More Chances to Get Stoned

Actor Tom Selleck has given an interview to TV Squad, in which he talks about his latest Jesse Stone teleflick, No Remorse (which was just released in DVD format), but also about his forthcoming CBS-TV series, Blue Bloods. I think the most interesting elements of that interview, though, are these two questions and answers:

Now that you’re doing the series Blue Bloods for CBS, will you be doing more Jesse Stone movies?
es, and it’s important to tell people that, because the one thing I said to CBS was, “I’m not going to do this series at the expense of Jesse Stone.” So there’s more Jesses to come. In fact, we’ve already shot the next one. It’s called Innocents Lost, and it’s another original story [not based on a Parker novel]. So that’s Jesse Stone number seven, and it’s about a little girl. That’s where the title comes from. And that one is in the can, ready to air, and we’re writing number eight, which we don’t have a title for yet. So yes, there’s going to be more Jesse Stones. ...

How did you first get involved with the Parker books? Were you a fan as a reader?
I was a fan of Robert [B.] Parker’s. And I almost did--in the ’80s, I was offered one of Robert Parker’s books as a feature film, called Early Autumn, [based on] one of the Spenser novels. And basically, it was written by an Academy Award-nominated writer, Jay Presson Allen, and I was committed to it, but like so many things, I was shooting Magnum, P.I. and only had three months off, and we couldn’t schedule a director and get the movie done in that time, and I missed the opportunity. And my friend, the late Bob Urich, used to kid me a lot about that, because of course he ended up doing the series of Spenser, Spenser: For Hire.

I, for one, didn’t know--or don’t remember--that Selleck was ever approached to star as Boston private eye Spenser.

To read the complete interview, click here.

* * *

By the way, while we’re talking about Parker and his man Spenser, blogger-editor Gerald So notes that “the Robert B. Parker fansite Bullets & Beer had gone offline. It’s been two years since proprietor Bob Ames announced his shift had changed at work and he’d lost interest in the research needed to maintain the site. Founded in the mid-1990s by Mike Loux, who moved on to other projects himself, for many years Bullets & Beer was the single best Robert B. Parker resource on the Web.”

We’re very sorry to see Ames’ Web site disappear.