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March 13 - 19, 2022 WHATS UP! T11 that, essentially, some roles go to the short guy, and other ones just don't. "Size matters," he told the Irish Times in 2020. "You could be a very imposing char- acter and walk into a room and the people will back away. On the other hand, you may look like an easy mark, but … those things matter." Fortunately for him, he said, his stature suited his other tal- ents. Despite getting a classical education from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, he never wanted to be the leading man. Simply put, he enjoyed making people laugh. "I got one thing from my sis- ter — God rest her soul — An- gie," DeVito said. "She put me to work in a beauty parlor, and I think the gift of the gab start- ed coming out." Of course, the kind of "gab" he leaned toward was, to put it mildly, teasing people. "I enjoyed winding people up. So that's how I became that guy in 'Taxi,' or ... Frank ['It's Always Sunny in Phila- delphia'] … or the character in 'Ruthless People.' Those char- acters were in my fabric." Q: Is the "Fargo" show re- ally based on true events? They seem so outlandish. A: You could say that the crimes depicted in the TV ad- aptation of "Fargo" are too good to be true, and that's be- cause they are. (Well, maybe not "good," but you get it.) Screenwriter Noah Hawley ("Legion"), who was given the enviable task of adapting the 1996 movie for the small screen, admits that the "true story" dis- claimer at the beginning of each episode is itself a fiction. "It's all just made up," Haw- ley told E! "The whole cloth. I didn't go looking for true crime. It started from a charac- ter standpoint and everything grew organically out of that." He said that claiming it's true allows him to approach the story differently, unbur- dened by audience expecta- tions of seeing a good guy tri- umph over adversity. "It allows you to tell the sto- ry in a different way, because you're no longer on the hook to tell that hero's journey that we've all seen a thousand times before," he said. Hawley elaborated: "You're allowed to say, 'Well, look, I know the story goes in a weird or crazy direction now, but that's just the way it hap- pened.' And the audience then goes, 'Well, this doesn't feel like I know what's going to happen now because it's not unfolding in a way that it usu- ally does.' And I think that's exciting." He was also following in the footsteps of the original. The 1996 film also starts with a claim to be based on real events. Ethan Coen, one- half of the writing-directing- producing Coen Brothers who made the original "Fargo," subsequently admitted that it only "pretends to be true." He said it was inspired by a couple of unrelated real-life crimes, but so loosely that the film can't even live up to Hol- lywood's very loose definition of a "true story." Have a question? Email us at questions@tvtabloid.com. Please include your name and town. Personal replies will not be provided. Advance Pest Control 2 x 2 TAKE 5 BY ADAM THOMLISON TV Media Q: Why did they pick the Cleveland Indians for the movie "Major League"? A: You wouldn't really think of the 1989 sports comedy classic "Major League" as an auteur-type picture, but it re- ally was a labor of love by one man, writer-director David S. Ward. And Ward is from Cleveland. In a sprawling oral history of the film done by Sports Il- lustrated magazine, Ward said that he was a born and raised Cleveland Indians (now Cleveland Guardians) fan, and at the time he was growing up, that meant only being able to dream of wins. (Cleveland was a perennial basement dweller for most of the mid-20th cen- tury.) He came to realize the only way he'd ever get to see them winning was, "If I make a mov- ie where they do, and obvious- ly it has to be a comedy be- cause nobody would believe it as a drama." Of course, sports is big busi- ness, and they still had to con- vince the Major League Base- ball corporation to let them use the team name and logo. The bigger challenge, howev- er, was getting permission to use another real team — the globally popular New York Yankees — as the villains. Again it seems that Cleve- land pride came to the rescue. "I think what happened was [Yankees owner] George Steinbrenner is from Cleve- land," Ward said in a 2016 in- terview with ESPN. "I think he thought it's a comedy so there was no harm, but it took him a while." Q: Is Danny DeVito really as short as he is portrayed, or is it some sort of camera trick? A: Four-foot-10 star Danny DeVito comes by his height naturally — no special effects required. But you're right that it's more than a matter of him just being short. He was born with Fairbank's disease, known medically as multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, a genetic condition that af- fects bone growth. He says that his height un- doubtedly affected his career trajectory in Hollywood — Danny Devito at the FX TCA Starwalk HOLLYWOOD Q&A Solution on page T23 Use the clues above and beside the grid to fill in the squares Rogers 479-636-5590 • Springdale 479-756-1788 Eureka Springs 479-253-8967 www.advancepestcontrolnwa.com Family Owned, Competitively Priced, Quality Service Since 1981 PEST CONTROL | TERMITE FERTILIZATION | WEED CONTROL PRE-EMERGENTS