The Unseeing Eye

THE UNSEEING EYE


I freely admit it: I'm a TV junkie. I started mainlining when I was 10 and we got what was probably the fifth or sixth set in the neighbourhood. It had a round ten-inch screen, showed only black and white, and got only three channels.
What we got was a far cry from all the channels and all the content, but at the time it seemed wonderful. Some of the limitations were interesting. No movie could be shown on TV unless it was at least ten years old! Ironically, there was a fear in the industry that TV would kill the movie business.
Contrarily, movies now sponsor TV shows and TV has become a targeted market for less-than-big-budget movies and even more specific arenas like the Lifetime woman-centered movies. (I confess; a lot of days I find myself watching them because they are often excellent thrillers adapted from first-rate women writers.
Over time, I think that TV may have given women better representation than the movies. Of hand, how many movies can you think of that featured two strong women on the order of “Cagney & Lacey” and now “Rizzoli & Isles”? A few years ago, there was a pilot called “Nikki & Nora” which featured two lesbian detectives in New Orleans, but TV, or at least the Powers That Be in TV, weren't ready for it. There were other lighter-hearted but enjoyable offerings like “She-Spies” and 'Snoops.” and, of course, the ground-breaking “Charlie's Angels.” (From what I've seen. The remake of 'Angels' looks a lot more like 'She-Spies,” with the Angels being convicted felons. In the original, they were former cops who were being squashed under the glass ceiling.)
TV is a huge market and unfortunately, the market aspect often drags down the drama. The most annoying aspect of this for me isn't so much the commercials as the ads at the bottom of the screen, often for other shows on the same channel, which distract from and sometimes even conceal, the main action.
Now, however, TV has been given a new task: it is watching us. Finally, the grimmest prophecy of '1984' has come true. We are being watched everywhere we go. We are being sold this phenomenon on the grounds that it makes us all safer. And perhaps it does. But as has been pointed out, the illusions of safety often come at the price of freedom. To quote a line from a Lord of the Rings parody song, 'the Eye is seen each night on CBS,' referring to the Eye of Sauron, a device by which the evil wizard could keep track of his enemies. (For the 20-30 people out there who have never read the books or seen the movies.)
TV is certainly here to stay. It's everywhere: in our homes, public gathering places, our cars, our pockets, and even on our telephones. It has brought the world closer together and provided great learning opportunities for children from all over the world to meet. It's given us drama, comedy, art, music, dance, and ***INSERT COMMERCIAL HERE***history, the sciences, and a load of drivel. Like many another thing, one can get out of it what one wishes.

Trek Wars

TREK WARS

There's a brouhaha on YouTube over Star Trek vs Star Wars. Bill Shatner started it by calling 'Wars' “derivative.” Carrie Fisher responded with more heat than light, and others have waded in.
I don't usually get into these things, because A) nothing anyone says is likely to change anyone's mind, and B) they're just not all that interesting.
I was born at the beginning of WWII, and I grew up with science fiction. I saw all the TV shows, those great George Pal movies, and all the good and bad TV shows and movies that came along.
The great Ted Sturgeon once said, “90% of everything is crud,” which has come to be known in sci-fi circles as Sturgeon's Postulate. It was certainly true of the movies from the 50's. Some were scary, some were smart, but most were cheap and unmemorable to anyone over the age of 10.
So, here you have two actors both well beyond their glory days, sniping at each other over not much. I am sure both of them aren't happy about where their lives are now compared to Back Then. One is selling travel, one is selling a diet. But neither one of them is starving. So why does all this seem so desperate?
Who knows?
To get back to the argument, it's nearly pointless. Shatner saying 'Wars' is derivative is truly a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Look at everything that went before, especially shows like “Space Patrol” and “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.” Any sci-fi show, movie, even a lot of books, all stand on the shoulders if what has gone before. They all had the blasters, the rocket ships, etc. Even the miniskirts, which were prominent in 'Patrol” and turned up again in “Forbidden Planet.” Data is merely Tweeky 7.0 or Robbie 10.09. As movie technology and real science eveolved, so did these shows.
Fisher's contention that 'Trek' “isn't in the same league” as 'Wars' is partially truey because of the quantum leap in technology in the intervening years and the fact that the films had bigger budgets. Later 'Trek' movies are arguably equal, and I think the later 'Wars' trilogies are not as good as the first. 'Clone Wars' sucks, IMHO.
I have several gripes with both series.
1. The uniforms. They're better in 'Wars' because they look more like real military dress uniforms, and they did at least provide a decent head cover – the caps, not the helmets. In fact, a lot of sci-fi shows with military milieus have neglected any kind of field service or dress head covering, which flies in the face of all military traditions. And Bill Theiss never seemed to think it worthwhile to look at real combat clothing before giving the Enterprise crew pajamas with no pockets and tops that kept riding up. When I was in the Air Force, our winter blue uniform had two jackets, the waist-length Ike jacket and the full-length blouse (it's what they call it, god knows why). I spent a lot f time doing the 'Trekker tug' in that Ike jacket. (The Brits got around that problem by making their jackets attach to their trousers.)
2. The weapons. Not so much a problem in these two cases as in many others. Despite the fact that real-life weapons technology constantly moves toward smaller and lighter, I have seen a lot of movies where the longarm was about the size of a keyboard and had to be worn with a sling in order to be maneuvered at all, A far cry from those neat little sub-guns in 'Stargate.' Those, by the way, are very real.
That aside, both series have made major contributions to the genre. They are distinct in their character and intention. “Wars' is more of a mythic piece of Good vs Evil, putting it closer to “The Lord of the Rings” than to “Battlestar Galactica,'” which. Like 'Trek' has more to do with Man's relationship to technology.
My favourite sci-fi show, though, is “Blake's 7,” a British low-budget job that rode in on the coattails of 'Dr. Who.' It was the creation of Terry Nation, who had invented the Daleks. It showed a Federation further in the future which had become corrupt and ruthless. Although there was never any textual reference, the insignia on the black uniforms was the Star Trek device turned on its side.

“SPEAK THE SPEECH, I PRAY YOU...”

Why is it that most American actresses – and a lot of American actors – have such crappy voices? If you listen to their British and Australian counterparts, the difference is glaring.
How can they spend so much time on their talent and their appearances, and yet neglect the tool they use probably far more than any other to convey the emotion and inner life of their character?
I don't want to single anyone out, so I won't mention names, but here's a case in point: it's a B movie, direct-to-TV, but it's reasonably well done. The two big flaws were that one of the women was supposed to be Hungarian, and she couldn't produce even a bad imitation of Zsa Zsa. Every time she opened her mouth, you heard a contemporary Midwestern accent complete the whinig denasality and blurry diction. The other character was supposed to the be the ancient, ageless Queen of Vampires. As she came into the scene, she looked impressive: strong, powerful, beautiful – then she spoke, and the illusion was shattered.
Tonight's episode of “House” was a great lesson. Here was Hugh Laurie, an OxCam grad, and Jamie Bamber, fresh off “Law & Order: UK” both doing completely convincing American accents, but in pleasant-to-the-ear voices.
Listen to Hugh Jackman, Kenneth Branagh, Kate Beckinsale, Amanda Tapping, Lucy Lawless, Sam Neill. They can play anything they want: mutants, vampires, ageless scienttists, Greek warriors, master spies – kings, princes, and gods – because they have the vocal equipment to pull it off.
Part of the problem is the collapse of the studio system and the indiscriminate adoption of Stanislavsky without fully understanding what was involved. Stanislavsky taught only the master class. By the time students came to him, they already had learned the basics of speech and movement. They knew how to speak. What the American theatre ended up with was what became known as the 'Mumble and Scratch' school of 'naturalistic' actors who had great passion, but were sometimes hard to understand. When a group from the Moscow Arts Theatre came over here in the mid-1960s, they were shocked. One of them remaked to my director at CSC, “You have made Stanislavsky into a god!”
Another villain in the piece was the wireless microphone, which allowed people with untrained voices to make themselves heard without good vocal technique.
Contrariwise, the British can't seem to mike for sour owlshit. I don't know how many times I've found myself straining to hear a line in a British film because the mike isn't picking up the sound.
There are a lot of TV shows I watch these days in spite of this, because they have good writing and acting, but I would be happier if I thought they could make me believe they were anything other than 21st-century Americans.

                     PC  and the 'A' WORD

    I think the first time I heard the phrase 'political correctness' in its current context was during the Clinton Administration. I think whoever used it originally meant it to be ironic, but somebody somewhere chose to take it at face value, and there we were.
    First, the phrase itself originated in Stalinist Russia. One of the charges brought against the defendants (or should I say 'victims') was not being 'politically correct,' i.e, not being a good Stalinist.
    Secondly, it is a classic example of Orwellian 'thinkspeak,' or Skinnerian conditioning.  If you get into the habit of speaking a certain way, you also begin to think that way.
    Even before the term came into use, its application was already active. This emerged in the form of non-gender specific terminology.  As I remember it, the intention was not to deny the existence of two genders, but to avoid a presumption of gender where it was not known. So, 'chairperson,' rather than 'chairman' or 'chairwoman.' Once the identification was made, then then gender appropriate term should be used. This, of course, got completely out of hand and eventually bottomed out in such ridiculous identifications of someone as being the 'chair' of something or other. Down from a human being to a piece of furniture.
    The absolute nadir of this nonsense was the 'A Word,'  which resulted in the awards show where they prizes were given to the 'Best Female Actor...”
    Somehow, women in the Profession had got the notion that the term 'actress' was  somehow degraded and degrading.  So, many of them – mostly in this country – now refer to themselves as 'actors.'  Which, I suppose, is fine a good deal of the time, but as in the case of the awards, they have lost not only an identifying title, but had been reduced to mere adjuncts on their male counterparts.
    Women of the Profession: if you truly feel that your title has been degraded, then do something about it! Fight to take it back! You are Women. You are in the Profession of Acting. You are Actresses. Make it a proud word again. Don't let some obscure idiot with a warped sense of language and ideals trick you into thinking that way.

ON BEING A CRITIC (2)

At first, I felt a bit uneasy about taking on the task of reviewing since I had been an actor. It felt almost like treason. On the other hand, I saw the opportunity to give a boost to the acting community, who were all fighting had to bring in audiences in a town that was already over-entertained.

I looked at it also as a form of consumer service. If something was really crap, I could warn readers to save their money.

I forget whether it was Walter or Jean Kerr who made the distinction between reviewing a work or writing a review. In either case, the point was that reviewing the work was a serious and sincere effort to inform the potential audience of the merits and demerits of the piece, while writing a review was an exercise to show how witty and clever one could be often at the expense of the subject.

Most of the time, I had the greatest regard for John Simon and Kenneth Tynan. But both could on occasion write lines that were nasty and uninformative. Simon on Nicol Williamson's 'Hamlet,' saying that “----played the King as though he were expecting someone to play the Ace,” of Tynan's diatribe about Barbara Streisand's nose in a show she starred in. These were things I avoided at all costs.

One of my favorite venues was Theater Center Philadelphia, down on Fourth Street in the fabric district. The producer, Albert Benzwie, had come fron Germany, where he had worked with Bertolt Brecht. Over the time the company was in existence, he did most of Brecht's plays. One memorable piece was Macchiavelli's “Mandragola,” a classic Commedia dell' Arte piece by the notorious schemer. It was very good.

What wasn't was “The Rise and Fall of Phineas T. Nozzle,” which was precisely as bad as you would expect it to be. They also premiered the stage version of “Extremities,' which became a film which helped put Farrah Fawcett in the serious actress category.

There's an interesting sidebar to that. By this time I was married to my second wife, who also had a theater background. We were both trained in stagefighting, and we noticed on opening night that the lead actress had some very real and very nasty bruises on her legs from the attempted rape scene. We arranged to coach the cast on some techniques to avoid future injury and later spent some time going to theater seminars where we did stagefighting classes.

McQuown 101

ON BEING A CRITIC

I started at the newspaper as a copyeditor, but when the entertainment editor found out I had a theater background, she asked me to go see a few plays. At the time, Philadephia had several good companies doing everything from classical to modern. After a few successful stage reviews, I got assignments for film as well.

My first actor interview was Paul Winfield for “A Hero Ain't Nothin' But A Sandwich” opposite Larry B. Scott as his son. Winfield was one of many actors, producers and directors I met during the seven years I worked at the paper.

Thie was between 1976 and 1983, when the Hollywood publicity machine was still relying on the press junket to hype films. Most studios had PR offices in major cities and they staged huse press lunches where the actors and others sat down to chew the fat with the members of the Fourth Estate.

What usually happened was that the press did all the chewing and the star did all the work. At a big splash at Bookbinder's seafood house, the writers chowed down on a multi-course dinner while producer Jon Peters answered questions. Then, while we were still fressing, Peters was whisked off to the airport to fly to his next gig. He got to eat a box lunch on the plane.

Henry Winkler fared no better. There were about thirty tables full of press on this occasion. Winkler was shuttled form table to table then out the door. If he got as much as one bite per table, I would be surprised. Oh, the glamour of show business!

Many other sessions were far less hectic. I don't recall that a twenty-something Jackie Chan ever ate a bite, but that was because he was too energetic to sit still.

To be continued...

McQuown 101

McQUOWN 101

My name is Michael McQuown. I'm 71. I've lived a lot of places, met a lot of people, loved a few, had a lot of jobs, done some interesting things.

Places I've lived include London, New York, Ft Lauderdale, Atlanta, Syracuse, Tallahassee, and some small towns in Ohio.

Jobs include airman, actor, critic, journalist. I met and interviewed people ranging from Billy Barty to Richard Zanuck, Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, Dudley Moore, Pam Grier, and Jamie Lee Curtis, to name-drop a few. There were plenty of others in the time I worked in that field.

I've traned in martial arts, including firearms, have a carry permit, know a bit about Western historical weapons clothing and customs, was a member of the Church of Satan, married twice, divorced twice.

I'm not easy to categorize politically. At the moment, I'm a registered Republican. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Actually, it has more to do with the fact that in my last marriage my wife registered Democrat and I registered Republican so we could have an influence in the primaries. At this point, I don't feel either party truly represents the needa and desires of the American people, but that's a topic for another blog. I'm pro-gun and pro-choice, concerned for the environment, and have a decreasingly lower tolerance for stupidity with each passing year.

This venue in going to be the platform for my opinions on a lot of diverse subjects. And you know what is said about opinions. So be it.

I welcome dialogue as long as it's intelligent and respectful. If you come on to prove me wrong, to start a fight,, or try to make me look stupid, nobody will ever know you were here. I don't expect everybody to agree with me, but there are ways to disagree.