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TCA Press Tour: Kevin Bacon, Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore discuss their HBO movies

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HBO cannot be accused of be being boring.

Ted Haggard kicked off the premium cable network’s busy TCA schedule -- eight press conferences in total-- and the TV press spent some time with Jill Scott, Anika Noni Rose, Kevin Bacon, Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore.

Scott and Rose are the lead stars of ‘The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,’ the new series that premieres on March 29 and is based on the popular series of books by Alexander McCall Smith.

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Scott said she had not read the books but was drawn to the project because of Anthony Minghella (‘The English Patient’), who co-wrote and directed the pilot episode. (Minghella died in March.)

She read the novels once she was chosen for the role and fell in love with Botswana when she arrived to film the pilot.

‘I didn’t really get it until I went there and saw people that looked like me,’ Scott said. ‘I saw my cousins, girlfriends. Botswana was never tainted or touched by apartheid and that makes the country very strong and the people very kind toward each other. They don’t have ugliness.’

HBO has ordered seven episodes of the series.

Kevin Bacon stars in a poignant film, ‘Taking Chance,’ which is based on the real journey of a Marine lieutenant who escorted the remains of a 19-year-old Marine home.

Lt.Col. Michael Strobl, who co-wrote the script with director Ross Katz based on the journal that he kept during his journey traveling with the remains of Lance Corp. Chance Phelps of Dubois, Wyo.

Strobl, who attended the press conference with Bacon and Katz, said he was inspired to keep a journal on the trip because of the kind gestures of people he met along the way. For example, he noticed that construction workers at a mortuary in Dover, Del., where the remains of several fallen soldiers arrived, would put their hard hats over their hearts and stand at attention each time the bodies were removed from the premises. In another instance, a flight attendant gave him a crucifix.

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‘You can presume that these people cover the political spectrum, but they had profound gratitude toward me and sorrow at Chance’s loss,’ Strobl said.

As a filmmaker, Katz wanted to tell the story because America ‘has never seen what it literally takes to take a fallen Marine home.’

Strobl traveled from Iraq to Germany; Delaware; Philadelphia; Minneapolis; Billings, Mont.; and Wyoming.

‘The story is a simple one,’ said Bacon, who plays Strobl. ‘It’s the story of this man and Chance, who he is returning. It’s not embellished to make it more cinematic or dramatic to make us feel one way or the other based on what our preconceived notions on Iraq are. It’s just a simple telling of what this proecess is like and in its simplicity becomes a profound comment on the casualties of war.’

‘Taking Chance’ premieres on Feb. 21.

Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange are portraying the indelible ‘Little Edie’ and ‘Big Edie’ Beale, the eccentric first cousin and aunt of Jacqueline Kennedy who chose to live in squalor and almost total isolation in East Hampton, N.Y., in ‘Grey Gardens.’

The two women were subjects of a 1975 documentary with the same name that showed the way they lived, but the new ‘Grey Gardens’ will go back 40 years in their lives to tell the story of how they became who they were.

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Barrymore and Lange said they slept at the Grey Gardens mansion, which is now owned by Sally Quinn and Ben Bradley, to prepare, and studied the documentary to land the womens’ charming but bizarre personalties.

The movie will cover their relationship from 1936 to 1978, director and executive producer Michael Sucsy said. It will premiere in April.

--Maria Elena Fernandez

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