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JAKE GRADUATES
Jake Pennington Cassidy can now add a BS to his name, upon graduating from Boston University on Sunday, May 20.
He received a bachelor of science degree in communications, television and motion pictures.
OLD NEWS
DAVID PROMOTES RAT PACK IS BACK
David appeared on THE INSIDER on Weds, Nov. 23, to promote Rat Pack Is Back. You can see TV shots Here:
INSIDER PICS
LATEST NEWS
David announced during his Sept 23
Concert in Milburn NJ that the Ft. McDowell concert on Oct 7 & the Mohegan Sun Concert on the 22nd will be his last concert
tour dates for a long time. His latest plans are to tour with The Rat Pack Is Back & take it to Broadway in November.
There is no word whether David
will be a cast member, or what his particiation will be, although he has plans to sing a few songs in the show. Stay
tuned.
I just posted my photos from the Oct 7 Ft. McDowell concert.
you can check them out here:
David Appears on Conan O'Brian
To promote Rat Pack Is Back & salute the holiday season, David appeared in a spoof of the lighting of the Rockefeller
Center tree on Conan O'Brian on Dec 1/2. He sang "Have yourself a merry Little Christmas" & spoke about Rat
Pack. Photos posted Below
CONAN PICS
PLAYBILL ARTICLE
The Rat Pack Is Back!'' with Creator David Cassidy
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 7, 2006--
David Cassidy, Along with Sandy Hackett and Dick Feeney, Announces Settlement in Cassidy's DRDC Productions' Lawsuit Against
Hackett's TRP Entertainment LLC
David Cassidy, along with Sandy Hackett and Dick Feeney, is pleased to announce a settlement in Cassidy's DRDC Productions,
Inc.'s lawsuit against Hackett's TRP Entertainment LLC. The out of court settlement, the amount and terms of which are not
being disclosed, protects DRDC's U.S. trademark for "The Rat Pack Is Back!." "It's a great win for everybody,"
said Cassidy, Hackett and Feeney.
Cassidy's "The Rat Pack Is Back!" was the original Las Vegas musical comedy theatrical production that depicts
the fictional night in 1960 when the legendary foursome celebrated Frank's birthday on stage. The show was created by Cassidy
and written with Emmy Award winning writer/producer Don Reo.
"TRPIB" debuted at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas in 1999 to rave reviews and sold out performances. After one
year, the show moved to the Sahara Hotel where it remained in the Congo Room for 2 years, until the room closed for renovations.
"TRPIB" took its show on the road - most notably to the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, where it plays for several weeks
each year.
TRP's show, "A Tribute to Frank, Sammy, Joey, and Dean," produced by Dick Feeney and Sandy Hackett, now entering
its 5th year, has had a long and successful run in Las Vegas at the Greek Isles as well as in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston
and Detroit. The show will be re-branded as "The Rat Pack Is Back! in The Tribute to Frank, Sammy, Joey, and Dean."
As part of the settlement, Cassidy has granted a license to TRP to use "The Rat Pack Is Back!." Some creative
changes will be made, including Cassidy guest starring as the quartet's sidekick and protege, Bobby Darin, for the first weekend's
performances of the newly titled show, on Saturday and Sunday, June 24 and 25. This marks Cassidy's return to Las Vegas for
the first time since he starred in his theatrical production "At the Copa" at the Rio at the same time "The
Rat Pack Is Back!" was enjoying its Sahara success. He has been touring in concert nationally and internationally since.
The show will continue its extended run in Las Vegas and already has dates scheduled in Dallas, Memphis, Dayton, Kansas
City, El Paso and more cities to be named as dates are added for a national tour.
Contacts
JAG Entertainment
Jo-Ann Geffen, 818-905-5511
jgeffen@jagpr.com

JUST CALL HIM STEP-GRANDPA
ON Aug 6, Shaun became a Grandfather when step-daughter Jessica, & her husband Arrow, became parents to a new son,
Odin Ash! Congratulations to all!

NEW INTERVIEW WITH SHAUN
Shaun Cassidy Interview with TV.com |
http://www.tv.com/feature/invasion/ Please note that by clicking on the above link, you
can also find the promos along with Dave's "catch-up" video.
How did the idea for Invasion
come up?
Watch the news.
How many networks did you
pitch the show to before ABC said yes? Or were they the first to see, first to pick up?
They were the
one and only and they bought it in the room.
Why Invasion? Are
you a sci-fi fan and did the success of Lost open up a door for one of your favorite projects, or did you have several
projects on your plate and sci-fi was just the smart way to go last year?
I like blending
genres. If this is a sci-fi show, it's also very much a family show and a suspense thriller. It's also even comedic in places,
granted darkly comedic.
Do you have the overall concept
of the show, what the mystery of the aliens is, or are you flying by the seat of your pants and thinking up the plot lines
as you go?
I have everything
figured out AND I'm flying by the seat of my pants. I'm a 32 regular, by the way.
One: How do you feel being
compared to other supernatural dramas like Threshold, Ghost Whisperer, and so on? Two: Why do you think
Invasion has succeeded where others have failed?
I love being
compared if we're compared favorably. And if we're successful, I think it's because we try and keep everything within the
realm of possibility. The truth is, our show is much more science fact than fiction.
What are some of the fun/tough/interesting
things about filming in Florida?
We rarely do.
In what ways has TV changed
since you started out in The Hardy Boys and Breaking Away?
Well, The
Hardy Boys was cancelled with a rating that is usually reserved for the likes of American Idol these days. Of
course, back then there were only three channels. So everything is relative, I guess.
Which do you enjoy more, acting
in a show or exec producing?
The last time
I acted in a series was 1980, so that should tell you something.
How do you write the scripts?
Do you hammer out a draft and then execs give notes, or do you gang-write it, then polish?
We have done
it every which way.
Is there one show that you
pitched, a pet project that you really liked, but never got made?
Yes. A musical
television series I was working on last year that I am still looking forward to making.
The theme of body snatchers
is recurrent in cinema but appears new for television drama series. One: How did the idea originate? And which one of the
three Body Snatchers movies did you see/do you like? Two: Both American Gothic and Invasion feature
a sheriff as the character- and spell-binding factor. Is there a reason?
I have seen
pieces of some of the original Body Snatchers on television though I couldn't tell you how the bodies were snatched.
As for any similarities between Lucas Buck on American Gothic and Tom Underlay on Invasion, all I can say
is that I have an innate distrust of authority.
What are you favorite shows
on TV today?
The
Simpsons has been my favorite show for many years now. And aside from sports, I like CBS Sunday morning.
|

INVASION WILL RETURN ON APRIL 19 FOR A 5-EPISODE RUN, CULMINATING WITH THE SEASON FINALE ON MAY 17.
ON APRIL 15, THE ABC-FAMILY CABLE NETWORK WILL AIR A 10-EPISODE MARATHON.


ZAP2IT ARTICLE

An 'Invasion' Hurricane Hits Burbank
By Kate O'Hare
In the Wednesday ABC freshman drama "Invasion," the small town of Homestead, Fla., struggles to recover from
a devastating hurricane while also coping with an apparent influx of strange creatures in the water and strange behavior among
its citizens.
Series creator Shaun Cassidy knows a bit about Homestead, since his wife's family still lives there, so you might expect
a certain level of authenticity. What you might not expect is a convincing slice of the South Florida Everglades smack in
the middle of the Warner Bros. back lot in Burbank, Calif., just a short golf-cart ride from Cassidy's production offices.
The show also films on location in Fillmore, Calif., and other surrounding areas.
"This is our pond," Cassidy says, standing next to a good-sized, murky body of water surrounded by trees and
bordered by a large blue-screen canopy. "This is our window to the Everglades. It's about four feet deep. The blue screen
comes and goes, depending on what we're doing.
"This pond was here. We added all the saw grass, and we dressed it with a lot of specific foliage to Florida. But
I think it was used in 'Fantasy Island.' They shot a lot of 'Adaptation' here and 'The Last Samurai.'"
The dirt road that runs by the pond is rutted and muddy -- the result of cinematic "rain" the night before --
and Cassidy says that some of the huge trees alongside it long predate "Invasion."
"This is a banyan tree," he says. "This was here. We didn't put this big tree in. That's a magnolia, and
that's a parking lot. Can you see it through there, through the painted screen?"
Pointing at another painted backdrop, he says, "It's shielding a fence leading out to Warner Bros. Records, where
I made records when I was a kid. Right there. That's where I used to go all the time. It's really weird."
The eldest son of Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones, and half brother to David Cassidy, Shaun Cassidy had a recording career
as a teenager, including the hit 1977 single "Da Do Ron Ron," and later segued into acting and then writing and
producing. By the '90s, he was creating such TV shows as "American Gothic" and "Roar."
Because of his parentage, Cassidy has a lifelong history in show business.
"My first memory of being on any lot was this lot," he says, "when my mother was doing 'The Music Man.'
I was, like, 5 years old, and I was riding my bike around with Ronny Howard, who was 8 or 9 years old."
Adjacent to the pond is the field office of park ranger Russell Varon (Eddie Cibrian). Not far away, nestled amid more
trees and greenery, is the rustic, storm-battered house Russell shares with his children -- teenage Jesse (Evan Peters) and
little Rose (Ariel Gade) -- and his pregnant second wife, TV reporter Larkin Groves (Lisa Sheridan).
Russell's first wife, Dr. Mariel Underlay (Kari Matchett), lives with her second husband, Sheriff Tom Underlay (William
Fichtner), and his teenage daughter, Kira (Alexis Dziena), in an expensive subdivision that suffered no hurricane damage --
but that's later in the tour.
On the way to Russell's house, chain saws drown out conversation as a large tree is cut into pieces, and Cassidy has to
hop out of the golf cart to move aside branches.
"By the way," he says, "what they're doing here -- we constantly have to make hurricane debris."
A later encounter with producer Timothy Marx, who's walking a new director around the set, reveals the tree in question
was actually 15 years old and rotted out and fell of its own accord.
Next to the house is a barn occupied by Russell's brother-in-law, conspiracy theorist Dave Groves (Tyler Labine), who
rightly suspects that all is not well with the Underlays.
"It's an indoor-outdoor set," Cassidy says. "You never see, on television, people playing a scene inside
and walking outside in one shot. You usually have to cut, because it's usually on a soundstage.
"The benefit is, we're playing the nature and bringing it in, but the downside is real weather is going to affect
us and real sound. When it's raining on the roof, you hear it."
The house itself is roughly thrown together -- Cassidy explains that Russell built it from a dilapidated shell for Mariel
when she was pregnant with Rose -- and much the worse for wear after the hurricane. There are replacement shingles on the
roof, missing windows and a lot of dirt tracked everywhere. But still it has charm.
"Our guys did this in three weeks," he says. "There was nothing here. You're seeing it more cleaned up
than it was. This has been a slow recovery. This is an old house, and Russell added onto it.
"What's so great, you can shoot through windows to real outdoors. You can walk and talk, go into the bedroom, through
the living room, out into the yard, over to Dave's barn, get into a car and leave, all in one shot."
There's also a treehouse Russell built for Rose, from which one could see, as Cassidy says, "probably Burbank."
In sharp contrast is the Underlay McMansion, built on a soundstage that Cassidy says once was home to "Casablanca,"
"A Streetcar Named Desire" and "East of Eden."
It's an angular, cold house painted in dull colors. "This was the model for the neighborhood," Cassidy says,
"and Underlay said, 'I'll take it,' and surprised Mariel with all the furniture."
As to the possibility of another storm before the end of the season, Cassidy says, "There may be, but in our universe,
it's not so much about the hurricane as what comes in with the hurricane."
TV Guide Quotes /Oct 31, 2005
Could aliens be to blame? The more likely culprit is creator and executive producer Shaun Cassidy, the former Hardy
Boy who knows the value of sustaining a good mystery. Which is exactly what Invasion is turning out to be. In a fall season
stuffed with sci-fi—including NEC's Surface and CBs' Threshold-Invasion has distinguished itself by remaining down-to-earth,
Set in his wife's hometown of Homestead, Florida, and inspired in part by her experience during Hurricane Andrew, Cassidy's
creation is as much a richly wrought tale about surviving the aftermath of disaster as a supernatural serial. "A big
theme in the show is how you recover {whether it's} from hurricanes or divorces or alien invasions," says the thrice-married
Cassidy. "I'm basically a glass-is-half-full kind of guy, but you can't just sit back and hope things come together on
their own. I think you have to work at it."
Invasion certainly has its work cut out for it. Critically acclaimed as it may be, it's still trying to win over viewers.
Thanks to lead-in Lost, the drama scared up strong ratings initially, but its audience has softened in subsequent weeks.
Naysayers point to the show's some-times very deliberate pace, which, accord-ing to Cassidy, is about to change. "Most,
if not all, of the mysteries raised in the pilot will be answered before the first 13 shows are finished," he vows, including
"what's in the water."
November sweeps will pack in more plot developments than you can shake a conspiracy theory at. In the November 9 episode,
Russell's pregnant wife,
Larkin (Lisa Sheridan), struggles to survive a car crash, although creepy town sheriff Underlay (the deliciously enigmatic
William Fichtner) might make that difficult. "With the sheriff the bottom line is 'Don't get in my way,'"
Fichtner says. "If somebody [stumbles] into my backyard, it's not all right."
Also coming up: A mother who's given away her baby lands in the hospital, only to have tests reveal "she's never
actually had a child at all,"
Cassidy says. Hmmm. And look for Larkin's conspiracy-theorist brother, Dave (Tyier Labine), to be abducted.
"It's his dream come true," Cassidy says, "until he finds out the people abducting him think he's the
enemy."
Finally, keep an eye on doctor Mariel (Kari Matchett), Russell's ex and Under-in lay's current wife. Since surviving
the hurricane, she can't stay away from as H2O and has apparently acquired the baffling ability to breathe underwater. as
According to Cassidy, her survivors group will "start hatching agendas that might he frightening to some people."
Now that raises so many more questions, doesn't it?
CHEERS
FOR FEARS
NOVEMBER 4, 2005 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
Why this show is the scariest thing on TV? Exec producer Shaun Cassidy, 47, just conies right out and says it: Invasion’s
post-hurricane Florida wasteland is scaly.. .because it's true. Except for the aliens. "I wish all the bad things were
just happening on TV and life were wonderful," he says. "But it is out there. Every family in the country is asking
itself the same questions: How do we protect our children? What's going on here? You don't need aliens for that." Best
Halloween costume? "Most actors that I know don't like Halloween. It's like amateur night." Favorite horror movie?
"I really go in for the Rosemary's Baby land of horror: 'Everything's normal! Except.. .what's wrong with my baby?' Scary
stuff in the bright sun." Spooky show secrets? Cassidy swears we're about to find out what's really going on in the battle
between good (Gibrian's park ranger/ pilot dad) and maybe-evil (Fichtner's eerie town sheriff). "By the time the ninth
episode has aired, basically all of the questions raised in the pilot are answered. We find out what happened to that skeleton,
what happened to Mariel [the creepy, water-obsessed doctor]. We find out that what's going on is an experiment that's failed
in other places; but for some reason it seems to be catching on here." We'll believe it when we see it, sir "I know.
When you're doing a mystery show, you get the sense from the audience that they want to believe—but there's this
layer of cynicism you have to cut through, because they've been burned before." Whitney Pastorek
An 'Invasion' Hurricane Hits Burbank By Kate O'Hare
In the Wednesday ABC freshman drama "Invasion," the small
town of Homestead, Fla., struggles to recover from a devastating hurricane while also coping with an apparent influx of strange
creatures in the water and strange behavior among its citizens.
Series creator Shaun Cassidy knows a bit about Homestead, since his wife's family still lives there, so you might expect
a certain level of authenticity. What you might not expect is a convincing slice of the South Florida Everglades smack in
the middle of the Warner Bros. back lot in Burbank, Calif., just a short golf-cart ride from Cassidy's production offices.
The show also films on location in Fillmore, Calif., and other surrounding areas.
"This is our pond," Cassidy says, standing next to a good-sized, murky body of water surrounded by trees and bordered by
a large blue-screen canopy. "This is our window to the Everglades. It's about four feet deep. The blue screen comes and goes,
depending on what we're doing.
"This pond was here. We added all the saw grass, and we dressed it with a lot of specific foliage to Florida. But I think
it was used in 'Fantasy Island.' They shot a lot of 'Adaptation' here and 'The Last Samurai.'"
The dirt road that runs by the pond is rutted and muddy -- the result of cinematic "rain" the night before -- and Cassidy
says that some of the huge trees alongside it long predate "Invasion."
"This is a banyan tree," he says. "This was here. We didn't put this big tree in. That's a magnolia, and that's a parking
lot. Can you see it through there, through the painted screen?"
Pointing at another painted backdrop, he says, "It's shielding a fence leading out to Warner Bros. Records, where I made
records when I was a kid. Right there. That's where I used to go all the time. It's really weird."
The eldest son of Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones, and half brother to David Cassidy, Shaun Cassidy had a recording career
as a teenager, including the hit 1977 single "Da Do Ron Ron," and later segued into acting and then writing and producing.
By the '90s, he was creating such TV shows as "American Gothic" and "Roar."
Because of his parentage, Cassidy has a lifelong history in show business.
"My first memory of being on any lot was this lot," he says, "when my mother was doing 'The Music Man.' I was, like, 5
years old, and I was riding my bike around with Ronny Howard, who was 8 or 9 years old."
Adjacent to the pond is the field office of park ranger Russell Varon (Eddie Cibrian). Not far away, nestled amid more
trees and greenery, is the rustic, storm-battered house Russell shares with his children -- teenage Jesse (Evan Peters) and
little Rose (Ariel Gade) -- and his pregnant second wife, TV reporter Larkin Groves (Lisa Sheridan).
Russell's first wife, Dr. Mariel Underlay (Kari Matchett), lives with her second husband, Sheriff Tom Underlay (William
Fichtner), and his teenage daughter, Kira (Alexis Dziena), in an expensive subdivision that suffered no hurricane damage --
but that's later in the tour.
On the way to Russell's house, chain saws drown out conversation as a large tree is cut into pieces, and Cassidy has to
hop out of the golf cart to move aside branches.
"By the way," he says, "what they're doing here -- we constantly have to make hurricane debris."
A later encounter with producer Timothy Marx, who's walking a new director around the set, reveals the tree in question
was actually 15 years old and rotted out and fell of its own accord.
Next to the house is a barn occupied by Russell's brother-in-law, conspiracy theorist Dave Groves (Tyler Labine), who rightly
suspects that all is not well with the Underlays.
"It's an indoor-outdoor set," Cassidy says. "You never see, on television, people playing a scene inside and walking outside
in one shot. You usually have to cut, because it's usually on a soundstage.
"The benefit is, we're playing the nature and bringing it in, but the downside is real weather is going to affect us and
real sound. When it's raining on the roof, you hear it."
The house itself is roughly thrown together -- Cassidy explains that Russell built it from a dilapidated shell for Mariel
when she was pregnant with Rose -- and much the worse for wear after the hurricane. There are replacement shingles on the
roof, missing windows and a lot of dirt tracked everywhere. But still it has charm.
"Our guys did this in three weeks," he says. "There was nothing here. You're seeing it more cleaned up than it was. This
has been a slow recovery. This is an old house, and Russell added onto it.
"What's so great, you can shoot through windows to real outdoors. You can walk and talk, go into the bedroom, through the
living room, out into the yard, over to Dave's barn, get into a car and leave, all in one shot."
There's also a treehouse Russell built for Rose, from which one could see, as Cassidy says, "probably Burbank."
In sharp contrast is the Underlay McMansion, built on a soundstage that Cassidy says once was home to "Casablanca," "A
Streetcar Named Desire" and "East of Eden."
It's an angular, cold house painted in dull colors. "This was the model for the neighborhood," Cassidy says, "and Underlay
said, 'I'll take it,' and surprised Mariel with all the furniture."
As to the possibility of another storm before the end of the season, Cassidy says, "There may be, but in our
universe, it's not so much about the hurricane as what comes in with the hurricane."
Cassidy's Dark Streak |
Former teen idol has high hopes for the spooky Invasion
|
By Jim Benson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/24/2005 |
While many TV viewers have been tracking hurricanes this season, Shaun Cassidy has been eyeing one particular
storm.
After a somewhat rocky ratings start for ABC's Invasion, about the sinister aftereffects of a devastating
Florida hurricane, the network last week finally provided Cassidy's new show—its entry in the supernatural-series sweepstakes
this season—with a full season order.
But the 47-year-old former Hardy Boys teen idol, now a showrunner and writer, was encouraged even prior
to the announcement. ABC had continually expressed its happiness to Cassidy about the creative direction of Invasion,
showing its trust in him by providing only minimal weekly script notes for the character-based serial mystery.
Peter Roth, president of Warner Bros. Television, where Cassidy has established his production company, attributes
getting Invasion's plum 10 p.m. Wednesday post-Lost time slot to a variety of factors, including its compatibility
with the 9 p.m. juggernaut.
Yet the program's positioning on ABC's prime time schedule has proved to be both a blessing and a curse for
the network, studio and Cassidy. Invasion has been improving on its time-period average versus last year and winning
in adults 18-49, but the concern stems from the fact that the show has been losing more than half the frighteningly huge audience
delivered by the sophomore giant preceding it. The rookie series, whose ratings have stabilized over the past two weeks, also
has to face off each week against tough competition: Jerry Bruckheimer's CSI: New York on CBS and Dick Wolf's Law
& Order on NBC.
Cassidy has been through this exercise before with a number of short-lived but critically acclaimed series,
including American Gothic, which lasted one season on CBS a decade ago, and 2000's Cover Me, which aired on
USA.
Cassidy's longest-running series is CBS' CIA thriller The Agency, which he executive-produced during
its two-season run. He was forced to quickly retool the series when it debuted shortly after 9/11. The events of that day
made Cassidy want to bring the darkness out of the shadows in his next series: “For my money, there are all sorts of
scary things happening in broad daylight.”
STRANGE TIMING
That led to Invasion, which almost provided Cassidy with a repeat of his 9/11 experience on The
Agency. Debuting shortly after the Gulf Coast was ravaged by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, production was already well
under way on the show, and it was too late to alter scenes.
Invasion is set in Homestead, Fla., where Cassidy's wife, Tracey, lived through Hurricane Andrew in
1992; she witnessed firsthand the dramatic changes the storm brought to the community. Cassidy thought it would be interesting
to set a mystery show in a small town on the heels of a disaster.
“Our timing has been rather strange in that it was a big hurricane season last year and this year has
been one like we haven't seen in our lifetime,” he says.
Cassidy did not want the hurricane in the show to “feel like an exploitive event, so we went back and
looked at what we originally shot just to make sure it was being given the gravitas that it deserved in light of recent events.
And it did, actually, so nothing has really been altered. The show really isn't about a hurricane; it is about community.”
His shows have earned Cassidy the respect of networks and studios, which keep coming back for more. Warner
Bros. has brought in Cassidy, who also co-created the series Roar and Players, as executive producer to launch
several series, including CBS' Cold Case. Warner Bros.' Roth first met Cassidy in 1997, when the former oversaw programming
for Fox. Roth was impressed by Cassidy, even though Roar, a highly anticipated action-adventure show for Fox set in
fifth-century Ireland and starring then-newcomer Heath Ledger, tanked in less than two months.
“He is a uniquely talented, very passionate, outstanding writer and producer,” says Roth, who
rushed to sign Cassidy two years ago when Cassidy left his longtime home at Universal after all his mentors had departed.
FAMILY THEMES
Major themes for Cassidy, the son of actors Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones and half-brother of David Cassidy,
are family relationships and the paradox of optimism in the face of calamity.
Family themes were evident again last year in CBS' short-lived The Mountain. Cassidy wrote for and
executive-produced the program about a namesake who reluctantly inherits a ski resort, then has to contend with a bitter older
brother who is already working there.
“People talk about my shows having a dark streak,” Cassidy says. “But I'm really interested
in family and all of the machinations of family.”
Still, it is hard to overlook that “dark underbelly,” as Cassidy calls it, running through his
shows. Gothic, the 1995-96 series, was about a demonic, twisted sheriff in an idyllic little town. The disturbed lawman's
affable personality belied his insatiable and murderous appetite for control.
Cassidy credits his dysfunctional upbringing in New York and Beverly Hills as the inspiration for Gothic,
which he describes as another of his “family” shows—a moniker perhaps more in tune with the Mansons than
The Waltons.
To explain his penchant for mixing complex, layered plots with compelling and evil characters, Cassidy quips,
“I'm Irish. I have no choice.”
He has a sense of humor: The first pilot he wrote after making the jump from acting and singing in the early
1990s was a comedy for Fox called Fear of Family.
He always preferred to spend his time between takes with the writers while working on ABC's The Hardy Boys
from 1977 to '79. During his first year on the show, he released the single “Da Do Ron Ron.”
Cassidy jokes that he made the transition from pop star to producer because “I made a deal with my audience.
They agreed to stop buying my records, and ...” he shrugs. |
SHAUN NEWS
AMERICA MADE INVASION THE
#1 SHOW FOR SEPT 21!
Weekly Invasion Ratings!
#12 |
INVASION |
ABC |
10:00PM Wed |
10.2 |
16.0 |
(Yahoo Neilson) |
(Or #9 or #10, Depending on which Neilson listing in the newspaper you read!)
Invasion Strikes Close To Home
Shaun Cassidy, creator and executive producer of ABC's new SF series Invasion
—which kicks off with a hurricane in Florida— told SCI FI Wire that he has
a unique perspective on living through a hurricane, thanks to someone close
to him. "There have been numerous disasters of late,
and yet a lot of us are
still here, and we don't know what the ramifications
really are yet," Cassidy
(American Gothic) said in an interview. "That's
the universe our show is set
in. ... And it's also personal for me. My wife is
from Homestead, Fla.
She
went through Hurricane Andrew," the real-life 1992
storm that helped inspire
Invasion, well before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the
Surrounding areas.
Cassidy said that his wife was a senior in high school at the time and
had
to live for months without electricity. He said her perception of what happens
to a community when a hurricane hits has helped color his approach to
Invasion.
Cassidy's description of the series sounds eerily similar to the real-life
drama that is playing out on CNN in the aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina.
Invasion is "a show about a family and community
in recovery, post-hurricane, and a
lot of people are traumatized by the initial event," Cassidy said. "It's
really the aftermath that is the breeding ground
for ongoing mysteries. Aberrant
behavior in the population, changes in the population
that initially are
attributed to the trauma as a result of the hurricane."
According to Cassidy, the show's hurricane will lead to the quarantine of
the small Florida
town in the series "because of the stuff released from the
hospital, and there are bodies missing. They don't
know what the state of the
water is. It serves to isolate a lot of these people,
and there may be darker
forces at work here. The sheriff seems to have another
agenda beyond just
protecting this community. He may want his community
and the people to survive,
but he may want certain things to survive more than
others."
Cassidy said that he plans to keep his "suspense thriller" series as
grounded in science
fact as possible. "If at the end of the season it doesn't come
off as science
fiction at all, that would be fantastic," he said.
Quotes from Sept 9, 2005 Entertainment Weekly:
Shaun Cassidy likes a little mystery in his life. He was a Hardy Boy,
after all. Plus, there was that baffling business with the "Da Doo Ron Ron." More recently, in his second life as a TV producer,
Cassidy created the creepy 1995 soap American Gothic and ran CBS’ 2001 CIA spook show The Agency–both
short-lived. Now there’s ABC’s Invasion, an enigmatic serial starring Eddie Cibrian (Third Watch)
and William Fichtner (The Longest Yard) about a Florida town recovering from a hurricane that brought with it a big
wave of weirdness (and some glowing orange orbs, to boot). Alien incursion? Mass demonic possession? Old folks gone loco?
Whatever it is, the timing of Cassidy’s idea could not have been more perfect. "I had the fortuitous luck of pitching
this show the day after Lost premiered," says Cassidy. "The gods were smiling on
me that day."
There are bits of mystery and sci-fi, but there’s a very strong family dynamic."
That’s not a coincidence. "I’m interested in complicated families. I come
from one," says Cassidy, 46, son of The Partridge Family’s Shirley Jones, half brother to David Cassidy, and
thrice-married father of four. Invasion, he continues, is what you get when your new wife from Homestead, Fla., tells
you stories about surviving Hurricane Andrew–which then mingle with your notions of making a Rosemary’s Baby-type
thriller. "Invasion is an allegory," says Cassidy. "This little town is a microcosm for how you deal with your life–and
with the unknown–post-disaster."
Invasion may have many
meanings for Cassidy, but he agrees that most people are going to assume that it’s all about little green men. The pilot
doesn’t discourage this thinking: Russell’s brother-in-law (Tyler Labine) is an ET-believing conspiracy theorist,
while characters go missing and come back...changed. Still, Cassidy says that as the conflict between Underlay and Russell
escalates from personal to ideological to perhaps political, the little-green-men question will become more gray. Or
it may not. "I ran a show about the CIA," says Cassidy. "I cannot confirm or deny anything." –Jeff Jensen
QUOTES FROM SEPT 15 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
(REGARDING INVASION'S RELAVENCE TO
THE REAL-LIFE DISASTER) "The catalyst in our show is a hurricane, but the aftermath is totally different than Katrina.
Our little TV show is inconsequential in the big picture of human suffering."
OGLIORECORDS
KODOVONER, the 1981 Barnes & Barnes CD has been released. You can order it
from THE LINK ABOVE. Shaun sings lead on "Girl of My Dreams."
AMERICAN GOTHIC comes to DVD Date set for Oct 25
Shaun
announced that there was a possibility that AMERICAN GOTHIIC's 22 episodes will come to DVD at the end of OCT. Shaun will
provide commentary for the Pilot (COURTESY OF WWW.tvshowsonDVD.com
SHIRLEY ON SESAME STREET O5
SHIRLEY ON PBS
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