'O.C.' Cast Members Say Good-Bye

As promised, here are the thoughts of the cast members of The O.C., where they talk about the series finale and their favorite moments in the show.

Rachel Bilson(Summer Roberts)

“I like when I get to do things that really are embarrassing for me because it’s fun to make fun of yourself. I like the episode last year where at prom I got really drunk and fell off the stage and it was my first time doing a stunt, so I like to brag and tell people that I can do stunts because I got to fall off the stage, even though it was like a foot. The stunt girl did the fall… but I did a little of that. Oh, the Spider-Man kiss of course… the Spider-Man kiss was so cool. I remember reading it when Josh wrote that script; it was really clever and it was really fun to replay that kiss. Adam, I think, threw up in his mouth a little bit, so the kiss wasn’t pleasant, but other than that it was a really cool scene. It was upside down.”

Adam Brody(Seth Cohen)

“Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. If you are upset, don’t worry, there are DVDs.”

Melinda Clarke(Julie Cooper-Nichol)

“As an audience member when Sandy and Seth had a sex talk, I just thought it was clever and those guys are just so talented, and as an audience member I loved to watch that scene. I think it defines many high-schoolers. It will be the thing that defines their high school years. Anyone who was a freshman in 2003 and is a senior now. So this defined their years. It will be interesting for a whole generation to remember when. In the early decade of 2000 this show will be remembered as a hip pop culture reference of this time.”

Peter Gallagher(Sandy Cohen)

“I guess my favorite moment was the day I read the pilot script. That was very exciting. And I certainly loved singing in the second season. And you know, frankly, I have had so many good days on this show; I loved going to work; I love the cast; I love this crew; I love our directors and every day on this set sure beats working in a coal mine."

Willa Holland(Kaitlin Cooper)

“One of my favorites I got to do was the scene when I got to hit Melinda on the head with a pedestal. That was really fun to shoot.”

Autumn Reeser(Taylor Townsend)

“I liked shooting the college sweatshirt episode where we had this college sweatshirt party because we were shooting on the beach in Malibu at night it was a big bonfire. That was just a cool feeling because I never go to the beach at night. Basically whenever we got to go on location and shoot at the beach, that was always amazing to be hanging out at the beach all day working. We were watching dolphins go by and hearing the seagulls, so that was pretty neat.”

Benjamin McKenzie(Ryan Atwood)

“The first day of the pilot was kind of nutty. I showed up in the Valley and we were shooting Ryan at his old house with his mom. I think McG stopped by for like two seconds… ‘You’re going to be great, you’re going to be great’ and then ran away. It was cool. I think it was just me and Doug and I think Peter maybe worked a little with Doug Liman the director. And then Peter was in a couple scenes… it was pretty heavy stuff. It was kind of crazy. It was either sink or swim time; so thankfully it has worked out.”

First 'O.C.' Vet Lands Pilot Work

Lady Heather meets LL Cool J?

February 20, 2007

Taken from zap2it


Melinda Clarke

The early cancellation of "The O.C." may have been sad for viewers, but for the show's stars, it meant a headstart on pilot casting season.

Melinda Clarke is the first current "O.C." regular to secure a follow-up pilot gig, landing a lead role opposite LL Cool J in CBS' drama "The Man".

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Clarke will play a touch, sexy policewoman, a colleague to LL Cool J's undercover cop, who becomes a father to an orphaned boy. Jessica Collins ("The Nine") was previously cast.

Clarke has spent the past four seasons vamping it up as the frequently married Julie Cooper on "The O.C." She has also done recent duty on HBO's "Entourage". Before being welcomed to The O.C., Clarke was most familiar as Lady Heather from the original brand "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation".

Which "O.C." veteran will hop on the pilot train next? Stay tuned.

'O.C.' Creator Reflects on the Show's End

On the even of the finale, Schwartz shares some thoughts

By Daniel Fienberg
February 22, 2007

Taken from zap2it

It's the final night of shooting on FOX's "The O.C." and Josh Schwartz, the show's creator, doesn't have time to cry.

"Just stop it," Schwartz says, when I toss out the idea that tears might flow.
He pauses, getting a bit serious.

"You know, it's like I can't even absorb what's going on. It's overwhelming. It's like graduation day. We have a lot of work to do to get everything done today, because there ain't no reshootin', so I think everybody's just trying to keep their wits about them and get their work done and I'm sure that around nine o'clock tonight, it'll get very emotional."

After a tumultuous four years that saw it transition from guilty pleasure to pop culture phenomenon to slumping punchline to brilliant-but-cancelled, "The O.C." ends on Thursday (Feb. 22) night with an episode titled "The End's Not Near, It's Here." Down in the Nielsen dumps this season against the dueling behemoths of "Grey's Anatomy" and "CSI," "The O.C." will probably welcome more than its averaged 4.05 million viewers due to a mixture of both finale curiosity and the kind of robust lead-in it's been denied all season, a little competitive show called "American Idol." Schwartz has been toyed with enough this season.

"That will be nice," he says of the "Idol" boost. "I'm sure at the last minute it'll be switched out for two encore episodes of 'Stacked.'"

The fourth season launched in November without magazine covers and with minimal promotion. Instead, there came a steady stream of reviews suggesting that the series was the best it had been in years. Nobody watched. After recovering from their grief, many fans agreed that the death of Mischa Barton's Marissa, a damning loss for certain viewers, actually revitalized several storylines and opened the door for breakout co-star Autumn Reeser. Nobody watched. The show's writers experimented with the format and delivered episodes that were fresh and creative. Nobody watched and it became immediately clear that the season, already shorted to 16 episodes, would be the last.

"If I had to choose, I'd rather do this -- I'd rather make a show that I'm incredibly proud of that's getting the living daylights beaten out of it, than make a show that a lot of people are watching that I don't want to put my name on," Schwartz insists.

Along the way there were questions of whether a different lead-in ("Happy Hour," "'Til Death" repeats and "The War at Home" each did their damage) or a different time period might help, but FOX didn't budge. Although he felt frustration at the time, Schwartz gives FOX some credit.

"Look, I've certainly shared my dissatisfaction with how a lot of things went down with the network, but one thing I will say is that they ordered us for 16 episodes and we did 16 episodes and they let us do them on our terms. And for that, I'm grateful."

Schwartz isn't giving anything away when it comes to the finale, with follows last week's emotional "Night Moves," in which the core characters survived a major earthquake that shook Newport Beach and leveled the Cohen family's abode. Given that the show began with the Cohens giving a home to delinquent Ryan (Ben McKenzie), it's easy to see the resonance building.

"It certainly doesn't feel like another episode of 'The O.C.,'" Schwartz promises. "I think it feels really big. Hopefully it will feel fun and satisfying and everyone will feel a real sense of closure... and a sense of satisfaction that you've gone on a journey with these characters, that you're sad to see them go, but excited for their futures."

Schwartz didn't get any downtime after production wrapped on "The O.C." He has a pair of pilots -- NBC's "Chuck" and The CW's "Gossip Girls" -- to keep him busy.

"That's better for me. I think if I had to stop and reflect, I would just become overwhelmed with emotion and collapse. I think it's better that I just keep looking forward and don't look back."

Schwartz Shares 'O.C.' Highlights and Lowlights

Creator loved Chrismukkah, hates Johnny

By Daniel Fienberg
February 22, 2007

Taken from zap2it

Although his mind may have been occupied by the pending finale of "The O.C.," Josh Schwartz was willing to hop into the Wayback Machine to reflect on his show's four season run.

What were some of his favorite episodes?

"The pilot, just because I wrote it in my boxer shorts and I had no idea what would come of it and there was just that purity to it," Schwartz responds quickly.

He continues, "The Tijuana episode, episode seven, because for me it summarized the spirit of the show, that it could be funny and real and also operatically tragic. You had a Luke and Holly Jager-shot grind-out on the dancer floor, a club-wide brawl, a 'Sure Thing'-style road trip sequence, Ryan and Marissa fighting over Ding-Dongs and cheese sticks at the vending machine at the dive motel, Seth and Summer realizing they hate each other but they're an old married couple and then you had Marissa's O.D. It encapsulated the spirit of the show and hit all the notes."

He also salutes "The Rainy Day Women" from season two and "The Summer Bummer" from season four, as well as show's various episodes celebrating Thanksgivings, Easters and, of course, Chrismukkah.

"I always loved our holiday episodes. I think we did holidays really well. We didn't get to Sukkoth, which is a great regret of mine, or Yom Kippur, but who wants to watch people atone for an hour?"

Asked for least favorite episodes or story arcs, he's a bit more pragmatic."There are no episodes where we leaned too much on the comedy that I really regret, but there are some maybe the melodrama overtook the show," he hedges. "There's certainly the Johnny run from season three. That's probably the one I'd like to have back."

And what important lessons has he learned since beginning his run as an inexperienced twentysomething network showrunner?

"We had a great extended cast of characters and lot of those people we let go and tried bring in newer characters and tried to keep the world fresh and turning, and I think there was a lot of potential to be tapped in some of those characters that left the show early. I'm thinking of Anna and Luke and Haley and Jimmy and Caleb, though Caleb had a good run."

Were there any storylines that Schwartz wished they'd been able to pursue?

"There's very little, story-wise, that I think we left untapped," he says, after a couple seconds thought. "The thing we never did was mix and match our couples. You never saw Seth end up with Marissa and Ryan's dating Anna while Summer's with Luke. We never went that version. I think it would have been interesting. That ties in with my earlier point that if you have a canvas of characters that people are really responding to, you keep them around and figure it out."

With two pilots -- The CW's "Gossip Girls" and NBC's "Chuck" -- in the mix this spring, what has Schwartz learned about dealing with networks?

"That if you don't believe in something, say 'No,' because if you do something they ask you to do and it doesn't work, they don't really remember that they asked you," he says. "Just try to make the best show possible and not worry about the other stuff -- the numbers, the ratings, the other stuff -- but that's not gonna make a good show."

"The O.C." series finale aired Thursday (Feb. 22) night on FOX.

'The O.C.' vows a satisfying end

Lynn ElberAP Television Writer
Feb. 15, 2007 12:00 AM
Taken from azcentral.com

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. - A moment of respectful silence, please, for Fox's departing "The O.C.".

Yes, the drama wiped out in the ratings like a klutzy Southern California surfer. Yes, it lost its storytelling punch in season three and then really bummed out fans with the violent death of Marissa, played by Mischa Barton.

But credit where credit's due. "The O.C." brought dramatized adolescent angst back to TV, gave the tabloids fresh faces like Barton and Rachel Bilson and boosted pop artists by showcasing their music (the band Rooney) or just mentioning them (Death Cab for Cutie).

Set in the Orange County city of Newport Beach, the show even managed to make cultural and economic waves: Residents who knew better began referring to the county with the artificially hip "the" in front of O.C., and the postcard-perfect coastal town enjoyed a bump in tourism.

"The O.C." generated a reality TV boomlet, with MTV's "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County" and Bravo's "The Real Housewives of Orange County" following in its footsteps.

Not bad for a four-season, 92-episode series about the loves and lives of rich, golden California teenagers - one even named Summer, to drive home the point - and the parents that watched over them, or not, depending on their own foibles.

"Overall, I'm incredibly proud of the run the show had", series creator Josh Schwartz said as production ended this month. Just the day before, he recounted, "we were filming on location and there were packs of teenagers screaming for autographs when the cast walked by, and crying that the show was coming to an end".

"We were 24 hours away from wrapping the show and it was surreal to have that level of emotion from our audience", Schwartz said.

The series finale airs 9 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 22, and won't leave viewers hanging, he vowed.

"We went into this season sort of assuming that it was going to be the last season", Schwartz said. "So we were able to build naturally to this final episode and do the finale the way we always planned".

The conclusion will focus on the show's core - the affluent Cohen family of Newport Beach and the needy young man, Ryan, they took in, he said. The hope is that fans will find it fun, emotional and "really satisfying", Schwartz said.

Will Marissa, killed in a car crash in last season's finale, manage to reappear?

"All of the characters of the show will be touched on in some way", Schwartz said. He's carefully guarding the final plot twists, including the romantic fates of couples Ryan (Benjamin McKenzie) and Taylor (Autumn Reeser) and Seth (Adam Brody) and Summer (Bilson).

All that, and an earthquake hit the fictional Newport Beach in the Feb. 8 episode, imperiling pregnant Kirsten Cohen (Kelly Rowan) and others.

"The O.C." itself rattled the TV landscape when it debuted in summer 2003. It was a ratings phenom in its first year, ranking as the top-rated drama among advertiser-favored young adults and attracting a total audience of nearly 10 million. Schwartz, then only 26 and a recent University of Southern California grad, said the show's young actors became stars "very, very quickly, within two months of the show airing. It was nuts".

"To have had the experience and see those kids be in an airport and walk by a magazine stand and the magazine covers are the cast of your show - it's exciting", Schwartz said. So was the fact "that we all were able to work together for this time and kind of grow together. I mean, we all really did grow up together. I feel like I did. This is like college".

Newport Beach got a few lessons in the power of TV, according to the town's mayor.

"I think there were some people in town not too pleased about how Newport Beach was portrayed in the series. But I think everybody understands that TV distorts reality", Mayor Steven Rosansky said, a truth known to anybody who used to watch the 80s serial "Dallas".

But while some grumbled about the show's satiric depiction of a hedonistic and shallow Newport, the city gained a higher profile and an influx of visitors, said Rosansky.

The local visitors' bureau capitalized on the attention with a map of locations referred to in the series - although production mostly took place in Los Angeles - and by recording the hand- and footprints of some cast members in concrete, he said.

But the show proved unable to hold its audience, slipping to about 7 million weekly viewers during 2004-05 and then to fewer than 6 million last season. Returning last November after Fox wrapped postseason baseball coverage, "The O.C." has averaged about 4 million viewers.

A time-slot change, to the highly competitive 9 p.m. EST Thursday period opposite CBS' "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and then ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," contributed to the slump and probably hastened the defection of fickle young viewers.

Does Schwartz long for a different ending, with more seasons still ahead?

"Coulda, woulda, shoulda, I guess", he says, the verbal equivalent of a shrug. He called four seasons "a pretty damn good run. Especially for a show like this, where the audience we're speaking to is younger and moves on faster".

"I'd never worked on a television series in any capacity before it began, so it was learn as you go and I certainly learned a lot", he said. "But to be able to learn on a show that had the impact on its audience this show had is a really incredible gift".

Schwartz already is looking ahead to new projects, including adapting the book "Looking for Alaska" for film and producing two television pilots.

But what about the future of Newport Beach? Will it miss basking in its fake counterpart's limelight?

"It ran its course and we'll wait for the next show. ... I'm sure some creative television person will create another show", Mayor Rosanksy said.

The O.C. finale

Sun sets in The O.C. Last Thursday, the final episode of The O.C. aired in the United States with a great and strong episode that really felt like a conclusion to all of its fans.

"We went into this season sort of assuming that it was going to be the last season," series creator, Josh Schwartz said in an interview prior to the series finale. "So we were able to build naturally to this final episode and do the finale the way we always planned". The conclusion will focus on the show's core - the affluent Cohen family of Newport Beach and the needy young man, Ryan, they took in, he said. The hope is that fans will find it fun, emotional and "really satisfying," Schwartz said.

As a tribute to The O.C., in the next posts I'll publish some interviews with the protagonists of the series and its creator expressing their thoughts about the finale and their favorite moments in the show, some news about them and what they'll be doing now.

If you live in Latinoamerica, where I guess this episode hasn't aired yet, you have an internet connection and you want to download it but don't know how, I'll write a new post, in both, spanish and english, explaining how to download TV series using .torrent archives, which are more faster than downloading from P2P programs like Ares or emule.

Cómo bajar archivos .torrent

En este post explicaré cómo bajar archivos .torrent, que resultan mucho más convenientes y rápidos que bajar archivos convencionales por Ares o emule.

Primero necesitas un cliente Torrent, que es el equivalente a los programas de P2P. Yo recomiendo µtorrent por ser un programa que consume menos de 6 Mb de memoria y por tener un ejecutable que pesa menos de 170 Kb.

Puedes descargarlo desde su página oficial.



Una vez que instales el programa, tienes que bajar los archivos .torrent que se cargarán en la aplicación. Para ello necesitas un buscador online, como Torrentz.



En torrentz.com, busca tus archivos como lo harías en el Ares, el que salga primero en la lista es el que tiene más usuarios. Al seleccionar un archivo, te llevará a otra ventana donde podrás escoger los sitios de descarga. Recomiendo mininova y snarf-it. Ahora que te encuentres en la página de descarga sólo haz clic en Download torrent, el archivo descargará, y comenzará a bajar por µtorrent. Es conveniente que de la página de torrentz donde salían los sitios de descarga, copies los trackers, que son por donde los usuarios suben y bajan los archivos, esto acelerará tu descarga. Estos trackers deberás pegarlos en las Propiedades de tu archivo torrent, haciendo clic derecho sobre él y luego en Propiedades, recuerda dejar una línea en blanco entre un tracker y otro.

Y una vez hecho todo esto, sólo debes esperar que tu archivo descargue. Recuerda que generalmente los torrent sirven para bajar archivos pesados, como películas y series, la música puede ser descargada pero como un álbum completo generalmente. Para bajar ciertos documentos y canciones en particular es más recomendable usar programas de P2P.