March 2006 Archives

A poll conducted by an advocacy group called TV Watch shows that Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the FCC’s efforts to stifle free speech amongst broadcasters. In a sneaky if clever way of marginalizing the handful of pro-censorship Americans, TV Watch notes that the 12 percent who advocate governmental regulation of TV content is smaller than the percentage of Americans who believe that alien abductions have occurred.

87 percent of those polled believed that there are enough controls in place for families to regulate their TV viewing as they deem appropriate, and that small self-interest groups should not be able to petition the FCC and decide what the rest of the country can or cannot see. Three-quarters say the government should not waste taxpayers’ money investigating the complaints of a handful of people when an overwhelming majority of viewers watched a program without being offended, and that they would be upset if governmental regulation restricted what they got to see.

All well and good, but when was the last time anyone in Washington actually paid attention to what the majority of Americans believe?

The following link to the story is a bit of a chuckle, since it’s at the CBS News website and CBS is the network that’s been absolutely pounded in recent days by the FCC.

Let People Watch What They Want

Singer/songwriter Ed Hamell routinely spins funny, outrageous and outraged yarns, and in his latest recording, "Songs for Parents Who Enjoy Drugs," he uses the occasion of his recent fatherhood to explore the disconnect between family values and the current troubled political climate. In “Values,�? he finds his kid unwilling to engage in any good behavior that politicians likewise eschew; in “Inquiring Minds,�? Hamell finds the best way to answer his son’s pointed questions about his own, uh, colorful past is to, simply, lie. Some of it’s too cute, and some of it’s a bit obvious (particularly a song about Ann Counter, the title of which cannot be reproduced here), but it’s a lively, engaging outing. Hamell on Trial, whose live shows are energetic bursts of pure adrenaline, performs tonight at On the Rox, 9009 W. Sunset.

Ed Hamell’s website

Ruby Dee and Julie Harris will accept Calabasas and Woodland Hill’s Method Fest’s 2006 Lifetime Achievement Awards this weekend, as well as appear at the screening of their film “The Way Back Home,�? about the relationship between a woman who has suffered from a stroke and her housekeeper.

I spoke to Dee for a story on the Method Fest that ran in Wednesday’s paper, but there wasn’t enough space for her to talk about the film, so here’s a little bit of that. After the links.

Method Fest story

Method Fest website

Method Fest tickets

Though hardly in a Clintonian sense. I'm no big fan of "AI," either, though for the exact opposite reason. The contestants know exactly what they're getting into at this point, so they should know the chances of their winning are pretty weak, and that Simon's ubiquitously present to insult them.

No, it's the songs the contestants pick (or have forced upon them) that annoy me. There're so many great songs in the world and the show seems insidiously determined on making sure that television represents none of them, emphasizing instead pop tripe that depresses me so. Occasionally an R&B chestnut might sneak in there, but usually it's presented in such a polished and sanitized manner that it's actually worse than hearing the bad versions of the songs I don't like. Of course, the whole point of the show is to find someone who could sell as many records as possible, which you (speaking to Fred but also to anyone reading this blog), of course, realize doesn't necessarily have anything to do with good music.

But as Fred notes, music, ultimately, isn't "AI's" point -- it's the creation of personalities, and that drama and tension that arises in seeing them triumph and/or suffer. Still, the music -- can't abide that.

I really don't like "American Idol." Not because of the music - that part is so lightweight it doesn't even merit notice. What bugs me about this glorified high school talent show ...

You know when you hear about some upcoming film project and all you can do is shake your head and, with a rueful smile, wonder: What are they thinking? Something that everyone realizes is a stupendous blunder -- everyone, that is, except the studio head greenlighting the thing?

The latest is a big-budget remake of the '80s TV melodrama "Dallas" (OK, officially it ran from 1978 to 1991, but it defined the Me Decade), starring (tentatively) John Travolta as villainous oilman/infamous bullet receptacle J.R. Ewing and Jennifer Lopez as his boozing wife Sue Ellen. Luke Wilson and Shirley MacLaine are also said to be cast. The director will be Robert Luketic, whose films "Monster-in-Law" and "Win a Date With Tad Hamilton" have been decided non-starters and whose only success, "Legally Blonde," cruised solely on Reese Witherspoon's delightfully ditzy performance.

"I heard Larry [Hagman] approved of me.," Travolta confided to "ET" clone "Extra!" today. "It was sweet, giving his seal of approval.�? Well, what else is he going to say: "Don't tell me things like that, I already have a bum heart?" Such a response certainly wouldn't score him that cameo appearance he's so clearly angling for.

"Dallas" so clearly was a product of its era (remember those shoulder pads Linda Gray and Victoria Principal used to wear, which they had to have swiped from some Cowboys linebackers during a furtive visit to their locker room?) that it's hard to imagine it brought up to date. And it's one of those shows that, if you look back on it, was pretty stupid and makes you feel dumb for having been taken in.

Online stories about this film include such phrases "Before you declare the project doomed . . ." and "In the 'say it isn't so' news category . . ."

So of course they'll have to do "Who Shot J.R." or even the people who might want to see this will feel ripped off, but the buildup and resolution for that storyline took the better part of a season or so, and a movie like this can't exceed two hours. What other dastardly deeds will they fit in there beyond that?

Maybe all this will turn out to be a bad dream.

Watching the protests and student walkouts of the past week in response to the immigration bill drama in Washington, I couldn’t help but let my mind drift back to … oh, a couple of weeks ago, when I watched the HBO film “Walkout.�?

That film (airing again tonight at 10 p.m. and a couple of more times in April) concerned the 1968 Chicano student walkouts in East L.A. schools over unequal treatment -- they were not allowed to speak Spanish in classrooms, nor permitted to use restrooms during lunch breaks.

Last August, Edward James Olmos, director (and co-star) of “Walkout,�? told the Daily News’ Valerie Kuklenski of today’s student activists, "They care about a lot. They just have to learn how to walk out ... and this picture is going to teach them how to walk out.�? He was speaking specifically of the low graduation rates of Latinos in L.A. schools; instead, many of them, American citizens, are defending their parents, who may not be in this country legally, and would face deportation.

I’d say, given the events of the past few days, lesson learned.

“Walkout�? set visit story

One can imagine what a tightrope walk this represents for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who himself participating in the protests depicted in Olmos’s film, at Roosevelt High School. In today’s Daily News, he says, “Our students belong back in school ... in their classrooms, where they can have further discussions about this issue.�? Asked about 1968, he admitted, “Yes, I was involved in protests and I paid a price. It was one of the reasons I was forced to leave school.�?

Villaraigosa on walkouts

Of course, as the film makes clear, and as Villaraigosa knows, the students were successful in 1968 because their passion carried them past the safety zone of protest. Authorities then, as Villaraigosa seems to be doing now, took an initial attitude of, “Yes, we get your point. Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, let’s go back to the status quo.�? And when the students didn’t, things got ugly. It was the students’ refusal to back down at that point that underscored their commitment to the cause, and the importance of the cause, rather than showing up the students as mere dabblers in the idea of protest.

When comedian-author and lefty radio icon Al Franken and columnist and righty diva TV commentator Ann Coulter were set to take the stage Monday at the University of Judaism's lecture in Universal City, the event was introduced with a Ringling Bros. metaphor. I found it more insightful to look at it as a high school debate, awarding points for substance and style -- and taking away points for unsportsmanlike playground conduct.

Nothing I’ve ever written in more than 20 years has received more impassioned response than my interview with Eric Haney, a founding member of the elite special-ops anti-terrorist team Delta Force, who had critical remarks about the Bush Administration’s war with Iraq. And, really, I hardly wrote a thing – I merely plopped a cursory introduction atop a segment of our talk while I was visiting the set of the CBS series “The Unit.�?

When I asked Haney about Iraq, I actually expected to hear a defense of the war, which I was interested in absorbing from a military, rather than political, or pundit’s, point of view. That someone who had risked his life so many times and under so many extreme conditions in defense of our country was so vehemently opposed to the war, however, was surprising to me, and, hence, newsworthy.

The story picked up some traction when it was linked at the Huffington Post (and elsewhere). There have been more than 180 comments on the story at the Huffington Post. Likewise, I’ve been inundated with emails, both complimentary and condemning. Some of the negative ones sort of tried to swift-boat Haney; others said that I, as a TV writer, have no business writing about politics. (On the other hand, I was the guy who did the interview, so who else was going to hang their byline on it? And as it was a strict Q&A, my own opinions did not appear in the piece.)

A couple asked a very valid question: Had Haney been pro-war, would I have written the piece? If he had had some insights into Iraq that I hadn't heard and that were positive, then yes, I probably would have done a story, trying to explain the war from a different perspective than the one with which we're all familiar. If he had said the war was justified for the same reasons we've all heard, then, no, I wouldn't have done a story because an ex-military guy being in favor of the war isn't exactly a newsflash.

On the other hand, if his negative comments had been of a more mild or generic nature, I wouldn't have done the story, either. What made this erupt as a much-debated story was the ardent nature of his comments. When someone who has spent so much of his unique and courageous life defending our country questions military policy in such strong terms, I think it's worthy of joining the national debate.

And, honestly, I wish our country could return to genuine debate rather than the divisive rote attacks on ideology, the liberals-aren’t-patriots/conservatives-don’t-think-for-themselves (or vice-versa) cant that gets us nowhere. I get emails from a conservative reader who takes issue with me from time to time, and does so in a thoughtful, genial fashion (he rarely calls me an idiot, and then only if I’ve actually been an idiot), and it’d be nice if the national dialogue could cool itself down to the tenor of his and my exchanges.

In case you haven’t seen the piece:

Eric Haney on Iraq

At a press conference this week, President George W. Bush suggested that insurgents in Iraq are creating terror in the country because they know the media will report on it. I know Mr. Bush is no great fan of the media, but I don’t believe he was really trying to put all the blame on journalists; he was simply stating a political truism: Everyone wants to control the story. (Does the politician exist who didn’t do something just because he knew the media would cover it?)

Nonetheless, conservative pundits leapt upon the statement as a new talking point. Most notable was radio host Laura Ingraham’s appearance on “The Today Show,�? where she chided reporters for ignoring the good news coming out of Iraq, sneering at journalists timidly “reporting from a hotel balcony in Baghdad.�? (She had recently spent eight days in Iraq, no doubt striding about as confidently as Robert Duvall’s Lt. Col. Kilgore in “Apocalypse Now.�?)

Naturally, the media then came to its own defense.

Buck Owens was a decent guitarist, creating the "Bakersfield sound." He had 20 No. 1 country singles. He was such a good songwriter that the Beatles covered one of his songs ("Act Naturally").

So how much must it suck that that lame "Hee-Haw" show (the worst stuff of which he had nothing to do with) comes at the top of his media obits? Toby Keith and Keith Urban -- and any other Keiths, and any other country singers, and any Simpsons into dopey behavior with a penchant toward considering how history will judge you: You've been warned; stick to your strengths.

Just to thoughtfully ensure that you, the faithful blog reader, emerges a nominally well-rounded individual, we’ll slip in an occasional book review here, as well. (Honest: Books are entertainment, too.)

First up: Colson Whitehead’s “Apex Hides the Hurt�? (Doubleday, $22.95). Though he’s only just got four books under his belt, Whitehead is fast becoming a favorite of mine, with a keen satirical sensibility. His first book, “The Intuitionist,�? remains my favorite: It’s about a mid-20th-century elevator inspector in New York, which is what-the? enough before Whitehead adds the elements of mechanical metaphysics and racism. “John Henry Days�? was a more conventional effort, blending contemporary media criticism with another look at race. “The Colossus of New York�? was a series of post-9/11 essays on the city that apparently suffers from insomnia.

“Apex Hides the Hurt,�? by contrast, is a sort of minor work with big ideas burbling inside it. Whitehead told me about an idea he had for this book five years ago, but it seems as though he didn’t think it worked on its own and so he tucked it into this novel, about a “nomenclature consultant�? who is recruited to rename a small town at the behest of a techno-billionaire who lives there. The protagonist is a legend in his field for launching a Band-Aid competitor who created a series of bandage strips replicating the colors of races beyond Caucasians.

Two issues that seem peripheral, but are actually at the heart of the proceedings, highlight Whitehead’s book. There’s the notion that minorities cling tenaciously (more tenaciously, in fact, than the sticky strips themselves), even profoundly, to the concept of their identity, because sometimes, that’s all they have. And there’s the whole love/hate thing with the idea of words themselves – few authors have so eloquently and so baldly explored, and luxuriated in, and criticized, how the simple art of phrasing things can elevate, inspire, manipulate and create maudlin responses in those who receive those words.

All that said, the narrative throughline’s pretty weak. The protagonist has not one but two seemingly unmotivated very-public existential meltdowns in a mere 210 pages. Look, if you’re a professional, well, anything, you know the first rule of business is that, to paraphrase those Las Vegas commercials, whatever happens in your head stays in your head.

So, enjoy “Apex Hides the Hurt�? for its clever writing and sly takes on significant issues, but ignore the fact that it has any plot whatsoever.

Open rebellion erupted last month when Ricky Gervais’s podcast began charging $1.95 on iTunes for a service that had been, for the first dozen episodes, free (the series initially originated from England's newspaper The Guardian, which has no ties to the for-pay podcasts). Hundreds of “reviews�? vehemently excoriated Gervais for charging the same price for a 30-minute audio file that could be spend to download an episode of their favorite TV shows. A few timorous souls pointed out that there’s no outrage at spending 99 cents to download a three- or four-minute pop song, but the overriding conventional wisdom seemed to be that Gervais had crossed some line between good will and greed.

(An aside about Gervais’s show: I have a number of recordings of his London radio show that presaged the podcasts, in which he was quickly divining the comic gold that could be mined from his sidekick Karl Pilkington – who, essentially, is his Larry “Bud�? Melman, a clueless, lumpen clod whose peculiar worldview endlessly amuses Gervais and bemuses Stephen Merchant, Gervais’s writing/directing partner on “The Office�? and “Extras.�? Initially, Pilkington – the show’s producer, there mainly to push buttons to lead into songs and commercial breaks – was quiet, reticent, vocally resisting being dragged into Gervais's anarchic lunacy. But as the radio show continued, they couldn’t get Karl to shut up – he’d actually interrupt Gervais and Merchant to inject some of his own vacuity, and they were perfectly happy with this. Some of his stories were epic jaw-droppers, such as an anecdote about a blind date with a woman who had a bone marrow disease that he dumped, because he didn’t want to spend good money on her just to have her die on him.)

Anyway, iTunes seems to have backed off from the controversy a bit – it offers a free, two-and-a-half-minute video podcast offering an exchange between Gervais and Pilkington, but I couldn’t find the pay-for podcasts there; for those, you’ll have to go to audible.com, which is offering six episodes for $6.95, which seems reasonable.

But there still seems to be discrepancies in the prices for video downloads. The most egregious example is “High School Musical,�? a dopey if cute Disney Channel movie that still scores high ratings whenever the cable network runs it, two months after its premiere (the highlight, a musical number boasting clever choreography from the high school in question’s basketball team, comes early in the film, it’s all predictably downhill from there). That’s going for a whopping $9.99 on iTunes, for a low-budget 90-minute movie; you could download five high-end episodes of “Lost�? or “Desperate Housewives�? for that. (On the other hand, you would pay about $8 for four sitcom episodes that would roughly comprise "High School Musical's" running time.) That same $9.99 will get you a full month of original episodes of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.�?

But “High School Musical�? is aimed at tweens, those most likely adept at iPod technology, and when it comes to entrenched kids who won’t take no for an answer and parents who don’t want yet another argument with their kids, you know who’s going to win that battle: Disney. Same tweens probably already have the soundtrack, and they’ll want the DVD with the “extras�? Disney’ll scratch together to make it a desirable addition to the collection. So parents may end up spending $45 for a movie that the Disney Channel has aired 20 or more times at this point.

What do you think? Is there an unfair, exploitative disparity in pricing schedules at iTunes, or will the market justify everything, and when costs get unreasonable customers will simply tune out?

Charles Bukowski, the poet laureate of raging drunks and the otherwise reprehensible, has finally been tamed. “Bukowsical!�?, a new musical being offered by the Sacred Fools Theatre Company in Hollywood, offers up the cheeky spectacle of his biography rethought as a feel-good musical.

Conceived and co-written by TV comedy writer Spencer Green and composer Gary Stockdale (full disclosure: I’m on friendly terms with Stockdale, who received an Emmy nomination for his title theme for Showtime’s “Penn & Teller: Bulls#!t!�?), Bukowski’s sordid saga has been transformed into a parody of the rags-to-riches sort of biofodder with which anyone with a passing relationship with popular culture is familiar. The joke, of course, is only the most wrong-headed would consider Bukowski’s life worthy of such treatment. (The seedy Mickey Rourke-Faye Dunaway film "Barfly," referenced in the musical, was based on Bukowski's life.)

The result is not unlike the Tony-winning “Urinetown,�? in which wildly poor taste is transformed into something not just palatable but even kind of cute. David Lawrence plays Buk (rhymes, appropriately enough, with “puke�?) as a put-upon doofus whose life only begins to turn around when he confronts Sweet Lady Booze (Christina Byron in a costume suggesting A.A. Kabuki). One of the funniest songs is, of course, the love song – “Chaser of My Heart,�? in which Buk and his True Love (Fleur Phillips) exchange moony glances and shots simultaneously. Ah, young love.

“Bukowsical!�? is unrepentantly silly and frequently funny and, at just an hour in length, the perfect theatrical experience for those with short attention spans. It'll be presented Fridays at 11 p.m. at Sacred Fools through (at least) May.

Bukowsical! website

So Randy Quaid wants more money because "Brokeback Mountain" made more money than expected? How long has he been in this industry, anyway? Has he never heard the term "sleeper hit?" Movies do sometimes surprise their creators and attract far more viewers than anyone expected.

If you haven't heard, the actor is suing the makers of "Brokeback Mountain" for something in the neighborhood of $10 million, claiming he was duped into appearing in the movie for very little pay, that he was told everyone was making financial sacrifices to get the film made. And now that it's a hit, he wants another payday. (If Defamer.com hadn't already made it, a "backend" joke would go right about here.)

Has his agent not explained to him that you make that kind of arrangement when you sign your contract, not retroactively? Did the star of "The Grubbs" give back the money he was paid when Fox decided to scrap it before it even aired or repay studios for movies that were box-office disappointments? Honest, I don't understand the thinking here.

That said, whoever pocketed BBM's payday could share the wealth. It's happened before.

OK, so there are petty lawsuits roiling over BBM and Crash (the producer kerfuffle). What's next for this year's Best Picture nominees? Joe McCarthy's estate seeking royalties from George Clooney for his performance in "Good Night, and Good Luck"?

... 22nd appearance on "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central -- did you see it?
Democrat Brad Sherman is the latest congressman to sit down for a one-on-one with faux-Fox news commentator Stephen Colbert for his 434-part "Better Know a District" series. And Sherman just might be the first one to actually get into the satirical spirit of the program.
As he touts the San Fernando Valley as "America's first suburb," Sherman is incredulous at Colbert's frequent mentions of the 27th District being home to the multibillion-dollar porn industry.