Ripped from the Headlines

David Letterman's caution in the name of comedy: My visit to the first 'Late Show' in 1993

So I guess this is how it happens: You do something long enough and you start being able to flash back on your own work. In 1993 I wrote to Late Night With David Letterman in the hopes of being able to get a ticket to one of his last NBC shows before he jumped to CBS, a move I was concerned would parallel with REM's leap to a major label. Letterman wasn't exactly Letterman then; on NBC, he was Dave. At CBS, he became Letterman, if you get my drift.

Instead, I landed one of the 440 tickets to that first CBS show.

In the ensuring years Letterman's become a national treasure. Since the network jump I've paid little attention to his show; when he abandoned his silliest routines and traded spotlights on oddfolk like Harvey Pekar and Ostarro the Discount Magician for effusive celebrity guffaws, I lost interest. Generic Letterman wasn't for me.

But that's fine; give the people what they want.

Having landed one of those 440 tickets way back then, I took advantage of the situation: I pitched my attendance at the Boston Phoenix (pause for moment of silence for the departed) and editor Jon Garelick gave me one of my very first assignments to cover TV.

I'm still doing it today. Thanks, Jon ... and thanks, Dave.

Here's the piece I wrote:

Easy Street
Hey, I got tickets to the David Letterman show!
(The Boston Phoenix, September 1993)

Like an often-absent uncle, Letterman is just "Dave" in my household. And today, August 30, he has invited me into his home. I've watched Dave since 1983. I have earned this ticket. So standing on line, schvitzing in sunny, humid Manhattan as we wait to get into the first of his new CBS shows, the news that the fat lady behind me from Long Island "never watches his show - it's on too late" nearly spurs me to violence. And it strikes me: are we going to have to share Dave now, with a bunch of people who don't deserve him?

Quite probably. Dave is open for business. I expected CBS to be thoroughly unprepared for the arrival of Dave: the ticket department had no idea how tickets were to be doled out as recently as July, when I called to check on my request. And the Ed Sullivan Theater, where the Late Show is now filmed, had rats, not phone lines, until just a few weeks ago. But I forgot one thing. Dave is the boss.

He's just letting CBS air his show. The ticketholders' line had started forming at 12:30 that afternoon, and standby ticketholders had been waiting since the Saturday evening before, hoping to be one of the 440 selected by the efficient, scurrying, laminated-pass-wearing worker bees. CBS pages swarmed up and down the line, updating impatient ticketholders with tidbits:

"Once you get inside, you will have a limited time to use the bathroom, so go to the Roy Rogers across the street now." Limousine chasers got their reward when Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel arrived and were thronged by television camera crews and thrill seekers in line. Next to me, last-minute alterations were being made as carpenters constructed wooden dollies in record time, then slid them into the air-conditioned building. A CNN camera filmed a posse of ticketholders waving their very important blue cards, like a scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Paul Newman, a surprise pop-up in the first episode, wondering where the hell the singing cats were.

Once in the building we were held in winding queues as though waiting for the Batman ride at Riverside Park, then herded by yet more pages into our cushy, suede seats with a precision that would have impressed the Marines. While minions scurried to round up last-minute details - one assistant gasped, "I never want to do this again" - Paul and the rest of the CBS Orchestra, the World's Most Dangerous Band fleshed out by a second guitarist and keyboard player, launched into a loud, tight version of "1999," segueing neatly into the locale-appropriate "I Saw Her Standing There."

Everything felt like the inside of a new car, fresh and spotless. At NBC, Dave's studio held the audience on a tight incline of bleacher seats, leaving people blocked by lights and dangling monitors. At the Sullivan Theater, Dave's desk sits higher than the first row. The stage is only three steps up from the audience, and though it looks spacious on television, those thousand-pound cameras teeter perilously close. One of the show's writers, dressed eerily like Dave five years ago, even down to sucking on a cigar, took the stage and introduced us to the show, adding that we were very lucky to be witnessing television history. History? Phoo, we were witnessing Dave. And then Dave emerged jacket-less, striding onto the middle of the stage, looking thinner and handsomer in person than television would lead you to believe. He made a short speech, acknowledging much of what his writer had already told us, but he did not ask, as he does traditionally, if there were any questions or out-of-town guests - it seemed he just wanted to get on with the show. Once he departed, without so much as a countdown, Calvert DeForest (Larry "Bud" Melman) was guffawing from the iris of a huge black eye: "This is CBS."

From there the roller-coaster never stopped and never had to. Controlled anarchy reigned, Dave wise-cracked, he stole an in-joke for the rest of the show from Paul Newman. While cameras rolled, all staff paused to watch the action, leaning pleased against theater walls. Dave's assistant Rose twirled her skirts giddily. During the breaks they were all action: darting about to meet Dave's changing coffee needs, to roll Calvert away, to set up Billy Joel's equipment. This bustling activity seemed organized; no one ran screaming across the stage about last-minute changes, Dave never broke a sweat. From the start the Late Show never resembled a maiden voyage. Of course, Dave had taken no chances; two practice shows were taped to work out the bugs. Caution in the name of comedy seems to work for Dave.

As my friend and co-Dave ticketholder Valerie remarked, "It feels less planned on TV," and she's right. What makes Dave remarkable after 12 years is that though what you see on tape feels, as he would say, "slapped together," Dave has it planned down to the last cigar puff. Of course you know putting together the Late Show takes massive manpower and endless energy. But Dave, our favorite uncle, knows how to make it all look easy.

Remake, remodel: "Mad Max: Fury Road" and the delicious taste of a reboot done right

When I go to the grocery story for ice cream, I know exactly what flavor I want. Maybe I'm flexible on who's making the flavor but in general, give me what I know I already like.

Ice cream makers aren't the only ones in on this truism; advertisers are well aware that once consumers find something to our liking, we keep going back to it. Then movie executives got on the bandwagon a few decades back and boom – we're awash in remakes, reboots and sequels.

Of course, when you're pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a two-hour entertainment venture in an industry that's slowly leaking customers, original vision and story is not high on priority list.

Last week, the latest edition in how this tale plays out hit the press. On Thursday, Sony Pictures announced it would remake the 1996 supernatural cult favorite The Craft to much wailing and moaning among people who feel it's a touchstone. (Confession: I have not seen, and I have no opinion on the remake.) Then on Friday, Mad Max: Fury Road premiered after a three-decade hibernation of the franchise.

Remakes and reboots and sequels, oh my! It's easy to see why they get the studio executives excited; they're a proven favorite flavor. It's also easy to see the dismay in potential consumers, who're left bewailing "why?" And while it's less easy to see, I imagine there's a significant disappointment in the creative screenwriters whose fresh stories are buried once again under the same stuff we've already seen. Hiring writers for remakes and reboots must appeal to those who like the strictures of fan fiction: Here are your borders, your canon, and a beloved lead character. Go!

The moaned "why" is not important here. Why is easy, why was decided by the accountants who saw that Craft made $55.6 million in worldwide box office with a budget of $15 million, and that the last entry in the Mad Max franchise, Beyond Thunderdome (1985) earned $36.2 million with a budget of $10 million. (And that one had Tina Turner in a skimpy mesh dress!)

The "why" that comes next, however, does interest me. Clever writers who avoid aping the same movie again can make or break the good do-over film. And while I can't speak for Craft (though there's hope in the indie horror director Leigh Janiak and screenwriter Phil Graziadel, who worked together on her film Honeymoon), I can address why Fury Road is the best kind of do-over film possible.

There are a number of reasons to ignore Fury Road, including:

1. No Mel Gibson, perfect as the haunted title survivor. (Pretend the last decade of his behavior never happened.)

2. The Fast and Furious franchise already has a lock on two hours of racing cars.

3. Dystopic sci-fi largely has gone beyond shoot-em-ups.

4. Ain't nothin' wrong with the first three Max films (aside from the absurd replacing of Australian voices with American ones in the 1979 original).

But having seen Fury Road, there are even more reasons to go see it. Fury Road, is exactly what you want from a big, loud (very loud), dumb (not entirely dumb) summer action picture. The movement is nonstop, the dialogue is minimal but effective, and the visuals are jaw-dropping and original. It succeeds because:

1. Original director and screenwriter George Miller has remained fully in the driver's seat.

2. He's not cashing in on his creation; he's re-crafting it for a new age.

3. He understands that women watch action films – and has weighted not just his cast but his story in their direction

Was there a screenplay for Fury Road? Ostensibly yes; writers (including Miller) were deployed at some point to craft at least a skeleton of a story. But what they did best was not in the line-by-line readings, it was in the world-building of a post-apocalyptic landscape of little water, acres of sand, plenty of grinding metallic engines, and an abundance of shell-shocked, possibly insane survivors. The film is predicated on a brilliantly realized, layered world of intertwining backstories – white-faced creatures exist to serve with religious fervor underground; women are sequestered as breeders for the leader (or used as milk-producing cows); there's a determined, take-no-shit female leader (Charlize Theron) who makes a bold break for freedom that propels the plot; and there are multiple factions of differently-motorized tribes scattered around the blasted landscape. Each calls out for its own film, or at the very least more explanations and explorations, but none of those are forthcoming. You are in this story, and the story owns the viewer from the first startling moments.

And the payoff works, for the most part. Angst, loss, determination, conversion, reunion, loss, survival. Max (played ably if not electrically by Tom Hardy) is almost beside the point. Instead, for this go-around Miller has used his Mad Max creation as a Trojan horse to tell a story today's audiences will lap up like ice cream – a brilliant packaging switch that more than justifies the need for whatever this film is: reboot or sequel.

"We don't need another hero," Tina Turner sang in the theme song to Beyond Thunderdome. And she has a point – most remakes feel like a chance to capitalize off of an established franchise and ring that cash register again. Fury pulls off a magic trick with this new edition, expanding its universe and providing several new, unexpected heroes. That it will more than make its budget back should comfort the accountants, but it's unimportant to those who care about story. Fury Road gives us the heroes we didn't know we needed.

This story originally appeared at Curiosity Quills.

Let's get retro: My 2007 'Mad Men' review for The Hollywood Reporter

_{Back in July of 2007, I was about a year and four months from getting laid off from The Hollywood Reporter after a pretty good run at the troubled trade publication (which has very much bounced back in the years since after going through a visionary rethink). But they were at loose ends in a lot of ways, having laid off plenty of other folks -- giving me some room to maneuver into the TV reviews section now and again.}

_{Along with a clutch of other media types, AMC invited me to a lunch at a nice restaurant with the premise that they were getting into the original programming business (that was funny back then, this network that chopped up classic movies and added commercials, coming up with anything original worth watching) with a new show about the advertising business in New York City during the 1960s. They had a legendary ad man there, they (probably) had Matthew Weiner, but memory does not serve.}

_{They showed some of the pilot episode of Mad Men, gave us a portable flask-and-shot-cup box with a nifty leather handle, and lunch. I went home fired up to write the review of this first episode and got permission to do so. The fact that I had to plump for it -- "this is AMC's first original series, non-premium cable networks are starting to do their own original programming" says something about how the eye was off the ball at THR in those days and that nobody really took this new series seriously.}

_{That means that I got to review the show outside of the zeitgeist bubble it would become, away from the highfalutin' discussion on its meaning and interpretation, and aside from the success it turned into. At the time, it was just another series to watch. And while it had lots to say for it, I had my doubts. From episode one it was clear that this was the apex of the white straight Christian American male, and things were only going downhill from here. (I say as much in the review.) Why would we want to invest in a lead character who hadn't a clue he was about to lose it all?}

_{Well, we did and we have. (And actually, Don Draper's world has upended, but he's turned out all right.) Tonight, Mad Men goes off the air in what will undoubtedly be an understated meditation many will discuss extensively. So before that happens, I'm including the review below (to my surprise it still exists, with no images or credits, on the revamped THR site. Enjoy. I still hold true to a lot of what I said then, but -- to my great pleasure, the show has turned out to be much better than its pilot would suggest.}

_{Enjoy, and stay Mad, people.}

"Men" delivers retro charm but succumbs to soft sell
By Randee Dawn
The Hollywood Reporter (July 17, 2007)

Advertising is based on one thing: Happiness, says Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the creative director on AMC's shiny new hourlong drama series Mad Men, which takes place in a 1960s-era Madison Avenue ad agency.

Clearly, as writer/executive producer Matthew Weiner portrays it, the era is packed with happiness: There's smoking and drinking and extramarital sex and oodles of charming of secretaries (2007 translation: harassment). It was the gilded age of white, male, heterosexual Christians (Draper's agency, Sterling Cooper, has but one exotic Jew in the mailroom). Little did they know that the rest of the century would be a slow, privilege-stripping roll downhill.

Which makes watching the agency's alpha males (who seem to have matriculated from the Patrick Bateman school of style and manners) prowling their natural habitat a glorious thing. There's crisp, knowing dialogue: Secretary Joan (Christina Hendricks) plays up to her bosses but knows their M.O.: "Most of the time they're looking for something between a mother and a waitress." There's competent, if not standout-worthy acting (Hamm's square-jawed woodenness likely is part character-based, but it would help to know there's something there). There's beautiful camerawork from Phil Abraham (a Sopranos vet like Weiner and director Alan Taylor) that paints 1960 in clean, natural tones.

Yet if the pieces are in place for Mad Men to break big, why does its center feel so hollow? Watching characters indulge with relish in what today are vices has a transgressive quality, yet it's all done with an insider's wink to the audience. A fawning tone would grow just as tiresome, but who can identify with characters from whom even the writers seem to shrink?

A lack of an obvious narrative entry point also keeps that distance -- viewers are just shot back in time and plopped into the agency, expected to run with the pack. That the rest of that episode's soft spine focuses on little more than character introductions and a B-story of how to sell cigarettes without touting their health benefits (an issue solved by the credit roll) is hardly compelling enough to bring those eyeballs back.

There's much to admire about Mad Men, and much worth tuning in for. But so far, it's all soft sell. At one point, Draper advises a cigarette exec (John Cullum) that they'll promote his product's "toasted" quality," thus ushering in the era of pitching lifestyle over product, the birth of selling nothing. Unfortunately, at this stage, Mad Men is giving its audience pretty much the same thing.

Bonus: My chat with Jon Hamm (Don Draper) for the L.A. Times in 2011.

Contain yourself! Four shows whose “bottle” episodes are short bursts of perfection

Into the life of every TV series, a breather must fall. Here you have a successful plot engine chugging along, peopled by a beloved ensemble cast, all of whom who up every week to continue an ongoing story. But that can get tiring. Everyone needs a palate-cleanser.

Which is what happens when a showrunner and his or her set of writers step back and create what’s known as a “bottle episode.” The term refers to a self-contained episode within a series; technically, they’re supposed to be a money-saver since they rarely venture off of the main set (or even one room on the main set). But this is a lie – bottle episodes run over budget all the time.

What they really are is a chance for writers to crack their collective knuckles and go deep rather than broad with storytelling. The best bottle episodes are like one-act plays, taking place in an enclosed environment with a limited number of characters who may not do very much, but who undergo emotional or psychological changes. They are my favorite types of TV episodes.

Here are four that were done exceptionally well:

Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Data’s Day” (1991)

Written by: Harold Apter and Ronald D. Moore

Any discussion of the bottle episode would be remiss not to include something from Star Trek, the series that reportedly originated the concept (the “bottle” refers to a “ship in a bottle”; in this case, the Enterprise). In this episode, the artificial intelligence character named Data goes through a typical day in his life on the ship, narrated by his portrayer Brent Spiner. He experiences dramas small and large, but the script tells several small stories rather than a single overarching one that imperils a crew member/the ship/the universe. While no one would want to watch the heightened mundanity of a day in the life of a character each week, thanks to skillful writing and storytelling, plus the ultimate “outsider” character as narrator, the episode is charming and fulfilling.

Homicide: Life on the Street, “Subway” (1997)

Written by: James Yoshimura

How do you solve a murder that’s a kind of Schrödinger’s cat of a mystery? In this episode, which takes place almost entirely on a subway platform, commuter John Lange (Vincent D’Onofrio) is pinned at the waist between a subway train and the platform. His injuries are such that he cannot be removed without instantly dying, though whether he moves or not he will be dead within an hour. The detectives are tasked with trying to find the man who pushed him while also trying to keep him calm and track down his girlfriend so that he can make his goodbyes. The episode is moving and uncompromising – there is no last-minute save or easy ending. The best anyone can do is to find the not-yet-late man’s killer. The episode won a Peabody Award and earned two Emmy nominations (for the script and for D’Onofrio’s performance).

Law & Order: SVU, “911” (2005)

Written by: Patrick Harbinson

Though the show eventually leaves the Special Victims’ Unit precinct, most of the episode involves Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) speaking on the phone with a little girl who says she’s in a locked room. Tracking her down while calming her down is both harrowing and exasperating, but Olivia has to remain cool while marshaling all the forces of the unit to first determine it isn’t a hoax, then to actually locate the girl. Hargitay won an Emmy for her performance in this episode.

“When we finished the episode, I knew this was going to be nominated,” said then-showrunner Ted Kotcheff. “In 1967 I did a TV movie, The Human Voice, with Ingrid Bergman. She gets on the phone with a lover and off the phone. As her mood changed, the walls subtly changed colors to objectify her feelings…. The script [of “911”] did come to me because of [that film]: ‘Let’s put Mariska Hargitay on the phone for an hour.’”

 

Mad Men, “The Suitcase” (2010)

Written by: Matthew Weiner

Though not fully contained within Don Draper’s (Jon Hamm’s) office, the episode largely focuses on interactions between Draper and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) over one long night in which emotions get spilled and secrets are discussed. Both characters are going through life upheavals: The niece of Don’s friend is dying of cancer, and Peggy has sabotaged her relationship with her boyfriend by remaining at work. By the end of it they’ve had a rare (if brief) discussion about the baby Peggy gave up for adoption and Don has gone to sleep with his head in her lap. They’ve never been lovers, but in this moment they’re as intimate as two people in a long, meaningful relationship.

“In ‘The Suitcase’ you see a vulnerability from Jon,” Weiner said. “A lot of people look at that character and see someone who is reserved and a presence without dialogue, and to have an excuse to let go of that reserve and be adrift – he’s pitiful at times, he’s ashamed about having to break down his emotions, and that’s a satisfying thing to see him down… [With Peggy] you see this mutual respect between them.”

This article originally appeared at Curiosity Quills.