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From: Yahoo! Finance
Friday July 13, 5:50 pm Eastern Time
Bravo Profiles is 'Livin' On a Prayer' This JulyBRAVO PROFILES: JON BON JOVIPremieres Monday, July 16 at 7:00PM/ET, 8:00PM/PT NEW YORK--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--July 13, 2001--BRAVO:
"I walk these streets, a loaded six string on my back From the lead singer in one of the all-time great hair bands to one of the most successful musicians-turned-actors of the last 20 years, JON BON JOVI has garnered well-deserved attention on stage, on the silver screen and back again. On Monday, July 16 at 7:00PM/ET (8:00PM/PT), BRAVO PROFILES: JON BON JOVI takes a look at the creative process behind this multi-faceted artist - interviews with his co-workers from both the musical and theatrical sides of his life, as well as archival footage of a New Jersey band trying to make it big. One of the eighties most revered lead singers, Jon Bon Jovi has continued to surprise his critics, fans and even himself over the years - he survived well past most eighties hair bands, successfully entered the world of acting, has appeared in a dozen films, and has even gone up against the women of Sex and the City. His band has lasted through two decades of personal struggles and triumphs, including a major ``change of the tide'' in the music industry during the grunge-centric early 1990s. As Bravo Profiles reveals, the only people not surprised by Jon's successes are his friends. Young Guns: II star and friend Emilio Estevez sums up Jon's appeal: ``The thing about Jon is he definitely has star quality - the guy is terminally handsome, he's got great presence, he's got a great voice, and he's very tenacious.'' Guitarist and friend Richie Sambora adds, ``Jon's a front man, in my opinion he's the best in the business. Still to this day, I'm sitting right next to him and I just go, `This guy is amazing.'' Bravo Profiles' exclusive look at how this driven performer has lasted through two decades, bringing his music to every corner of the globe and - successfully - bringing his passion for acting to Hollywood, attempts to answer the question - how did Jon, who was once dismissed as being a fleeting MTV icon, bridge the gap between leading singer to leading man? Drive isn't the only thing Jon's colleagues see in him. Moonlight and Valentino co-star Elizabeth Perkins tells BRAVO: ``There's this duality to him that's really enticing, because he has this enormous charisma coupled with this unbelievable down-to-earth quality that you don't see very often.'' Entertainment Weekly film critic Owen Gleiberman comments on Jon's selection of films he wants to be in: ``Most rock stars, if they try to get in to the movie game, they want to do some big star vehicle befitting their majesty, like Tommy or Evita. And Jon, I think, has done it in a different way, with a refreshing modesty, he has taken small parts, character parts, he's more serious about being an actor than most rock stars have been.'' Bravo Profiles goes with Jon on location in Mexico, where he is filming Los Muertos (The Vampires). Tommy Lee Wallace, the film's director, offers his opinion of Jon as an actor: ``He's a contentious actor, he really, really wants to penetrate past his part into the essence of the film, he's thinking all the time about the story, and about how his part in it illuminates the story and gets the story told effectively.'' Jon's dream of being an actor doesn't come quite as easily to him as his music does - and he has no problem admitting it. As he tells BRAVO ``It's much different than what I do in the music business. I'm creating something that someone else has given me, and it's been a long time since I've done that.'' Friend Kevin Bacon understands Jon's struggle - ``If he goes and does a concert in Giant's Stadium, there's gonna be a sound check and 50,000 people are gonna want to rip his clothes off, it's like `yeah, I've done that.' But I bet you that there is a certain element of danger going on to a set and working with other actors, a director throwing him something - these kinds of things give him that feeling of butterflies that I think is an important part of the creative process.'' ``It's a very lonely job being an actor,'' adds Jon. ``You're one person alone, you walk on there it's just you. When you have a band, there are four other guys standing with you, fighting the same fight.'' As BRAVO turns back the clock and traces Bon Jovi from its early club days to the point where success became to much to bare, Jon narrates the band's rise and near-fall in the late eighties. ``Another show in another time zone on another continent and another cortisone shot (Jon was being given steroids to keep down the swelling of his vocal cords), there was such animosity in my belly for what this had become. We went from the great sense of `OK, on three, everybody lift this organ onto the stage,' to this virtual corporation employing a hundred people running around the globe in airplanes and trucks and buses - it wasn't the pure joy for me to do this anymore, and I had to get back to that.'' Bravo Profiles goes with Jon past the music and the acting to his roots - his home in Sayreville, New Jersey. After almost two decades of being a rock star, Jon still calls this small town home - he and his wife Dorthea, and their two children, live ten miles from the house where he grew up. Knowing he would someday be a rock star, Jon spent his free time following fellow Jersey musicians like Bruce Springsteen and taking every chance he could to play in clubs. Says Jon, ``This was a great little second generation, ethnic community - it was a great place to grow up. This was the place they wrote all those Americana songs about - little league and picket fences. My dad was a hairdresser; my mother had a variety of jobs. I think I spent the first 21 years of my life trying to get out of there, and the next 20 trying to get back.'' BRAVO offers critically acclaimed American and international films as well as performing arts, including dance, theater, classical music and jazz.
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