Category Archives: entertainment

an end to the strike?

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LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — The three-months-long Hollywood writers strike could enter its final chapter Saturday when guild members gather in Los Angeles and New York to consider a proposed contract.

If writers respond favorably, the walkout that has devastated the entertainment industry could end as soon as Monday.

Writers were wavering between hope and skepticism as they prepared to learn details of the deal for the first time.

Oh, it would be nice. I’d love to know they’re all snugly back at their computers, tack-tacking away at the keys. I’m so sick of reruns I could just spit. Though to be honest, Netflix has taken good care of me these 3 months.

I really wish the WGA writers all the best; I hope they get what they wanted, for all their trouble.

I believe that someone who creates something should share the profits; in fact, the creative talent should have the lion’s share, as compared with those who merely transmit it. I realize that’s a vast oversimplification of the matter at hand. I’m just saying, don’t muzzle the ox that threshes the grain.

peaches

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… But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. …

That’s from the poem “Why I Am Not A Painter,” by Frank O’Hara. One of those brilliant little poems that keeps making itself useful as metaphor in my life.

So I sat down and ate my peaches and watched the closing disc of bonus features in the Deadwood series. I ate my peaches without weeping, but I have not escaped the gnawing sensation of having been denied closure. (Incidentally, if you Google Deadwood Peaches, you’ll find that I didn’t make that up; canned peaches are indeed served on the show. In fact, one episode is titled “Unauthorized Cinnamon,” concerning someone’s ill-considered idea to add cinnamon to the peaches.)

In comments by Deadwood creator and lead writer David Milch I heard this:

“Any good poem, any good human being, and any good story spins against the way it drives.”

Huzzah! That’s absolutely right, Mr. Milch. We are dissonance seeking harmony, just as we are estrangement seeking atonement. And the ultimate fruition of life is death. Well, maybe I just went a little too far; it’s what we do while we’re alive that matters.

Speaking of things that matter and things that don’t, is anyone reading this blog? I’ve not had a comment since 12/22. My stats say 6 hits a day this week, but somehow the tracker has been counting my own visits when I proof posts, so maybe it’s zero. If you’re out there, could you Please Leave A Comment? Can I get just a smidgen of external validation? Sheesh.

imagine my disappointment

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For the last few months, I’ve been slowly working my way – via Netflix – through the HBO cable TV series Deadwood. Once you get past some harsh language and a slathering of violence, it’s absolutely great. Shakespeare in the old west. It has the acting, directing and writing talent that makes a guy like me wish he had a career in TV. It has interesting characters, brilliant dialogue, engrossing sets and costumes. All the best you’d expect from a high budget movie, in 36 hours instead of 2. But I never got bored.

Imagine yourself caught up in a 400 page novel, only to find that someone has torn out the last 50 pages. Imagine that To Kill A Mockingbird fades to black as Jem and Scout leave the school. That’s what happened to me with this show. I came to the end of the third season, with all sorts of story still to be resolved, and discovered they simply stopped. HBO decided not to hire the actors for a fourth season, then they tried to get the creator to make half a fourth season, then there was talk of a couple of move-length things to finish the story. But they never got made.

You can read about the show here. Scroll to the bottom to read about its demise.

Now we literate people – whether writers or readers – know how it is. You get engrossed in a story, and relate to the characters. That’s what we ask of people when we create; we seek their attention, and imply a promise to deliver something for the time we’ve asked for that attention.

Of course most TV shows don’t make it. And even those that do eventually come to an end. So it goes with everything. But after three years, the network has asked for, and in this case definitely received, a great deal of viewer loyalty. Deadwood was enormously popular, by all accounts. At that point, cancellation of the show calls for something very simple: an ending. Resolution. A sense of closure. In other words, a Series Finale.

We’re never going to get that. No last chapter for this book, boys and girls. Any why? Because HBO didn’t wait to pay the actors more money for the increasing popularity of the show; an increase which the network undoubtedly demanded as prerequisite for the show’s survival: You guys make the show popular, you can keep doing it, unless it gets too popular, and you price yourself out of the budget, then we’ll cancel it. Aaargh!

This isn’t just a case of a commercial company deciding not to deliver a product. (They are free not to do so.) But to the extent that films and television speak for and inform our collective unconscious, it’s a case of what passes for art passing into the void.

I want my closure. All I have now is the last disc, with the third season bonus features, and a can of sliced peaches. See, one of the characters – Swearengen – used to serve canned peaches at town meetings. It was a funny and strange twist in the script. So I’ll eat my peaches and

moving beyond my disappointments

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Just as we thought our last weekday of Daylight Savings had drawn to a placid end last night, the twisted fates threw us a triple punch:

  1. Dog was yanked to the curb; unleashed from the schedule at A&E.
  2. Steven Colbert failed to amuse, seeing his dreams of running on democratic ticket in South Carolina dashed.
  3. The Writers Guild voted to strike, casting doubt on our diversions for an indefinite time to come.

If you ever wasted a moment of your finite life in this world watching Dog the Bounty Hunter, you have my pity. Good riddance to rank rubbish. Nuff said.

I’m glad the Democrats didn’t let Colbert run. It’s fine to joke about running for president, in the spirit of Pat Paulsen. But people are dying for nothing in an illegal, unconscionable war. And this country is going to hell in a wheelbarrow. That’s no joke. Colbert is a smart guy, who was funnier on the Daily Show, by virtue of being less annoying in smaller doses. He’s smart enough to know better than this. Maybe he should have tried NC, where at least the Wright Brothers could get a doubtful deal off the ground.

The writers’ strike is bad news for every one of us who have bothered to wire our living rooms for electricity beyond illumination. This sucks. But the writers are getting the shitty end of the stick, and they should have our support as they do something about it. Fair is fair.