Mediola

An EXTRAORDINARY Oscar show!

Did you notice the exquistely sophisticated chartreuse eyelids of Beyonce? A beginning point, a small detail in an amazing, surprisingly exciting display of style and star power. So many beautiful women, and men!, brought to a point of absolute perfection of appearance by international wizards of fashion. This is the New Hollywood.

Never mind that it wasn't a year for great films. Watching the Academy Award broadcast, the films didn't seem to matter. It was like attending the Church of Celebrity. For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church sought out the greatest artists of the day to create places of worship that uplift and inspire. Today, we have a global devotion to the fame of random living humans alongside our religious faith, and we have found that artists can create icons of equal power to the paintings on the walls and ceilings of churches.

It is impossible to single out any of the women as being the most stylish. Cate, so elegant! Rene, what a stunningly perfect miniature. Hilary, Olympian.

King Arthur and the 10 page rule

How wonderful to know that I won't be writing about any more current film epics like Troy and this horrid piece of trash. At 16 minutes into the DVD, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. About 37 minutes in I stopped watching. Good thing I'm a Netflixer. Would anyone care to tell me if this was about King Arthur and the knights of the round table? Or something? Was there a story? Help, please.

I want to add to this rant for all you screenwriters out there, that what's wrong with King Arthur is what's wrong with what 99% of the scripts I, and everyone else in Hollywood, read. Number one is Structure. Three acts, etc. Syd Fields is the master of explaining this in his book Screenwriting.

Then there is the 10 page rule.  Everyone should know that a page of script equals one minute of screen time, so this could be referred to as the 10 minute rule as well. If the viewer doesn't have the whole setup; if they don't know exactly what the movie is about; if the central characters haven't been established--all in the first 10 pages, go back and rewrite the script. And read Robert McKee's Story for good measure. Every development person in Hollywood has taken McKee's seminar. If you can afford it, you should take it too.

King Arthur's first 10 pages? Utter confusion. There's the bell. See you tomorrow.

The new Sunday 60 Minutes...

...is a piece of garbage. Having working in the news magazine field for much of my career, I feel well qualified to toss out such a seemingly outrageous comment.

Yesterday's show was about as close to Entertainment Tonight as it's possible to get.

Thanks, Mr. Moonves, for a glimpse of the new CBS News. We get it. Celebrity promotion. Wonderful. And replace Andy Rooney with Jon Stewart. I can't wait.

More on the demolition of CBS News in the next article.

American Idol: Better Than Ever

I watched the first group of 12 young male singers on American Idol tonight, and just when you thought "How can there be one decent signer left out there?", leave it to executive producer Simon Fuller to put together the most amazing group of competitors yet.

These guys were great, and it was the first time in the history of the series that the panel's reactions seemed deliberately harsh (don't believe for one second that their reactions to the performances aren't planned in advance).  The producers are clearly building what could well be a bravura season of dynamic singers, every one of them distinct and while clearly nervous at their first studio performance, each was simply terrific. Curiously this week's shows are pre-taped.  But I think it's all about packaging now, and the later live shows, if there are any, might just be let-downs, but I'd guess not. By then each performer will have been groomed, and they'll be doing the theme shows.

The ever adorable Ryan Seacrest has abandoned his chop chop haircut in favor of a blah nothing do, and has barely anything to say. No comforting yet. Randy, Paula and Simon are still drinking their poisonous looking Coke (what a bizarre shade of red those glasses are). God knows what's in them.

And praise be, they're already working with a sizable studio band instead of cheesy prerecorded backtracks.

It was a powerful hour, and Idol remains a killer combo with 24 as a leadout. Great entertainment and brilliant drama. As I've said, 24 is so good this season it's hard to believe we're in the first third of the episodes.

As to Idol, when we need fresh brilliant ideas, we always have to turn to Englishmen. Why? It's really simple. England has a class (a social class) of brilliantly educated people--they're just far brighter than Americans. Sorry. I find it amusing that Les Moonves is trying to figure out what to do with CBS News, and he hasn't surrounded himself with executives from the BBC and other British broadcast journalists. You should see the newscasts in England. You think Ted Koppel is good?

It's time to give the ultra-stupid, weak-kneed and pathetically insecure Andrew Heyward the comeuppance he deserves. He has done nothing for CBS News worth a shit since becoming president, and having known him for years, I can say he's petty, jealous and blatantly simple-minded. Dump him, Les. Don't give him a graceful way out. Humiliate him, the way other media barons I have known have ordered division presidents ousted. And get Rather off the air. He looks like he's about to vomit every night. And Bob Scheiffer? Are you jesting? There's only one broadcaster in America who deserves to front CBS News. Charlie Rose. I can't believe he'd ever do it; why work so hard? But Rose is the best broadcast journalist we have, and if CBS wants to compete, Rose has to sit on the throne.

Candance Bergen: Phooey

When I was in college, I thought Candace Bergen was one of the hottest things on two feet. She wasn't an actress yet. She was doing some acting in college at the time, but what she was was incredibly beautiful, brainy and sexy.

She emerged into the whirl of knockout, class act babes, but she couldn't find the right guy. She tried journalism, but failed. In the 1970's, she used to appear on a local TV talk show on Channel 7 in New York talking about getting old and not meeting anybody.

Then, of course, she got married, and whom did she marry but the French intellectual filmmaker Louis Malle. Being in the same room with a French intellectual is enough to nauseate anybody, but I'm sure his "philosophe" was just the thing for Candace. I think they were very happy, probably trashing American culture and sending out for cuisses de grenouilles.

Then Candace evolved into Murphy Brown. Boy, I hated that show. She could never make it as a film actress, but quips turned out to be up her alley. I think Vice President Potatoe Quayle was right to condemn the single mother storyline, and by that time I couldn't even imagine Candace having sex with anybody. She was drifting toward fossilized WASPdom. Then we all said bye-bye after 10 years. That's a great run, so somebody must have liked her. Or maybe, just maybe, Murphy Brown was about the late Bobby Pastorelli, and he was the star.

Until they let David Kelley out of his straight jacket again, and he cast her on Boston Legal as a partner with Bill Shatner and Rene Auborjonois.  Hello ABC, she's wrecking the show. Large. Her outfits, with collars up to her ears as though she were Kate Hepburn drive me crazy.

ATTENTION ABC: GET RID OF HER FAST.

You want a woman of a certain age?  Who can fit into the sexed-up environs of the world of Denny Crane? There are plenty. Jacqueline Bisset? Helen Mirren? So long, Candace, you're history.

Carlos Bernard returns to 24!

I can't wait, as usual, for the next 24 Monday night at 9.  But this week, there's an extra bit of excitement and happy memory.

Last week, at the end of the hour, Jack was in a major jam, surrounded by hostiles, clearly cornered and moments from the bullet. He made a cell call to "the only person I can trust".

Who, I thought, could that be?  We ALL wondered.  His allies are all gone.

Suddenly, running top speed guns blaring into the bunker where Jack was trapped, came Tony Almeida. TONY! Tony was back! I can't even tell you what a feeling of relief I felt, and affection, and joy that Tony was back to work with Jack.

Carlos Bernard has done such brilliant work in the first three seasons. Here was an instance where you don't fully comprehend the place an actor has created in your life until his character is gone, you accomodate the loss, and then he heroically re-enters your life. I don't want him to ever leave 24.

Carlos Bernard as Tony Almeida, left

The 2005 GarbageBowl

It was a total piece of television shit, another hyped-up Superbowl, more mistakes than points scored.  This is what makes me nauseous about football: it's a game for sadists in mental institutions and it's about crashes.  Break your bones, play injured, retire crippled, that's a hero player.  Compare it to baseball or soccer.  Totally pathetic.

The MVP is this game was the guy who directed it for Fox.  This was the best directed sport event I've ever seen.

During the game, the color guys pointed out so many stupid moves you'd think it was mentally challenged football. Then, the post-game analysis turns it into a symphony of genius.

But at halftime, Sir Paul McCartney was just plain all-American fabulous. These days, if you want  top tier entertainment for the event of the year, you have to hire a British Knight of the Realm.  And a senior citizen as well.  If you hire an American, they show their tit or ass or worse.  If only Jim Morrison were still alive.  I'd love to see a drugged-out halftime rendition of Light My Fire including Jim's typical unzipping his fly and popping out his dick.  It wouldn't be much of a dick these days, but I'd pay to see it.

McCartney's voice sounded youthful and vigorous.  How does he do it?  Doctors.  But who cares?  He still sounds like he did during the Is Paul Dead? craze.  He hits every note straight on, articulates his lyrics perfectly, and those songs are forever.  Do you think any of the zillion pretend singers watching learned one single thing watching him?  He played with a fabulous Beatles-size band.  I love Maroon 5, but do they sound like the Beatles?  Give me a break. 

Cellular: Even worse than Planet 9 From Outer Space

I'm as we say "calling for scripts", putting out the word to screenwriters that I'm looking for scripts I can produce. One of the sources I'm using to request "queries", or brief emails with story synopses, asked what genre I'm looking for. I replied, "Suspense and horror". She asked if there was a single film I could identify that was similar to what I was looking for, given certain parameters I listed for her. While I was pondering, she suggested "Cellular". I hadn't seen it, and told her I'd dash out to Hollywood Video a grab a copy.

OK, I got through about 15 minutes. Now, I read a lot of scripts, as everyone in the film business must. I've read some stinkers, and some absolutely amateurish efforts. But I've never read anything nearly so pathetically, laughably horrible as Cellular. And the direction is equally awful. The people who made this film could not possibly ever make even one episode of a prime time TV series.

The box office on this picture was over $30 million dollars. The budget was $25 million. It looks like it cost 3 cents. This means they lost a lot of money. Which is good. What's not good is that some people like this garbage.

This is at the bottom of my Vomit List.

The Golden Globes: Ya gotta love em! NOT

My notes on the Golden Globes:

• Wonderful black gown worn by Renee Zellwegger
• Clive Owen is the next James Bond, or else
• WONDERFUL! Bill Shatner wins again for Denny Crane! If you're not watching Boston Legal, you're missing some of the greatest characters ever created for television. I've raved about Shatner's creation of the Denny Crane character before, and I'll say it again...it's unforgettable

• Hand me the barf bag. Somebody named Moushkee Hargity or something from Law & Order beat Edie Falco. Mousky better look both ways when she crosses Sunset. Ya neva no when some nut is gonna drive crazy, ya know?

 

Troy: Unbearable ancient shit

I've known since junior high that Trojans were designed to prevent life-bearing sperm from getting into a woman's vagina. They've always worked for me, and they worked for Warner Bros. too, sucking any possible life out of this never ending, incomprehensible bore of a feature.

I remember when Wolfgang Petersen could direct. But there isn't even one single shot in this mess that looks better than any 14 year old could make with a Kodak. The CGI is the worst I have ever seen. The script, by somebody who doesn't deserve mentioning, but who has NEVER written one single movie that played anywhere but in his brain, is semi-literate and so stupid and confused and simple-minded that if I did any research I'd probably discover that he is a milkman who screwed a studio executive.

Puke, puke and puke.

I truly feel bad for the actors. They seem to be trying to do what they can amidst this barrel of slops.

I had a long conversation last night with a very bright young development executive. At one point he expressed his belief that many brilliant people in the movie industry work extremely hard to create the scripts that we may think are mediocre. He said if they're mediocre, it's be cause these brilliant people want them to be mediocre.  Years, he said, are spent shaping these films into their final form.

If he's right, I'm a green Chuckle. This movie was made by illiterate morons with too much money.

Fans of The Da Vinci Code...I want to point out that Troy spelled backwards is Yort. And yort an idiot if you see this piece of crap.

JACK IS BACK

Now that I've seen the first four episodes of 24, I'm thrilled to say the fourth season is even better than the first.

I'm going to begin with the one negative: the incredibly obvious steal of the Arab family from the film House of Sand and Fog, where they were Iranian. Father, mother and son, the identical characters, and amazingly, the mother and son are played by the same actors in both House and 24. The father on 24 is no Ben Kingsley by a long shot. Come on, guys.

Now then. Jack is at peace, and I feel a love for him that after these years of tragedy and trauma, he has found a world to live in, and a glorious girlfriend. And what casting for the girlfriend! She plays the daughter of the Secretary of State, and she looks so much the part it's uncanny. I lived most of my life among the very wealthy of Manhattan, although I am a working class Brooklyn boy made good. But I know many, and married one, of these privileged children of the ruling class. The private schools, finest colleges, sophistication and culture. And the look. Beauty and intellect. Class. That Jack found her, and that she loves him, and that he is struggling to allow himself to love again is supremely powerful.

The scripting and direction is the best of any television series, and I'd rather watch 24 than go to the movies. The ratings for the first four episodes were excellent, even without the former American Idol lead-in.

Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow fascinatingly have returned to their cult USA series La Femme Nikita for the wonderfully bitchy actress Alberta Watson, who has replaced Bauer as head of CTU. In fact, she fired him.

Scenically, the CTU interior has been modified to closely resemble the interior of the CTU-like facility on La Femme Nikita, allowing camera angles that heighten the intrigue.

The multi-screen boxes are back in frequent use. Damn it, this series is brilliant.

Jack, welcome back.

Desperate Housewives: What makes it work?

Teri Hatcher, in the years when she was every American man's fantasy.
___________________________________________

Here is a true programming phenomenon: an out-of-the-blue oddball formula that premieres and shoots right to the top of the ratings charts.

It has none of the tried-and-true (translate tedious and mind-numbing) formulae--not a procedural, not a sitcom, not a drama, no cops, doctors, lawyers or mafioso.  It's about a group of women, but it's not Baywatch.  These women are, after all, older desperate housewives.  What's going on here?

What we have here is a very clever translation of the work of one of our great film makers adapted for the small screen.  Without question, the inspiration for Desperate Housewives is Tim Burton's film Edward Scissorhands.  Think about it for a minute.  Take Edward (Johnny Depp) and his Maker out of Edward Scissorhands, and you have Wisteria Lane.  Far out?  No way.

Shopping in Los Angeles for chic women's clothing

I have often told actresses that they have to develop a sense of personal style, and that to prepare for stardom they must acquaint themselves with clothing that is chic, and wear their brand every day.

Virtually none of them get it.  Frankly, I think it's because few of them have lived in Manhattan, and they don't keep up on fashion. 

Here's my initial advice: subscribe to British Vogue.  It's expensive, but you need it.

Lots of girls hang out and audition in sweats or yoga tops and pants.  I'll tell you who can get away with that, and I've seen it with my own eyes: Jennifer Love Hewitt.  If you saw her with no underwear and clingy yoga garb, your brain would melt.

For everyone else in LA, I have a list of boutiques where true fashion can be found.  The sad thing is that when I've bought gifts for clients from these shops, they actually won't wear them.  If it's not trash, it's too weird and scary .

Wanna be a star?  Be great at your craft and learn to dress:

The November 2004 sweep kicks off with a horrid OC

Huggies at the end, parents who worry themselves to death about their children, kids chomping to leave home but just really can't resist returning to mommie and daddy where everything is easy and paid for.

What a bunch of crap.  And in the middle of it, Peter Gallagher, a solid actor who was triumphant in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls, co-starring with Nathan Lane.  Gallagher is doing the Bronx Irish accent Gary Sinise should be doing on CSI:NY.  And God blesses him with patience and empathy, while chaos reigns around him.  He can be happy eating dinner in a demolished house while desperate to bring home his runaway son, and keeping to himself an impending, and potentially financially devastating investigation into family business dealings.  BUT!  He's a lawyer!  So he'll figure it out!  Because the sun is shining in Orange County, which is largely a low rent outland of Los Angeles.  And to top it off, a pregnant girl lies to her boyfriend about her baby dying in utero because she thinks he doesn't love her, and she does this with her MOTHER'S SUPPORT!

You've heard of 3-hankie shows?  This one is a 5-toilet paper swipe bonanza.

The commercials were cool, though.  But the much-vaunted fashions looked like off-the-rack crap from Marshall's to me.  Did you catch the Old Skool Vans?  Man, I was wearing those 10 years ago.  Wow, trendulicious. 

This may be great entertainment for 14 year olds, but if Fox thinks this is Desperate Housewives (more crap I'll be getting into) or CSI or NCIS, give it up.

A Casting Story

A couple of months ago, the casting directors of CSI:NY put out a call for an actor to play the role of a club DJ. They wanted the real thing, somebody who was so chill and such a master scratcher he would read totally real on the show. At that time, before the premiere, the word was "real New York types".

I was then managing, and I instantly knew I had the perfect actor. First of all, he's an actual DJ specializing in raves. Second, he is the hippest man I have ever met in my long life. As I always say about him, if you want cool, when he walks into the room it's like liquid hydrogen. He is in the Grooove.

Actor/DJ/Model/Choreographer Paris Davis

On stage, he is a superb dancer and choreographer. And he is represented by an exclusive talent agency so hip they like to say stuff like "Don't even bother submitting to us to become a client. If we haven't spotted you, you're not hip enough".

I contacted the casting director, and what is called a pre-read was booked for the next day. A pre-read is simply when you have your first audition, and a casting associate reads a bit of your part with you. My guy felt that the minute he walked into the room, the casting person disliked his look. But he did his best.

Now get this. My guy's first name is Paris. He was auditioning for a role called DJ Scratch. One day later, word came out of CSI:NY that they were also looking for an actor to play another DJ whose name was DJ Paris! Well, we thought, what's this? My man must have booked the job, because the writers obviously rewrote the scene. There was supposed to be a fight between these two DJ's, and one was to kill the other. Cool...this was going to be a fight during a DJ contest.

Well, I never got a callback for my guy. He was "passed" on.

And tonight I watched the episode of CSI:NY all this was about.

I'd rather be "LOST" in hell.

Would someone please comment and tell me why people are watching Lost?

I watched about 45 minutes of it tonight, before my brain began to rot and I had to turn it off.

JJ Abrams, to be polite, is certainly the craziest producer working today, and ABC must be out of their minds.

Has Mark Burnett sued over this pathetic steal of Survivor? Shouldn't the real Rudy sue over the theft of his identity on this idiotic mess?

People fighting on an island. Tonight one missed his guitar, boo hoo, a Korean yelled at a Black (thanks Disney for reinforcing the stereotype) and some babe stared out to sea while men came on to her, looking mysterious.

I'm dreaming that a fake Jeff Probst will show up with an AK-47 and mow them all down, so they can move Boston Legal into this time slot.

Those of you who are watching Lost, please stop.

What makes NCIS a better procedural?

Not the stories and scripting, which are fine but pedestrian, with one exception: the presence of actual wit. The opportunity given to Mark Harmon to have a twinkle in his eye. The nerd relationship, which while totally hackneyed, hasn't driven me crazy yet. Mark Harmon's coy silences, which remind me of British TV. Bravo for silence and a knowing glance!

The real star of the show is the direction. Comparing the direction of NCIS to the Law and Orders and the CSI's is like comparing 24 to The West Wing.

On NCIS, the camera darts here and there, and the editing is superb. Everything comes to life and the entertainment value is heightened because of the directorial, and therefore editing, style.

If you're a Law and Order fan, look at NCIS, and give your eyes some exercise. It's so terribly boring watching people just stand there and talk.

Meanwhile, I've joined the Navy.

Ovitz On The Stand: Don't miss this testimony about Michael Eisner

This is from today's New York Times, and paints a pretty ugly picture of Michael Eisner. Sit back and enjoy it.

October 27, 2004
Ovitz Testifies He Was Sabotaged at Disney
By LAURA M. HOLSON

GEORGETOWN, Del., Oct. 26 - Michael S. Ovitz, the former president of the Walt Disney Company, vigorously defended his 14-month tenure on Tuesday, saying his efforts to expand and improve the company were undercut at nearly every turn by recalcitrant senior executives and the man who lured him there, Michael D. Eisner, the chief executive.

Mr. Ovitz was a witness in the trial of a lawsuit filed by Disney shareholders, who contend its board of directors breached its fiduciary responsibility when Mr. Eisner hired Mr. Ovitz as president in 1995 and then signed off on a severance package valued at $140 million 14 months later.

Mr. Ovitz, who waved to reporters in the back row when he entered the courtroom, spent much of his four hours of testimony describing how his vision for a substantially different Disney was thwarted. To bolster Disney's relatively weak Hollywood Records division, he said, he tried to sign the pop singer Janet Jackson and explored acquisitions of or joint ventures with the EMI Group and Sony Corporation's music operation. Mr. Eisner rejected those prospective deals as too expensive, and then used Hollywood's poor performance as a reason to fire him, Mr. Ovitz said.

East Side, West Side: More brilliant TV from the early 1960's

George C. Scott as a social worker

This hour drama series, created by the brilliant and omnipresent David Susskind and his partner Daniel Melnick, remains one of the greatest pieces of episodic television in the history of the medium.  For those of you not immediately familiar with the name George C. Scott, it was he who played Patton in the Frances Coppola movie of the same name, and was one of America's greatest actors. 

I thrilled at the opening titles--a montage of subway cars rushing past each other (as I recall it), establishing the world of a social worker in the underclass of pre-civil rights movement New York City.

As with Naked City and Route 66, the guest star casting was exceptional--major names.  And it was probably only the power of Susskind's name and the success of the series not only among critics but in Washington, DC that kept the series on the air an entire season.  The show was dropped by stations in the South because it dared to treat blacks as equal humans.

Read about East Side, West Side here.

More on David Susskind:

Naked City and Route 66

Thanks to reader Dedra Littleton, I'm inspired to tell you more about two of the most important series in television history.  I'll make it brief and direct you to excellent articles on each show.  As I have said, as a pre-teen, these two series had as much to do as anything in my life to bring me to entertainment, and thanks go to the giant Herbert B. Leonard, Sterling Silliphant, Howard Rodman, and others you will read about.

Discover Naked City here.

Martin Milner and George Maharis in Route 66

And most important, discover the series that created a genre that has become part of the TV vocabulary, the brilliant Route 66.