Tim Allen
There's an explanation for all that ape-meets-hog
grunting that emanates from comedian Tim Allen: He's the missing
link, the evolutionary tissue that connects Alan Alda to Sam Kinison.
And Allen's cheerful credo — ''Men are pigs! Red-butted monkeys! Primate
bastards!'' — has made him television's brightest newcomer. In ABC's
sitcom Home Improvement, a top 10 hit that pokes fun at the
back-to-macho movement while riding its crest, Allen, 38, plays an
equipment-obsessed family man bent on rewiring anything he can nail
down. His concept — a world in which man is ruled by the Tool — is sly
enough to fuel both his hilarious R-rated stand-up act and his
gentler PG series. ''What do we want?'' yells Allen every week. ''More
power!'' He's getting it.
C+C Music Factory
You can't fault C+C Music Factory for deceptive
advertising. The name of their dance-heavy, triple-platinum debut
album, Gonna Make You Sweat, is no brag, just fact. And if they
hadn't already stuck ''Factory'' in their moniker, surely somebody else
would have, considering their string of hit singles (like ''Here We
Go, Let's Rock 'N' Roll'' and ''Things That Make You Go Hmmmm...'') and
their fruitful collaborations with Mariah Carey, Martika, and Lisa
Lisa and Cult Jam. C+C writer-producers Robert Clivilles, 27, and
David Cole, 28, became dance music's major players in 1991. Coming up
next: a collection of their greatest remixes, including a remake of
U2's ''Pride,'' sure to make you go hmmmm...
Katie Couric
Reporter Katie Couric, 34, substituted in February
for the Today show's Deborah Norville, who was taking a few months
off to have a baby. But Couric's spunky charm and uncanny nose for
news (she got Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf's first postwar interview)
quickly won her a huge following all her own.In April, after Norville
quit to devote more time to motherhood (and, later, to a new radio
career), Couric, a former Pentagon correspondent for NBC, was made a
permanent part of the program — at least until July, when she left to
have her own baby. Her return in September pulled the show's ratings
to within a fraction of first place, territory the Today show hadn't
been near since the golden days of Jane Pauley.
John Grisham
In terms of stamina, lapsed lawyer John Grisham's
second novel, The Firm, was the fiction best-seller of 1991: With
515,000 copies in print, it spent 40 weeks on the New York Times
best-seller list. His first book, A Time to Kill, had come out in
1989 with a flash-in-the-pan printing of only 5,000, but The Firm got an early boost when it was nothing more than a manuscript:
Paramount bought film rights for $600,000. Already the film rights to
Grisham's next book, The Pelican Brief, which is due March 1, have
gone to director Alan J. Pakula (Sophie's Choice, All the President's
Men). And Grisham, 36, is not done: ''We're gonna try to publish once
a year for the next four years. Fortunately there's no shortage of
ideas. The words are coming fast.''
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