Hollywood power publicist and pal to stars Nanci Ryder dies
Nanci Ryder, a powerful Hollywood publicist and co-founder of BWR Public Relations who became close to such stars as Rene Zellweger and Courteney Cox, died Thursday of Lou Gehrigs disease in Los Angeles. Zellweger thanked Ryder in her best actress acceptance speech when she won the Academy Award for Judy earlier this year. Stints at Goldberg-Ehrlich Public Relations and Management and Michael Levine Public Relations followed, before she formed Nanci Ryder Public Relations in 1984, with Fox as her first client. In 1987, she co-founded the firm BWR Public Relations with Paul Baker and Larry Winokur. This spring, the firm's parent company, Burson Cohn & Wolfe, shut down BWR Public Relations, moving staffers or laying them off.
'Mad About You' reunites Reiser, Hunt as empty nesters
Darren Michaels/Sony/Spectrum via CNN(CNN) - With so much else getting rebooted and revived, a "Mad About You" reunion series is hardly shocking. The vanity part isn't used lightly, since stars Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt not only share executive producer credit on the new series -- being billed as a limited event -- but he wrote the premiere and she directed it. Still, it's a big moment, and while Paul is willing to admit that he's flummoxed by it, his wife Jamie (Hunt) bottles it all up, until of course she doesn't. When Paul seeks to reassure his wife that he loves her as she pines for Mabel, she responds tartly, "Whatever." "Mad About You" premieres Nov. 20 on Spectrum Originals.