Tag Archives: Showtime

Inside Inside Comedy

You don’t go into comedy unless, really, it’s all about you.  Even if your comedy is about self loathing, it’s still about you.  

What comedians want is clapping, whistling, foot stomping approval. The room, if not the heavens, should ring with our admiration and gratitude.

So Inside Comedy (Showtime, Thursday, 11:00) had a problem.  Where to find someone who knew comedy from the “inside” but was not the captive of the comedian’s essential self regard.  

Popular culture is strewn with projects in which the comedian serves as interviewer only to ruin the occasion by butting in with their own observations or hunting down the funny.  (David Letterman has no clue how to conduct an interview despite 30 years of trying.  There is no more convincing demonstration of someone’s inability to learn on the job.)

Enter David Steinberg, the interviewer (and executive producer) on Inside Comedy.  Nancy deWolf Smith says:

Mr. Steinberg … is the ideal interviewer. He does not focus on himself but is exquisitely tuned in to his subjects, many of whom he knows well. This seems to have relaxed some of his guests to the point where they appear more natural, and less switched on—as entertaining as that can be—than they are with other interviewers.

Steinberg has a courtly quality, a fineness, a liquid intelligence, all of them made more generous by the evident conviction that comedy is not a zero sum enterprise.  He also has a curiosity that promises us genuine interest in the place of the paddle-ball approach that characterizes so much interviewing these days.  Inside Comedy should be good.  

See the full article by Nancy deWolf Smith, by clicking here.  

Don Cheadle’s reading list

Yesterday, Showtime announced a new show called House of Lies.  Don Cheadle will serve as star and executive producer.

This great news for cable.  To have an actor of Cheadle’s ability and stature, well, who could ask for anything more?

But is it good news for Don Cheadle?

Here’s how the the press release describes the show.

HOUSE OF LIES is a subversive, scathing look at a self-loathing management consultant from a top-tier firm. Cheadle will star as Marty, a highly successful, cutthroat consultant who is never above using any means (or anyone) necessary to get his clients the information they want.

I think this is Showtime’s way of signaling that they intend to use every cliche in the book.

And by book, I mean the work of Martin Kihn from which they drew their title and apparently, their approach.

Here’s a wee glimpse of House of Lies according to Kihn.

Here is the story of a nasty little man and how he rips the soul from his department, pulls its lungs out at the roots, and leaves behind a legacy of victims so vast it is as though a minijunta storms the halls and opens its grab bag of tricks—people with lives to lead . . . people with children, for God’s sake, with babies . . . are tossed into the street—your mentor is tossed into the street—your mentor’s mentor is hurled onto a rotting pile of ex-consultants . .

Golly and who would have thought if possible to take cliche one better.  Capitalism red of tooth and claw, anyone?  This takes Wall Street and ups the ante.

But of course cliches are not always a bad thing when it comes entertainment.  They do grease the rails of comprehension.  And, let’s be honest, a stereotyped, simplified and thoroughly dumbed-down notion of advertising appears not to have hurt Mad Men at all.

Mind you, the advertising cliche has quite a lot of ore in it.  There’s the sex, the drinking, the politics, the glamor, and the deal making.  It’s not clear to me that the consulting cliche leaves Showcase much to work with.  Deal making?

We know what happens to TV projects that stick to empty cliches. Audiences lose interest almost immediately.  It’s horrifying to think of an actor of Cheadle’s gifts taken hostage by a show that is itself taken hostage by simple minded ideas of its theme.

Let me make a suggestion: that Cheadle consult literature that can introduce him to the subtleties, nuances and richness of the consulting biz.  I like the book by Micklewait and Wooldridge as background reading.  See also Walter Kiechel’s wonderful The Lords of Strategy.  But the real opportunity here, I think, is to talk to consultants and to see how very smart and sighted they are.  Some of this will help correct the cliches with which House of Lies is freighted. 

References

Kiechel, Walter. 2010. The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World. Harvard Business School Press.

Kihn, Martin. 2009. House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time. Business Plus.

Micklethwait, John, and Adrian Wooldridge. 1998. The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus. Three Rivers Press.  

For the Showtime press release, see Robert Seidman’s site TV By The Numbers at http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/12/13/don-cheadle-enters-showtimes-house-of-lies/75293

Culture Contest: Showtime vs. USA Networks

Preamble

The Big C, the new show starring the deeply talented Laura Linney gives us a glimpse of what is now possible on cable. It resembles a second show on Showtime, Weeds.

Together these shows give us a glimpse into the Showtime thinktank.  (One of the principles, apparently: let’s see what happens to suburban living when we mix things up.)

There is a another experiment at work at USA Networks, from which a string of hits has recently issued (Burn Notice, Psych, Royal Pains, White Collar).  (One of the principles, apparently, stay as far away from the suburbs as possible.)

Your essay question:

1. Compare and contrast Showtime and USA Networks.  Identify the grammar or algorithm that produces the shows in question.  (Consider my "suburb" reference a hint, but merely one very rough indicator of the possibilities.  Please do feel free to contradict me.)

2. What larger cultural significance do you attach to the fact that these two approaches to making TV now exist?  Did they exist in the 20th century.  Why do they exist now?

Conditions:

Fewer than 1000 words.

point form preferred.

points for being crisp and clear.

Contest winners

Contest winners will receive a Minerva (as pictured) and a place on the winner’s list.  (And immortality as a contest winner, of course. See the list of previous winners, by clicking here.) (Note: the Minerva used to be called the "VOWEL.")

Contest judges

Normally I do the judging for Minervas.  But this is a recipe for provincialism.  So I am invited several people to act as judges.  They are:

Rick Boyko, Director and Professor, VCU Brandcenter

Schuyler Brown, Skylab

Bryan Castañeda

Ana Domb

Mark Earls, author, Herd

Brad Grossman, Grossman and Partners

Christine W. Huang, PSFK, Huffington Post and Global Hue

Steve Postrel

Chief Culture Officer

This is precisely the kind of question I would expect a CCO to hit out of the park.  If you are having trouble with this question and fancy yourself CCO material, you are not watching enough TV.  (When spouses or colleagues complain, look them straight in the eye and say: "It’s doctor’s orders."  (Trust me, I’m an anthropologist.)

Previous Winners

Juri Saar (for the "Who’s a good doggie woggie?" contest)

Reiko Waisglass (for the "Who’s a good doggie woggie?" contest)

Brent Shelkey (for the "Who’s a good doggie woggie?" contest)

Daniel Saunders (for the "JJ Abrams vs. Joss Whedon" contest)

Tim Sullivan (for the "Karen Black vs. Betty White" contest?)