Project Greenlight and the Liesure Class

"Project Greenlight" wrapped up its fourth season this past month.

If we assume that the other nine "Project Greenlight" finalists (whether team or individual) had at least 95% of the talent of Mann, better people skills and a measurable level of enthusiasm for the project, than wouldn't it have been a better logistical choice to suggest one of them? The answer is an emphatic no: A cooperative director would not have given the show the requisite amount of drama to make the show interesting or even remotely watchable.

Ultimately, Mann being chosen was a good thing from not just an entertainment perspective but from an educational one as well. "Project Greenlight" taught me quite a bit about film and keep in mind: It will soon be approaching nine years that I have been blogging on here; I have interviewed people who have created TV shows and starred in films; and I minored in film in college. None of those things tell me where exactly a director stands during filming, how many people work in an editing room, or how a director spends his time before the production starts. It is through "Project Greenlight" that you learn the ins-and-outs of what filmmaking is like on a tangible visual level.

On top of the film making narratives of art verse commerce and conflicting artistic visions, the show allows us to see the more mundane battles being waged like getting another shot vs. upsetting neighborhood ordinances, or on  Hollywood stand-in vs. tax-break-friendly Georgia vs. authentic Connecticut on the location front.

The film had two veritable villains in the form of line producer Effie T. Brown (another thing the show does well is answering the casual film fan's number one head scratcher, "What does a producer do?") and Mann himself which led to plenty of debate fodder on the internet over who was really "ruining" the movie. Of course, Mann provides pretty reasonable evidence in a Washington Post interview that many of his villainous traits (i.e. taking forever to choose a location) were exaggerated by the cameras so any TV show viewer familiar with reality show conventions should know better than to truly condemn Mann or (considering we have no reason to assume the camera weren't as drama-hungry for his counterpart) Brown.

The curious thing about the condemnations in online reviews and on message boards was the constant floating around in association with Mann of the most overused word of the year in TV criticism: "Privilege." Mann is a white, male and came off as petulant but that doesn't mean there's a correlation between those things or any on-screen evidence that he grew up pampered with wealth. It was even referenced in the season's second episode that Mann lived somewhat of an ascetic lifestyle to fund his projects. Some comments also surmised Mann was of unreasonable wealth because he went to film school, which I found disturbing for that criticism's undercurrents that taking the time to subjugate yourself to professors in an academic environment isn't something to be admired (and for ignoring the possibility that a person talented enough to win Project Greenlight wouldn't also be able to win an academic scholarship).

I suspect reviewers had difficulty divorcing their impressions of Jason and his overblown aspirations from the final product. If the job of a reviewer is to meet a film on its own terms and to discern what those terms are, the second part of that process is made extremely easy since Jason's obsessions with lighting and the fine details are well-documented.

Personally, I found plenty to like in "The Leisure Class." The HBO film (screened a night after the finale) was an admirable stab at a genre (a comedy of manners) that doesn't exist today outside of stage plays and period pieces set in Britain. By transplanting that style to an American setting, the film has something relevant to say about class in America and that's a pretty decent baseline for a comedic film. The film mostly succeeds at throwing twists and turns at each character to heighten the intensity of the hijinks as the night goes on.

The most interesting part of the viewing experience is deciding for yourself if each of the dramatic episodes behind the scenes made a difference in the final product. For example, there was a car crash that Mann and crew missed out on capturing the way he wanted due to logistical issues. Watching the film made me learn first-hand that I couldn't have cared less about the magnitude of the car crash. On the other hand, the last-minute decision to change rollerblading to pillow fighting in one of the film's later scenes did make a noticeable difference in my viewing experience. In that case, it would have given me a stronger visual image of two people running amok.

The chemistry between leads Ed Weeks and Tom Bell (something Jason Mann had to fight for) was also tangibly noticeable. The characters needed slightly better motivation, but acting salvaged quite a bit in my opinion.

Narcos Season 1 Review

Being a sucker for South American politics (yes, it's a strangely specific interest but trust me, it's fascinating) I was drawn to Netflix's Narcos but even then I didn't expect such a fascinating show.

Narcos is the classic study of power corrupting that's been told many times by De Palma, Scorsese and Coppola but it feels fresh when this tale is transplanted to the leadership vacuum of Colombia.

Pablo Escobar isn't a Ray Liotta character who fell under the allure of crime and turned cold. Instead, Escobar was a man who grew up in an environment where evil was the norm and he just exploited it better than anyone else. Narcos makes the case that Columbia's drug empire was born out of a dog-eat-dog world.

Chance is also a key thru-line that runs through the series: It was through mere chance that a Chilean character known as "The Cockroach" survived a Chilean death squad and picked Pablo Escobar for his goldilocks qualities (not too murdery, not too soft) out of the three cartel chiefs in Medellin. It's through mere chance that neither Pablo nor Cali drug lord Pacho Herrerra escape bullet fire during various assassination attempts. It initially appears to be through foolishness that Justice Minister Lara gets assassinated (due to him opting against a bullet proof vest) but it appears the bullet would have hit him anyway. Power is obtained through smart maneuvering in this universe but also through luck of the draw.


Although Escobar fashions himself an anti-hero that seeks to help the poor, there's good reason to think the show doesn't expect us to buy that. Escobar is a destructive man and we're invested in stopping him. It's not a subversive commentary on the war on drugs here: There are characters in this story engaged in drug smuggling (the Cali cartel, the Ochoa brothers) who are not responsible for keeping an entire nation under terror with a constant threat of bombs, corruption, and mass murder.

With an evil mastermind front and center, the show packs in suspense as we await the catharsis of seeing the good guy win.

The show has gotten criticism for the blandness of its heroes but that's OK, because Kevin Murphy is simply an observer to a setting that is anything but bland. The characters that we have the most investment in are the series of government officials who are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to negotiating their way through terrorism tactics. That they're secondary and often tertiary in terms of screen time is inconsequential.

The show has gotten criticism for its narration but the critics should keep in mind that most prestige dramas have a slow burn. It generally takes a while to get into the action when the plots are so complex that they require two or three episodes of exposition. The socio-political scene in Narcos is no exception. While I agree that it's slightly cheap to tell rather than show, that's a small price to pay to get hooked immediately. Narcos is gripping from the first episode and not a lot of shows can lay that claim. 

Spring Review Part IV: Better Call Saul, Big Time in Hollywood FL, Fresh off the Boat

Better Call Saul (AMC) "Breaking Bad" was obviously a great show in later seasons, but it started out as an undiscovered gem and in its later seasons, the show was such a Goliath (as evidenced by the most boring Emmy Awards ceremony in history) that proclaiming its greatness was a joyless exercise. For this reason, I'm generally a huge fan of sophomore series (Off the top of my head: Angel, Treme, Raising Hope, Futurama, American Dad) because they allow the creator to rework his magic with a different concept. Most importantly, the creator can win the critics over again on the show's own merits while simultaneously enjoying the breathing room that his last success granted him.


Like Gilligan's last show, the joy of "Better Call Saul" is watching a protagonist do amazing things with his fight-or-flight instinct when he's in a tight spot. Jimmy McGill is a man of many talents: He can work a crowd of senior citizens like River City's Harold Hill ("The Music Man") he can talk a drug kingpin down from a death sentence, he can MacGuyver his way to locating a family of white collar runaways and he can outlawyer a bunch of snooty guys in suits and ties.

The show began with an implicit tease that McGill would descend into amorality like Walter White, but McGill's relationship with his conscience is one that is seeming to take a more interesting route so far. McGill was never a do-gooder but we also learn during a date interrupted by sudden bouts of vomiting that he has a conscience he simply can't ignore even if he tries. The reluctance of Jimmy's morals and his attempts to split the difference is what make him a fascinating character.

The show also benefits from a strong ensemble cast that includes Michael "Lenny Kosnowski" McKean as Jimmy's older brother Chuck (another curious casting choice with a primarily comic actor) and Rhea Seehorn as Jimmy's ex (although theories have floated around that the two were always platonic) who has an enduringly sweet bond with him in the present. On top of that, the city of Albuquerque is a vivid character in the show as well. It's good to be back in the ABQ.

Big Time in Hollywood Florida (Comedy Central)- This black comedy is marginally a show about struggling film makers (a genre I hate outside of "Be Kind Rewind") and it was advertised as such but the characters' filmmaking background is mostly used as a framing device which is something I can live with.

What we have instead is mostly a show two young adult brothers desperate to remain in arrested development. Standing in their way are a set of parents who want them to move out of the house and get real jobs.

The brothers decide to fake a drug addiction which becomes the first in a series of bad decisions that gets them into hotter and hotter water. The show can best be described as "Dumb and Dumber" meets the Coen Brothers.

Some noted scientist or philosopher or historian (or possibly a TV weatherman, I have no clue) said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting different results. This can also be said for comedy if one considers that insane people can be pretty funny. In the case of this show, these are certainly two characters who never consider doing the "right thing" which could be described as pathological and there's certainly a humor in that although it's on a very base level.

Needless to say these guys certainly aren't rootable characters. The prime example of this is how casually disrespectful they are of their father. This is partially understandable considering their dad is perennial punching bag Stephen Toblowsky, but it's indicative of the cartoonish broadness here that extends to the way manslaughter is treated with gravity of Zach Morris getting in trouble with Principal Belding.

At times, the casual moral decay of the world around these characters works tonally and has the makings of a deliciously twisted dark comedy. At the same time, the broad cartoonishness wore thin over the course of ten episodes (in my experience, at least). This goes back to that famous TV weatherman/scientist/philosopher's definition of insanity with a slight caveat: Characters doing the same thing over and over again can certainly be comedic but they are very often not rich characters.

This is particularly true in the case of the brothers' mentally challenged sidekick Del whose presence on the show is so misguided, it's not just a comedic concern but one of sensitivity.

"Big Time in Hollywood Florida" can best be described as an acquired taste with diminishing returns.


Fresh off the Boat (ABC)-The show is simultaneously a throwback to TGIF family-style sitcoms of the '90s with a modern edginess to it in the vein of "Everybody Hates Chris" or "Malcolm in the Middle." More than those two shows, however, the show approaches 90's sitcoms with an ironic self-consciousness without omitting that genuine sweetness that those sitcoms were known for. More often than not, 11-year-old protagonist Eddie Huang learns a lesson in a round about way.

Oh, and did I mention this show centers around a family of Taiwanese immigrants? That was pretty much the main selling point of the show and it's the first thing anyone knows about the show.  Considering it's been 20 years since an Asian-American family has been on TV ("All-American Girl" with Margaret Cho),  the novelty factor of being transported to an Asian-American household for a half-hour is exotic enough to give this show a reason to exist.

Fortunately, however, the show is more than that. Showrunner Nahnatchka Khan infuses the plots with labyrinthine storylines that are reminiscent of the looniness she brought to the sitcom with "Don't Trust the B----." Randall Park and Constance Wu are both ridiculously fun to watch and the show serves as a great crash course on what living in 1995 was like: Shaq, 90's rap, lunchables, Melrose Place and the OJ Simpson trial all make appearances here.

Constance Wu certainly qualifies as a breakout character as she gets some of the show's best lines and delivers them with a certain wry ferocity. At the same time, Randall Park (who I knew as Asian Jim on "The Office") is underlooked (by nearly every other review I've read) with his endearing doggedness to turn his restaurant into a success. Papa Huang has the classic immigrant-trying-to-make-something-of-himself arc and although it's laced with great comedic potential, the joke is never on him so much as it is on the incongruity of his understanding and circumstance.  It also helps that much of the humor in the Golden Saddle subplots revolves around the odd couple chemistry between Park and Paul Scheer as quite a bit of their MOs are lost in translation.

Orange is the New Black Season 2 Review

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Credit: OITNB.com

When it first premiered, "Orange is the New Black" produced in me a strong emotional response. Watching Piper find herself in such lose-lose situations (i.e. be nearly starved to death just for accidentally insulting the food while no one cared) made me want to research prison abuse and take a stand against it. In other words, the show made me angry in exactly the way it was intended to.

In echoing the realities of the harshness known as prison, the show thrived on a tone of claustrophobic uncertainty as it was told through the eyes of a decidedly WASPY outsider in Piper Kerman.

This season marked a noticeable change in that Litchfield felt like a more comfortable place. Instead of a fish-out-of-water scenario, we now have a protagonist who has more fully accepted her fate and subsequently has a better handle on navigating her environment. As a result, the view of prison is one we see with a more hopeful tone. There's a greater focus on friendships (Poussay and Taystee; Morello and Nicky; Rosa and her young hospital friend; and strangely enough Healy and Pennsatucky) and Piper is no longer at the bottom of the food chain.

That role goes to chatterbox Brooke Soso who, although a relatively minor character, is perhaps the biggest target of injustice from an audience surrogate point of view: She's largely disliked and shunned for being naive and having a little too much hope. Like Season 1 Piper, Brooke makes the mistake of trying to navigate prison based on her past experiences unwilling to acknowledge that the rules of conduct in prison are completely alien to anything outside of it. One wonders whether Piper is doing Brooke a favor by chewing her out early in the season and stooping so low as to pimp her out for Miss Claudette's blanket (I can't imagine Claudette saying upon her departure "Piper, be a doll and get me my blanket back and don't worry about tricking someone into getting prison raped").

The rather sudden twist here is that "Orange is the New Black" managed to sneak in a happy ending: By all accounts, the season closes out with everyone worth rooting for enjoying a slightly better peace of mind and every big villain defeated.

The emotional roller coaster of good guys verse the big bad was a rather loopy and especially satisfying one this season. Counselor Healy, Pornstache, Morello's boyfriend, Alex, Fig, and Vee have all taken turns as my most hated character and often found themselves in my good graces a couple episodes later. In some cases, a character like Pornstache elicited empathy when it was apparent that they were genuinely lovesick and, more importantly, completely duped. In others, it was a clearly flawed character taking action to do the right thing. This connects with the the larger theme that the penal system as a whole is seen as largely a quick-fix solution to solving a problem: Demonize the culprit, justify locking them away and keep empathy to a minimum, If one had told me that I'd feel any empathy for Pornstache and Healy, I would have doubted it but getting the viewer to suddenly reverse loyalty has been one of the great strengths of this show.

It's also worth noting that the ensemble is such a strong and well-rounded one that the narrative can zoom in on or out on a large tapestry of characters without losing the bigger picture (or more importantly, our interest).

Of course, there's one character to whom the entire season hinged on the anticipation of her demise. Vee's Shakespearean rise and fall from power came off a little bit melodramatic, but it led to the earned happy ending where every inmate and officer banded together to do the right thing and lock Vee away. The reason this had any meaning at all is because the first two seasons established that prison is a world where right and wrong are abstract terms with no relevance to the only thing that matters: survival.

Meanwhile, Fig's warning to Caputo (the closest we get to a hero in the administration though the last episode left him on shakier grounds) on her way out hinted at the possibility that the dark side can be difficult in a closed-off bureaucracy like this. "Orange is the New Black" closes on a happy note with a hint that the good times are extremely fragile. One can definitely expect this detente to unravel in 2015 but the cathartic ending of Season 2 is worth enjoying.

Notes from House of Cards 1st Season Eps. 1-6

-Neither the degree to which Frank Underwood is rotten nor the root causes of his evil ways are questions the show has that much of an interest in answering and rightfully so. It reflects a broader theme that people in Washington operate the way they do through long-standing habits. Frank has played the political game so long that playing it well has become a means to to its own end. As it stands, I'm more content to just sit back and watch Frank's mind tick.

-Things really started to become interesting when it seemed like Underwood found a respectable nemesis in lobbyist Marty Spinella in the 6th episode. Spinella was not a big-name power player but he managed to make Underwood look like an idiot on national television and had little interest in playing any political games. It was a big mistake on the show's part to have the showdown end in an implausible assault framing. Characters that always win aren't particularly interesting and it looks like Frank might be taken in this direction. If the show's smart, Spinella will be back and his vowel gaffe will have some residual damage

-As a journalist, I can't say I endorse the Zoe Barnes school of thought that your best route to becoming a prestigious reporter is to latch onto a powerful person and print whatever he says. Realism seems to take a vacation in general when it comes to the Zoe Barnes storyline which doesn't help the show's blatant attempts to satirize the broken state of today's media (the politician and media incarnate are literally in bed together, get the symbolism?). Still, I appreciate certain aspects of the storyline: This is one of the few shows I've seen that dramatizes the struggle of a reporter trying to get a scoop and that's worth something.

-Frank and Zoe ending up in bed together was a  bizarre turn of events but TV shows can thrive on moments like that if handled well. So far, it's not looking like a well-advised move but I'll wait for the long game.

-The other shows I've seen involving politicians in Washington -- Veep, West Wing, and Scandal-- have highly stylized dialogue that I find insufferable. Who knew we'd get to the point where a show with remotely natural dialogue would be in the minority. If you pay close attention, there's a lot to appreciate about the subtle ways in which the dialogue of the show's four main characters -- Frank, Peter, Claire, and Zoe-- are different from each other.

-Watching Frank's brain tick is one of the key reasons to watch the show. Even more exciting is watching Claire and Frank interact and seeing a husband and wife whose minds tick in sync. I've seen her referred to as a "Lady MacBeth" but at this point in the series, it's really hard to figure her out which is a good contrast to the other characters on the show. I've seen comments that there's an asymmetry between Frank and Claire signified by the fact that Claire pulled out of her extra-marital relationship in the same episode that Frank decided to pursue one. I don't agree: The two seem to be in mutual agreement that sex is a useful tool to add to their array of weapons. It's hard to tell whether there's an implication that extra-marital affairs are just a fact of life in Washington but I hope not as that would be kind of a been-there done-that theme to  explore.

-A character with my first name ("Orrin") makes an appearance on TV! Finally, I feel a little less alone in the world. So far, I like him more than the "Parks and Recreation" character who's popped up at house parties here and there.

-Our first glimpse of Christina is as she's being sexed up by Congressman Peter Russo. We half-expect her to be an accessory to the main story as many of the women involved in sex scandals are. The twist is that she's actually his monagomous (as far as she knows) girlfriend and a whip-smart political climber. In fact, she might be the sanest character on the show.

-I'm not convinced that the all-it-once-viewing method of Netflix has a single advantage to it. The episodic format still relies on cliffhangers and these cliffhangers need breathing room.

Orange is the New Black (through episode 8)

Two of my more fully realized blog entries (a review of "The Great Gatsby" was the other) were mysteriously reverted to an earlier incomplete draft form by the Blogger software. This matter is under investigation by the Google team, but in the interim, I will attempt to piece together a blog entry out of this although I doubt it will be as good as the original.


Orange is the New Black's portrayal of prison as a hellish place that brings out the worst in people is more a reiteration of pop culture's depiction of the prison system than something shockingly new.

Still, even if you've seen films like Sleepers or Shawshank Redemption, the show can sometimes  still upsetting to watch at some points and arouses a societal anger in me watching these girls have their hope strangled.

Prison guard Mendez stops short of physically violating the inmates but he doesn't have a good bone in his body and soon becomes the most hatable character on the show. The fact that none of his superiors care about him is troublesome if this story supposedly has bearing in real life.

Even the relatively benevolent warden Healey is part of a system in which the inmates truly have no one they can trust. Whether he actually cares about the well-being of the inmates is difficult to tell. He's frequently overwhelmed and tries to lessen the drama but an inmate like Piper still has to play the game of survival with him. She can't truly tell her his problems even when they're life threatening. He's unwilling to improve the lives of the prisoners and he only builds a council to give the illusion of power.

The show treats prison as an ultimate survival challenge in which there's a certain upside-down culture you need to assimilate to very quickly  and, more than anything else, you need highly advanced people skills.

One of the show's greatest strengths is the ease with which an expanding roster of supporting characters are introduced and deepened. Piper's fellow inmates are an eccentric bunch that run the full gamut of personality. Whether they're flawed individuals (Watson or Red), victims of circumstance (Yoga Jones and Sister Ingallis are the most extreme cases of this but Piper would also arguably fall in here), honorable outlaws (Miss Claudette or Daya) or knowingly bad people, there is no prisoner I don't have some sort of empathy for. 

That's not to say that many of the prisoners don't do horrible things to each other and make things worse but it's largely the people on the outside who make things worse through lack of understanding.