return to the pines
June 28, 2000
In honor of Gay Pride Week/Month/Whatever the pre-defined period of time is, from June 18-30, Bravo is having their "Out of the Closet Festival". As part of that Festival, they're showing "Tales of the City" and "More Tales of the city" this week. Which is good. Except they cut that magnificent shot of Bill Campbell's rear end. Which probably means that they cut the shot of the dingus of whoever plays Michael in "More Tales". And it's such a nice dingus.... On the other hand, at least they let 'em kiss and have a nice romance. Sort of.
Can I just say that Bravo's whole "Out of the Closet" festival thing is driving me batty? It's not the shows (not all of them, anyway); it's the interstitial bits between. Don't get me wrong, I do love kd lang, and I'll be buying "Invincible Summer" tout de suite, but why on earth did they pick her as their host with the most for their "Out of the Closet" festival? ... wait, that came out wrong. It's not that I mind her being host, as such, it's that she's at EVERY commercial break with a pithy bon mot which gets repeated two or three or four of twenty times per hour. Surely there was another out gay person or two they could have tapped to do the odd promo? RuPaul? George Michael? Elton John? Martina? ANYONE?...
And "Fire Island: The Pines", their gay and lesbian docusoap [sic] is periodically quite detestable. On the good side, there are men in it--or more precisely ONE man--who aren't gymmed to a fare thee well (although it's not for lack of trying; it seems that taking protease inhibitors causes some people to develop a paunch) and some who are also not under 35 (the same person, actually). More of the lesbians are older than most of the men, in fact--what an odd time for the slightly-older lesbian to explode into visibility--and the living situation is somewhat different; I suspect it's somewhat a reflection of the striking difference in the earning power of men and women, and gay men and lesbians in particular.
On the other hand, most of the men in it ARE gymmed to a faretheewell and ARE under 30 and ARE in desperate need of a suntan. (Euphemistically well handled, don't you think?) There's quite a lot of nudity that gets edited out for the American version--it was originally broadcast on the BBC--but enough of it is left in to give the impression that the only thing on the minds of most of the men is unrestrained hedonism, to put it politely.
To some extent, the focus on the superficial, the sex is a limitation of the format--it's quite apparent with "The Real World" and "Road Rules" as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was a problem with "Survivor" and the forthcomimg "Big Brother"--but these people, especially the men, do come off as awfully superficial. Granting that it's the editing, the selection of people and scenes, whatever; there MUST be more to these people than we get to see. The superficial bits, weirdly enough, probably show people's personalities really sharply in some ways, but mostly they seem to reconfirm all people's prejudices about gay men, at least. (The lesbians, at least, seem to have more of a life, in part because some of them have children. Which pisses the hell out of some of the others. But you get a sense of the women working at relationships, at life in a way that is totally absent in what you see of most of the men.)
june 2000 gaygirlvid festival
In celebration of Pride month, I decided to create my own video festival, and, for a change of pace, decided to rent a couple of gay girl vids and a gay guy vid.
As for the gayguy vid ... Well .... the only thing that kept me with All the Rage at all was that the box said that it was supposed to be a parody of a certain type of gay lifestyle. So I waited for the parody.
And I waited ...
And I waited.
And then I wondered if there was something that I was just entirely missing. Because this was a film about thoroughly despicable, detestable stereotypical gays, and there was no parody in sight. Basically, Christopher (John-Michael Lander) is a thoroughly shallow, stereotypical sort of Guppie. He sleeps with anything that moves, and tracks it in his little black box; as he sleeps with one man, he throws out an old card and adds a new one to the list. His friend, Larry (Jay Corcoran), actually starts out as a nice guy (for about ten seconds) who is charmed at receiving roses from someone he slept with; he's quickly disabused of the notion that this could be a good thing. (Although one wonders how he managed to get above the age of 30 without forming his own opinions on such things.)
Eventually, through the machinations of his "friends", Christopher meets Stewart (David Vincent), a nice little ungymmed unstereotypical book editor. And they fall deeply in love. And you never EVER understand why; as superficial as Christopher has acted to that point, you'd expect him to reject Stewart out of hand. Instead, he actually tolerates a long, slow dating pattern, in which it takes quite some time before he and Stewart actually fall into bed.
At this point, the film archetype becomes clear: it's a "shallow guy falls in love, finds everything he wants, gets scared and blows it all up" type of film. So, in order to further this archetype, Christopher changes out of all proportion. He becomes quite loveydovey and cloying. Eventually, as required, he does something colossally stupid. It's been signalled since the beginning of the film; you know exactly what he'll do to ruin things, and it will be about as bad as possible.
Christopher doesn't handle rejection at all well.
To be quite honest, eventually it gets bad enough that the only way to watch the thing is on fast forward, stopping periodically to hear the clanking dialogue. The end of the film contains some truly unspeakable grand guignol over-the-top drama.
The only thing to say is, watch this one only if you're in the mood for sincere and intense self flagellation. But keep a nice comedy in reserve for after to wash the taste out of your mind.
A reasonable way to look at it is: if you liked "In the Comapany of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors", you'll probably like "All the Rage". It's the same general type of film, in which you get to follow the dislikeable characters around. And, to be sure, there's not precisely any attempt to make them likeable, but it makes for a hard film to watch.
On the other hand, Out of Season is a really, really lovely film and an unalloyed delight. One of the better romantic comedies I've seen this year. 
Micki (Carol Monda) comes back to Cape May to care for her terminally ill Uncle Charlie (Dennis Fecteau). Interestingly, although it's made reasonably clear that he doesn't have AIDS, you're never certain what it is he does have. In any event, when she first comes to town, Micki is all attitude. And, to be sure, it never quite leaves her. And then, almost immediately, she meets Shelly (Nancy Daly), manager of Zoe's Restaurant--Shelly just liked the name "Zoe"--and her cook Roberta (Joy Kelly) and you know what will happen.
To be sure, this film moves at its own quite deliberate pace; for some, this may be quite a problem, and it could move a bit faster without harming anything (although not a lot; forcing the fast moving urban Micki to adjust to small-town Cape May is part of the point). commensurate with the pace, the relationship is very slow building; if you're looking for a film where they get to the relationship, get to the sex right off the bat, look somewhere else.
The first part, where the relationships betwen the various characters are established, is really remarkably funny; remarkable because it's not trying to be a gag-a-minute film. There aren't any jokes to be found. The humor arises from the characters and situations and isn't at all forced.
Technically, "Out of Season" is pretty good. The cinematography and scenery are, to be sure, periodically stunning. Sections of it look as though it were composed with Norman Rockwell illustrations at hand. And, for the most part, the director, either through necessity or desire, eschews a soundtrack; it's a rather refreshing silence, most of the time. The screenplay does, unfortunately, need a bit of help now and again--Uncle Charlie, for example, varies between underwritten, overwitten and absent, and Roberta is periodically entirely too wise--but not often, and generally not badly.
Eventually, of course, characters get together. (In fact, the lovemaking scene is somewhat the most annoying scene. Is The Great Musical Love Scene really necessary? Are we still in the 70s?) Then there's a crisis--because, in every romantic comedy, there's a crisis. The end of the film--the very very end of the film--is mildly surprising, but that's about the the only surprise in the film. If you want to see something unexpected, "Out of Season" is probably not the film for you. On the other hand, if you want an enjoyable romantic comedy, mostly well written, well acted and reasonably interesting, give "Out of Season" a shot. It's a perfect movie for a summer date night.
Posted by iain at 12:39 PM
color television
June 20, 2000
The age of the minority has arrived! Fear us!
More prosaically, the summer season has arrived, and with it, two new shows with predominantly minority casts and other shows with minority leads. And a holdover from last season will be showing repeats in an effort to gain a bit more audience share. (After all, if you didn't watch it the first time, you might catch it the second time, right? right? ... oh, well.)
To take the latter show first ... CBS renewed "City of Angels", the Bochco drama that takes place in an inner-city Los Angeles hospital with a predominantly black cast. However, renewal could hardly be said to be a ringing endorsement; CBS essentially said that had the show not had a minority cast, and had they not been getting pummeled regularly by the NAACP over the fact that they were the worst of the nets regarding minority casting, "City of Angels" would not have survived. Following this enthusiastic announcement, Paris Barclay, one of the show's creators--it was his idea in the first place, backed by Bochco's reputation--left due to creative differences. (The impression is that he was "encouraged" to leave.) In other words, "City of Angels" is pretty much the sickman of CBS, which is really saying something.
The difficulty is that the show ... really wants to have something to say and hasn't figured out quite what it is or how to do it. Essentially, it's trying to be "St Elsewhere of Los Angeles", but they haven't figured out how to structure the show so that this approach will work without looking like that's what they're trying to do. They also want to try to approach specifically minority concerns in a way that doesn't alienate It spent its entire first season putting at least one moral lesson per segment (in other words, five per episode), and nobody likes to be preached at. It also doesn't seem to be catching the imagination of minorities--it's not one of the top five shows among blacks--and a show with a minority cast that can't catch a minority audience is in deep trouble. It's wasting Viveca A Fox and Blair Underwood (although Michael Warren is a perfectly delicious Evil Administrator, if somewhat one-note ... and, of course, the problem is that in comedies or more broadly drawn shows, one-note villains can be quite a lot of fun, but in a more serious show, they need to be more ... subtle.)
Showtime, almost all by itself, seems to be resurrecting minority shows and minority leads and all sorts of controversial things.
One of those things is "Resurrection Blvd", the first regular series to have a principally Hispanic cast in television history. (Be warned; Showtime has put their site through yet another redesign and they are now sincere believers in Shockwave/Flash and things that make noise.) Unfortunately, I have to reserve judgement on it. I tried to watch it, I really did, but it was full of thundering stereotypes and nearly as much moralistic fervor as "City of Angels", with far less cause. It's so intensely earnest that it's periodically rather offputting. After about 20 minutes, I just surrendered. It may be better (if harder to follow because it'll be tougher to tell who people are) after the first episode; we'll wait and see.
Showtime also heads into relatively rarely plumbed territory (rare recently, in any event) when the new season of "Rude Awakening" begins. Mario van Peebles enters the show, and his character will become one of Billie's (Sherilyn Fenn) love interests, along with the ever-present Dave. So you get not only a love triangle, but an interracial relationship. Given the show, it's likely that those aspects will be touched and discussed. Given that particular show, it's also likely that someone will put everything in the most offensive terms possible--the sort of thing that almost everyone thinks, but nobody would ever say, because you just don't do that. On this show, everyone does.
It will be interesting to see how they handle it. Given that Marcus (Mario) is supposed to be one of Dave's old friends, it's quite likely that the race issue will only come out to play on rare occasions, subsumed under the "You're screwing my friend!" issue and the "You need to stop drinking and doing drugs" issue and the "You need to get a job" issue. (Billie has LOTS of issues.)
And finally, there's Showeime's "Soul Food", based on the film of the same name. Of the three dramas reviewed, it's easily the best written and best acted. Unfortunately, you do pretty much have to forget the film if you want to take the show at face value. It's produced and written by the same people who did the film, which provides welcome continuity. However, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, in recasting for the series, the producers decided to go with a much younger cast; it feels about ten years younger almost across the board and they also seem to have reduced the age difference between the sisters, as well. It makes a bit of a difference in the flavor of the series--these characters have less history with each other. Nonetheless, this is a good solid cast, and the episodes should get a bit better as the series moves on and the producers and writers feel less urgency to have each character involved in almost every scene; the constant presence of almost every cast member confused almost as much as it clarified. The one change they should make, as soon as possible, is to soften Teri (Nicole Ari Parker), the sister originally played by Vanessa L Williams. As it stands, whenever she's around her family, every word out of her mouth is edged and barbed until the viewer wants to call her a very naughty word indeed. It may be the producer's goal, perhaps, but it runs the risk of turning her into a caricature instead of a character.
It's very interesting to look at the differences between the three cable dramas and even HBO's Oz and something like "City of Angels." As the directors of programming at both HBO and Showtime have said, being pay cable services allows them the unusual luxury of narrowcasting--that is, aiming specific shows at specific audiences knowing full well that the bulk of their audience may simply stay away in droves. That's why you see all of the shows that actually deal with race as in issue on the pay cable services. That's why "More Tales of the City", "Common Ground" and the forthcoming "Queer as Folk" came out of Showtime, and "Dragtime" from HBO, where they have the luxury of creating shows that will appeal primarily to the relatively small gay audience.
One of the struggles that "City of Angels" has on CBS is that, by its very nature--a show about an inner city hospital with primarity minority patients and staff--race would normally be an ever present issue. It would not necessarily be in every conversation, but the topic would always be around somewhere. However, since networks are broadcasters--that is, their programs must appeal to as wide an audience as possible to draw ratings and advertiser dollars--that puts them in the awkward position. To be realistic, race should be an issue all the time; to attract viewers and dollars, they need to keep it off the table as much as possible. As long as "City of Angels" tries to walk this line, it will continue to fail. Minorities will stay away because it's not realistic; both minorities and everyone else will stay away becaus it's just not that good.
Compare "City of Angels" and "ER". ER can succeed because, in many ways, it simply shows things the way they have always been. In the composition of its staff, it's a mostly realistic depiction of Cook County Hospital, on which the show is modeled (mostly, but not completely, white administrative staff and physicians, and mostly, but not completely, minority support staff--orderlies, nurses, etc). By showing things the way they always have been, that enables ER to take race off the table, even though, as an inner city hospital, it would never ever be far away. Interestingly, presenting the dynamics this way also allows ER to play with the topic a little, every now and again, dancing in to have one character mugged by and subsequently afraid of black men, dancing away when he eventually realizes what he's doing and that it's just not right, restoring the status quo of unspoken truce. By the same token, "City of Angels" struggles because it's showing a different side, but trying to maintain the same dynamics; it simply doesn't work.
Ultimately, one good thing about the increasing factioning of the broadcast audience is that it may make broadcasters less reluctant to try risky or different types of shows. It may be a while before that day really arrives, though, as they try desperately to hang onto the audience they have. And, unfortunately, "How to be a millionaire" and "Survivor" have shown the networks that if they put up something people find compelling, they'll come back to TV. Unfortunately, they're relatively low risk, brain dead shows. So it may be some time.
Posted by iain at 10:35 PM
in the name of ....
In honor of Gay Pride Week/Month/Whatever the pre-defined period of time is, from June 18-30, Bravo is having their "Out of the Closet Festival". As part of that Festival, they're showing "Tales of the City" and "More Tales of the city" this week. Which is good. Except they cut that magnificent shot of Bill Campbell's rear end. Which probably means that they cut the shot of the dingus of whoever plays Michael in "More Tales". And it's such a nice dingus.... On the other hand, at least they let 'em kiss and have a nice romance. Sort of.
Can I just say that Bravo's whole "Out of the Closet" festival thing is driving me batty? It's not the shows (not all of them, anyway); it's the interstitial bits between. Don't get me wrong, I do love kd lang, and I'll be buying "Invincible Summer" tout de suite, but why on earth did they pick her as their host with the most for their "Out of the Closet" festival? ... wait, that came out wrong. It's not that I mind her being host, as such, it's that she's at EVERY commercial break with a pithy bon mot which gets repeated two or three or four of twenty times per hour. Surely there was another out gay person or two they could have tapped to do the odd promo? RuPaul? George Michael? Elton John? Martina? ANYONE?...
And "Fire Island: The Pines", their gay and lesbian docusoap [sic] is periodically quite detestable. On the good side, there are men in it--or more precisely ONE man--who aren't gymmed to a fare thee well (although it's not for lack of trying; it seems that taking protease inhibitors causes some people to develop a paunch) and some who are also not under 35 (the same person, actually). More of the lesbians are older than most of the men, in fact--what an odd time for the slightly-older lesbian to explode into visibility--and the living situation is somewhat different; I suspect it's somewhat a reflection of the striking difference in the earning power of men and women, and gay men and lesbians in particular.
On the other hand, most of the men in it ARE gymmed to a faretheewell and ARE under 30 and ARE in desperate need of a suntan. (Euphemistically well handled, don't you think?) There's quite a lot of nudity that gets edited out for the American version--it was originally broadcast on the BBC--but enough of it is left in to give the impression that the only thing on the minds of most of the men is unrestrained hedonism, to put it politely.
To some extent, the focus on the superficial, the sex is a limitation of the format--it's quite apparent with "The Real World" and "Road Rules" as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was a problem with "Survivor" and the forthcomimg "Big Brother"--but these people, especially the men, do come off as awfully superficial. Granting that it's the editing, the selection of people and scenes, whatever; there MUST be more to these people than we get to see. The superficial bits, weirdly enough, probably show people's personalities really sharply in some ways, but mostly they seem to reconfirm all people's prejudices about gay men, at least. (The lesbians, at least, seem to have more of a life, in part because some of them have children. Which pisses the hell out of some of the others. But you get a sense of the women working at relationships, at life in a way that is totally absent in what you see of most of the men.)
june 2000 gaygirlvid festival
In celebration of Pride month, I decided to create my own video festival, and, for a change of pace, decided to rent a couple of gay girl vids and a gay guy vid.
As for the gayguy vid ... Well .... the only thing that kept me with All the Rage at all was that the box said that it was supposed to be a parody of a certain type of gay lifestyle. So I waited for the parody.
And I waited ...
And I waited.
And then I wondered if there was something that I was just entirely missing. Because this was a film about thoroughly despicable, detestable stereotypical gays, and there was no parody in sight. Basically, Christopher (John-Michael Lander) is a thoroughly shallow, stereotypical sort of Guppie. He sleeps with anything that moves, and tracks it in his little black box; as he sleeps with one man, he throws out an old card and adds a new one to the list. His friend, Larry (Jay Corcoran), actually starts out as a nice guy (for about ten seconds) who is charmed at receiving roses from someone he slept with; he's quickly disabused of the notion that this could be a good thing. (Although one wonders how he managed to get above the age of 30 without forming his own opinions on such things.)
Eventually, through the machinations of his "friends", Christopher meets Stewart (David Vincent), a nice little ungymmed unstereotypical book editor. And they fall deeply in love. And you never EVER understand why; as superficial as Christopher has acted to that point, you'd expect him to reject Stewart out of hand. Instead, he actually tolerates a long, slow dating pattern, in which it takes quite some time before he and Stewart actually fall into bed.
At this point, the film archetype becomes clear: it's a "shallow guy falls in love, finds everything he wants, gets scared and blows it all up" type of film. So, in order to further this archetype, Christopher changes out of all proportion. He becomes quite loveydovey and cloying. Eventually, as required, he does something colossally stupid. It's been signalled since the beginning of the film; you know exactly what he'll do to ruin things, and it will be about as bad as possible.
Christopher doesn't handle rejection at all well.
To be quite honest, eventually it gets bad enough that the only way to watch the thing is on fast forward, stopping periodically to hear the clanking dialogue. The end of the film contains some truly unspeakable grand guignol over-the-top drama.
The only thing to say is, watch this one only if you're in the mood for sincere and intense self flagellation. But keep a nice comedy in reserve for after to wash the taste out of your mind.
A reasonable way to look at it is: if you liked "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors", you'll probably like "All the Rage". It's the same general type of film, in which you get to follow the dislikeable characters around. And, to be sure, there's not precisely any attempt to make them likeable, but it makes for a hard film to watch.
On the other hand, Out of Season is a really, really lovely film and an unalloyed delight. One of the better romantic comedies I've seen this year.
Micki (Carol Monda) comes back to Cape May to care for her terminally ill Uncle Charlie (Dennis Fecteau). Interestingly, although it's made reasonably clear that he doesn't have AIDS, you're never certain what it is he does have. In any event, when she first comes to town, Micki is all attitude. And, to be sure, it never quite leaves her. And then, almost immediately, she meets Shelly (Nancy Daly), manager of Zoe's Restaurant--Shelly just liked the name "Zoe"--and her cook Roberta (Joy Kelly) and you know what will happen.
To be sure, this film moves at its own quite deliberate pace; for some, this may be quite a problem, and it could move a bit faster without harming anything (although not a lot; forcing the fast moving urban Micki to adjust to small-town Cape May is part of the point). commensurate with the pace, the relationship is very slow building; if you're looking for a film where they get to the relationship, get to the sex right off the bat, look somewhere else.
The first part, where the relationships betwen the various characters are established, is really remarkably funny; remarkable because it's not trying to be a gag-a-minute film. There aren't any jokes to be found. The humor arises from the characters and situations and isn't at all forced.
Technically, "Out of Season" is pretty good. The cinematography and scenery are, to be sure, periodically stunning. Sections of it look as though it were composed with Norman Rockwell illustrations at hand. And, for the most part, the director, either through necessity or desire, eschews a soundtrack; it's a rather refreshing silence, most of the time. The screenplay does, unfortunately, need a bit of help now and again--Uncle Charlie, for example, varies between underwritten, overwitten and absent, and Roberta is periodically entirely too wise--but not often, and generally not badly.
Eventually, of course, characters get together. (In fact, the lovemaking scene is somewhat the most annoying scene. Is The Great Musical Love Scene really necessary? Are we still in the 70s?) Then there's a crisis--because, in every romantic comedy, there's a crisis. The end of the film--the very very end of the film--is mildly surprising, but that's about the the only surprise in the film. If you want to see something unexpected, "Out of Season" is probably not the film for you. On the other hand, if you want an enjoyable romantic comedy, mostly well written, well acted and reasonably interesting, give "Out of Season" a shot. It's a perfect movie for a summer date night.
Posted by iain at 10:28 PM