Preview

The emulation of an era

NBC's American Dreams goes to great lengths to re-create the 1960s, including painstaking makeovers of 21st century musicians into '60s singing stars.

LOS ANGELES - The director yells "Playback!" and the driving thump-thump rhythm of Oh, Pretty Woman rocks the soundstage.

A man begins lip-synching to the track, which he recorded earlier. He sounds very much like Roy Orbison. He looks very much like Roy Orbison.

But wait! It's Chris Isaak.

On the American Dreams set, Isaak is re-creating one of the historic moments of American Bandstand. The re-creations are a regular feature of American Dreams, an NBC series chronicling the shifting cultural, social and political mores of the Pryor family of Philadelphia in the 1960s.

Teenage daughter Meg Pryor (Tampa's Brittany Snow) and her pal Roxanne Bojarksi (Vanessa Lengies), both of whom are regular Bandstand dancers, are in the audience as "Orbison" sings his 1964 hit.

"It's fun hitting the high notes," says actor-musician Isaak, who had recorded the song the previous day, with his brother, Nick, handling the famous Orbison growl.

Chris Isaak, whose music can sound remarkably like Orbison's, performs on a set made to look like the Philadelphia studio where Dick Clark originally produced Bandstand.

"I always loved Roy Orbison," says Isaak, star of a behind-the-scenes rock series in its final season on Showtime. Both grew up in "hot, flat, dusty places" - Orbison in Vernon, Texas; Isaak in Stockton, Calif. - and "when I met him, we just clicked," Isaac says.

He says performing was "a surrealistic moment. . . . I'm dressed up like Roy, who I liked as a kid and watched on TV, who I met as an adult and played and sang with, and became a friend. I talked to his widow, Barbara, yesterday. Some place up high, if he's watching, he's going "Wow, how strange!' "

Previous guest performers on American Dreams who have re-created the looks and sounds of earlier singers include India.Arie as Nina Simone, LeAnn Rimes as Connie Francis, Kelly Clarkson as Brenda Lee, Hilary Duff and her sister Haylie as the Shangri-Las and, also this month, Nick Lachey as Tom Jones.

The wardrobe, hair and makeup departments of American Dreams, in its second season, match up the era's look for the show's regulars as well as the musical guest stars.

"The '60s is such a beautiful period, and we are right in the middle of it," says costume designer Vicki Sanchez as she sits in front of a rack that includes a fringed minidress worn by Jennifer Love Hewitt as Nancy Sinatra singing These Boots Are Made For Walkin' on a January show.

Love Hewitt plays Sinatra again in Sunday's episode with Isaak as Orbison.

This time Sinatra is on a USO tour of Vietnam, performing for the troops, which include the Pryors' oldest son, JJ (Will Estes).

Love Hewitt, who played the title role in the 2000 TV biopic The Audrey Hepburn Story, loves the female empowerment of Sinatra's persona and song.

"It's a kind of really neat message and a fun thing to be part of, to get to shake around, feel sexy, wear the boots and know I have all that power," she says.

She made her version of Sinatra's songs by listening to the originals and recording verse by verse. It took about an hour and 15 minutes to properly capture Boots.

She said hair and makeup took a little longer: "adding lashes and lots of yummy eyeliner and big, blond hair."

American Dreams airs at 8 p.m. Sunday on WFLA-Ch. 8.

Entertainment headlines