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July 2009 Archives
GUEST BLOG #36: Another Bill Brioux Dispatch from TCA, About... Lorenzo Lamas?
July 31, 2009 6:57 AM
[Bianculli here: Contributing writer Bill Brioux, allowing TV WORTH WATCHING to borrow from his own blog TV FEEDS MY FAMILY, provides another wry dispatch from press tour. This time it's about Lorenzo Lamas, who broke my Sleazometer by tossing out hideously sexist comments on ABC's 2003 reality competition fiasco, Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest People. Brioux's opening salvo? "Lorenzo Lamas looks Mahvelous"...]
Lorenzo Lamas Gets Another 15 Minutes? Yes, And So Do His Offspring
By Bill Brioux
Lorenzo Lamas looks Mahvelous. The former Falcon Crest and Renegade dude was at press tour today to help promote The Lamas Life, a celebrity reality show/dysfunctional family TV intervention airing Stateside on E! Entertainment Television.
Still impossibly tanned and trim, if a little Tommy Lee leathery, Lamas sat on stage with daughters Shayne Lamas, son A.J. Lamas and ex-wife Michele Smith. Getting The Eagles or Zeppelin back together again for a press conference would have been less tense. There was more tension in the room "than in Chris Brown's car," to steal Jeff Dunham's one funny line from yesterday's TCA sessions.
"Reality shows tear families apart. Are you worried this is going to happen to you?" said Shane, helpfully interviewing herself. "Well, no, because we have already been torn apart," she stated. The problem is between Lamas and his son, A.J. The two hadn't spoken for six years prior to the series.
It all dates back to when A.J. was 11 or 12, Lamas told a small scrum after the session. Dad had gone and married wife No. Three of Four, and this rocked Jr.'s world. Lamas admitted the timing was bad, mistakes were made, but tried to explain to Jr. that daddys have needs.
Still, daddy gets no respect. It wasn't that way between Lorenzo and his movie star dad, Fernando Lamas (the movie smoothie Billy Crystal used to send up on SNL). Lamas said he idolized his dad. Son A.J.? Not so much.
Lamas is separated from his fourth wife, but is still hitting on half the planet. It is even happening on the show: Lamas said he met a lady in a recent episode, and things could get interesting. The episode had Lamas accompanying daughter Shayne to an auto show, and daughter asking daddy to work the room to help her land a gig. Lamas turned on the seducto-beam and quickly lined up his next date. What a guy, what a dad.
Lamas said he checked with buddy Bruce Jenner, who was dissected on that whole Kardashian show, before stepping into the big, fat E! celebrity vat of goo. Jenner warned his pal that cameras would be thrust in his face 24/7. Lamas took the advice, remembered he didn't have a steady TV gig, held his nose and walked the plank.
"You'll be surprised to see how normal and dysfunctional our family is," Lamas told reporters. "We are in a sense rebuilding out lives, professionally and personally."
Son A.J. was a little more direct. "A f***ing TV show, to bring us back together? If it takes a TV show for me and this guy to get back together, so be it."
Shayne is just glad to be part of one big happy family again. "My dad has come through," she said, gaining volume the way Catherine O'Hara's Lola Heatherton used to shout "I'm going to bear all your children!" on SCTV.
That's the series that ended before all of this celebrity reality junk took TV beyond parody. Those were the days.
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Bill Brioux started contributing to TV WORTH WATCHING in 2008. A veteran TV critic and reporter, Brioux was TV columnist for the Toronto Sun from 1999-2007. He runs and writes his own website about all things television, called TV Feeds My Family.
GUEST BLOG #35: Bill Brioux Checks In From TCA Press Tour
July 30, 2009 9:44 AM
[Bianculli here: The seminannual Television Critics Association press tour has begun -- and even though I'm not there this time, TV WORTH WATCHING is, thanks to contributing writers Bill Brioux and Diane Holloway. Diane's piece on this weekend's TCA Awards will run Monday. But first, here are two of old buddy Brioux's typically observant dispatches from the West Coast -- one on Matt Damon, the other on ventriloquist Jeff Dunham...]
Matt Damon Makes History, Jeff Dunham Makes Headlines
By Bill Brioux
Maybe it's just because I'm sitting next to the constantly clicking still photographers, but the buzz level seems to have jumped a notch on Day Two of the Television Critics Association press tour. I'm in a session now for The History Network with Matt Damon and Marisa Tomei, both very involved with a program called The People Speak.
This is a different kind of show for the Hitler Channel: hiring actors to get up and read historical documents and speeches, especially moments when ordinary citizens stood up and changed history. Even the inspiration behind this deal joked that this could be a turn-off for non-history buffs.
"As I'm describing it now, I'm getting bored," joked author Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States).
It helps that the actors involved are all A-list: Damon, Tomei, Josh Brolin, David Strathairn, Don Cheadle and musicians such as Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Eddie Vedder. Somebody asked Damon what other musicians were on the series.
"What -- Dylan and Springsteen aren't enough for you?" he quipped.
Damon said he's spent 10 years trying to get this "locomotive up the mountain," and said Zinn's book had a "huge impact on my life." He pitched through meeting after meeting at Fox and HBO trying to get this documentary series off the ground. HBO wanted stand-alone, scripted films depicting different moments in U.S. history. "It was such a big project and so unwieldy, HBO eventually just ran out of gas for us," Damon said.
Now he's happy to be at History and sticking to "actual words" (the actors reads through everything from private letters from Confederate soldiers to passages from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath). How did he get over all those network turn-downs?
Said Damon: "I'm an actor, I'm used to being rejected."
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Comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham wanted to help critics out by offering some headlines for his TCA visit Wednesday. Dunham is the dude with all those big-headed dummies (no, not the critics) he carts up to Just Four Laughs every summer. You know them: his cranky old man Walter, Peanut, Bubba Jr., and Achmed the Dead Terrorist (basically a talking skeleton). He has a new series, The Jeff Dunham Show, coming to Comedy Central Oct. 22.
Among Dunham's headline suggestions:
Jeff Dunham Show Cast is Kinda Wooden
Dunham's Show is for Dummies
Dunham Makes Dolls Talk but Can't Make Audience Laugh
Dunham is as Funny as a Block of F***ing Wood
Not Funny: Read My Lips
There were others. He went on to make hilarious jokes about how all the critics are being downsized and stuff. "Are you guys going to wait to get laid off or take the early severance package?"
To be fair, grumpy grandpa Walter said that, not Jeff. Still, Jeff Dunham is a Tool.
--
Bill Brioux started contributing to TV WORTH WATCHING in 2008. A veteran TV critic and reporter, Brioux was TV columnist for the Toronto Sun from 1999-2007. He runs and writes his own website about all things television, called TV Feeds My Family.
Knights of The TV Round Table: A Freewheeling Critical Discussion
July 29, 2009 8:41 AM
In the current cover story of Broadcasting & Cable, Marisa Guthrie presides over a roundtable of TV critics, tossing out questions about the coming TV season and other things.
Participating critics were Robert Bianco of USA Today, Matt Roush of TV Guide, Ellen Gray of the Philadelphia Daily News, Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune, and, representing TV WORTH WATCHING, yours truly...
The full article is fun, and tells you not only what to anticipate this fall, but what to take great pains to avoid.
Thanks, Marisa. Thanks, gang. And thanks, B&C. Click HERE to read the full article. have fun.
Ben Silverman Exits NBC Universal: Quality TV Stock Futures Rise
July 28, 2009 8:05 AM
TV executives are people, too -- but unlike most people, especially in this economy, they have the uncanny ability to fail up, and parachute into increasingly lucrative deals once being forced or steered out of their jobs.
So I don't feel sorry for Ben Silverman, whose exit as co-chairman of NBC Universal was announced yesterday. But I am happy for the potential future of quality TV at that network, because Silverman, in his NBC post, sure wasn't providing much of it...
The best dramas under his reign, Friday Night Lights and Life, were either sublet to satellite TV to reduce costs or cancelled outright. The best comedies on his schedule were 30 Rock, which predated his arrival, and The Office (which did as well, but he was an executive producer of that Americanized remake, as he was of ABC's Ugly Betty). In both cases, nothing he did increased the audiences for those shows substantially, even in a year in which Tina Fey infected the entire country with her version of Sarah Palin fever.
That's a shamefully short list of excellent TV shows, especially for the network that, when "mired in third place" in the early 1980s, launched its Must-See TV campaign in the first place. But under Silverman, when NBC was mired in FOURTH place (and with Univision gaining fast), NBC was a lot more concerned with program costs, production deals and product placement than whether what was on the air was any god or not.
Bionic Woman and Knight Rider remakes didn't HAVE to be awful ideas for remakes -- but under Silverman, they certainly were, as was Kath & Kim. And while surrendering five hours of weekly prime time to Jay Leno may save the network's bottom line, the bottom line for quality TV is that those are five fewer hours for quality scripted TV. Not that NBC is doing much of that these days anyway.
Perhaps the lowest NBC has sunk, under Silverman, has been this summer's move to revive an old ABC reality-show stinker, I'm a Celebrity -- Get Me Out of Here. That was when I decided NBC's new slogan should be changed to "I Used to be a Network -- Get Me Out of Here."
And now it's Silverman who's out, and Jeff Gaspin, who at least was witness to former NBC programming chief Brandon Tartikoff's "Must-See TV" reign, who's in. Bonnie Hammer, who has done such great work with the cable side of things, apparently must wait her turn, but I'm guessing not for long.
But that's only if making good TV, once again, becomes something the folks at NBC begin to care about. If they don't want to be mired in FIFTH place by 2012, they'd better start caring, quickly.
GUEST BLOG #34: Diane Holloway Gives Local Love to "Friday Night Lights"
July 27, 2009 9:06 AM
[Bianculli here: Even when we agree on things here at TV WORTH WATCHING, our tastes and perspectives can be very different... which I love. Contributing critic Diane Holloway, for example, loves Friday Night Lights as much as I do -- but since it films in her home town of Austin, she has a special take on it...
She also is a lot less enamored than I am of The Mentalist and Lost, but that's what makes horse races. And interesting websites...]
Still Fuming: How Could The Emmys Ignore "Friday Night Lights"?
By Diane Holloway
When the oh-so-flawed Emmy nominations were announced earlier this month, I kept my angry trap shut. But anyone who knows me can attest that I'm not particularly good at stifling rage.
Here's my biggest (among many) gripes about the list: Friday Night Lights continues to be ignored. Nobody else seems to be as outrageously offended by this glaring omission, so it's up to me now.
If ever a drama deserved an Emmy nod and the description "TV Worth Watching," it's Friday Night Lights. And I'm not just saying this because the series is based in my hometown of Austin, Texas. This is not a gripe based on provincialism; it's a gripe based on sky-high quality overlooked.
To jiggle your memory about the nominations, check out the full list HERE. And for those who care, mark your Emmy-watching calendars for Sept. 20.
When FNL (as it's nicknamed in Austin) debuted, the hallowed New York Times became nearly apoplectic in singing its praise. The initial review was so glowing that some readers may have thought the Times had forgotten that this was a TV show, not a film, a play or an art exhibit.
NBC executives may have privately wondered if Americans would embrace a show set in Texas, given President Bush's sagging popularity at the time. Nevertheless, critics sang its praises, a small but fiercely loyal audience did come to the show, and the production recently got the green light for a fourth and fifth season.
Last season and for the next two seasons, FNL will air first on DirecTV and then shift to NBC. The fourth season arrives in January on DirecTV and on NBC in the summer of 2010. This arrangement was struck for financial reasons, and hats off to everyone concerned for finding a way to keep it going.
For the uninitiated (hello, quality seekers), FNL is about small-town life, the glue of high-school football that holds many such communities together and the coach's family. Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton play Coach Taylor and his wife Tami. A phenomenal cast of young actors, next season headed up by Jesse Plemons (as Landry Clarke), Taylor Kitsch (Tim Riggins) and Aimee Teegarden (Julie Taylor), rounds out arguably the best ensemble on TV.
FNL never has been a show about football. Nor has it ever been a teen drama or a Texas drama. It's an everywhere/everyone drama about small towns and families. The Dillon Panthers are simply a conduit for good storytelling.
Brilliantly written and stunningly portrayed, the series is heartwarming, heartbreaking and hilarious from episode to episode. It is what good drama is all about, and it unfolds the way series were meant to unfold, developing characters and storylines in detail and depth.
So why is FNL not among the seven best-drama nominees? Maybe nobody in the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences bothered to look at it last season. If so, that's their loss... and their bad.
Britton certainly deserves a nod, and so does Chandler. Supporting nominations also could have gone to just about any of the young actors, including Plemons, Kitsch, Adrianne Palicki (Tyra Collette) and Zach Gilford (Matt Saracen).
What would I ditch in favor of FNL? In the drama series category, I would scratch Lost, which takes itself way too seriously for no apparent reason. Among the actors, I would replace Simon Baker, who simply grins his way through The Mentalist, and Mariska Hargitay of Law & Order: SVU, who has been emoting the exact same way for way too long.
Heading into its final 26 episodes -- scheduled to air in two 13-week batches -- it's time for the Emmys to recognize this under-appreciated gem called Friday Night Lights. Even if it weren't based in Austin, I would keep tooting its horn.
Really, I would. And I will.
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Diane Holloway was the TV critic for the Austin American Statesman for 30 years, until the downturn in the newspaper business prompted her to take a buyout. She's now sniffing out other possibilities. Before newspapers, she worked in Washington for the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. Maybe something entirely different is next. Or not.
Pushing Daisies: Gone from TV, But Arriving on DVD
July 23, 2009 10:10 AM
The facts were these:
Pushing Daisies premiered on ABC in October 2007. I instantly hailed it as the best new series of the year, viewers embraced it, and all was well. Then, a month later, came the writers' strike, and the series never recovered. Once ABC burned through the programs already filmed, the network held off showing new episodes until the fall of 2008, by which time the series had lost its momentum.
But now, on DVD, comes the complete 13-episode second season of Pushing Daisies, to remind us, all over again, what a bold, brilliant, beautiful series it was...
Created by Bryan Fuller, and telling of a piemaker with the ability to raise the dead, it's the kind of show that comes around only about once a decade -- a show with such a distinctive look and tone, with everything from its visual flair and its musical soundtrack to its heightened dialogue and outrageous plots, that it stands apart from everything around it. Twin Peaks was like that. So were Due South and Northern Exposure.
And Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season, released this week by Warner Home Video, displays in almost every frame why this ABC series was The One That Got Away. More than that, it was The One Just Hitting Its Full Stride -- or, to put it another way, The One That Deserved a Few More Years.
The Extras in this DVD set, which you can buy by clicking HERE (or the Blu-Ray by clicking HERE, show how much care went into this series. The sets. The scored music. The computer-generated effects. The acting and scripts. The absurdly imaginative murders and crime scenes.
And the 13 shows... what a baker's dozen (how appropriate) of tasty treats. Guest stars are served up without fanfare, each bringing his or her peculiarly tasty flavors: Fred Willard, Richard Benjamin, George Segal, Wendie Malick, David Arquette and Stephen Root. There are nasty Norwegians and sinister synchronized swimmers, buzzing beekeepers and ghoulish graverobbers.
And the regular cast: Jim Dale Lee Pace and Anna Friel (pictured) star as Ned and Chuck. Ned can revive the dead with a single touch, and revives Chuck, his former childhood sweetheart -- but can't touch her again, or she'll die forever. Chi McBride is Emerson, the private eye who uses Ned's gifts to solve crimes; Kristin Chenoweth (pictured at top) is Olive, who has an unrequited love for Ned and works in his pie shop; and Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene play Chuck's eccentric aunts -- one of whom actually is her mother.
Jim Dale narrates Pushing Daisies in true storybook style, and always, at some point, advances the narrative by saying, "The facts were these..." The visuals will make you laugh -- but so will the verbals. When Emerson (pictured) is invited to the circus, for example, he pats the pockets of his jacket and says, "Where did I put that rat's ass I could give?" Still makes me laugh.
What makes me sad, though, is that ABC canceled this series before Fuller and company got to mount their planned musical episode (imagine that, with Broadway musical vets Chenoweth and Greene already on board) -- and before what surely, given Ned's powers and their desire to finally kiss, would have been one of the best, most poetic series finales in history.
DVD, though, gives us a chance to fully appreciate Pushing Daisies -- which, in the end (and especally AT the end), is more than ABC ever did.
One Last Piece of Our Cronkite Tribute: Bill Brioux Quotes A Swearing, Stuttering Uncle Walter
July 22, 2009 7:20 AM
When I put out a call (actually, an email) to our TV WORTH WATCHING writers for reflections about Walter Cronkite, one of them, Bill Brioux, turns out to have been unreachable for the weekend in some remote cabin. (Canadians will do that.) When he returned, and found what we'd done here, he wrote his own, and it's too terrific -- and R-rated -- not to share...
He tells, for one thing, about the same press conference I did, where Cronkite cackled with glee when demand for his attention turned into a verbal free-for-all. But Brioux tells it with a lot more detail, a lot more flair, and a lot more... brio. And he tells other stories as well, including Cronkite's account of a stuttering rival from the old days.
With Bill's perspective, which you can read in full by clicking here to his blog TV Feeds My Family, our TV WORTH WATCHING Walter Cronkite tribute is complete -- covering a collective couple centuries or so of TV journalism experience. And, for this topic, that's the way it is.
Walter Cronkite: All of Us At TV WORTH WATCHING Remember The Way He Was
July 20, 2009 5:45 AM
[I'm keeping this up one more day because I'm so proud of this group effort. Please read -- and add your own comments! -- David B.] We're a bunch of veteran TV reporters and critics here at TV WORTH WATCHING, and each of us has his or her favorite memories -- as viewers and as interviewers -- of iconic CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, who died Friday at age 92. So in a tag-team tribute to one of the finest and most important journalists in television history, today we present a string of salutes, stories and observations about The Most Trusted Man in America...
My own radio tribute to Cronkite, on National Public Radio's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, ran Monday, and can be heard here. Meanwhile, I'll offer some quick comments here, as will the other contributors to TV WORTH WATCHING -- all of whom, it's worth noting, have enough experience and clout to have interviewed Cronkite themselves.
Their respective reflections will be presented in reverse alphabetical order, just so I can't be accused of favoritism. So here we go: Salutes to Walter Cronkite, written by Diane Werts, Ed Martin, Diane Holloway, Tom Brinkmoeller, myself and P.J. Bednarski. I consider this compilation one of TV WORTH WATCHING's finest hours to date, so please enjoy... and add your own comments.
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Walter Cronkite Wasn't One of "The Boys" -- But Reflected Them Proudly
By Diane Werts
Walter Cronkite is famous not just for being Walter Cronkite. Or being a solid newsman. Or an avuncular presence, America's uncle, or anything else anybody wants to celebrate about the man's life, upon his death.
No, Cronkite remains renowned, 30 years later, for being the primary face of a TV program that remains the gold standard for a nightly news broadcast. His CBS Evening News, from 1962 to 1981, was reported by a cast of correspondents whose names I can still remember, in an era when few current viewers can cite reporters in TV news today.
Richard C. Hottelet. Charles Collingwood. Robert Pierpoint. Roger Mudd. Terry Drinkwater. Eric Sevareid (pictured). Barry Serafin. Robert Trout.
OK, those are just great names, in and of themselves, especially said aloud, as correspondents do when wrapping their report. But they're also memorable because they were such authoritative reporters -- men (nearly all men in those days) who knew how to go out and get a story, and how to bring it back and boil it down to a couple of salient minutes saying more than hours of "breaking news" babble today, and how to do it with an eloquence, clarity and flair born of working with the meanings of words, not "sound bites" or "pictures arriving now."
These men had most often cut their teeth in newspapers, typically, or print wire services. And in war, World War II mostly. Some in radio,and later video. But all of them did it in a day when reporters knew how to gather their own information, not simply relay facts or hearsay procured by producers or researchers. They had to harvest it from personal sources, not merely parrot press room briefings. They could write with fluency. After actually thinking it through, themselves.
Cronkite had worked for United Press (forerunner of UPI), where he'd covered postwar news in Belgium and the Netherlands, the Nuremberg trials, and even Stalin-era Moscow. Hottelet came from UP, too, where he'd been stationed in pre-war Berlin. Collingwood, also, reporting from London. And Howard K. Smith, later known as ABC's evening anchor, who jumped from UP to work alongside Hottelet in Berlin for CBS Radio.
Sevareid, later known for his columnist-style commentaries in Cronkite's "Evening News" broadcasts, learned his trade in print, too. He'd worked for newspapers in Minneapolis and Paris, before joining the radio gang known as "Murrow's boys," having been assembled mid-century by CBS news legend Edward R. Murrow.
Trout (pictured below) was the rarity who'd been in radio from the 1930s, having pioneered the "anchor" role of helming a "roundup" of reports from correspondents in farflung locales.
Walter Cronkite would eclipse Trout as his most illustrious professional descendent. But Cronkite didn't do it alone. He couldn't possibly have been the "voice of authority" without that authoritative broadcast behind him -- without commanding reports to introduce, in a broadcast widely considered the country's most respected, from a news organization that defined the word "esteemed."
It was an era of three networks, when only two had widely respected newscasts. (NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report, airing 1956-70, was a compelling and occasionally more highly rated competitor.) Nearly all Americans watched Cronkite's CBS Evening News at some point, if not regularly.
"Uncle Walter" became a household name, a trusted source, a daily companion, to Americans of all ages.
But he was no lone ranger.
And Cronkite would have been the first to report that.
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This Just In: Uncle Walter Did NOT Sail with Princess Di...
By Ed Martin
I have interviewed hundreds of famous people during the last 20 years and can recall only two times when I was awestruck. Fortunately, in both instances the awe struck me after the interview had been completed. The first time this happened was when I interviewed Walter Cronkite in March, 1995. As I stepped out into the bustle of midtown Manhattan after our meeting, I suddenly froze and said to myself, "Damn, that was Walter Cronkite!"
(The second moment of awe came after a brief interview with Steven Spielberg in Los Angeles ten months later. As I turned my tape recorder off and turned away from him I mumbled, "Damn, that was Steven Spielberg!")
I interviewed Cronkite shortly before the premiere of Headlines and Sound Bites: Is That the Way It Is?, an installment of The Cronkite Report, a quarterly series he was producing for Discovery Channel at the time. The intent of the program was to determine how well broadcast and print press had been serving the information needs of the public in the Nineties.
In hindsight the timing was profound, not simply for the premiere of Cronkite's show but for my interview. The traditional understanding and consumption of news reporting, which up to that time had been challenged only by CNN and television tabloid shows, was about to be uprooted by the arrival during the next two years of MSNBC and Fox News Channel, not to mention the first significant surges in home computer usage and the creation of Internet content.
We didn't realize it at that moment, but the media world Cronkite had known throughout his career, and that I had known throughout my lifetime, was about to come to an end.
Cronkite was relatively upbeat on the subject, despite growing concerns from critics and media observers that fragmented attention spans and the appeal of the sound bite were corroding news reporting on television. Not so, Uncle Walter asserted. He explained to me that a study undertaken for his program found that TV news at the time treated the four or five top stories of the day with the same attention, almost the same time and space emphasis as newspapers.
Who knew? Not Cronkite: He admitted that his final assessment "was a little different than we anticipated when we started the piece." He did give newspapers the advantage because they continued to report stories long after they had fallen off the nightly news.
Still, he was gravely concerned at the time with the growing tabloidization of news (especially its impact on local news broadcasts, which he dismissed as "pretty much of a disaster across the country") and gross factual errors in local and regional newspapers.
He shared with me a story about Princess Diana's early-Nineties visit to Martha's Vineyard, where Cronkite maintained a home and indulged in his passion for sailing. After a reporter from The Cape Cod Times speculated about it, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and the Associated Press all reported that Cronkite had taken the princess for a ride on his boat.
In truth, he said, the two never crossed paths during her stay on the island. But the reports took on a life of their own, and soon thereafter a leading newspaper in London revealed that Diana had chosen to tell her life story to Cronkite via a new TV series and had travelled to Martha's Vineyard to negotiate the deal. The story, he told me, "Didn't contain one iota of truth."
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Walter Cronkite: The Texas Connection
By Diane Holloway
During the course of my 30-year career as TV critic for the Austin American-Statesman, I wrote more than a dozen pieces on Walter Cronkite. His Texas roots ran deep, from his childhood in Houston to his Austin days as a journalism student at the University of Texas to his return to Houston as a cub reporter for the Houston Press.
He wrote for the Daily Texan (UT's newspaper) and was a part-time sports reporter for a local radio station in Austin. His daughter Kathy and his two grandsons still live here and he remained an adjunct communications professor at UT until his death.
Here are some of my favorite Cronkite interview moments:
On CBS's decision to bump him from the anchor desk in 1981 and then keep him off the air but tied to a lifetime "special correspondent" contract: "It's not the way I want it, quite honestly. I'd love to have them make better use of me... They need somebody with historical knowledge and capability, but it's too late for me now."
On his memories of growing up in Houston in the Depression: "My mother denied it, but I know good and well that she made hamburgers out of dog food."
On his move from print to the new TV journalism: "We literally figured it out as we went along. For an old newspaper man, it was like carrying a printing press around."
On his pick for biggest story: "Space. Man leaving his environment and landing on another orb is certainly the biggest story of the 20th century." Cronkite always got misty talking about space.
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Uncle Walter at Walt Disney World
By Tom Brinkmoeller
I watched CBS' assassination and moon landing coverage, wrote about the Cronkite-to-Rather transition and had a few other contacts with Walter Cronkite as a reporter.
But the ones I remember most happened several years after I left the paper. I was working as a Walt Disney World publicist, assigned to the new movie theme park that was being built, when Mr. and Mrs. Cronkite visited Disney's Florida park.
They were asked if they would like a pre-opening tour of parts of the park, and when they said yes, I was assigned to see if we could get some publicity out of the event. I met them as they were touring the New York City backlot, a movie-like permanent set that would have worked for movies, had any ever been shot there.
Celebrities who were asked for favors like this, a publicity photo shoot, weren't predictable. Some were agreeable; others growled and flashed their celebrity fangs. The Cronkites were totally gracious, happily posing by a parking meter on the fake street. He even pulled a quarter out of his pocket to feed the phony meter.
A couple of months later, Cronkite and Robin Williams were on an L.A. sound stage to record the audio for an animated film Disney was to use in the new park's animation-studio tour. I was there, too, to collect background for press kits yet to be written.
Had I relied only on Williams, whose protective handlers stood like a wall between the ordinary and their man, I would have gone home with an empty notebook. But Cronkite, who arrived without any entourage and joked with the crew, took time to talk, and the notebook ended up full of good stuff.
In both encounters, Cronkite was under no obligation to help me out. But he did, and he seemed to enjoy it. In both cases he treated everyone he met with the same genuine kindness. Once you met him this way, you learned the term used so often to describe him, "avuncular," reached far beyond his gray hair or authoritative voice and delivery. He was the kind of person you'd love to have for an uncle.
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Uncle Walter Meets Uncle Barky -- and Betty Bacall
By David Bianculli
In 2006, as TV Critic for the New York Daily News, I noted the occasion of Walter Cronkite's 90th birthday by stating the following:
"As Walter Cronkite enters his ninth decade, it's worth noting - though not necessarily celebrating - that there will never be another like him.
"No matter how long TV continues, the likes of Uncle Walter, once heralded in surveys and the press as the 'most trusted' man in America, will not be seen again. It can't happen."
Except for that fact that Cronkite, at that point in his life, actually would have been entering his TENTH decade, I stand by my story. TV is too fragmented. TV news is too slight.
I'm old enough, and lucky enough, to have witnessed all of what might be called Walter Cronkite's greatest hits: the JFK assassination coverage, the space race and moon landing, his Vietnam special report. (I play clips from all of them on my Fresh Air report.) Any one of those could have made a career. Cronkite's career incuded them all, and more. Next to Edward R. Murrow, who virtually invented the professional standards of broadcast news on CBS Radio (and, later, on TV's See It Now), Walter Cronkite was the best of his kind.
But of all my Cronkite memories, the two I'd like to share here are more random and less known.
The first came in 1978, the year CBS mounted a celebrity-filled prime-time special celebrating its 50th anniversary as a broadcast entity (using radio, not TV, as a starting point). The networks had money to burn in those days, and CBS burned some of its by mounting a ridiculously lavish party in New York, inviting almost every star who had been part of the network's 50-year history.
I was a young TV critic for what then was the Fort Lauderdale News, and found myself, early on, so intimidated by all the star wattage that I sat against a wall in a chair, watching quietly as a roomful of famous people attacked the shrimp buffet and congregated at the bar. All of a sudden, Walter Cronkite, who was walking with a cane because of a leg injury he'd just gotten while sailing, sat in the seat next to me, and struck up a casual conversation.
I'd never met him before, but he acted like we were old buddies as he whispered war stories about one celebrity after another. Then he pointed to one, Lauren Bacall, and raved about her: so beautiful, so sexy, so classy. At that moment, she turned around, saw Cronkite, and immediately came over. "Hi, Betty," he said, beaming widely and rising to greet her. She sat next to him on the other side, and I listened -- the luckiest fly on the best possible wall -- as the two of them told stories about everybody else, and laughed, and drank.
The second occasion was decades later -- in 2006, as Cronkite faced TV critics as a press conference for his coming American Masters profile on PBS. Cronkite sat there, in front of an understandably respectful room of reporters, telling tale after tale about presidents, colleagues and earthshaking news events.
Ed Bark, then the veteran TV critic for the Dallas Morning News (and now running a terrific website about TV called UncleBarky.com, got so annoyed that other reporters were cutting off his attempts to ask Cronkite a question that he finally shouted one down, demanding that it was his turn. Cronkite's eyes sparkled, and he clapped his hand together, at the temporary dust-up. NOW we're having some fun, he said, or something like that -- obviously gleeful that the press conference had taken a competitive turn.
For Cronkite, that's the way it was in his day... and the way he always liked it.
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When Cronkite Died, So Did Broadcast Network TV News
By P.J. Bednarski
The death of Walter Cronkite signifies the official end of broadcast network television news. Network news divisions may claim impressive achievements while they lived, but Cronkite was the final, definite period at the end of the sentence.
Cronkite's death erases the last presence of broadcast news stature -- with only Mike Wallace, Morley Safer and a few other lesser lights as the last remnants of the network swagger.
Most people think that's OK: When network television ruled, there weren't many national competitors, and none on television. Everybody who wasn't there knows it was awful that three powerful gatekeepers decided what was important.
Thank goodness news organizations do a much better job of representing diverse points of view these days, with dignified, thoughtful informed news and opinion. The bold truths from Glenn Beck, the cool calm of Chris Matthews, the Lincoln-Douglas quality debates on The View and the entire crusading predator-baiting thing on NBC are displays of the sophistication television has developed since Cronkite signed off in 1981.
When Cronkite said, "That's the way it is," no doubt he didn't believe it. Nor did intelligent viewers. But the fact that Cronkite proclaimed it gave CBS News the crown of certitude. This wasn't all the news there was, he was saying, but that which CBS and Cronkite had presented was the truest version.
He might have believed it was true and it might have been at least mostly true, which is extraordinary to consider now, given the hundreds of versions of fact that news consumers now have the option to choose. Long after he left, Cronkite's sign-off continued to engrave the stature of that network. It might be why those who attack "network news" save special ire for CBS. It bragged about its world view, and for 20 years it had this utterly regular guy representing it.
Next to The New York Times claiming it has "All the News That's Fit to Print," no other American news organization really speaks in superlatives about its journalistic acuity. They might talk about their popularity. But they don't say, in essence: We Know What's Going On.
Cronkite was a perfect fit for the William S. Paley era of CBS News, during which CBS did have authority its competitors lacked, or, when it didn't, acted like it did. When Laurence Tisch began to dismantle the news division, it wasn't surprising the big names at CBS News contemplated seceding from the network. You'd have thought that the B in CBS stood for brio.
And that's what's over with Cronkite's death. It's the definite nail in the coffin, the death of a journalist who represented the strength of the Institution, with a pride no other journalist or sloganeer would dare to replicate today. Once, reporters and editors bled for the places they worked, and disdained the competition. Today, everybody puts himself or herself on a more or less even field, so that nobody has to lead.
In two decades we've gone from "That's the Way It Is" -- definitive, bold, brassy -- to "We Report, You Decide" -- which, even coming from in-your-face Fox News, really is a pretty meek slogan that takes the messy work out of their hands, and hands it to You, the Viewer. It's not a statement of superiority. It's an invitation for focus groups.
Cronkite was the last TV newsman who will be able to make legitimate claims of importance, for himself or for his news organization.
As an example, CBS, relentlessly committed to procedural crime dramas, gave short shrift to his death on Friday night -- no way to treat their own legend, as even Cronkite would have acknowledged. And CNN, particularly, used his passing as a good way to fill up hours of nauseating programming because, after all, filling time is the primary business of 24/7 news operations.
Maybe the slogan for news organizations ought to be that which viewers now easily know is true:
"That's business."
GUEST BLOG #33: Ed Martin loves a show named 'Maria'
July 17, 2009 7:15 AM
[Bianculli here: Contributing columnist Ed Martin checks in again with another valuable find from cable TV's outer orbit. This time it's BBC America's imported reality competition series, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?...]
How do you make a great reality competition? R-E-S-P-E-C-T
By Ed Martin
This has been an extraordinarily satisfying year for fans of reality TV.
Powered by more dazzling Top 10 talent than in any previous season and one of the most exciting finales in its history, American Idol demonstrated once again why it deserves to be the most popular program on television. Dancing with the Stars also outdid itself on the talent front. The Amazing Race featured two unforgettable teammates -- Margie and her deaf son, Luke -- who became instant audience favorites. The Real World: Brooklyn was the MTV franchise's best effort in years, ending on a level of extreme duress as Iraq War veteran and disarming prankster Ryan learned that he had been called for a second tour of duty. And in perhaps the most surprising reality kick of all, Celebrity Apprentice, in its final episodes, became essential Must-See TV, as legendary comedian Joan Rivers locked horns with poker champ Annie Duke for an extended take-no-prisoners conflict.
More recently, America's Got Talent has in only a few short weeks identified many likely finalists (including several exceedingly gifted kids) and one very humble contestant (chicken catcher and aspiring country singer Kevin Skinner) who evoked memories of Britain's Got Talent internet sensation Susan Boyle. So You Think You Can Dance is also having a splendid season.
But off to the side of all this marvelous American-made madness have been two British talent shows that have provided more consistent feel-good entertainment than any of the series mentioned above. Last spring, BBC America offered the American premiere of the 2007 reality hit Any Dream Will Do, in which young men competed for the title role in a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat that debuted in the West End later that year. Dream was actually a follow-up to the hit 2006 British search-for-a-star competition How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, with young women competing for the lead role in a West End production of The Sound of Music.
Joseph completed its run on BBCA several weeks ago, and Maria has since inherited its Sunday time period (8-10 p.m. ET, with an 11 p.m. ET repeat), making for some delightful summer night viewing.
If the Maria/Dream format sounds familiar in a bad way, you may be having a flashback to You're the One That I Want, the abysmal 2007 NBC reality effort in which men and women competed for the lead roles of Danny and Sandy in a Broadway production of Grease. I suffered through most of You're the One, so my prior impression of this malleable franchise -- the brainchild of legendary composer and theatrical producer Andrew Lloyd Webber -- was not particularly positive. But I was floored by the talent on display when I first discovered Dream, and I am now happily hooked all over again on Maria.
The full season of Maria was originally telecast in 2006, so it may seem like old business. But as they once said over at NBC, if you haven't seen it, it's new to you! The winner went on to star in a West End revival of The Sound of Music that ran for over two years. (Similarly, Any Dream winner Lee Mead enjoyed an 18-month run in Webber's West End revival of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.) The Maria winner can be easily identified through a simple Google search, so if knowing the outcome is an issue for you, don't surf the web for anything related to this program.
Why all the enthusiasm? Maybe it's because the Maria contestants -- especially the five who remain -- could handily hold their own against any past or present Idol favorite (with the possible exceptions of Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson). Unlike Idol, which always ends up with a few unaccountable clunkers in its Top 10, the finalists on Maria (like the Joseph finalists before them) have been uniformly great.
Indeed, it isn't just the super-talented contestants that have made these two shows more enjoyable than Idol. Andrew Lloyd Webber, the premier voice of authority and top judge on both, has given them a dramatic weight greater than that of Idol's four judges combined. The engaging experts who critique each performance -- actor, singer and Torchwood star John Barrowman, vocal coach Zoe Tyler, and theatrical producer David Ian on Maria; theatrical producer Bill Kenwright, actress Denise Van Outen, Barrowman and Tyler on Joseph -- have more interesting insights to offer than Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, Kara DioGuardi and Simon Cowell and seem to take their jobs more seriously than their Idol counterparts.
And host Graham Norton, one of the most effortlessly engaging television personalities in the world, keeps everything moving at a brisk clip without any of those uncomfortable attempts at forced humor that compromise Idol main man Ryan Seacrest. Also, Norton's flashy suits and shirts add to the visual fun of these shows, something the increasingly drab Seacrest should consider.
Another reason Maria and Dream have worked so well is that the young singers on both have been uniformly respectful of the grown-up judges. Everything the professionals say matters. Cowell has often commented on the differences between the young people who appear on talent shows in England and those who snarl and growl their way through various American productions. The contestants on Maria and Dream are ecstatic when they succeed and crushed when they don't. Sometimes they become emotional when they are told that they will continue through to the following week. The contestants' honest displays of emotion add much more to the entertainment value of these programs than the often-snarky responses of some Idol contestants. Then again, maybe Lloyd Webber, Barrowman and their colleagues command more respect than Cowell and Co.
To put it simply, everything about these shows has worked, from the staging to the costumes to the music to the weekly climactic sing-offs, in which the bottom two vote-getters perform together and then wait for Webber to choose which one will survive and which must say goodbye. (On Joseph, elimination meant surrendering one's colorful coat. On Maria, the young ladies sing the classic So Long, Farewell from The Sound of Music as the eliminated Maria departs. Thankfully, she does not have to remove her colorful housemaid's dress.)
It may be that the producers of American Idol can learn a few things by watching How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? and Any Dream Will Do, but I think young people hoping to compete on future seasons of Idol (or any American talent show) can gain valuable insights from them, too.
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Ed Martin is the television critic and programming analyst for the media industry Web site JackMyers.com. The former senior editor of the award-winning, much-missed television and advertising trade magazine Inside Media, Ed has also written for USA Today, Advertising Age, Television Week, Broadcasting & Cable and TV Guide.
2009 Emmy Nominations: What They Missed, What They Got Right
July 16, 2009 10:01 AM
The always conservative voters behind the Emmy nominations have welcomed some deserving first-timers this year, including Jim Parsons of CBS's The Big Bang Theory and Elisabeth Moss of AMC's Mad Men. But today's nominations also snubbed a LOT of deserving artists and programs...
This good news and bad news approach is typical of the Emmys, but this year the good and bad seemed to arrive simultaneously. Fox's Family Guy became the first animated series to compete in the Outstanding Comedy Series category since The Flintstones. Good news for fans of that series, I guess, but what a slap in the face for Fox's The Simpsons, which should have been considered in the same category for, oh, the past two decades.
AMC's Breaking Bad getting nominated for the first time as Outstanding Drama Series? That's well-deserved, as was star Bryan Cranston's win last year. And Aaron Paul getting nominated in the supporting category? That's a win-win. No bad news here.
But the DirecTV-NBC series Friday Night Lights got a single nomination, and the fabulous leading players, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, were ignored. So was the work of Michael Chiklis and Walton Goggins in the final season of FX's The Shield, James Spader's work on the final season of ABC's Boston Legal, Denis Leary's powerful work on FX's Rescue Me, and Damian Lewis' great work in NBC's underappreciated Life. Kiefer Sutherland was snubbed in the best series actor category for Fox's 24, but was nominated, for the same Jack Bauer role, in the movies and miniseries category.
The ranks of the drama and comedy series categories were swelled to admit seven nominees each, making room for such newly honored contenders as HBO's Flight of the Conchords and AMC's Breaking Bad. But HBO's True Blood was snubbed, as were Rescue Me, The Shield, ABC's Pushing Daisies, and others.
NBC's 30 Rock set a record for most nominations by a series in a single year (22 nods). And in guest actor spots, Alan Alda has a chance for a new Emmy for his role as Jack's dad on 30 Rock, and Michael J. Fox has a shot for his role on Rescue Me. I'd like them both to win -- but I'd also like to see Justin Timberlake take home a statuette for his work as a guest star on NBC's Saturday Night Live.
One thing the nominations do point out this year: Amid all the horrid junk on TV this year, there also was a lot worth celebrating. The seven drama series in contention, for example, all are worth watching: HBO's Big Love, Breaking Bad, FX's Damages, Showtime's Dexter, Fox's House, ABC's Lost and Mad Men. TV Worth Watching, every one...
RomaFictionFest: Keeping Scripted Television Alive, Part II
July 15, 2009 7:37 AM
Yesterday I reviewed some of the intriguing completed TV series screened in Rome last week at RomaFictionFest, an international gathering of creative and executive types interested in scripted television. Today I'll detail the best pitches for shows that haven't been made yet -- covering everything from a musical biopic of a largely unexplored chapter in the life of Frank Sinatra, and the story of a pygmy from the Congo who was displayed in a cage at the Bronx Zoo a century ago...
Here's the way the RomaTVPitching sessions worked. For three days, an auditorium full of people who develop TV for domestic and international markets -- including such active U.S. participants as Showtime, TNT and HBO -- sat and listened as prospective TV producers pitched their next ideas, showed short clip reels of related materials or examples of their previous work, and hoped to find some financial and/or creative partners.
Each team of pitchers got 10 minutes, after which the audience members were allotted five minutes to offer their succinct and unvarnished reaction. If the ideas didn't work, the wannabes knew almost instantly their new pet proects were not gonnabe. But a pitch that got buzz often got some instant interest, the promise of a same-day meeting, and the very real chance to turn a good TV idea into some actual good TV.
Series, miniseries and telemovies each got a day. It underscored the sad realization that, for broadcast networks in the United States, the market for TV movies and miniseries is virtually extinct. But cable outlets and boutique networks, abroad as well as in the states, offered some relief. Over the three days, here are some of the best proposals -- coming soon, we hope, to a TV set near you.
FOR FAME AND FORTUNE -- This was the most outstanding project to originate from the U.S., and if you saw the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, you saw a scene with a character based on this real-life subject. In 1904, a pgymy named Ota Benga was among the Belgian Congo natives brought to the United States as part of the St. Louis World's Fair Afterward, Benga wanted to remain, and ended up being put on display in the Monkey House at the Bronx Zoo. Unthinkable? Indefensible? Yes, but, as this TV project wants to make clear, Benga was as much opportunist as victim.
The project comes from Madison Davis Lacy, one of the original visionaries behind Eyes on the Prize, one of the best TV documentaries ever made. The director attached is British filmmaker Horace Ove, whose pioneering work predates even his bold 1968 work, Baldwin's Nigger. This is a project that should -- that must -- see the light of day.
TOM AND FRANK -- This project, from Brazil, wowed the audience by showing documentary clips capturing the 1967 studio and concert tour collaboration of Frank Sinatra and guitarist-composer-singer Antonio Carlos Jobim, the bossa nova popularizer of "Girl from Ipanema" fame. Writer Giuliano Cedroni sees it as a music-filled period miniseries, capturing the fiery pair's lengthy, unusual and sometimes stormy friendship. It may work better as a self-contained telemovie, but Cedroni definitely has struck gold here.
ALIAS GARBO -- Garbo was the code name of Juan Pujol Garcia, a WWII spy who was so effective as a double agent, he was awarded both an MBE by the British and an Iron Cross by the Nazis. Where did his true loyalties lie, and what was his story? That's what this Spanish production, written by British screenwriter John Howlett, will attempt to reveal. Howlett co-wrote the screenplay for Lindsay Anderson's If..., which makes this even more enticing.
SHAKESPEARE IN VENICE -- Do William Shakespeare's Venetian plays -- among them Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice and Othello -- have enough telling details about the place and culture that the playwright, in his "missing years," may have lived there? This Italian miniseries, written and directed by Alessandro Bettero, will make, and follow, that assertion. Shakespeare in Love was a worldwide hit in theaters, so why not a more dramatic, and investigative, approach?
THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE -- Another Italian project (this one from writer-director Fabio Segatori) this historical docudrama picked up interest immediately from potential co-production partners in France and Germany, where this 13th-century crusade began. Thousands of children were led on a march across the Alps, expecting the sea to part for them when they reached Marseilles. It didn't, but there's an individual true-life story to be told here as well, and its message of tolerance, as well as its love story, makes it a vey attractive dramatic property.
CLEOPATRA -- This comes from the BBC, and the pitch stressed comparisons to both Rome and The Tudors. Expect it to land on premium cable in the States, and to have its 13 episodes tracing the life of Cleopatra from her early childhood to her final asp-irations.
FIFTH BUSINESS: THE DEPTFORD TRILOGY -- This three-part, six-hour Canadian miniseries is based on that country's beloved novels by Robertson Davies, in which the throwing of a snowball (with a schoolmaster's paperweight packed within) figures in both the start and the climax of a story that spans 60 years. Writer Charles K. Pitts and producer Niv Fichman drew lots of interest on the strength of their pitch -- and even more when they dropped the name (though not yet for publication) of the famous Canadian director about to be attached to the project. I promised not to identify the famous Canadian director -- but your initial guess is likely to be correct.
MR. 7 MINUTES -- From Italy, this may be one of the purest, most playful ideas of all. The title character is a ruthless, impatient filmmaker (think Jeremy Piven's Ari Gold from Entourage, only as a producer, not an agent), whose waiting room is full of nervous screenwriters waiting to pitch him their ideas. Each of them, upon entering his office, is given precisely seven minutes, after which "Mr. 7 Minutes" coldly deconstructs their concept. The series is conceived as episodes that last precisely seven minutes, with each film "idea" fleshed out, and with a multiplatform exposure that includes, and is ready-made for, the Internet.
Seven minutes to pitch, then an instant dose of cold-blooded reality. Add a few more minutes, and that's RomaTVPitching, the exciting showcase, run by Pat Ferns, that already has served as a midwife to many international TV productions. Here's hoping the ones I just mentioned are among the next litter of actual programs to emerge from RomaFiction Fest...
RomaFictionFest: Keeping Scripted Television Alive, Part I
July 14, 2009 8:06 AM
Tonight on the five commercial broadcast networks, there are a total of 14 hours of prime-time programming. Only four of them are scripted, and only one 30-minute program, ABC's Better Off Ted, is not a rerun. That's why last week's RomaFictionFest, in which TV writers, producers and executives from around the globe gathered to nurture the future of scripted programming, is such a big deal. If quality scripted television is an endangered species, RomaFictionFest is a renewing, encouraging greenhouse...
Basically, there are two levels to the festival. One is a nightly series of screenings, open to the public and presented on various theaters throughout Rome, showing current and upcoming scripted shows from around the world. The other is a daily series of pitch meetings, set in an auditorium and offering simultaneous translation through headphones, like a miniature United Nations.
International TV creators describe their ideas for their next projects, and seek funding or production partners from the executives in attendance. In the past two years of this festival's existence, pitches have resulted in partnerships, and partnerships in programs. The director of RomaTV Pitching, Canadian producer Pat Ferns, pushes attendees for their opinions and, when possible, for some commitments, or to schedule some meetings.
I attended as a newly invited member of the International Advisory Board, and loved it. I loved attending the screenings, both for the all-access pass my badge provided me and for the high quality of the stuff shown. I also was blown away by many of the pitch presentations over the three days, and took notes on several fledgling productions that, if and when they come to pass, surely will qualify as TV Worth Watching.
Today, I'll describe the best programs from the screenings I attended. Tomorrow, I'll describe the best pitches. Here goes...
LAW AND ORDER U.K. -- Maybe it's because I've been so consumed by my Smothers Brothers book, but I had no idea this NBC series had crossed the pond. Instead of walking the streets of New York, the inspectors and prosecutors of this international entry in the Law & Order franchise walk a different set of mean streets. The episode I saw, for example, took place in London, with the British police pursuing their leads as the Tower Bridge loomed in the background.
Does the show translate to the United Kingdom? Perfectly, and effortlessly. Except for the fact that the attorneys and judges wear powdered wigs and red robes, it's the same show, based on adapted versions of the same scripts. Stars include Jamie Bamber (Apollo on Battlestar Galactica) and Freema Agyeman (from Doctor Who and Little Dorrit, both seen stateside), and the episode I saw was based on a third-season Law & Order script, in which a sadistic gynecologist takes advantage of his patients -- including Agyeman's assistant prosecuting attorney. TNT or BBC America, or some other cable network, should import this series immediately. I suspect all hard-core L&O fans would devour it.
UNDERBELLY -- This Australian production, based on the history of organized crime in Melbourne, plays like a Down Under cross between Martin Scorsese's Casino and Paul Haggis' EZ Streets. We spend equal time with criminals and cops, and the fact-based plots are as twisted as the characters. It's a fast-paced, sexy, violent, funny whirlwind of a crime drama. And while it's wholly engrossing as is, news from the festival is that a deal is imminent for a new production, for American TV, overseen by just the sort of U.S. director you'd love to see tackle a story like this.
BURYING BRIAN -- This New Zealand miniseries is a mature comedy-drama about four mature yet lovely women who bond together when one of them accidentally kills her husband. (Their picture leads this column above.) It's like Desperate Housewives, if one of the gals needed a little help from her friends to stay out of jail -- and it's every bit as sassy, and funny, as Housewives. Again, it holds up perfectly as is, but an American adaptation of this script, cast with the right four ladies, could be a big asset for Lifetime, USA, AMC or elsewhere.
DARWIN'S BRAVE NEW WORLD -- The festival makes room for documentaries (I'm not sure why, since it's called a FictionFest), and one of the best of them this year is a multipart series, an Australian/Canadian co-production, that's a docudrama stressing the reenactment elements. The draw is the detail of Darwin's life, and how, when he finally reveals the outline of his heretical theory of evolution to a scientific colleague, he nervously admits, "This is rather like confessing to a murder."
Fabulous photography of creatures encountered during Darwin's many voyages makes this a must-see miniseries for nature lovers, and the natural drama (so to speak) of Darwin's life should satisfy any lover of period stories. This one doesn't need to be remade -- merely imported. Animal Planet and Discovery Channel are two obvious places to start.
GUANTANAMO: INSIDE THE WIRE -- This British dcumentary is a natural fit for the PBS series P.O.V., which ought to import and present it intact. In 2001, journalist Yvonne Ridley went to Pakistan, donning a burka to investigate conditions there, and was captured by the Taliban.
For 10 days, she faced death, then was freed. Six years later, she and young British writer-producer-director David Miller got the approval to go to Guantanamo Bay -- where the oppressive media restrictions, as well as what she witnessed there, made Ridley upset, angry, frightened, sad, and other things perfect for a P.O.V. assessment of conditions at that top-secret U.S. prison facility in Cuba.
Even though what we CAN'T see is revealing, Inside the Wire does reveal a lot: about the depth and machinations of the on-site censorship, about the contents and distribution of books in the prison library, and more than one astonishing fact. For example: Musical torture was used as one of the methods to break down prisoners, and the music used was from Barney the purple dinosaur. Surely, Barney should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention. I always thought so, even here in the States...
GUEST BLOG #32: Diane Holloway Says "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" Has Struck Gold with Goldblum
July 13, 2009 7:49 AM
[Bianculli here: I'm back from Rome, and tomorrow will post a recap of the best new and proposed international TV projects knocking around at RomaFictionFest. Today, though, contributing columnist Diane Holloway wants to rave about a star of NBC's Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which airs tonight at 9 ET -- but NOT about the star of tonight's show...]
Jeff Goldblum Sucks... But In a Good Way
By Diane Holloway
Not many actors can draw me to a TV series that I don't normally watch, but Jeff Goldblum is sucking me into the eighth season of Law & Order: Criminal Intent (9 p.m. Sundays on USA).
The first seven seasons didn't strike my fancy, but this season with the new cop and a new guy? Much better.
Goldblum has replaced Chris Noth as the alternating lead cop on Dick Wolf's L&O spinoff. Howls of protest from Noth fans erupted over the casting announcement last year, but as perhaps the only woman in the country who didn't love him or his time on Sex and the City, I didn't care one bit.
Original star Vincent D'Onofrio, who still leads the CI cast every other week, has always gotten on my nerves. D'Onofrio's perpetual twitching drives me nuts, and as the years have gone by, both he and his character (Detective Goren) have seemed on the verge of "going 'round the twist," as they say in Britain. Come to think of it, both sort of have, but D'Onofrio fans slurp up every weird turn and twist.
I know, I know. Goldblum's quirky intensity, coupled with his propensity for playing wildly eccentric characters, would appear to place him in the same vein as D'Onofrio. But Goldblum, to me, is endearing, whereas D'Onofrio is off-putting.
My love affair with Goldblum began way back in 1980, when he starred with Ben Vereen in one of the best and most under-appreciated comedy-dramas of its time, Tenspeed and Brown Shoe. Goldblum played a nerdy detective who was paired with Vereen's super-hip parolee hustler. The chemistry was immediate, and the result was fast-paced fun. It didn't last, but that's one of TV's ongoing tragedies: sometimes the good die young.
Goldblum, now 56, had been floating around stage and screen for a while before he popped up on Tenspeed and Brown Shoe. He made his movie debut in Charles Bronson's Death Wish (1974) and may be remembered by alert moviegoers for a brief scene in 1977's Annie Hall. He popped in as the type of flustered Hollywood lightweight Woody Allen loves to make fun of, a desperate guy on the phone frantically babbling to his meditation guru, "I forgot my mantra!"
Even more memorable was Goldblum's performance in the iconic baby-boomer flick The Big Chill (1983). He played Michael Gold, the bespectacled, neurotic magazine writer suffering an early midlife crisis. As usual, his neuroses provided a healthy dose of comic relief in the angst-ridden comedy-drama.
Goldblum, apparently, is an acquired taste. Either his fast-talking, pointy-headed take on characters makes you hungry for more, or makes you hit the remote so fast you hurt your finger. Millions of viewers certainly fled his most recent solo series, Raines (2007), in which he played a detective who communed with dead crime victims. That little effort lasted less than half a season.
And when he starred in the 1986 remake of the camp horror film The Fly, people never quite knew whether to laugh or cringe -- or both. Certainly watching his gooey human ears drop off as he turned into the icky insect was both funny and deeply disgusting. And he sure buffed up his previously scrawny body for the role. It was a perplexing take that was not well-received.
But millions loved him as the chaos theory scientist in 1993's Jurassic Park, and once you become a certified member of the Goldblum fan club, there's no turning back. His take on New York Detective Zach Nichols in Criminal Intent is refreshing in an otherwise overly serious cop saga.
Try it... maybe you'll like it. He may not be as GQ handsome as Chris Noth (again, I never got it), but he's a whole lot more interesting.
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Diane Holloway was the TV critic for the Austin American Statesman for 30 years, until the downturn in the newspaper business prompted her to take a buyout. She's now sniffing out other possibilities. Before newspapers, she worked in Washington for the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. Maybe something entirely different is next. Or not.
GUEST BLOG #31: Tom Brinkmoeller on 'Sunday Morning' delights
July 9, 2009 2:00 AM
[Bianculli here: One of the best things about TV WORTH WATCHING, if I do say so myself (and I do), is that its writers are encouraged to follow their passions. Today, contributing columnist Tom Brinkmoeller's passion takes him to an old TV friend: a show that's been around since the Carter administration, but remains one of broadcast TV's most watchable, least hyper nonfiction newsmagazines...
'Sunday Morning' Stays at Top Form by Staying the Same
By Tom Brinkmoeller
A little more than 30 years ago, as it was getting ready to debut CBS' Sunday Morning, the network mailed out a promotional piece that was perceived as a challenge by many who received it. It was a drawing of a newspaper floating out of a TV screen.
"CBS News Sunday Morning," read the copy. "The Sunday Paper that Comes in a Tube!"
Sent to newspapers across the country, it seemed like a red cape waved in front of people so bullish at the time on print news. I know that because the people at my paper, who patiently smiled at the CBS claim, assigned me the story of finding the reactions of other news folk.
"Like other TV news programs, they'll be hard-pressed to deal effectively with other than visual news," said a news executive at one paper.
"I'm glad that TV's adding to its news coverage," said the managing editor of another paper. "God knows they need it. But I feel they could run news all day and still not equal the kind of content we offer."
"The beautiful thing about a Sunday newspaper," said another of these unfazed editors, "is that you can pick it up and read it any time during the week . . . That's something they can't easily do with a newscast."
Since that day in 1979, time-shifting of programming through home VCRs and DVRs has arrived, and it, like the Internet, has scrambled the news assessments of three decades ago. Newspapers are curled into a corner, as afraid and bewildered as the bully who's met his match. Latest figures from the group that audits newspaper circulation numbers show subscribers for Sunday papers dropped 4.8 percent between October 2008 and March 2009. Arrogance is a tricky thing.
Meanwhile, Sunday Morning is having its "best season in several years" -- so says the program's executive producer for the last 10 years, Rand Morrison. "We have 5 million loyal . . . viewers each week," in what Nielsen reports are 3.7 million homes.
But it's more than changes in the media landscape that have made Sunday Morning so successful for so long. A look at the many failed newsmagazine attempts from NBC over that span, as well as the sorry state of the surviving Dateline, proves network presence doesn't translate to lifetime respectability.
CBS' Sunday Morning started as a class act and has only improved since. Robert (Shad) Northshield, a creator of the show and its first executive producer, said back then that CBS had dedicated "a real commitment" and a "relatively high budget" to Sunday Morning. Morrison says the network's support hasn't changed and the trendiness that marks other news shows hasn't been forced on his.
"We're very lucky to have enlightened bosses who understand that, for our audience, this works. I have never had a conversation with a boss to start or stop a story."
No one has pushed to have studio windows looking out on the street. There are no live performances by pop groups. No cooking or decorating demonstrations. Host Charles Osgood doesn't ask his viewers to guess where in the world he's traveled to this week. (Morrison says, "We've been really fortunate to have had two anchors throughout the show's history, Charles Osgood and before him Charles Kuralt, who our viewers have considered to be smart and loved broadcasters.")
Instead, viewers get to see deep, truly interesting interviews with people who don't have a movie, album or book to peddle. Recent stories about Sheryl Crow, Dennis Hopper, Norman Lear, Lynda Carter, Lionel Richie and Marianne Faithfull are the kinds you don't see on Today, Good Morning America or the other regular stops on the hype circuit.
Features one recent week included two other examples of what Morrison says are stories "that take [viewers] someplace they never thought they'd be going" -- a 2-year-old pool-playing phenomenon known as New York Shorts (watch it here), and the love-to-hate process behind buying a parrot and then finding out they're more work than buyers ever imagined. The program's consistently strong reporting, producing and editing guarantee the most engrossing 90 minutes of news produced anywhere.
Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent on PBS' equally respected NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, mirrors the respect Sunday Morning carries among fellow professionals:
"They found a formula that defines who they are and what they offer uniquely, and they've stuck with it. Despite dramatic changes in the news media, and pressures to try something different and 'hip,' they haven't changed their mission or their approach in any fundamental way in all the years they've been on the air. Viewers know what they're getting when they turn to CBS' Sunday Morning -- in-depth looks at some of the most interesting and under-reported stories of the day. Plus, they've kept a crew of terrifically talented correspondents and producers, who deliver week in and week out."
Hear much praise like that for newspapers lately?
[In most markets, Sunday Morning airs at 9 a.m. ET, but check your local listings.]
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Tom Brinkmoeller, who may
have smirked with the best
of them back when CBS'
Sunday Morning premiered,
has only rarely missed a
Sunday broadcast for years.
Thanks to the Jackson Memorial TV Coverage, We'll Always Have Paris -- But Should We?
July 8, 2009 9:53 AM
Just because I was in Rome, that didn't mean I couldn't watch the Michael Jackson memorial TV coverage, on several channels, in more than one language. I even watched a Sky network late-night repeat of The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. I was part of an audience she estimated as "tens of millions," and which CNN International later claimed was "more than 1 billion." All of those viewers saw something, at the very end, I'm not certain they should have...
It was Paris Katherine Jackson, Michael's 11-year-old daughter, flanked by her relatives at the end of the ceremony. They clutched the microphone for her as Paris, formerly protected from the media by her father and seen in public shrouded by colored veils, sobbed out a two-sentence message straight from the heart. It was her first public utterance -- and to more than a billion people, it won't be forgotten.
"Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine," Paris said, choking back tears. "And I just want to say I love him so much."
As an unscripted, unexpected, unforgettable globally televised display of grief from a child to a parent, those heartfelt, heartbreaking words from Paris were the biggest such display on TV since little John John saluted the passing casket of his slain father, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963. But this new moment, somehow, reveals even more of the child's personal grief.
Maybe it was cathartic for Paris. Maybe it was something she desperately, definitely wanted to do, and maybe she's better for it. Certainly, she got the world's notice, reminding everyone that the loss of Michael Jackson was, to she and her siblings, more than just the passing of a phenomenally talented pop star.
But I'm conflicted about this. I wonder, though Paris' comments were by far the most poignant part of the lengthy tribute, whether they WERE the best thing for the child, or whether she should have been shielded from the media spotlight just as aggressively as when her father was alive. I lost a parent suddenly at about that age, and I'm not sure, whatever decisions I may have made at the time about what to say or how to act, there's a justification for broadcasting such grief.
I don't trust my own reactions, though, to decide whether baring her soul, and delivering such a loving, sad message on international TV, was good or bad -- for her OR for the viewing public.
You tell me.
All I know is, it felt almost too painful, and too private, to watch.
Problems With Site Server -- May Not Be Able to Update Today
July 8, 2009 2:21 AM
Working from Rome isn't all it's cracked up to be. When I was loading this morning's BEST BETS update, my system disconnected, then locked me out of my own website administration. I'll have to take this issue to a higher pay and brain grade, but it'll take a while, thanks to the time difference. Bad news: No fresh Best Bets until this is repaired. Good news: It was a very slow TV night anyway. Wish me luck...
Michael Jackson Coverage Goes Mega -- Again
July 7, 2009 1:55 AM
Last week on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, an overview of the saturation media coverage of Jackson's death was capped by a reporter who noted, for the record, that Michael Jackson can only die once.
Maybe. But today on TV, the networks are diving headfirst into round two... the memorial coverage.
The morning salvo, built around the public memorial service at Staples Center in Los Angeles -- public, that is, for the people who won a raffle for free tickets, with more than a million people requesting seats -- will start with the network morning shows and cable news outlets, even though the service itself doesn't start until 1 p.m. ET.
News is out, of course, about some of the celebrities schedule to attend -- though who's really coming, and who might be performing, and how long it might be, is all in flux. Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder and Usher are three names bandied about a lot this morning, so we'll see.
But where should we watch?
For the morning and afternoon events, I'd start with ABC, where an expanded Good Morning America pairs host Charles Gibson with Nightline co-anchor Martin Bashir, he of the famed Michael Jackson interview a few years back. I'd also check in with MTV and BET, as well as the traditional cable news outlets. MSNBC starts with special coverage at 11 a.m. ET, CNN and MTV at noon, and the actual service begins at 1.
Then, in prime time, Michael Jackson will die, or at least be remembered, all over again. Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters, like pit bulls refusing to let go of the same chew toy, will co-anchor a special 20/20 program at 9 p.m. ET. That's one to watch, definitely, if only to witness the "chemistry" between the two reigning divas of ABC News.
ABC has another Jackson special at 10 p.m. ET, the same hour that CBS presents a special 48 Hours and NBC serves up a special hour of Dateline. And when they're through, flip to Comedy Central, where Stewart and company will have had enough time, barely, to lampoon the afternoon memorial coverage on tonight's Daily Show at 11 p.m. ET.
Only dying once? Not on TV. With the last global music superstar of such stature, expect Michael Jackson to keep dying, on television, for a long, long time.
When in Rome...
July 6, 2009 9:22 AM
On the 4th of July, while by tradition I should have been grilling a gamey roster of exotic meats, I was instead airborne, flying from Philadelphia to Rome. I'm here for business, which is a pleasure, but I'm also prepared, between duties, for a week of all-out celebration...
I had to take it with me to pull it off, but I've finally sent back to New York the finished, no-fooling, completely edited and updated and revised Smothers Brothers manuscript. About a ream of pages, marked with my notations and deletions and additions on top of my copy editor's, which are in addition to the revisions by my editor. Included were Post-It flags marking places where I'd added a sentence or paragraph long enough to require them being typed out rather than handwritten -- 30 flags for 29 chapters.
So now it's out of my hands, literally. If UPS doesn't mess up this international shipment, my editor will have the manuscript tomorrow, and her understandably impatient and hamstrung colleagues will be able to lurch into a higher gear. Meanwhile, all the rest of the book material, including the dedication and acknowledgments, was sent this morning via email. So I'm DONE, DONE, DONE. No more revisions. No more fact-checking interviews.
Finishing all this up meant I missed a day's sessions, and at least two terrific opportunities for meals and a private tour. But already, I've enjoyed one such meal, at a remote hilltop location so gorgeous, with food so delicious, it as sinful. We even drove over part of the original Appian Way (see picture) to get there, winding our Way, Appian or otherwise, through hidden streets I could never hope to find unaided, and undriven.
But from now on, it's all work and all play. I'm here as a member of the International Advisory Board of RomaFictionFest 2009, a gathering of international TV writers, producers, executives and other interested types specializing in the creation of scripted dramas, comedies and documentaries. In other words, this is a convention of people determined to rage against reality TV.
For the next few days, I'll be seeing some of the best TV in the world, and hearing about what's coming next. Eating and drinking some of the best food and wine in the world is a bonus -- but after shipping off Dangerously Funny, I'm determined to be Dangerously Indulgent.
GUEST BLOG #30: Diane Holloway likes Dick Enberg's versatility
July 3, 2009 12:30 AM
[Bianculli here: Wimbledon tennis is available all weekend, regardless of weather, thanks to the new retractable Centre Court roof. Men's semis are televised live Friday by ESPN2 (7 a.m. ET) and NBC (noon ET). Women's finals are Saturday at 9 a.m. ET, and the men's on Sunday at the same time, both on NBC. And at the climax of these weeks of British tennis, contributing columnist Diane Holloway salutes one of its amiable, always professional sportscasters...]
Dick Enberg meets every sports challenge
By Diane Holloway
Oh my. Dick Enberg -- arguably one of the best and certainly the most versatile sportscaster ever to grace televised sports -- turned in another brilliant performance during ESPN's Wimbledon tennis coverage.
Seriously, is there a smarter, more subdued, yet more enjoyable communicator working in sports today? I don't think so. And as many of you know, I'm a big-time sports watcher. But I'm happy to hear alternative nominations . Just click on "comments" below. (Please keep the additions to current sportscasters.)
Enberg is my clear-cut winner, and has been since he hit the national stage in 1975 calling college basketball for NBC. Nobody holds a candle to him. Not Al Michaels or John Madden or Marv Albert or even Bob Costas.
I think it's time to send out a hearty appreciation to Enberg, who at 74 hasn't lost a step in terms of energy or knowledge. He's still very much at the top of his game. And he still looks like he's having more fun than any working professional should be allowed to have. The smile is wide, genuine and permanent. But I feel kudos are in order.
I interviewed Enberg several times over the course of my tenure as TV critic for the Austin American-Statesman, mostly for his coverage of the NFL and the Olympics. But I've watched him exude quiet excitement during many TV sports events. He's a true sports Renaissance man.
Let's see, where to begin the Enberg story? Before he signed with NBC, Enberg was the voice of the California Angels, the Los Angeles Rams and UCLA basketball. And before that, the Michigan native was an academic. He has a master's degree and a PhD in health science from Indiana University. Armed with book smarts, he became an assistant professor and baseball coach at California State-Northridge.
On-air experience? Oh my! Enberg has covered NFL games for 41 seasons, the Super Bowl 10 times, the Rose Bowl nine times, the Olympics four times, Wimbledon 25 times, the French Open 22 times, the U.S. Open Tennis Championship five times, U.S. Open Golf Championship five times, the World Series and heavyweight boxing championships five times, NCAA basketball championship 13 times, the NBA playoffs numerous times . . . there's more, but my fingers are tiring.
Succinctly put, Enberg knows his stuff in tennis, football, basketball, baseball and golf. Oh, and he has put in time calling horse races, track and field, gymnastics and even figure skating. In 2000, he switched from NBC to CBS and remains much in demand. Who knows what NBC was thinking when they let him go.
What makes Enberg so good? Well, obviously he's smart and articulate. But he also knows when to analyze and when to shut up. Knowing when to talk and when to be quiet takes confidence and years of experience. And it signals to the viewer that he thinks we're smart enough to recognize a magnificent moment when we see it.
For his efforts, Enberg has raked in so many Emmys he's lost count, and he's won them for sportscasting, writing and producing. He nabbed a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 2000. Not that it matters in the overall scheme of sports on TV, but Enberg also has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
I once asked Enberg if he had a favorite sport among all he has covered, and he shrugged with that shy grin and said, "Oh my, I love 'em all." When you enjoy your work that much, it seeps into the broadcast booth and into living rooms all over America. What a joy for us.
(ESPN2 has the Wimbledon semi-finals Friday 7 a.m.-noon ET. Then NBC takes over Wimbledon coverage Friday noon-5 p.m. ET. NBC has the women's finals Saturday 9 a.m.-2 p.m. ET and the men's finals Sunday 9 a.m.-3 p.m. ET.)
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Diane Holloway was the TV critic for the Austin American Statesman for 30 years, until the downturn in the newspaper business prompted her to take a buyout. She's now sniffing out other possibilities. Before newspapers, she worked in Washington for the Library of Congress, the American Film Institute and the National Endowment for the Arts. Maybe something entirely different is next. Or not.
