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

Still Young, Less Restless: Good News for Daytime Dramas

Maybe it was the Hoff. On Monday, CBS announced that it had renewed “The Young and the Restless,” the soap opera that launched the career of David Hasselhoff and thus can be blamed for transforming America’s cultural landscape into a dilapidated amusement park filled with dope fiends and abandoned babies. Hasselhoff recently returned to the show to reprise the role of Dr. William “Snapper” Foster. Is there a link between the Hoff’s triumphant homecoming and CBS' decision to pick up three more “Restless” seasons? God, let’s hope not.

Cable, DVD, and Other Dinosaurs: Netflix's $1 Change

“We are now primarily a streaming-video company delivering a wide selection of TV shows and films over the Internet.”

That was Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in a statement Monday announcing that the company had introduced a new streaming-only subscription plan and raised the price of its traditional DVD-by-mail service. No word yet on whether Netflix will no longer offer audio versions of talking motion pictures recorded on wax cylinders and delivered via pony express.

Let's Put on a (Minstrel) Show: The 'Scottsboro' Dispute

Last week, a small group of people gathered outside of Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre to protest a minstrel show. The demonstrators—about 30-strong, according to The New York Times—were organized by the Freedom Party, a self-described black and Latino political organization. The show was “The Scottsboro Boys,” a musical by David Thompson, John Kander, and the late Fred Ebb, based on the true story of nine African-American men falsely convicted in 1931 of raping two white women in Alabama. “Scottsboro” employs the form of a minstrel show, which it further destabilizes by having the black actors playing the two end men enact white characters and a white actor as the Interlocutor, who in the show declares himself “the master of these folks.”

Google TV's Lack of Television

On Tuesday’s “Morning Edition,” National Public Radio took a break from eulogizing the Democratic Party long enough to look at Google TV, the latest attempt by the Internet behemoth to make people forget about Google Buzz—not to mention Google Wave, Google Nexus One, and the Google self-driving car (yes, seriously). In a sit-down in Mountain View, Calif., an engineer invited reporter Laura Sydell to witness the firepower of Google TV’s fully armed and operational battle station. Accessing the service through a Logitech box—it’s also available through Sony’s Blu-ray players and new line of Internet TVs—the engineer didn’t pull up an episode of “30 Rock” or “Modern Family” but rather a video from the satirical news website the Onion. “The Onion actually has a great set of video content online,” the engineer said.

You know who else has a great set of videos online? ABC, CBS, and NBC, which have blocked Google TV from accessing their content.

Surprise! Pension and Health Still a Big Deal for Unions

The Screen Actors Guild’s pension and health funds revealed this week that their ills have not yet been miraculously cured. Addressing SAG’s national membership meeting Sunday, pension and health CEO Bruce Dow announced, according to Variety, that the funds are expected to pull in $26 million less this year than they did in 2007. In other shocking news, Sandra Bullock is well-liked by women over 40 and a lot of Democrats will be drinking heavily come Nov. 2.

The Meaning of (Ned Vaughn's Political) Life

If you’re looking for one human being to personify the recent political shifts within the Screen Actors Guild—and seriously, who isn’t, right?—you could do worse than Ned Vaughn. One of the co-founders of the Hollywood-based moderate party Unite for Strength, Vaughn couldn’t even get elected to the Hollywood board of directors last fall. As of last night, he’s its president.

Race to Mount Doom: The Push to Unionize 'The Hobbit'

The ongoing saga of the attempt by a group of New Zealand actors to unionize producer Peter Jackson’s film “The Hobbit” has been nothing if not instructive. First, we learned that “Kiwi” is not a pejorative. (We asked Twitter, so you know you can trust us.) Then we learned that Sam Neill is still alive. Then we learned that New Zealand is not part of Australia. Or Tasmania. Who knew?

Pirates and Censors: Unions' Stand on Infringement Act

Last Wednesday, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists—joined by the Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees—sent a letter to the ranking members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to express support for Senate bill 3804, otherwise known as the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act. Later that day, the committee shelved the bill. Such is the power of the American labor movement.

Ken Howard's Ankle: A Special Report

The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists began their much ballyhooed joint TV-theatrical negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on Monday. So what’s the biggest story to emerge thus far from the Sherman Oaks, Calif., meeting room?

Ken Howard has hurt his ankle.

Tax Credits Illustrated: From Detroit to N.Y. to L.A.

If you believe The Wall Street Journal—and why wouldn’t you, unless you’re a freedom-hating commie?—Hollywood is Detroit’s salvation. The paper took a long look at Detroit’s booming film industry last week. Shockingly, the general theme was that all the productions rolling into town thanks to Michigan’s generous production tax credit (a 42 percent rebate on all above- and below-the-line expenses) are helping to keep the Motor City’s post-motor economy from sinking any deeper into Third World status.