Year End List 2007: Fuel for Inspiration (Part 3)

THIS IS A day late, but hopefully not a dollar short. (That's roughly 98 cents to you Americans.) Part One of this List can be read here. Part Two is here.

4) AMY WINEHOUSE - "Back to Black"

They need to try to make her go to Rehab harder. And don't let her say "no, no, no." If you look at the history in pictures of Winehouse from her first record, FRANK, to now, you'll see a disturbing evolution from a healthy, pretty, gorgeous woman with a great voice to a disturbed, sometimes-addled cautionary case.

But sadly, there is still that voice. What a voice. Whatever haunts Winehouse, when she can keep it together and channel it through her art, the results are breathtaking. Each song on Back to Black feels to me like its own movie.

And as good as the record is, Winehouse's artistic evolution continued through the year, making the record seem like a snapshot, rather than a culmination of something. I sometimes get a little obsessive tracking down b-sides by artists I like. (This is an undertaking made far easier, and cheaper, in the Itunes era.) In the case of Winehouse, the major catalyst for her further brilliance came when she hooked up with the Dap Kings -- the stellar soul-funk backing group of Dap Tone records, probably best known for supporting neo-funk goddess Sharon Jones (whose 100 Days, 100 Nights was another favorite of mine last year.) The Dap Kings backed Winehouse on her U.S. tour. And B-side recordings made along the way have offered tantalizing glimpses of where Winehouse might go, if she lives, that is.

The B-side cover of the Zutons "Valerie," covers like "You're Wondering Now," and "Hey Little Rich Girl" are fantastic (You can get them all on a limited edition 2-CD reissue of B2B.) and the remixers have cottoned onto Winehouse in a big way, too. The Rumble Strips reworking of "Back To Black" raises the threat level or the original and becomes a sinister masterpiece, and there's a couple of reworkings of "You Know I'm No Good" that best the original, as well. Hip-hop artists discovered Winehouse in a big way, too. I may not like those collaborations, but seeing as we live in a time when musical genres are as separate as possible, where there is no crossover -- the interest from that side of the fence in Winehouse is interesting, to say the least.

In a lesser sense, 2007 was all about female vocals for me. Feist, Kate Nash, Lily Allen, Jenny Lewis -- all produced records that demanded more time in my CD player than their scruffier male contemporaries. But Winehouse still stands up there, striding over them all, like a colussus. I want another record. I hope she gets well soon, so we can see the promise and the challenge of Back to Black fulfilled.

3) 30 Rock

"Never go with a hippie to a second location."

I can't even remember, beyond that, what my favorite lines from 30 Rock are. All I know is that once or twice a show, they rip a laugh from me that comes as much from astonishment as from craft. There are jokes that work even though they shouldn't, there are jokes that are arcane or simply weird, and there are jokes that are joyfully, exuberantly silly. Jack McBrayer's Kenneth is a wise fool foil monster character -- probably we haven't seen one better since the first time Kramer slid through Jerry's door. And how, when, who, where - WHAT do you say about Alec Baldwin? Supreme Ego and supreme vulnerability; the neurotic behind the bully. It's like somehow Tina Fey found a way to make Montgomery Burns lovable.

The great thing about truly transcendent comedy writing is that it overwhelms your efforts to discern its craft and construction. 30 Rock is just raucously funny; like Fawlty Towers, at this point, you just have to sit back and enjoy the ride.

But craft is at the heart of this recommendation, and also why 30 Rock makes me a little sad, at least in the current climate. The David-vs.-Goliath dynamic that greeted the show's faceoff with Studio 60 at the start of last season is rapidly fading into footnote territory, but it shouldn't be forgotten that the show did have a shaky start. The degree to which this show found its feet in the room, and worked itself out by the end of season one shows, to me, the value of the writing room, and the process, and how no matter how well you think you know a project going in (Could anyone be better qualified to write about behind the scenes of a comedy show than ex-SNL'er Tina Fey?) you have to find the show in the room.

But there's finding the show in the room, and then there's what 30 Rock did. Right now, 30 Rock is the New England Patriots of television comedy. How the fuck can you write a "comedy is dead on TV article" when you can point to 30 Rock? I have no idea. So the plaudits are there, and the audience is slow to catch on -- but they were slow to catch on to Seinfeld and Cheers too. How'd those shows do?

But it's that very clicking, that amazing confluence of writers and actors and subject matter that makes me a little sad now. Because those things have their moment. And that moment is ephemeral at best. Putting scripted television in drydock is going to affect different series differently -- but for the show that's captured lightning in a bottle, the stakes are higher. If the writing room of 30 Rock is down for months, maybe even most of a year -- what happens when it comes back? The dirty little secret every artist knows -- the subtext, in fact, running underneath my picks like Steve Martin and his standup, or Winehouse -- the reason why I always include a theater show or two is that these things all have their time. Time is a factor in any artistic collaboration, because you change with every script you write. That's less of a factor when you're doing a film or a book... A film or a book captures something and preserves it, but it's at least representative of a time -- and that time is preserved in the work forever. In contrast, a great theater performance stale dates -- a cast member moves on, the production closes and is lost -- it's entirely temporal. A great TV show exists somewhere between those two states. It's a high wire act that demands that something be done fast, and on a schedule that's always punishing, and yet reach for a consistent, and renewable bar of greatness.

30 Rock was firing on all cylinders before the strike. Will it come back just as strong? I hope so. But I curse the circumstance that stopped them when they were clearly hot, and clearly on a roll.

2) The Stage Takes on The TeeVee: Frost/Nixon and The Farnsworth Invention

Speaking of temporal greatness. I knew years ago when I sat in the dark and saw a play called "A Few Good Men" that I was seeing the start of a great new voice. Having moved into TV, three series in, Sorkin repays his new employer with a memory play that touches on many of his particular obsessions: people with principles who fall short of them, politics both corporate and personal, and that particularly American obsession with the little guy -- and how the little guy can't seem to win, even though the American myth tells him he can.

The Farnsworth Invention is ostensibly about the fight to create the technology of TV. It's a story of two unlikely protagonists: Philo Farnsworth, a genius inventor who comes up with the idea of a scanning cathode ray tube while plowing potato rows, at the age of 14. And David Sarnoff, a Russian emigre who invented most of his early history and created modern broadcasting with RCA.

Sorkin's play moves briskly, with each man telling the other's story. It's a story that involves American ingenuity, corporate espionage, personal tragedy and driven obsession. He resists the urge to make one character good and one bad, and he also does an admirable job of pondering the legacy of television. Hank Azaria as Sarnoff is commanding, brutal, and compelling.

"Nobody had it. Nobody was even close."

This play was a little personal for me -- because years ago, my ex-boss, Moses Znaimer, started collecting a whole bunch of old TV's. He opened his own Museum of Television, including the set that Sarnoff showed at the 1939 World's Fair. That got me interested in early TV, and led me to Philo Farnsworth. I was making notes about a possible stage play myself when I heard a few years ago that this was Sorkin's next project.

Wisely, I put the books away. Sorkin came up with a more even-handed, more poignant, more exciting vision than I probably had in me. Farnsworth is magical.

The other theater piece that transported me is one that you'll probably get a chance to see, in some form, at least. Ron Howard is currently making a movie of the play. Frost/Nixon was un unlikely beast. Peter Morgan (The Queen) dramatized the story of the groundbreaking 1970's interview that David Frost did with ex-President Richard Nixon.

Looking back now, how extraordinary the circumstance. A major network gave over multiple nights to an interview with a politician. Along the way, the commercialization of the project -- it was produced by Frost's own company and Nixon was paid -- caused much hand-wringing about what the future of news on TV was. (Like Good Night and Good Luck, Broadcast News, and Network, these concerns now seem sad and quaint, and all-too-prescient.)

The great thing about Frost/Nixon is that it's structured like a boxing match -- only it's about two men facing off in conversation. Frank Langella as the disgraced President is a revelation, and Michael Sheen continues the nuanced, fascinating and offbeat way of slipping inside a character he brought to Tony Blair in The Queen.



The whole point of the research and prep leading up to the interviews is "will they GET Nixon?" Will they get him to admit culpability? Frost doesn't seem up to the task. Nobody thinks he can do it. But there are twists and turns a plenty on the way to the ending.

Again, it's a glimpse at a time when TV did something more than make six corporations money. And it's also quaint because it comes from a time when we didn't just expect and accept leaders lying all the time and never answering a question. Compare the grilling of Nixon to the lightweight treatment George W. has gotten over the last seven years, and you can't help but admire Tricky Dick. On some level. For humanizing Nixon, for showing what TV can do, and for making compelling theater out of the arcane nature of a TV interview -- well, for that, Frost/Nixon inspired the hell out of me.

1) Mad Men

I wrote a lot about Mad Men this last year. I know that only a million or so people watched every episode. But I also know that the show drew the households with the highest income in all of television.

In many ways, the show is a shot across the bow to those who would idealize a past that never really existed. But it's also a testament to what happens when you let a truly gifted writer/producer do what he wants to do, with full commitment and support.

Mad Men was not an expensive show. It's a show that could be done in England or Canada. All it requires is people to support a bold vision. It's a show whose characters were indelible, and who revealed themselves like an onion, bit by bit, layer by layer.

If you haven't seen the whole season, I don't know how this will play for you. But this clip is from the finale. Don Draper, who has invented and re-invented himself, and lied, and ran, and sacrificed and nearly lost everything through a desire to protect his secrets, waxes on family to sell Kodak on a new campaign for their slide projector. This is the culmination of everything we've seen Don go through. It's terrible and beautiful and subtle -- great writing, great nuance...just...wow.

I hope one day to be able to write something 1/10th this good: