Category: Television

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Rob Reiner Trashes a Scene

It was cheesy anyway.

There it is again– in a brief biography of Nora Ephron at the New York Times– a reference to the allegedly memorable “fake orgasm” scene in “When Harry Met Sally”.

At least the Times has the good taste to describe it merely as “probably best remembered”. I am thankful for small things. You have probably heard, many, many times, that this scene, in which Sally tries to prove to Harry that women can convincingly fake orgasms, is the funniest scene in the movie, and, maybe, the funniest comic bit ever filmed.

It’s not true. It’s not really very funny at all. Rob Reiner, who directed it, kept asking Meg Ryan to do it over and over again, bigger and broader each time, until it was what you saw in the film: a ridiculously over-the-top caricature of actual humour, perfectly adapted to the talents of Jerry Lewis or Jim Carrey.

If it ever was funny, it’s not funny by the the time Reiner has had his way.  It’s not funny. It would have been more amusing if it hadn’t been ridiculous. And the allegedly funny riposte by the woman at the next table– Rob Reiner’s mom– is poorly delivered by –Rob Reiner’s mom. “I’ll have what she’s having.” Do you need to ask why she was chosen to deliver this funny line? Yes, it is a good line. It’s a hint: that scene could have been very funny.

The truth is, that scene would have been much, much funnier if Ryan had made the grunting and moaning and yelping believable, and the camera could have picked up Harry suddenly realizing an unpleasant truth that had been hidden from him for years and years. You might also have seen a few faces at nearby tables, mildly aghast, or befuddled.

The point was lost: if that is what a “fake” orgasm sounded like, nobody would ever have been fooled. Reiner destroyed the funniest element of the scene. The best comedy is revelatory– that could have been a brilliant moment for the film, but Rob Reiner trashed it. He slapped custard pie all over it and made into something feeble and crass. He made it into something you love to quote around the water cooler but really isn’t that funny as you are watching it.

I imagine a richly imagined, subtle, teasing rendition– with that intimation of resistance and the loosing of reserve and the building intensity, all while Harry — in recognition– signals increasing anxiety. Maybe, at the end, he is incredulous: “That was fake?”

Come on– that’s funnier.

Then, a real actress does the line: “I’ll have what she’s having..”

What Rob Reiner did to that famous scene is what Gary Marshall (“Happy Days”) did to Fonzie: you like that “EEEEHHHH!”? You do? I’ll do it again. And again. And again. And again. Ten times an episode. No, twenty, thirty… no forty times! And at every public appearance. And on every talk show. And ….

What? You’re sick of it already?

Incidentally, “You’ve Got Mail”, also written (and directed) by Ephron, was also about as bad as “Happy Days” in it’s worst moments, monumental in it’s simple disregard for any kind of plausibility or psychological insight.

More recently, “Julie & Julia” was moderately amusing, enlivened, as it was, by Meryl Streep’s performance.

All right– you want a really funny scene: rent “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” and watch for the scene at the airline car rental counter with Steve Martin and a brilliant Edie McClurg. Yes, it’s rude, but it’s more inventive and original than the fake orgasm scene because McClurg sounds close to believable as the clerk. You recognize the attitude, the manners, the “I don’t think I like the way you’re talking to me sir.”

I would have loved to hear her do the line in “When Harry Met Sally”: “I’ll have what she’s having”.

It would have been funny.

 

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Laura Ingall’s Doctor

When the Ingalls family came down with malaria, they were treated by Doctor George A. Tann, who may have saved their lives.

Forget all about him. In “Little House of the Prairie”, the Ingalls very, very kindly help the son of a former slave named Solomon find refuge and an education. Did that make you feel kind-hearted and virtuous? I’ll bet it did. I’ll bet you thought– those wonderful Ingalls– so progressive!

How would it have struck you if the African American had been the doctor who came to their house and actually lived with them for a time while treating their malaria? You would have thought– come on!

IN 1870!

Are you mad?

For those of you who can’t understand why some people just can’t love “wholesome” television or movie programs, this is why: TV refused to show you that Dr. George A. Tann was an African American doctor who treated the Ingalls for malaria.

It would have been disturbing in some way to a large portion of the audience. It would have been disturbing to a large number of potential customers of Wonder Bread to think that perhaps their attitudes towards race were not what they thought they were.

One of the most popular shows among the denizens of the Republican heartland.

So, is anyone surprised?

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PBS’ Soundstage

When I was in college back in the 1970’s, the only decent music program on TV was Soundstage (earlier known as “Made in Chicago”), which presented relatively current, relatively serious artists like Harry Chapin, Arlo Guthrie, Gordon Lightfoot, and Emmy-Lou Harris, in a one-hour format, no commercial breaks, no light shows, no lip-synching.

Okay– so they also presented– geez!– Burt Bacharach and the Bee Gees. It absolutely blows my mind that the same minds that would put together a program like this for Emmy-Lou Harris would think it was a great idea to give the Bee Gees an hour of rapt attention. The Bee Gees were worse than mediocre. They were aggressively mediocre. Their mediocrity pounded you on the face and stuck it’s waxy fingers into your ears and wobbled your head from side-to-side to scream at you that there is not a single interesting thing musically or intellectually in any of this noise you are hearing.

But then again, in 1976 Lightfoot appeared on Hee-Haw to lip-synch “Sundown”.

Anyway, two or three of my favorite shows are on PBS: the News Hour which is about the only television news program that I watch without getting nauseous nowadays (I know I’m mean but even Peter Mansbridge looks and sounds like a pharmaceutical salesman– think about it– doesn’t he always seem about to ask, “and how often should the patient take this dosage, Mary?”) and “Frontline” (documentaries) and “Inside Washington”. And “Nova” can be pretty cool thought it can also get annoyingly breathless at times. And cheesy.

But mostly, when they need money, they present John Sebastian presenting endlessly recycled clips of “Do You Believe in Magic” or the Mamas and the Papas singing “California Dreaming” on Hullabaloo, in bathtubs, or Peter, Paul, and Mary doing their farewell concert to end all farewell concerts at Carnegie Hall. Over and over and over again. And over and over and over again. And over and over and over and over again. I don’t think they have done pledge week once in the last 20 years without showing Peter, Paul & Mary singing “Lemon Tree” or Pete Seeger doing “Turn, Turn, Turn” and John Sebastian strumming his autoharp and creeping me out with that harmless, aimless expression, grinning and looking folksy and trying to make you believe that the 1960’s was a happy place of delightful experimentation and joyful frolics in psychedelic meadows of unicorns and marshmallows.

When it’s not John Sebastian and the 1960’s, it’s Victor Borge, Perry Como, or Harry Belafonte. Who runs this network?

It doesn’t make sense to me. The average age of the PBS viewer must surely be sliding ever closer to the grave– they will, sooner or later, require younger viewers to survive the next round of Republican attacks. To attract younger viewers, they have to start bringing in musical artists like Leslie Feist, Arcade Fire, Royal Wood, Bon Ivor, Conor Orbest, Wilco, please, anybody from the last ten or fifteen years!

I am never not astounded that Lawrence Welk is actually still shown on TV, on Sunday, PBS.  Really?  Seriously?  Who is running this network?

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Downton Abbey Misses the Ball

In Episode 8, Season 1, of “Downton Abbey”, Bates is confronted with the accusation that he has stolen some bottles of wine. Bates says something like, “no one has ever seen me touch a drop since I came here”.

In the so-called science of “statement analysis”, this would be a dead giveaway: he doesn’t say he hasn’t touched a drop– only that no one has seen him touch a drop.  Why does he not say he hasn’t touched a drop? Because he’s not sure of that; he’s only sure he hasn’t been caught yet. It’s as if, accused of murder, the suspect blurts out, “you couldn’t possibly have seen me do it”.

Except, in Downton Abbey, we know that Bates, who is turning into a bit of a sanctimonious character, is as innocent as the driven snow.

A lot of dramas want it both ways. Thomas and O’Brien are fun to watch, at first, but it’s no fun watching Thomas openly abuse William and everyone else in the house. In real life, he’d have been sacked very quickly, but then we wouldn’t have had the fun of watching him continue to needle William and try to frame Bates. Carson and Hughes are too stupefied to do anything about him?

It’s also a bit tedious to see Bates get away with saying that he can’t tell anyone why he was unjustly sentenced to two years for theft, just that he was, and if they don’t like it, they can fire him. This episode would have been dramatically improved if Lord Grantham had simply fired him like a plausible character would have. “Very well. I can’t help you if you don’t want me to or won’t take me into your confidence. I don’t have time for this: I’m afraid you’re sacked.”

Daisy, completely out of character, ruins the meals prepared by Mrs. Bird because Mrs. Patmore asked her to make sure the family misses her while she’s gone getting eye surgery. Daisy is cold-hearted enough to sabotage the meal, but not sneaky enough to lie about it when confronted? That might or might not be “possible” but it isn’t interesting: it’s a writer strong-arming his own characters into situations that provide titillating plot developments but undercut character.

I don’t mind Sybil considering a relationship with the chauffeur– I just don’t buy her behaving like a school girl, as if she has suddenly shucked off 18 years of upbringing and culture as if it were a hat. Remember — she did participate in her own “coming out” party, her “debut”. It would have expanded her character considerably if she had refused.

She has spent every day of her waking life dealing with servants who are expected to provide for her every need.

It also would have been far more interesting, as a story line, if Robert had had a chat with the chauffeur once he realized the Sybil has been lying to him about where she was going. Given his position and character, and given the obvious conundrum Sybil’s dishonesty would present Branson, he might have told the chauffeur that he was free to use force if necessary to prevent Sybil from attending one of those dangerous political rallies. That would have created a very interesting dynamic between the chauffeur, Tom Branson, and Sybil. Or he could have told Branson that he was not responsible if the lady decided to act recklessly. That too would have been interesting — Branson “not recommending” that her ladyship proceed and stating that he “won’t be responsible” if something goes wrong, and peevishly parking somewhere to wait for her. But Fellowes wanted the passing titillation of the argument between the two, Branson urging her to get back into the car, Sybil, without the slightest condescension, insisting on her own way. It’s a thoughtless, under-developed scene that could have been much more.

Is Downton Abbey now a soap opera?

It started out well. It started out as a period piece, like an extended “Age of Innocence”. Great acting, great filming, lovely sets and costumes. But then two or three things became clear. Firstly, that Fellowes wants to recycle certain themes and characters over and over again– like a sitcom, basically. Mary just can’t make up her mind about Matthew; Edith’s relationships, like Sir Anthony Strallan, get sabotaged by Mary– who seems bizarrely stricken by the idea of not confessing her role in the death of Mr. Pamuk. Mary? Who earlier mocked her own mother’s ideas of propriety and rules? Suddenly, she’s Karen Santorum?

Secondly, it appears that nobody connected with the show wants to spend the big bucks on a really remarkable scene like (we can only imagine) Sybil’s “coming out” party in London. We’re merely told about the affair. I recommend that you watch this episode carefully, stop your PVR or DVD player just before the scene in which they discuss the ball, and then pop “The Leopard” into your DVD player and watch the final ballroom scene from that movie instead. Then go back to Downton Abbey. (Dr. Zhivago has one or two great grand ballroom scenes; or try “Russian Ark”, a really extraordinary film that culminates with a fabulous ball.)

[January 30, 2012: there are scenes from the war, but they are rather chaste and extracted looking. Can’t blame them really– the budget just isn’t there, probably. But I can blame them for the ridiculous degree of reverence paid to all things military, especially the officers parading about, whining about how they don’t get to serve at the front. That’s not what this war was: it was precisely about officers like that ordering other people to the front to be maimed and gassed and slaughtered for reasons that have, as of yet, 100 years later, escaped most people. More appallingly, if you were not willing to blindly serve in a war with no purpose, they made you out to be unpatriotic or cowardly. ]

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Michael Coren Cannot be Taken Seriously

It is not possible to take Michael Coren seriously when he has Anne Coulter as a guest on the first episode of his new show. It’s an utterly cynical move bereft of taste or ambition or intellectual integrity or guts– and all the self-seriousness in the world can’t wipe the stain of it off Coren’s naked forehead.

He might as well have interviewed PeeWee Herman about his socialist leanings.

Rick-Perry-Psycho-Nightmare

Most of the time, political differences are a matter of debate between reasonable people with different priorities. Not any more. The Republican party has tilted off the spectrum, into a kind of psychotic delirium. They believe that if they only absolutely, hysterically, intransigently insist on having their way, they will win and they will be right. They’ve gone mad.

As a matter of curiosity, I do wonder how long someone like John McCain can remain in the party, or Jon Huntsman, or even Mitt Romney.

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Wienergate

Unemployment. The War in Afghanistan. The war in Iraq. Global warming. Thousands killed in Syria. The government collapsing in Yemen. Spain and Portugal going broke. Japan. Cancer. AIDS.

The Anthony Wiener story is intended to amuse the illiterate, the sheep, and the frigid-hysterics while the government and big corporations continue to ensure the gradual impoverishment of the middle and lower classes and continuation of disastrous foreign policies over there.

I am hugely disappointed in Jon Stewart. The story was funny for five minutes, not 105. And it wasn’t funny because a foolish young politician made stupid decisions. The very, very funny part of the story is Wolf Blitzer with a straight face pretending to be a journalist. At least he got that right.

I was baffled, at first, by the amount of time Stewart was giving this story. Wasn’t he doing exactly what he frequently ridicules other media organizations of doing? Tunnel vision. Flogging a trivial, inane issue to death?

Mystery solved: Stewart is very touchy about some critics who claimed he low-balled the issue on the first day because of his personal friendship with Anthony Wiener– not, they believed, because he was rational. Those critics successfully manipulated Jon Stewart and made him look like a fool as, on the very next Daily Show, he desperately tried to muster the hysterics to prove that he really, really can’t be tricked out like some CNN tart. He made the story the centerpiece of three consecutive Daily shows, long after it stopped being funny.

But then, that’s about all you get on the news these days, including the CBC up here in Canada. When it’s not falling over itself to drool over the royal wedding.

At the end of the June 8th “Daily Show”, Stewart played a clip of a reporter listing five or six important stories she had intended to cover and then announcing that she would not be covering those stories because there were new developments in the Anthony Weiner story.

My wife and I could never could figure out if the reporter was being sarcastic or serious. It is so had to tell nowadays. But it was utterly shameless of Stewart to play it because he was doing the same thing or worse.

If you were to be honest with yourself for a moment… if you woke up one day and heard that Anthony Wiener, who is married, had flirted with several other women online, would you really believe that this was an important story that needed to be on the front page of every newspaper and online news website in the country?

But you believe it now, don’t you? Because it was on the front page of every newspaper, top of the news on every broadcast, all over the web. You believe that no story would be given such prominence by so many different news organizations and media entities if it wasn’t really and truly important.

Or do you think for yourself?

No matter how many news organizations cover it, nor how many gallons of ink are spilled on it, or how many photographs or videos or web pages, or self-serious pundits using euphemisms, no matter, no matter, no matter, the Anthony Weiner scandal is trivial and irrelevant and unimportant.

The real story now is just how bad is the entertainment-news industry in the U.S.? And the next real story is, is this really what Americans want– because they do tune in– or is something they are having shoved down their throats? The Anthony Wiener story might well begin to seem important to some people because coverage of it is ubiquitous.

This story will die soon enough. Unlike Sarah Palin’s enduring idiotic appeal to every numbskulled dissident survivalist in the U.S.– something that appears to be trivial but isn’t (we’re talking about the intellectual ability of a potential candidate for the highest office in the land)– this never was a real story, there never was a real impact, and not even Fox News can make a whole turd out this fart.

No crime was involved. No political issues were involved. It’s none of anybody’s damn business.

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Hamid Hayat is still in Jail

Hamid Hayat is a casualty of 9/11. Or is it massive, national, hysterical ignorance. He should not be forgotten. And the souls of the men who prosecuted and convicted him should not be forgotten.

Oh– you do have souls. Do you ever think about Hamid Hayat’s life in prison? 24 years. You don’t feel sorry for him?

Suppose the FBI were to place some informants with some American gun clubs, have them hang out at their watering holes, befriend them, spend money on them, and casually mention stuff like, “hey, you know, Washington is a cesspool of corruption and wreckless nanny-state attitudes. I wish someone would blow up Congress one of these days”. Do you think it would be all that hard to get someone to say “you’re telling me!” That’s all you need. That’s enough. You then arrest this person and charge him with terrorism and then you lock him up for 25 years give yourself a medal and a parade and vote for the guy who’s going to cut your taxes.

But first, I imagine, you’d have to make him look Arabic.

My original piece on Hamid Hayat.

Washington Post on the full Sarah Palin interview with Greta Van Susteran on the Fox website: “We watched all of it so you don’t have to.” June 3, 2011.

Oh, that biased, liberal, main-stream media!

Unshrewd Athletes: in the periphery of the Bernie Madoff scandal, the New York Mets negotiated a clever buy out with Bobby Bonilla. Instead of paying him the $6 million he was owed when he was released, they agreed to pay him over time by putting the money into an investment with Bernie Madoff, which they expected would return 10-12% per year over the life of the agreement, thereby actually making money on the money they owed the washed-up slugger.

Didn’t work out too well.

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The Ingenue

An ingénue is a dramatic and literary archetype. “The ingénue symbolizes the mutable character par excellence, the blank slate in search of an identity,” the French scholar Julia V. Douthwaite wrote about the role of the ingénue in Ancien Régime French fiction. The ingénue is defined by her age — that crepuscular moment between adolescence and adulthood — and also by her innocence. A naïf in a complex, urbane, foreign world, she moves unaware of the hypocrisy, duplicity and exploitation all around her. She is credulous and vulnerable and dependent on a protective paternal figure and lives in constant peril of being exploited or corrupted by some lurking cad or villain. This threat is the central tension of her life. What makes her interesting are the questions of how she will navigate this world, who she will become and what will become of her. Traditionally, there have existed two possible outcomes: marriage (whether successful or ruinous) or death.

From New York Times, Carina Chochano, April 22, 2011

Link to the Full Article

So, at the very heart of it, the ingénue doesn’t know she is about to be tricked into having sex.

Once she realizes that the men in her life are willing to use her, she becomes a different person. Either she takes control of her life and becomes “worldly” or “cool”; or she becomes a victim, destined to appear on Oprah.

Kim Yu-Na, the Olympic figure skating champion, appears to me to have almost perfect proportions.  Waist, trunk, thighs, arms, shoulders: perfect.  If I was looking for a model for a sculpture of “Eve”, I’d ask her.

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The Wonder Years Without the Music

Here’s my second brilliant idea of the month!

As you may or may not have heard, a well-regarded TV series, “The Wonder Years”, has never been released on DVD. Why not? Lots and lots of people want it. Well, the problem is that “The Wonder Years” used a lot of popular music in the background of many episodes. At the time, the cost of using pop music in a tv show or movie was negligible. Now it is not. Everyone got greedy. Of course, the owners of “The Wonder Years” are also greedy– they are dissatisfied with the amount of money they will make if they have to pay all those royalties.

The funny thing is, you could probably acquire most of the songs used in the show for a very reasonable cost, if you just bought them on iTunes. Maybe you already have copies of those songs. In fact, if you are fan of the “The Wonder Years”, chances are pretty good that you already have a fully licensed, fully paid for copy of the songs used in the show.

So what we need is software.

What we need is for the owners of “The Wonder Years” to release the series on special DVD’s without the expensive already paid-for music. You put the DVD in your computer and this special software scans your hard drive, finds the missing music, and synchronizes it. Then it burns the entire DVD to a new blank. Problem solved.

The only problem is that this would make naked a little-understood fact about copyright: you are paying twice, three, four times for the right to listen to the same song, whether you have the album, the CD, the iTunes version, or a movie or TV show with that song on it, your wedding video (if your videographer paid for and charged you for the rights– not likely.)

And by the way, it’s not the artists who are greedy, of course. It’s people who usually swindled the artists out of their rights in the first place. They’ll be damned if you get to watch “The Wonder Years” or the great documentary on the civil rights movement, “Eye on the Prize” with the music.

Fred Savage, who played “Kevin” on “The Wonder Years” grew up surrounded by some of the most beautiful and, in the case of his co-star Danica McKellar, smart, women in Hollywood.

Who did he end up marrying? Someone he met in kindergarten.

I had stopped watching “The Wonder Years” after a year or so because I thought it was getting too precious, and I began to find the narration annoying. I just read a TV critic who feels that the narration “made the show”. Hey, maybe I was wrong. I don’t know. I won’t be able to re-examine the idea until it does finally get released on DVD. Or not.

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Newt Gangrene: America, America, America

“In America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life.”

Never imagine that any kind of scurrilous, scumbag, divisive politics is beneath a Republican. Newt Gingrich has found Jesus. Just in time for 2012. Do even fellow Republicans buy this? Does anyone in the Republican Party ever acknowledge that the movement itself would be better off if it sounded a little less cynical and opportunistic?

Is there anything more that anyone needs to know about Newt Gingrich than that he is willing to stand in front of a crowd of Republicans and make the statement he made above, (at a gathering of the Ohio Right to Life) February 28, 2011?

Nobody can seriously believe that Newt actually believes this. If he does, America is far worse off than even I imagined. But it does magnify something that has become more apparent since 9/11: he doesn’t even care if you believe he believes it or not. It doesn’t matter.

How does one avoid being rude when observing what should be obvious but obviously isn’t? That New Gingrich, ready to make another run at the presidency, studied the polls and decided that Americans– actually, Republicans who vote in the primaries– want a leader with genuine religious convictions so, all right, we can do that. Here’s how: you say “In America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life.” You say this in front of “Ohio Right to Life”. Just drink in the applause. Ahhhh. Feels good. It’s so easy. And the money keeps rolling in. And James Dobson is already behind you, on his knees, lips puckered.

It’s like “fiscal responsibility” and “no new taxes” and “strong military” and anything with “America” in the title, on a book– not that anyone will actually read it. They just need to know that you, like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee and everyone else out there on the right, has not only read at least one book in your life but has also written one. Something like “Fighting for America”. Or “Finding the Real America”. Or, “America– the America of Americas”. Or “God and America”. Or “How Immigration is Ruining America” by Nancy McDougal and Sid Hofstetter.

Not that you could actually have ever been bothered to actually write the book. Gosh, that’s not time well-spent for God’s appointed leaders– that’s hack work, for what’s-his-name– the elite intellectual snob we hired just for this kind of work.

But conservatives don’t give a flying leap about whether you actually wrote a book you “authored”. That’s for those effeminate, liberal, snobbish eastern elites. People like Al Gore and Barack Obama. No, by God, a real leader just puts his name on it. Nor do they seem to give a damn about the rankest hypocrisy imaginable (see sidebar).

I suppose people should be reassured that Gingrich has discovered, thrillingly, if belatedly, that 2+2=4. We all look forward to the next miracle: how he will balance the budget, cut taxes for the rich, and increase military spending, without cutting any programs.

Aside from all that, isn’t Gingrich more or less openly saying that America should become a Christian Theocracy? If not, then what is he saying?

It’s really the Christians who have fallen down on this. Where are the church leaders who have any real religion? They would be standing up now, declaring that Christianity should not be exploited and tricked out in this way, and that politicians like Gingrich do more harm than good to real spirituality.

A lot of harm

Do Republicans ever hold any of themselves accountable for anything:

He [Newt Gingrich] also acknowledged having an extramarital affair with Callista Bisek, then a House staff member, while leading impeachment proceedings against Mr. Clinton for lying about his own sexual transgressions. NY Times, 2011-02-28

I don’t think they do hold themselves accountable. I think they believe they are special, touched by god, with wisdom so sublime and transcendent that mortal men cannot even begin to apprehend the audaciousness of their wisdom.

When you think you are so right that those who disagree with you are not mere political opponents but enemies of the state– nay, enemies of God!– foreigners, and subversives, consistency is truly the hobgoblin of little minds.