by notesfromachair

Ahead of Your Time

It’s a sort of a tradition at our house on holiday weekends to at some point excitedly tune the television in to a Twilight Zone marathon. (Note: That would be the original black and white series first broadcast from 1959-1964, in case you were wondering, rather than any subsequent remakes or sequels).

What is unusual is not so much that we here are consistently entranced by the inventive storytelling and enduring themes of a classic television show – almost anything artistic that lasts has those qualities and more. Rather, what stands out is that on any other particular day of the year we would only have to walk several feet over to our shelves of DVDs to watch any one of those episodes on our big screen TV, desktop or laptop computers at any time of the day or night.

These days we all have to be reminded of what’s really good from time to time, don’t we? Yes, we’re living in a new golden age of television but sifting through it all has become a challenge that most of us simply don’t have the time for. I don’t know about you, but too often I am willing to settle. I think – all I want is to be entertained a little, or laugh a little or even be prodded to think a little bit more on a subject I hadn’t considered by what I’m watching. And have it last in my mind a little bit longer than the time it takes to suck down a single Mentos.

… or really if it involves any home design with these two.

We read and hear constantly about how a continuing explosion of networks and a myriad of new streaming opportunities make this the optimum moment to be what the entertainment biz calls a content creator. And how privileged this new generation of Millennials (along with everyone else who is older, not dead and still working) are to be among those whose stuff is getting read, seen or generally played with via those or any other venues. But…well….. here is what the top 1%/chattering class of those bull crappers are really saying:

You young people who are writers, directors, actors and even producers?! Yeah you! Do you know how LUCKY you are? There are so many places where all that stuff you make can now be seen. So don’t complain to us about how difficult it is to get views or how much you’re not getting paid. This is the LAND of opportunity – the wild west of new media landscapes. Don’t you all realize how GOSH DARN fortunate YOU ALL ARE to even be a part of this????

(Note: I might add that the same goes for middle-aged and older creative people. It’s just that the top 1%/chattering class chooses not to include the rest of us among the content creators because, with some exceptions, they are not quite as interested in the types of content that we are creating).

So – here is both the really ugly and really reassuring truth about all of this:

It is no easier or difficult to be a writer, director, actor, producer or any other type of artist than it ever was. The same blank canvas still exists and it still takes the same single-minded leap of faith, ingenuity and ever so slight craziness to believe that anything you have to say will prove interesting to anyone else or even be listened to. That is both the challenge and, when it really works and lasts, the ultimate reward.

Twilight Zones don’t happen without a gigantic leap on everyone’s part – the hardest and longest being from its creators. Nor does something light and classic on the other side of the spectrum like…well…I Love Lucy. A 1950s television show about a Manhattan housewife married to a foreign musician we can’t understand, played by a “B” movie star and her real-life, non-actor foreign musician husband who we also can’t understand? Are you kidding? Well, this better be the funniest thing we’ve seen in years.

Still America’s sweethearts

Ah, yes – and lucky for them and for us it was. In the same way that the unique idea of dealing with the timeless dramatic themes of conformity, prejudice, sexism and totalitarianism in a futuristic and alternate universe has also kept The Twilight Zone alive all this time.

One could go on and on with examples from the artistic discipline of one’s choice. I simply chose The Twilight Zone and inserted I Love Lucy in the back-up position because they were most easily at hand and on the tube this holiday weekend. And we’ve already established how much I – and we – enjoy easy.

It is not the wrong time for those of us in the Business of Show, or in any other business, to remind ourselves that the viability of one’s new idea can’t be measured so much against what’s out there but by what’s in there – meaning in your heart and soul and mind. Oh, pooh pooh that idea all you want – or as Bette Midler said several decades ago on her fine comedy album, Mud Will Be Flung Tonight – “hiss and boo your own selves” – it’s true. Too many of us are not willing to go there nowadays, myself included. There’s an emotional risk to failure and that is rejection, embarrassment, shame and depression. There is also a financial risk and that’s loss of home, status or just plain poverty. And certainly it’s no more fun that it ever was to be poor these days. Probably less.

Still, the ugliest and tritest truism about art, and its even higher counterpart, innovation, is that nothing great is ever accomplished by dwelling on the what will happen instead of concentrating on the what could be. That means taking a risk and going with what really moves you or gnaws at you. No, this does not mean living in an artistic cocoon without taking in reality or the rest of the world. That’s the kind of thing the top 1%/chattering class and all the other naysayers in your life and brain say to get you off track.

Not your ideal working environment

Take The Twilight Zone, for example. At the time of its conception Rod Serling was a long form dramatic writer for live television who had served in the military and was married and had children. It was the 1950s and he had a family to support and he didn’t have a chance to live in an artistic garrote and WRITE merely for himself. So what did he do? He embraced the most popular art form of the day but wrote about subjects he cared most about in just about the most commercial structure imaginable. What were those subjects? Oh, simple ideas fit for mainstream consumption in the escapist times of the fifties and early sixties. (Note: Insert sarcasm here). Ideas that were ANTI-GOVERNMENT, ANTI-WAR, explored SEXISM TOWARDS WOMEN and addressed that popular old subject we’re still all always so willing and anxious to talk about – DEATH.

As I viewed Twilight Zone this weekend I was once again amazed to rediscover the timeless themes Mr. Serling managed to feature that few of us have the nerve to tackle today. For example, Time Alone At Last in season one dealt with a bookish bank teller who loved to read classic literature but was perpetually ostracized for being strange and behind the times in then contemporary 1950s America. Season 2’s The Obsolete Man went a step further and centered on the execution of one of the last thinking intellectuals living in a now totalitarian state where only people who are of direct use to the whims of its corporate-run government entity have the value to live. Coincidentally, the leads in both episodes were played by veteran character actor Burgess Meredith, who gained greater fame the following decades as the original Penguin in the Batman television series and as the grizzled old trainer of Rocky in the first of all 22 of those films. Hey, as Peter Fonda once told me his father Henry once told him: You go where the work is.

Meredith in Time Enough At Last

Mr. Serling was also probably one of the first male dramatic writers on television to so prominently focus on feminist themes and address the devaluing of women in American society. Season 2’s Eye of Beholder, first broadcast in 1960, is one of his most classic. A woman with a bandaged face has endured her 11^th and final (per legal limits) plastic surgery to make her face not necessarily beautiful but simply what is considered for the times to be normal – or at least not as ugly as the horrible features she was genetically cursed with. But when her surgeon finally unmasks her he and everyone else cries out in horror that there has been no change at all while simultaneously we in the audience see for the first time that the woman is not only blonde and beautiful but everyone else in the room – and in society for that matter – are all hideously and literally pig-faced. Look around at all of the surgically mangled faces of 2014 humans worldwide – especially those of women, who still face more stringent societal standards of beauty than men – and one can’t help but long for a fictional Twilight Zone limit of a mere eleven surgeries when the subject of voluntary facial augmentation comes up.

Are you sure we’re not on Santa Monica Blvd?

Interestingly enough, as the 1960s continued and the feminist movement began to take root, along with The Twilight Zone, the series chose not to play it safe but to go even deeper. One Serling-produced episode in Season 5, Number 12 Looks Just Like You, focused on a young, futuristic woman with a pleasant face who is refusing to go along with the government mandated surgical transformation all young women and men of 17 must endure. Forsaking their own genetics, each must decide which of several scores of prototypically beautiful yet perfectly vapid faces, bodies and minds they will choose to transform into.

Being like everybody, isn’t it the same as being nobody?, questions the young woman. To which her perfectly transformed doctor can only reply, Hey, what you need is a nice instant cup of Smile.

A nice instant cup of Smile, if such a thing existed, might be what any number of commercial production companies and their vast audiences would prefer nowadays. But that does not mean that it has be what we content creators make for the selling. In fact, it is really up to the creator – the first line of defense for the integrity of the artistic endeavor, to fess up and take responsibility for the creation much in the way Mr. Serling did in his storytelling for not only that episode but the entire series.

Preach, Rod.

On that note, this might be a good time to mention that the genesis of The Twilight Zone actually came from the extreme censorship Mr. Serling had to endure at the hands of the networks and sponsors who chose to cut and then severely edit much of the work he had done before it. The final blow came on a drama he wrote that was broadcast in 1956 called Noon on Doomsday. Inspired by the real-life case of Emmett Till – a young Black man of 14 whose eyes were gouged out as he was brutally beaten and then shot to death for merely speaking to a White woman in Mississippi one year prior – Mr. Serling persevered as first the setting of his story was taken out of the South – and then his young Black male lead was changed to a Jewish pawnbroker – until the final, watered down product focused merely on the actions of a generic foreigner in an unknown town.

But had Mr. Serling thrown up his hands in disgust and walked away right then and there, or just simply thrown up, we would never have The Twilight Zone. It was only when he decided to beat the marketplace at its own game and partnered with another producer who liked his idea of using a science fiction setting to tackle all of the timely yet difficult subjects he aspired to write about (in other words – owning the idea of that foreigner in that unknown town but making him anything but generic) that any television network or sponsor would come onboard. Which is not to say they did so without continued rancor or distress at just how timely and topical Mr. Serling would choose to be.

We should all be wary of countering the lesson of The Twilight Zone with comments like – oh, but times have changed, it’s not so easy to do that stuff these days, or even thoughts like, well, for every Serling there are hundreds of those who don’t make it and, quite clearly aren’t geniuses, but could do decent work, what about them? To say this is to miss the point entirely. No great or even good idea happens on the first try and most geniuses are merely just hard-working people relentlessly going about their jobs with dogged determination in a self-created world where giving up is not an option. People like Serling have no idea if and when they will ever be successful – or if their new idea will ever be accepted. They just keep going. And that is the recurring theme of creation whether it’s digitized, computerized or merely presented – for your approval – in black & white.

06.08.14

by notesfromachair

Curious Jane

If you’re not a naturally curious person – or, like me, are someone predisposed to restlessness, depression, boredom or complacency – it’s easy to fall into a rut of mere…existence. Even if you are none of the above, there are too many days we all spend lying around watching or living the equivalent of bad reality television. Or even worse, munching on our favorite snack foods of choice (Note: Mine are Whole Foods organic corn chips and Trader Joe’s hummus) as we endlessly scroll down a list of never-ending social media feeds of our choice.

I think of this when they say the world is more divided than ever. And no – you are not the only one.

Perhaps this is a mere by-product of western civilization and one of the side “benefits” of living in a country that, despite its recent economic hardships, still has a population that on the whole live better than most anywhere else in the world. But I don’t think so. As you get older you realize the world is generally divided into two kinds of people – the doers and the thinking about doing; the engaged and the I’m sooo tired and please pass the drugs or the cookies kind of guy/gal. Depending on where we’re at in our lives, the overwhelming majority of us alternate between both types – sometimes even in the same day, week or even – hour. (Note: Guilty as charged).

Queen Fonda

Jane Fonda received the American Film Institute’s life achievement award this past week – only the eighth female honoree in 42 years – and in the closing marks of her acceptance speech left us with this sage advice:

It’s much more important to be interested than be interesting.

That might seem like a paradoxical statement coming from one of the most interesting American women (whether you like her or not) in the last century but it got me to thinking – doesn’t one beget the other? In order to be interesting – especially to yourself, don’t you have to stay interested? I mean, what’s worse than hearing the endless drone of your same complaining, miserable inner voice verbalizing the same continuously familiar issues you’ve had with the world or your friends, family and self for the last decade, year, or even less? Nothing. Not even the prospect of Andy Cohen’s recently announced reality series on Bravo entitled – “I Slept With a Celebrity.” Though admittedly that does come a close second.

I can’t deal with this guy

But back to Jane. Anybody’s who’s read this blog knows I have an unrequited love affair with La Fonda, in great part due to her extreme intelligence, talent and ability to transform herself for so many decades into so many areas of accomplishments that have impacted the world in both small, great and arguably, even not so great ways. Not to mention, she still looks good at 76. Yeah, she’s had advantages of birth, money and talent in getting there – but the world is littered with dead or screwed up millionaires and members of royalty, not to mention the horribly altered faces of celebrity plastic surgeries at much younger ages. There’s got to be something else, doesn’t there?

To stay engaged and curious and, well, interested in something other than yourself or The Housewives of FillintheBlank is an essential antidote not only to aging but to one’s predisposition towards boring oneself and others literally to death. Actually, it’s more than that – it’s a miracle cure. Because nothing takes you more quickly out of yourself or your own ennui than trying something new or forcing yourself to speak to someone else about anything other than you.

Jon Hamm approves.

But make no mistake – changing it up with something or someone else does not necessarily mean you will feel better. I mean, put on Fox News or MSNBC at any moment on any given day and you could easily feel angrier than you have in weeks. Plus, more often than not you have to hold yourself back from throwing something very heavy and large at the television screen. But even that impulse has at least gotten you out of the endless morass of complacency and given you a new reason to live – if for no other reason than to douse a very large vat of stale sour cream all over the poufy hair of Sarah Palin when she bellows that the father of a recently released, sick POW of five years is anti-American because he chose to grow a long beard and speak the language of his son’s captors in order to get them to listen as he pled for his boy’s life for well over half a decade.

Yeah, I’ll take the prospect of stale sour cream dripping (slowly and messily) down Sarah Palin’s noggin over crippling depression or an endless loop of Hashtags about the Twilight The Fault in our Stars movie any day of the week, month or year, thank you.

stop the violence

In the last few weeks since returning from my first and fabulously perfect trip to Italy – a journey I’ve wanted to make for 30 years but found countless excuses not to ever go on – I’ve been on a roll of forcing myself to do a bunch of new things. And when I say force, believe me – it’s a constant struggle. Because in my brain, chips, dip and mindless TV are ALWAYS calling.

Still, without even giving up the chips and dip totally (Note: Because who can or would even want to) I have also managed to break through all resistance and:

Attend the LA Opera version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” starring Renee Fleming downtown at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Listen, I’m not terribly interested in anything operatic – okay, not in the least – but I have to tell you I am still amazed at the unbridled originality on that stage. Plus, fun fact – did you know Ms. Fleming, the most famous still working opera singer in the entire world today, is actually from – Syracuse, NY?
a different side of the stage
Read the best account of why it’s not okay to let people hire you to write for free. It was on the blog page of the digital NY Times– something I never read. Yet in my new strategy of making more of “an effort” I actually click and read something I was referred to by Twitter in its entirety and found that I’m far from alone in being offended by the fact that Arianna Huffington pays NO WRITERS (other than the few she has on staff) at The Huffington Post any money at all. And I pass this on not only as a service to other writers or to those who aspire to write for anyone other than themselves at any time in their lives but also to all their future free-loading employers (Note: No, it is not lost on me that I am not being paid to write any of this for you nor do any of you have to pay to read it. (#LifeIronies #StillFigurinThatOut).
Have even met a new producer I am about to be in business with. I can’t go into the details yet (Note: I don’t mean to sound Hollywood but, well, I guess I do live here) though suffice it to say that as a creative artist you find stories to tell in the strangest of ways. And often it’s in the form of random introductions from others you know who happen to speak with someone they know or work with on the fly. If you don’t believe me, let me add that someone very close to me had that exact same experience just several days ago but with different people (Bottom Line: If no one took the time to speak and really hear from a random somebody – nothing – and certainly none of this stuff you can’t but one day will be able to talk about – would ever happen.
The Divine Mr. Puddles
Change my mind about performance art and hear one of my new favorite singers in the world perform live. So what if he’s an almost 7 foot tenor in a clown suit named Puddles? I have tickets this week to see him in Hollywood in a show called “Puddles Pity Party.” Yeah, I’ve posted his songs before but can you imagine the guy in the flesh???? It almost beats singing show tunes at the top of my lungs in the shower while pretending I’m onstage at Carnegie Hall. And all because I chose to indulge a Facebook friend who kept insisting I actually watch and listen to a video from a dude who headlined some weird show at some local bars in Atlanta.

(Side Note: Puddles works with a great YouTube site called PostModernJukebox. Do you know that in a bookstore in Rome, Italy three weeks ago I heard this terrific young singer in the background on their sound system and when I asked the gals behind the counter who it was they told me they didn’t know her name but they found her on that very same You Tube site? And you thought it was just me and sometimes you if you make an effort who find this “nameless” new stuff no one else wants to hear about until they do?)

Of course, this all begs the question of the true value in social media. Certainly there is something awfully mind-numbing about refreshing your Facebook feed for hours on end a la the fictional Mark Zuckerberg in Social Network or falling into the dark pit of a three-hour You Tube surfing loop that begins at midnight as I recently did several days ago. However, social media used for good – that is, for curiosity and discovery and, well, 21^st century learning – can actually be a positive force for us all.

Using those fingers for good

The fabulously talented Helen Mirren – a dame I usually love, disagrees. In a recent cover story for AARP magazine, where she was interviewed from her villa in Tuscany (is there an Italian theme here?), the 68-year-old actress had the following to say about the time-suckingness (it’s a word now!) of the media the rest of us like to refer to as, among other things, social.

It reminds me of a stinky old pub. In the corner would be this slightly disgusting old man who sits there all day, every day. If you went up and talked to him, you’d get the kind of grumpy, horrible, moldy, old meaningless crap that you read on Twitter.

Well, at least she’s got an opinion. And I’m willing to give HM a pass since I met her at a private screening for six people at a filmmaker’s home some years ago and can report she was smart, funny and overall pretty fabulous. See, the truth is, like all the rest of us she might feel this way about Twitter and the like on any given day but I doubt in the blankedly dismissive way it comes across in that story. Though there would have been no way for me to know that had I not gotten up and out of my house that night to attend that very small rough cut screening of a low budget film I almost wound up not going to at all out of sheer…unmotivation.

(Side Note: Is it just me (that is to say, more than it usually is) or is it to the overall discredit of AARP, an organization touting the virtues of those 50 and over, that they put someone who looks as good as Ms. Mirren on their cover and then felt obliged to airbrush out her true looks to resemble that of a wispy 25 or even 35 year old?

She’s thinking: I wonder if they’ll photoshop me within an inch of my life?

I’m not sure if they’d do that to Jane Fonda, but mentioning her once again does provide me a segue into one final piece of advice on what to do when you’re too caught up in yourself and not enough at the world around you. And I leave you with this not because I’m obsessed this week with the opinions of larger-than-life female movie stars (Note: this week?) but that…okay, well, maybe I am.

What can I say… the Chair loves me!

Reflecting on the rare opportunities she has had to meet, work with and get to know such legendary actors in the past as Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn and Lee Marvin – and to have had still another legend, Henry Fonda, as her own father – Jane had this to say to the crowd at the AFI, and to all of us.

I’ve been blessed to know many geniuses; real geniuses in our business…and so many are gone now. And I (now) ask myself, “Why didn’t I ask them more questions? When you’re with people who have been at it a long time, ask questions.

Not to mention – even if they’re new to it they still might able to teach you something you didn’t already know. Or wake you from your lethargy and cause you to move forward.

notes from a chair

Category Archives: The Biz of Show

Ahead of Your Time

Curious Jane