Long Live the Queen!

This past Saturday night, just as HBO was unspooling her hilarious new comedy special Long Live the Queen, the self-proclaimed "lovable Queen of Mean" Lisa Lampanelli (in truth one of the nicest people in showbiz) was hosting a premiere party of her own, filled with friends and family, at New York's Friars' Club.

Frank and I were so happy to be invited to watch the special live, along with Lisa's mother, father, equally loud and funny sister Nancy, her brother and assorted other Lampanellii and Lampanelliites.

The special -- taped before a live audience in December in Santa Rosa, CA -- airs again on HBO on Feb. 3, 6, 9, 12, 16 and 18.

Click here to check HBO's web site for more info on Lisa and the special, as well as watch an outrageous clip.

The "Bad Road" Not Taken

A few months back, I had the chance to see all six existing episodes of the comedy 12 Miles of Bad Road, which HBO had originally picked up, to much fanfare, and then mysteriously cancelled in mid production.

The series was created by now-legendary Designing Women scribe Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, and had a first-rate cast.  Lily Tomlin.   Mary Kay Place.  Leslie Jordan.  Gary Cole.  And so many other fabulous actors you may not yet know by name, like Katherine LaNasa, Leigh-Allyn Baker (from Will & Grace), Eliza Coupe (now on Scrubs), Kim Dickens, Tara Karsian and Ilana Milicevic.

But more important than its amazing pedigree, 12 Miles of Bad Road was simply just a fun, funny show.  With the timing of its production, it seems to have been at least partially a victim of the writers' strike of 2007-08.  But HBO's cancellation of a series in mid-production is exceedingly rare.  Remember, they even let that turkey John From Cincinnati hit the airwaves.

It's a mystery why the network never let 12 Miles find the fans -- like the Designing Women devotees and Lily Tomlin adorers -- who were waiting for it.  Here's the best I can do:  a trailer for the never-to-be show (unless HBO relinquishes it to another network, I hope, I hope!):

The Office Jumps the Shark?

Back in the old days, networks used to use the Super Bowl as a launching pad for brand new series.

Sometimes, it worked.  (Remember the premiere of The Wonder Years in 1988?)  And sometimes, it didn't.  (Remember Davis Rules in 1991?  Anyone?)

Then later began the super-sized, "special" episode phenomenon.  Following the big game in 1996, Julia Roberts turned up on Friends.  People at the time criticized the episode for being overblown, overwrought.  Me, I still kinda liked it.

But tonight's The Office?  The weakest episode of this normally amazing series I've ever seen.  I had read interviews with some of the show's producers, who claimed that they wanted tonight's one hour installment to be more of a "standalone" episode, so as to draw in fans who don't already know, for example, the saga of Jim and Pam.  But what they ended up getting was a meandering and overblown (not to mention not very credible) storyline, with its non-sequitur elements pressed together with so much adhesive tape.  

It must be hard to write a show like The Office, to find new ways for Jim to torture Dwight, for Dwight and Michael to show their social ineptitude, without going over the top.  The show has approached -- and maybe even crossed -- that line before.  Remember Michael's atrocious behavior at Phyllis' wedding?  At the time, I didn't believe that even someone as socially retarded as Michael would make such a scene.

Now tonight -- and this is my largest problem with the episode as a whole -- I think we have the clearest example of The Office going too far.  Dwight has officially crossed the line from inappropriate to murderous and sociopathic.  Luring Phyllis several miles away from the office and leaving her there, so as to force her to walk back (as Dwight did earlier this season) is one thing.  But setting the building on fire, and jeopardizing his coworkers' lives?

And here's the other thing you learn about corporate America:  it's very hard to get yourself fired for cause.  If you're hard-working and competent, you'll often get screwed, blamed for something, laid off.  But if you're crazy, or if you drink, you're pretty much safe.  UNLESS: you do something like set the office on fire.  If your actions leave the company vulnerable to a lawsuit -- and it's an amazing oversight that Stanley, as he mentions not being able to afford to retire, doesn't even THINK of suing -- you would definitely be fired.  David Wallace would never have given Dwight a second chance.  And DEFINITELY not a third, after he stabbed and disemboweled the CPR dummy with a concealed knife in the workplace.  Another big no-no.

And then suddenly, after all that, tonight's storyline morphed into being just about Michael and his sudden self-knowledge.  For one thing, did anyone not see it coming that Michael would be offended by the roast?  And that would be forgiveable, had the roast been at all funny.  The Office excels in a combination of awkward-funny.  The roast was just plain awkward.

All that said, there were moments I loved -- Dwight's tricking Phyllis into giving her signature, and anything involving Cloris Leachman, of course.  

But what did you all think?  (And by the way:  Hilary Swank:  hot, or not?!)

JJ Abrams talks Fringe, Star Trek

Recently, as Fox held its "2009 Winter All-Star Party" at a Hollywood hotspot called Our House, I cornered JJ Abrams at the end of the night to get some behind-the-scenes insight into his newest hit series Fringe, as well as a sneak peek into his upcoming big screen rendition of Star Trek.

Must Hear TV:  Okay, first of all, on Fringe, what kind of explanation can I wring out of you about all the symbols – the frog, the leaf, the butterfly, etc. 

JJ Abrams:  There is sort of a code to that. 

MHTV:  Planned from the beginning?  You’re not just messing with us with random stuff? 

JJA:  It’s not random.  It’s the images and where the lights are, and it’s a whole thing.

MHTV:  So that’s a clue?  We should go back and freeze frame it?

JJA:  I wouldn’t ask anyone to spend their time doing that, but some people might…  It’s the kind of thing that I for some reason get excited about, which is either strange or odd or pathetic.  I don’t know.  But I love those kind of things.

MHTV:  For example, there was the episode where the guy was killed by hallucinating butterflies -- are those the same butterflies as in the code?  Do some of these symbols then turn up in episodes?

JJA:  There are some things that are definitely connected to some of the imagery.  And there are other things, too, that will happen.  But that code thing is sort of a separate thing.  And there are clues in every episode about the next episode.

MHTV:  Well that certainly clears it up.  How closely should we be watching each episode for hidden clues?

JJA:  What I love about what started to happen is that we started to find the rhythm and voice of the show.  The episodes that started airing this month [January 2009] really are the beginning of those episodes.  They are what Fringe is.  What’s fun is that there are a lot of loose ends that get wrapped up and separate pieces that may have felt standalone actually have reason and purpose.

MHTV:  Your shows are known for their complex plotlines.  Do you plan the whole mystery and story arc before writing episode 1, or are you doing a little as you go along?

JJA:  It’s always a leap of faith.  You do things that you think, “This is cool and I have an idea where this could go.”  We’ll have an idea where we need to go, and then put [plot points] on the board or have cards or whatever.  But a lot of times as you’re working on it, you say, “Wait a minute, I know we talked about this being that.  But what if this is why this happened?”   You could figure out right now what you want to wear ever day for the next 5 years.  But I promise you 3 ½ years from now, you’re going to wake up and there will be a combination you could never have anticipated.  So you don’t try to figure out literally every episode.  There’s no time when you’re working on a pilot to say, ”In episode 106…”  But you can say,  “Okay, I think I know why Walter was put away.”  And the leap of faith is you’ll either land on those ideas or a better one.

MHTV:  In another example, you planted the clue “Little Hill” – the phrase that Peter is able to construct from just a series of vertical lines.  Then, a few episodes later, we learn that it’s a crucial location.  How many episodes do you have to be writing at a time in order to do that?

JJA:  We knew what “Little Hill” what it was going to be, but not exactly how that was going to play out.  For example, if we had had a better idea by the time Jones was broken out, we would have used that.

MHTV:  So Little Hill would have been something else other than a field?

JJA:  Well it certainly could have been.  There are sometimes when an idea will come up, and it’ll work to pay off something, but it’s also clearly a setup for something else.  And all that matters in that episode is that the payoff works.  And then you go, “Ooh, now I have this other thing!”  The best analogy I can think of is Tarzan swinging through vines.  All you need to know is that the vine you’re on is going to sustain, and you’re going to swing along.  And you pray to God there’s another vine when that vine has to swing backwards.  So you work it out the best you can, but you’ve got to trust that there’s something that will come that’s either as good as or hopefully better than where you think this is going to take you.

MHTV:  How much do you worry about the plausibility of all this technology? How much suspension of disbelief are you expecting?

JJA:  What’s very funny to me, like in the pilot, no one said to me, "Wait a minute, so she’s able to go into his consciousness—"

MHTV:  --in her supermodel bra and panties, by the way –

JJA:  --Yeah, you’re welcome.  But what we did hear was, “Wait a minute.  There’s a lab they’re not using -- at Harvard?!”  The stuff that people have problems with are the things that they can relate to.  If someone’s floating, they don’t have a problem with it.  But if Olivia is floating and her hair is perfect, they’ll say, “Oh yeah, like her hair is going to be like that!”  And I’m like, “They’re f-ing floating!  How about that?!”

MHTV:  Where do Fringe’s ideas, like for example the floating, come from?

JJA:  From just sitting around and thinking, “Okay, this is weird, but—“  Most everything is just something I’d like to see.  [In the case of the flotation tank], that was absolutely a complete homage – or if you don’t want the French, rip off – of Altered States.  It is one of my favorite movies.  I have one of the makeup heads from it.  I love that movie.

MHTV:  Speaking of movies, with Star Trek, what was your biggest filmmaking challenge?

JJA:  It was a very ambitious shoot.  So there are a lot of sequences that were challenging.  But it was the most fun I’ve ever had.  It was as hard as everything I’ve ever worked on, rolled into just a quarter of that movie.  It was a huge production.  It was so tricky.  For one thing, having never done a movie, or a show, that took place in space before, it screws with your perception of scale.  It’s like being in Las Vegas.  “Oh, there’s that hotel.  I’m going to walk over there.”  And a half an hour later you’re still walking, thinking, “What the f- is going on?”  An establishing shot in Star Trek can’t be a house or a building or a city – it’s a planet.  It changes everything about how you look at scale.

MHTV:  How daunting are the expectations of the movie?  Does it make you nervous to live up to the Trekkies?  And are you one?

JJA:  Yeah, a little bit.  I want to do them proud and make sure that they’re happy.  And me, I’m a new Trekkie.  I’m a Trekkie now, but I never was.  I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t I love Star Trek now.  Not just loving what I did, but loving the world of it, the optimism, the characters.  I get it in a way that I never did before.

MHTV:  Sci-fi fans can be so exacting, and mean when they don’t like something…

JJA:  But I’m also beholden to them.  Those are the people who watch Fringe.  Those fans are the people I’m making the movie for, so I hope they’re happy with it.

The Girls Live On and On

I love The Golden Girls as much as -- or more than -- anyone.  But this is ridiculous (and hilarious, and more than a bit creepy...!)

Pistol Youth - In My Eyes from Pistol Youth on Vimeo.

Tracey Ullman back to check the State of the Union

On Sunday, April 12, Tracey Ullman will return to Showtime with season 2 of her show State of the Union.

At today's TCA, Ullman appeared with her fellow executive producer -- and husband of 25 years -- Allan McKeown and talked about the process of playing so many different characters.  Ullman and her crew shot season 2 last fall -- 7 new episodes in 3 weeks -- adding an extra challenge to playing Arianna Huffington because the presidential election hadn't yet been decided.  As a result, Ullman and her fellow writer Bruce Wagner came up with alternate endings -- an Obama and a McCain -- for those sketches.  "There was very low enthusiasm [when we were filming] the McCain endings," McKeown remembered.

Also in the political vein, Tracey -- who recently became a U.S. citizen after 25 years living here -- now "takes on" (to use a phrase from her earlier HBO show) Laura Bush.  "I was just obsessed with Laura Bush," she admitted.  "I know that by the time the show goes on, she'll be back in Crawford and it'll be 115 degrees," surrounded by her "objets d'art and trying to fit in."

Among her favorites from State of the Union's first season, Huffington will be back, as will singing pharmacist Padma and her spot-on take on a squinting Renee Zellweger.  And she'll be adding plenty more.  This year, Tracey impersonates Jonah Hill.  ("I'm never keen seeing Tracey dressed up like a guy.  She always tries to kiss me and it upsets me," McKeown admits.)  She's always watching odd people, she says, getting ideas.  And listening to NPR.  Then, it's time to write.

"Bruce Wagner and I sit and throw out ideas all day together, and you write.  To impersonate actual people is something I started to do [only] on State Of The Union.  I hadn't done that before -- I always thought it was SNL's domain.  But i thought if i'm going to do a trip across America, I should do some celebrities to add flavor to the show.  But I'm not Rich Little.  I didn't want to be Sarah Palin, which i think Tina Fey nailed and was a genius thing.  I wanted to be that lesbian Sarah Palin talked about who was her best friend for years.  Where was she -- Juneau?"  

In the resulting show, tied together with a voice-over narration by Peter Strauss, Tracey plays a plethora of characters as they live and breathe one day in America dawn to dusk, in pieces lasting no longer than two minutes.  The show has a lot of similarities to Little Britain -- and particularly to HBO's current Little Britain, USA, which is also set on a trip thru the States.  But a format framed by voice-over is nothing new, Tracey says of the similarity.  Plus, McKeown points out, whereas Little Britain is all sketch comedy, State of the Union has Tracey playing the truth in realistic American characters first, with punchlines coming second.

I asked Tracey if characters her fans (like me) love from her earlier series -- like Francesca, being raised by two gay dads on The Tracey Ullman Show, or Fern Rosenthal, the Jewish Florida matron from Tracey Takes On -- might ever pop up on this newest show.  Fern, she realized, thinking quickly, would be perfect:  she's undoubtedly a Bernie Madoff victim.  So although all of this season's episodes are already in the can, don't be surprised to see Fern kvelling on Showtime should there be a Season 3.

But there are other things about her older shows Tracey is happy to leave behind.  Watching Tracey Takes On now, she says, she's struck by how each character scene seems to go on forever.  Now, she says, doing these quickie bits of characters is much more in fitting with the times, with our "youtube mentality."

And, of course, it also offers her the chance to cram in so many more personalities.  "I can't do a show where I play just one character," she admitted.  "Even if I love playing a character and have a great time, at the end of the day I say 'What are we going to do tomorrow?'  I just have that energy.  And until I get too old, that's what i'm going to do.  Then I can do Murder She Wrote where I live in Cornwall and solve mysteries."

Tracey Ullman's State of the Union

Season 2 Premiere

Sunday, April 12

The L Word Goes out on Top

This Sunday night at 9 PM, Ilene Chaiken's groundbreaking Showtime drama The L Word enters its final season, with one storyline providing a framework for the season:  who killed Jenny Schechter?

As Chaiken told critics at today's TCA convention in Los Angeles, her show is going out on top.  Season 6, she says, is the show's strongest.  "We've had our ups and our downs, but it has all come together."

When asked why Showtime has chosen to promote the show this season by revealing Jenny's death, rather than using it as a big bang surprise during this weekend's opening installment, Chaiken didn't question the network's wisdom.  The mystery angle will be eminently promotable.  And Jenny's demise, she said, "happens in the first 20 seconds of the episode."

Guests to look forward to this season will include Xena lesbian icon Lucy Lawless and gay camp icon from Showgirls Elizabeth Berkley.

And let's not forget the show's fabulous cast, who was in attendance, including another icon, Pam Grier, as well as Leisha Hailey, Laurel Holloman, Katherine Moennig and the incredibly beautiful Jennifer Beals.

Beals spoke eloquently about how much The L Word has meant to its fans -- not just as entertainment, but as a lifesaver for questioning women and men.  She remembers one older lesbian couple who won walk-on roles on the show as an auction prize; the show, they told her, had inspired them late in life to come out to their families.  And Beals began to cry when she recounted other stories of how much the show has meant.

I told Ilene when we started this show, "I want this show to change the world!"   And she said, "Calm down, it's just a TV show."  I want the show to be for that young girl in the middle of nowhere who decides that she's gay and has no one and has to come out to her family.  I want her to turn on the television and have her see the most

 fabulous, resourceful version of herself shown back to her.  I recently got a letter from a young woman who told me she had just come out.  She was 16 years old.  She said it was the loneliest time of her life.  And she said by watching the show, the show had saved her life.  Because she had contemplated killing herself. And that by realizing there were other people who were out there like her and there was a larger community to which she belonged, and in which one day she might be able to take part, she was encouraged.

Beals went on to compare the show to Flashdance, where her character was also an "other," or outsider.  In Flashdance, she says, the woman finds her outlet in dancing.

[On The L Word], in playing this character, it's an extension of what it means to be "other."  I don't know what role will be next.  but what will be the most difficult thing to do is to find something that is written as well and as helpful as [The L Word] has been to people.

The L Word

Season 6 Premiere

Sunday, January 18, 2009

9 PM Eastern

Secret Diary from the Lady Garden

If you're looking to Showtime for some more soft-core porn, like their famous old series Red Shoe Diaries, you may be out of luck.  

The British-made Secret Diary of a Call Girl, which begins its second U.S. season on Showtime this Sunday night, January 18, won't be bringing you the full Monty -- or the full Marie, for that matter.

Although star Billie Piper is often called on to show her naked backside -- "the diet starts when I get back home," the actress, who had a baby a mere 11 weeks back, admitted to the critics at the TCA today.  "It's so hard here.  The portions are so large, and the food is so delicious" -- she will never be asked to show what the show's producer Rebecca de Souza quoted a gentleman as euphemistically calling her "lady garden."  

But will we ever see any of Billie's character Belle's clients' "man gardens," shall we say?  No -- mostly.  The male actors on the show are required to wear "modesty sacs," as they're known, which Piper says are really no more than "penis socks.  They're horrible.  You do end up being able to see, and by the end they're falling off..."  And I learned something about Britain's broadcast standards, too.  "You can't see [penises] ready for action.  That's the rule," de Souza clarified.

So much for Big Ben.

Secret Diary of a Call Girl

Season 2

Premieres Sunday, January 18

10:30 PM

NCIS Spinoff in the works

Legendary TV writer/creator Don Bellisario doesn't use the word spinoff when referring to his series NCIS, which was first introduced as a special episode of Bellisario's earlier show JAG.

But today at the TCA, CBS President Nina Tassler referred to a new NCIS "spinoff," which will be now introduced in exactly the same way:  as an episode of the ever-growing Tuesday night hit.  According to Tassler:

It's happening.  We're doing it... We've seen an outline.  We're in great shape, and we're just waiting to get the script, but we're going to cast, and we're going to shoot...

More to come...!

Breaking news: L Word spinoff details

Today at the TCA convention in Los Angeles, Showtime president Robert Greenblatt leaked a few details about the highly anticipated L Word spinoff (which according to imdb.com, is currently titled The Farm.)

As had previously been reported, the spinoff will star Leisha Hailey (aka Alice), who will unfortunately be going to prison.  There, she'll be joined by a whole new cast of characters, only some of whom are lesbians, played by such well-known and hottie actresses as Famke Janssen, and Roseanne's Laurie Metcalf, last seen in the underappreciated and quickly-cancelled CW series Easy Money.

When asked if the new show could be considered a female version of HBO's infamously brutal drama Oz, Greenblatt replied, "That might be a good comparison."

More as they happen, including further details from L Word creator Ilene Chaiken when the L Word panel begins at 3 PM Pacific time today.