Sometimes You Can’t Go Home Again

It feels like the new television season has started but, well, are there even seasons anymore? Not only on television but, in general?

How about movies? Isn’t late September/early October when we begin ushering in the prestige films? Yet it’s Shang-Chi and Venom 2 for the fall, 2021 box-office win.

Not a bad outcome if you’re a theatre owner, since there is very little “prestige” Covid box-office business to be had. In fact, doing any business at all right now could be considered prestigious.

It was in this spirit that I approached my personal, potentially exciting entertainment choices this week. And, in fact, it could account for my choices.

It does not escape me that the three new offerings I was most looking forward to – the new Apple+ series, The Problem with Jon Stewart; the debut of the long-awaited big screen prequel to television’s legendary The Sopranos HBO series, The Many Saints of Newark; as well as the return of Saturday Night Live for SEASON 47, were all subconscious attempts to recapture my past.

This was a time when the excitement and potential of new seasons seemed infinite.

A time when being snide and being a cynic did not necessarily go hand in hand.

As I recall.

But let’s not quite go there, as the kids say (Note: Or once said!). Even though Going There is the title of Katie Couric’s new memoir where she dishes former morning show competitor Diane Sawyer as her complete opposite – tall and blonde, with a voice full of money.

Yes, I’m sidetracking, but interestingly, even my choice of sidetrack subject harkens back to a time of what was rather than who is now. (Note: And if you don’t relate to that, let enough years go by and, trust me, if you’re lucky enough, one day you will).

As for my choices, let’s say they all have their charms, even as they all, at times, felt a bit charmless and disappointing. Which probably says more about me than it does about them.

After all, when you go to a party expecting to recapture the perceived halcyon days of your past, you have concocted a recipe for disappointment. It’s self-sabotage to the nth degree, and colossally unfair to blame all your troubles on the party you’re standing in. Which is not to say this present party is entirely blameless.

I’ve loved Jon Stewart a bunch of years before he took over a not very much watched Comedy Central series in 1999 called the Daily Show, revamped it, added his name into the title and in the process changed the face of political social satire and the way young people, in particular, forever perceived the news.

I saw the makings of this back in 1996 in his solo comedy special Unleavened. That was when this fellow Jewish kid from the east coast took on the then VERY rabidly homophobic Republican Party politics and joked that presidential candidate Pat Buchanan blamed gays for so much of the country’s problems because, of course how can you concentrate on anything with the constant sound of all that butt f—-g going on in your ears.

This is why it particularly disappointed me at how much I was disappointed in his new bi-weekly Apple+ series. After all his achievements in re-setting political humor and taking on establishment politics, it seems only natural that the next step would be for him to be less jokey and more proactive in trying to shine a light on the serious issues he’s been mining over the years.

Certainly, Stewart’s time as an advocate for 9/11 responders would lead to him being an advocate for thousands of wounded Iraq War veterans not receiving medical coverage for various forms of cancer and other serious diseases they came down with years after their service due to their exposure to toxic chemicals. So wasn’t the latter a more than a worthy subject for show #1?

See, it’s his idea now that in each episode in his new series he takes on an issue – nee PROBLEM, hence the show’s title – introduce the topic with his writers and others, give reportorial examples by interviewing and discussing those it affects; and then look for solutions in a third segment by reaching out to experts and powerbrokers who could effect change.

There’s some humor in there amid all the journalistic talk as well as some satire and commentary. And it’s a worthy undertaking. But it’s not a laugh riot – nor should it be expected to be. And yet I suspect a show with as much potential as this could likely begin to drown in a sea of expectations of what we all so desperately want from Mr. Stewart at this point in time and what we actually believe we’re entitled to given the last 18 months.

He seems more than aware of this too since he closed out the premiere episode joking to his writers that once the new show airs and he returns to a table full of comics backstage at a local comedy club he’s dreading lines like, ‘oh look who’s here, Mother Theresa.

Of course, he’s several steps ahead of his audience as usual, looking forward instead of back, even if we (okay, me) are right now unable to do the same.

The Many Saints of Newark is all about looking back because it literally gives us the origin story of HBO’s Sopranos. Interestingly enough, that series debuted the same year Jon Stewart took over The Daily Show and over eight years became the first cable TV series to EVER break into the top 10 of the Nielsen ratings, essentially catapulting HBO past all of the major networks in television excellence.

To say that it changed the face of what could be tackled in a one-hour television drama critically and commercially doesn’t quite do justice to the impact it has had on the business model for series TV and on what was possible for all creative teams artistically if they broke out of the constraints imposed on them by the four major television networks.

With that in mind, it’s difficult to not appreciate the joys offered by The Many Saints even though most of us are indeed still watching this new Sopranos FEATURE FILM story on TELEVISION via HBO Max, rather than on the big screen its creator David Chase intended it for.

It would also be dishonest to say that by the end of this film one didn’t feel they were now once again ready to revisit the next chapter of the Sopranos family that picks up exactly where THIS FILM leaves off. Because it’s only by the very end of this film that we fully get where the filmmakers were going with this somewhat generalized, episodic prequel.

Sure, it’s well acted, well made and psychologically cringe-worthy in all the best ways at various points. But what makes it special, and what makes it tick, is all the knowledge we bring from its six seasons over eight years on HBO. That was a time when America willingly embraced a larger than life guy running a huge criminal enterprise and family business more deadly and corrupt than anyone could fathom from the outside (Note: Sound familiar?).

Yet for all their faults, this family, The Sopranos, have always been more inherently conflicted, and scarily human than any of its real-life present day political dynasties. Which is what makes them all the more riveting and thought provoking in these particular times.

And to answer the lingering question – yes, Michael Galdolfini is often terrific playing the young version of the title role that his late father James Galdolfini, made famous. But he doesn’t enter until halfway through the film and by the end we want more of him. At least an HBO miniseries? Think of it as the Jersey, or even Jersey Shore, version of The Crown. Something that doesn’t so much try to capitalize on the past, but instead deepen our understanding of it so as not to want to repeat it.

Which brings us to Saturday Night Live. In its 45+ years, SNL has covered about the same amount of time as The Crown has covered Queen Elizabeth’s reign. And overall it has probably been just as effective as a series in its way. Indeed, both have deservedly won lots of Emmys, delivered high ratings and won all kinds of other accolades even if some episodes or years wound up not delivering, and even disappointing, more often than not.

Unfortunately, this SNL opener this past weekend hosted by Owen Wilson, was much more in the latter category.

Its spoof of female hosts of The View/The Talk, Wilson lambasting Jeff Bezos in space, the show’s take on a local school board meeting with several dozen crazies testifying about government controlled nonsense, and even Wilson spoofing himself voicing a new Cars movie simply felt tired and forced.

The new SNL cast member portraying Joe Biden – TikTok star James Austin Johnson – showed some promise. And Pete Davidson on Weekend Update saying the outfit he wore to the Met Ball last week made him look like Tilda Swinton on casual Friday was clever. But, oy vey, as my Grandma, used to say. Is that all they got????

Well, next week Kim Kardashian West is the host so how much worse can it get?

That was both snide and cynical for those keeping score.

Adele – “When We Were Young”

09.26.21

by notesfromachair

For Your Entertainment

My entertainment choices lean towards the haunting, dramatic, unusual and silly. Not necessarily in that order and certainly more than one of those at a time.

But mostly, it’s the heartfelt, or at least the felt.

Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t necessarily mean melodrama, bathos or twee. It’s simply to say I hate facile, bullsh-t storytelling. A movie or TV series or book that glides gently on the surface but never quite gets into it.

As many producers, studio executives and dinner party conversations have noted in my presence over the years:

Chair, it’s called ENTERTAINMENT. Why does everything have to MEAN something? Can’t you just drop a shoulder strap and enjoy yourself?

Well yeah, sure. I like to enjoy myself…most of the time. But the way I do this is to indulge in something creative that speaks in some crazy or earthbound way to something of human existence.

The great Mike Nichols once said when speaking about directing actors in scenes from plays and movies that his approach was to ask the question (and I’m paraphrasing here): what are these two people doing, really? What would really happen here?

That’s a great lesson not only for directors and actors but writers. What’s the truth? Even if this world we’re playing in is crazy, what is true here? And how best can I show it?

By every measure we are living through strange times. But this week a streaming series and a novel, both off-center, odd, original and yeah, just plain out there and weird, fully caught my attention. And it wasn’t because they tried to be different. It was that they dared to be true.

The first is the Apple series, Mr. Corman, created, co-written, directed and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The second is a debut novel, Several People Are Typing, written by Calvin Kasulke.

(Note: Full disclosure – Cal is a former student of mine from more than a decade ago. But this has nothing to do with me praising his book. Nor, I suspect, did his participation in my writing class all those years ago have much to do with him writing this book. As for JG-L, I’m merely a fan boy… um… man).

Mr. Corman and Two People both seem to exist in our world and yet, as they play out, dare to become a pushed reality existence of their individual creators’ daring and bizarre invention. Things happen that aren’t supposed to, or at least seem to defy what we consider to be real, yet there is not a false or phony moment in either of them.

Their lead characters have struggles in recognizably human ways, even when they and their events and actions literally become surreal. Nothing is melodramatic or touchy-feely, even though what we’re watching is dramatic and touching, not to mention – yeah, I’ll say it – entertaining.

Mr. Corman centers on a 35-year-old teacher of third-graders in the Los Angeles San Fernando Valley who may or may not be seeing things; may or may not be having a nervous breakdown, losing his mind or becoming mentally ill; and is yet all the time behaving rationally and humanly given the parameters of what life has been like for all of us the last 18 months.

We watch Josh Corman, a former musician turned educator, with his friends, his family (Note: A wonderfully subdued Debra Winger plays his Jewish mother), his students and his ex and/or potential girlfriends in a ten-episode first season where each episode dares to go down a road we never see coming in a way we never quite imagined.

There’s the episode that is partly animated, another that becomes a musical and several where the covid-19 pandemic changes everything and everyone (Note: The series actually had to shut down shooting in L.A. during episode three due to covid-19 and then relocate months later to complete filming in New Zealand). There is also one that takes place primarily in the past and a stand-alone where we watch as this young yet middle-aged guy spends an evening with his estranged father, a man who likes to do things like open credit cards under his son’s name or call up and pretend he’s having a heart attack just to get his son’s attention. Then there’s the one where Josh goes to a party attended by a bunch of social media wannabes and witnesses…well, just watch it.

Of course, none of this does justice to the twists and turns and sadness and humor the series touches on. It can’t because the entire enterprise builds, one carefully crafted episode at a time, off the unfolding existential question of whether our main character has truly lost it or is simply the only sane one in our clearly insane world 2021 reality.

In searching for the truth it actually tells the truth, and often quite brilliantly.

Several People Are Typing takes an equally compelling but yet quite different approach. Its hero, Gerald, a writer at a NYC p.r. agency, has been working with a group of people who communicate virtually on the popular business communication platform called slack.

For those unfamiliar, as I once was, think of it as inter-office gchat that is supposedly a lot more secure, with all kinds of sub breakout rooms for “sort of” private chatter (Note: Because NOTHING IS PRIVATE anymore, right?).

In any event, when the novel starts Gerald is calling out for help because, guess what, his consciousness has somehow been uploaded on to slack. Yes, Gerald is now simply gerald, a virtual/written version of himself disembodied from his human self.

Oh, did I mention the entire book is written in slack prose? Well, it is. Think of the most basic text thread you’ve shared from anywhere between 2-10 different people at various times, all published in consecutive or intersecting order, with the same type of phraseology, and peppered with a series of pertinent yet vaguely annoying gifs, photos and abbreviations and you get the picture.

This is oh, so trendy and too much of a trick, right? No, not even slightly. That would be the superficial, untruthful way to execute this story and, well, there’s none of that here. It’s about people, virtual and otherwise, finding their meaningful identities and not merely slacking through life.

It’s about how we spend our time and what our time means to us. And whether a picture really is worth a thousand words, especially when someone decides to listen to you. And to actually, well, hear you.

But mostly, it’s really, really clever and really, really weird. And pretty gosh darned funny.

See, you can be a lot of things, including entertaining, when you have a point to make that’s more than just trying to be entertaining. Because what’s truly entertaining is a personal take on what is human. And what’s truly human is always a lot more than mere entertainment.

David Bowie and Morrissey – “That’s Entertainment”