This Week's Podcast: stalking Katie Holmes

This week, CHML's Scott Thompson wanted the scoop on my recent trip to Hollywood. I was there earlier this week to work the red carpet premiere of The Kennedys (bowing Sunday April 3 on Reelzchannel in the States and Sunday April 10 at 9 p.m. on History Television).
I'm not a red carpet guy, it's an elbows up free-for-all I've never mastered. Sometimes, however, it is your only shot at getting near the talent with a Flipcam or recorder.

Monday night in Beverly Hills, outside the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts ad Science headquarters on Wilshire Blvd., I took my place on the red carpet alongside Toronto Star TV critic Rob Salem--at the very end of the line. Was this a good placement? No. Did Katie Holmes, who sleepwalks through plays Jackie Kennedy, walk right past us Canadian scribes and on into the theatre? That would be yes. Were we bitter? You can listen in here.

Not sure what I would have said to her anyway. Salem suggested we should ask her escort Tom Cruise if he was planning on making any movies with Paul Haggis.
Holmes plays Jackie opposite Greg Kinnear as Jack, and he's very good as the doomed American president (and I'm not just saying that because he spoke with us). History Television is showing the miniseries in four two-hour chunks spread over four consecutive Sundays.

We did get to speak with the lovely Rookie Blue regular Charlotte Sullivan (right) which more than made up for the Tomcat snub. Sullivan plays oft-alleged Kennedy squeeze Marilyn Monroe and has the half open lids and lips act down pat.

Scott also asks about Roger Abbott and wonders if the press in Canada makes enough fuss when somebody like the Air Farce pioneer passes away. Abbott's stellar comedy career spanned 40 years on radio and TV.

I say you could never salute a guy like Abbott enough, but I also knew him as a modest and very private man who would go and die right before the Junos just to dodge a lot of wheezy obits. May he jest in peace.