The Ledger

Law & Order cast members on Celebrity Jeopardy

Three cast members of the various Law & Order shows appeared on Celebrity Jeopardy on Friday night. It was pretty funny. Sam Waterston (original), Kathryn Erbe (CI), and Chris Meloni (SVU) competed for their favorite charities while giving their fans something to cheer for and laugh about (as is the case with most episodes of Celebrity Jeopardy).

The episode was notable mainly for the idiosycrasies of the cast members: Sam W. seemed fairly bewildered most of the time, Chris M. kept answering before being called on, and Kathryn was having more fun horsing around with Meloni than playing the game.

Highlights included their failure to know what controversial novel by Dan Brown begins with a murder in the Louvre, their trying to figure out what sitcom has a character named Kramer on it, Erbe getting cut off by the applause sign while going on and on about her charities, and a special Daily Double performance by a star of the Broadway show Mamma Mia. Also, the first round ended with the famous L&O "Chung Chung" sound instead of the usual beep-beep-beep-beep. Most of these moments and many more can be found in the video clips below.

Watch as the three are stumped by the Dan Brown/Louvre question:

In this clip, Sam is stumped as to which New York neighborhood hosts a film festival every year:

Here's the end of the game. You can find out who won, and who needs to brush up on their Shakespeare.

Downloadable videos

I am not going to upload all the clips I have to YouTube, but you can download all of them here. All videos are iPod/iTunes/everything-compatible MPEG4s.

• Intro to the show
• First answer/question
• Daily Double featuring Mamma Mia/ABBA
• Stumped by The Da Vinci Code
• Meloni confuses Bela Lugosi with the character he played
• Brief interviews with contestants about banal topics and charities. Note the way Erbe gets cut off.
• Sam forgets Joan Crawford's first name
• Meloni hams it up
• Waterston gets tongue-tied while choosing a category
• What NYC neighborhood has a film festival every year? Cast members somewhat stumped
• What's the name of the sitcom with Kramer on it? Erbe not sure.
• End of Double Jeopardy (second round)
• Final Jeopardy/End of game

Dennis Farina leaving Law & Order +

Not too much of a surprise really: Dennis Farina is leaving L&O to pursue other opportunities. He's a big time movie star, so the move makes sense, I think. It was fun while it lasted.

Update: J. Bishop writes to tell us that Milena Govich, from Conviction, will replace Farina: I thought you might be interested in this.

J. Bishop
www.HelpMeImpeachBush.com

Photos from a Law & Order: Criminal Intent shoot

Pretty exciting moment today. I was walking down Spring Street on my way to work, and walked right into a L&O: CI shoot. I stopped for a second and thought, "I could run into Vincent D'Onofrio right now." Two seconds later, he walked out of a doorway onto a sidewalk, 10 feet in front of me. Vincent has been one of my favorite actors for a long, long time, so I took a quick picture of him and stepped up and told him I thought he was a good actor in everything he does. He said thanks and looked the other way, pretty much ignoring me. No problem...I pretty much expected that.

This was the second time I've "met" Vincent. The first time was way back in 1996 or 1997 when he was promoting Whole Wide World at the Boston Film Festival.

Photos from an Law & Order: SVU shoot

They were shooting an episode of L&O: SVU outside my work today. Looks like a bunch of guys in hazmat suits standing outside a police station. The building, labeled "16th Precinct", is a high school in real life. This is at the corner of Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) and Dominick Street in Soho.