The press tour is nothing new for celebrities, but Rutger Hauer came prepared for his American press interviews for the 1982 release of BLADE RUNNER with a stealth co-star -- an amazing sweater that upstages any question that could possibly be asked. This was obviously an intentional decision, as there were at least two different interviews recorded in one day in the same office setting.
The first, by John C. Tibbetts, addresses the sweater right away, and does manage to enter into some interesting discussion about the nature of villainy. (It's not stated on the YouTube link, but I believe this comes from an interview made for Kansas City's CBS affiliate, for whom Tibbetts worked at the time.)
The second interview, conducted by Bobbie Wygant for the Dallas/Fort Worth NBC affiliate, is even more entertaining, as Wygant dispenses with any notable questions about the film itself and instead asks repeatedly about how Hauer feels about special effects. He's a professional, but he's clearly ready to get off the tour. (The elephant in the room of Hauer's choice of garb is never addressed.) Stay tuned for the ending, in which Wygant records additional reaction shots - not an uncommon thing in TV interviews, but very strange to be watching without any type of editing.
MTV quickly became a cultural juggernaut in the 1980s after its 1981 launch, bringing new music to millions of households whose access to music videos had been previously limited to late-night programs. It's not surprising that others attempted to cash in on their success, and in the fall of 1984, enterprising media mogul Ted Turner made his attempt to do so with the blandly-named "Cable Music Channel."
The network launched at midnight EST on October 26, 1984, with a very awkward press conference featuring Network President Robert Wussler, Los Angeles Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson (who declared the day "Cable Music Channel Day"), General Manager Scott Sassa (who now works for Robert Rodriguez's El Rey Network) and Turner himself, promising that the network will "stay away from excessively violent or degrading clips toward women that MTV is so fond of running." Heck, don't just read my description - watch the awkwardness unfold.
CMC tweaked the MTV format slightly, doing live VJ segments with unseen VJs rather than the bigger network's pre-recorded video segments. This gambit, along with the veering away from "controversial" music videos, failed to pay off, and the network didn't find an audience, even with commercials like the one below, featuring Randy Newman, Steve Miller, Corey Hart, Little Richard and Sparks (!).
It's not that the network was really even given a chance to succeed. On November 29, only 34 days after the network's launch, it was sold to MTV Networks for a rather pathetic sum of a million dollars, signing off the very next evening with the same video that launched the channel - Randy Newman's "I Love L.A." - interspersed with goodbyes from the folks who worked at one of the shortest-lived cable channels in history.
