Valley Talk

Ready for His Close-up Real estate developer Gerald Katell has a second career going. Katell, president of Katell Properties and perhaps best known in the San Fernando Valley for his efforts to develop what was then a highly controversial project, Warner Ridge (which he has since sold to Legacy Partners), recently snagged a brief role in The Retrievers, a made-for-television movie with Robert Hayes (Airplane!) and Mel Harris (thirtysomething) that just premiered on Animal Planet. The 60-year-old developer began taking acting classes last year at The Larry Moss Studio (the school Helen Hunt thanked when she accepted her Oscar for As Good As It Gets) after a friend took him along to another acting class and coaxed him into doing a scene. That led to a small part in the yet-to-be-released, low-budget Space Girls and an audition for the prestigious acting studio. Now Katell has his own stash of head shots and is looking around for an agent. Katell hasn’t given up his day job but, he says, “with the slow economy, we’re not starting anything new anyway.” Does his newly culled acting experience help with those community planning meetings? The budding thespian hasn’t actually had to attend any since he took up the craft but, he adds, “maybe the meetings on Warner Ridge helped with the acting.” Can Al Mann Cut Back? In June, shortly after it was announced Medtronic Inc. would buy MiniMed Inc. and Medical Research Group, the companies’ founder and chairman, Alfred E. Mann, joked that, with fewer responsibilities, he “might take a weekend off.” Well, the $3.8 billion deal closed just before Labor Day and last week Mann said, “I’m semi-retired now, so I’m going to cut back to an 80-hour week. “And that’s only because the Patent Office rejected my last patent for a 48-hour week.”