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Rocca Adds Laughs to 'Smoking Gun'
« on: Jul 9th, 2003, 4:42am » |
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Rocca Adds Laughs to 'Smoking Gun'
(Tuesday, July 08 05:54 PM)
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - The good folks at TheSmokingGun.com have always had a sense of humor about what they do. It's hard not to laugh sometimes when your stock in trade involves unearthing embarrassing celebrity demands, humiliating gaffs by reality stars and the country's most pathetic mugshots.
In the past year, the web site has also unearthed serious documents including court records from sex crimes cases involving Roman Polanski and Michael Jackson, but it's the funny side that's exposed when Court TV turns the muckraking site into a series of quarterly television specials, beginning Wednesday, August 20.
"The emphasis of the special is going to be comedy," promises Mo Rocca, the Harvard alum who is about to become the face of The Smoking Gun. Rocca, who once produced and wrote for the PBS series "Wishbone," is a senior political correspondent for Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." In addition to orchestrating gleefully sardonic news features, Rocca can always be counted on to contribute his "Mo-pinion."
Rocca hosts the specials, providing his reliably intelligent wit, but also going above and beyond the call of duty, promising some interesting celebrity impressions.
"The Nick Nolte mugshot, the one with his finger in the light socket, you know, with the hair up like that," he demonstrates. "It's sort of like the 'Whistler's Mother' of my generation. I mean, it's such an icon at this point. We're going to do a celebrity makeover, if you will, and turn somebody into that. And actually, I'm the lucky person. I'm going to become the star of 'Lorenzo's Oil' on GHB."
"I think if you read the site, it's really hilarious stuff," says Smoking Gun co-founder Daniel Green of the mix of tawdry celebrity mistakes and dopey small town crime. "So what Mo's going to do with the TV show is, I think, take that and use it as sort of a basic script, if you will, and then just add more humor to that."
Rocca promises that only half of the stories on the specials will be celebrity-based, unless you count Tawny Peaks or Cooler Head as celebrities. Peaks, of course, is the stripper who was sued by a patron for injuries caused by her 69-inch breasts, while Cooler Head was arrested for armed robbery, a crime he committed with a cooler on his head to maintain anonymity. Rocca also swears no special favors will be given to Smoking Gun repeat offenders like Bobby Brown.
The site, which takes advantage of the Freedom of Information Act as well as the print journalism backgrounds of Green and co-founder Bill Bastone, will continue to publish regular updates as often as the famous and not-so-famous bungle through life. The site will further branch out with regular features on the Karen Duffy-hosted "Hollywood at Large."
"I think the most fun stories are when we break things that other reporters have looked at and have never bothered to delve into or were unable to find out anything," Green says. "When we do that, to me, that's the best feeling in the office."
Visit http://www.thesmokinggun.com.
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