10 posts tagged “tv”
Ah, it's been a busy two weeks, I tell you.
I may have missed an astronaut dropping the cosmic bomb that interstellar life has visited Earth, but I was deeply engrossed in a different form of "Lunacy" altogether -- that being the name of the "Law & Order: SVU" script being shot over the past two weeks. I was on the set for virtually the whole shoot with my co-author Susan; we've got two more months to put together the "Unofficial Companion" for the show and it all came down to whether we'd be greeted with suspicion or warmth on the set, because these were the folks who'd be giving us the real poop and letting us into their New Jersey studio-enclosed world.
The answer: Warmth! We really couldn't have been been better treated, from everyone involved -- including the director, the writer (who regularly gave up his director's chair so I could sit in it) to the crew (this may surprise you, but yay for Teamsters!) to the actors themselves (even if they did require a little chasing down to interview). We went from meat-locker temperatures in the studio (located in beautiful pylon-infested North Bergen, NJ) to muggy, mosquito-filled days in Flushing, but were always made welcome and treated like we were supposed to be there. Which we were -- our new BFF Dick Wolf has given us the thumbs up on the project -- but nobody made us call to daddy to get treated well. They just did it.
I will say it probably took about three days, though, to feel at home in any real sense. There's a rhythm to how everything works -- as in any office -- and inserting yourself and waiting for things to happen isn't always the best way to get around. We'd get driven in from the west side of Manhattan in a van with extras or background actors to the studio and then there'd be a lot of waiting around while crew set up the shots, the stand-ins helped the director block the scenes, the actors came in and rehearsed, the shots were taken, then taken again, then taken from another angle, then done in close-up, ad infinitum, until the director yells "Cut! Print! Check the gate!" and you get to move on to the next scene. We were given "sides" every day, which are small paperback book-sized mini-scripts of just the scenes to be done that day, just a few pages.
Most days they did perhaps 5 pages of dialogue, which you look at that and say, "Gee, we should be out by lunch with this little to do" but there's no way to convey just. How. Long. Everything Takes. Law & Order shows still use film (as opposed to video or digital video) so it's fairly old-school with lighting and big rigging and it takes an incredible long time to get everything just so. Then there are a hundred things that can go wrong, from the boom being in the shot, to an actor bobbling his lines (let's just say that happened a lot with one particular guest on this show, and very rarely with the regulars), to someone walking in the wrong direction in a shot, to a director just wanting to do things a little different once he sees how it looks in the monitor.
There are eight million details to consider, too -- what kind of mugs do you want to use in this scene? where should the blood spatter appear on a shirt? is the A/C turned off during filming (too much noise)? Is someone sweating? Why are people still talking when we're about to roll? Can you hear that helicopter/airplane/boat noise in the background? There's tons of slang -- I learned what the real meanings of "dance floor," "video village," "honey wagon" are. And then there are the union regulations: You can't bring back crew for 10 hours after you let them home, you can't bring back actors for 12. And when your shoots go into 12:30 am, that can put a crimp into your next day. Plus, four hours after call time in the morning you have to provide a "snack," then there's lunch (and before that breakfast) and then some hours after lunch another "snack" and then dinner if you're really there a long time.
I would also like to point out that the food part of all of this was like being on a cruise ship. When I told Ray about being on the set and all the food he noted, "You're in Crafts Services heaven." Before this I really thought "crafts services" meant a deli plate and some sodas -- but nooooo. First off, there's breakfast, where they routinely had folks making Belgian Waffles or omelets or pancakes to order, plus the standing hot food of potatoes, two kinds of sausages, biscuits, Eggs Florentine, bagels with lox and other toppings, cereal, hot oatmeal and so on. There was a permanent table of varying snack foods, which could go from the most amazing egg salad and shrimp salad I've ever had to a basket of Ding Dongs to fresh fruit (loads of fresh fruit) and deli cookies, granola and Sun Chips and now I'm getting hungry again. "Snacks" weren't even "snacks" like egg salad -- they would be like hot wings or tacos or something most of us would consider Another Meal Altogether. Lunch again was a wide choice of meats -- you'd have fish AND beef AND chicken AND sides AND three or four kinds of dessert, plus salad with fixins (three kinds of salad). All the soda, juice and Gatorade you might want. The crew kitchen had permanent snacks too, in cabinets. The refrigerator in the production office was stuffed to the gills with so many kinds of sodas I thought I was temping at a high-priced firm again in the 1990s. You could eat in the cafeteria, you could bring it on set (where bottled water was also always available), you could take it outside if you wanted. It was just so much damn food. And yes, it's union regulated but I was also told that it's psychological -- you have so many people doing nothing for long stretches while other people do something that if you don't feed them, you could have trouble.
I digress. But seriously, people: Omigawd FOOD.
The actors were generally quite lovely. A little unapproachable at times, though that was probably more me than them -- I didn't want to be accused of getting in their way or messing up their "method" or whatever, and it was hit or miss for a while to know whether they even recognized me from the day before. But by the end of my time there I was rapping pretty comfortably with Chris Meloni (Mariska Hargitay often came with her boy August and was with him in the trailer or doing other work pretty regularly -- though they did come onto the set and she was pointing out "where mommy works" to the kid). Ice-T makes you cool by just standing next to him; he's got a real Zen master smoothness about the whole thing and is very approachable; Richard Belzer is goofy but when he's not doing something amusing I think I found him the most difficult to approach -- maybe beacuse of the sunglasses. He also tended to have his wee dog Bebe with him much of the time. The rest of the cast, from the famous names to the up-and-comers were also hit or miss but generally quite nice, and the stand-ins were some of the best hosts on the floor. As for everyone else -- again, they just took us under wing, always answered questions when asked, and let us know how the whole crazy business worked. We heart the crew!
All of this is going into the book in one form or the other, in much greater detail. We have to turn in the manuscript by the end of September, so my weekends will probably not be my own for a while. But it was really quite something to watch a whole episode get filmed, from the way the scenes are all mixed up, to how they put together the sets in and out of the studio, to feeling like I was on the "inside" when we filmed down in Battery Park and all of these gawkers gathered to watch the thing getting filmed. The episode, as I mentioned, is called "Lunacy" and airs as the third episode in the new season, whenever that kicks off. And it's about a dead Belgian lesbian astronaut. What more could you ask for?
Two more days, and things return to normal.
Maybe.
Miss you all!
XO
Me
This isn't one of those calculated-to-be-cool answers; I didn't go through the algorithms of:
old picture (good)
+
legendary actors starring (good)
+
not the obvious choice (i.e. Casablanca, Citizen Kane) (good)
+
not a camp selection (in order to downplay cheesiness) (good)
=
cool choice
It does fit all of that, but that's not why it's my choice. It's damn funny, for one thing, even by today's standards. That's when they really wrote a script, with jokes that were intelligent and verbal, not having to do with farts (farts are funny, but not all the time) or overt sexual innuendo (though there's plenty of sex under the surface), and you could apply the phrase "verbal repartee" and it would mean something. Then it has The Sexiest Man Ever to Grace The Screen Who Isn't George Clooney (that would be Cary Grant), and then it has my favorite actress of all time as the star: Katharine Hepburn.
I just dig her. In real life, she was way ahead of her time; a feminist before anyone called anyone that, wore pants before women really did that -- literally and figuratively. Then, after taking her bumps in the industry (she was called Katharine of Arrogance, there was that legendary review from critic Dorothy Parker who said of Hepburn's appearance in a play, "She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B"), took charge of her career in a way few actors, much less actresses did. Yes, she had some patrons: family friend Philip Barry, who based "TPS" very much off of the Hepburn household, and Tracy Lord on Kate, and Howard Hughes, her onetime suitor who helped her buy the rights to "TPS" the play and then "TPS" the movie so that she could star and restart her career. Which is exactly what happened.
But it's not even just those things I like about "TPS." I really like Tracy Lord throughout the film (I've never seen the play), and I always feel like she gets a bum rap. She's got a philandering father, her ex husband was a drunk, and all around her people are fools, silly, incompetent or some combination thereof. Can she help it that she's, well, none of those things? I find her sympathetic early on, then everyone starts calling her on being cold and insensitive to human frailty and I'm thinking -- well, yeeeees, but ... come on, y'all are morons! But Tracy takes it on the chin and starts actually hearing all of them for the first time, gets drunk at her own party and nearly gets it on with Jimmy Stewart (and after he woos he at the pool, who wouldn't?) and passes out. The next morning she's quite sure she has done the nasty with Jimmy, and is all contrite and very much, "Well, y'all were right, I'm no better than the rest of you." But she didn't! Maybe only because she passed out, but the point is that everyone else with all their "human frailties" all around her are still just the same incompetents they were before, while she just got drunk.
Still, you go along with the fact that Tracy Has Learned to Be Human and it all wraps up quite nicely at the end. I do have this argument with the film -- especially a scene where her dad insinuates that if she'd been "the right kind of daughter" he wouldn't have been a philanderer, which to modern ears has an ick level you don't really want to think about, but even that aside sounds deeply condescending and void of responsibility; Mr. Lord is my least favorite character in the picture -- but it doesn't stop me from absolutely loving this picture. I even love the musical version, "High Society," with Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra in the Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart roles, even if Grace Kelly was in the lead. She's not bad, but she's the Gwyneth Paltrow of her day and I don't like GP either. (Plus, "HS" has Louis Armstrong so you can't miss there.) "HS" also has one of my favorite musical sequences ever:
Which leads me to what I was doing tonight. Katharine Houghton, Kate's niece and Sydney Poitier's other half from "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" gave a talk tonight at the Metropolitan Museum of Art about her aunt, and talked us through the early arc of Kate's career, from the gender-bending flop of "Sylvia Scarlett" to the fighting-for-her-life ensemble "Stage Door" to the career resurrecting "The Philadelphia Story." Over an hour and a half she scattered anecdotes from her aunt's history with critical notices and clips from the films; the museum is going to screen all three tomorrow (I decided I could have my own marathon at home if I wanted, since I own all three). I'm sad that I never got to meet Kate, and Houghton is not exactly a pale imitation -- she's no imitation at all -- but I do love jumping at the chance to enjoy some Kate history with someone who at least knew her. (She came on the stage in some kind of fur-trimmed vestment carrying a glass of clear liquid and assured us it "wasn't gin" before she went to the podium.)
Right, so there was a point here.
The point being: "TPS" and "HS" -- if you haven't seen either, get 'em now. Fantastic films.
************
Unrelated: I applied for "The Alaska Experiment 2" today. I'm quite sure that a) I won't get chosen and b) if I do get chosen my current job will disqualify me, but we'll see. Frankly I'd be terrified to do it, but it's also one of those once-in-a-lifetime things. I have no interest in being on TV, but arguably if there's a camera crew watching you do all this stuff, you're less likely to get killed in the process. Arguably. At least the whole first season cast came back intact, so there's that going for it.
Then again, maybe it's just an excuse to meet Les Stroud, who hosted the reunion special?
I sense Kate would approve of such folly, though.
For the record: I have no kids.
But I love "Supernanny." When I watch it, I'm simultaneously reminded why I'm glad I don't have kids, and saddened that these clearly overwhelmed people are the ones raising the next generation. But then Supernanny comes in and puts a few babies in the corner and writes up a few lists and yells at a few vacant-faced parents and then all is well. I'm usually itching to try out her technique when it's done and have to restrain myself from running down the street looking for a child to discipline.
However. I have noticed a few commonalities in the "Supernanny" episodes. For one thing, these families of upwards of four kids have houses that could swallow a schoolroom's worth of them. For another thing, there's absolutely no sense of decoration. It's like they came into their preprogrammed house with the beige carpet and the white walls and threw up a bedroom set, a dining room table and a TV armoire and called it a day. Does anyone have a plant? Art on the walls that didn't come from Bombay Company? Maybe even a coat of paint that doesn't suggest white? Yes, I suppose if you're having difficulties disciplining your eighteen children in the space of a small hangar airport, making sure there's a bookcase with knick-knacks is maybe not a priority. But ... maybe it should have been before you hit child No. 15. It's like watching families try to live in the Soviet Union's idea of suburbia.
The worst part is that -- and I know, this is "reality" television so we're not seeing all of it -- the kids never seem to go out. If they do, it's to their own (highly-fenced-in, can't see beyond the slats) backyard. There's no sense of neighborhood, of going out to play with local kids in the front yard or a nearby playground, no sense of just letting the kids go ride their bikes and have an adventure. In fact, Supernanny has more than once chastised parents who just let their kids go out roaming in the neighborhood. She did take issue with them not telling mom they were going out -- makes sense -- but the larger problem seemed to be that they might be Out There Without Supervision (OTWS).
I love Supernanny. And I state again: No kids. But they're wrong. They're just dead wrong. It makes me so sad to see these kids bored to tears or playing videogames or bouncing around their wrecked basement playroom when it's clearly perfect weather outside and they're driving mom insane anyway. Isn't that what the outdoors is for? To get kids to run off that excess energy and give the parents at home a break? To foster some sense of independence?
Well, I used to think it was a combination of me being childfree and insensitive to the Major Dangers of being OTWS. And that may be some of it. But I read this column today, and I just had to grin.
"(F)or weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.
No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, “Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.”
Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.
Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating — for us and for them."
Sing it, sister. She's taken a lot of shit for it, but I'm with the commenters over at Boing Boing: There's a difference between being the mom in "Gone Baby Gone," who leaves her 3 year old alone in the apartment while she's down at the bar hoovering up illegal drugs and drinking -- and being a parent who assesses her child's maturity and independence and lets him at 9 years old (because that's the kid's age in the story above) assert that maturity and independence.
I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, and was not allowed to ride the Metro alone. Period. Given: The closest stop was a good 15 minute car ride, and until age 16 I had no car, but even then it would have been questionable. So when I was about 14 or 15, probably more like 15, I wanted to go down to see this musician I loved do a signing at Tower Records. He was coming in on a summer's afternoon when I was supposed to be a camp counselor in training, so it wasn't like I'd miss any school. But when I mentioned it to mom, her response was, "Well, it's a shame you can't go." So I kept my trap shut and told camp I wouldn't be in and after mom took my brother to his camp on her way to work while I waited for my ride (to not come), I headed to the bus stop and took the bus to the Metro, and the Metro down to Tower Records, where I met up with my friends and had a jolly old time. Then we all came back together. And guess what: We all came back.
(Confidential to Larry: Mom's never heard this story, so if you're in a mood to keep next Passover weekend on an even keel, you might want to not share this entry.)
I don't know what I'd be like if I had a kid. I'd like to think I'd still back all of this up 100 percent, and that I'd want to raise a kid who would feel comfortable enough in the world that when he or she finally entered it full-time, permanently, on their own, it wouldn't be a foreign territory. But for now, what I'd really like is to know that more parents were acting that way. Because who wants to live in a world where the first time someone's offspring sees the true light of day it blinds them?
I don't care if it is a hunk of wiring and cathode ray, I spend enough time staring at it that when it dies, it's hard not to feel a little nostalgic.
My Sylvania God Knows What Model TV set is terminal. She's my second TV set, a used one I'd been given when replacement was wanted, if not necessary, back at the homestead. The Sylvania GKWM is analog and unattached to cable. You could say it was a long time coming. She didn't even have a remote control, for God's sake. (The ones on the top of the set are for the DVD and VCR.)
It's been sickly almost as long as I can remember, and I can't honestly remember the TV set we had in the house before having this one. I think we're talking at least 20 years old. Maybe a bit less. What I do remember about this TV set are two things: My grandfather (dad's side) complaining about it or possibly buying it. That one is fuzzy. And that when you'd watch some shows -- mostly music videos with fast jump cuts and sudden light flashes -- the image on the screen would show a slight split, like a fat guy trying to bend over and his pants beginning to rip in the buttocks region.
(Can a person say "buttocks" and not think of Forrest Gump?)
I digress. Anyway, it did that for ages and annoyed the crud out of me because there I'd be as a teenager trying to tape or watch "Everything She Wants" by Wham and it would split a bit every time the camera light bulb flashed in the video.
Somehow, she ended up here with me in New York and has sat largely unused in the bedroom/office, uncabled, rabbit-eared, ready if needed.
A few months ago she decided to shut off randomly, whenever she felt like it. I could turn the TV off and then back on again and would get picture. Now that happens more frequently, with less time from turn-on (I think tonight I got a half hour) and she doesn't come on again right away.
I hate throwing things out that don't seem obviously broken, but I don't see a way that this gets fixed. And in a couple of years or less she'll be obsolete anyway; everyone's going to have to have a digitally-ready TV.
So: Anybody want her for parts or amusement value? Free. Come get.
Second: Any suggestions on what TV to get next? Frankly, I'm at a loss. (And yes, I'm going to get cable for the new one in the new year.)
For those keeping score, I'll be heavily-makeuped and shooting out radiation sparks from ye olde MSNBC tomorrow morning, sometime between 9 and 9:30 am ET.
We will be discussing the weightiest of issues: Harry Potter.
So for those who have an interest in such things, I'll be appearing on Alex Witt's news show on MSNBC tomorrow at 9:15 ET and 10:40 ET. In the ay-em, as they say. Which kills a late Saturday night, I tell you.
We will be discussing how Michael Moore's new film "Sicko" is already available at thepiratebay.org. Since Moore himself is on the record as not caring about piracy (so long as someone's not making money out of it), I think it'll be a short discussion. Done twice. But we'll see.
And for those who want the inside scoop, I will essentially be blind: I can't wear contacts any more because I'm having PRK surgery next Thursday and I will not be seen on national television -- even a station viewed, at this time and day, by approximately 6 people -- in glasses.
Of course, I tried this once before -- went on camera without glasses or correction -- and it was a scary thing. We were taping a cooking-with-Indian-food segment for a history project (don't ask) and I'd done my preparation the night before of the dish (so you can show a finished project) and was apparently not as efficient about washing my hands before removing my lenses as I should have been. Next morning it was like putting curry powder in my eyes. So, had to wear glasses for the taping. Refused to. Now, you try and get a frying pan hot and ready for cooking without being able to see it properly. Mom was practically wetting herself when she saw the tape; she said I looked like Mr. Magoo.
Maybe I'll wear glasses after all.
Did my TV set shut off at a crucial last-minute moment?
Or is David Chase fucking with us?
I think he's fucking with us.
"Don't stop," indeed.
Am I the only one who watched "Fantasy Island" and really, really wanted something bad to happen to Mr. Rourke?
I remember one episode where he got kidnapped, and I was kind of keen on seeing him all flustered and confused and pissed off and maybe scared, but I don't think he even got a stain on the white suit. Something about his sanguine superiority -- there's no way I'm really in danger -- annoyed the crud out of me.
The same goes for Nancy Drew. My favorite mystery of hers was the time she pricked her finger on a tusk of an ivory elephant (or something equally as bizarre) and collapsed, poisoned.
I desperately hoped she wouldn't wake up. I ignored the fact that there were dozens of other volumes to be read. That girl had no personality trait beyond "intrepid." And my copies were so old she was wearing hair that even outdated my mom.
I'd like to note that these are not new thoughts, I've had them since I was, oh, say, ten.
Superheroes don't bother me quite that way, though I have to admit the episodes/volumes/stories told there that interest me the most are when danger actually seems imminent, but then again -- hundreds of more volumes, editions, episodes indicate they clearly do manage to escape unscathed. But then again, I'm not a comic book fan the way many are.
So that's off my chest.
In unrelated linkage, I was looking around for my next piece of rewriting and came across two interesting lists I found on the Internets many years ago. I'd made copies of them and saved them as text because at that point, I actually thought something could disappear once it had been on the Web. Boy, was I wrong. So here they are for your edification, still up there for all to see. Not that I have a huge readership, but it'd be fun to get these circulating around again.
First, the serious one: Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.
My favorite:
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
And the amusing one, which is apparently just about every-freaking where. My list starts and ends in different places, but this one more or less resembles it: How to Keep a Healthy Level of Insanity and Drive Other People Insane. It's still amusing, but I immediately can flash back to my temping days when it all really made sense, man.
That's what you think.
That was me, on Sunday morning. MSNBC called me in (I've done this a few times now) to share an opinion on whatever they think needs an opinion. I've done the Fall TV season, I've done James Bond. (Well, that was for CNN.) (And I wish I'd done James Bond in other ways, see below posts.)
Sunday they had a burning need to know about the O.J. show that was supposed to air on Fox on November 27 and 29. I called up our resident TV expert on Saturday and got a few good tidbits over the whole thing to flavor the report, one of which was "there's a 10-15% chance they won't even air the show."
Which, saints preserve us all, they have just now announced they won't. Also, the book is being pulled.
Truth is, once the decision is made -- the devil gets his signature -- to do something like that O.J. book and TV show, I actually support airing/publishing. (I'd prefer if nobody decided to do it in the first place, but once jeopardy has attached, so to speak, I believe in the concept.) I don't like him, or what he has to say, but he does have the right to say it. As we should have the right to publicly shun him. Censorship in any form hurts us all. If what can be said is so damaging to your beliefs, it might be time to re-address your belief system.
What I wanted, I detailed here: Get the jurors from the case to talk. Any regrets? Even one says, "Well, I've had a few," you've got gold. And if anyone says "No, I firmly believe in what I did," you've also got gold.
And now that the book and show are history, I still think the juror show is one worth pursuing.
