Tuesday, Dec. 27
Canadian TV writer Joe Bodolai commits suicide, was 63
TORONTO – Canadian TV writer Joseph Bodolai was an outstanding scribe who had a knack for comedy and discovering and mentoring young talent, one of his friends said Tuesday after news broke that he committed suicide in Los Angeles.
“In many ways Joe reminded me a little bit of Hunter (S. Thompson),” said producer John Brunton, president and CEO of Insight Production Company Ltd., in a telephone interview from Toronto.
“He was very, very well read, he had a broad scope of reference, he loved politics, he loved comedy, he was a terrific writer and one of the funniest guys I ever knew in my life.”
The Los Angeles coroner’s office said Tuesday that Bodolai, a former “Saturday Night Live” writer, committed suicide in a Hollywood hotel room.
Coroner’s office spokesman Craig Harvey said room service staff found the body of the 63-year-old Bodolai at 1:30 p.m. Monday in a room at Hollywood’s Re-Tan Hotel. He checked into the hotel on Dec. 19.
Harvey said Bodolai drank a mixture of Gatorade and antifreeze. The death has been ruled a suicide. Police Cmdr. Andrew Smith said there was no suicide note.
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Besides writing on 20 episodes of “Saturday Night Live” in 1981 and ’82, Bodolai was also the TV producer for 20 episodes of “The Kids in the Hall.”
Bodolai, who had two sons, also wrote for the Gemini Awards and was a writer and producer on the TV series “Comics!”
On his blog, he wrote that he also penned the first draft of the 1992 film “Wayne’s World” with Mike Myers.
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Matthew McConaughey engaged to longtime girlfriend Camila Alves
LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Matthew McConaughey is engaged to marry his longtime girlfriend, Camila Alves.
The 42-year-old actor proposed to the Brazilian model on Christmas Day. He announced the move in a tweet that included a photo of the couple kissing and read, “just asked camila to marry me, merry Christmas.”
McConaughey’s publicist confirmed the engagement Tuesday.
McConaughey and Alves have two children together, son Levi and daughter Vida.
His film credits include “We Are Marshall,” ”Tropic Thunder” and “The Lincoln Lawyer.”
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Helen Frankenthaler, a defining force in the development of American painting, dies at 83
NEW YORK, N.Y. – Helen Frankenthaler, an abstract painter known for her bold, lyrical use of colour who led a postwar art movement that would later be termed Color Field painting, died Tuesday at her home in Connecticut, her nephew said. She was 83.
One of Frankenthaler’s most famous works is “Mountains and Sea,” a 1952 painting at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which she created by pouring thinned paint directly onto raw, unprimed canvas laid on the studio floor.
Frankenthaler’s death at her home in Darien, Conn., followed a long illness, said her nephew, Clifford Ross, a multimedia artist and photographer known for his large landscapes.
Her abstract style helped American art make the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting and influenced such artists as Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.
She was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2002. From 1985 to 1992, she served on the National Council on the Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts.
She was only 23 when she created “Mountains and Sea,” building on Jackson Pollock’s abstract technique by pouring highly thinned oil paint from coffee cans directly onto the raw canvas to create floating fields of translucent colour. Louis later said “Mountains and Sea” was “the bridge between Pollock and what was possible.”
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