There are few things as completely juvenile and ribsplittingly hilarious than when one part of the culture (the hip, uh, sexslang contingent) meets the other (inchoate Republican tax-rage.) But if you haven't seen it yet, check out Anamaria Cox nearly destroying Rachel Maddow over the Conservative movement's sudden interest in, uh...teabagging.
Seriously, I haven't laughed that much since the reaction to the dood who unwittingly published the web book with the cover that is a dead ringer for an internet meme that's soNSFW that I won't even link to the Wikipedia entry about it. If you know what I'm talking about, you know what I'm talking about. And hey, if you don't, I've just spared you a half hour of staring blankly into space wishing you could unsee something. So, like, you're welcome.
SHORT HIT for this new ABC Drama. I'm of the opinion these days that it takes a big gimmick to give another cop show a shot. The genre has been on fumes since NYPD Blue and especially The Wire and The Shield. The Shield, in fact, is in danger of being the Cop show's version of Unforgiven. I remember when I saw that Clint Eastwoodtour de force I couldn't look at a western for two years -- not even the classic ones. It just seemed like it put an exclamation point on the entire genre, and closed the book for good.
So while those promos for Southland push all the right emotional buttons, I find myself thinking, first, "I really don't want to watch another cop show," and second, "Oh God I really, really, really don't want to watch another cop show set in L.A."
Because, let's face it, as far as L.A. cop shows goes, we had our ambitious try, rather recently, with Boomtown -- the Graham Yost copper that employed the multiple perspective gimmick.
And there it is again...the gimmick. When you're treading such well trod-earth, you need one. Some sort of hook to erase all those years of every other cop show you've ever seen.
I bought the pilot for The Unusuals, but just barely. In my estimation, here's what it had going for it.
Appealing Cast:
Amber Tamblyn gets to grow up from Joan of Arcadia days. She's still pretty, but not "no way she'd ever be a cop" pretty. A nice, self-deprecating air about her, but a couple of interesting scenes in the pilot to both set up her toughness and vulnerability.
Surrounding her is one of the most appealing supporting casts I've seen for awhile. Terry Kinney as the world weary head of the precinct, Harold Perrineau, Adam Goldberg, and a guy named Jeremy Renner as her partner.
New York Tax Credits:
A LOT of on the street shooting. This show gets NY in a way that NYPD Blue didn't, with its 'few trips to NY every year' shooting. The authenticity and feel of the locations really shines through. You are transported to somewhere else.
Nice setup, cleanly presented. A cop who was dirty is murdered. Through the hour we find out that he was surprisingly decent for a dirty cop, but he had a file on all the other cops. New girl (Tamblyn) is from a rich, rich family (a premise that was being floated recently for a Canadian cop show -- be interesting to see if that sticks now) and so is brought in by Captain to "keep an eye on" and report on the other cops -- who we are starting to realize, all have secrets. One of those cops, (Goldberg) has a brain tumor -- he won't tell anybody, but somehow he experiences two miraculous events in a day that save his life. The focus of Tamblyn's explorations, revealed only at the end: her new partner, who apparently was a first baseman for the Yankees at one point before becoming a cop.
Jeremy Renner and Tamblyn are in interesting pairing. Renner gets to state the theme of the show: Cops are defined by their secrets. At the end of the pilot, he gets a moving speech about his dead partner's badge number -- how it was passed down from cop, to cop, to cop -- until someone dies on the job, then the badge is retired. You pass down the badge till it kills you. A little maudlin, but surprisingly effective.
The numbers weren't great for the premiere, so it might not stick around. But there was definitely a kick or two left there in the premise. I'll watch it again.
I'd love to tell you more about Southland but I fell asleep about ten minutes in. Take that as you will.
ENTRIES ARE COMING in at a steady clip for the Dead Things ON Sticks WGC Screenwriting Awards Ticket giveaway. Remember, you have until 5pm tomorrow to enter -- details here.
THERE ARE, I think, certain clarity moments in the culture. Especially when you make culture (ugh, that sounds pretentious, let's say, if you make "cultural products") you have to try and figure out ahead of time, where people's heads are going to be at. There's a lag between when you make something and when it gets exposed to the audience. An artist creating a painting or sculpture, a playwright preparing a theatre piece, or a writer crafting a TV show or a film screenplay are obviously on very different timetables.
The lag for screenplays and TV series means you're taking a gamble on what people are going to be in the mood to see when it finally gets made, and ordered and on the air. In the USA, with pilot season, that can mean a matter of months. In Canada more often it can be a year or more. With screenplays it can be years and years.
Below we see one of the effects of the current economic times...suddenly everybody's trying to move toward comedy. That extends to the projects I'm developing and that I see other people developing. It's like no one can bear to come up with the same perilous, down, damaged or downbeat concepts about crime or strife. Everybody wants something escapist or redemptive. And you know what? Trying to write something like that actually lifts your spirits, too.
At the same time, I think we've come to a sort of ending, or a pause, at least, in our TMZeedy consumption of celebutardism. The Bale/Joaquin/BillyBob stuff comes down the pike so often these days that we're fully desensitized. A year ago, I could still summon up some outrage toward Kim Kardashian and wonder why on earth anyone expected me to care about her. Now, the UK, who always was better at this kind of weird celebrity just for celebrity's sake thing than we in North America were (I mean, Page 3 girl is a career there. The Girl in the WonderBra ad got to have her own press agent!) have gone through their first reality show burial. We are, in essence, at the end of the snark, I think.
It's not to say that the snark will stop, or even that it should. But really, Billy Bob Thornton can go beep beep beep and fireman carry one of Angelina's 11 babies down the field and spike it in the endzone, and...uh.... nope. Don't really care anymore. I mean, O.J.'s finally in jail. It's a whole new world.
So I look for the redemptive message or story in life, and in art. I hope that despite the current government's determination to hobble the CBC, there will be a way found to preserve that which needs preserving. Yeah, the dice is stacked against creatives getting anything made in Canada. But yet people get stuff made. And some of it is actually quite delightful.
A final aside. Probably the only time you'll ever see a link back to this site from Sticksville. There's this blog about the CBC that was started in the wake of the 2005 CBC Lockout by a Manager inside the building. It chugged along for a couple years as a quixotic but occasionally informative organ of dissent and tough love for the vagaries of the CBC. Awhile ago, that manager stepped back and handed over the reins of the place to a group of dyspeptic, antisocial wingnuts. They claim to be the "loyal opposition" and to be doing all they do from a position of "love for the CBC," but whenever I see a link back to something I've written here, or other media sites, it's an inevitable gainsaying criticism of CBC. The Corp, to these guys, can do nothing right. At a time when the place is fractious, bleeding, and in real trouble, there is nothing weirder than a bunch of idiot contrarians claiming to know better, showing with every post that they don't understand anything about a) broadcasting b) management c) dealing with people d) business e) ratings f) journalism g) ...and so on and so on.
So why talk about them here? Because I am weeeak, chickens. Heh heh. Nah. Because every once in a while you get the perfect example, the absolute embodiment of what is wrong with something. And here it is. From the self-appointed "loyal opposition" to the CBC:
WHEW! WHAT A DAY. Meeting after meeting after meeting.
Just a reminder that the Dead Things ON Sticks WGC Screenwriting Awards contest is still on. You could go for free to the awards in Toronto on April 20. Click here for details.
Of 71 scripted pilots in contention for slots at the five networks, 33 are half-hour comedies and 19 of those are multi-camera formats -- shows taped before a live audience, and sometimes enhanced by laugh tracks. Today, only CBS airs multi-cam sitcoms.
The multi-cam sitcom, such as legendary hits "I Love Lucy" and "Cheers," was once the dominant format in which to televise comedies, as much for conveying a theater-like intimacy to home audiences as for its relatively cheap production costs. But within the last decade, multi-cam sitcoms began to disappear, while single-camera comedies like "30 Rock" and "The Office," with its movie-like freedom, started to rise in prominence.
"The industry had been moving away from multi-cameras out of a sense that other formats offer more creative freedom," said Jamie Erlicht, president of programming at Sony Pictures Television. "But there's room for both and there's a real appetite in these economic times for the tried and true multi-camera format."
Sony, which produces the multi-cam "Rules of Engagement" for CBS, is also behind 10 of the comedies under consideration this pilot season. A year ago, Sony commissioned a study to determine how a change in government or the economy could affect television habits. Its conclusion was that this pendulum would swing away from dramas. Six of the shows on Sony's slate are traditional sitcoms, including "AB FAB," a remake of the popular British series "Absolutely Fabulous" for Fox.
While Fox has a healthy animation comedy block on Sunday nights, it has failed to successfully develop a live-action series for some time. Its pilot slate includes two multi-camera comedies, two single-cameras, one hybrid, and a one-hour comedy.
"Post-9/11, reality TV was very, very fresh to the audience and took up a lot of the space that comedies did," President of Entertainment Kevin Reilly said. "Right now, people are angry. That's where comedy historically has come into play -- when you need someone to voice something in a way that you can hear it."
So there it is. It'll be interesting to see -- if even ONE of the multicam comedies hits in any significant way, watch for all the "death of comedy" talk to simply disappear.
JAIME WEINMAN thinks he's the only guy in the world who cares about the cuts to music in TV shows that get released on DVD. He's not, of course. So far this year, I've not bought the DVD of the British show SKINS, which I otherwise would have grabbed, due to music substitution. There's a couple more, too, which I just can't remember right now. And don't even talk to me about WKRP.
Add to that list Andy Richter Controls the Universe, the engaging 2 season long show that shows in this YouTube clip, just how companies not wanting to pony-up for music rights completely pooches the show. Ugh. This is really, really painful to watch.
THE MORE I think about it the more this makes sense. The next logical step after suing your customers like the RIAA, and seeding malware or tracker torrents to combat piracy could just be ... self spoiling?
So I had a late meeting last night. Which means I wasn't home to watch HOUSE, which is one of the few network shows I watch every week. In fact, now that baseball's back, I can think of nothing more relaxing than flipping between HOUSE and four or five baseball games. Mmmm. Cool down the head at the end of day.
Now if you're a HOUSE person or a habitue´of the gossip rags, you'll know that there was a rather big and surprising happening on HOUSE last night. Which was spoiled for me at roughly 12:01 A.M. EST (or one MINUTE after the show ended on the west coast) in an email, and a Facebook message I got on my phone. Sigh. Perils of the modern world.
...Except...
What if it's not? What if this is a grand, concerted effort to make sure we all watch shows off air again?"The Only Way to Stay Safe From Spoilers -- Watch As It Happens!" I can see the Soviet style propaganda posters now.
I imagine squads of poorly paid peons dropping truth bombs from deep within the FOX complex in a bunker in Phoenix.
"Tivo THIS, you anti-market based hippie." Darth Vader = Luke's father. Ha ha ha hah ha!
FOR BRITISH TVPHILES, the news that Paul Abbot's excellent 2003 miniseries State of Play was being remade for American audiences came as a bit of a puzzler, mostly because it was being condensed in a two hour movie, and it was hard to imagine how that could work.
Having rewatched State of Play again recently on DVD I can tell you that it shares a flaw with more recent vintage short run series like Jekyl: it starts like gangbusters and kind of peters out at the end. So that, plus this article, gives me new hope that maybe the movie won't be so bad. Plus, hey...Helen Mirren.
Much harder was shrinking the story to two hours. Mr. Hauptman and Matthew Michael Carnahan, the film’s original writer (whose credits include “The Kingdom” and “Lions for Lambs”), mapped out the entire series and then began eliminating things that didn’t seem essential. They were encouraged by Paul Abbott, creator of the BBC’s “State of Play,” who told them the amount of new information added over the six hours wasn’t as much as they thought. “In some ways the series is just a great piece of six-hour tap dancing,” Mr. Macdonald said.
But Mr. Carnahan’s script was still very long, and when Mr. Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”) came on board, he hired two new writers, Tony Gilroy and Billy Ray, to simplify it.
Entire characters were dropped, like a brash young journalist with father-son issues, played by James McAvoy in the original. “That was gut-wrenching,” Mr. Hauptman said. And one of the last things to go was an affair between Cal McAffrey, the lead journalist and a friend of the accused member of Parliament, and the M.P.’s wife. It was probably the single strongest story line in the original, because of the way it moved some of the story’s larger themes into the bedroom. But in two hours, Mr. Macdonald said, there wasn’t room for it to be a believable relationship, so it became part of the back story instead, something that had happened in the past.
Eric Fellner, of Working Title Films, which co-produced the movie, also insisted that the resolution at the end be clearer. “You can have all sort of loose ends in a six-hour series that you can’t have in a movie,” he said. “Television and movies are ultimately very different. In TV it’s the beginning that counts. With movies it’s the last 15 minutes or so.”
IF YOU'RE HOME tonight and looking for something to watch, may I direct you to a "ripped from the headlines" TV movie written by the incomparable Shelley Eriksen? Playing for Keeps airs tonight at 8pm on CTV.
You can find out more about the show, and its lead actor, Jennifer Finnigin (Close to Home) in this Globe article.
The $4.7-million, two-hour film is based on the trials and tribulations of Kimberly Van De Perre, a sports groupie who had an affair - and a son, Elijah - with Vancouver Grizzlies basketball player Theodore (Blue) Edwards.
A vicious battle at the time, Canada's highest court eventually overturned a controversial Appeal Court decision that had ruled Elijah would be better off growing up in a black household, and had given custody of him to Edwards and his wife who were living in the southern United States.
In Shelley Eriksen's script, the names and some events have been fictionalized. The sports groupie is Nicole Alpern (Finnigan), who falls in love with pro basketball player Ty Rivers (24's Roger Cross). Alpern's lawyer Peter Marcheson is played by Doug Savant of Melrose Place and Desperate Housewives.
"The story we tell is not cliché at all," says Finnigan, who broke into acting at the age of 17 when she landed a part on the kids' show The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo in Montreal.
"We don't victimize my character too much, nor do we vilify the basketball player. We try to be respectful of all the points of view."
IN THE A&L section of today's New York Times, there's a couple of very different, and informative takes on comedy. First, Michael Cieply profiles Shawn Levy, the Director of the very-family friendly Night at the Museum, and its upcoming sequel, about mining the type of material that appeals to the widest possible audience:
And to talk with Mr. Levy and some of his allies is to realize that big, inclusive comedies — those with a real shot at universal appeal — are an exercise more complex than the arch humor of a “Superbad,” or the druggy in-jokes of a “Pineapple Express,” both of which reflect the hip but narrower approach of Hollywood’s reigning comic king, Judd Apatow.
The most successful in the genre, like “Home Alone,” “Meet the Fockers,” or “Ghostbusters” have wrapped occasionally sharp-edged physical humor, notable star performances and more than a few eye-catching special effects around a warm, forgiving approach to life and laughter. But it has been six years since a family comedy swept the Memorial Day box office, when “Bruce Almighty,” which starred Jim Carrey, did in 2003.
For more than a year Mr. Levy resisted entreaties to direct “Night at the Museum,” a project that Fox had owned for a decade, but finally agreed after reading a draft of the script that included some revisions by Scott Frank, now a regular collaborator. “He made me see that it was really a father-son story,” Mr. Levy said. “I saw the soft center.”
Certainly “Smithsonian” does not stray too far from a key element — basic human warmth — that the most successful comedies share. Cowboys and critters aside, the “Night at the Museum” movies are much the same. At bottom the first is about a divorced father (Ben Stiller) who wins back the respect of his doubting son. In the second Mr. Stiller’s character, with a hand from that son, must regain the trust of a museum full of creatures he abandoned in pursuit of material success. Among all the gags, one character after another does his bit to help the wayward father figure out what he truly loves in life, all of them.
But to deliver its lesson in a slick, funny package that plays to all ages and around the globe is a complicated bit of work.
That's the thing about comedy -- and why, more often than not, it ends up in an argument about subjective taste. So if you're not one of those people who likes the idea of "the soft centre," maybe Dave Itzkoff's profile of Jody Hill, the writer/director of Observe and Report is more your speed:
With the briefest of résumés he has already evolved a storytelling style predicated on awkward comic moments meant to provoke cringes as much as laughs, and offbeat, even unlikable protagonists.
“Observe and Report” stars Seth Rogen as a pathetic mall security guard who sees an opportunity for glory when his shopping center is besieged by a flasher. The film follows Mr. Hill’s independent debut, “The Foot Fist Way,” a comedy about an overweight, overconfident martial arts instructor, and his HBO series “Eastbound and Down,” about a relentlessly arrogant ex-major-league pitcher.
Mr. Hill does not deny that his characters are jerks, but they are his jerks.
“The average Joe doesn’t think of himself as an average Joe,” he said. “He thinks of himself as the star of his own movie.” He added: “I don’t find much in the comedies I’ve been seeing to get excited about. I’ll watch ‘City of God’ and laugh more.”
The profile doesn't back away from the fact that much of Hill's comic territory is mined from a place of anger. Depending on your taste, that might be the reason why the movie appeals to you -- but it also might be the reason why an Observe & Report will never do the business of a family-friendly film like Night at the Museum.
There's no right and wrong here. Both starting places -- warmth or anger -- are fine places to start your exploration of a comic theme. But they are different strands of the comedic DNA.
I've found a lot of the time, in development, screenplays get into trouble when they try to cross-pollinate those streams. This is where a knowledge of who your audience is and what they want isn't being a sellout, or writing for the market instead of yourself.
The market is an idiosynchratic place, and nowhere is this more so than with the comedy -- a form that has to fight cultural differences and reference points to translate. You can tell a lot about a culture by what they laugh at. The fact that both these forms -- the Family comedy and the darker, edgier Hill kind of show, or its prettier cousin: the attitude at the bottom of the well of the Apatow school (which also comes from anger,) both thrive in Hollywood just goes to show you how what a crossroads our culture finds itself at today.
The negotiations required to reach a mass audience aren't just complex: sometimes they're simply a bridge too far.
For a certain kind of viewer, the heart of darkness at the core of the comedy is the whole blessed point.
