Name-Drop Blog

Will Charlie Sheen Get Around to Technorati in His PR Bender?

Melissa Lande — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:34:00 GMT

By Alan Appel

In the annals of celebrity PR campaigns, there has never been anything quite as excessive (or deeply annoying) as that being waged by Charlie Sheen, who, during the past week or so, has spoken with . . . well, everyone. So when the phone at this outpost rang a few minutes ago, I imagined the voice at the other end to be unmistakably that of Charlie Sheen. The conversation I fantasized was brief, catching Charlie during another of his frantic days crammed with a typically inexhaustible series of bizarre chats with broadcast, print and web outlets, agreeing to spend a little time with TECHNORATI.

TECHNORATI: “Thanks for these few minutes, Charlie. I know your interview schedule is incredibly tight.”

SHEEN: “That it is, dude. I just got off the phone with Popular Mechanics, and following you, I’ve got Dental Health Today to deal with. So let me get this straight, you write for TECHNORATI, and your name is . . .?”

TECHNORATI: “Alan Appel.”

SHEEN: “Alan? Isn’t the Hebrew name for that, Shlomo?”

TECHNORATI: “I really have no idea, but asking does beg the question about allegations raised by some that calling the Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre by his Hebrew name, Chaim Levine, may be borderline anti-Semitic. How do you respond?”

SHEEN: “That’s of course ridiculous. My problems with Chuck have nothing whatsoever to do with his Hebrew name, only the measly millions per episode he pays me for the TV series. I LOVE all things Jewish, particularly the hot pastrami at Nate and Al’s deli in Beverly Hills, and by the way, dude, I have seen Exodus twice! What does that tell you?”

TECHNORATI: “I’m not really sure, but let’s go back to Two and a Half Men, which for the present has been shut down. You’ve said that you’re prepared to sue CBS for breach of contract and that, in any event, whatever happens with the show, you can always make a good living in movies.”

SHEEN: “Absolutemento! It’s a win-win for me. Possessed as I am of tiger blood, I’m a huge talent for all seasons and for all genres. And I’ll let you in on a little secret--since so much of the original material I see is crap, I’m thinking seriously of buying the rights—and believe me, I have the dough to do it—to some old classics and giving them a fresh coat of paint?”

TECHNORATI: “Like what?”

SHEEN: “Well that would be giving it away, wouldn’t it? But can you just imagine, for example, a remake of The Lion in Winter pitting me against Mel Gibson in 12th-century England?”

TECHNORATI: “But one of the two leads in that film was played by a woman, Katharine Hepburn?”

SHEEN: “WAS played, WAS played! You got to expand your mind, man.”

TECHNORATI: “I’m sorry, Charlie, I’m not quite getting this. Are you saying, you’d be King Henry II, and Mel would be his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine? Or vice versa?

SHEEN: “You’re missing the cosmic picture; it doesn’t matter. Roles in the universe are always dictated by the choices we make. Can you follow me?”

TECHNORATI: “Not even with GPS, but never mind. Can we turn instead to your possible substance-abuse issues?”

SHEEN: “Hello! What issues? That was a drug-free report I showed CNN’s Piers Morgan,”

TECHNORATI: “Yes, but afterward, Morgan said, you invited him to go out ‘and get hammered’. Do you worry that this full-bore media blitz of yours leaves you just too, uh, overexposed?”

SHEEN: “That supposed to be funny? Next, I’m guessing, you’ll want to ask me about porn stars, and all I’ll say on that score is that I am the equal at least of two and a half men, if you get my drift. You know what I hate about these interviews, dude? They invade my privacy. This conversation, therefore, is terminated.”

TECHNORATI: “OK, goodbye and good luck, Charlie.”

SHEEN: “Goodbye, Shlomo.”

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Oscar Night Buzz

Melissa Lande — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:44:00 GMT

by Alan Appel

Few would argue that there was little suspense over who would be the major winners at last night’s 83rd Academy Awards.

Colin Firth and Natalie Portman were considered virtual shoo-ins for Best Actress (Black Swan) and Best Actor (The King’s Speech), and both Melissa Leo (dropping, and having ABC bleep out, an F*** bomb in her remarks, suggesting, who knows, she may have though she was still in character as the film’s potty-mouthed mother) and Christian Bale for their supporting turns in The Fighter, but here’s my question surrounding the Best Picture prize for The King’s Speech: since the producers of the telecast decided to play Firth’s climactic speech as King George VI in the film for several minutes (with the same music), it seemed to me in its entirety, over very brief clips of the nine other Best Picture nominees, was I the only one who got the feeling that someone must have been pretty well damn sure that it would indeed be The King’s Speech that Steven Spielberg would ultimately announce as the winner in the evening’s final category? Hmm.

So much for the stalled band wagon for The Social Network, which, though it picked up a few prizes—including one for Aaron Sorkin’s adapted screenplay—had a disappointing evening. His acceptance speech included a thank-you to his agents “who never blow my cover,” and I’m still trying to figure out what exactly that means. Of the major races, the closest was perceived to be between Social Network’s David Fincher and The King’s Speech Tom Hooper, but once Hooper won the Director Guild of America prize some weeks earlier, the dye was likely cast.

As for the show itself, give its two young hosts, Anne Hathaway and James Franco, props for trying to inject some energy into the proceedings. The Oscars are trying to go young and hip, I get that. But when did sharp, self-deflating comedy become too old school (and, believe me, in an Oscar-night audience, there’s much to deflate)? You know you’re in trouble when the funniest lines are delivered in archival clips of Bob Hope, and in a brief bit of stand-up by Billy Crystal. (Hathaway and Franco opened the show much as Crystal used to do as host, by injecting themselves into a montage of nominated films and that may have been the entertainment high point.)

It was good to see Crystal, and also the wonderful Kirk Douglas, whose endlessly stretching out an introduction of the Supporting Actress winner bothered me not a bit (but did give me pause to wonder how his son Michael, who apparently was not there, was doing in his recovery from throat cancer). But where were all the other Hollywood heavyweights? The evening is ostensibly about movie-making royalty, so it would have been nice to see, for example, Robert DeNiro (who showed up at the Golden Globes to collect the DeMille prize) or Al Pacino or George Clooney or Harrison Ford or Meryl Streep or Barbra Streisand (who sang at the Grammys) or Harrison Ford or Tom Cruise, or even comics like Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Chris Rock, Jon Stewart or Whoopi Goldberg and—dare I say it, Ricky Gervais--who might have goosed up the proceedings as presenters and lent the show some spontaneity.

And, for heaven’s sake, could they not have found a few minutes to present Francis Coppola with the Thalberg Award and Eli Wallach with his honorary Oscar during the broadcast. They are Hollywood royalty, and film packages of their careers would remind us what great film-making is all about. We have time for an In Memoriam segment (sung to by Celine Dion), but no time to celebrate in person a couple of living legends? Explain that to me.

That said, the show was mercilessly brief (clocking in at less than 3 and one-half hours, fairly astonishing for the Oscars) and handsomely mounted. It did have the patina of class, but every party needs a jester, and they were in short supply last night. Evenings such as this, however, are to be savored for any touch of irony, and last night’s was delivered to us by the estimable Oprah Winfrey, who reminded us that part of why we go to we go to the movies is for escape and relief—and then proceeded to present the Best Documentary Oscar to Inside Job, Charles Ferguson’s lacerating study of the 2008 Wall Street meltdown that put millions of Americans in the crapper. Ferguson collected his prize and said, three years after the debacle, “not a single financial executive has gone to jail.”

Unlike we among the unwashed masses, rest assured those guys don’t need relief.

The Screen Actors Guide Awards -- The Buzz

Melissa Lande — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:34:00 GMT

Author: Alan Appel

Come home, Ricky Gervais, all is forgiven.

Honestly now, as movie-awards shows go, and of course we can never have enough of THEM, has there ever been a duller one than the 17th Screen Actors Guild ceremony? Telecast simultaneously on TWO basic-cable outlets, no less. This show didn’t sag, it sank.

Apart from the fact that there was no time wasted on lesser Hollywood craftspeople, you know, minor contributors like, say, writers, directors, cinematographers, editors, costumers and art designers; and apart from the fact that the broadcast had the feel of a union rally—albeit one with a spiffily dressed audience membership, one considerably more well-heeled, you can be sure, than the nearly 100,000 active members of SAG nation-wide who voted; and apart from the fact that there were neither hosts nor any traditional entertainment segments to inject the proceedings with actual fun, I am now formally and unapologetically rethinking my position on having even an incendiary host such as Gervais to ignite any kind of spark to leaden affairs such as this.

There’s not much that can be said of the show-biz value of the 17th SAG Awards telecast, but you can give it this: how many telecasts would give several shout-outs to the Teamsters? Jimmy Hoffa would have been proud.

The awards themselves only confirm what Oscar prognosticators already know—that the winners of the four major individual SAG awards provide an air of inevitability to their collecting the gold at the Feb. 27 Oscars. Those four are lead actors Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) and Natalie Portman (Black Swan); and supporting actors Melissa Leo and Christian Bale ( both for The Fighter). Further, the ensemble award for The King’s Speech, the night after its director Tom Hooper won the DGA Award (The Social Network’s David Fincher had been considered the strong favorite), lends added proof that this superb historical drama (with 12 Oscar nominations), and not The Social Network (with eight), is the consensus front-runner for Best Picture and numerous other Oscars, though Aaron Sorkin still appears to be a lock for adapted screenplay.

As for SAG’s TV awards, Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife) and Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire) were entirely deserving, individual comedy wins by Alec Baldwin(30 Rock) and 89-year-old Betty White (Hot in Cleveland) were minor surprises, and Boardwalk Empire’s ensemble-drama triumph broke the two-year streak of Mad Men. Modern Family won the TV ensemble comedy award (undoubtedly ticking off fans of Glee who probably considered it, along with Jane Lynch, shoo-ins for prizes).

If the SAG telecast did have one highlight, it was the 47th annual Life Achievement Award to 94-year-old Ernest Borgnine, presented to him by Morgan Freeman (who appeared with him in Red) following a somewhat rambling, and definitely unfunny, introduction by his old McHale’s Navy costar Tim Conway. “There are millions of those in the world who would love to be in our shoes,” said Borgnine, who was visibly moved by the honor. “We are a privileged few who have been chosen to work in this field of entertainment.” A 1955 Best Actor Oscar winner for Marty who’s made more than 160 films, Borgnine has been one of our great unsung character actors for more than half a century. The SAG Awards was nothing to cheer about, but the heartfelt, long-overdue standing ovation for Borgnine was something any movie fan could applaud.

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: 2011 Oscar Nominations by Alan Appel

Melissa Lande — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 06:02:00 GMT

Posted by Alan Appel | Edit Post

The first gasp from the over-caffeinated audience at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills came shortly after 5:40 AM (Pacific Time) with the very first announcement in the 2011 Oscar nominations. Javier Bardem, a supporting-actor winner a few years back for No Country for Old Men, received a Best Actor nod for Biutiful. Be honest now, who saw that coming? How many of you, in fact, have even SEEN this art-house film? A surprise like this meant two things: good news for the Bardem entourage, but disappointment for two other nomination-worthy actors who were pushed aside—in this case Ryan Gosling for Blue Valentine and Mark Wahlberg for The Fighter.

The Wahlberg omission is interesting. Let me see if I understand this: The Fighter gets nominations for Best Picture, Director (David O. Russell), Supporting Actor (Christian Bale), Supporting Actress (Amy Adams and Melissa Leo), Film Editing and Original Screenplay, but Wahlberg, giving the performance of his career in this gritty boxing drama, is shunted aside (though he is a producer of the film)?

His wasn’t the only snub. The box-office hit Inception gets a Best Picture nomination, but it is primarily the vision of one of Hollywood’s most boldly imaginative directors, Christopher Nolan, yet he is overlooked. Crazy. And what of The Social Network, which received eight nominations? Jesse Eisenberg did score a Best Actor nomination, but some (including myself) feel two things about this film. 1) It is wildly overrated and 2) The best performance of the film was given by Andrew Garfield, who was considered a shoo-in for a supporting nod—and didn’t get one.

Here’s the good news in the Supporting Actor category: the great Mark Ruffalo did indeed score his first nomination for The Kids Are All Right, though probably hasn’t a shot in hell of winning. Bale and Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech) are the favorites. Another highly touted contender was Mila Kunis for Black Swan in the Supporting Actress category. She didn’t get a nomination, and that now calls into question whether her costar in the film, Natalie Portman, is really such a lock-solid sure thing for winning the Best Actress prize. Momentum does seem to be building for two of her rivals, Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right) and Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine). The good news in the Supporting Actress grouping is that young Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) received a nomination; the bad news is that Julianne Moore (The Kids Are All Right) didn’t.

Steinfeld’s nomination was one of 10 for True Grit, proving once again that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which shut it out completely at the Golden Globes, is something of a joke. Jeff Bridges, who won last year for Crazy Heart, is nominated again for the Rooster Cogburn role that won John Wayne the Best Actor Oscar in 1969, and also well deserved are the directing and writing nominations for Joel and Ethan Coen. James Franco, a co-host of the Oscar ceremony this year with Anne Hathaway) also received a Best Actor nomination, for 127 Hours.
The nominations champ, however, and what I’ve long contended is the film of the year, is The King’s Speech, with 12 nods. Nothing is ever certain in these Oscar derbies, but if Colin Firth doesn’t win Best Actor on Feb. 27, there will be even louder gasps (and, I would suggest, calls for a vote recount). Director Tom Hooper probably hasn’t much of a chance against The Social Network’s David Fincher, but The King’s Speech, now with a dozen nominations in the bank, has a legitimate shot at Best Picture.

Finally, might this at long last be the year when an animated film—in this case, Toy Story 3--wins Best Picture? Probably not, and not so long as the Academy continues to have an animated film competing against itself. Can someone please explain to me the point of having an Animated Feature Film Oscar (where Toy Story 3 is competing against How to Train Your Dragon and The Illusionist), with the same film showing up in two best-picture categories?

COMMENT MELISSA LANDE: Big Media Day in the USA- First Oscars. Then State of the Union. Are we not the greatest nation? It's not just how you play it's if you win. Just keep trying, guys. We're all on the same team. Aren't we? I'm having some personal issues about awards though. And Robert De Niro burst a few bubbles in his quite frank speech at the Golden Globes. All that glitters is not gold. How does this relate to media relations? It's about awards, awards, awards. Let the work begin. Personal congratluations to the enterntainment busoness who did a lot of meaningful material this year.

Golden Globes Debacle Profiled on Blogspot (Name Dropping) & Technorati

Melissa Lande — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 20:20:00 GMT

Alan Appel writes OSCAR AND EMMY WATCH: MUSINGS & MISGIVINGS for Technorati; his own blog (http://namedropblog.blogspot.com/) and he referred to the absolute mean spiritedness of the TV awards show, which is getting buzz everywhere.

His column:

Well, we know this much at least—if last night’s Golden Globes telecast was a train wreck, Ricky Gervais was the engineer.

There’s bawdy and then there’s bad. Not that overlong, self-inflated telecasts like the Golden Globe Awards can’t occasionally use a dash or two of bad taste, nastiness and even outright offensiveness (as opposed to the sometimes blinding garishness of, say, the Oscar ceremonies). But, c’mon now, stale, almost uniformly unfunny, way-past-their-expiration-date and at times cringingly unkind jokes about Charlie Sheen, “gay Scientologists,” the “airbrushed” cast of Sex and the City (“girls, we know how old you are. I saw one of you in an episode of Bonanza), Hugh Hefner as “the walking dead,” and even Robert Downey Jr.’s past legal and drug troubles are supposed to pass for entertainment? “Hugely mean-spirited” is how Downey described the proceedings at one point, and he had a point.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association deserves what it gets, and if Gervais wants to kid about corruption and bribes being the only explanation for the nominations for The Tourist, who’s to say he’s wrong. That’s called an easy target, and Gervais clearly had no intention of playing it safe, which is entirely fine. Shows like this need unscripted, on-the-edge spontaneity and unpredictability. The problem wasn’t the talented Gervais; it was his tone-deaf material. And why exactly he seemed to disappear for about an hour midway during the show (prompting Twitter jibes that he may have been either a) drunk or b) fired mid-broadcast) is a question that no one seems able to answer. “I want to do either such a bad job I’m not invited back,” Gervais earlier told the Chicago Sun-Times, “or such a good job that I don’t want to do it again.” Choose choice one.

If Gervais’s stand-up left much to be desired, what then to make of Robert De Niro’s odd speech accepting (from Matt Damon; what, Martin Scorcese couldn’t fly in from London for the event?) the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement. Apparently channeling his inner Rupert Pupkin from The King of Comedy, De Niro, struggling with the cue cards, had his own ideas about being funny. “I’m sorry more members of the foreign press aren’t with us tonight, but many were deported right before the show along with most of the waiters. And Javier Bardem.” Leave it to the Golden Globes—suddenly Robert De Niro is Jim Carrey.

As to the other awards, there were hardly any major surprises, though the prizes for Al Pacino (You Don’t Know Jack) and Claire Danes (Temple Grandin) for best performances in a TV movie or miniseries were almost afterthoughts inasmuch as both won Emmys for their roles six months ago. What the Golden Globe movie winners foreshadow in terms of Oscar-nomination projections seem clear: The Social Network is the Best Picture to beat (along with its director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin); Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) and Natalie Portman (Black Swan) are heavy favorites in the lead actor categories; and The Fighter, gaining momentum by the week, has a strong pair of supporting-actor contenders in Melissa Leo and Christian Bale. Best Oscar dark horse: The Kids Are All Right and Annette Bening, both Golden Globe winners.

Finally, if the telecast had a single grace note and emotional high point, it was the appearance of Michael Douglas to announce the final award. “There’s just got be an easier way to get a standing ovation,” said Douglas, and for once, the applause and cheers from the audience seemed heartfelt and genuine.

PR/Image & Branding Commentary from Melissa Lande, Lande Communications aka LeaderHuntress: With all of the good vibes, consciousness raising and charity works the entertainment business bequeaths to this country and others, Ricky Gervais was far off the mark in styling communications. FAR. If he did his homework (or lost his ego for a nano-second) he would know he was among some of Hollywood's biggest humantiarians last night. And he blew it. Not just embarrassing himself AND the industry. But casting a pall in these political days of fight-fight-- when many Americans, especially those in Hollywood with money and high profiles, are trying to move closer to an age of uniting, helping, compassion and tolerance. How rude to refer to Robert Downey Jr. in such a condescending fashion. How absolutely counter productive when the numbers of alcoholics and drug addicts fight a lifelong battle. I can only guess that high porfile personalities like Spielberg, Hanks (he told us publicly what he thought), Damon, Pitt and hundreds of others were appalled. This is BAD IMAGE PR for both the Golden Globes, TV, and one lousy comic. Let's get back to a civilized era, yes?

It's understandable - as high profile personalities have let go of some of the standard PR restrictions from days of yore (or ten years ago) -- Bad manners is still not in. Public relations means relating to the public and Gervais did not even relate to the room he was in.

Read more: http://technorati.com/blogging/article/oscar-and-emmy-watch-musings-misgivings1/#ixzz1BK8RefZ9

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Make 'Em Laugh?

Melissa Lande — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 22:40:00 GMT

It’s a time for holiday cheer, so I figured I would get in the mood by canoodling around the house humming two of the Golden Globe-nominated songs from that magnum opus Burlesque, “Bound to You” and “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me,” until I remembered, who the hell has ever HEARD of these songs much less knows how to sing them?

No, let’s try another tack—all the laugh-out-loud comedies of 2010 that have given us such a rollicking time and provided much needed belly laughs, Maybe if I recall the good times we all had at the screen hilarity that lightened our heavy loads, that would definitely put me in a more convivial frame of mind. Until, I thought, has there really BEEN a single comedy this past year that has been any good? Not really, even when a Hollywood heavyweight like James L. Brooks—the guy, after all, who gave us Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets-- produces such a tepid Reese Witherspoon -Paul Rudd-Owen Wilson-Jack Nicholson vehicle like How Do You Know, we know it’s been a tough year.

Funny, but James L. Brooks will likely get another pass, but when an enduring master like Woody Allen produces genuinely funny, if inconsequential, films like, say, Hollywood Endings or Whatever Works, he’s harpooned again for producing “just” another mainstream comedy, and not another masterpiece like Annie Hall, Manhattan or Hannah and Her Sisters. The double standard is alive and well in Hollywood and simply making audiences laugh is apparently no longer enough.

But it was certainly enough for two wonderful comic artists who recently died—actor Leslie Nielsen and writer-director Blake Edwards . Nielsen, a sturdy, nondescript movies and television leading man of the 1950s and ‘60s, reinvented himself as a brilliant, deadpan farceur with 1980s’s Airplane! a relentless exercise in sight gags, puns, non sequiturs and manifest foolishness. As many of us do, Allen was among those who copped to having a soft spot for Airplane! And Nielsen surely--whether or not you call him “Shirley”—helped showcase this new genre spoofing disaster, cop and other films.

And Edwards (a recipient of an honorary Oscar in 2004), who helped make his name with such classics as Breakfast at Tiffanys, Days of Wine and Roses, 10 and Victor/Victoria, left behind perhaps a more indelible—or at least funnier—mark as the creative force behind the Peter Sellers Pink Panther films.

One of the better Mel Brooks comedies, 1981’s History of the World: Part I, has a delicious vignette on the French Revolution, complete with memorable lines (“don’t get saucy with me, Bearnaise!” and, of course, “it’s good to be the King”). You’ve got to hand it to those down trodden late-18th-century French; they knew how to settle a score with the aristocracy. Now, during these profoundly hard economic times, when avaricious corporate/financial interests and dunderhead politicians are turning millions of hurting middle-class families into the new peasant class, I suppose we should be grateful that no one today is storming the Capitol.

But I do wonder: do they still have guillotines?

Oscar & Emmy Musings: Golden Globe Nominations on the Radar

Melissa Lande — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 23:13:00 GMT

By Alan Appel

Post-mortems on this week's announcement of the Golden Globe nominations for movies and television were predictably less about the heavy favorites that predictably got much of the love (The King's Speech, the nominee leader with 7, followed by The Social Network and The Fighter with 6 each), then several critical darlings that got royally screwed. Foremost among them are the Coen Brothers’ expansive remake of True Grit, which was shut out; and Ben Affleck’s gritty bank-robbery drama The Town, which scored but a single nomination (Jeremy Renner’s supporting turn).

And then, of course, came the howlers—out-of-left-field nominations for performances and films that seem to make no sense whatsoever, until you remember that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, an assemblage of less than 100 entertainment journalists and freelancers, is not taken all that seriously. And it never will be when it produces multiple nominations for the likes of pedestrian works such as The Tourist and Burlesque. As predictors for eventual Oscar nominees and winners, the Golden Globes has a mixed record—its Best Picture last year, for example, was Avatar, while the Oscars chose The Hurt Locker), but what Globes recognition does yield is enormous promotional value for print and broadcast Oscar campaigns. As for the television selections—for shame HFPA for overlooking Blue Bloods—in terms of influencing the Emmys, less so.

If there is one odds-on, overwhelming Oscar favorite this year, it is Colin Firth as Best Actor for The King’s Speech. It is a stunning, richly textured and emotionally charged performance (as England’s future King George VI, suffering from a severe stammering problem) in a handsomely mounted, crowd-pleasing film that doesn’t leave many dry eyes in the house. No less effective is Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, the unorthodox Australian therapist who helps the monarch.

Rush (a previous Best Actor winner for Shine!) will almost certainly get a Supporting Actor nomination, and that will beg the question for many as to why exactly Rush, who shares above-the-title screen credit with Firth and seems to have as much screen time as him, shouldn’t be nominated in a lead rather than supporting category. But then we know the answer, don’t we? The producers won’t want to split the vote.

And that, in turn, may likely hurt the nomination chances of a true supporting male performance in The King’s Speech that has not gotten nearly enough attention. Guy Pearce, an always interesting and occasionally eccentric actor with those wonderful John Malkovich-like dramatic tics, gives one of his most complex and understated performances as King Edward VIII, whose affair with Baltimore divorcee Wallis Simpson scandalizes the royal family and leads him ultimately to abdicate the throne for “The woman I love.”

When you get right down to it, actual performance time in a film hardly seems to matter one way or another. Several supporting Oscar winners triumphed despite being on screen in their films less than 10 minutes (Anthony Quinn in Lust for Life, Beatrice Straight in Network and Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love), so if Rush doesn’t mind having his meaty role—one that could well carry its own film, say, The King’s Speech Therapist—relegated to a supporting category, it probably makes strategic sense. Because there’s no way he—or anyone else—is beating Firth.

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Hit and Myth

Melissa Lande — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 03:49:00 GMT

In today’s lesson, biding our time while the year-end movie-critic awards begin to roll in — expect ample recognition for The Social Network and not enough for The Town -- we’ll try and dispel some myths about myths surrounding the Emmys and the Oscars.

First we’ll concentrate on the Emmys, some of whose officials, during my years at TV Guide Magazine, were relentlessly pushing the idea that their prizes reflected what industry professionals and audience members already knew, that today’s television fare — in its sheer diversity (a fractionalized programming universe with hundreds of channels will do that), graphic treatment of even the rawest subject matter (thanks to premium cable, anything goes, and who says that’s such a good thing) and pure entertainment value — constitutes the medium’s real golden age. “What is it with this nostalgic haze,” a CBS executive asked me at one Emmy ceremony in the ‘90s, “lamenting the shows of the ‘50s and ‘60s as if they were truly superior to today’s programs?” The so-called 1950s-‘60s golden age of television, went the argument, is a myth.

But I wonder if that itself is a myth, and whenever I took up the golden-age-then-or-now question (a generational one, I grant you, relevant only to viewers of a certain age) with a veteran actor whose work spanned many decades, as I once did with Jackie Gleason and Jack Klugman , the conversation generally pivoted on two words: live television. There were giants indeed among the writers and directors working in live TV during the ‘50s — Chayefsky, Mosel, Foote, Serling, Mandel, Rose, Cook, Mann, Hill, Frankenheimer, Lumet, Pollack, Schaffner and Nelson among them. “There will never be another time like that,” said a wistful Klugman at a press tour event in Los Angeles. Like many of his contemporaries such as Jack Lemmon and Charlton Heston, Klugman got his start and honed his craft doing countless live TV anthologies, including Playhouse 90, in the ‘50s. Live television was America’s national theater.

So where are the new, trend-setting writers and directors who might energize the medium today? There are a handful of true innovators (J.J. Abrams and Matthew Weiner among them), but so many more toil invisibly in a steady churn of dramas and comedies that come, go and register with few.

That is, if they can find a scripted show, at least on network television. Scripted shows once dominated the medium and there was also a time in the ‘70s and ‘80s when the long-form miniseries and a full slate of made-for-TV movies flourished and gave next-generation artists like Steven Spielberg a chance to grow. Now TV thrives as a niche-driven, specialized-content-for-every-conceivable-taste landscape populated with an ungodly number of reality series (filling one-quarter of network line ups according to one estimate), a few of them — such as the reigning Emmy reality winner Top Chef, Amazing Race (which won the prize the preceding seven years in a row) American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and Project Runway -- earning loyal followings.

Once viewers watched TV stars and now they want to be them. Reality shows are hardly new (Candid Camera, Divorce Court, Queen for a Day and You Asked For It were early favorites); the problem today is their unchecked proliferation — seriously, how many of us ever thought that any reality show could call itself The Biggest Loser? And be a hit. Now we have Skating with the Stars. What next -- Sleeping with the Stars? After The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, how about something with a Yiddish flavor, The Balabusta. Network honchos say they want to celebrate the diverse passions of real, everyday people, young and old; their pluck, perseverance, resilience, ambitions and talents. Of course, what they actually celebrate is the bottom line — cheap programming. Viewers are the biggest loser.

Scripted dramas and sitcoms may be doing a slow vanishing act, but here’s the good news: we still have Turner Classic Movies (the best damned channel in the universe) and lots and lots of sports. And recent times have given us the likes of The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Nurse Jackie, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Cable, premium and basis, has become what network television once was. Only now we’re paying for it.

If network television, following the era of live television, was “a vast wasteland,” then what is it now? Not more dynamic or original, for sure, not in these crushing, impossible-to-fill 24/7 programming days. But maybe the long-ago “golden age” of fewer channels and more iconic talent has just burnished our memories. Holding a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Gleason, in Manhattan in the early ‘80s to promote a TV movie with Art Carney titled “Izzy & Moe,” laughed that familiar raspy laugh at the notion that he, The Honeymooners or any other beloved show or performer in television’s formative years were part of a golden age. “The truth, pal,” he said, is that “they were part of OUR, not a, golden age.”

Comment from Melissa Lande: I have a feeling that Jackie G. was right-- it was a Golden Age for someone else; this is a Golden Age for beancounters at the networks and a different kind of publicity seeker who wants to play center stage. I've already commented endlessly on the PR value of reality shows in proportion to their humiliation value; many people will do anything (eat a worm; have a relationship in the dark only to be rejected when the lights go on; it's used to be just a simple pie in the face) to have their 15 minutes of media fame and people love to watch a horror (Diane Arbus got this as did many novelists.)

We're lucky that the great shows that Alan has mentioned above are so superior to so much that has been done in the past- and it's interesting to see how TV was a venue for very powerful writers, directors, etc (Spielberg? Serling? Hitchcock? )Do you think of TV as a powerful venue for the greatest artists today?

Today it was announced that BFF is used in the newest version of the Oxford Dictionary. BFF is now a word. Soon it will be a reality show. Refudiate is a word. It's a word that Sarah Palin made up. Soon it will be a reality show or a politician. Can you make up a word for the dictionary? I'm not as concerned about TV's niche audiences as with their mass audience that likes words that aren't words or doesn't even know that they are not words. Shame on Oxford. The Golden Age of words is, indeed, over.

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Rookie Hosts for PR Value

Melissa Lande — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 02:12:00 GMT

by Alan Appel

“I see a lot of new faces, especially on the old faces”—host Johnny Carson scanning the audience at the Oscars

So now that they’re named two new faces to host the 83nd Academy Awards telecast—Anne Hathaway and James Franco —the pairing has been announced as one that, say the producers, “personifies the next generation of Hollywood icons.” Their selection is clearly designed to serve and attract a younger viewing audience, and that’s all well and good, but can we please not liken these talented and pleasant young actors to icons. Icons are always stars, but not all stars are—or ever will be--icons. It’s about indelible personality as much as artistry, awards or longevity.

True icons, the for-all-time legendary faces that would be carved on Hollywood’s Rushmore, are—from the sound era--the likes of Grant and Gable and Davis and Garbo and Stanwyck and Crawford and Fonda (the elder) and Cooper and Garland and Rooney and Stewart and Astaire and Bogart and Cagney and Welles and both Hepburns and Peck and Wayne and Douglas (the elder) and Lancaster and Tracy and Monroe and Holden and Brando and Taylor and Dean and Newman and Redford and O’Toole and Eastwood and Streep and Pacino and Poitier and Streisand and Nicholson and De Niro and Freeman.

And then there’s the class of cross-generation possible-icons-in-waiting (depending on your own particular grading curve), which might include a select few from among Roberts and Hanks and Keaton and Beatty and Duvall and Bridges and De Caprio and Damon and Washington and Clooney and Cruise and Pitt and Depp. Our young hosts are a long way from either group, but it does invite the question as to whether the right host, any host, solo or in partnership, can elevate the Oscar from a tedious, self-congratulatory affair with way too much industry business to conduct (and awkward acceptance speeches to endure) into a bona fide entertainment showcase that does the movie business proud.

I have my doubts, but every circus does need an affable ringmaster and even if you can’t get the likes of a modern-day Will Rogers (the host in 1934), we would benefit from one with a comedic bent who can deliver a sharp monologue and has the ability to toss out an ad-lib or two—18-time host Bob Hope (“How about the pictures this year? Sex, persecution, adultery, cannibalism—we’ll get those kids away from TV sets yet”) and eight-time MC Billy Crystal (“a billion people are watching tonight, except for Linda Tripp—who’s taping it”) having set the standard.

If we fess up to the fact that the primary reason we once liked watching the Oscar telecast—to see old-style Hollywood glamor and real icons (such as those listed above) is now as relevant as black and white movies, then we can admit to ourselves that the present-day ceremonies, say beginning with those in the 1980s, are basically about six things: 1. The office Oscar pool. 2. The red-carpet pre-show in which nominees would have us believe (we don’t) that “it’s honor enough just to be nominated.” 3. The gowns. 4. The hair styles. 5. Wondering who's had plastic surgery. 6. The shots of the major-category nominees in the audience, their faces impassive and seemingly frozen, and our wondering whether any of them might visibly express what they really feel—abject mortification?--when their names are not announced as a winner.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were a tandem with good chemistry last year (Martin: “There’s that damn Helen Mirren.” Baldwin: “That’s Dame Helen Mirren”), but you can’t fault the producers for going young this time. So let’s give the kids a chance—maybe Hathaway and Franco, with good material and stage presence, are the freshness the show needs, plus if both score Oscar nominations—Franco is the better bet for a Best Actor nod for 127 Hours and Hathaway less of a sure thing for Love and Other Drugs--well, it would give the show a little more juice. And even if they don’t work out, remember, even disappointing one-time hosts can leave us with something memorable. In David Letterman’s case, in 1995, four words that live in Oscar infamy: “Oprah, Uma. Uma, Oprah.”

Comment from Melissa Lande: Since celebrities are the ones we like to watch, what becomes of the pundits, or is no one "good enough"? Everyone is so critical of the messenger-- the glue in between the ceremony, so that now the producers think the draw will come from young stars themselves. And will this really play to a younger TV audience? Like the MTV awards?

OSCAR AND EMMY WATCH: MUSINGS & MISGIVINGS—PR Snub Hub

Melissa Lande — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 01:11:00 GMT

By Alan Appel

“What art? What science?”—D.W. Griffith

In the annals of prizedom, there have been, of course, momentous screw-ups. After all, the Oscars and Emmys wouldn’t be much fun without them. I’m not talking your traditionally nutty, are they-KIDDING? brand of head-scratchers—say the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ unfortunate and occasional habit of bestowing Best Director statuettes on favored actors in their membership, two particularly egregious examples being Robert Redford’s 1980 win for Ordinary People (beating out Martin Scorsese or Raging Bull) and Kevin Costner’s a decade later for Dances with Wolves (burning Scorsese again, this time for GoodFellas)—but rather those of the apocalyptically mindless variety that forever stains the Oscars’ credibility, rooted perhaps in a bias against East Coast filmmakers and so-called “popcorn entertainments,” or, as was the case for example in the 1980s, in a bias FOR politically correct epics.

Looking back, it’s hard to discern exactly how voters justified the director’s 1982 win for Richard Attenborough (another actor) for the fairly unwatchable Gandhi over Steven Spielberg —who had previously been denied winning for Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Raiders of the Lost Ark—for the much loved (by critics and audiences alike) E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Spielberg would, in 1985, become the focal point of Oscars’ most celebrated snub ever when The Color Purple received 11 nominations and he, its director, was shut out. OMISSION IMPOSSIBLE ran one headline, and the Academy, in a clear demonstration of brazen envy from those in its ranks, seemed to again be punishing him for possessing, at so young an age, prodigious talent and from having honed it in--horrors!--television. The Color Purple did not receive a single win.

Being a wunderkind in Hollywood, therefore, isn’t necessarily wonderful; it can inspire craven pettiness (see also: Orson Welles). In 1986, the Academy gave Spielberg the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award (which is a producer's award, the Academy thinking perhaps that, well, an award is an award is an award). His competitive Oscars as director would come in the 1990s, when Spielberg was segueing from Young Turk into Old Guard, for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

Back to Scorsese. The classics for which HE should have won Best Director come to mind because both starred his favorite actor, Robert De Niro, who, as it happens, will at long last be receiving the Cecil B. De Mille Award for lifetime contributions at the 68th Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Jan. 16 (Scorsese was so honored at last year’s ceremony). Presumably the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will get around to Woody Allen--if he'd bother to actually show up and accept the award--or Michael Caine or Meryl Streep before they're 90, and what's with the fact that only one minority, Sidney Poitier in 1982, has gotten the DeMille; Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones are long overdue. For De Niro, I suppose, it's better late than never and at this stage of his distinguished career, he does seem today to be coasting in a series of harmless “Focker” and “Analyze” comedies (with sequels), threatening to become the next Fred MacMurray (himself a great star with a long, ever-evolving career who, you should know, never received a single competitive nomination. But then again, neither did Edward G. Robinson. Nor Donald Sutherland. Nor Spike Lee (at least, not as director). Nor Mia Farrow. Nor Jerry Lewis. (The Emmys has its own share of shameful oversights—like the Great One himself, Jackie Gleason, being a non-winner—and we’ll get around to them in a later column.)

The various newspaper critics awards will start rolling in soon, and the Golden Globe nominations will be announced on Tuesday, Dec. 14. Sometimes they’re a good predictor of Oscars, sometimes not. But for sure, it’s then that Oscar campaigning seriously begins and we draw closer to wondering about the next great snubs.

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Early Award Favorites

Melissa Lande — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 16:08:00 GMT

By Alan Appel

Television ratings were once HUGE, but audience interest for Oscar broadcasts in recent years does seem to be plummeting faster than Harrison Ford’s career. Maybe if more sophisticated, crowd-pleasing films were nominated, and maybe if the Academy could settle on a quick-witted, continuing-year-to-year host (come home, Billy Crystal) , and maybe if telecasts didn’t have painfully long running times to accommodate lame performance segments and lamer acceptance speeches for even the minor awards, there would be hope. I’m not holding my breath that this year’s 83rd ceremony, slated for Feb. 27 at the Kodak Theater, will be an appreciably livelier or better-paced affair.

On another gloomy front, there’s yet another film adaptation of The Great Gatsby in the works, this one to star Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan and directed by Baz Luhrmann. Listen up, old sports: some Great American Novels simply defy adaptation; five previous versions didn’t work, and if Francis Ford Coppola’s script couldn’t save the Robert Redford-Mia Farrow Gatsby from 1974, then just give it up. Another remake in production, however, does have intriguing possibilities—Colin Firth in a big-screen version of John LeCarre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which got a spectacular six-part adaptation back in 1979 on PBS’s Great Performances franchise.

When this year’s nominations are announced on Jan. 25, it may certify that this may, in fact, be Firth’s year; he’s pretty much a sure thing to nail a Best Actor nomination (and be the odds-on favorite to win) as England’s George VI for The King’s Speech, a “payback award” for the Oscar he might have won last year for A Single Man if his competition didn’t happen to be Jeff Bridges, a long-overdue winner (after four previous nominations) for Crazy Heart—and, look out, Colin, the same potential rival being talked up again for the Coen Brothers’ remake of True Grit. The “reverse payback” victim for The King’s Speech could be Firth’s costar Geoffrey Rush, playing the speech therapist helping the monarch deal with a debilitating stuttering problem. Rush will likely get a Supporting Actor nod, but voters who remember him winning the Best Actor prize back in 1997 for Shine (and somehow beating Ralph Fiennes for The English Patient) might be inclined to say, not this time. If you want another solid “payback” Supporting Actor bet, take Jeremy Renner —great in The Hurt Locker last year but another loser to Bridges—for The Town.

Finally, back to DiCaprio and what to forecast for Inception? Both a critical and box-office success, it will surely nail one of the 10 Best Picture nominations, and probably recognition for DiCaprio and director Christopher Nolan. But do many in the Academy actually understand the film? Some more early questions—will The Social Network overwhelm all in its path (let’s hope not); will Annette Bening and Julianne Moore —two more “payback”-worthy candidates--split the Best Actress vote for The Kids Are All Right and allow another (we’re thinking of you, Natalie Portman, for Black Swan) to grab the prize?; and, as long as small, art-house indies seem to be all the rage, will someone, please, invest a marketing buck or two for Andy Garcia’s City Island?

Next week; history was made last year when Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director. Now, will animation at long last break through and get the big prize, for Toy Story 3?

Reverse Payback Phenomena of The Best Picture Oscar Win

Melissa Lande — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:21:00 GMT

By Alan Appel

Sometimes, more isn’t actually less; it’s effectively more . . . and better. That came to mind as I watched HBO’s telecast of Avatar. James Cameron’s boldly imaginative and technically eye-popping fusion of sci-fi adventure and ecological fable set on the planet Pandora is—even in a televised non-3D format—an epic for the ages.

Yes, it won three second-tier Oscars (for art direction, cinematography and visual effects) and has become the highest grossing movie of all time (presently at $760 million, and that’s only domestic, and counting), but it was not last year’s Best Picture. Nor was Cameron the Best Director. Those honors went to The Hurt Locker and its gifted director Kathryn Bigelow (Cameron’s ex-wife). That movie is the lowest grossing Best Picture of all time.

Which demonstrates, once again, that audience approval, even on a globally grand scale, sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t in forecasting the Oscar for Best Picture. Or maybe the Academy just doesn’t get sci-fi films. I mean, we all love Annie Hall, but beating out Star Wars in 1977?

What the critical consensus is for the Most Important Picture can be a better barometer. Here, story and cast do count, but a weighty message—and the artfully visceral way it’s delivered—can seal the deal. And make no mistake, The Hurt Locker, an almost unbearably intense chronicle of a U.S. Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal Team in Iraq—how they defuse devices, why they do it and, if they survive, how it leaves them—is an important piece of work. More meaningful, for sure, but in what impressively ambitious technical or narrative sense was it more Oscar-worthy than Avatar?

And that’s the odd, totally unpredictable (and irritating) thing about the Oscars and what exactly “Best” means. Cameron gets jobbed last year, yet won the big prize more than a decade ago for Titanic, a soggy romance with a pair of dream boats in the leads. Call it “reverse payback.”

That is, belatedly rewarding the veteran, even legendary, actor (or director or writer) for a lesser film to make up for past oversights (how else to explain John Wayne for True Grit or Paul Newman in The Color of Money or, yes, even Sandra Bullock last year for The Blind Side), is one thing (and makes only sentimental sense), but the Academy, getting all guilty conscience on us, is occasionally wont to stiff an artist for superior work if that person somehow previously copped an underserved prize. Maybe that explains Cameron’s loss last year and, never mind how he must have felt--it screwed up our Oscar pools.

So what’s the Best Picture outlook for 2011, sprawl vs. small? Expensively mounted (and mega-hyped) studio entertainments vs. provocatively themed smaller, independent films? Next week we’ll size up the early field of favorites—including one much-touted drama that pairs prime candidates for “payback” and “reverse payback” Oscars.

Read more: http://technorati.com/entertainment/film/article/oscar-emmy-watch-musings-misgivings-reverse/page-2/#ixzz15MeyZJAT

Comment from Melissa Lande: This brings up the PR Factor of "What is Best?" and "Winning Prizes." Rating a social media campaign or PR campaign created by an in-house or agency, is one way to measure how effective you are doing professionally. ROI is another way. The prizes mean that a qualified jury of professionals has rated the work. With social media and the ability to vote each day phenomena, do the prizes mean as much? We will explore thison Leader Blog.....

Pre- PR/Marketing Oscar & Emmy Watch: TV Time Slots Still Matter

Melissa Lande — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 22:16:00 GMT

By Alan Appel

There have been a handful of long-ago significant exceptions along the way (Dallas, The Rockford Files, Miami Vice and The Brady Bunch among them), but generally speaking, Friday night, in terms of viewer numbers, is a graveyard for TV shows. Yes, it is marginally better broadcasting real estate than Saturday night but that’s not saying much. So what’s a network to do when it suddenly strikes ratings (and critical) gold with a Friday show—as, for example, CBS did in the fall of 1990 with a little number titled CSI , which became the first TV crime series ever to be No. 1 in the Nielsen charts (and explains why it continues to spin off a seemingly unending parade of other CSI hours)?

As in the case of the original CSI, it quickly expanded its audience by moving it to another night, and while the official network line at present is that there are no plans to shift the Tom Selleck drama Blue Bloods, don’t bet against it. The series is just too artfully written, performed, directed and photographed (in New York), and it along with Selleck—whose one and only Emmy came more than 25 years ago for Magnum P.I. —will not likely be forgotten when it comes to end-of-season nominations.

The show handlers (and writers) Mitchell Burgess and Robin Green —yet two more veterans of The Sopranos who have gone on to a follow-up success—like to describe the multi-generational Blue Bloods as an ensemble family series melded with a police procedural, and there’s something to that. But the greater truth is that Selleck—as widowed Police Commissioner Frank Reagan, whose sons (played by Donnie Wahlberg and Will Estes are also cops, daughter (Bridget Moynahan) is a prosecuting attorney and own father (Len Cariou) is a former police official—is its wise if somewhat rigid center, investing a commanding multi-layered character with a raw emotional depth that seems to lift the series around him.

Like few other male TV legends (only James Garner comes to mind), Selleck’s easy charm, a mix of humor and vulnerability, has largely defined his three-decade-plus durability as a star. He never really got his due on the big screen (check out, in particular, a terrific performance in Quigley Down Under and wonderful comedic turns in 3 Men and a Baby and In & Out), but charisma together with fan loyalty goes a long way and now, in Blue Bloods, we’re reminded once again of just how accomplished an actor he is.

Go to: http://technorati.com/entertainment/tv/article/oscar-emmy-watch-musings-misgivings-blue/

Mad Men's Emmy Drama by Alan Appel

Melissa Lande — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 21:42:00 GMT

Will Mad Men win the Best Drama Emmy for the fourth consecutive year?

Probably, though its season finale two Sundays ago was a real head scratcher, what with Don Draper somehow deciding that ravenous secretary Megan was worth marrying based on the romantic epiphany that, hey, any woman who could remain composed and calm in the face of his kid spilling a strawberry
shake was someone to spend the rest of his life with.

In my book, that’s worth giving an engagement ring (even if it once belonged to another woman, the wife that Don adored of a man whose identity he took! You Mad Men neophytes have a lot of catching up to do.) Plus, where exactly has partner Bert Cooper gone? Will jilted Dr. Faye tell her mob-connected father?

And what ever did become of Sal? Still, why quibble—Mad Men, in all its opaque brilliance, is rightly in the pantheon of Great Shows We Love and will return
next season.

Not so the AMC series Rubicon that preceded it on Sunday nights, and whose renewal is up in the air. Here is the perfect candidate for the Woody Allen-coined (in his film Manhattan) Academy of the Overrated. Really, has there ever been a more highly praised (though, let’s be honest, cheap-looking) conspiracy thriller with more loose ends, false leads and red herrings?

Ordinarily, any series in this genre that plants clues in a DVD copy of Meet Me in St. Louis would have my attention, but Rubicon goes down so many blind alleys with so many bland, button-down types constantly shuffling papers (or folders) that nothing dramatic ever seems to happen. There was one intriguing mystery, however: why the show’s best character actor, the wonderful Harris Yulin, was killed off in the first episode and given virtually nothing to do?

No, come Emmy-nomination time, there will be two new faces in the Best Drama field, and Rubicon, despite the hype, if there’s any justice, won’t be one of them. One of the newcomers is a chalk pick, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire (more about it in a later column) and the other demonstrates that while even a great star (like Jimmy Smits in Outlaw) cannot save a deeply flawed series), sometimes an icon (Tom Selleck in Blue Bloods) can elevate a solid ensemble cop drama into a bona fide keeper. Now let's see if CBS is smart enough to move it from its graveyard Friday-night slot.

Note from Melissa Lande: It's important that those in media keep up with how time slots are being used.

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: Boardwalk Empire

Melissa Lande — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 00:32:00 GMT

By Alan Appel

Has there been a better character actor than Steve Buscemi over the past two decades? Not really. A wiry and weirdly endearing presence in a spate of Independent films, and a favorite of filmmakers including Quentin Tarantino (beginning with Reservoir Dogs) and the Coen Brothers —he was the bungling kidnapper deposited head first into the wood chipper near the end of Fargo.

Buscemi is a uniquely riveting and idiosyncratic performer, making an art of portraying characters who seem somewhat menacing, if forlorn, wild-eyed eccentrics. I love the range he has and his dramatic sense, and also his sense of humor, Martin Scorsese (who directed him in the first episode of HBO’s sensational Prohibition-era drama Boardwalk Empire) told a gathering of TV critics this past summer. There’s something that’s very, very strong on camera. . with Steve as a character, whatever he plays.

Buscemi has been Emmy-nominated before. He was Tony Soprano’s doomed trying-to-go-straight cousin in The Sopranos , and he directed several episodes in that series, including the much-acclaimed season-3 Pine Barrens. Considerable Sopranos writing and directing talent is involved with Boardwalk Empire, and halfway through its 12-episode first year (a second season is on order), it seems almost a foregone conclusion that the next round of Emmy nominations will present the lion’s share of nominations in all major categories, including Best Drama, to (again) Mad Men (created by another Sopranos alum, Matthew Weiner) and Boardwalk Empire.

Veteran character actors can sometimes make the sudden leap to top-line star. Certainly James Gandolfini did just that in The Sopranos, and on the big screen, Anthony Quinn and Walter Matthau are among a handful who used an Oscar win to instantly propel them to marquee attractions. In Quinn’s case, a revitalized career followed supporting Oscars for Viva Zapata! and Lust for Life; for Matthau, it came after a supporting Oscar for The Fortune Cookie. By the same token, some of our best character actors remained forever just that—wonderfully invaluable, below-the-title performers essential to their films. But unable to carry them.

So the question is, does Buscemi—a good bet to score a Best Actor Emmy nomination as Atlantic City Treasurer Nucky Thompson—have enough leading-man charisma to go with his strong acting chops to carry Boardwalk Empire? The evidence so far is, yes. Buscemi is the sturdy center, but this ambitious and expensive ensemble series also has its own dynamic supporting players in Michael Pitt (as Jimmy Darmody), Kelly Macdonald (Margaret Schroeder) and Michael Shannon (Agent Nelson Van Alden). There will be plenty of Emmy glory to go around, and the odds are that the top-billed and too often underrated Buscemi—for once projecting strength and savvy, not strangeness--will finally get his long-overdue prize.

Comment from Melissa Lande: Even in acting, the right part for the right talent can mean a change in branding. In the past, Steve Buscemi has been known as one of the top character actors. Now he's a top leading man and new episodes are on their way.

Oscar & Emmy Watch: Musings & Misgivings: On Our Radar

Melissa Lande — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 14:57:00 GMT

Alan Appel, who writes the name drop blog, is citing his Oscar & Emmy opinions on Technorati as well.

ZUCKERBERG UNBOUND

The flagrant gushing for The Social Network is way over the top. Can one day pass without the media reflecting on director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s cautionary tale of "Young Adult Genius" (and world-class nebbish) Mark Zuckerberg and the birth of Facebook?

Even the otherwise sensible David Denby in The New Yorker has opined that Sorkin writes the sharpest movie dialogue since Ben Hecht and Preston Sturges.

C'mon now. Better than Billy Wilder? John Huston? Ernest Lehman? Robert Towne? Never mind. People, the film is largely fictional. The presumed life lessons about corporate ambition and personal betrayal that so many feel that the film yields can be taken with a veritable shaker of salt.

In that sense, it's not unlike Citizen Kane to which The Social Network has been foolishly compared.

Here's the difference: In its textured look (by cinematographer Gregg Toland), memorable music (Bernard Herrmann) and multi-layered narrative and performances, there never has been a film quite like Citizen Kane.Whereas, the considerable chatter and debate re The Social Network seems to turn on a single shopworn question: what price success?

The Social Network has already been anointed the Oscar pony to ride in the Oscar derby because it so dominates the national conversation and invites questions about whether the brilliantly precocious but socially disconnected Zuckerberg is to be pitied, thanked, admired, blamed or ignored for giving us what Facebook has become.

Which is the point, its fans say. Here at last is a film we can argue about. Yes it’s entertaining, but controversy is what’s made it a critical darling. True, as its poster suggests, you can’t have 500 million friends without making a few enemies along the way, but in the case of Citizen Kane, one titanic enemy--publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst—was enough.

Oscar voters can be--what's the word?--stupid. The Oscar rolls have famously been littered with awards that made perfect sense (say, Glenda Jackson for Women in Love), awards that made no sense (say, Glenda Jackson for A Touch of Class), awards that were paybacks for better performances in other years (say, Jimmy Stewart for The Philadelphia Story), outright embarrassments (say, the Best Picture nod to The Greatest Show on Earth), and enduring performances that didn't even net a nomination (say, Anthony Perkins for Psycho).

So don't jump on "The Social Network" bandwagon just yet. Its box-office grosses have been good, not great, and hey, let's be honest, it's not even the best film so far this year. I'll take The Town and The Kids Are All Right, and there's more good stuff (like The King's Speech) to come.

Responsible Due Diligence Before Media Asks Experts Questions

Melissa Lande — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 16:46:00 GMT

Since this blog is part of a strategic marketing

communications company website (Lande Communications) that talks every day with the media, it's worth remembering that segmentsof the press, past and present, may never bridge

the cultural gap affecting journalists born, say, pre-

and post-Madonna, but all would do well to studiously

avoid the etiquette gaff.

Case in point: an L.A.Television Writers Press Tour event I attended in 1993 that included a session with the multi-talented

Steve Allen, whose myriad accomplishments included

being the first (and, to this day, most innovative) host

of "The Tonight Show." As his awaited his introduction

to discuss his being profiled in A&E's "Biography" series,

a young journalist approached his seat and breathlessly

asked him: "How does it feel to be at the end of your career?"

Unfortunately, Allen, his wife Jayne Meadows seated

next to him and looking ready to flatten the clueless reporter,

did not respond, as I hoped he would, in the following manner:

"I'll answer if you tell me how it feels to be a certifiable

moron."

Allen, as a matter of fact, with protean interests

and opinions about seemingly everything, stared blankly

and did not say anything to the reporter. I'm sorry in this

instance that his good manners prevailed and he didn't. For

the same reason, very little of genuine news value (as opposed to

fluff flackery) ever seems to emerge in these mind-numbing

Q &A events in which most questions are pitched in three

speeds--soft, softer and softest--and in which most actors

are reluctant to say what's really on their minds when journalists

ask, for example, the obligatory and always compelling, "Are you

in real life anything like the character you play on TV?"

Once, just once, I wish an actor would, with a straight face, say: "Yes. We're both fictional."

Or be so painfully unfathomable (as Joaquin Phoenix was on a legendary David Letterman show re-run just last night), that you wonder: Is it pain, problems, or the absurdity of being a celebrity?

In Allen's case, clearly his best days were behind him, and he was going for another shot. Was there a compassionate reporter to be found asking questions? No. Without Steve Allen, there would be no late night pundits....

When it comes to Millennium communicators, Lande Comunications is attached to the word CONTEXT. Remember, before Leno there was Carson; before Carson, Paar, Allen, more. It helps to have an historic view in view before asking questions.

MORE ON MEDIA STRATEGY: RESPONSIBILITY?

Melissa Lande — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:32:00 GMT

(this one by Melissa Lande)

It’s one thing to trash celebrities. As Alan told the story about Fantasy Island’s Herve being reamed out in an elevator 20 years ago, the publicity was somewhat limited but the actor still shot himself. Today, he probably would have done it sooner.

Life is hard—and life as a celebrity is different. As the fishbowl grew into a 24-hour shark attack – what happened? Paris banned from Wynn hotels; Lindsay in jail; this one in rehab; that one a sex addict. But the sharks are hungry for more; TV is more expensive to produce, so voila: reality shows.

ABC, home to respected journalists like the late Peter Jennings, and the current Ted Koppel, Diane Sawyer, Oprah Winfrey, and Barbara Walters (the order is not purposeful), as well as to expensive series like Lost, Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives, is now saving bucks in the reality show business, and is more desperate than any Bravo Housewife breakdown scene with its new series: Dating in the Dark. The premise: contestants meet in a pitch-black room before seeing each other and decide if there's a love connection. Then the lights go on and the real ugliness of the unthoughtful human being comes to life before our eyes.

Conclusion: the media is so gossip hungry that it now manufactures it. Given, celebs keep everyone busy but not busy enough. For years, Americans have watched what has also been done in some of the finest novels: witnessed people reacting to each other in hurtful ways. OK. Some reality shows have redeeming value and entertainment addiction qualities, but not this one. Maybe this is the worst of the recession. You can’t make this crap up so you produce it and the viewers eat it.

What so this have to do with PR strategy and what we do for a living? Not much except that every second that messages like this count as acceptable entertainment, it means bad behavior is being modeled to the country, which is already overstimulated and undernourished in so many ways.

Our purpose is to analyze media trends and provide resources to media (including TV). As these reality trends continue, we so appreciate Oprah, Ellen, Barbara, Brian, Matt, Anderson, Keith, Rachel, etc. and the many many cable shows and networks that find and beam out magic but not in this dark corner of the Magic Kingdom.

How Today's Media Spin Trips up PR pros in Responsible PR Strategy

Melissa Lande — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:45:00 GMT

It was a summer day in the early 1980s and the tall blonde

standing alongside me in an elevator at L.A.'s Century Plaza

Hotel was doing some serious (and loud) venting. Her complaints

were shrill and constant, and seemed to be directed at a

companion who was, it was my guess, cowering somewhere

behind her. My memory is, she seemed majestically

annoyed by their plans being disrupted by his commitments

to press interviews.

There was no response, not a peep, not a sound, from him, and I wondered--had to see--who exactly was being addressed so caustically by this woman. Curiously, a glance over my left and then my right shoulder revealed . . . no one! Was the woman talking to herself?

Only when the door opened and the couple exited did I understand. The gentleman whom I initially didn't see was Herve Villechaize, the diminutive, accomplished actor (and painter) who at the time played Tattoo--he of "Ze plane! Ze plane" fame-- opposite Ricardo Montalban's Mr. Roarke on

"Fantasy Island."

Today, of course, this minor anecdote might have been instantly tweeted over the blogosphere. It wasn't enough to be news and isn't feature worthy, but it might have gotten a text spin that could have subjected the already troubled Herve--he died in 1993 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound--to further ridicule than he already experienced as a small (at 3 feet, 11 inches) person.

All of which is to suggest that some of today's media professionals can be merciless and thus irrelevant. This leads Lande Communications to believe that

along with real enterprise--be it on entertainment, fashion, finance or

travel--comes an abiding sense of responsibility to provide useful

information, not an easy laugh. To do otherwise would be, with all due

respect to the memory of the too-often underestimated and

unappreciated Herve, a quick hit with longterm wounds.

Who Are/Were The Nicest Media Celebrities? by Alan Appel

Melissa Lande — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:06:00 GMT

As a generalization, most celebrities know what they

are--famous and therefore, they believe, ordained

by the show-business gods to a degree of entitlement--

but not exactly who they are. Not so Tony Randall,

and the time I suspected this was so occurred at a post-

Tony Awards dinner gala at the New York Hilton

sometimes, if memory serves, in the early '90s. As

he walked into the cavernous ballroom, my

companion happened to be staring at him (I mean,

after all, it was Felix Unger in a tuxedo), and Randall,

making no pretense whatsoever that he wasn't

accustomed to being noticed, strode immediately to our

table. "Young lady," he said, "why are you staring at me?"

My companion, surprised but hardly flustered, could only

say, "well, because you're Tony Randall." To which Randall,

with a half smile, answered: "Yes, I see your point" and

sauntered away.

Which is to say, Randall is among a select

few I've encountered over the years (Alan Alda and Carol

Burnett are two others) possessed of a genuine down-to-earth,

self-effacing (and perhaps whimsical) sense of their

understanding the real people they are, not the iconic figures

they represent to fans. Randall hadn't remembered me at

the dinner, but we had shared a limo some years earlier

following a function surrounding his new series "Love Sidney."

After railing (he was by now famous for it) about the sins of

smoking, we shared some New York tales, and one an

acquaintance had told me seemed to amuse him.

The story is this: In Lower Manhattan, an inebriated beggar had

approached my friend and asked for $10. My friend said

"sorry," but then the beggar made a proposition. If he could

create an original song on the spot that pleased him, could

he get the $10. My friend said OK. Whereupon the beggar began singing a tantalizing melody, and added lyrics as he

went along. My friend, who had never heard the song before,

was fairly astonished and gave him the money. Some months

later, quite by chance, he heard the song again, this time in

a club and amazingly learned that it was an obscure ditty

written by Cole Porter. My friend had apparently been taken

by an indigent man who happened to have a sophisticated

taste in popular music. Randall chuckled and said, "only in New

York."

About Our Name Drop Blog Author: Alan Appel

Melissa Lande — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 17:44:00 GMT

If anyone knows anything about building the celebrity brand, it's Alan Appel, a 40 year veteran of TV Guide. As NY Bureau Chief, manager of the writing desk and occasional book critic, he knows a thing about the medium and the TV Wars. We thought his background covering the TV medium (now making fewer impressions compared to the web, but still, extremely meanaingful and deep ones) during its golden age and beyond would help bring the moving target of media into perspective (as it moves). His blog is heavy on anecdotes (amusing, instructive), designed to be reflective snapshots of the TV world-- then and now. Stay tuned for some prominent people on camera and behind-the-scenes whom you can thank (or blame) for helping make television what it is today. As such-- think about the whole media strategy landscape and what is most effective in strategic communications.

Celebrities (like the Great One) Don't Always like Publicity

Melissa Lande — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:19:00 GMT

Jackie Gleason looked painfully bored.

One gets used to that at celebrity functions such as this one that took place at Manhattan's 21 Club, in 1985. At soirees like this, the stars are there to plug something, but wish they wer somewhere, anywhere, else; the entertainment journalists, a profession on the evolutionary chain falling somewhere between used-car salesmen and quiz-show hosts, are there for the free food and booze, some photo ops and maybe a boilerplate quote or two about the project at hand. As it happens, the cast members present on this particular evening, Gleason and Art Carney, were bona fide legends being asked to promote "Izzy & Moe," a slab of certifiable TV-movie junk.

No one cared about that; what they wanted to talk about was the two stars' great TV vehicle, "The Honeymooners,"
and why this kitchen-sink classic would likely endure in syndication for all time. What was its secret? "Uh, it happens to be a very funny show," Carney said. As journalists furiously scribbled that response as if Carney had unexpectedly revealed the truth behind the Lindbergh- baby kidnapping, Gleason managed a slight smile. It was his last of
the evening.

Two hours later, the publicity herd having thinned, I found myself sharing a few drinks with the Great One (as Orson Welles named him) and talking about, not show business, but his youth in Brooklyn (we shared
that) and his considerable interest in diverse subjects (like UFOs and the paranormal) that had nothing whatsoever to do with movies, TV or even his start in vaudeville. He had talked with great eloquence and passion
about these "other interests" years earlier on a David Susskind program, and I told him how greatly impressed I was by that conversation. "Well, pal," he said, "it pays to have a mind to go with the talent. Whether one is more useful
than the other is a question I'm still working on." Then a pause, and suddenly his voice trailed off and he seemed distracted and steeped in sadness.

"The thing about questions, you don't have forever to answer them." In fact, Gleason, a world-class drinker with a five-pack-a-day cigarette habit, had little more time to answer this one; he died two years later, in 1987 at age 71.

Next time: At a Tony Awards dinner, Tony Randall wonders why my companion
is staring at him.

What's in a Celebrity Name?

David Adams — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 20:05:00 GMT

What's in a name?

Very little it seems to me unless it can be assiduously dropped, and that brings me to this particular blog in which I recount my experiences with various strata ofcelebrities that I've encountered during a 40-year career writing and editing for TV Guide magazine and, before that, during my two years of Army service as a newspaper editor at the US Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

Teaching moments? Uh, why bother (unless you think that spilling a drink on Mamie Eisenhower while simultaneously almost sliding on a wet floor into the lap of Ike might offer a cautionary lesson for any green journalist who's battling a serious case of nerves preparatory to interviewing the President of the United States and the First Lady).

No, these anecdotes are intended to be neither instructive nor insightful--though that doesn't mean they're not revealing in terms of saying something reflective (and, you be the judge, amusing) about the culture, the Iconic Figures that define it and also ourselves. Spending time with the famous isn't a particularly big deal, but when they're, say, transparently loony or seem acutely lonely, well, there's likely a Life Lesson or two to be gleaned and I'm hoping to do the gleaning in the blogs that follow.

For instance, I've told friends that the saddest person, let alone celeb, that I ever met was Jackie Gleason and I formed that opinion after sharing several drinks with him in the early '80s at Manhattan's 21 Club as part of a press junket for the TV movie "Izzy & Moe." The pedestrian quality of that film would depress anyone, but the great Gleason, perhaps fortified by the booze (and with his co-star and longtime TV partner Art Carney forlornly looking on), had other things on his mind, and what he mournfully had to say about his life and "the business" has stayed with me almost 30 years later. I'll share some of that conversation with you in the next blog. This, of course, is commonly known in the writing game as a tease. See you next time.