Entertainment

Comic Relief

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 06:00:00 +0000

Comic Relief Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/01/2017 - 00:00

Marty Coffin Evans

Sizing up and relating to people are must-have skills for Boulder County Sheriff Sergeant Vinnie Montez (PolSci’15).

His sideline as a standup comic also helps.

“I believe the essence of a good cop is being a great performer,” said Montez, who knows the pressures of hostage negotiation and the bright lights of the comedy club stage.

The dramatic aspects of law enforcement can make for tense moments. A way with jokes helps diffuse stress during arrests, investigations and in the squad car.

“Laughter breaks barriers,” said Montez, 41. “Police officers are regular people.”

He came to law enforcement early, initially as a fan of CHiPs, the TV drama of the 1970s and 1980s about a pair of California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers.

“They were always doing what was right,” Montez said of the fictional duo. “There was always a lesson in the show. They talked to people and resolved problems.”

At 14, after a ride-along with the Lafayette Police Department, he became an explorer cadet — kind of like a junior apprentice without law enforcement powers — first with Lafayette, then with Boulder County. In 1994, after high school, he was hired as a sheriff’s dispatcher, and he’s been in law enforcement ever since, rising through the ranks.

Along the way, he attended ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder, doing most of his degree in the 1990s and finishing later, in 2015, while working full-time as a detective sergeant.

“I didn’t sleep much,” he said.

In 2007, as a counterweight to the stresses of his day job, Montez turned to comedy, making a two-minute “newbie” debut at Comedy Works in Denver.

“I like to tell stories involving my mom, my Mexican heritage and cops,” he said. “I’m still perfecting my law enforcement routine.”

The shtick has been working. Since 2013, Montez has been promoted to Comedy Works’ “almost-famous list,” as he called it, a role in which he opens for bigger-name comedians when they come to Denver, folks like Caroline Rhea, Chris D’Elia, Bobcat Goldthwait and John Crist.

Whatever natural talent Montez has, he attributes to his late father, a hardworking, genial man who could “talk to anybody in any situation.”

At any sort of social gathering, “It would take him 15 minutes to make an exit,” Montez said. “That rubbed off on my brother and me.”

Still, comedy takes work.

“I never think, ‘I’m just a hilarious guy,’” said Montez, who does as many as six shows a week, always aiming for a laugh within the first 30 seconds. “It’s trial and error.”

When not performing at comedy clubs, he often takes the stage at benefits for fellow officers and at law enforcement conferences.

“Comedy has kept me from becoming jaded and overly cynical in a profession which has a tendency to drive officers in that direction,” he said.

Photo courtesy Vinnie Montez

Sizing up and relating to people are must-have skills for Boulder County Sheriff Sergeant Vinnie Montez. His sideline as a standup comic also helps.

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Pulling Stunts with The Arthurs

Anonymous — Sun, 01 Mar 2015 14:30:00 +0000

Pulling Stunts with The Arthurs Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 03/01/2015 - 07:30

Jillian Arja

No Business Like Show Business

Actors play characters; Heather (Mktg’03) and Jonathan Arthur (Mktg’03) play actors. They’re stuntmen.

“I was with Jennifer Love Hewitt for three years and Ali Larter for five, and it worked out nicely because then I knew their movements better,” Heather says. “If I do a good job, then no one will ever know it is me.”

She’s performed stunts in the films Furious 7 and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, as well as in scores of TV show episodes. Husband Jonathan has doubled for Patrick Dempsey and Ben Stiller and appeared in NCIS, The Mentalist, Captain America and a slew of other projects.

Neither started out in entertainment. Heather worked in law firms as a marketer and Jonathan as a real estate developer for Walmart.

But the athletic pair had a Hollywood connection — Heather’s father, Michael Vendrell, was stunt coordinator for the television series “Lost.” In 2005 he offered them positions as stunt doubles on the show, and needed an answer fast.

“We both quit our jobs and moved to Hawaii in less than a week,” says Heather.

The California couple travels a lot and needs to be ready to go on short notice, sometimes to places as distant as Asia and Australia. Often they bring their one- and three-year-old children.

Always, they need to stay fit.

“My first stunt ever was for Michelle Rodriguez, and I had to fall into a hole, about a 12-foot drop,” Heather says. “I had to lay there as they dropped me like a dead body. I was super nervous.”

At first, working with famous actors was daunting, says Jonathan.

“Early in my career it was certainly intimidating when I’d be working for an actor that I watched on Letterman the night before,” he says. “What I came to realize over time is that we’re more like teammates who need to work together to make the scene look great.”

Variety is part of the work’s appeal.

“I don’t always know what I am going to be doing until I get to set,” says Heather. “I could be told that I am going to be lit on fire that day.”

Even a fight scene, which is considered routine, is exciting, because the conditions are never the same.

“Even on an almost identical stunt, there’s always a changing variable from the day before,” says Jonathan. “Everything matters.”

The job has its downsides: Heather is sore every day. Last November, for example, she was tackled by Mark Wahlberg’s stunt double in a scene for the upcoming comedy Daddy’s Home.

“Then you go home and still have all the mom things [to do], too,” she says.

But the thrill of the job keeps them going.

Jonathan recalls a shoot at Lake Havasu a few years ago: “I had to escape out of the bottom of a sinking and burning boat underwater just before it exploded, tied to a stuntwoman I was saving.”

Heather — despite a fear of heights — dreams of dangling from a helicopter, as her dad once did.

“After a good stunt, the crew and staff all clap for you,” she says. “If you have done a good job, it’s a very proud moment.”

It’s also a moment to remember the importance of humility, as her father taught her. Because there’s always the next stunt.

“We realize the nature of our business has inherent risks involved,” says Jonathan. “It’s what we’ve signed up for.

Photography by Chris Sanders

Actors play characters; Heather (Bus’03) and Jonathan Arthur (Bus’03) play actors. They’re stuntmen.

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Actor Christopher Meloni

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 14:15:00 +0000

Actor Christopher Meloni Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/01/2014 - 07:15

Clay Evans

Character study

With his steely blue eyes, sculpted Italian features and brawny physique, let’s just say actor Christopher Meloni (Hist’83) doesn’t have much to worry about in the looks department.

No, it’s no surprise that People magazine named the long-time star of television’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit one of its Sexiest Men Alive in 2006. Whether he’s playing quarterbacks or psychopaths, cops or vampires, “hot” seems to be a common denominator — though there was this one time when his agent called…Aco

“He said, ‘I’ve got an offer for you. It’s four days of work and it will take you four hours of prosthetic makeup.’ That really intrigued me,” Meloni says by phone from Hollywood. “Then he said the character’s name was Freakshow and I was like, ‘That’s absolutely perfect, I don’t even need to read the script.’”

And so a Hollywood sex symbol came to play one of the most hideous film characters in recent memory, the dermatologically challenged, frazzle-haired, backwoods denizen in two over-the-top Harold and Kumar comedies.

Of course, nobody could tell it was Meloni under all that latex, and Freakshow is just one small — disgusting — data point in a career that includes not just success on network TV, but also on the big screen and in some of cable’s hottest series, including “Oz,” “True Blood” and “Veep.”

The actor, 53, grew up in Washington, D.C., and came to ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ-Boulder hoping to “experience America from a different perspective.” He says he began learning his craft both through acting classes and by keeping his eyes open.

“ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ was definitely the first place where I got a chance to really study people, how they interact and react,” he says. “There was a lot of quality people watching.”

After graduation he studied with legendary acting coach Sanford Meisner in New York while supporting himself working in construction and as a bouncer and fitness coach. He began to pick up commercial work and in 1984 was cast as an ex-con quarterback in HBO’s first sitcom, 1st and Ten.

Meloni came to prominence with his visceral portrayal of bisexual psychopath Chris Keller in the 1998-2003 HBO prison drama “Oz.” It made him an icon in the gay community.

In his best-known role, he played the complex, not-quite-by-the-book Det. Elliot Stabler alongside Mariska Hargitay in Law & Order. He left the show in 2011.

“Doing 12 years of something that great on national TV was rewarding,” he says. “I think it was also pretty important to be on a show that resonated with sexual crime. … In certain ways it opened up dialogue for people to confront or discuss that sort of thing.”

Meloni’s recent work includes starring with Shailene Woodley in 2014’s White Bird in a Blizzard, the FOX network comedy Surviving Jack, and his recurring role in the popular supernatural cable series True Blood.

As for what’s next, the actor says you never know when the next Detective Stabler (or Freakshow) will come along.

“You can do all the planning and wishing you want, but at the end of the day you read what’s on the page,” he says. “If you are lucky enough to have your imagination sparked, you know exactly how to fit into that world.”

Photography courtesy Christopher Meloni

With his steely blue eyes, sculpted Italian features and brawny physique, let’s just say actor Christopher Meloni (Hist’83) doesn’t have much to worry about in the looks department.

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Desperately Seeking Tom Cruise

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Desperately Seeking Tom Cruise Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/01/2009 - 00:00

Bronson Hillard

War protest on the quad

The 1980s was a tough decade at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ-Boulder. The ’60s and ’70s had stamped their respective imprimaturs on everything from campus politics to postgraduate expectations. When we met alums from other eras, they seemed smug and self-satisfied — or maybe we were just envious of their big times in Boulder.
“You should have seen the war moratorium protest on the quad. . .” those from the counterculture said. “You know, since AIDS wasn’t a part of our lives, sex was everywhere. . .”

You get the idea.

The ’80s kicked off with a recession, but back then, ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ was pretty cheap. My tuition and fees ran about $900 per semester, if memory serves. During my junior year in 1985, my three roommates and I each paid $187.50 a month for a spacious condo in north Boulder. With a decent student job, things were affordable for me and my middle-class parents.

On campus, though, costs weren’t on most people’s minds. Instead, we searched for what would define us as a generation. Some students dug in their opposition to President Ronald Reagan and adopted the appearance and philosophies of their late ’60s and early ’70s campus radical forebears. Other students looked to the 1950s and ushered in a Greek revival — think Animal House, not Doric columns.

Most of us, however, took a buffet-style approach to creating our identities. I sported a ’70s-era hairstyle, espoused ’60s political values and listened to ’80s music. My wardrobe was too awful to describe, and I would not want to malign an innocent decade by explaining it.

In fall 1986, the campus was abuzz. It wasn’t about declaring the campus a nuclear-free zone or debating the strengths of the Buffs. Rather, it was a rumor that struck campus: Tom Cruise had enrolled at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ. The Tom Cruise.
I first heard the news from a friend who had heard it from a friend who, in turn, had heard it from a friend who allegedly worked in admissions. Another person claimed to have seen Cruise make the announcement on Good Morning America. The source wasn’t important. He was here. Tom was one of us. Or would be.

At parties, speculation turned to anecdote. Cruise was seen at the UMC Connection having a beer. He was living in a secluded Boulder Canyon house protected by a possibly armed entourage. A friend knew someone who had met someone who had sold Cruise a tennis racket.

This was in the days when doing detective work on a celebrity rumor was, well, no mean trick. There was no Internet, so no constant flow of entertainment news existed to help you geo-locate celebrities. There were no cell phones for on-the-spot actor tracking.

I remember a party where one well-connected friend told me that he would check out the Cruise rumor by talking to students from Hollywood, presupposing that everyone from Hollywood knew each other and would know Cruise or be able to confirm his whereabouts.

Today, cyber-culture would have crushed our fragile hopes within hours or even minutes. But back then, the Cruise line limped along. I don’t remember any official statements or stories in the Boulder Camera, the ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Daily or the Campus Press to crush or fuel our hopes.

As a result, nobody stepped back and asked the obvious question: why would the hottest star in movies abandon or postpone a lucrative career to come to Boulder and attend a public university where his privacy would be shattered like an old skier’s knee on a bad landing?

How naïve and quaint we were during the salad days of Entertainment Tonight. We really hoped — and some of us believed— that Tom would be one of us. We would high-five him in Folsom Field as the Buffs turned it around and thumped Nebraska. Maybe he’d go rock climbing with us in Eldorado Canyon, developing the mad scrambling skills he would use years later in Mission Impossible.

It wasn’t to be. Or rather, it just simply wasn’t. By October, the rumor was dead, and so was the Buffs’ offense. They were 0-3 with no Top Gun to be found anywhere, particularly not in the option attack.

And our hopes of defining our decade as the “Tom Cruise era” would go tragically unrealized. Of course, the Buffs recovered, but I’m not sure we of the ’80s ever have. We’re still looking to define our decade.

The 1980s was a tough decade at ŷ��ڱ��Ƶ Boulder.

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