Tom Watson

Emergency Broadcasting System: Mad Men Live-blogging is Here

Once upon a time in the west - and in gritty noir backlots - rough and ready men carried guns, drank hard liquor, and made violence a part of their daily lot. That's the way they were portrayed, at least. And the idea of "real men" inhabiting a cushy mid-town Manhattan office building was a ludicrous as, say, Cary Grant's Roger Thornhill being a secret agent in North by Northwest. See, Hitchcock got the joke. But as David Hinckley points out in today's Daily News, our idea of tough guys has changed.

"Mad Men" also reflects something else that's been brewing on TV for quite a while, however: a long-term shift in the professions to which we look for swagger. Once upon a time, American swagger was largely defined by physical guys like cowboys, G-men, explorers and soldiers. Think John Wayne. Sure, there's always been swagger in other fields of endeavor. While Wild Bill Hickok was galloping through the West, robber barons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan were accumulating insane levels of wealth simply because there was no one to stop them. But in general, swagger once had a blue-collar aura, reflected in the Westerns that dominated early television.

Live-blogging of the frustrating and fascinating Mad Men continues tonight. [Note: our hosts at Yahoo appear to be on the slow side tonight, so bear with us and dump that crappy YHOO stock.]

Thanks to Yahoo's server troubles, I've moved newcritics live-blogging of Mad Men to my trust old-school Typepad blog. Comment away! Back in a few...Cool credits about to roll.

Love the Hudson Line shots - North by Northwest in reverse! Big error, though. "Mount Kisco, next." In yer dreams. Knew there was another name in Draper's past - Dick Whitman.

"Who put the Chinamen in my office?" Ha.

Some hilarious "oriental" humor. We get it. 1960 was a different time. Now can these guys do something?

"Part of this job is doing things you don't want to do." Welcome to that strange place known as Workland.

So how accurate is Mad Men? Burt Helm from Business Week wondered the same thing:

So last week I picked up the phone to ask a couple of these allegedly overpaid, creative, glib and self-destructive ad guys from the 60's what they thought of the show. AMC courteously agreed to send them screeners. I got two very different opinions of the show itself, but some agreement on how accurately it portrayed Madison Avenue in 1960.

"What a miserable piece of garbage," said Irwin Warren, who was a copywriter for Doyle Dane Bernbach in 1965. "It's a kind of a poor man's The Apartment". Jerry Della Femina, who was in the mailroom of agency Ruthrauff & Ryan in 1960 before becoming a copywriter and a founder of his own agency, loved the depiction. He had recently participated in a panel discussion at Michael's about the show. "It’s a pretty fascinating as a study of the 60’s."

But how accurate is it? For those who haven't seen it, the show is a parade of constant smoking, near-constant drinking, casual sexual harassment and anti-semitism. Warren admitted that much of that was spot on.

A miserable piece of garbage? Seems to describe what  I've seen of the firm's work so far. Man does Sterling Cooper blow. They don't even get the VW ad!

OK, we get that it was a sexist period - now make something happen. "Rib-eye in the pan...with butter....ice cream." That's not a plot.

The cheesy Yonkers Raceway commercial for slot machines and a legal sports book on my local cable system is far better than anything Sterling Cooper has produced.

This scene as a Breakfast at Menken's quality to it.

I'm a total sucker for the commuter train scenes, probably because I spend half a life on 'em. But didn't they have monthly passes in 1960? Does he buy a ticket every night? Any experts out there?

WWeek's Daniel Carlson has a snarky post: AMC is "TV for people who would like to think of themselves as movie people but lack the energy." Is that us? More:

"...if half the show is just the cheap thrill of watching people play dress up, the other half is watching those people act out a fairly rote melodrama. Weiner's time on The Sopranos means that Mad Men is inevitably being forced into that same mold of darkly lit offices, slick hair and commonplace adultery, and while Weiner certainly knows his material, the fact that he's so willing to stylistically rehash it is a disappointment. Mad Men lacks the sheer fire and energy of The Sopranos, and not simply because AMC won't let you get away with nearly what HBO does (AMC after dark consists largely of the same boring content as AMC daytime). It's also because while The Sopranos was a complex and original show, Mad Men wants to be all things to all people, offering the same aesthetic and stilted drama—unhappy philanderers, ambiguous mistresses, depressed housewives—that have marked too many series before it. It's as if Weiner wants his show to be just edgy enough to be noticed but actually safe enough to be digested by even the most casual viewer; no one has to think too hard here, and no one is asking you to.

The Executioner’s Songs

[Cross-posted from newcritics.com]: Televised executions are all the rage these days, but the long drops in Iraq brought to mind two made-for-television movies that I saw decades ago, but remain fairly vivid for their imagery and their unshaking lens. They were seen as anti-death penalty arguments on the small screen, but as I remember, both The Execution of Private Slovik and The Executioner’s Song were delivered straight up. And because we don’t televise our executions in America, they became stand-ins for what was then a raging discussion about the morality of capital punishment, as the death chamber came back into active use across the United States.

Of the two, Martin Sheen’s portrayal of the scared and confused Eddie Slovik, the first American shot for desertion since the Civil War, has the most staying power (this is possibly because Gary Gilmore, played well by Tommy Lee Jones, was convicted of one murder and suspected in several others). Slovik was clearly an innocent, whose death warrant was approved by Eisenhower to send a message to an Army facing a desperate and dangerous enemy in Europe - an American force whose desertion and AWOL rates were growing rapidly in 1944.

In the 1974 TV flick, Sheen portrays a very simple person, a 24-year-old draftee rifleman from Detroit, who decides he simply won’t fight anymore and would rather take the prison time. Thinking the court martial will go better for him if he simply admits his guilt and offers no defense, Slovik submits to the court - which (as the movie portrays) has no choice but to sentence him to death. When the brass punches Eddie’s ticket - to the evident surprise of the officers who sentenced him to die - the film moves to its most effecting and haunting sequence.

As filmed by veteran TV director Lamont Johnson (who co-wrote the screenplay with author William Bradford Huie), the execution segment is shown in real-time, without any melodrama. From a cell to the snow-covered back garden of the French house, Sheen moves slowly and looks with friendly eyes to his guards; he even greets the firing squad of hand-picked sharpshooter GIs. Ned Beatty plays the priest who sees Pvt. Slovak through his last hours, torn between the evident injustice and the fulsome carrying out of his duty as a military chaplain. A radio plays Bing Crosby singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas just before the execution. Blindfolded, the prisoner begins to recite the Hail Mary, over and over as the squad lines up and takes aim. The shots interrupt the prayer. When he’s shot, Sheen slumps and moans on the ground before dying. Then his body is covered and removed.

The partial documentary style removes any forced emotion; so the “actual” feelings of the men attending to the killing are that more starkly portrayed. Their horror is that much more evident. The end of minor criminal Gilmore’s life became a major national story in 1977, when convicted of murder, he opted for the firing squad and refused appeals for his life. Only three months after his conviction in the cold-blooded murder of a Utah gas station attendant, he was taken out to a prison storage room, strapped to a chair, and shot.

Sheen didn’t play Slovik as smart, and Jones doesn’t play Gilmore as particularly noble; that puts the execution itself at center stage - its method (considered brutal back in the more genteel 70s) and those who vehemently opposed it. Gilmore was the first man to be executed after the U. S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, and in those days, a state’s ritual killing was news. The impending execution was national news for weeks, and the Saturday Night Live cast famously sang “Let’s Kill Gary Gilmore For Christmas” to the tune of Winter Wonderland.

The TV film was aired five years after Gilmore was shot and Jones won an Emmy for his portrayal; it was based on Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, which copped a Pulitzer. Unlike Slovik, who was simple and innocent, Gilmore was smart and guilty - not the first sociopath to stir the artist’s pen. He reportedly quoted Nietzsche to his brother at their final meeting: “time comes when a man should rise to meet the occasion.” Gilmore’s appointment with the Utah marksmen took on the noble quality of the monster in life facing death with dignity - we’ve seen this scene recently, I think, in some blurry cameraphone footage.

Meet the Newcritics

You may have noticed a slight slackening here the last few days, the appearance of distraction, of a mind engaged elsewhere. All true.

Friends, meet the newcritics. Newcritics.com is a fledgling effort that promises "web-based criticism in literature, music, television, film, technology, theater and art from a diverse group of bloggers."

That promise is my promise; I cobbled the site together over the past few weeks and invited a few bloggers to post. Last week, the first posts hit the clickstream.

Newcritics is an experiment for me - it came about after a gathering of political bloggers a couple of months back. What I expected to be a hard-core politicalfest actually became and meandering and fascinating discussion of culture, both high and low. I loved it, and thought about extending the conversation; newcritics is my answer to that problem.

I hope you read the posts there, subscribe to the feeds, link to them, and comment often. So far, there have been some terrific articles - here's a few:

Band of Brothers: The Game by Tony Alva, on role-playing games and soldiers
Steve Bowbrick's Crime for Kids, a review of Carl Hiaasen's latest
Talking on the WhyPhone by Brendan Tween, a reaction to Apple's media domination
Blue Girl's Promises Kept. Chapter One on Calvin Trillin's memoir of love
Sidewalks of New York, by Lance Mannion, which discusses film characters who are controlled by their appetites and emotions

Then there's what I hope will be the first of many "list" postings - argument-provoking Top 10 affairs that spur reaction. Jason Chervokas and I take a shot at the ten best American domestic sit-coms of all-time, those classic situations revolving around a home and a family. Sure, we've all got The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, and All in the Family...but what's on your list? That's the point! Read Blondie's Children: the Best Domestic Sitcoms and let us know.

Consider what's up the first week, and my reaction is this: that's a magazine I'd read. Lots of voices, shared interests, conversation. We got one comment this week from Roxtar that really hit home, and made it feel (thus far) worthwhile:

A round-table, free-wheeling discussion of popular culture, on the other hand, can spin off in an infinite number of directions. It can take you from poetry to music to television, to literature, to film, to sociology and psychology, to marketing and persuasion, to technology and its role in the future…. I suspect your dinner last November touched on most, if not all, of those areas, and more besides.

Popular culture is not a trifle, or an idle diversion. It is like water to a fish; it surrounds us and, to a large degree, it defines us. But unlike our finny friends, we can actively participate in evaluating and determining the quality of our environment. Which I suppose is what you have in mind.

Exactly. I'm not giving up blogging here by any means. This will still be my personal space, and I'll probably cross-post most media/culture pieces. I'll only blog politics here. No politics on newcritics - it's a place for discussing what unites us, not what divides us. C'mon and set a spell.

Life in TV Land

[Cross-posted over at newcritics] The sitcom has never really received its full cultural credit. For every chapter in American social change chronicled by M*A*S*H or All in the Family, the contribution of the form itself gets lost. Since the early radio shows, Americans have learned to speak in quips, in quick exchanges, to a virtual laugh track or studio audience.

The family unit as a central theme of comedy accelerated with the first television domestic sitcoms, as household tension became a basis for escape and comedy, rather than a bleak personal landscape. In the sitcom world, we're all funny - the very mundane quality of daily life is worthy of portrayal. Our own hypocrisy, our middle class status symbols, our struggles - all played for yucks in Homer Simpson's world.

Then too, there's always the duck out of water to laugh at - the oddballs we all know. Kramer. Norton. Gilligan. Barney Fife. Danny Partridge. And so on. That crazy so-and-so, lookit what he's gone and done!

I'm starting a little list-gathering that I'm going to try and pull together over at newcritics, our new group blog - the idea for this particular list is Jason's, and he's got his own Top 10 choice for domestic sitcoms. Here's mine - a mixture of best and personal favorites (workplace comedies like M*A*S*H and Taxi are excluded - may for another time):

1. The Honeymooners. There's no arguing with this one, it's the model for scenes of uproar and domestic disharmony entertaining millions. How sweet it was.

2. The Simpsons. Longest running sitcom of all time, it continues to amaze with its rich characters and unending parody of local life.

3. I Love Lucy. Urban domestic life, the faux New York created to effortlessly in the Desilu studio, the innovative camera work, Desi Arnaz's immense talent used so subtly as straight man and Cuban sidekick, the familiar sets, the Murtzes, and the wild, wacky, wonderful Lucy.

4. All in the Family. Forget the social commentary and ground-breaking political statements. Forget its timeframe in a time of protest and upheaval. Just watch this killer cast, the original foursome. And laugh out loud. As comedy, All in the Family holds up and Carroll O'Connor rides the role of a lifetime with perfect pitch.

5. Seinfeld. It's genius, Jerry, genius! So many of the lines in Seinfeld have entered daily parlance, so many of Larry David's wacky situations have become part of our consciousness - the Seinfeld moment - that this series may actually be underrated. Notice too that all the top five adhere to the same "rule of four" of the basis domestic unit; in Seinfeld, it's not a marriage, but clearly a family situation.

6. The Dick Van Dyke Show. Quick, hum the opening theme. A hybrid really, because it's almost a workplace comedy (again, another list) it tips toward domestic classic by one star's presence - Mary Tyler Moore's wonderful Laura Petrie. Ah, life in New Rochelle!

7. The Bob Newhart Show. Sexy, urbane, it seemed so adult when I was a kid. A swinging childless couple - clearly by choice - living the high life in Chicago with a bunch of wacky friends. All in brilliant Newhart deadpan.

8. The Flintstones. OK, it's a cartoon Honeymooners rip-off, not really a classic, not particularly well-written, not all that funny. But the Flintstones had two great things - a wacky premise brilliantly executed, and a sympathetic, consistent style that stays with us 40 years on. And without Fred, there's no Homer.

9. Bewitched. The sitcom, suburban version of Bell, Book, and Candle, this baby revved in 60s color along with Elizabeth Montgomery's sultry, twitching nose and two - dig 'em - two different husbands.

10. Curb Your Enthusiasm. Pure mayhem; no one gets comfortable around Larry David. The situations are literally painful to watch. And the house changes every season. The one current sitcom on the list, and the only new show I simply will not miss.

I've left off so many - the other magic-monster 60s classics (Munsters, Addams Family, I Dream of Jeannie), the softball suburbans (Dobie Gillis, Leave it to Beaver, The Brady Bunch), the 70s icons that really don't hold up (Happy Days, Three's Company), and some personal faves (Sanford & Son, My Three Sons, The Jeffersons). Love to hear yours.

I Killed, Jerry, Killed!

So the man who played Kramer has now ruined the pleasant quietude and well-timed chuckles of the Seinfeld reruns for millions of shut-ins, er, fans. If nothing's on, Seinfeld's on. But does knowing that Michael Richards harbors some vile racial hatred destroy the experience? Is he our sitcom Ezra Pound? Well, it does take the edge off. And it may well diminish residuals along with reputation.

Everybody has something to say about this K-K-Kramer, but I liked Joe Gandelman's take the best. Joe's a working ventriloquist as well as the man behind The Moderate Voice, and he plays scores of gigs per year. And he knows from bombing:

I'm not on the same level as Richards or Seinfeld, but I can say that every performer has stories of bombing. There is even a book that deals with the highs and lows of stand up — a book called "I Killed" which I'm reading now. Check it out.

Read bios of comedians and they all have stories of performances that were Performance Hell. Clearly, Richards was not doing well in the minutes leading up to his poor choice of how to proceed. If a performer starts to "bomb" it is an excruciatingly lonely experience; the performer can't just say "Oh, well, you hate me tonight, so goodnight!" but they have to try to salvage the performance. That entails experience, fall-back performance strategies...and also a lot of LUCK. The phrase "flop sweat" reflects a performing reality in cases such as this.

I have my own share of horror stories. One was doing a show for an audience clearly composed of people associated with organized crime. They did not want a show at all (but I had been contracted to do one). Many years before I went into ventriloquism fulltime I did a song parody satire at the piano in New Delhi. And the wife of a high American official was very angry at jokes that poked fun at anyone. In my own case, in the these-days-rare cases where a "bad show" happens I shift to alternate strategies, move set segments around around, etc. If it doesn't work? I complete my show, smile graciously and leave when it is over. I would NEVER use name calling. Why? The comedian has to try to win over the audience. Just name calling turns the audience against the comedian.

A few putdowns usually will do, and I've seldom had to use those. The great ventriloquist Jimmy Nelson had one line he'd use if he had problems from a heckler. His dummy Danny O'Day would say to the heckler: "Who's working your string?"

Bush and ABC: Puhhfect Togetha

So this is the hour of Tom Kean's disgrace and humiliation. For four years, he portrayed the bi-partisan centrist, the big man who became half of the chairmanship of the 9/11 Commission, the real American who did good work on behalf of our people, who held government to task for its failings. What was the motivation for crawling into bed with the right-wing nutball bloggers, the little green goofball types, the pajamas media dorks, the spit-spewing haters, the fear-mongers? Was it the fee he collected for serving as a consultant to ABC's reputation-destroying "docudrama," the one that has anybody center or slightly left enraged by its lies, its silly portrayal of the Clinton Administration, its blatant campaigning? Was it the temptation to attack the Democrats and help his son's campaign in New Jersey? Did Cheney put the strong-arm on Kean at last? Did Rove say "do this piece of Goebbels work for me and I'll help sonny boy in Jersey?" Did the President call? When was the moment when he decided he didn't care anymore, when it was okay to give his thumbs-up to a fictional moment in "history," when those fraidy-cat Clintonites had bin Laden in their sites but were too liberal and feminine to pull the trigger. Tom Kean has traded his considerable reputation for a mini-series - one that will get terrible ratings (as Gilliard pointed out) because it's up against something truly American: the NFL. Tom Kean and the lies of the Bush Administration: puhhfect together.

It's the Freakiest Show

Back in the early 70s, I'd sometimes sit in my parents' room and watch The Avengers on their old black and white TV. It was cheeky fantasy really, a strange alternative world of crime-fighting keyed by the visual cues of a bowler hat, an umbrella, small guns, and Dianna Rigg's tight leather pants. I'm not sure if the show actually ran in color on Channel 9, but I watched in shades of gray and all the world of that Great Britain seemed to live in those hues. The 60s had already swung by the time the series ran in America, and it seemed like a relic - a fun relic, to be sure, but ancient.

I was thinking about The Avengers when I tuned into the new BBC drama Life on Mars, whose premise is a lawman's strange return to the world of 1973 in grimy Manchester, whose monochrome backdrop is tinted a stready flavor of grimy red brick. From the whirlwind opening, when a chance traffic accident sends Deputy Inspector Sam Tyler into a netherworld - he "lives" as a police officer in 1973 but is occasionally drawn to his hospital room in 2005. I could go on about the premise, but I won't; it's complex and in some ways, the facts don't matter.

What matters are the superb performances, the groovy soundtrack, the wardrobe brillance (all cheap leather, chains, and wide polyester collars), the sets thick with cigarette smoke, and the wonderful enveloping sentimentalism for the 70s. The moral center is provided by DI Tyler's nemesis, an old-fashioned bruised-knuckle copper as played by Philip Glenister, whose rutted face is like a crinkled motorway roadmap. His corruption and real-world venality root the weekly episodes in the kind of fertile acting loam that produced Ian McShane's brilliant Al Swearengen.

The men smoke, booze, beat up suspects as they please, and grab ass; the women don't seem to mind. Oh, the nostalgia - keyed by the soundtrack, which opens with Bowie title track and has included (thus far) pitch-perfect choices like Live and Let Die, Jean Genie, and Lou Reed's I'm So Free. I'm totally hooked. Or as Bowie said:

Take a look at the lawman
Beating up
the wrong guy.
Oh man!
Wonder if he'll ever
know
He's in the best selling show.
Is there life
on Mars?