Zachary Pincus-Roth.com

Kevin Spacey in Richard III: The Winter of His Content

Kevin Spacey in the movie "Margin Call"

Published in WSJ Magazine

"If there was one play that we really, really didn't want to f— up, this was it." Kevin Spacey curses a lot, which is especially startling since we are walking through the stately public gardens of Greystone Mansion, the English Gothic–style estate in Beverly Hills.

We're having about as British a day as you can have in Los Angeles, starting with breakfast at the London Hotel. Spacey likes to stay there because the hotel offers free calls to London, where he lives and works his day job as artistic director of the storied Old Vic Theatre.

Spacey, who is strolling along in gray Converse All Stars, is headed out tonight to Avilés, Spain, a tiny northern port town, the next stop on the global tour of the play in question, "Richard III."

"The expectations were so high," he explains. It was, after all, the first time he would be working with director Sam Mendes since both won Oscars for "American Beauty." The production is also part of the duo's ambitious Bridge Project, in which a play debuts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) or the Old Vic, takes an epic world tour to places like Hong Kong, Sydney and Greece. Richard the III lands in New York on January 10 at BAM, a co-producer of the project.

Howard Braham's 11-11-11 Party at 1111 Olive Ave. in Burbank

​Published in L.A. Weekly

On November 11, 1998, when Howard Braham was a student at Columbia University, he realized around 10:30 p.m. that it was about to turn 11:11 on 11-11. He knocked on the door of his friend Steve Schwartz and they decided to gather 11 people, head up to the 11th floor, turn on the television and watch channel 11, which, Braham recalls, was the 11 o'clock news.

Since then, Braham hosted 11-11 parties almost every year, spacing them out so that the 11th of these parties took place last Friday, on on 11-11-11. The venue was George Izay Park, selected because its address is 1111 Olive Ave., in Burbank.

Braham, who now lives in Glendale and works as a Disney Imagineer, arrived just before 11:11 a.m. and stayed until the final moment of truth -- 11 seconds after 11:11 p.m.

Lights! Camera! App!

Published in Los Angeles Magazine

Like most camera assistants, John Reyes, w ho works on the MTV sitcom The Hard Times of RJ Berger, stores his equipment on a four-foot-tall aluminum cart. Among the lenses and tripods is a viewfinder (a short telescope-like device that helps directors see how a shot will look from a certain angle) and a depth-of-field calculator (a rotating instrument that calculates what portion of the shot will be in focus). Lately, however, the gizmos have started to disappear.

“Slowly each of these pieces of equipment is being replaced by apps,” says Reyes. “If you go on our set, it’s 90 percent iPhones. Pretty soon we’ll probably just use the camera on the iPhone to shoot our shows.” That last part’s a joke. Sort of.

The story of technology in Hollywood has long been one of a few early adopters fighting against the status quo. Each advance in the Industry, from talkies to Technicolor, took a while to catch on. Movies may be flashy and fancy, but movie sets are old-fashioned places, filled with apple crates (for actors who need a boost) and spotlights that have hung from the rafters since David Fincher was in diapers. But the iPhone and the iPad are propelling casts and crews into the 21st century, fundamentally altering the way people collaborate while saving time and money. Recently South Korean director Park Chan-wook went so far as to shoot an entire 30-minute short on his iPhone 4.

“Everyone’s looking to create a standard that will unite every department,” says Taz Goldstein, a director who blogs about production gadgets at Hand Held Hollywood. “That’s the holy grail.”

A Circus That Lets Its Freak Flag Fly

Published in The New York Times

Los Angeles — Does a circus seem more dangerous when one of the performers confesses that he’s clumsy?

“When I’m not focused, stuff happens,” said Mason Ames, the performer in question, in an interview between shows at the Ricardo Montalbán Theater in Hollywood. “I bump into people.”

Unlike the mega-productions of Cirque du Soleil, which employ dozens of godlike athletes hiding behind costumes, “Traces” asks its seven performers to reveal something of their real selves.

The show, which closes in Los Angeles on Sunday and opens in Denver on March 11, is the creation of the Montreal-based group 7 Fingers, founded in 2002 with the mission of bringing circus to a human scale. The British newspaper The Guardian called it “circus for the Facebook generation.”

Combining circus acts with emotion and intimacy to win over the audience is a tenet of the new circus movement that started in the 1960s as a countercultural departure from the stunt for stunt’s sake philosophy of traditional three-ring circuses like Ringling Brothers.

But “Traces” goes deeper in its relationship with the audience, as the performers open up about their personalities, vulnerabilities and obsessions. One cast member’s parents are revealed to be psychologists. Another hates when people don’t put the cap on the toothpaste. The show is “really trying to connect with the audience members as if we’re just like them,” said Bradley Henderson, one of the performers. “We’re not superheroes.”

Oscar nomination predictions 2011 - How did I do?

I got 39 out of 45 correct in the major categories.

X = wrong answer [the actual nominee is in brackets]

BEST PICTURE
1. The Social Network
2. The King’s Speech
3. The Fighter
4. Black Swan
5. True Grit
6. Toy Story 3
7. The Kids Are All Right
8. Inception
9. 127 Hours
10. Winter’s Bone

My Oscar Nomination Predictions 2011

My Oscar nomination predictions:

BEST PICTURE
1. The Social Network
2. The King’s Speech
3. The Fighter
4. Black Swan
5. True Grit
6. Toy Story 3
7. The Kids Are All Right
8. Inception
9. 127 Hours
10. Winter’s Bone

Not motivated? Make a game of it

Published in the Los Angeles Times

Michael Pusateri is a 43-year-old senior vice president at the Disney- ABC Television Group, but he still doesn't eat his vegetables. So in October he joined Health Month, an online game that allows him to compete against 16,000 other users in striving toward his goals — which include cycling 80 miles a week and going on a weekly date with his wife.

When he made progress, he earned life points and raised his ranking. When he failed, he lost points but could ask other players to take pity and "heal" him by giving him virtual "fruit." The game prepared him for his first triathlon. "My wife has been after me for years to eat more fruit and vegetables and bring my lunch to work, and it was, 'Next week, I'll do it next week,'" says Pusateri, an avid video game player and father of two. "Just because it was on this dumb website I actually did it."

Companies such as Health Month have begun to harness people's innate craving for competition to turn the world into one giant virtual summer camp. Now that 97% of teens and more than half of adults play video games, companies have caught on to the medium's addictive powers. Websites and apps are using virtual points, levels, leader boards, badges and challenges to motivate people to stay healthy, watch television or read a newspaper. "Games are starting to creep into every aspect of our day," says Jesse Schell, a game designer who teaches at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center.

In the tech world, gamification is now a full-blown movement, and the first Gamification Summit will take place in San Francisco in January, organized by Gabe Zichermann, author of "Game-Based Marketing." But while some believe this phenomenon is a motivation machine that will dominate lives in coming years, others think it's a manipulative fad that does not acknowledge how humans' brains really work.

When to Quit?

Published in Los Angeles Magazine

Steve Gabriel works as the script coordinator on $#*! My Dad Says, the new CBS sitcom starring William Shatner. The show is based on the Twitter feed of a guy who is 29. Gabriel is in his forties—he’d prefer not to reveal his exact age.

Gabriel wants to be a TV staff writer—and at times, he’s been one. Soon after graduating from college, he got a job as a writers’ assistant on Carol Burnett’s 1990 variety show, Carol & Company. He worked with the writers of the Home Improvement pilot and went on to write a script for the series that was produced during its second season. The Home Improvement creators promoted him to staff writer on their next show, Thunder Alley, starring Ed Asner and Haley Joel Osment. His next job was another promotion: story editor on the Dave Chappelle sitcom, Buddies. But the show was canceled in 1996 during its first season.

“That’s kind of when the rails came off the tracks,” says Gabriel, whose graying, close-cropped hair makes him look more like a colonel in the Air Force than a proofreader of other people’s jokes. “I didn’t get a job after that and had to start over.”

This is the reason that Gabriel, at forty-something, is an assistant to writers instead of a writer himself. To pay the bills he became a script coordinator, first for the short-lived 1998 Fox sitcom Costello, then the following year for ABC’s Norm MacDonald vehicle, Norm, and later for Will & Grace. Toward the end of that hit’s eight-season run, he was promoted to staff writer. But then it, too, was off the air, and he went back to script coordinating on the 2008 NBC comedy Kath & Kim (canceled) and this year’s 100 Questions (canceled).

Generic arts and entertainment headlines

Inspired by Slate.com media columnist Jack Shafer's piece about generic news headlines that we see over and over again, I thought I'd compile my own list of generic headlines, an arts and entertainment edition (disclosure: I'm sure I've been guilty of a few of these):

Is [Insert Artistic Medium Here] Dead?

Are We Living In The Golden Age Of TV?

Movie Star To Appear On Broadway

Movie Star Who's About To Appear On Broadway: "Live Performance Is More Fulfilling Than Film And TV"

A-list Celebrity Or Filmmaker To Do Web-Related Project

A-list Filmmaker Who Just Did A Low-Budget Project: "I Like It When It's Not Such A Huge Crew And No Studio Breathing Down My Neck And It's Just Me And A Camera And I Can Do What I Want"

Burlesque Or Other Vintage Art Form Enjoying A Revival

Underage Celebrity Does Provocative Photo Shoot

Oscar Ceremony May Move To Different Date

Racist Remark Made On Radio

Awards Show Gets Disappointing Ratings

Lots Of New Films And/Or TV Shows Address The Subject Of Our Bad Economy

Play Or Musical Revived On Broadway Because It Relates To War Or Bad Economy

Facebook Or Other Social Networking Site Bigger Than Ever

YouTube creative artists pride themselves on being a separate breed

Published in the Los Angeles Times

Every week, Dane Boedigheimer drives to the Ralphs near his home in Riverside on a specific mission. One time he bought 10 kinds of apples. Another time he bought avocados and walnuts. He recently bought a cheese plate.

Other shoppers probably don't realize that Boedigheimer is conducting a casting session for "The Annoying Orange,"the YouTube channel he started a year ago. He voices the title character, an orange who badgers his guest star with insults like "you look fruity," until a knife slices the guest in two. These videos consistently get at least 3 million views.

"There's something to the knife moment," he says. "There's almost become an expectation to it. If I don't have it in those videos, people get upset, because 'What happened to the knife? Why didn't the character get killed?'"

YouTube is a chaotic heap of video content, and Boedigheimer is one of a core group of comedy stars who have clawed their way to the top, leading a burgeoning and bizarre form of American entertainment. These digital auteurs aren't interested in flash-in-the-pan viral hits or polished Web series with narratives — they create videos in their apartments on pocket-change budgets, post consistently, and turn their YouTube channels into fan magnets.

"YouTubers," as they call themselves, serve as director, producer, star, editor and marketing director and can earn six-figure salaries through their share of the ad revenue. As they've become celebrities in the 25-and-younger demographic, they increasingly face the quandary of whether to give in to the lures of Hollywood and risk giving up their scrappy authenticity.

The videos are some combination of sketch comedy, reality show, video blog, song parody, animation and 3 a.m. activity at an over-caffeinated slumber party. Their comic sensibility is irreverent, surreal, self-deprecating and fixated on lampooning cultural touchstones like Lady Gaga or Miley Cyrus. "It's the sort of the comedy that you would get on television if there wasn't an infrastructure for filtering it, vetting it," says Tim Hwang, a founder of the Boston-based research group the Web Ecology Project and an organizer of ROFLCon, a conference on Internet comedy. Some think these videos are hilarious. Others find them mundane, sophomoric or crude, and wonder: Why would anyone want to watch this stuff?

'The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers' is ready to battlewith flips, spins and dance steps

Published in the Los Angeles Times

It's your classic western pastiche: The good guys saunter through the saloon's double doors. The bad guys put down their whiskey. The brawl begins.

But in this scene, rehearsed at Melody Ranch in Newhall a week ago, the two sides compete not with fists and guns but with flips and spins. "What if dance was actually a weapon?" asks the director, Jon M. Chu. "They can use it for good or for evil."

Chu was filming an episode of "The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers," a.k.a. "The LXD," a new Web series in which hip-hop dancers are portrayed as superheroes. It's dance crew meets "Fantastic Four" — ordinary people discover their exceptional powers and decide to join the Legion, which then faces off against mysterious enemies. But instead of specializing in firepower or invisibility, it's breaking, popping, locking, finger tutting or boogaloo.

"These guys have absolutely amazing powers — real powers, not fake superpowers," says Chu, 30, the series' creator, who also directed Disney's "Step Up 3D," which comes out in August. "You can show, in your living room, what they do."

2010 Southern California Journalism Awards Winner

My article in Slate, "Best Weekend Never," ended up winning the 2010 Southern California Journalism Award in the Online Entertainment News/Feature/Commentary category (it was previously named a finalist). 

At the July 27 ceremony, speakers included Sean Penn, Anderson Cooper, a Sarah Palin impersonation, and the governor (see photo).

For a full list of winners, click here.

2010 Southern California Journalism Awards Finalist

My article in Slate, "Best Weekend Never," which won a 2010 National Entertainment Journalism Award, was just named a finalist for a 2010 Southern California Journalism Award in the Online Entertainment News/Feature/Commentary category. The award winners will be announced June 27. Apparently, Sean Penn and Anderson Cooper will be there.

Download the full list of finalists by clicking here or by visiting the LA Press Club website here.

Is location-based social networking practical in spread-out Los Angeles?

Published in the Los Angeles Times

This article was the lead story on the front page of the Los Angeles Times website:

In early May, Mark Ghuneim was sitting in his hotel room at the Four Seasons near Beverly Hills. He discovered, via his iPhone's Foursquare app, that a friend was at the Echo, a concert venue in Echo Park about eight miles away, about to watch a concert. "I'm realizing that even if I got in my car and drove there right now, I'd miss the set," he said.

At that moment, Ghuneim did not find Foursquare as useful as some of its 1 million users do. Location-based services are the hot new form of social networking, allowing users to tell their friends where they are and what they think of that place. Loopt has more than 3 million users and MyTown has more than 2 million, while Twitter and Google also have location-based features.

But as Ghuneim discovered, these services might not be an ideal fit for Los Angeles, a city that has always had anxiety when it comes to locations. Angelenos tend to spend too much time in a location we don't want to be, driving to a location we're trying to reach, along with a bunch of other people fighting to do the same. The city's spread-out geography and car dependence might make it particularly inhospitable to the spontaneity that these services thrive on.

Robin Hood Psychology

Published in Slate

Most summer movie heroes have an uncontroversial moral mandate: Beat the bad guys; save the city; "With great power comes great responsibility." Robin Hood's crusade is more divisive: He steals from the rich and gives to the poor, redistributing wealth in favor of a more equitable society.

On opening weekend of Ridley Scott's film adaptation (starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett), the climate for Robin Hood's moral brand seems bleak—"socialism" has become a dirty word in America. But while Robin Hood's ideals are politically controversial, researchers in psychology and related fields are finding that humans seem inclined to engage in Robin Hood-like thinking, which they often call "egalitarian motives," "inequity aversion," or "variance reduction." In fact, there's a growing body of evidence that, despite appearances, we're Robin Hoods at heart.

To measure our attitudes toward inequality, researchers conduct "ultimatum games," a form of experimental economics frequently cited by journalists and pop psychologists to debunk the idea that we always act rationally. In an ultimatum game, the first test subject is given money that he must divide between himself and a second subject. The second subject then gets the opportunity to take the deal or to reject it—leaving both subjects with nothing. It turns out that people are inclined to reject the deal when the split is very unequal, even though they'd be better off taking what they can. The conclusion: People are willing to sacrifice their own income to punish those who don't distribute incomes equally.

To continue reading, click here.

2010 National Entertainment Journalism Awards Winner

I wanted to let you all know that I won a 2010 National Entertainment Journalism Award for first place in the Online Feature category for my piece in Slate, "Best Weekend Never." The awards were given by the Los Angeles Press Club at the Steve Allen Theater last night.

Me getting the award:

The award:

2010 National Entertainment Journalism Awards Finalist

I am a finalist in the 2010 National Entertainment Journalism Awards for my piece in Slate, "Best Weekend Never." I'm very excited. Check out the full list of finalists by clicking here.

NPR appearance: TV Tropes

This weekend I will be appearing on the National Public Radio show "On the Media" to discuss my recent Los Angeles Times article about TV Tropes.

Here are some air times for "On the Media":

Los Angeles
KPCC 89.3 FM Sunday 4 PM - 5 PM

New York City
WNYC 820 AM Saturday 7 AM - 8 AM
WNYC 820 AM Sunday 3 PM - 4 PM
WNYC 93.9 FM Sunday 10 AM - 11 AM

Washington, DC
WAMU 88.5 PM Saturday 4 PM - 5 PM

For listings in other cities, click here. My interview is in the final ten minutes of the show.

The interview is pre-taped, so you can also listen to it right now by clicking below:

For a transcript of the interview, click here.

Top Movies of 2009

This year, my opinions of films tended to be swayed by my expectations. I thought many of the best picture nominations were solid and entertaining but still a bit disappointing. A few movies gained several notches on my list merely because they were the opposite — surprisingly good.

In the past, I’ve been a bit skeptical of this kind of thinking. I’ve felt that that if we are really aware of how we are experiencing a movie, then we would view the experience in absolute terms, and not in relation to our expectations. I’ve learned to appreciate how expectations can matter.

My top movies of 2009, in order:

1. District 9
I wasn’t even going to see this, as it seemed too science fiction-y for me, but I love the way it grounded the science fiction in real life. I very much enjoyed watching the flawed but sympathetic protagonist, Wikus, a government bureaucrat who is appointed to head up the effort of evicting the aliens from Johannesburg. He’s like a South African Michael Scott. The political allegory managed to be completely obvious but also, somehow, still smart and nuanced — an area where “Avatar” could have used a lesson.

Mumbling Wins Oscars!

Published in The Daily Beast

Jeff Bridges will almost certainly win a well-deserved Best Actor Oscar Sunday for Crazy Heart, as the performance caps a fruitful but underappreciated career and manages to find sympathy and humor in a washed-up, alcoholic country singer. But there's another factor that may contribute to his victory: It's hard to understand what he's saying.

In recent years, a number of Oscar-nominated performances have involved some form of low-talking, be it mumbling, muttering, slurring, or a lack of volume, either because of the actor's choice or the requirements of the role. It's not that they're completely unintelligible—it's that on the spectrum that runs from Laurence Olivier in Richard III to the Olsen twins in Full House, they're a few standard deviations toward the latter.

Every year, there are at least one or two acting nominees who are in this category, and this year it's Bridges and the tight-lipped Gabourey Sidibe in Precious. Last year, it was Frank Langella's gravelly former president in Frost/Nixon and Robert Downey, Jr.'s white actor pretending to be black in Tropic Thunder.

To continue reading, click here.

TV Tropes identifies where you've seen it all before

Published in the Los Angeles Times

Some people take care of orchids. Others take care of guinea pigs. Barbara takes care of tropes.

Most of the day she's a 51-year-old seamstress in Illinois and a caregiver for her husband. But in her spare time, Barbara tends to four tropes: "Cool Bike," "Badass Longcoat," "You Fail Logic Forever" and "Silly Reason for War."

"They were a mess, they needed to be cleaned up, and nobody else was doing it, so I adopted them," she says. "It's equivalent of wiping down the sink every morning after I brush my teeth."

Her obsession takes place at the website TV Tropes (tvtropes.org), a catalog of thousands of pop culture tropes -- conventions or devices that pop up repeatedly in storytelling. Each trope has a Web page listing examples, not only from television but also film, theater, literature, comic books, professional wrestling and other media.

TV Tropes is a wiki -- a site anyone in the world can contribute to and edit, like Wikipedia. Since its founding in 2004, more than 42,000 people have volunteered to be "tropers" like Barbara -- a mixture of fans, writers, educators and amateur academics smitten by pop culture and accessing their inner Joseph Campbell. The site now gets more than 2 million unique visitors a month, according to Google Analytics.

Oscar nomination predictions - how did i do?

I got 41 correct out of 45 nominees in the major categories:

X = wrong answer [the actual nominee I missed is in brackets]

Best Picture
1. The Hurt Locker
2. Inglorious Basterds
3. Up in the Air
4. Avatar
5. Precious
6. Up
7. An Education
8. A Serious Man
9. Invictus - X [The Blind Side]
10. District 9

Oscar nomination predictions

My predictions for the Oscar nominations:

Best Picture
1. The Hurt Locker
2. Inglorious Basterds
3. Up in the Air
4. Avatar
5. Precious
6. Up
7. An Education
8. A Serious Man
9. Invictus
10. District 9

Avatar in Spanish, or French, or German: How dubbing works

Published in Slate

James Cameron's Avatar has earned over $440 million at the domestic box office but has raked in more than twice that much internationally. The viewing experience in many non-English-speaking countries is naturally quite different—since audiences hear dubbing artists read Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver's lines. While Americans generally associate dubbing with out-of-sync martial arts B-movies, the technique is no joke for audiences around the world, where most of the big-budget films are from the United States. How does dubbing work?

First, pick your languages. Big Hollywood movies are always dubbed into French, German, and Spanish, since those respective countries all have sizable film-going communities. There are often two Spanish versions, one for Spain and one for Latin America. Otherwise, the decision depends on the type of film and its perceived market value in a given country. Animated films are dubbed into more languages than live action, since animation is primarily aimed at children who may not be able to read subtitles. Disney's The Princess and the Frog, for instance, will be dubbed into 38 languages, while the studio's live-action offering The Sorcerer's Apprentice is only scheduled for nine.

To continue reading, click here.

"The Drunkard's Walk"

I’d like to praise “The Drunkard’s Walk,” a book I just finished listening to on CD, written by Leonard Mlodinow, a professor at Caltech. It’s in one of the many books I’ve read in the general arena of pop academia, all of which basically have the same theme — “you don’t know what you think you know.” It’s like on huge Venn Diagram where each circle is a book, so they all overlap, many citing the same experiments, though each one focuses on a different subject. There are the ones that focus on happiness, the one that focuses on crowds, one on split-second decisions, many on economics, etc.

This one is the math one. The theme is: “you don’t know what you think you know about probability.” Our brains are bad at calculating the probability that something will happen.

I started out skeptical, as Mlodinow starts with some very elementary pop academic concepts, like his discussion about how film executives get fired even when they’ve only been in their jobs for five years, and does anyone really know how much their actions actually have an impact on whether a movie actually does well. It’s a concept I’ve heard in other similar books, namely “The Wisdom of Crowds” — that CEOs’ actions don’t always affect a company’s results in the way you think they can.

The book eventually takes us on a journey through the history of the field of probability. For each discovery, he explains the concept and uses various examples to help us understand it. Eventually, the book starts to point some concepts that I’m sure are understood only by a tiny fraction of the population, and which even very smart people don’t know about or completely ignore, and yet are crucial to hugely important situations.

"White Lie" and Christianity

My song "White Lie" is the subject of a sermon at a Christian website. To read it, click here.

Steve Martin and Savion Glover

A couple months ago, I saw Steve Martin at Disney Hall playing the banjo, right after seeing the famous tap-dancer Savion Glover perform at the Broad Hall. Both events struck me as surprisingly similar.

Each man is probably the most famous person in his art form, and most audience members I’d imagine showed up because of this. Martin is very much a legit banjo player, as his first album of banjo songs, “The Crow,” released earlier this year, spent months atop the bluegrass charts and got nominated for major International Bluegrass Music Association awards (again, probably at least in part from name recognition). Glover is a tap dancer and has always been a tap dancer, but his fame also came from outlets where his tap dancing mixed with more popular art forms, as in his creation of the Broadway show “Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk” and his choreography for the animated movie “Happy Feet.”

Each one’s art form is a small corner of Americana, one that is easily forgotten and isn’t often written about in big feature stories in the New York Times Arts & Leisure section.  

Each one had a band of sorts. Martin had the Steep County Rangers as his backup band, and for a few songs he was joined by his opening act Abigail Washburn and for others the famous banjo player Bela Fleck came onstage, and the Rangers also did a couple songs on their own. Glover’s act was also set up very much like a concert — it was him and two backup dancers, and each had his own wooden platform on the stage, and, as with Martin, the backup dancers at times got their own “songs” to perform.

Each one involved the impressively quick repetition of this tiny staccato noise in order to create a catchy rhythm. There’s the click-click of the tap shoes, and the blink-blink of the banjo.

"White Lie" sheet music

In response to many requests, I am posting the sheet music to "White Lie," the song I wrote for the show "Lie to Me." You can download it by clicking here.

Watch my song on "Lie to Me"

I am very proud of a song I wrote for the show "Lie to Me," which will be performed on the episode that airs tonight at 9 PM on Fox. The song, entitled "White Lie," appears about three quarters of the way through the episode.

You can listen to the song right now by clicking on this gray bar:

White Lie

The song is not yet available on iTunes, but you can download it as an mp3 by right-clicking on the gray bar above and selecting the option "Save link as..." (or another similar option -- each browser has different language)

Movie stars break the song barrier

Published in the Los Angeles Times

This story also appeared in the Chicago Tribune

Kate Hudson sang songs from "Annie" around the house as a kid, but she never had a professional singing job until she auditioned for the movie "Nine." She walked in and started a song from the show, "A Call From the Vatican." After her first line, a soaring "Guiiiidoooh," the director, Rob Marshall, stopped her.

"Does anybody know you can sing?" he said.

Hudson blushed. "I don't think so," she replied.

Hudson, who landed the role of Stephanie, is one of many stars to reveal a secret singing talent, as movie musicals have become more popular in recent years. "Nine" is a clown car of bold-faced names -- Hudson, Penélope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren and Daniel Day-Lewis in the lead role of the film director, Guido Contini.

This month also saw the opening of "Crazy Heart," in which Jeff Bridges plays an over-the-hill country singer whose protégé is a Nashville superstar played by Colin Farrell. These days, dubbing a performer's singing voice is not as acceptable as it was in the days when Marni Nixon was the singing voice of Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady" and Natalie Wood in "West Side Story."

So how do so many actors just happen to be able to carry a tune?