Blog Stage - Acting in Film, TV, Theatre - Backstage

Television's Unrewarding Consensus on 'The Wire'

To little surprise, The Sopranos received a handful of Emmys on Sept. 16 as it took its final bow. Over the past decade, the HBO drama has transcended the relatively narrow confines of pay cable to redefine television's possibilities and help lead a medium's renaissance. David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and a journalist who has covered everything from professional basketball to the Soviet Union, has called The Sopranos "the richest achievement in the history of television."

What escaped notice last Sunday was that The Wire, HBO's other universally praised crime drama, received no Emmy recognition at all, not even a nomination. This snub is quite possibly unintentional, but it is getting to be pro forma. In four seasons, the show has contended for a trophy exactly once, in a writing category in 2005. (It didn't win.) And the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is hardly alone: The guilds for actors, writers, directors, and producers have never nominated the series for any awards.

A show about crime the way a Faulkner novel is about Mississippi, The Wire has depicted the interplay among police, drug dealers, politicians, school kids, and dock workers, chronicling a nation's underclass with a level of complexity rarely seen in fictive television. Set in Baltimore, the show has a cast of some 70 characters -- 75 percent of whom are African-American. One can't help but wonder if there's a direct connection between the show's racial makeup and Hollywood's screaming indifference toward it.

Though things have improved over the past decade, the television industry's record on racial issues remains spotty. The Writers Guild of America released a report this year stating that minorities make up less than 10 percent of television writing staffs (and get paid significantly less), even though nonwhites compose about 30 percent of the U.S. population. A UCLA study in 2006 noted that casting notices for television and film were disproportionately tilted in favor of whites. And of the 29 new shows set to debut this TV season, only five feature performers of color in central roles, according to a June report in the Los Angeles Times.

For those thousands of actors, writers, and directors who struggle to get work on one episode of one television show, a scarcity of Emmy recognition would seem to be a high-class problem. But this isn't Susan Lucci needing 19 tries to earn a Daytime Emmy, and it isn't a well-regarded show such as Freaks and Geeks getting canceled. This is a program of vast artistic achievement whose testifiers measure their praise in grand terms and historic dimensions.

Noel Holston has critiqued and covered television for three decades, for the Orlando Sentinel, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and New York's Newsday. "The Wire is the best series, the best program in the history of television," he told me last week. "If you could cross whatever you think is the best drama with Edward R. Murrow's See It Now, this is what it would look like."

Holston is hardly alone. The Washington Post's Tom Shales wrote last year, "The Wire might be the most authentic epic ever on television." The New York Times' Virginia Heffernan has described the show as "literary television that broadens the mind and blows the heart open." The Sopranos may very well be a historic achievement, but -- with all due respect to Remnick -- its aspirations reached no higher than those of Mario Puzo. The Wire's ambitions match those of Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens.

Taste and ratings -- not to mention awards -- cannot be commanded by critical opinion. But there is a pattern to the way The Wire is passed over year after year when it comes time for awards, and it reflects a consensus from every quarter of the television industry: actors, writers, directors, and producers. In the end, trophies and baubles don't matter all that much, and we who are awed by the show should take no small amount of satisfaction from the fact it made it onto the air. But entertainment decision makers like to copy successes; with a scarcity of industry affirmation and acclaim, The Wire -- in the people it portrays, the subjects it addresses, and the perspectives it reveals -- looks as if it will remain a singular achievement. That would be a shame.

-- Andrew Salomon

Anna Faris Gets 'Deep'

Funny girl Anna Faris (Just Friends, the Scary Movie series) is trading deep belly laughs for deep throat in her next role, starring as porn star Linda Lovelace. The Deep Throat actress that brought X-rated movies to the mainstream will be given the biopic treatment in Inferno, to be directed by newcomer Matthew Wilder.

"It's a really deep, dark drama," Faris said. 'And it would be cool for me to do."

According to MTV Movies:

Lovelace became a household name after Deep Throat became a pop-culture phenomenon that had stars like Johnny Carson and Jack Nicholson attending showings. Porn became chic, and the film has to date grossed more than $600 million worldwide (some believe it is still the most profitable movie ever made).

In the years that followed, however, Lovelace reinvented herself as an anti-porn crusader, toiled in poverty and insisted that she had a gun held to her head off-camera during those infamous Throat scenes, blaming the experience largely on her manager/husband Chuck Traynor.

"This would be incredibly intense," Faris said of the script about Lovelace, who died in 2002 following a car accident and several weeks on life support. "It would be the most difficult thing I've done, and I'm really nervous."

"It's a pretty tragic story,"  she admitted with earnest. "It's going to be a challenge, definitely."

Faris said that the other roles in the film, including Lovelace's husband, have not yet been cast.

Deep Throat was already revisited once with the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat. Faris is currently wrapping the Playboy bunny comedy I Know What Boys Like.

-- Daniel Lehman

Let's 'Gossip'

Gossip Girl debuted on the CW last night, and you know what? I liked it.

If you didn't already know, the show is based on the widely popular book series by Cecily von Ziegesar about rich, Upper East Side high school students who smoke, drink, and party at posh hotels on school nights.

Being a huge fan of The OC (pre-oboe playing Lindsay, of course), I instantly fell in love with the character's adolescent teen drama. Maybe it's just me, but I delight in watching good-looking, bad boys causing trouble with their girlfriends, who are secretly sleeping with their best friend’s boyfriend. Love triangles, backstabbing, and deceit? Give me more!

What I found really interesting about the show was its characters resemblance to ones on The OC. Did anyone notice that Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley) had the whole "Seth Cohen" thing going on? His sarcastic reactions and awkward facial expressions were definitely Cohen-esque. And Blake Lively, who plays the somewhat rebellious, Serena van der Woodsen, a rich girl with secrets and a passion for hooking up with friend’s boyfriends, undeniably channeled Marissa Cooper for this role. It wasn’t just the character’s familiarity that had me thinking about The OC, but their situations were sort of OC’ish as well. When the fight scene between Humphrey and Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) went down on a NYC roof top, I was totally waiting for someone to say “Welcome to the UES, bitch!”

Being compared to The OC isn’t necessarily a bad thing, in actuality it’s very good. Us OC fans were left in limbo when the show was canceled, but with Gossip Girls, we get a fresh new take on a plot we are familiar with. Let’s just hope Josh Schwartz doesn’t go and do something stupid (again) like kill off a main character or something.

--Diana DiSilvestro

More 'Women' Join All-Star Cast

In what looks to be a swirling whirlpool that's sucking in every working actress in Hollywood (especially some  still looking for that Oscar), a bunch of new actresses have just been added to The Women.

According to Variety, Bette Midler, Cloris Leachman, Carrie Fisher, Lynne Whitfield, Joanna Gleason, Ana Gasteyer, and Debi Mazar have joined Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing,  Jada Pinkett-Smith, and Candice Bergen in  a remake of George Cukor's 1939 comedy (which was also a play by Claire Booth Luce).

The story is about friends who discover the pal they envied most is being cheated on by her husband.

The long-discussed and in-production film, directed by Diane English, is currently shooting in Boston.

Wasn't there any room for Meryl Streep or Susan Sarandon in the credits?

-- Daniel Lehman

You Offend Me, You Offend My Family

After Bruce Lee died in 1973, there was a fury of films released starring actors with some variation of his name:  Bruce Le, Bruce Li, Bruce Lei...  Even though we realized the difference, my friends and I would still see them.  Usually they were a disappointment, especially since the films often included brief cuts of the real Bruce Lee in action in a naked attempt to make money off the late man's charisma and abilities. 

The weirdest had to be 1978's Game of Death, in which producers took 20 completed minutes from a film Bruce Lee was working on when he died, and wrote an entirely new story to fill in the other 65 minutes.  Most of it is horrible -- including a fistfight between Lee's double and then-50-something American actor Hugh O'Brian, in which the older man is somehow kicking the double's ass with Irish boxing moves. (O'Brian was known primarily for Westerns, so kung fu was not in his skill set.)

However, the sequence Lee completed is thrilling, and worth seeing (even if you have to fastforward through the rest).

Lee's character faces off with opponents of various fighting styles. In each case he must adapt his technique in order to overcome each person.  Lee choreographed these scenes to fit within his belief that movie fighting should look real, which was a new concept at the time, and every frame demonstrates that ideal.      

After each confrontation, Lee portrays his character as injured and increasingly fatigued (far from superhuman), yet he fights on through pure determination.  Lee's character finally faces 7-foot-tall hoops star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was a student of martial arts in real life, and in the scene defeats him through a mix of ingenuity and physical prowess.

Cut to the present. 

Back in July, I was lucky enough to catch a screening of Justin Lin's new film, Finishing the Game, which comments on the post-Lee mania by portraying the process in which producers hired an actor to portray Lee's double for Game of Death.  (Hence, finishing the Game.)  The film opens on October 5th in select cities, and I highly recommend checking it out.

Instead of taking the ridiculous situation at face value, Lin ups it to another level and makes the real farce into a farcical farce.

In the story, dozens of actors compete through the audition process to score the plumb part of Lee's double, dressed famously in the yellow jumpsuit (quoted by Quentino Tarantino in Kill Bill), some of whom are wildly inappropriate. 

The actors are hilarious, including the normally gangsta Sung Kang cast against type as a happy-go-lucky young actor caught between the role and his supportive girlfriend.  A number of offbeat cameos includes MC Hammer (as a slick talent agent), Spiderman's James Franco, Dustin Nguyen (from 21 Jump Street), and Star Trek's George Takei in a voiceover. 

But actor Roger Fan steals the show as the egocentric Breeze Loo, a Bruce Lee wannabe who, as star of the preposterous kung fu flick Fists of Fuhrer, refuses to do his own stunts. ("There's a name for actors who actually do their own fighting.  They're called stuntmen.") Catch a bit of his performance below. 

Also, a cast-and-crew meet & greet will be held on Saturday, October 6th at 723 Washington Street, New York, NY. Tickets are $20, and available here.  (Tickets will NOT be sold at door and must be purchased in advance online.) First 50 attendees with movie ticket stubs will receive a "free gift bag," and all ticket stub holders will have a chance to win raffle prizes.

-- Tom Penketh

That's A 'Crock' Full Of...

Chris Crocker, the whiny, drama-queen who skyrocketed to the d-list last week for his Leave Britney Alone YouTube video, has just signed a TV production deal with 44 Blue Productions.

According to Variety, 44 says it plans on creating a show around the YouTube celebrity and his life as a young gay kid, living in a small U.S. town. “It's going to pretty much be the 'Chris Crocker experience,'" a spokesman for the production house said. "We consider him a rebel character that people will find interesting. He's going to be a TV star.”

The Tennessee native’s YouTube video had over eight million hits in its first week on the website. In the video, Crocker screams, cries and whines as he tells people to “leave Britney alone.” Crocker is of course referring to the harsh criticism the popwreck received after her VMA performance.

The video is so popular, that fellow d-lister Seth Green made a parody of it. Green’s performance is however, somewhat more amusing as he pauses ever so often to re-apply his black eyeliner.

Watching a skinny, heavily made-up kid, cry all day about hopeless celebutantes? Sounds like something for E!.

--Diana DiSilvestro

Ok, I'm a Geek...

But I couldn't resist writing about the new Wii game that allows normal mutants like myself wield a lightsaber.  In a story on the Times Online today, it says:

The Force Unleashed “casts players as Darth Vader's ‘Secret Apprentice’ and promises to unveil new revelations about the Star Wars galaxy,” the publisher said.

Now what is acting if not pretending once in a while to being a Jedi (or a Sith), crossing laser swords with a determined foe in a desperate battle for control of the galaxy? 

Ok, maybe it's not just me.  (Photo courtesy of StarWars.com)

-- Tom Penketh

No Love Lost Behind the Scenes of 'Lone Star Love'

Not sure how much clout Randy Quaid has in Hollywood anymore, but apparently he and his wife, Evi Quaid, have "hijacked" the musical Lone Star Love, starring Quaid and the Red Clay Ramblers in a jolly Wild West retelling of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Randy Quaid stars as the lecherous, hard-drinking con artist Col. John Falstaff in the $6.5 million musical, now in tryouts in Seattle and set to open Dec. 3 in New York at the Belasco.

Michael Riedel of the New York Post writes today that Evi Quaid, Randy's hard-charging wife and manager, is firing away at the show's lead producer, Ed Burke, whom she dismisses as "essentially an investor who has no experience except for a three-day course he once took in producing."

It gets waaay better:

"Ed Burke doesn't know what acting is, and he's lording it over Randy, telling him to tone down his performance," Evi tells The Post. "Ed is more concerned with his personal taste than he is with what's right for the show."

Burke's "personal taste," she adds, runs more to "Disney" and "Six Flags" than it does to Shakespeare.

And of the Red Clay Ramblers, she says: "Randy has several scenes with them, and he's finding it very difficult because they don't know how to act."

Evi, at the same time, is being criticized as an "out-of-control maniac" who has "bulldozed" her way into every aspect of the production... When she doesn't get her way, she fires off "incredibly vicious" e-mails to production staffers in the middle of the night. One, sent to the show's ad agency, contained a photo of herself ( a former Helmut Newton model)  in the nude and carried a message that cannot be printed in a family newspaper.

Sources also say she's ordered the writers to eliminate subplots and characters so that her husband of 18 years has more time onstage, and that she's had his costumes completely redesigned.

We don't know if Randy can get some control over this mess himself - or if this is all his idea anyway - but we sure hope things settle down before the cast and crew make it to New York this winter. (Makes you wonder if brother Dennis Quaid and his ex Meg Ryan would have acted this way)

-- Daniel Lehman

Chad Struts His Stuff

At Chad Kimball’s Sept. 14 solo gig, presented by Upright Cabaret, one enthusiastic member of the audience, Blank Theatre Company's producer-director Daniel Henning, shared great news with me. The Seattle-born Kimball, acclaimed veteran of several Broadway shows (including The Civil War, Good Vibrations, Lennon), has been cast in the West Coast premiere of Michael John LaChiusa’s musical Little Fish, opening Oct. 9 at Henning’s 2nd Stage Theatre in Hollywood. The fast-rising Kimball, who won the Back Stage Bistro Award for his New York cabaret debut, wowed the crowd at Mark’s Restaurant with his clever banter, buoyant personality, and stylish crooning of songs--including Stephen Schwartz’s “Lost in the Wilderness” and an enchanting tune from Little Fish. Kimball is probably most widely remembered locally for his hilarious portrayal of the sassy cow Milky White in the Into the Woods revival that played the Ahmanson in 2002 before moving to Broadway--from cow understudy to charismatic cow.  "Milky White" has evolved into a cream-of-the-crop actor-singer, a dynamic young entertainer, who’s a fortuitous addition to the  L.A. performing arena. For more on Kimball, visit www.chadkimball.com .Upright has a lot of dazzling talent coming up in engagements at Mark’s, including Ovations and Garland winner and Broadway luminary, Jennifer Leigh Warren (Sept. 20); the charismatic David Burnham, who starred in The Light in the Piazza (Sept. 22); Reprise’s award-winning musical director Gerald Sternbach (Sep. 28); the stellar team of Shoshana Bean and Jake Simpson (Sept. 30), and a star-studded encore night (Sept. 24) featuring some of the most popular Upright regulars. The group returns to its resident venue, La Boehme Restaurant on Oct. 12. For updated information on Upright, visit http://www.myspace.com/uprightcabaret

--Les Spindle

McConaughey Joins 'Thunder'

Variety reports that Matthew McConaughey has taken Owen Wilson’s place in the upcoming Ben Stiller comedy Tropic Thunder. Wilson dropped out of the project last month following his reported suicide attempt. The film is about a “group of actors shooting a big-budget war movie on a remote island when they find themselves forced to become the soldiers they are playing.” The cast also includes Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Nick Nolte, Bill Hader, and Steve Coogan.

--Diana DiSilvestro