Tea, please!

The Anglofile in me was overjoyed when I discovered a friend, who, because of her half-British heritage, shared the same love of dressing up and going to tea. So every few months we get together and try out a new place in LA to have tea. After all, there are a lot of Brits in LA, especially in the entertainment industry. However, through our forays into tea time, I think I've seen more Asians having tea parties than Brits.

Anyway, my friend, SUZANNE CUPAL, suggested that we celebrate my birthday by having High Tea at Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, this time. I was certainly game for this -- the only difference being that we had to celebrate my birthday three weeks early because her dad, HENRY, was in town and wanted to come along on what he called 'a chick thing.' Well, the Brits might see it as a cultural ceremony for all civilized folks, but the red-blooded, meat and potatoes, whiskey-swilling American male sees it as 'a chick thing.'

I love her dad. He's eighty this year, but he's robust and healthy enough to get about and do things... he may be a little slow-moving with age and a little watching his diet due to bypass heart surgery, but he's fun to be with and robust enough to do things with. I miss that with my own dad... for the last few years that I visited him, we couldn't go anywhere... his eyesight was too bad and he was too afraid of falling... and I never pushed it because the one time I took him to the mall to get him new pants, as easy as we took it, he came back to have a heart attack at lunch, in front of me. And that is something you don't want to experience, a loved one having a heart attack in front of you and feeling impotent to stop it.

I also love talking to Henry. He was an engineer before he retired... worked for GM in Michigan. And more importantly he was an MP during the Korean war... and I love to hear him talk about being an MP, especially when he describes himself as a green, wet-behind-the ears country kid who didn't know anything suddenly thrust into the military police because he could read and write and was better educated than anyone else in the unit.

But I digress... back to tea at the Peninsula Hotel. As you can see, it is quite the nice place. We arrived early so I had time to take plenty of photographs. I didn't get to follow the paths to see if there were gardens but I liked the fountain.

The harpist played well, although before we were done with tea, she was gone and someone was playing the piano. Not as nice.

Being early also gave me a chance to scope out the place. As you can see, they have their teas in their atrium lounge... with large, and I'm certain, comfortable couches, for people to gather and chat. Which, though lovely, I'm sorry, is not quite what I want for tea.

I don't want to be constantly leaning over, reaching for the sandwiches and sweets, dribbling the jams and clotted creams over my lap. I love lounge settings, and soft lighting, and music -- for drinks, when I'm cuddling up with an attractive male date, not for tea with a female friend and her dad.

Luckily, I spied some cute little tables in the corner... one with three chairs around it and one with four. So I went to the hostess to alert her that I wanted a table. Suzanne had indicated that we would probably be put on the small side couches inside the door. Picture something that looks like one side of a booth... or what you wait on before entering the restaurant. Just because they had cocktail tables in front of them didn't make them look inviting or comfortable. So I decided to tell the hostess what I wanted.

What she told me was interesting. She said that tables were reserved for parties of 10 or more. To which I promptly pointed out the small tables in the corner and said no way do those handle 10 people. Then she indicated that those tables were requested specifically by people more than two weeks ago. Well, I know that Suzanne made the reservation well over a month ago -- it isn't easy matching our schedules and this time we had to take into consideration when Henry was coming. I, of course, mentioned this to her, but I conceded that Suzanne probably had not specifically requested a table... after all, who would know you had to? The Hostess said that people who had been there before knew to do so -- not exactly the kind of answer that would prompt me to return.

When she pointed out the booth-like seating near the front as where they were planning to put us, I told her no way was I having tea, sitting in the through way to the restrooms. That I wasn't going to let her slough us off in such an undesirable place. We went back and forth a bit, since she was claiming that the two small tables I was talking about, although empty, were booked, but I stuck to my guns. She requested 10 minutes to see what she could do and requested we be seated in the undesirable place. I told her that we would while she sorted things out, but no way was I having tea there. And when a waiter came to put the place settings on the cocktail table in front of us, I waved him away, saying we weren't having tea there.

I don't know what Suzanne or Henry wanted because they said nothing, except the birthday girl gets her choice. I can't believe they would have liked being shoved in the corner booth where we'd be interrupted by everyone going down the hallway to the restrooms and hotel facilities, but they chose to keep quiet.

After about 10 minutes, the hostess came back and took us to the small table seating three. The other table which seated four had three people already there. That was fine, since there were only three of us. I was quite happy with it. It was lovely and private -- just what you wanted for tea, especially at the prices they were charging us. Don't mind paying for value.

We had a good time there. I had caramel pear tea which was delightful. It had a strong enough aroma that Suzanne could smell it and compliment its fragrance. They were less venturesome and chose chamomile tea. I could drink mine all day. Suzanne and Henry gave thumbs up on theirs as well. Hence, I'd be the first to say that the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills served excellent tea.

We ordered what they called the Full Tea. There were a couple of higher priced teas, but those came with alcohol, which none of us drink any more, for various health-related reasons. If they had had one with the fresh strawberries without the alcohol, we would have gone for it.

Unfortunately, the food was not up to the promise of the tea or the surroundings. I'm never a good judge of scones, since I rarely like them -- too heavy for me -- but the cream looked more like butter than cream, let alone clotted cream. In fact, I even asked where the cream was and Suzanne pointed to what I thought was butter. Instead of sugar cubes, we got the same packets of sugar/sweet&low/equal one finds in most restaurants.

The finger sandwiches were so-so. I liked the salmon and the chicken salad one. And the egg salad one was decent, but I was disappointed there were no cucumber ones -- which I love. What is a British tea without cucumber sandwiches? Putting a slice of cucumber on top the salmon is not the same thing. They also had an odd finger sandwich -- all raw vegetables -- which I didn't care much for, but Suzanne and Henry liked it.

The sweets were okay, but sparse. I can't think of anything to write home about there.

All in all, the company was great and we enjoyed ourselves in the pretty surroundings, but Suzanne and I both agreed that we have had better teas. Henry, being on his second visit to his so-called 'chick thing', had no vote. We both agreed that our favorite teas are still the Rose Garden in Pasadena... a tiny British store with an adjacent teahouse and best of all, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pasadena. And that we were both somewhat disappointed with the Peninsula tea. So much so that Suzanne suggested we take another trip to the Ritz Carlton tea in a few weeks.

As we were driving home, Suzanne remarked that she felt unsatisfied by the tea. I knew what she meant -- it wasn't exactly a high spot. She had been wanting to try a Chicago hotdog and wished that we could do that, since she'll be leaving LA soon. I didn't see why we couldn't do that, even though it did feel a little piggish to be eating again right after tea... did I say we weren't satisfied by the tea?

So we drove to my favorite place for authentic and excellent Chicago cuisine, Taste Chicago in Burbank, owned by Joe Mantegna, whom I worked with on Joan of Arcadia. When going over my receipts for income tax time, I found so many from Taste Chicago that I'd be embarrass to admit how many times I was there last year, never by myself and often with people as crazy about the place as I am. But Taste Chicago has the real thing: Vienna Beef hotdogs, with onions and mustard and tomato slices on poppyseed buns, sprinkled with celery salt if you wish (and peppers if you're nuts). But most important, they have the dark green relish that I remember on my Chicago hotdogs in Chicago, not the pale green stuff you buy in supermarkets. You have to ask for it -- they call it 'neon relish' here -- but it's worth the trip all by itself.

Of course, Henry protested as we dragged him inside Taste Chicago that he was full from the tea and we told him that was okay, he could order something and take it home for lunch the next day -- after all, it is a take-out as well as eat-there place. Then I heard him say, "They have Italian beef here?"

"They have great Italian beef here," I answered. I've had it... it's wonderful, but I like the hotdogs even more. Chicago is known for its Italian beef and this is as good as it gets.

"Okay," he said, "I'll have a bite and take the rest home." He had it polished off even before we had our hotdogs done. So much for a bite because he was full and take the rest home.

Now Joe Mallozzi would probably say I should have taken a photograph of the hotdog... and I would have, if I had thought about it -- from the time I got it in my hot little hands, my only thought was of consuming it.

We both agreed, though, that we were now satisfied and happy. A truly great ending to a birthday celebration.

For those of you who are celebrity watchers, while we were waiting for the Peninsula Hotel valets to get our car, Tony Bennet and his family were waiting right beside us. He looks hale and hearty as well.

Busting the Myth: What 'Tweeners Are Watching and Why

I was a bit surprised to get an invitation to a Humanitas Master Writer’s workshop called “Busting the Myth: What ‘Tweeners Are Watching and Why.” I must admit I hadn’t given much thought to what we are saying to young girls about the roles of women, not in our primetime fare, but in our programming for children. So I went to the panel discussion at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences where we were treated to a special presentation by SEE JANE, a research and advocacy organization founded by Academy Award Winner Geena Davis. The topic: gender images in the media specifically geared towards the young audience.

Like the rest of society, film and television has been rife with a disparity of roles for females as opposed to their male counterparts in terms of availability and substance. But like in other professions and areas, we have made significant strides in those directions. While the disparity still exists in adult fare, especially for older women, the playing field is a lot more level today than it used to be. How surprising, then, to learn that while there is pretty much parity for females and males in live action aimed at our children, there’s a big disparity in animation and an even larger one in videogames.

Panelists were actor GEENA DAVIS, who co-founded the SEE JANE organization in conjunction with the DADS AND DAUGHTERS national non-profit; DR. STACY SMITH, researcher for See Jane and associate professor at USC; BEN SILVERMAN, executive producer of Ugly Betty and The Office and founder/CEO of Reveille Productions; ERIC COLEMAN, vice president/executive producer of animation & production for Nickelodeon, overseeing Sponge Bob; JONAS AGIN, senior vice president of The Tom Lynch Co.; DOREEN SPICER, co-writer of “Jump In!” film for Disney; and KARIN GIST, co-writer of “Jump In!” film for Disney. Moderator was CYNTHIA LITTLETON, deputy editor of News for “Daily Variety.”

Dr. Stacy Smith reminded us how in the ‘60s, there was concern about violence onscreen in children’s programming and in the 70s, the focus was on children exploitation and sexual exposure. Today, there are grave concerns surrounding sexual stereotyping in programming designed for children and 'tweeners. There’s a concern about equity, because repeated exposure to sexual stereotyping leads to a sexist, gender view of the world. ‘See Jane’ is attempting to reduce gender stereotyping for female children and increase percentages of roles for girls and women.

Actress Geena Davis summed it up best when she said she created See Jane because as an actor, she’s constantly aware that there are fewer roles for women. She admits to selfishly wanting to play baseball roles rather than the cheerleader ones. And she managed to do so… 13 years ago. The two movies that she made back to back, Thelma and Louise and A League of Our Own, increased awareness because she met many women who told her how those movies changed their lives. At the time, the media touted that these movies would start a wave of female buddy films and female baseball films. Unfortunately, it took 10 years for the next one to appear.

As she watched shows with her young daughter, she saw lots of gender imbalance and disparity. Unfortunately, she explained, women will watch shows about boys, but men won’t watch shows about girls. This is said to be human nature. But is that true? she asked herself. Could it be growing up with this disparity, not human nature, which took kids into adulthood perpetuating this inequality into adult fare? What if we change it from the beginning, so that they grow up with a more balanced viewpoint? Perhaps then, they’ll carry that into adulthood. That was the genesis for See Jane.

Dr. Stacy Smith supplied the empirical resources, for she studies gender balance and the amount of roles of male and females in children programming and movies, utilizing G-rated films and 1,000 children shows. Her findings for single-speaking characters aimed at children and tweeners was this:
TV content m:f 1.72:1
Movies content m:f 2.5:1
Videogames content m:f 6:1

In live action, there is almost parity between the sexes. G-rated–TV shows are close to parity. These same ratios are seen in adult and TVG fare. The highest disparities of females to males are in animation. While TVG shows equity, TVY and TVY-7, in particular, need improvement.

But in films, there is a curious phenomenon at work today: women more likely cast in traditional roles, while males (or the male personality) are often portrayed as less intelligent, more action, more humorous, dumb, strong and bad.

And while multi-channels and more media outlets make it seem like it should be easier to find one’s niche, the reality is that all we get is more of the same.

As a network representative, Eric Coleman explained that when a project comes in, he first looks at the content and idea. He doesn’t seek out gender shows to do, but the reality is that certain networks have more girls watching than guys. The bottom line, he reminded, is that “hit shows are the driving force of programming. We’re giving them what they want.”

Doreen Spicer answered him that perhaps we should be looking at it as “something like: ‘If you build it, they will come.’ – If you do it, and it’s successful, then other people will copy it.”

Coleman went on to elaborate that networks want strong female characters and balance because it’s smart for business. “But it’s not enough to say, ‘got to have more females.’ You need to bring something to the table… a show that’s so awesome that it’s gonna break through.”

One such series brought to the table this season is Ugly Betty. Executive producer Ben Silverman thinks it’s fantastic how many people embraced the character and suggested the enthusiasm shows that many people want this kind of program. In the Spanish world, Ugly Betty is seen as successfully challenging the stereotype of what is beauty. Its predecessor originated in Columbia -- a country under attack for corruption -- where Miss Columbia is more popular than the president. Hence, there, Ugly Betty stands for purity, an absence of the corrupt world, not the vapid world often shown.

In the US, however, Ugly Betty is seen more from the looks angle. It’s ‘The Ugly Duckling’ syndrome and its popularity points out an underserved audience. Even so, it didn’t surprise Ben that the first note he got from the Network was “We need an angry guy.” The audience laughed but Ben said he had been okay with that note.

One of the things that makes this kind of programming difficult, Eric offered, is that we’ve shut down the discussion of race and gender politics in the real world.

To which Ben proudly responded that The Office may insult many different groups but it also shines a light on problems through its humor – e.g., who’s in prison, who’s running the company. Hence, with Michael Scott as today’s ‘Archie Bunker’ who sees his female boss just as a sex object, Ben sees The Office as promoting dialogue on the subject.

It was then that Doreen Spicer and Karin Gist weighed in. They had done a very successful coming-of-age film for Disney, called Jump In! It’s about double dutch jump roping tournament in inner city Brooklyn. Originally meant to be a movie about just girls, the studio wanted a boy in. I suspect the studio was thinking along the lines of what Geena said: That boys won’t watch girls without a significant guy interest in it. But she didn’t elaborate.

Doreen Spicer was very familiar with skipping rope and she knew boys didn’t do double dutch, especially not in Brooklyn. Since you have to give the studio what it wants, she asked herself, how can I get a boy in? Doreen decided that the only way a boy would get involved in a ‘girl thing’ is if he’s hooked in by thinking it’s interesting and fun, then finds it challenging, plus… he likes a girl doing it and wants to spend time with her.

Karin explained that then the central question becomes, will he be seen as a wuss by his male peers if he joins the double dutch team? He’s fearful that he will be teased about something only girls do. The idea of creating a script of a boy doing something out of the box excited Karin, for most scripts have girls coming out of the box, doing things, not boys.

What came out of these ruminations is a movie in which a boy, whose family owns a boxing gym, is expected to be the third-generation boxing champ of the family by winning the Golden Gloves. When he is forced to take his younger sister to a double dutch tournament, he discovers two things: jumping rope takes talent and creativity and the girl he has a crush on is on the team. He joins the team as they prepare for the city-wide competition and has to overcome obstacles such as a bully disseminating a picture of him double dutching with the caption of ‘loser’ and a dad who sees this as the reason his heart isn’t in the ring and labels him weak. In the end, he learns to follow his heart, not someone else’s dream, and about family support and love.

Turning gender stereotypes on their head was so satisfying to Karin that she craves this kind of projects now: the boy-driven, out-of-the-box kind. The point of tweeners shows like this is to ‘empower’ the kid. To have them see a kid finding his dad dumb as a cliché. To have them explore their inner strength without having their parents look stupid.

When the floor was given to the audience to ask questions, a woman asked how parents could combat this gender stereotyping. Geena Davis explained that parents presenting their views to their child while watching the show with their child can mitigate a lot of bad parts. For example, she said, if you are watching violence, ask the child, “Wouldn’t that hurt if it happened to you?”

All agreed that the danger is for writers to write down to the child audience, especially when teenagers think they know everything and speak from that place. To this, Geena added that animation writers have told her it’s too hard because the girl needs to be more beautiful and smarter than anyone, stronger. The stereotype has become that the girl is the smartest and does the best and is the best behaved. Karin Gist agreed with Geena, for even writing Jump In!, she had to write the character description as “pretty but…”

The answer to this might be to have more girl characters, so each character doesn’t have to be everything – doesn’t have to represent every different type of woman. More choices working and playing together means none need be the spokesperson for all girls or womanhood.

Jonas Agin talked about the network side – saying that broadcasters want to be responsible and want to make the message clear. In fact, they will allow a character to be as flawed as you want, as long as he/she is redeemed in 22 minutes and has a clear message behind it. Networks have a strong sense of responsibility, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because their audience want it. A big part of the appeal of The Simpsons is that Homer may be the worst dad ever, but he shows he has a lot of heart. People hunger for that heart, they just want to be entertained without the heaviness of being lectured.

Ben added that one of the reasons he got the call for Ugly Betty is because the pharmaceutical companies want female-skewing programs. Bringing new revenue sources to television, pharmaceuticals believe it’s the women who make their dumb, put-upon husbands get the colon cancer drug that the husbands wouldn’t necessarily get on their own. So they want to provide programming that will keep the women watching.

But there's still a long way to go. Even though CBS is shifting in personality with a woman running it and the CW is clearly programmed by a woman, there has been no systemic change in the number of women in movies (17%) since 2004, even with some women in the top positions. And, Ben educated us, women watch more reality shows than men. How this all affects what our children are exposed to remains to be seen.

Heroes: "Save the Cheerleader, Save the World"

These six words have become the banner and rallying cry for the Heroes television series, which the Paley Festival honored last night at the DGA for being one of the most innovative and entertaining shows of the year. And it was fun to learn that these words were coined by old acquaintance Adam Armus, in the script he and his writing partner, Nora Kay Foster, wrote, called “Homecoming.” I know Adam and Nora from our mutual Hercules and Xena days.

It was an interesting evening and somewhat different than others I’ve attended. As a producer friend and I stood in the DGA lobby, looking over the crowd to the sold-out event, we saw something I’ve never seen at PaleyFest – a standby line. Looking at the crowd makeup and the poster announcing the slew of actors, my producer friend suggested that the Museum was choosing its tributes by which programs would bring out the most fans. With my so much more loftier view of PaleyFest, I assured him that wasn’t the case – that the panel makeup of these events was part cast and part creative team and the audience reflected the same division, half people in the business and half general public.

He remained skeptical and I can’t blame him, for with eleven actors onstage and only the creator/executive producer Tim Kring with them, it wasn’t possible to hear from anyone else on the creative team and hence, it didn’t look like a balanced mix. Obviously, the decision was made that everyone was there to see only the actors – a point brought home by someone asking where a cast member who wasn’t on stage was.

I don’t know if the paucity of writing/directing/producing/industry-related questions was due to the preponderance of actors and scarcity of creative team onstage or whether those of us who both work in the industry and watch the shows just didn’t get our collective fingers clicking on the internet buttons before the event sold out. Because the event did sell out within the first hour after the online box office opened.

To be fair, with every question making the rounds of everyone on stage, there wasn’t enough time for more than a few.

This evening’s special excerpt pulled from the archives was from a 1967 documentary, 21^st Century Mysteries of Life. It was about a scientific study on rats’ brains treated to induce more extensive use of brain function. I can understand the relation to the evening’s subject, but I thought it was a questionable choice because most of the audience couldn’t relate to it and was bored. I was bored and I used to work on biochemical studies like that! In the right mood, I might have been fascinated, but revved up for a good time and fiction as we were, it wasn’t easy to concentrate our grey matter on rats being injected and data collected.

The moderator was Emmy-winning, 12-year veteran reporter Tony Potts of Access Hollywood. He was part of the fun of the evening because he was quick on the comeback and drew as many chuckles out of the audience as the cast did. For example, the actors admitted they’re all really nervous whenever they get new script, for none of them feel safe. None of them have seen final script. To which Tim Kring nodded and admitted to knowing everybody’s fate. “Tim Kring survives,” Potts quipped, getting a chuckle out of audience and guests.

Adrian Pasdar added that although the show is called Heroes, he thinks it should be called “Survivors.” On the same subject, Greg Grunberg teased the audience that he had read episode 22 and it blew him away. Hence, he felt he could say with authority that it will have that same effect on the rest of us.

Potts talked about his own introduction to Heroes. Every summer, to help him view all the pilots he’s sent, he invites his friends and his “rock-n-roll rebels from the mid-50’s parents” who are now in their mid 60s (not exactly the demographic NBC is looking for, I should think.) He shared how quiet it became in the room after watching the first scene of Heroes. He looked at his guests and asked if this could possibly be as good as he thought it was. Having to screen dozens of new series each season, I don’t blame him for looking for those shows that make him want to see the next scene.

Obviously, he was onto something with Heroes because the pilot debuted to 14 million people in October and had grown to 16 million by November. (I had seen the full 71-minute version of the pilot at Comicon earlier this year, which had left me feeling I should’ve just waited to see the stripped down version aired on television.) He then introduced Tim Kring, the creator and executive producer, who told us we were going to see the episode which they internally call episode 9 and which we know as “Homecoming”, then we were going to get a preview clip from episode 19 (which would air on April 23^rd). In it, Linderman has a proposition for Nathan – his campaign for the presidency will be successful, but the price of it will be his brother’s life.

When Potts asked about Tim Kring’s history with NBC (his first writing credit being on NBC’s Knightrider) and how the series came about, Tim claimed to have “a long career, but a short attention span.” That after he does something for a while, he’s ready to do something else. That he’s interested in doing open-ended shows where he can dig deeper. As soon as he mentioned this, Potts brought up Lost and asked if Tim was worried about Heroes falling into the same trap as Lost.

Kring said that his show has an advantage of coming after Lost made a mistake in frustrating its audience by carrying a storyline out too long. To that end, he promised that he won’t carry out the storyline past the end of the season. “The difference between our show and Lost is that the central dilemma is wrapped up at season end and we move onto chapter 2.” This allows him, he said, to jump on a story and jump off. Thus, he described his series as having close-ended stories with continuing characters, where the central theme and central storyline are wrapped.

Asked about pitching the show, Tim said he had memorized the pitch before going into the room. When he was done, the execs stared at him, wondering how he would pull it off. They were stunned, though, by the pitch and said, “Let’s do it.” It ended up being a pretty quick turnaround as he pitched it in September, wrote it in November, and it was picked up to pilot in January. The pilot had to set up a lot of characters.

Tim then went on to describe a fairly standard casting process: first, the actors read for the casting directors, him and the director. Then they read for the studio, and then for the network. He said that Hayden Panettiere (who mentioned signing on for 6 seasons) was the only one considered for Claire. Potts then got a laugh out of Ali Larter by asking her whether she gets two paychecks.

For those who are interested in how the show is written, it is written differently than the shows I’m used to working on. Then again, I’ve never worked on a show with such a huge cast of series regulars, so maybe this is standard writing for this type of show. Tim said that every writer writes on every episode, for they divide up the characters. Then the writer on record polishes it up.

An interesting corollary to the subject of writing the show came as a result of Adrian talking about the first time he flew in the desert: the director asked him, “What are you doing?” when he skidded to a stop and hurt because of it. He told the director that he didn’t have "super feet". Tim picked up on Adrian’s answer to say that's an example of the crazy times the writers can have in the writers room -- discussing things like how would he land?

Tim also reminded us that series eat stories very quickly and that there was an organic process to how characters interact. That you have to let the chemistry between characters be fluid so that if it is playing as something different than you wanted, you can go with it.

When the subject of the violence and death on the show came up, Tim admitted that he didn’t realize how many families with kids were watching the show. Hence, they have to be a bit careful picking and choosing the evidence they show, sometimes giving it almost a comic book feel. Hayden added how she kept getting her limbs chopped off. She said, “You should’ve tied my legs back.”

To which, Greg was quick with a provocative, “Okay.” And Hayden realized what she had inadvertently implied and just made it worse trying to right it. She ended up giving Greg another opening to tease, “We should move to Showtime.”

At which point, Hayden turned to the audience and said, “I didn’t mean it that way.” She went on to explain that she needed body casts for her breaking limbs. She described it jokingly as being mummified without taking her organs out. It’s an algae thing that gets hard, she elaborated, and then they saw her out of it.

For those not interested in questions about the writing or producing of the series like I am, there also were questions that apparently the cast gets asked often. One such question directed to every actor was: Which power would you each like to have?
Leonard said fly.
Noah: pet psychic – understand/talk to pets
Ali: get boyfriend to do dishes.
To which Potts inserted, “If you put a pole in the kitchen.”
Adrian: the ability to dodge this question because they get asked it a lot
Milo: the power of persuasion
Masi: pick out right clothes like Milo does.
Hayden: teleporting
Greg: supermetabolism (This got a big laugh from the audience and a wicked smile from him.)
Jack: invisibility is cool but he was invisible for most of the eighties. Flying faster than speed of light would be good.

The actors then turned to Tim who was surprised that they were waiting for his answer to that question. However, they insisted that he answer it, too. Thus, he revealed he wanted the ability to break an entire season of stories very quickly and painlessly. Something I think all of us writers can empathize with and wish for.

For more on the Heroes panel and the questions asked, visit what I wrote in "Fireside Chats From Hollywood" at: http://community.tvguide.com/forum.jspa?forumID=700152230

Brothers, Sisters and Heroes: Let the Paley Festival Begin

This is the title of the news article I wrote for the AWG Newsletter about the Paley Television Festival that is currently being presented by the Museum of Television and Radio at the DGA.

If you would like to read it and other newsworthy events applicable to writers, visit this link:

http://www.alamedawritersgroup.org/newsletter/2007/newsletter_0307.html

From One Minute Movies to STAR WARS

His first film was one minute long, GEORGE LUCAS -- the man who gave us STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES -- told us at the PaleyFest tribute to him at the DGA last night. This was part of the two-week long celebration of the best and most innovative of new and vintage TV shows the Museum of Television and Radio puts on every year.

I love the PaleyFest's tribute evenings. Normally, I try to go to as many of the drama offerings as I can. But this year, time and work constraints are such that I can only manage the two weekend events. What's so great about the Paley Festival is that the MTR usually brings the entire cast and creative team together with us, the audience who watches the shows. And this audience is a great mixture, many of us are their colleagues in the industry and the rest are from the general public who are often able to watch their shows even more faithfully than we are. Hence, the questions reflect this mixture. You don’t get all ‘what was the budget?’ and ‘will you read my script?’ like often happens at a pure industry event. And you don’t get the often silly questions that can pop up among the good ones like you do at conventions.

This time there was a special treat on the hot seat, iconic George Lucas, who came dressed casually in black jacket, plaid shirt, and jeans.

The excerpt from the museum's archives that they showed for this occasion was Saturday Night Live's skit on the 20th anniversary of the Star Wars screen-test auditions. Not a big watcher of SNL myself, this was a first viewing for me. It was hilarious so I’m sure the segment went over big when it aired. Kevin Spacey pretended to be Christopher Walken auditioning for Han Solo. He also pretended to be Walter Matthau auditioning for Obi Wan and Jack Lemmon auditioning for Chewbacca. Kevin Spacey is an incredible actor no matter what role he’s in, and this is no exception.

Darrell Hammond pretended to be Richard Dreyfus screen-testing for C3PO. Norm MacDonald strutted onto the scene as Burt Reynolds for Darth Vader and Ana Gasteyer came out as Barbra Streisand screen-testing for Leia. That bun hairdo was not at all flattering to her.

My favorite line was delivered by Spacey’s Lemmon caricature for the Chewbacca screen test. Holding the furry headpiece, he groused, “You had me come all the way from Beverly Hills to play a fucking space ape?”

Since I didn’t know all the SNL actors, I had to look up a couple online. In perusing the net, I discovered that this screen-test skit can be seen online, in several places.

After this presentation, the Museum’s president, Pat Mitchell, introduced George Lucas to a standing ovation. The weird thing was that when she came out, she didn’t introduce herself. I had to ask an usher who she was. Of course, I suppose if I had looked in the program book, I would have noticed the resemblance to the president’s photo, but I started out life as a scientist – the last thing we do is read the instruction manual.

The best news that came out of this introduction was that there was a fourth INDIANA JONES movie on its way. And I could swear I heard them say that Sean Connery would be in it. If he is, then I’ll be waiting with bated breath for it. I only really cared for the father and son movie and the first adventure. I was always more taken with STAR WARS – or I should really qualify that, I was taken with the first three SW movies he made, not the last three. In fact, I’ve only bought the DVDs for the first three movies and while I’m sure my lack of purchase didn’t make much of a dent in his bottom line, he might want to take note. To that end, we also heard that he is planning both an animated and a live action SW series.

Then came the biggest surprise of the evening – in retrospect, it should have been obvious, but it wasn’t. Pat explained that since they were the Museum of Television and Radio, they were going to discuss George’s 1992-1993 series, “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles,” which had won 12 Emmy awards for technical innovation. Instead of watching one full episode, we were being treated to a montage of Indy’s encounters with historical figures -- excerpts from 11 of 44 episodes.

Through the eyes of Indy, we got to know such notables as TH Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Woodrow Wilson, Prince Faisal, Sidney Becket, Giacomo Puccini, George White, George Gershwin, and Lenin. In that sense, this series reminds me of the brilliant 1977 TV series, “Meeting of Minds,” done by the late Steve Allen and his wife Jayne Meadows, except that instead of sitting around the table talking, we’re taken to exotic locations with lots of special effects, where the hero Indy watches events unfold. Obviously on a far greater budget and technical advancements than Allen had at his fingertips back in 1977. But not necessarily as riveting.

Describing his series as “fanciful encounters with historical figures,” Lucas explained Indy “could not be a key player” for that would affect history. He could become friends with the historical figures and have conversations, but ultimately he had to be the proverbial “fly on the wall” when the historically significant events happened. Still, a history buff himself (reading things like the Landmark books of history), Lucas took pride in making the historical encounters as accurate as possible.

My favorite excerpt was the one on the Mexican revolution. Indy tries to explain to a peasant who has had his chickens taken by the army for food that the army is there to help him, to free him, to make his life better. But all the peasant can see is that the soldiers stole his chickens, as every army before them have done. The more Indy tries to defend the army he’s traveling with, the less the peasant buys it, saying, “They all steal your chickens. Only the name of the man who steals your chickens changes.”

Of special note was his segment on Lenin and the poetry of his speech: “Peace for our soldiers. Bread for our workers. Land for our peasants.” Even that little bit gives you a sense of Lenin.

In order for the series to fill in the blanks for film Indy’s background, Lucas chose to represent two time periods in young Indiana’s life -- 10 years old and the 16-20 years. In doing so, he also saw the potential of these adventures providing a useful tool for teaching history in schools. Towards that goal, he’s planning to put the series out on DVD where he’ll combine two episodes together for 90-minute special and then add documentary commentaries about the real historical people portrayed in the episodes. Lucas feels that kids would be more likely to remember important historical people if they can ‘meet’ them.

Lucas spent a fair amount of time telling us about writing and producing “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” series, which he shot in 16mm. Interestingly, Paramount begged him not to shoot in 16mm, reminding him that it had never been successfully done before. However, Lucas admits to being stubborn when he wants to do something a certain way. Nevertheless, Paramount was worried enough to get everybody who knew Lucas to call him and beg him not to work in 16mm. Nothing and nobody, however, changed Lucas’s mind, for he understood that eventually, computer technology would be sophisticated enough to clean up the 16mm and to blow it up larger. He admits, though, that he’s now spending more money on enhancing and cleaning up the original 16mm film than he originally did on producing the entire series.

Why the desire to go what he called ‘low budget Roger Corman filmmaking?’ 16mm film is cheaper than 35, so the tradeoff is that he got 13 shooting days rather than the 9 he would have had with 35. That is a huge tradeoff.

He used other techniques to keep costs down. He could travel with a small permanent crew because he hired locals in whatever country he was in. He used stock shots from movies and experimented with digital shooting. “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” boasts 100,000 special effects using digital technology that even ILM couldn’t do at the time. But Lucas felt that since he was working on a smaller canvas, he needed less for the smaller screen. He even had matt paintings painted electronically rather than on glass.

But the innovative way of producing this series actually started in the Writers Room, where he had all scripts done before he started any shooting. First, he laid out the stories for the various historical characters whose lives he wanted to visit. Then he had his seven writers sit together in and office and he pitched the stories to them. He let his writers ‘trash on them,’ telling him what was wrong with them. Then, they got down to business, hammering out one story treatment a day for 15 days. When all the treatments were done, he told each writer to choose which two the writer wanted to write. The writers then went off and wrote for two months. After two months, they read each other’s work and came together to ‘trash each other.’

By doing all the scripts first, he was able to do TV like he would a feature, that is, shoot the entire series as one unit. Hence, he was able to shoot things when they were financially feasible rather than when he had to. It also helped that actors wanted to do it and were willing to do it as a labor of love, working for scale.

ABC gave them whatever leeway they wanted. He felt that the network didn’t even read the scripts. Which was probably true – they probably just wanted to be in business with him. But what it meant for him was that he “only had to deal with Standards and Practices and most of the time, we ran over them.”

Unfortunately, it was not shown in a good time slot – it alternated with Monday Night Football on Monday nights. He was fortunate, though, that Bob Iger and ABC let them continue, even though the ratings were not good. He even expanded that to say that he’s always been fortunate to have people who loved his work enough to let him go for it. From the beginnings with Alan Ladd to Bob Iger.

Having said that, Lucas believes that Paramount will make money off the repackaged episodes for DVD. They may not make money like THE INCREDIBLES did for Paramount, but he’s hoping they will be “evergreen” for the studio – meaning, “go on and on.”

The most important lesson he learned from this was that he loved TV more than film. However, I think he realized that in the audience were many people who worked in the industry like me, who would be very skeptical of an answer like that, so he qualified it: he loved TV under the condition that he could do TV with no interference. That was an answer we could more understand. And all of us hope to one day be in that lofty position.

Lucas went on to talk about the enormous stress of doing movies -- that only 10% of produced movies ever break even and only 1% make money. For those odds, you are “staking everything on it – 3 years of your life. Whereas in television, if one show doesn’t work, you go on to the next one – it’s a week later.” He also feels that TV is still malleable enough to do interesting things, now even more so with cable.

Asked what goes through his mind when watching Star Wars, his answer was, “It was a lot of work.” But he plans to bring it to TV in the form of The Clone Wars. He’s already tested 5-minute segments on the Cartoon Network and plans to do them in 3-D to make the animation more like movies.

Recognizing that there’s no money for TV animation, he plans to do it his way, even if it’s “breaking the rules.” He plans to make 100 episodes first, then try to make a deal with someone who wants to show them. It will have the smart-ass humor everyone loves, but he realized that for episodics, he doesn’t need to do the Skywalker story. A lot was going on during Clone Wars besides the Skywalker story, he said, and offered as an example an episode with only storm troopers in it.

When asked to give advice to a budding young director, he offered, “Persistence makes you a director if you have a picture in your mind and then work like hell to get that picture done.” He went on to say, “I’m very stubborn. And determined.” He finishes the projects he starts, even though the Indy movie took 15 years and RED TALES 18 years. He also revealed that he “can’t work on 16 different things at once.”

He went on to elaborate that if he was directing, then that’s all he can do – that one project – because a director is constantly busy. But as an executive producer, he can do many different things – for an EP works with scripts, writers, and actors. In fact, the job is a lot of reading of scripts and writing. “And lots of meetings.” But the trade-off is that an executive producer can work more regular hours, like 8am-6pm, rather than 4am to midnight.

Still, his favorite part of production is editing. He started out in the business as an editor, although in school, he started out as anthropology major. He didn’t watch even movies until he went to film school. He remarked that he “went to movies for other reasons.” We all laughed at that, since we’ve all gone to movies for those reasons at some time in our lives.

Asked then who inspired him, Lucas replied “The underground films in San Francisco where I’m from.” At school, he really liked at Kurisaki, Kubrick, Fellini, and Ford.

Asked about Joseph Campbell, Lucas admitted that he had read a lot of Joseph Campbell and attended many of his lectures. The best thing about Joseph Campbell, he claimed, is the underground tapes, adding that Campbell’s lectures are much better than his books.

He went on to explain that Bill Moyer is a friend who knew of his interest in Campbell. Moyer suggested they do a series of talks with Joseph Campbell. So every time Joe Campbell would come to town, Lucas would call Bill Moyer who would fly out for a chat. Later, the two of them pieced the talks together into a show.

In his final words, Lucas said that ultimately talent is the measure. He felt he's been successful because he broke the cardinal rule of filmmaking, which is “never put your own money in it.” But he likes making movies more than he likes making money. So he never cared if he lost it. Studios have to make money. His first film was one minute long and he didn’t care because he was making a movie. In the end, he said, he’s the same as a storyteller going from town to town to get a meal – the tap dancer who hopes to get somebody to throw nickels into the hat. With a smile, he reminded us that entertaining is the second oldest profession in the world.

For more of what Lucas discussed at this PaleyFest event, see my article in "Fireside Chats from Hollywood" at TVGuide.com at http://community.tvguide.com/forum.jspa?userID=700039129&type=blog