Today, it's a different story. Yamin may have come in third on American Idol, but he endeared himself to millions during its record-breaking fifth run. (As of May 30, an AOL poll placed him fifth on its "Best Idol of All Time" list. Winner Taylor Hicks tied for third; runner-up Katharine McPhee tied for sixth.)
Elliott's graceful, grateful farewell was the kind of two-hanky sobfest usually seen on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. In just a few short months, the guy with the bowl haircut, chinstrap beard, goofy grin and health issues — partial deafness and diabetes — was transformed from a kid in hip-hop threads to a charismatic, smart-dressed crooner. His mom, Claudette Yamin, summed it up when she saw her son dressed in white in the May 22 edition of TV Guide: "Elliott looks sexy."
The change was more than cosmetic. As Idol turned his self-described "pipe dream" of a music career into a reality, he was the lovable mutt who, some would argue, became the best-in-show. Even host Ryan Seacrest asked on air what had happened to the old Elliott. "That guy is gone," the singer replied with a smile.
That guy was born Efraym Elliott Yamin in Los Angeles to Claudette, a former big-band singer, and Israeli Shaul Yamin. "My dad was a part-time [house] painter and part-time layabout," Elliott says. After his parents moved the family to Richmond, Virginia, their marriage ended and Claudette, Elliott and his younger brother, Scott, moved into an apartment. Elliott was 14 when his parents split. "It definitely hurt," he says of the breakup, after which, he says, "my mom had to turn into Supermom."
Elliott suffered from ear infections that eventually caused 90 percent hearing loss in his right ear. He left high school his sophomore year. Then, at 16, he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. He lived at home and subsisted on menial jobs, but he found a champion and role model in Tony Klisiewicz, the manager of a Foot Locker who gave him a job on the condition that he earn his GED. "I didn't want to see him fail," Klisiewicz has said.
Elliott, who used to turn out the lights to sing in front of friends, was encouraged to go for Idol after waltzing off with the $1,000 first prize at a karaoke contest last year. He and his girlfriend, Amanda Parker, tried out in Boston. While she didn't make it through the auditions, he quickly became a Paula Abdul favorite. "She has a big heart, like I do," Elliott says of the woman he reduced to tears.
Though he acknowledges that his songs could've been more accessible — he favored semi-obscure Donny Hathaway tunes — Elliott chose the music he loves. He's eager to get the "E-train" rolling on the American Idol tour. For the July 29 stop in his hometown, 9,000 tickets sold out in less than 15 minutes, besting the tour led by Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken in 2003. And he hopes to release a classic R&B record.
"Elliott was a little lost boy," Claudette says. "This is what he was looking for." Her son echoes her words. "Before Idol, I was lost.... Now I've actually followed through with something. I am a better man for it!"
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TVGuide.com: It's only two episodes into the season, but Rescue Me is ramping up to deliver some stellar plotlines. That altercation between Johnny and Tommy in Episode 2 left me on the edge of my seat!Andrea Roth: I know! Wasn't it crazy? He was scary, huh?
TVGuide.com: Just a tad terrifying, yes. That must have been quite a scene to film.Roth: We filmed that over two nights and that was actually pure fun because we rarely get to shoot with everybody.
TVGuide.com: And not to mention the guest stars who have made fine additions to the early episodes. Roth: We're lucky. Between Susan Sarandon, Marisa Tomei and Tatum O'Neal, we have three Oscar winners on our show.
TVGuide.com: It must be nice to have that increased female presence on the set. Roth: It is. Callie [Thorne, Sheila] is one of my dearest friends, and that sort of blossomed this year because we haven't gotten the chance to work with a lot of women on the show. TVGuide.com: During my chat with Callie, she deemed working with the Ladder 62 guys "delicious." Your take?Roth: All the boys want to make you laugh. And what better thing is there to do than sit around with a bunch of boys wanting to make you laugh?
TVGuide.com: Do the guys ever feel the need to be on their best behavior or hold anything back from you women?Roth: God, no! Those boys are completely uncensored.
TVGuide.com: Things have gotten quite tough for Janet. After losing her son in a tragic hit-and-run, she quickly hops in bed with her husband's brother, Johnny. She's had to really develop a thick skin, especially now that Tommy's found out about her "extracurricular activities."Roth: I think that just from years of being married to Tommy Gavin, she's developed a tough skin. [Laughs] He's someone obsessed with secret, evil plans. He's not normal! But the fact that I'm with his brother is just unredeemable, actually horrific. When they told me, I was like, "What?" But it makes for a good story! I kind of look at it as this roller-coaster ride that I'm on and have no control of. Sometimes I wonder what on earth they could possibly do next, and they just continue to come up with wilder, more dysfunctional and shocking things.
TVGuide.com: And the wild antics will continue once things heat up between Marisa Tomei — as Johnny's ex-wife — and Tommy.Roth: But that's very short-lived. There's a lot of secret, evil planning between the two of them, but it all blows up — like things always do — in Tommy's face!
TVGuide.com: I need a scorecard to keep up with all the bed-hopping and guest-star seductresses this season!Roth: I have a hard time keeping up with it myself. Here's a good teaser that you can't imagine [happening]: Tommy and Janet may end up dabbling together by Episodes 4, 5 or 6.
TVGuide.com: No kidding.Roth: [Pause] I don't know how much you want things ruined... but [SPOILER ALERT] Tommy is going to come over and we get in a bit of an argument. He pushes me down, and we end up having sex.
TVGuide.com: Wow. This season has provided some fantastic story lines. Do you have a favorite thus far?Roth: This year's been really tough for me because I was really confused about what the hell my character was doing. When the very first episode of the season was written, Janet was very angry, and I said to [cocreators] Denis [Leary] and Peter [Tolan], "My child just died. Shouldn't there be some more sensitivity?" And they were like, "Nope. We want you bitter and angry."
TVGuide.com: You do play bitter and angry well. What kind of reactions have you received from fans?Roth: It's really lovely because people tell me I'm a really good actress [judging by] when my child died. "You broke our hearts." People aren't just fans, no one just likes it. They're obsessed! And the rest of the world just doesn't know about [the show].
TVGuide.com: With the summer TV slate largely made up of reality shows and reruns, Rescue Me is a refreshing alternative. But why is it such a scorcher with fans? Roth: It has a dark, dysfunctional soul, mixed with a lot of light, funny drama. The audience has no idea [what will happen], so it's like a big kids' roller-coaster ride. There's enough alcohol, swearing and sex involved so it's a good ride. Every once in a while, because it can get so outrageous, I wonder if people think it's just too over-the-top or soapy, but they just eat it up. The crazier it gets, the more obsessed people get.
TVGuide.com: Tell me about some of the other projects you have coming down the pike. I understand you just wrapped the action flick Rogue with Jason Statham? Roth: That was great fun. I adore him, he's so talented. And so sexy! I was reduced to a blithering, dorky schoolgirl. When I'd be talking to him, I'd touch his arm, feel the electricity, and go, "Oh, my god!" So that, as Callie would say, was delicious. He feels like my first high-school crush.
TVGuide.com: Tell me more about your character in that film.Roth: I play Jason's wife. Lucky me, working with Denis Leary, John Corbett [and now] Jason Statham. But I didn't get to kiss Jason. [Dreamily] Oh, if only....
TVGuide.com: I can't let you go without trying to eke out one final Rescue Me spoiler. Surprise me.Roth: Well, when Tommy comes over and we have sex, it starts off very violent, and you're not really certain exactly what the hell happened. I read in an article that Denis said that scene actually shows how complicated and strong the sexual pull is between these two people and why they are together and find it so hard to be apart. I haven't seen it, but a bunch of producers have said it's their favorite scene.
TVGuide.com: It's also rumored that someone in the firehouse is bisexual. Roth: Yes. And they're wondering and start dabbling. Do you want to know who it is?
TVGuide.com: Well, if you're going to twist my arm....Roth: [Name redacted.]
TVGuide.com: That was my guess.Roth: [That person] is confused and there will be some homosexuality going down. And I do mean going down.

Bart says that — especially as cohost of AMC's Sunday Morning Shootout (think Ebert & Roeper meets Meet the Press) — he has often been asked to identify the ingredients that lead to box-office bizillions. Alas, as countless filmmakers have seen over the decades, there is no easy answer, if any at all. "The most important common denominator," Bart tells TVGuide.com, "is that every hit reflects the vision of one strong individual who was willing to accept all the disdain and animus and anger and rejection and see the damn thing through — only to find that when the picture opened, there was still more disdain and anger and rebuke."
The releases of the Boffo! book and documentary are timed perfectly, here at the start of the summer movie season. As such, TVGuide.com asked Bart to weigh in on the box-office surprises to date, and the highly anticipated films still in wait.
"Certainly, Poseidon, on the downside, was a surprise," Bart opines. "Warner Bros. has always felt that [it can] almost put blockbusters on an assembly line. But everyone was skeptical about whether Poseidon would resonate well." Everyone, in this case, was right. "It opened OK here and OK overseas, but on the downside, Poseidon may be the least successful wannabe blockbuster."
Sandwiching Poseidon's waterlogged debut were offerings from Hollywood's two Toms — Mission: Impossible III and The Da Vinci Code — each of which met expectations, albeit to different degrees. "Surely, Mission: Impossible III didn't perform as well as the first two, and perhaps Tom Cruise's image was a part of the problem," Bart notes. "[Tom Hanks'] Da Vinci Code has been the most successful film so far, in terms of international acceptance, because that's not a typical summer picture. It's a drama, not a shoot-'em-up."
As Bart brings up "Tom Cruise's image" and "problem" in the same breath, we ask if there is a temptation to update his Boffo! book with a chapter on the "outside factors" that can affect a film's performance. "It's such an imponderable area," he says. "You almost need to mobilize the resources of a market-research company in order to find out how, for example, Mr. & Mrs. Smith was a big success, and how [the real-life headline-making of its own stars, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie], all worked in that instance.
"I've never seen anybody measure the public impact of Tom Cruise's television appearances or his religious beliefs," Bart continues, "but if you did a chapter like that, you should arm yourself with a lot of data, because everybody's got an opinion."
The Boffo! HBO documentary features plenty of candid insights from the likes of George Clooney, Brian Grazer, Sherry Lansing, Danny DeVito, Peter Bogdanovich, Morgan Freeman and Tom Rothman. In fact, looking back on what is widely regarded as the first blockbuster, Jaws, it is detailed how Steven Spielberg's film drastically and at the last minute changed, apparently for the better, all because the robotic shark repeatedly wasn't ready for its close-up. That's right — Jaws was what it was because of what wasn't seen.
Boffo! also offers some uncomfortable moments, particularly when the bomb-word gets dropped. "When we started this," Bill Couturié, the film's director, shares with TVGuide.com, "one of the first things I said to Peter was, 'Talking to people about blockbusters is a no-brainer, but people talking about their flops...?' This is Hollywood. It's going to be a bit tougher." Indeed, even a revered and award-winning thespian like Morgan Freeman was literally unable to vocalize what went wrong with The Bonfire of the Vanities, one of the biz's biggest bombs. Says Couturié, "Here's this Oscar-winning guy, one of the most respected actors on earth, the movie is 15 years old, and he could barely get a word out about it. It was still that hard on the guy."
Adds Bart, "The psychology of failure is odd. Brian Grazer is one of the wealthiest and most successful producers of all time, but he feels that Cinderella Man was a terrible blight on his career. By any normal standards, Cinderella Man was very successful and it did well with the critics, but he felt it didn't fulfill its expectations. It's all a matter of expectations."
So what does Bart expect from the summer's remaining releases? Which films are all insiders' eyes on? "Certainly, Pirates of the Caribbean [Dead Men's Chest] is the biggest gamble ever taken by Disney," he observes. "I mean, you're talking somewhere between 250 and 350 [million dollars] for the two sequels made simultaneously. To watch the success of that [will be interesting]. Will there be a whole new genre of movies based on theme-park rides? That would be somewhat disturbing."
And what of Superman Returns, flying into theaters June 28 while weighed down with a supposed $300 million budget? Bart recalls the very tough sell he had back in his day with Michael Keaton as Batman. "Basically, Warner Bros. didn't want to make that movie," he shares. "They thought it was ridiculous, that the comic-book audience wouldn't move over." Ah, but they did, and even with film newcomer Brandon Routh in the title role, Superman Returns should be able to avoid being box-office Kryptonite. "[Casting] doesn't make a difference," says Bart, "because they feel that the star is the franchise."
Then again, as Boffo!'s numerous opinionators point out, over and again, nothing should ever be predicted in a business where an action-packed Mission can be faced with Impossible goals, while the march of some goofy Penguins can instead enchant a nation. Hollywood is littered with hits and misses, and scores of blockbuster wannabes that instead were bombs that went off in people's faces. "Success is not a process where everyone applauds you going in and applauds you going out," Bart points out. "Usually they do quite the opposite."