Word: paramount
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...buzz word for the 1990s, especially in the entertainment business these days, is global. Paramount Communications last week announced that it had taken a major step in that direction by purchasing a 49% stake in the British firm Zenith, Europe's leading independent television programmer. A subsidiary of Carlton Communications, Zenith last year produced such dramas as The Paradise Club and Inspector Morse in Britain, as well as the romantic comedy Finnegan Begin Again...
...Paramount declined to say how much it had paid for the acquisition, but Carlton's 1988 annual report put revenues for the production company at $95 million. "The Zenith acquisition represents our most significant entry into the international market," said Mel Harris, president of Paramount's Television Group. "By aligning ourselves with the United Kingdom's major independent producer, we are positioning ourselves for the 1990s and 1992, when Europe's trade barriers fall...
...that Murphy's worst idea is his own character. His box-office power having brought Paramount groveling to its knees, offering him any indulgence he wants, Murphy has come to fancy himself a killer, and that is the role he tries to play here: a psychopathic hit man. He is not a good enough actor for this particular assignment, nor has he the skill as writer and director to use cold-blooded murder (three times) as the topper for gag sequences. Once or twice his former sweet hipness glimmers through, and he has written a funny...
Some Americans might be willing to ignore the patent absurdity of numerically ranking the nation's issues. But not many would believe Bush's contention that the debate over abortion rights, which for at least a year stood near paramount in American consciousness, suddenly dropped off the scale of national priorities on the eve of the elections...
...close friends. Another is Murphy, whom he met at Los Angeles' Comedy Store in 1980. "Eddie's the brother I never had," says Hall. "We share intimate secrets. We cry together. There's no competitiveness between us. When I called and told him I had been signed by Paramount, he couldn't have been happier." Though Hall has been linked with Murphy's so-called black pack -- a group of young black performers and filmmakers, among them actor-directors Robert Townshend and Keenen Ivory Wayans -- Hall says the others are only casual friends...