Category / Television

by Edward Champion

Raquel & Janis

DICK CAVETT: Do you remember your dreams, Raquel?
RAQUEL WELCH: Ohhh! My dreams.
CAVETT: Your dreams.
WELCH: Which…which ones?
CAVETT: What’s the last one you remember?
WELCH: Oh. I’ve been dreaming nights about that premiere. I mean I just keep seeing pushing and shoving and flashing and getting mad. That’s all. That’s the last dream. But before, um, that when I was a little girl, I always used to dream that there was this ballet dancer and she was doing that — this thing called a forte, which is that terribly difficult and complicated spin that they do. And just doing it, like — intensely. You know? Until there were like sparkles coming out all over the place. And then I can remember this other dream I used to have, where they — there were men and beautiful women on flying trapezes. And they used to do these somersaults and clamp their hands over the bars. It was fantastic and exciting!
CAVETT: Gee.
WELCH: That was all — that’s the only thing that I can really…
JANIS JOPLIN: Do you know about F. Scott Fitzgerald? I mean, were you ever an F. Scott Fitzgerald freak?
WELCH: Sure.
JOPLIN: Yeah, well I was — I’ve been an F. Scott Fitzgerald freak for years and, uh, Zelda just came out. And, uh, you oughta read it. She was something else.
CAVETT: Yeah. Ms. Milford wrote that.
JOPLIN: Yes. She did indeed.
CAVETT: I’d like to read that. Good? You recommend it?
JOPLIN: Yeah. Oh…well, I’m a Fitzgerald freak. But it gives a lot of insight like you…the impression I got from all the Fitzgerald…uh..autobiographies I read was that he sort of destroyed her, right? But he wrote her a letter and he said, they keep saying that we’ve destroyed each other. He said I don’t believe it’s true. He said, we destroyed ourselves.
CAVETT: His letters are wonderful.
JOPLIN: Oh, so are hers!
CAVETT: Did you think of him when she mentioned ballet dancing?
JOPLIN: Yes. That’s what I thought.

From The Dick Cavett Show, June 25, 1970

by Edward Champion

Six Feet Under Finale

Just saw the finale. For a while, everything was rocking. The eyes were getting a-misty. The heart was still involved. There was the promise of some sense of finality, some ultimate message about existence that Alan Ball (who did, after all write and direct this send-off), hoped to provide for us. But what did we get in the final ten minutes?

Saccharaine moments that were, amazingly enough, more unconvincing than the Xmas future seen in the Richard Donner-Bill Murray version of Scrooged. (And that takes some doing.) Actors under really bad makeup living out their final moments in the future. A cheap finale. The overall message of living, so eloquently portrayed in the first hour, disrupted by some of the silliest moments ever seen in Six Feet Under‘s history. What Ms Chicha deservedly referred to as the most emotional car commercial ever. I don’t think so. Let’s try “most expensive car commercial ever.”

And it’s all thanks to Alan Ball that these characters were cheapened for an unconvincing future and, most likely, an unconvincing present.

Ah well. Go figure. The series went out with a bang and once again proved that, all along, this was an audacious yet flawed series. I have to agree with my good friend Beck that this series certainly did well, all things considered. And it certainly did me in because I’m an emotional fellow.

But I would argue that it was Jill Soloway and Kate Robin who knew how to write for this show and that contributed to the show’s convincing narrative, not Ball. Without these fantastic talents, the show would have quickly turned absurd and hackneyed. So here’s thanks to them or possibly Ball for hiring them.

Even so, the other thing that strikes me as false about the Six Feet Under solution is that salvation comes from a trust fund. This is about as realistic as D.W. Griffith’s shameless melodramas of blind women finding miraculous cures through generous scientists. In short, it just doesn’t happen. Which begs the question: how can anyone here be sad when the financial realities are out of scope with a sizable percentage of the population?

In the meantime, what does the man forever jaded against television have to look forward to? Why, Battlestar, of course!

by Edward Champion

Memo to USPS: Where’s the Dick Cavett DVD Set That We Ordered Last Week? We’re SO Jonesing For This

Chicago Sun-Times: “In July 1970, for instance, ‘The Dick Cavett Show’ featured a chat session with Sly and the Family Stone, Debbie Reynolds and tennis great Pancho Gonzales. Equally weird, a month earlier, was the joint appearance of Janis Joplin, Raquel Welch, news anchor Chet Huntley and the terminally suave Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The elderly Huntley was visibly sweet on Welch, and — while taking hits from a long cigarette holder — Joplin lectured Welch about underground cartoonist R. Crumb.”

[RELATED: Newsday talks with Cavett and Cavett reveals he unintentionally interviewed Howard Hesseman. Further Cavett trivia: You know that he underwent shock treatments for bipolar disorder, but did you know that he appeared on not one, but two soap operas?]

by Edward Champion

An Open Note To Virginia Hefferman

[SIX FEET UNDER FANS: Spoilers ahead. Proceed, only if you’ve seen the episode.]

Yo, Virginia. I’m enjoying the final episodes of Six Feet Under too. But it’s just a TV show. That you would willingly bring Fortinbras and Lionel Trilling into the equation, while completely overlooking the likely Clare-Nate consummation (which seemed strongly implied, given the episode’s final shot of Clare lying on the bed), suggests a deconstructionist who needs to inhale and exhale for several hours, get out of the house, and inhabit the real world for just a whit. Television is hardly as intricate as you make it out to be. I know your editors expect you to sound smart. But really, Virginia, we’re talking Alan Ball here. Not exactly Mr. Subtle.

by Edward Champion

Peter Jennings: The Missing Link

So Peter Jennings is dead. No doubt the paeans will be composed and filed tonight and tomorrow’s newspapers will yield the usual uncritical obits. They’ll tell you how Jennings was the last active member of the Holy Trinity of Brokaw, Jennings and Rather, about how Jennings was the final remnant of a certain time in television journalism (if one doesn’t consider that phrase an oxymoron), and about how Jennings was a decent guy (or at least appeared to be a decent guy).

But for anyone who contemplates shedding a tear or observing a moment of silence, I have to ask an important question: Did Peter Jennings ever ask a tough question in his life? And if he did, did it come during the past twenty years? Because I sure as hell don’t recall Jennings giving us much more than somnolent narration not dissimilar from a half-baked nature program.

Perhaps I’m fired up right now because I’ve just read this week’s New Yorker and I found myself horrified by Ken Auletta’s article on morning TV talk shows, “The Dawn Patrol” (unavailable online). Aside from that ol’ time sophistication, Auletta’s article is no different from a People Magazine profile in the way that it fawns over its subjects without blinking even a quasi-skeptical eye. Or maybe it might be my outrage after reading Norman Solomon’s new book, War Made Easy, which offers countless examples of how the media has, over the past forty years, repeated the boiler plate of official government memos without deviating, never really daring to doubt or question actions for fear of retaliation, along the lines of what happened to Ray Bonner when he dared to uncover the truth about the El Mozote massacre and found himself pushed out of the New York Times newsroom or when Elizabeth Becker faced resistance when uncovering the truth about Khmer Rouge for the Washington Post and the New York Times (as chronicled in part in Samantha Power’s excellent book, A Problem from Hell).

I recall that my mother liked Peter Jennings a great deal. He was, I suppose, a source of comfort — ironically enough, it took a Canadian to lull Middle America. For her and for many other Americans, Jennings’ soothing voice conveyed an illusory world that was far less problematic than the real one. And it was all because he was an affable, well-liked man who threw softball questions at his subjects more effectively than a batting cage machine.

But I would argue that one can remain reasonably well-liked and maintain a certain credibility. Let’s compare Jennings with, say, Walter Cronkite (incidentally, still quite alive), once considered “the most trusted man in America.” Cronkite had the cojones to declare, “There is no way this war can be justified any longer” after touring Vietnam in 1968. In fact, it was Lyndon B. Johnson who once opined, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Jennings was far from a Cronkite. Or even a Walter Winchell. If anchormen can be likened to a recidivist evolutionary chain extending from Walter Cronkite to Matt Lauer, then Jennings was the missing link that took whatever edge that remained in television-based journalism, suffusing it into a safe and inoffensive approach.

He was a calm, telegenic man who read his words from the TelePrompTer with all the care and duty of a dependable savant being asked to play a recital piece in front of a easily assuaged crowd. He was likable. And in being well-liked, who knows how many viewers he led down the rabbit hole?

I don’t blame Jennings entirely for this. Ultimately, this problem is endemic of the current system. And I’m sorry that he died of cancer. But at a time when only Karl Rove can get the White House press pool to rake Press Secretary Scott McClellan over the coals, at a time in which Americans are so desperate to find someone to trust that they turn to a comedian like Jon Stewart to get their news, and at a time when an anchor’s credentials are judged not by journalistic chops, but by how well-liked, coiffed and curvy they are, it seems to me a disgrace that we prefer to take solace in those who are well-liked rather than the journalists who dare to provoke or tell the truth. In short, celebrating Jennings is, in a strange way, ignoring those who dare to do the work of a journalist, television ratings and focus groups be damned.

by DrMabuse

Creature Features and More

If you lived in Northern California and remember the UHF programming of the 1960s through the 1980s, this site has done an admirable job chronicling the various ways that UHF stations aired movies during that time (complete with fantastic hosts such as Bob Wilkins and cheesy jokes galore). If you were too young or you weren’t growing up in the area, let’s just say that you missed out an a very important cultural indoctrination process. I’d venture to say that I wouldn’t hold nearly as much regard for Godzilla or horror exploitation films had I not seen them through these conduits.

by DrMabuse

Cookie Monster Saddened By Recent “Sesame” Sellout

WASHINGTON D.C. (AP): This morning, in front of reporters, Cookie Monster revealed shocking allegations that his love for cookies was being curtailed against his will by the producers of Sesame Street.cookiemonster.jpg

“Me so sorry!” said Cookie Monster in front of a mob of reporters. “Me still like cookies all the time. But Cookie Monster needs money to buy more cookies.”

Three journalists, trying hard to remain objective, broke down almost immediately upon learning that a pivotal character from the long-running PBS children’s program had sold out. Kleenex was offered.

The 36th season of Sesame Street will respond to the growing crisis of obesity. Characters will now sing the praises of vegetables and nutrition. But as TV critic Tom Shales recently noted, “If the Cookie Monster can’t have cookies all the time, it’s clear that Sesame Street has jumped the shark.”

Sesame Street producers were asked whether such a dramatic change in Cookie Monster’s diet would have adverse effect on Cookie Monster’s metabolism, which scientists believe involves an exclusive diet of cookies. Calls were not returned.

The slimmer Cookie Monster showed a noted loss of vigor at the press conference, the result of a sharp reduction in his cookie diet. He said that he was sadder than usual and that the sudden introduction of carrots into his meals had made him sick. Even the news that his sudden weight loss had earned him People‘s “Sexiest Monster Alive” offered no solace.

“Me can only eat cookies,” said Mr. Monster. “Why they no understand that me like cookies and cookies are for me?

by DrMabuse

Cable Soothes the Savage Beast

I don’t watch much television. In fact, I don’t even have cable teevee (haven’t since 1997), which apparently is an unAmerican thing to do. (In fact, two G-men were here last night grilling me about who won this year’s American Idol. I was unable to answer. But the charges of conspiracy were dropped when I showed them that I had Secret Agent in my DVD collection.)

But when talking to some folks yesterday, I was surprised to learn that basic cable today costs $55 a month. Basic cable. Not your snazzy HBO or Skinemax. Not even the Playboy Channel. Apparently, if you want to become an HGTV junkie in our great land, contemplating the landscaping options for the palatial home you’ll never own, it’s going to cost you. As much as a really solid evening out for two.

Fifty-five George Washingtons! That’s more than my DSL bill. That’s more than my phone bill. That’s more than my electric bill. That’s six movies at a theatre. That’s two hardbacks. And if you were to save that over the course of the year, that would be $660.

What kills me is that Ray Bradbury couldn’t have been more on the money with his short story, “The Pedestrian,” where a man was arrested simply for taking a stroll while the other obedient citizens were loving their television. Today, television-addicted Americans are arrested for having the temerity to take photos of a bridge or a subway — in other words, they are being reprimanded for documenting the world that they live in.

It is reported that, on average, Americans watch more than 4 hours a day. So let’s say that Joe Sixpack goes to work an eight hour day, and that he gets eight hours of sleep. Of the remaining eight hours he has to devote to leisure, let’s say that one hour is devoted to commuting, another hour is perhaps devoted to eating and preparing his meals, and a good half of that time involves getting hooked into the new fire. Because they’ll need something to talk about around the office water cooler. Which leaves two hours for showering, preparing for work, catching up with friends, getting drunk, and fucking like minks to make the time go by faster. Never mind that at four hours a day, a 65 year old will have spent nine years of her life in front of the tube.

Granted, we can all agree that everyone is entitled to slack time, to escapism, and to catching a second wind. But we should be extremely concerned with these statistics. Because if Joe Sixpack devoted that time to reading a book, then he might become self-taught in the machinations of the world. Or he might discover the many ways in which he’s being screwed over. Or he could volunteer somewhere and help someone in need.

In his book, The Working Poor: Invisible in America, Robert Shipler suggests, “Cable is no longer considered a luxury by low-income families that pinch and sacrifice to have it. So much of modern American culture now comes through television that the poor would be further marginalized without the broad access that cable provides. Besides, it’s relatively cheap entertainment.”

Right. Because we all know that Jane Sixpack is going out of her way to watch a hard-hitting documentary on the disparity between the rich and the poor. We all know that Jane Sixpack is pining for the art house film instead of Meet the Fockers. We all know that Jane is getting the bejesus scared out of her watching FOX News.

Television is worse than comfort food. It is the uncontrolled wilderbeast that encourages the passive. It reinforces the troubling notion that life should be easy and effortless. It suggests to the common people that if they are not living in glamorous excess (rather than the glamour that comes from within one’s own integrity) that they are failures.

Shipler should be ashamed of himself for letting televison off too easily in his otherwise fine book. It is interesting that despite his faithful reporting and his determination to explore the issue from all sides, one won’t find either “books” or “libraries” in his index.

by DrMabuse

Gray Lady Last to Discover That Willow Gets Around Outside of Sweeps Week

New York Times Corrections: “A picture in The Arts yesterday with a chart listing television shows that portray women kissing, to increase ratings during sweeps weeks, misidentified the actress being kissed by Alyson Hannigan in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer.’ She was Iyari Limon; Amber Benson is another actress kissed by Ms. Hannigan in the series.”

by DrMabuse

An Open Letter to the FCC

Dear FCC:

Since three people decide the fate over what is indecent on American television, I figured that my viewpoint counted for just as much. Plus, since this nation has spiraled into a financial abyss (and could use some cash), I thought you might want to investigate the following indecent things that I see on television every day. I am, to put it bluntly, quite mortified by what passes for “entertainment” these days. I will need therapy for years. Perhaps you may want to send me a finder’s fee to cover this.

Regardless, what follows are some of the many indecent things I have unearthed for your beautifully authoritarian eyes:

  • There are commercials that try to convince me to give them money! They use scantily clad models and people who offer false smiles to convince me that their goods (which are usually bad for me) are fun and harmless. They set down good rock songs to commercials and take away the value of great music I grew up listening. INDECENT!
  • There is a boorish man named Bill O’Reilly who tells other people to shut up! He is the rudest person I have ever seen on television. And what’s more, I understand that he actually gropes people who work on his show. INDECENT!
  • There is a purported “news” network called FOX News. Have you seen it? They spin stories based off of half-truths and cater to spiteful impulses. They never get all sides of the story and scare the bejesus out of me with their martial theme music and extremely frightening news graphics. INDECENT!
  • There is a network called WB that shows African-American people in stereotypical roles. I have met and befriended many African-Americans, but I have never seen them eat nearly as much fried chicken as they do the WB Network. Furthermore, on all networks, African-Americans are only cast as the Lovable Sidekick or the Badass Cop. Where are the African-American lawyers and professors? This is clearly racist and INDECENT!
  • There is clearly not enough sex on television. Where are the shows devoted to hours of bobbing breasts and naked people thrusting in slow motion? Don’t people on television jerk off? To deny such basic human impulses while simultaneously perpetuating the employment of such anti-actors as James Spader and Mark Harmon is INDECENT!

I trust that you will fine each and every network that carries out these indecent practices. The future of this clean nation depends upon it!

Very truly yours,

Edward Champion

by DrMabuse

Friends Recap

Last night, millions of Americans decided that they needed an emotional experience. The only way, of course, to feel the pitter-pattering within their collective hearts was not to set foot outside their homes and get to know their fellow neighbors, but to turn on their televisions and watch the final episode of Friends. There, they would experience cardboard cutouts who would illuminate and enrich them. Would Ross and Rachel get back together and have all sorts of crazy sex on camera right before a commercial break? And, most importantly, would we ever see a character in the Friends universe who was not shallow, Caucasian and attractive?

Having seen maybe ten minutes of one episode of Friends and not having experienced a single magical moment of this amazing television program since, I feel as if I’m thoroughly qualified to provide you with speculation on what happened last night.

The big question was whether Ross and Rachel got back together. Since this was in fact the final episode, this was a plot development as smoothly calculated as a Tic-Tac-Toe victory. But, yes, Ross not only got Rachel back, but had another character named Phoebe drive him to the airport. At the airport, shortly after walking past a dark-skinned extra being frisked by airport security, Ross told Rachel that he would be voting for George Bush in November and that he wanted her to do the same. Rachel told Ross that this was the most romantic thing that any guy had ever said to her and, after some witty banter about having freedom fries for lunch, Rachel did not get on her plane to Paris. Ross and Rachel decided that they would move to upstate New York and hire a few Spanish-speaking maids to use as human furniture.

The six New York flatmates handed in the keys to their apartments and collectively beat their landlord up. Not only did they receive their security deposit immediately, but they also received a signed waiver stipulating that the landlord would never bring the assault charge to a court of law.

Chandler revealed to Monica that he had a serious drinking problem and that he had taken the twins to the Pussycat Theatre from time to time for some quality pornographic entertainment. Monica understood and decided that it would be best if their young family moved to suburbia, where they would be better able to hide their problems from their neighbors and the television public.

Phoebe told Joey that she would be more than happy to have 2.2 children and be “a good wife.” She resolved to be put in her place, clean and cook for Joey, and agreed that she would never have a partial birth abortion.

Joey, meanwhile, promised that he wouldn’t develop as a character any further. He had a spinoff series to pursue and, thus, it was essential to color himself within the lines. We will report any developments as they come in.

by DrMabuse

The New Twilight Zone on DVD

TV Shows on DVD reports that The New Twilight Zone (the edgy 1985 version, not its recent incarnation) may be hitting DVD in July 2004. I’ve contacted Image Entertainment. Nick, in the Public Relations department, says that he’s “heard about this.” But it remains unconfirmed. I’ve left a voicemail with Cindy Barrow, the attorney who handles the legal contracts, to see if I can get confirmation on this. If I hear anything back from her, I will report it here.

by DrMabuse

The Golden Scam

I don’t have cable. Hell, aside from a DVD every now and then, I barely turn my television on. But Gary Dretzka’s TV Barn column makes me wish I did have cable, if only for an hour. It seems that Trio’s got sixty salacious minutes making the rounds. A modest tell-all ditty from When We Were Kings director Vikram Jayanti called The Golden Globes: Hollywood’s Dirty Little Secret. The doc goes into length on how the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the junket whores behind the Golden Globes, is granted endless loot and, well beyond the shameful nod to Pia Zidora in 1982 and other dubious merits, the awards ceremony is inclined to favor young, dumb, and full of come mythos.

Jeffrey Wells has more on the subject: “With relatively few exceptions, the HFPA members are a bunch of eager-beaver pseudo-journalists (a fair portion of them write for publications in Germany and Japan) who smile much too broadly and get far too excited when celebrities are in the room. They’re not ardent admirers of the art of motion pictures as much as people who appreciate huge bowls of tasty shrimp sitting on studio-supplied buffet tables. They’re pigs who squeal on cue in order to flatter Hollywood and keep themselves feeding at the trough.”

It’s not unlike what seems to be going down in the literary world of late, at least as Choire Sicha reports it.

(It looks like there was some serendipity in finding the links, but Greencine Daily led me to Wells.)