...

Jon Landau, the Oscar-winning producer behind the likes of Avatar, Titanic, and Alita: Battle Angel, has died. He passed away on Friday in Los Angeles after a 16 month long battle with cancer.

In a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Landau's sister Tina confirmed her brother's passing and shared the following: "The best brother a girl could ever dream of — my brother Jon — has passed away. My heart is broken but also bursting with pride and gratitude for his most extraordinary life, and the love and gifts he gave me — and all who knew him or his films."

And it truly was an extraordinary life. Born in New York on 23 July, 1960 to film and TV producer parents Edythe and Ely Landau, whose credits include Sidney Lumet's Long Day's Journey Into Night and John Frankenheimer's The Iceman Cometh, Jon Landau it seems was always destined to...

Jon Landau, the illustrious producer and COO of James Cameron‘s Lightstorm Entertainment, died July 5 in Los Angeles after a 16-month-long battle with cancer. He was 63.

Landau produced films generated by Cameron that include 1997’s Best Picture Oscar winner Titanic, which tied Ben-Hur for most Academy Awards, 11. That film for a time was the largest grossing film of all time until it was surpassed by another Cameron blockbuster, the 2009 Avatar, which Landau also produced. Other credits included Avatar: The Way of Water, Solaris, Alita: Battle Angel directed by Robert Rodriguez, and he co-produced Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Dick Tracy.

During his 27-year partnership with Cameron, having joined the director in the making of Titanic in 1995, Landau produced three of the five highest-grossing films of all time, Avatar, Titanic and Avatar: The Way of Water. His death was first divulged by Titanic actress Frances Fisher. Late last night she posted of his passing,...

Susan Seidelman with Anne-Katrin Titze and music producer/99 Records founder Ed Bahlman: “Music has always been important in my movies.”

In the first instalment with Susan Seidelman on her memoir, Desperately Seeking Something (St. Martin’s Press), and her career as a filmmaker, we start out discussing the jacket choices for Susan Berman, Madonna, Ann Magnuson (Frankie in Making Mr. Right with John Malkovich), and Emily Lloyd.

Susan Berman as Wren in Smithereens and Madonna as Susan in Desperately Seeking Susan

We move on to the influence of Jacques Rivette’s Celine And Julie Go Boating, her love of Billy Wilder films, being named after...

It’s New York City, 1989. Susan Seidelman is in the delivery room, in labor with her son. “Siskel and Ebert” plays on the TV, and in between contractions, the two critics are tearing apart her new movie “She-Devil.” “Watching them review my film literally with the doctor’s hand inside of me telling me to push was very strange,” Seidelman recalls.

That surreal scene is just one of the memorable moments the trailblazing director recounts in “Desperately Seeking Something: A Memoir About Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls.” By turns reflective and celebratory, the book covers the surprises and setbacks of a career carved out at a time when women filmmakers were a rarity.

When Seidelman first realized she could aspire to become a movie director, she could barely find a role model. Outside of Elaine May, there was only a small handful of women directing. But Seidelman kept at it,...

Susan Seidelman's 1985 comedy "Desperately Seeking Susan" is about an unhappy housewife named Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) who notices that two people appear to be communicating through mutually placed personal ads in her local newspaper. The correspondents are "Jim" and "Susan," and Roberta becomes involved in their progressing print-only drama. Audiences also see that Susan (Madonna) is an itinerant drifter who is having an affair with a mobster. She is involved in a crime drama of her own. All the same, Roberta manages to see a meeting between Susan and Jim from afar and then buys some of Susan's clothes after Susan sells them to a thrift store.

Naturally, through some exciting contrivances, Roberta is not only mistaken for Susan, but she hits her head and contracts amnesia, soon believing that she, too, is Susan. It's an exciting, high-concept comedy that introduced Madonna to the world and was inspired by Jacque...

If you knew Laurie Frank — and who didn’t? — you know her great heart burst skyward on Nov. 30. Hours earlier, a technicolor rainbow appeared over the Hollywood Hills, Laurie’s Promised Land.

You likely knew she was in the first class at Yale that matriculated women — class of 1973 — and went on to be an accomplished screenwriter, journalist and acclaimed gallerist. In the late ‘70s, she worked at ABC News and directed short films for Saturday Night Live, famously Prose and Cons featuring Eddie Murphy in a spoof on Norman Mailer’s championing of murderer Jack Abbott.

In the mid-1980s, she moved to Los Angeles and co-wrote Making Mr. Right (1987) starring John Malkovich and Ann Magnuson, as well as Love Crimes (1992) and later ventured into collecting and selling art. From 2002 to 2013, she ran Frank Pictures at Bergamot Station, showcasing artists of fame and those undiscovered. The latter was Laurie’s forte.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)

One of last year’s most resonant films, Aftersun looks at the scratchy dynamics between a father and daughter while on vacation. It’s about memory, the finite nature of the relationships in our lives, and the difficulties of a parent’s diminishing mental health. Charlotte Wells knows where to put the camera in her debut—undeterred from taking risks, from placing her characters outside of the frame, from looking at shadows instead of the people themselves. Aftersun is a rare, tremendous first film, full of heart and focused melancholy; it breaks you down and fills you up simultaneously. The consistent inclusion of camcorder footage, and the fact that it enhances the story rather than becoming a distraction, further...

I honestly never expected Steven Spielberg in a Criterion Channel series––certainly not one that pairs him with Kogonada, anime, and Johnny Mnemonic––but so’s the power of artificial intelligence. Perhaps his greatest film (at this point I don’t need to tell you the title) plays with After Yang, Ghost in the Shell, and pre-Matrix Keanu in July’s aptly titled “AI” boasting also Spike Jonze’s Her, Carpenter’s Dark Star, and Computer Chess. Much more analog is a British Noir collection obviously carrying the likes of Odd Man Out, Night and the City, and The Small Back Room, further filled by Joseph Losey’s Time Without Pity and Basil Dearden’s It Always Rains on Sunday. (No two ways about it: these movies have great titles.) An Elvis retrospective brings six features, and the consensus best (Don Siegel’s Flaming Star) comes September 1.

While Isabella Rossellini...

Ben Masters, best known for his portrayal of Julian Crane on NBC’s Passions from 1999 to 2008, died Wednesday in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 75.

According to his representatives, Masters battled dementia for several years, with Covid listed as his official cause of death.

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Prior to his starring role on Passions, Masters appeared on a number of hit TV series, including Touched by an Angel...

2021 is nearly in the books and Hulu is celebrating by heading back to the past…like, the way past. With its list of new releases for December 2021, Hulu is going positive Medieval with two swords and shield original series arriving this month.

Animated comedy Crossing Swords premieres its second season on Dec. 10. This stop-motion style tale follows Patrick (Nicholas Hoult) as he works his way up the feudal latter of The Kingdom. This will be complemented by Dragons: The Nine Realms on Dec. 23. This series is set in the How to Train Your Dragon universe and takes place over 1,000 years after the events of the films. In it, a group of modern day kids uncover the secret truth about dragons.

Hulu also has some more current options for TV this month. Original comedy Pen15 premieres the second half of its second season on Dec. 3. Watch it to relive the trauma...

For a certain generation of women, director Susan Seidelman’s second feature, “Desperately Seeking Susan,” is a formative text, an indelible record of New York in the ‘80s, from Madonna’s iconic hair bow to Rosanna Arquette’s spirited performance as the lead. With its cast of New York underground habitués, and fizzy pace set to the tune of Madonna’s “Into the Groove,” “Desperately Seeking Susan” was a fashion-forward change of pace from the teen comedies and slick action fare of the time.

Seidelman’s first feature, the scrappy microbudget “Smithereens,” shocked everyone when it was selected as one of the first American independent films to be accepted into official competition at the Cannes Film Festival. With a cast that included proto-punk rocker Richard Hell, the 1982 “Smithereens” captured the East Village in all its grungy, pre-gentrification glory, and has become a cult classic.

A die-hard New Yorker, Seidelman never felt comfortable in Hollywood.

Glenne Headly, star of Dick Tracy and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, has passed away at the age of 62. No cause of death has been reported at this time. However, since she was in production on several projects prior to her passing, this seemed to come very suddenly and as a surprise to those who knew her and have been working with her.

The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that Glenne Headly, who has been working in the business since the early 70s, has died after reports were circulating on social media. In a statement to THR, her representatives confirmed the news and also asked that the public respect her family's privacy. Here's what her reps had to say.

"It is with deep sorrow that we confirm the passing of Glenne Headly. We ask that her family's privacy be respected in this difficult time."

Before her untimely passing, Glenne Headly had been working on the new Hulu series,...

Polly Bergen dead at 84: ‘First woman president of the U.S.A.,’ former mistress of Tony Soprano’s father Emmy Award-winning actress Polly Bergen — whose roles ranged from the first U.S.A. woman president in Kisses for My President to the former mistress of both Tony Soprano’s father and John F. Kennedy in the television hit series The Sopranos — died from "natural causes" on September 20, 2014, at her home in Southbury, Connecticut. The 84-year-old Bergen, a heavy smoker for five decades, had been suffering from emphysema and other ailments since the 1990s. "Most people think I was born in a rich Long Island family," she told The Washington Post in 1988, but Polly Bergen was actually born Nellie Paulina Burgin on July 14, 1930, to an impoverished family in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her father was an illiterate construction worker while her mother got only as far as the third grade. The family...

Emmy-winning actress and singer Polly Bergen, who in a long career played the terrorized wife in the original Cape Fear and the first woman president in Kisses for My President, died Saturday, according to her publicist. She was 84. Bergen died at her home in Southbury, Connecticut, from natural causes, said publicist Judy Katz, surrounded by family and close friends. A brunette beauty with a warm, sultry singing voice, Bergen was a household name from her 20s onward. She made albums and played leading roles in films, stage musicals and TV dramas. She also hosted her own variety series, was a popular game show panelist,...

Emmy-winning actress and singer Polly Bergen, who in a long career played the terrorized wife in the original Cape Fear and the first woman president in Kisses for My President, died Saturday, according to her publicist. She was 84. Bergen died at her home in Southbury, Connecticut, from natural causes, said publicist Judy Katz, surrounded by family and close friends. A brunette beauty with a warm, sultry singing voice, Bergen was a household name from her 20s onward. She made albums and played leading roles in films, stage musicals and TV dramas. She also hosted her own variety series, was a popular game show panelist,...

Alexa here with some curios for your Tuesday. As Nathaniel mentioned, Earth Girls Are Easy just turned 25. A relic of Julie Brown's heyday, it is an afternoon-watch favorite of mine, belonging to a group of late-80s quirky screwball comedies that also make for good afternoon viewing, like the superior Making Mr. Right and the far superior Married to the Mob. 

Here are some curios in honor of this vintage curiosity.

Merthur kicks off their final season with tonight's season premiere of Merlin.

News

Typically, the words "Yes, Dear reunion" wouldn't get me excited but in this case we're going to get to see Mike O'Maley (along with Liza Snyder) on Raising Hope, as reported by EW. They'll play a couple that finds the sex tape Burt and Virginia lost.

IFC's getting into the animated comedy business. Out There will follow three socially awkward boys living in a small town, with a voice cast that will include Megan Mullally, Linda Cardinelli, Pamela Adlon and Fred Armisen.

In an interview with Vulture, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan says that Casablanca provides the bar for Breaking Bad's finale, "No one gets everything they wanted. The guy doesn’t get the girl, but he has the satisfaction of knowing she wants him. And he doesn’t get her because he has to save the free world.

General Hospital will be short one Webber in the new year.

Suds vet Scott Reeves took to Twitter late Wednesday to announce his impending departure from the ABC soap.

“Hey guys, u know how much u mean 2 me and I wanted u 2 hear it from me,” he wrote. “I was let go from Gh today and my last day should [be] in Feb sometime.”

Reeves — who also appeared on The Young and the Restless for the better part of a decade — has portrayed Port Charles-area doctor Steve Webber since 2009.

Ready for more of today’s TV dish? Well…

• The Office...

It's the last Christmas before breaking out the "Baby's First Christmas" ornament on The New Normal.

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Canadian channel MuchMusic (or is it just Much now?) has decided to pass on a third season of the critically-acclaimed L.A. Complex. Technically, the series isn't dead yet — the CW could keep it alive (which seems unlikely considering the ratings) and the series' production company is looking to see if another Canadian network might pick it up. As much as I'm saddened by this news, at least The L.A. Complex' last episode would make for a solid closing chapter.

Deadline breaks the word on a couple of amazing bits of recurring casting — S. Epatha Merkerson has joined Deception (that's NBC's upcoming soap where rich people suffer for ignoring the help) while Jere Burns will play a mysterious character on Bates Motel.

Howard Stern announced on his radio show that he'll be...

Exclusive: Matchmaking is a hot reality genre with such series as Bravo’s veteran Millionaire Matchmaker and NBC’s upcoming Ready For Love executive produced by Eva Longoria. VH1 is joining the trend with Making Mr. Right, which puts a twist on the matchmaking format. On the eight-episode show, which will premiere January 6, three single women pose as “expert matchmakers” to pull a rouse on 14 unsuspecting guys who think they’ve signed up for a show called Match Me If You Can. With the help of 15-year veteran matchmaker April Beyer, the three women — Brittany Skipper, owner of a private event planning service; Lindsay Osborne, an experienced caterer; and Rachel Seeker, a construction contractor — pretend to work on finding these guys true love, but in reality are there to mold them into their own versions of “Mr. Right.” Making Mr. Right is described as a real-life romantic comedy, the ultimate...

After the Academy’s attempt at honoring genre during the live show, we saw a real tribute to horror by someone who is truly one of our own. Bob Murawski thanked Sam Raimi for giving him his “first cutting job” in Army of Darkness. His Best Editing award for Hurt Locker was shared by his partner Chris Innis, whom he met on the Raimi produced TV show “American Gothic.”

I gotta say, never since Peter Jackson’s (who was nominated this year for District 9) thank you to the crew of Meet the Feebles has there been such an excellent genre shout out.

On top of working with Raimi for over a decade, Murawski also runs Grindhouse Releasing, which distributes and restores cult and horror films with a focus on extreme Italian cinema. Pieces, The Beyond, Cannibal Holocaust, and I Drink Your Blood are just a few names you’ll find in Grindhouse Releasing's catalogue.

(Filmmaker Susan Seidelman, above.)

by Jon Zelazny

In the early 80’s NYC cultural lull between Patti Smith’s retirement and Jay McInerney’s breakout, Nyu film school graduate Susan Seidelman did the scrappy shoestring indie film thing, resulting in her acclaimed feature debut Smithereens (1982).

Best known for her hit sophomore effort, Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Seidelman continues to direct movies and TV shows featuring female protagonists… including the pilot for “Sex and the City” and her Oscar nominated short film The Dutch Master (1994), about a shy dental technician who ventures “into” a museum painting for flights of erotic fantasy.

Susan Seidelman: My husband Jonathan Brett—who co-wrote and produced The Dutch Master—and I had committed to living in Paris for a year because I was set to direct a feature for Polygram, a company that unfortunately went bankrupt. So we were kind of in a funk over there, and...