Steven Rubio's Online Life

orphan black, season one

Here’s a show that’s easy to obsess over, but first you have to know it exists. It’s on BBC America, made in Canada, and I assume it gets low ratings, although they may be good enough for BBC America, since it’s been renewed for a second season. The basic setup is a cross of science fiction and mystery: Sarah Manning sees a woman who looks exactly like her commit suicide by throwing herself in front of a moving train, and spends the early part of the season trying to figure out why that other woman existed. We find out soon enough … there are only ten episodes in the season, and the show works at a breakneck pace anyway, so it doesn’t take long for Sarah (and the audience) to find out she is one of a set of clones.

There’s a plot twist happening just around every corner, yet for the most part Orphan Black maintains some connection to reality. The clones are real people, and we learn a lot about them over the course of the season. The writing is strong, and the actors are up to the challenge of delivering those lines. I’d argue that Orphan Black isn’t particularly atmospheric … there aren’t a lot of special effects beyond getting the same actress to appear twice or more in the same picture, and the look is fairly generic (it’s shot in Toronto, and with a little effort you can tell it’s Toronto, but the fact that it’s not immediately obvious demonstrates that atmosphere isn’t really the point).

If what I’ve described sounds appealing to you, then you ought to check this out when it makes its inevitable appearance on disc and streaming. In scale, it’s about on the level of something like Lost Girl, which also combines good writing and an excellent performance by Anna Silk in the lead, but Lost Girl is more into the supernatural/fantasy genre (the title character is a succubus), which doesn’t appeal much to me. (That’s not a knock on the series, which was good enough to keep my attention for a while until the disconnect between my tastes and the show’s setting became too great.)

Orphan Black, the series, gets a B+. I look forward to it each week, I don’t fall behind on episodes, and the narrative and characters are interesting. There is one thing that raises Orphan Black above its own level though. Her name is Tatiana Maslany, and no, I hadn’t heard of her, either, even though she’s been in TV since 1997 and in movies since Ginger Snaps 2 in 2004 (I’ll have to watch that one again, now that I know who she is). She’s won an acting award at Sundance … she’s been around, and she’s only 27. She gets the showy part here, playing (at least) seven different clones. There have been many multiple personality roles over the years: Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve, Sally Field in Sybil, Toni Collette in United States of Tara. And all of those actresses won awards for their work. But Maslany has a different task here. She isn’t playing one person with multiple personalities, she is playing multiple people with one personality each. And she pulls it off magnificently. Sarah is British and a con artist, Beth is Canadian and a cop, Alison a soccer mom from Canada, Cosima an American PhD student in biology, and then there’s Helena from Ukraine and Katja from Germany. Each of these characters is distinct from the others; you are never lost, you always know who you are watching (makeup and wigs help, of course, but this is largely due to Maslany’s skills).

It gets even more complicated at times. Maslany (who is Canadian) plays Sarah (who is British) pretending to be Beth (Canadian). Alison (Canadian soccer mom) pretends to be Sarah (British petty thief). Helena (Ukranian) pretends to be Sarah. In each case, you know who is behind the mask. It’s like watching Face/Off, with Maslany in both the Nic Cage and John Travolta roles. Most of the time, Maslany is portraying one character, and she inhabits each one. It’s not just the wigs or physical tics … it’s as if you’re watching seven different actresses.

Suffice to say that Tatiana Maslany is giving one of the great performances ever on television. It’s doubtful the major award winners will notice (I’m still waiting for Emmy Rossum to get an Emmy). She’s up for a Best Actress in a Drama award from the Broadcast Television Journalists Association, which is something, although given her more well-known competition (Claire Danes, Vera Farmiga, Julianna Margulies, Elisabeth Moss, and Keri Russell), she must be considered a long shot. If Orphan Black gets a B+, Tatiana Maslany gets an A.

music on tv

Interesting divide on my Twitter timeline btw Kanye song dissection and indie rock namechecking from the Armisen sketch #snl

— annkpowers (@annkpowers) May 19, 2013

top of the lake

In 2013, it’s hard to know when to write about a TV series. The first time I ever said anything about TV on this blog was January 8, 2002. In one post I noted that a new Buffy episode would be on later that night. (Thanks to the Internet, I can look it up and find that it was Season Six, Episode 11, “Gone”.) I also mentioned 24, which had the seventh episode of the first season that night. In a separate post, I briefly announced that I had just finished watching Season One of Sex and the City (we didn’t have HBO in those days, so I assume this was on DVD). That would have put me three seasons behind. Those two posts established the two primary ways of watching TV shows: live, or after the fact. TiVo was introduced in 1999. We didn’t get a DVR at our house until December of 2004. So in the early 2000s, the only way we could catch up with old shows was via DVDs.

Now, of course, there are DVDs, and streaming, and On Demand, and DVRs … there are a lot of ways to watch TV shows, so many, in fact, that fewer and fewer people watch them when they are actually aired. (And, I imagine, fewer people pay for access to premium channels when they can just wait for the Blu-ray.) At first, this use of “time shifting” allowed you to watch an 8:00 show at 9:00, or a Tuesday show on a Wednesday. (And, of course, you could fast-forward through the commercials.) Now, though, it’s common for people to wait until a season is complete, and then to pig out on an entire season over the course of a weekend, several months after the show has aired.

So, when do I write about a TV series? When it’s on? That’s what I used to do, and what I mostly still do: a post when a season begins, another when it ends. I’m not one for weekly recaps (I read them, but I don’t write them). I’m also a spoiler-phobe, so I try not to include spoilers when I write.

But how long does the spoiler rule last? I’m always telling people to catch up on Rubicon, or Lights Out … those shows have been off the air for a while, am I supposed to avoid spoilers in case someone actually takes me up on the suggestion and watches them? (Not that long ago, Nathan Fillion tweeted a joke that was also a spoiler for Firefly/Serenity. He got chewed out, but, as he noted, the movie was from 2005 and the TV series from 2002.)

Top of the Lake was a classy Sundance mini-series (in the U.S., anyway … it was a co-production with the BBC, and with UKTV in Australia and New Zealand). It starred Elisabeth Moss, featured Holly Hunter in what ended up being almost a glorified cameo, and a lot of other fine actors I didn’t recognize (most notably Peter Mullan, writer/director of The Magdalene Sisters). Here’s a spoiler for you: in a real cameo, Lucy Lawless turned up in one episode. The entire production was created by Jane Campion and Gerard Lee, with beautiful location shooting in New Zealand. The final episode aired last night; today you can already stream the entire series on Netflix. Which means, if I convince you it is worth watching, you can catch up this weekend.

Here in the States, Top of the Lake was compared to The Killing, another detective series with an unusual setting, dark secrets, a very good pilot, and top-notch acting from the leads. Sadly, The Killing went astray (not for everyone … the third season is about to start, so someone out there is watching), resulting in some of the harshest criticism I’ve ever read for something that got such positive reviews in the beginning. Top of the Lake doesn’t stick around long enough to go astray, which is a point in its favor. But the truth is, Campion and Lee have such command of the material that they were never in danger of wandering off. Holly Hunter’s character is a kind of guru to a commune of women, and their scenes aren’t always clearly connected to the rest of the narrative, but they make thematic sense, and it all comes together in the end, anyway.

Moss plays a detective with a few secrets of her own who becomes obsessed with a case involving a missing, pregnant 12-year-old. The series brings together a lot of common elements without ever quite letting us know how common they are … you think you’re watching something entirely new, but in retrospect, you recognize much of what goes on. The troubled detective from the small town where the crimes take place, the town where everyone knows everyone and everyone has something to hide, the red herrings and the red herrings that turn out to be on target, the sympathetic police officer … it’s all familiar, but in a different location and with a different feel.

While all of this goes on, there are undercurrents about power and gender and violence. Top of the Lake doesn’t rub this in our faces, the way a killer-porn show like Criminal Minds does. It takes its time, it gets its points across, all the while keeping the mysteries intriguing.

Elisabeth Moss is great, and if you only know her from The West Wing and/or Mad Men, you’ll enjoy her even more. I have a few quibbles about the conclusion, but it often seems that a story with deep and interesting characters getting involved in deep and interesting events fails us at the end. Perhaps it’s because the journey is so good, we don’t want it to end, so any conclusion feels forced. Grade for series: A-.

emmy rossum in shameless

shameless: season three finale

I know, I know … Mad Men began its new season last night, and that’s what I’m supposed to write about. Mad Men is one of the best shows in TV history, while Shameless is, well, Shameless. But you don’t need me to tell you about Mad Men, not when you can look here and here and here and here and here and (welcome back, Heather Havrilesky!) here. Not many of them wrote about the Shameless season finale … props to Alan Sepinwall for doing so.

I’m not here to say Shameless is “better” than Mad Men. But Mad Men doesn’t need my help (not that a tiny blog like this one has any impact in the first place). Shameless, on the other hand, is typical of a certain kind of show I write about on occasion (maybe it needs its own version of the Karen Sisco Award). The problem is summed up in this sentence, which led off a post from earlier this season: “I’m still trying to understand what makes Shameless work, and why I’ve never convinced anyone to watch it.” I gave Season One a B+, and Season Two an A- … this has never been, and likely never will be, a show that gets an A … yet a casual look at previous times I’ve posted about Shameless tells me that only one person in the comments has ever even admitted to watching the show (thanks, Tomás).

The kitchen-sink approach to plot is the main reason Shameless is too erratic to be considered great. The title is perfect: they really are shameless when it comes to plot contrivances. But the show is about the characters, and in almost every case, those characters deliver, no matter what is tossed in their way. It’s hard to know what was the most “shameless” plot device of Season Three. The part where Veronica and Kev can’t have a baby because V isn’t fertile, so they get V’s mom to be the surrogate, resulting in some odd three-ways, is in the running, but as usual, it’s Frank who is at the center of the best/worst of it, from convincing his son the kid has cancer so he can finagle money from charities, to calling Social Services to narc on the Gallaghers for their lifestyle (there’s no adults, he notes ironically), to pretending to be gay so he can get paid by pro-gay groups (and later, by a group that “cures” homosexuality). Frank has always been the biggest problem with Shameless; William H. Macy is good, and he’s the biggest star on the show, but Frank is over-the-top unlikeable yet it often seems like we’re supposed to find him funny.

The season finale played like a series finale, although Shameless has already been renewed for another season. Some of the characters got their ticket out of poverty, others moved out of town, at least one might be dead. Frank actually showed some decency, which was nicely done … I mistrust attempts at heart-warming emotional pulls, but Frank is such a creep that it was good to see him recognize, at least for a moment, that his kids have love for him somewhere deep inside.

But, as anyone knows who has read my previous stuff about Shameless, the above is just me filling space until I get to what really matters, which is Emmy Rossum. She plays every emotion with the exact right touch, from the hard-ass woman forced by poverty and shitty parents into a protective stance to the still-almost-a-kid who tries so hard and can’t help breaking down once in awhile. It’s one of the best performances on television, and if I gave a shit about awards, I’d say it was outrageous that she has never won an Emmy for her work (no pun intended). And Shameless knows what to do with her … while she is often quite glamorous and beautiful when she’s on a talk show, Shameless lets her natural beauty shine through, which somehow that makes her Fiona even more heartbreaking.

Season Three still only gets an A-, but Rossum gets her third straight A+. C’mon, folks, watch this show before I have to make up an award for it.

justified, season four finale

There is so much going on in this seemingly casual show that it’s silly to reduce everything down to two characters.

But Justified has, not just one, but two extremely charismatic characters at its core (not to mention some pretty good ones outside of those two). The title is also the theme of the series: when are our actions justified? Raylan Givens is a marshal who gets bad guys, and is very cool doing it. He is also a deeply disturbed individual with one of the worst fathers ever. The first scene of the first episode set the standard for how Raylan answers the question embedded in the title: he forces the issue until he is justified doing what he wanted to do anyway. It’s the old “he drew first” justification, and Raylan uses it on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, Boyd Crowder is the bad guy. He and Raylan grew up together. Raylan’s dad liked Boyd more. When they grew up, Raylan became a lawman, Boyd a criminal. Timothy Olyphant is the star … Walton Goggins is the secondary character. We root for Raylan, because for the most part, Justified helps us understand why he does what he does. We root for Boyd, too, but that’s more a case of Goggins grabbing the screen. In the crucial conversation between the two in the finale (and Justified is always good when Raylan and Boyd have a chat), each in turn accuses the other of lying to themselves so they can wake up in the morning. And they are both right. Raylan tells Boyd, “I think you love anything lets you put your head on the pillow at night believing you’re not the bad guy,” a particularly cutting remark since it casts doubt on Boyd’s great love for Ava. Boyd’s reply is on target, as well. “What do you tell yourself at night when you lay your head down allows you to wake up in the morning pretending that you’re not the bad guy?”

Nicky the Gangster knows how Raylan’s mind works. He knows that Raylan always goads the other guy into drawing first. So when they meet, Nicky doesn’t bring a gun. He knows Raylan won’t shoot first. What he doesn’t realize is how far Raylan will go to make things happen the way he wants them to happen, and still maintain the fantasy to which Boyd refers. Raylan doesn’t shoot Nicky, but he sets Nicky up to be murdered by other gangsters.

Justified is good enough, though, that it doesn’t let Raylan off that easy. Over the course of four seasons, Raylan has become more like Boyd (which is to say, more like his father). And he knows it. The message of Justified isn’t that Raylan’s way is right because he’s a lawman. The message is that Raylan is being destroyed from the inside. He no longer believes that his actions are justified. But he can’t escape those actions.

Grade for season finale: A. Grade for Season Four: A.

the walking dead and game of thrones

Sunday night saw the Season 3 finale of The Walking Dead, and the Season 3 premiere of Game of Thrones. Comparing and contrasting the two shows sounds like a cheap idea for a crappy freshman composition paper. I’m gonna do it, anyway (with spoilers).

The Walking Dead airs on AMC. It is a ratings smash, indeed a record-setter for basic cable. Because AMC is a basic cable channel, there are limits to what they will show, which is to say, even when they post advance warning about nudity, you won’t see much beyond a woman’s bare back. I mention this because Game of Thrones, beloved as it is, is regularly chastised for its incessant female nudity, which often appears gratuitous.

The Walking Dead has its own way of drawing in viewers interested in more “mature” fare. Quite simply, The Walking Dead is one of the most graphically violent shows in TV history. It speaks volumes about the cultural priorities of America that you will never see a woman’s bare breast on The Walking Dead, but you will see dozens, hundreds of murders every episode. The way they get around any possible censorship issues is pretty clever: the vast majority of victims of violent acts on the show are zombies. They are already dead, and we are repeatedly told they are no longer human. Oh, they need to be wiped out because they try to eat the brains of the living, so they deserve what they get. Nonetheless, even a regular viewer like myself is often astonished at the ease with which the show works on-screen slaughter into the mix. Beheadings, sharp objects thrust into eye sockets, gun shots to the head … every possible way there is to destroy a zombie’s head has been shown, often in detail, on The Walking Dead.

Understand, I like this. I am not bothered by it. But I admit I am puzzled that I read far more articles about the use of naked women on Game of Thrones than I do articles about the vicious visuals of The Walking Dead.

In the finale, there was an attempt to make us care, for a change, as a character killed a few dozen actual human beings who were purportedly on “his side”. This was supposed to offer final proof that the man was not just crazy, but evil. But viewers could be forgiven if we barely even noticed when he wiped out those people … we see that kind of carnage every episode, and while I’m not certain where I stand on the “watching violence makes you immune” theory, it is true that after watching a few thousand zombies get zapped, a few dozen humans barely registers.

Again, I’m not really complaining. I think the zombie stuff is the best part of the show, and I tend to get impatient at the character “development”, such as it is. I’m not sure I’d watch The Walking Dead if it wasn’t for all those zombie massacres. But I’m not going to pretend I watch it because it offers an in-depth look at humanity on the edge.

Plus, as Lorraine Berry effectively argues, the show’s vision of post-apocalyptic life is frightening in its acceptance of traditional gender and racial roles. Here’s one example:

When Rick returns to the prison, he chooses to talk to the following people about whether he should go through with the decision to turn over Michonne. Hershel. Daryl. And Merle. Merle — who beat up Glenn and took Maggie to the governor — Merle, who has functioned previously as the person where all of the show’s racial problems are located. Rick doesn’t talk to Glenn. And he doesn’t ask a single woman in the group. Merle refers to the group that Rick does talk to as “the inner circle.” That it doesn’t matter how awful a person Merle is, Rick will still consult him rather than consult the group about this awful decision. It doesn’t matter that Carol and Maggie have become crack shots who are capable of defending the group from the walkers; they don’t have any power. They don’t have any power because they don’t get to make any decisions.

Grade for finale: B+. Grade for Season 3: B+.

Then there’s Game of Thrones. Before we watched the season premiere, I asked my wife who was her favorite among the many GoT characters. “The Mother of Dragons”, she replied, referring to Daenerys. Dany is an interesting choice, especially if you’ve never watched the show. Emilia Clarke, the actress who plays Dany, has done as much nudity as any major character on the show. She has suffered through that old warhorse story of being raped, and then falling in love with the man who violated her (he falls for her, as well). Most of her scenes take place far away from the main action of the series (this affects many of the characters, since GoT covers so much territory). Why would she be my wife’s favorite? Because she has real power, thanks to her dragons. There is not a single woman on The Walking Dead with real power. Nor do most of the women on Game of Thrones fare particularly well. Queen Cersei is ultimately unable to control her son, King Joffrey. Catelyn Stark is currently under arrest on orders from her son. Margaery is wheedling her way into the realm of power by attaching herself to Joffrey. But Dany and her dragons? They have power.

There are a few other female characters who manage to escape some of this. My wife’s second favorite character is young Arya, a feisty girl with a knack for working her way through difficulties. Brienne has power because she is bigger, stronger, and basically better than all of the men, who taunt her for being a woman who wants to be a knight.

Game of Thrones can’t be reduced to any one issue. There are so many characters, and so many plot arcs, that a big problem is simply finding room for it all. But Game of Thrones addresses power and fantasy, features characters of real depth who can change over time, and includes a large list of actors doing great work. The Walking Dead has zombies.

There is room for both shows, of course. But only one of these is a classic.

Grade for Season 3 premiere of Game of Thrones: A.

stand-up to sitcom

At breakfast today, Robin brought up an interesting question: who was the first stand-up comic to do a TV sitcom. She thought we could start with Roseanne and work backwards, and I quickly came up with Redd Foxx. I told her I loved the question because it made me think, no matter what the answer was. What is a sitcom? When did they begin? What actually makes a performer a stand-up comic? And what is the history of stand-up comedy and situation comedies? Off the top of my head, I assume stand-up evolved out of vaudeville, and sitcoms began with radio. I also felt we were asking something more specific than was stated: did the comic have to star in the series? Did the sitcom have to begin as a TV series and not as a continuation of a radio show?

When we got home, I started searching. I know I’ve missed a lot … this list is tentative … and I know I am stretching the definitions of both stand-up comic and TV sitcom. But here are some early examples of sitcoms with stand-up comics, in reverse chronology.

Bill Cosby, The Bill Cosby Show. This debuted in the fall of 1969. Cos played a high-school P.E. teacher. It wasn’t his first series, of course … that would be I Spy, which ran from 1965-8. But that show wasn’t a comedy.

Phyllis Diller, The Pruitts of Southampton (later The Phyllis Diller Show). This one debuted in the fall of 1966, and featured Diller as the head of a rich family that had gone broke. It only lasted one season. The most remarkable thing to me was that none of the various lists I checked out mentioned this series. Diller was one of the people Robin and I thought of over breakfast; she seemed like an obvious choice. But, as usual, Diller has to fight for recognition.

Joey Bishop, The Joey Bishop Show. This was a spin-off from another series I’ll get to shortly. It had a checkered existence, at least at first. Bishop played a press agent, but after the first season, the show was revamped with a new cast, and Bishop became a talk-show host. It ran for four seasons, beginning in the fall of 1961.

Andy Griffith, The Andy Griffith Show. This is tricky, because I’m not sure Griffith was ever what we think of as a stand-up comedian. He was a monologist, and his story about a football game sold almost a million copies in 1953. He had other recordings … I can recall his Hamlet … but I understand he might not qualify for this discussion. Anyway, his series began in the fall of 1960.

Joe E. Ross, You’ll Never Get Rich (later The Phil Silvers Show). This show, which began in the fall of 1955, is often remembered as “Sgt. Bilko”. Ross was not the star, but just one of many supporting characters, so you might not want to allow this one. He was the co-star of Car 54 Where Are You?, which debuted in 1961, and even later, It’s About Time.

Danny Thomas, Make Room for Daddy (later The Danny Thomas Show). This show, which debuted in the fall of 1953, was eventually the parent of Joey Bishop’s spin-off. It ran for eleven seasons. I don’t know if Thomas ever did stand-up … he was a radio performer from the beginning of his career, so he may not qualify.

Jack Benny, The Jack Benny Program. Began its TV run in the fall of 1950, but the radio version (one of the greatest radio comedies of all time) goes back all the way to 1932.

George Burns and Gracie Allen,  The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. The TV version began a couple of weeks before Benny, so they get the “oldest” prize so far. They came out of vaudeville, so I suppose your opinion about whether they qualify depends on how you define stand-up comedy. To be honest, I’m having a bit of trouble pinning down the debut of the radio show … call it 1934.

I remember every one of these TV shows, which can’t be said for the last entry. I thought of Morey Amsterdam for his work on The Dick Van Dyke Show, but he’d been on TV long before that:

Morey Amsterdam, The Morey Amsterdam Show. The first episode aired on December 12, 1948, and ran for 71 episodes. Amsterdam played himself, and it seemed to have a variety show format, but Wikipedia calls it a sitcom.

Here is Andy Griffith’s classic “What It Was, Was Football”:

did i ever

There’s a web site called “Did I Ever Tell You About the Time…” that offers people the chance to tell dull stories of their brushes with fame. The FAQ for the site explains: “Your story must be an anecdote about meeting a Pop Star. It must be dull. That’s it.” They also prefer that the story is short.

Maybe an example would help. Here’s what I got when I clicked the “Random” link:

I had at meeting at a music management company once. As I was going down the stairs, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page was ascending them. He nodded at me as we passed. I was too slow on the uptake to nod in return and had passed him before I could do anything.

I saw him a few weeks later having a coffee on Portobello Road. I didn’t nod at him that time either.

You get the idea.

Of course this made me think about my own exciting tales. The biggest problem is that most of my so-called brushes with fame are with people who are not pop stars. If I adhered to that standard, I don’t suppose I’d have any tales to tell. So I’ll stretch it a bit, include a couple of actors, and also musicians who, if not pop stars, are at least famous to me. I’ve told many of these stories before.

Is Jack Casady a pop star? I suppose he was a bit in the late-60s, but then, I feel obliged to explain who he was, which means he’s certainly no longer a pop star, and likely never was. He was the bass player for Jefferson Airplane, and later, Hot Tuna. He was my favorite bassist when I was a player myself, and it wasn’t a bad choice … he’s great. I had two encounters with him, both of which follow my standard pattern in such situations. First, I notice the person. Second, I freak out because I’m in the presence of fame. Third, I act like nothing’s happening, because in the Bay Area, we’re supposed to be cool about this stuff. I saw him once at a Renaissance Faire in 1973 or so, just wandering around. And in the 80s, I took a leak next to him in one of those urinal troughs at the Fillmore at a Hüsker Dü concert.

Let’s see … fast-forward to the early 80s. We went to LA for the wedding of a friend. Another friend introduced us to her friend, Ralph Mauro, an actor who had just finished shooting They Call Me Bruce?, a comedy starring Tonight Show favorite Johnny Yune and Margaux Hemingway. This probably doesn’t fit the site’s standards … the anecdote is dull, but since we talked for quite a while, I feel like it’s a bit too substantial. Perhaps a better example comes from the same trip, when I met Brian Seff. I knew of him as “Rick” of Rick and Ruby, a comedy/musical act in the Bay Area that appeared in The Pee-wee Herman Show and on Mork and Mindy. In this case, I fear I gushed a bit, and while I recall Seff being polite, I don’t think he was enjoying himself as I badgered him. (I now know that he had just moved to LA, with “The Rick and Ruby Show” having broken up.)

Gee, I think I’m already done. My life has been so boring, I don’t even have any lame stories for that web site. I guess I’ll fall back on Gregory Peck. Here’s how I told part of that story in the first year of this blog:

I'm reminded of the time when I got to meet and hang out for a bit with Gregory Peck for a few days some years ago. At one point, thinking of the awful Boys From Brazil, I asked Mr. Peck if he ever got into a movie, saw it was going to stink, and decided that at least he could have some fun with his role. No, he assured me, that would be unfair to the audience. His job was to do his best, no matter what the circumstances; his audience expected no less. Gregory Peck was an exceedingly charming man, and I consider myself very lucky to have met him for even those few hours. But his answer explained the problem: he was so worried about his audience that he never allowed for the possibility that in a piece of shit like The Boys From Brazil, we were all in on the joke, and so he ended up looking foolish for trying to do his best. Meanwhile, in the same film, Lawrence Olivier tarted up his role as if it was more fun than having a three-way with Vivian Leigh and Danny Kaye. The result? Olivier is the only thing worth seeing in the entire film.

I have a couple of other Gregory Peck stories, but this is the one that actually placed me in fame’s orbit, rather than merely watching from afar. This is also from my blog:

Well, I was just searching myself via Amazon's "search all the books in our store" thingie ... yes, I'm vain like that ... and I find the following, on page 377-8 of the book Gregory Peck: A Charmed Life by Lynn Haney:

Around this time journalist Steven Rubio confronted Greg with an intriguing question. 'At one point, thinking of the awful Boys From Brazil, I asked Mr Peck if he ever got into a movie, saw it was going to stink and decided that at least he could have some fun with his role. No, he assured me, that would be unfair to the audience. His job was to do his best, no matter what the circumstances; his audience expected no less... But his answer explained the problem: he was so worried about his audience that he never allowed for the possibility that in a piece of shit like The Boys From Brazil, we were all in on the joke, and soon he ended up looking foolish for trying to do his best. Meanwhile, in the same film, Lawrence Olivier tarted up his role as if it was more fun than having a three-way with Vivian Leigh and Danny Kaye. The result? Olivier is the only thing worth seeing in the entire film.'

The quotes are, of course, from my old blog post. Haney doesn't get everything right, which makes you wonder ... how hard is it to cut-and-paste, anyway? She changes a couple of words and messes with some of the punctuation, and while it's a matter of contention these days whether or not bloggers are journalists, I don't think of myself as one. What's even weirder is the part that introduces the anecdote, "Around this time."  The context is the critical reaction to Boys From Brazil, which came out in 1978. (On the same page, Haney includes an extended quote from Pauline Kael's review of the film ... yes, I'm on the same page as Pauline Kael! That can be taken two ways, of course ... we're both on page 377 of Haney's book, and we're both on the same page regarding Peck's performance.) But I didn't meet Peck and ask him that question until sometime around 1990 ... I don't remember the exact year, but it was while I was in grad school. I most certainly wasn't a journalist then, just a guy sitting in the audience while Peck took questions about acting.

Maybe the next time I’m desperate for something to post, I’ll review the story about me, Bob Dylan, Joel Selvin, and the wife of Ralph J. Gleason.

And, oh yeah, I once shook hands with Muddy Waters. (That one never gets old.)

girls, season two

Girls demands that we talk about it.

Writing about Girls, Ellen Gray noted:

Maybe I’d have been more shocked if I weren’t already a much bigger fan of Showtime’s “Shameless,” a show watched by more people that seems to generate only half the buzz, despite plot points that recently included a man trying to impregnate his own mother-in-law — the old-fashioned way — and more teen sex than “Skins” ever dreamed of.

If I continue to prefer “Shameless” to “Girls,” it’s not so much for the sex as it is for the sheer exuberance of its characters, who for the most part have problems bigger than Hannah’s and who still mostly manage to pull themselves out of bed every day.

I think the last few words are a cheap shot … the characters in Shameless are indeed exuberant, and their problems are bigger than just about anyone’s, but those of us who have had our fair share of “can’t get out of bed” days know how debilitating it can be. And I know I’m supposed to be writing about Girls, not Shameless. But I’m puzzled that Girls gets argued about while Shameless gets ignored, when they are both pretty great shows dealing with 20-something women with no money struggling in the big city. If I had to guess, I’d say Lena Dunham’s skills at self-promoting make the difference (and more power to her, I’m not complaining). Shameless tries to get our attention by the outrageous things that happen on the show; Girls gets our attention by locking onto the current Zeitgeist. As Hannah said, she thinks (or thought) she might a voice of a generation. (Most people just quote the first part, before she qualifies her statement: “I think I may be the voice of my generation”. The difference is crucial, Dunham knows it, and too many people ignore it in their hatred of the character, the show, and Dunham.)

Dunham provides the focus for Girls, which is “her show” even more than other show-runner classics like The Sopranos, The Wire, or Deadwood. Significantly, all three of those series were violent and male-centered, while Girls is perhaps emotionally violent but, as the title reminds us, very female-centered. Combine Dunham’s work on the series as creator, director, writer, and star, and the autobiographical connections to Dunham’s real life, and you have a series that people assume isn’t just about Hannah Horvath, but also about Lena Dunham. No one thinks David Simon “was” McNulty, or that David Milch “was” Al Swearengen. But people do assume Hannah is Lena, and since Hannah is extremely self-absorbed and not particularly likable, it appears people who don’t know her think the same about Dunham.

You could say she invites this kind of deranged identification. But, to the extent that it is true, it merely marks the brave way that Lena Dunham is producing the work that she wants, how she wants it, which is a kind of power not many people have. I don’t think many people are jealous of Fiona Gallagher on Shameless. Emmy Rossum is brilliant in the role, and we empathize deeply with the character. We might envy her rock-solid commitment to her family. But Rossum is just the star of the show, not the creator, and the realities Fiona lives with (working poor, scrounging to get by, responsible for more than she should be handling) mean her life isn’t enviable. But we can watch Girls and feel jealous of Lena Dunham, if not of Hannah Horvath, precisely because she’s doing what she wants the way she wants it, and being rewarded for her efforts. Hannah is self-absorbed in the worst ways, but Dunham is self-expressive, creating art from her self, and it’s nonsense to be a hater because she’s doing what she wants to do.

Of course, if Girls sucked, none of this would matter. But the characters are finely drawn, Dunham gets the milieu down right, and there is some excellent acting going on. Girls isn’t wonderful because Lena Dunham shows off her naked regular-person body, and it isn’t reprehensible because it shows people acting in less-than-admirable ways, even though at times it seems like that’s all anyone wants to talk about, as if Girls isn’t a piece of art/entertainment, but is a social marker with a clear impact, for better or worse, beyond the screen. I’m not saying the social context is irrelevant, and again, in many ways, Dunham invites such speculation. But in twenty years, when the social context has fallen to the background, people will watch Girls solely because they like it. Grade for Season Two: A-.