'Dancing' waltzes through writers’ strike

'Dancing' waltzes through writers’ strike
By LYNN ELBER

Here's a "Dancing with the Stars" pop quiz: Which of the following performance critiques was delivered by effusive judge Bruno Tonioli before the Hollywood writers strike, and which came after? Quote A: "That's what I like to see! The boy from Brazil is going bananas!" Quote B: "That was a cliffhanger, riding the fine line between love and hate!"

If you picked the alliterative "bananas" line as writer-scripted, well, sorry, you're not moving on to round two. That's a post-strike quote, while the less snappy one predates it — and Tonioli devised both.

It seems his comments, along with those of fellow judges Len Goodman and Carrie Ann Inaba and the wry quips of host Tom Bergeron, have been largely spontaneous all along.

ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" is one reality show that's real, or as real as any sequin-studded Hollywood production can be. Who knew — until the Writers Guild of America's job action pulled back the curtain and revealed the show had a single union scribe.

That's allowed one of TV's top shows to waltz through the walkout.

"Oh, I wish!" Tonioli responded when asked if his lines were fed to him. "Even if you wanted to (prepare), it's a live performance. Anything can happen."

Sometimes a script doctor would help. But even they might be hard-pressed to craft the true drama that has shadowed this season: Jane Seymour lost her 92-year-old mother, then Seymour's Malibu house was imperiled by a wildfire. Osmond fainted on camera; two weeks later, her father died at age 90.

Tears and heartache abound but the show goes on. In recent weeks, it's been near the top of the TV ratings, with more than 21 million viewers at its peak.

David Boone, the show's WGA member who walked off the job along with thousands of other movie and TV writers in Los Angeles and New York, was scripting material including introductions and descriptions of upcoming episodes, a task Bergeron said now is handled by producers.

Bergeron used to lean heavily on canned patter until realizing, early in season two, that the approach wasn't working.

"You can see I'd walk on after a dance and have a line ready to go," Bergeron told The AP. "Sometimes it was a very good line, but it wasn't organic to what was happening. ... We don't do that anymore. Now, I'm watching the dance and responding to it and what I felt about it."

He enjoys playing ball with the excitable Tonioli.

The judge's "right arm sweeps over his left shoulder and I know he's about to let loose with an extremely clever or pained metaphor," Bergeron said, comparing himself to a batter "waiting for a good pitch."

For the full text of the article, click on http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gQAnfgZWYu4jrEuh-V2x6c3kGbEwD8ST4MGO0.