Bagdad Cafe

Whoopi Goldberg doesn't see moving from the stage and screen to a situation comedy as a step down. "As a girl from the projects, I'm not at all disappointed in the way things are going. This is what I've always dreamed about. And I'm still here, which is the phenomenal thing," the comedian says in the April 9 issue of People magazine.

The "Mad Hatter," a regular at the Bagdad Cafe, is hanging out at the worn Formica counter talking about his latest creation -- a hand-knitted Easter bonnet. River Bottom Dan, the cook at this funky desert diner off Route 66, is taking orders for Jack Palance burgers and T-bone steaks. General Bob, the resident eccentric, is slumped in a vinyl chair, his face red with rage as he yells at a visitor who has questioned Bob's claim that he designed the Pentagon.

Percy Adlon loves sending his favorite muse, the ample Marianne Sagebrecht, on personal journeys into quirk-dom. The cheeky German filmmaker pushed her through the Berlin subway on a quest for love in "Sugarbaby" (1985), and he dropped her in the Mojave Desert for a soul search in "Bagdad Cafe" (1988).

This 1991 production is filmmaker Percy Adlon's most venturesome film to date, taking us both geographically and emotionally into fresh territory. A remarkable companion film to "Bagdad Cafe," it also has a remote setting and centers on a relationship between two strong, distinctive women (Veronika Voss Rosel Zech and k.d. lang, pictured) from different worlds; this time, however, the tone is more serious than comic.

When Wim Wenders spotted fellow German film director Percy Adlon across the room at Musso and Frank's, Wenders rushed over to his colleague, enveloping him with a hearty embrace. Obviously delighted by the chance meeting, the twosome regaled each other--in German--with tales of their latest Hollywood adventures.

Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Stapleton are a match made in desert--parched and barren. Their ample individual talents don't really mesh in "Bagdad Cafe," a new CBS comedy series based on and named after the theatrical movie "Bagdad Cafe." It premieres at 9 tonight on Channels 2 and 8, followed by another new comedy, "Sugar and Spice," which was not available for preview.

"Bagdad Cafe" (opening Friday at the Guild), an adorable comic fable set in a ramshackle motel-restaurant on the edge of the Mojave Desert, is West German director Percy Adlon's first English-language film. It is a triumphant teaming of Marianne Sagebrecht, the irresistible Rubens-esque star of Adlon's "Sugarbaby," and the formidable black actress CCH Pounder.

Director Percy Adlon, a West German, set his first English-language film, "Bagdad Cafe," in a ramshackle motel and roadhouse in a dusty corner of the Mojave Desert. His newest film is set in Stuttgart--Stuttgart, Ark., not West Germany. Adlon--who will be at UC Irvine tonight to introduce a screening of "Bagdad Cafe" and to answer questions--takes his camera to distinctly American places that somehow escape the attention of American directors.

Writer Sues CBS Over 'Bagdad Cafe' Series: Television writer Mort Lachman sued CBS Inc., contending that it violated an agreement to pay him thousands of dollars stemming from his work on the TV series "Bagdad Cafe." In the federal lawsuit seeking at least $1 million in damages, Lachman and his R. F. Productions Inc. said he was compensated for his work on the show's first six episodes, which aired in 1989-1990.

'Cafe' Closes: "Bagdad Cafe," the CBS comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Stapleton, has gone out of production, CBS confirmed Monday. Sources close to the show say production shut down after a dispute between Goldberg and the show's co-executive producer, Thad Mumford, during a Nov. 16 taping. A CBS spokeswoman said the network had not yet determined a date the show would go off the air. Goldberg's representatives had no immediate comment on the matter.

Percy Adlon loves sending his favorite muse, the ample Marianne Sagebrecht, on personal journeys into quirk-dom. The cheeky German filmmaker pushed her through the Berlin subway on a quest for love in "Sugarbaby" (1985), and he dropped her in the Mojave Desert for a soul search in "Bagdad Cafe" (1988).

Even a romantic, curious, adventuring Irishman like Shanty Devlin wasn't fully aware of the history he had encountered. He knew when he leased the abandoned Sidewinder Cafe on Route 66 that he was signing to operate a chunk of '40s folklore. But Devlin--a former teacher of hotel and restaurant management--undertook running a roadside greasy spoon as little more than a retirement pastime. Enter a traveler from another desert: Hollywood.

Ever since Iraq invaded Kuwait, curious motorists passing through the Mojave Desert have stopped to ask the way to Bagdad, the California ghost town named in the 1800s for the Middle Eastern capital. "Every day they come into our gas station or restaurant and ask, 'Where's Bagdad? We can't find it,' " said Buster Burris, 81, owner of the town of Amboy, population 27, eight miles east of where maps indicate Bagdad is located. Burris tells them Bagdad is but a memory these days.

Writer Sues CBS Over 'Bagdad Cafe' Series: Television writer Mort Lachman sued CBS Inc., contending that it violated an agreement to pay him thousands of dollars stemming from his work on the TV series "Bagdad Cafe." In the federal lawsuit seeking at least $1 million in damages, Lachman and his R. F. Productions Inc. said he was compensated for his work on the show's first six episodes, which aired in 1989-1990.

'Cafe' Closes: "Bagdad Cafe," the CBS comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Stapleton, has gone out of production, CBS confirmed Monday. Sources close to the show say production shut down after a dispute between Goldberg and the show's co-executive producer, Thad Mumford, during a Nov. 16 taping. A CBS spokeswoman said the network had not yet determined a date the show would go off the air. Goldberg's representatives had no immediate comment on the matter.

Even a romantic, curious, adventuring Irishman like Shanty Devlin wasn't fully aware of the history he had encountered. He knew when he leased the abandoned Sidewinder Cafe on Route 66 that he was signing to operate a chunk of '40s folklore. But Devlin--a former teacher of hotel and restaurant management--undertook running a roadside greasy spoon as little more than a retirement pastime. Enter a traveler from another desert: Hollywood.

Whoopi Goldberg doesn't see moving from the stage and screen to a situation comedy as a step down. "As a girl from the projects, I'm not at all disappointed in the way things are going. This is what I've always dreamed about. And I'm still here, which is the phenomenal thing," the comedian says in the April 9 issue of People magazine.

Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Stapleton are a match made in desert--parched and barren. Their ample individual talents don't really mesh in "Bagdad Cafe," a new CBS comedy series based on and named after the theatrical movie "Bagdad Cafe." It premieres at 9 tonight on Channels 2 and 8, followed by another new comedy, "Sugar and Spice," which was not available for preview.