Friday, October 31, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Hallowe'en viewin'
These are my picks for the movies that will scare the bejaysus out of you. What will you be watching this weekend?
Monday, October 27, 2008
Grey power: one man's story
My feature from today's Independent...
Mark Kennedy (71) was actually double jobbing as a protestor last week as both a medical card holder and a mature student researching a PhD in NUI Galway.
Born in Galway in 1937, Mark, like many of his generation, left school at age 13 and took "the boat to nowhere" to England in the 1950s to work as a labourer.
Continue here.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Cowen should call an election
The Sunday Tribune is the first paper to call for a general election following the collapse of the Fianna Fail Technicolour coaltion's budget.
I heartily concur. This is a very different country, economically, if not politically, to the one that voted 16 months ago. A government needs a clear, unambiguous mandate to implement the kind of changes and tough decisions that are needed at this time, and this discredited shower of clowns, elected in economic circumstances now consigned to the history books, and, in particular, Cowen, our anointed, selected/unelected Taoiseach, simply don't have that.
He can limp along for the next few months, turning into the new Gordon Brown, but I can't see this government lasting another year anyway, not considering the new Dail arithmetic, not when there's the chance of another even more severe mini-Budget in the New Year, and certainly not when the government loses Lisbon II as part of the voter backlash.
Will power
My feature on the 10th anniversary of the start of Will and Grace in this month's GCN magazine
Jennifer Jason Leigh! Can it really be 10 years since Will and Grace first hit our TV screens? Debuting in the autumn of 1998 against the backdrop of shifting – and sometimes static - cultural mores regarding gay-themed entertainment, Will and Grace became one of America’s most successful sitcoms of the ‘90s and Noughties, running for eight years and winning just about every showbiz gong along the way.
But the show also divided queer commentators into those who believed the series celebrated gay life, however cautiously, and those who felt the show was mincing to the tune of a reactionary heterosexual agenda.
On July 22, 1998, the final episode of the groundbreaking sitcom, Ellen, aired in the US, little more than a year after 42 million people tuned into watch its creator and star, Ellen Degeneres, make television history by coming out as a lesbian on screen and off.
However, it turned out that Americans, or at the very least, television executives, were just not ready to embrace an out and proud prime time sitcom heroine, and soon even gay supporters such as Chastity Bono were criticising the show for being “too gay”. The ABC network, a Disney subsidiary, slapped a kiss-of-death parental caution warning onto the start of each episode, ratings slumped, and Ellen was cancelled.
Even though the decade had been heralded as ‘Hollywood’s Gay Nineties’, it seemed a television show revolving around a homosexual lead character just wouldn’t – or couldn’t – make it. But it was into this seemingly hostile television environment that Will and Grace was launched just two months after Ellen’sunceremonious dumping – and its fate couldn’t have turned out more different.
The Odd Couple-with-a-twist sitcom about a gay man living with his straight female best friend had luck and timing on its side. In many respects, its very existence owed as much to Rupert Everett, as it did to Ellen Degeneres. Everett was coasting on a wave of rave reviews throughout 1997 for his scene-stealing role as Julia Roberts’ wise-cracking gay confidante in the smash hit romantic comedy, My Best Friend’s Wedding.
The platonic gay man-straight woman dynamic was suddenly in vogue, featuring again in The Object of My Affection, with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd, and as a subplot in As Good As It Gets, with Helen Hunt and Greg Kinnear.
The central template for W&G, therefore, was palatable to the American networks. Devised by Max Mutchnick (a gay man) and David Kohan (straight), the guiding maxim for W&G was: do the opposite of what Ellen did in its final season. In the words of Dale Carpenter, an influential gay conservative columnist, Degeneres forgot that “a serious discussion of gay issues has no intrinsic interest for mainstream Americans”, and that he, for one, prefers, “not forcing the issue on the unwilling masses”.
Nobody could have accused W&G of being too in-your-face when it made its debut on NBC on September 21, 1998. The pilot was a sharp, witty confection that successfully set up the primary relationship between handsome, sophisticated lawyer Will Truman (played by straight, married actor Eric McCormack) and his gangly, neurotic interior designer housemate and best friend Grace Adler (Debra Messing, formerly of Ned and Stacey).
It was clear from the get-go that neither protagonist was going to upset anyone too much, irrespective of sexual orientation. Instead, Mutchnik and Kohan decided that the outrageousness factor would be displaced to the pair’s non-titular sidekicks, camp-as-knickers wannabe actor Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes) and helium-voiced, boozy, bisexual, pill-popping socialite Karen Walker (Megan Mullally), who, overnight, became the show’s breakout stars.
The first reviews of the show were respectable, though qualified. Showbiz bible Entertainment Weekly rewarded the show a B+ rating, calling it “the season’s cleverest, most intricate sitcom”. At the same time, however, the magazine noted that there was “an air of potentially offensive, wistful wish-fulfilment in the show: if only Will were straight, the series implies, both the protagonists' romantic problems…would be instantly solved”.
That writer was the first to pick up on the show’s curious (to the say the least) gay politics, particularly in relation to its queer characters Will and Jack. From the pilot episode, indeed through the entire first season, Will didn’t seem to have any love life, not to mention a sex life. Indeed, so careful were the show’s writers and producers not to make Will “too gay” that focus groups on whom the programme was tested often failed to grasp that Will was even gay at all!
Openly gay actor Leslie Jordan, who won an Emmy for playing the pint-sized Southern closet case Beverly Leslie on the show, said in a recent interview that Will’s lack of boo-tay was a necessary evil in W&G’s formative years. “Max [Mutchnik] and David [Kohan] were very smart,” he said. “They knew what their parameters were at the time. It had to be digestible to Middle America.”
The show increased Will’s number of trysts in later seasons, but it wasn’t until the sixth series that he got a long-term boyfriend (played by the strapping Bobby Cannavale). In retrospect, it’s too much to ask for any lead character – gay or straight – to get a happy ever after straight away; after all, something has to provide the fodder for storylines and, as television academic Glyn Davis has noted, the show specialised equally in “disastrous heterosexuality”, citing Grace’s inability to find or keep a partner, Karen’s bad parenting and Will’s parents’ divorce.
The character of Jack – the id to Will’s ego - proved equally problematic. In one way, Sean Hayes’ jazz-handy, over the top drama queen portrayal was extremely progressive, as it depicted a modern gay man who was overwhelmingly comfortable in his own skin, and the character forced a lot of gay men in particular to acknowledge, if not entirely confront, their own internalised homophobia.
But, at the same time, his campy fluttering was often, for entertainment purposes, blatantly cartoonish and stereotypical, leading some to theorise that heterosexual TV executives were using the show to mock that which they more most afraid of, and, as Shane McNamara wrote at the time in the now defunct Gay Ireland, to reduce homosexuality to a perception or concept, rather than treat gay people as actual human beings (the mixed messages were only exacerbated by Hayes’ refusal to publicly state his own sexual orientation).
For good and for bad, W&G was making its impact on pop culture. The show got a massive boost at the start of its second season by being switched to the network’s prestigious Thursday night prime time slot (following on from Friends and competing against Ally McBeal).
Its tight writing, double entendres, cheeky sight gags and zingy one liners helped it maintain consistent top 20 ratings, and the series was nominated for 11 Emmy awards in September 2000, winning three for Outstanding Comedy Series and Supporting Acting gongs for Hayes and Mullally. Over the show’s eight years, it picked up a total of 83 Emmy nominations, and 16 wins in total (including a second for Mullally, and single wins for McCormack and Messing).
It also quickly earned a reputation for stunt casting, and became seen as a fun, culturally savvy laboratory for huge names to try their hands at comedy. Among the huge array of guest stars over the years include Madonna, Cher, Britney Spears, Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, Joan Collins, Ellen Degeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Matt Damon, Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Elton John, Kevin Bacon, Gene Wilder, John Cleese, Sharon Stone, Debbie Harry, Demi Moore, and Irish hunk Stuart Townsend.
The show’s ratings took a dip in its final two seasons, having lost Friends as its powerful lead-in. The finale of the series aired on May 18, 2006, drawing 18.1 million viewers. Since then, its stars have experienced mixed fortunes. Megan Mullally landed her own talk show the following September, but it was cancelled a year later due to poor ratings. She was last seen guest starring on Boston Legal, and in an episode of Kathy Griffin’s My Life on the D-List.
Sean Hayes, meanwhile, went onto musical theatre work and also starred in The Bucket List opposite Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. His production company, Hazy Mills, is currently developing a new series, BiCoastal, about a man with a wife and a boyfriend on the West and East coasts of America.
As for Will and Grace, Eric McCormack has starred in a TV movie remake of The Andromeda Strain, while Debra Messing has had the most post-W&G success, starring inThe Women, opposite Meg Ryan, and having her mini-series, The Starter Wife, turned into a regular series by the USA Network cable channel.
Ten years ago, gay-themed television seemed in a perilous state. Will and Grace defied, and subsequently, re-defined industry expectations by playing the game, even if that was perceived as neutralising its gay quotient. Then, as now, it’s probably best to leave the politics aside, and just take it at face value for the well-produced, consistently funny comedy it is. And as for all those other concerns? In the words of Karen Walker: “Oh coulda, shoulda, Prada.”
Fianna Fail support collapses
From today's Sunday Business Post. Hardly surprising considering the events of the past two weeks.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Budget humour
Got this email today...
A driver is stuck in a major traffic jam just outside Dublin on the M50 motorway.
Nothing is moving.Suddenly a Garda knocks on the window. The driver rolls down his window and asks, "What's going on?"
"Pensioners" have kidnapped Brian Cowen, Brian Lenihan & Mary Harney, and a bunch of Bankers.
They're asking for a €30 million ransom, otherwise they're going to douse them with petrol and set them on fire.
We're going from car to car taking up a collection."
The driver asks, "How much is everyone giving, on average?"
"About a gallon."
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The original Mr Nasty
My piece from today's Independent...The death of fashion critic Mr Blackwell at the age of 86 has robbed showbiz of one of its wittiest and most entertaining meanies.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Joanna Murphy...
...from TV3's The Apprentice: officially the scariest woman on television. It's the constant smiling that's most unnerving. No doubt she'll make it to the final - she makes for great television. Still absolutely terrifying though.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Palin on SNL
Sarah Palin appears as herself on Saturday Night Live. Pity she and Tina didn't appear together...
Friday, October 17, 2008
'Capital' investment
With the entire global capitalist system in the shits, it's good to know someone is benefitting...
An ending fit for a president
Frank McNally's Irishman's Diary is worth a goo in today's Irish Times because he talks about All The President's Men - one of my top 3 favourite movies ever.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Debate
The most astonishing moments from last night's final presidential debate:
1. Fran-Cain-Stein blames Obama for HIS OWN negative campaigning. This man is actually delusional.
2. He then tries to link Obama to ACORN, accusing the group of performing "one of the greatest frauds in voter history" and for "maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." That's rich indeed coming from the Republican party.
3. Obama doesn't beat around the bush and challenges MuckCain on the fact that cries of "Kill him" were shouted - and not disputed - in relation to Obama at McCain/Palin rallies. It was electric viewing, and to hear the words come so calmly from Obama's mouth simultaneously crystallized how more presidential Obama is, and how disgraceful and vile McCain's campaign has become. The old fool was left speechless - because there was nothing he could say.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Name game
A proud day for the global clan Cashin on The Daily Show the other day. Skip to 1.37 mins in...
Sounds like a Leap of shite Amy!
Cyndi, dear, you're still No 1
My interview with Cyndi Lauper in today's IndependentCyndi Lauper has the strongest 'Noo Yawk' accent I've ever heard, so it was probably not the best idea to volunteer to teach her some Irish during the course of a transatlantic phone call that had a five-second delay due to being relayed through a London agency. Continue here.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Politics is bullshit...
Mysterious Skin and Third Rock from the Sun actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt gets all political in the run-up to the election.
Always nice to know you're being read...
Delightful thread started over on Irish-Nationalism.net about my feature on the gay prom in the Independent last week.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Alternative plans
Get your skates - and skirts, fake boobs, prosthetic penis' and wigs - on if you want to take part in next year's Alternative Miss Ireland. Click on the poster for all the details.
Google and gay marriage
Google adopts a rare political position and comes out (so to speak) against California's Proposition 8 proposal on next month's ballot seeking to amend the state's constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
Recount
This weekend, in absence of any real life, I watched Recount, a fantastic HBO TV movie about the farcical 2000 US presidential election, and the chaos that ensued in Florida over hanging and dimple chad (the plural of chad is chad, as we find out) and the various efforts on both the Republican and Democratic sides to swing the election for their guy. A brilliant cast - Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary, Tom Wilkinson, Ed Begley Jnr, and Laura Dern - truly unnerving as the bizarre Katherine Harris, Florida's overly-made-up Secretary of State - Recount is essential viewing for any politico-heads out there, and is especially topical this year where the election could come down to a close vote-off in many key swing states.
Have you heard about the bird?
Damn you Peter Griffin! This song (and, if I'm honest, dance) has been in my head all weekend. It's a recurring 'earworm' gag from episode 2 of Season 7 of the show, and I almost cried laughing at it. B-b-b-bird, bird is the word...
Movie posters
50 beautiful movie posters. Though it leaves out The Truman Show, one of the best (and most copied) posters ever.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
All the Presidents' movies
My feature from today's Review in the Independent
The 2008 presidential contest between Barack Obama and John McCain has been t he most thrilling and dramatic race in modern American history, and it’s sure to make a hell of a movie some day.
All the elements are there for a great Hollywood epic: generational conflict, cliff hangers, intrigue, bitch fights, glamorous leading ladies (as well as the odd femme fatale), and a spectacular plot twist in the third act in the form of vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, a candidate and a character that even the most imaginative screenwriter would surely struggle to create.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
