Television

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Television

      Michael Gandolfini and the Riddle of Tony Soprano

      by

      In “The Many Saints of Newark,” James Gandolfini’s son takes on his father’s iconic role. But knowing his dad hardly prepared him for the work ahead.When Michael Gandolfini was filming his role in “The Many Saints of Newark,” a period crime drama that casts him as a precocious teenage troublemaker named Tony Soprano, he was having trouble sleeping and would stay up late at night, working on his scenes for the next day.Sometimes he would reflect on the motivations of his character, whose loyalty is torn between two paternal figures: his frequently absent father, a New Jersey gangster named Johnny Boy; and the film’s protagonist, a charismatic mobster named Dickie Moltisanti.In his efforts to get inside his character, Gandolfini would try to identify with Tony’s desire to please both men. He would find himself drawn back to Johnny Boy and repeat the wish to himself like a mantra.As Gandolfini recalled recently, “I was always like, ‘I want to make my dad proud. I want to make my dad proud.’”It didn’t take a psychiatrist to decipher what it all meant. “Of course that was something inside of me,” he said.Gandolfini is the son of the actor James Gandolfini, who played the menacing but undeniably engrossing Mafia boss Tony Soprano for six seasons on the revered HBO series “The Sopranos,” and who died suddenly of a heart attack at age 51 in 2013.The 22-year-old Michael has naturally inherited many of his famous father’s features. They share the same immersive eyes and smirking smiles; like his dad, Michael is soft-spoken with a salty vocabulary and admits to an occasionally argumentative temper.And when Michael — who was born four months after “The Sopranos” made its debut in 1999 and had barely watched the show before preparing for “The Many Saints of Newark” — thinks of his father, he does not conjure up Tony Soprano, the larger-than-life character. He remembers James Gandolfini, the man.He treasures good times they shared, grumbles about life lessons his father imposed, admires him as an actor and misses him the way any child would yearn for a parent taken too soon. “I truly wasn’t aware of the legacy of him,” Michael said. “My dad was just my dad.”Now as he pursues his own prospering acting career, Michael Gandolfini is consciously and irrevocably tying himself to his father with “The Many Saints of Newark”; in his most prominent film part to date, he is playing James Gandolfini’s quintessential role — one of the most talked-about and influential characters in TV history — at a younger, more innocent age.Gandolfini as a young Tony Soprano opposite Jon Bernthal as his father in “The Many Saints of Newark.”Barry Wetcher/Warner Bros.With that decision comes demands — to fulfill an audience’s expectations and to meet his father’s benchmark — that Michael anticipated. But there’s an added responsibility he didn’t consider until he started making the film.“The pressure is real,” he said. “There’s fear. But the second layer, that a lot of people don’t think about, which was actually harder, is to play Tony Soprano.” When he stepped inside the role, Gandolfini said, “not only was it the feeling of my dad — it was like, Tony Soprano is a [expletive] hard character.”On a bright morning in September, Gandolfini, wearing a stubbly beard and a denim shirt, was walking through the Tribeca neighborhood where he’d lived as a boy: past the cobblestone alley where he’d learned to ride a bike and storefronts he visited after being given his first rudimentary cellphone, programmed with his parents’ numbers, at the age of 8 or 9.Though his father and mother, Marcy, divorced when Michael was 3, James remained a continuous presence in his life. Sometimes young Michael would tag along to neighborhood bars where his father hung out with friends. But more often Michael was doing chores his dad assigned him: “Mowing lawns, cleaning my room and getting $5 for it, going to shelters to feed the homeless and I would be grumpy about it,” Michael said.Despite the fame that his father enjoyed from “The Sopranos,” Michael said he showed little interest in the series: “I remember asking my dad, maybe at 13, what the hell is this? Why do I hear about this all the time? What is this about? He’s like, ‘It’s about this mobster who goes to therapy and I don’t know, that’s about it.’”After Michael attended middle school and high school in Los Angeles, he returned here to study acting at New York University. The craft, he said, called out to him not because it had been his father’s but because he wanted to see if he could do it himself.“I was craving an answer,” he said. “How do you do that — transform like that? Am I good? Am I not good? Am I going to get up and be embarrassed? That fear is an indicator that there was something that I wanted.”At a preproduction dinner, the “Many Saints” director recalls, Gandolfini thanked everyone “for giving me a chance to say hello to my dad again and goodbye again.” Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York TimesBut in his first semester at Tisch School of the Arts, Gandolfini said, “I did feel a target on my back.” He was insecure and lonely, unable to find a community with other students and eager to mix it up with his teachers. (“I’m a bit of an arguer,” he said with a grin. “I find it fun.”)Instead, Gandolfini transferred to N.Y.U.’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and, within a few weeks, had booked a role on the HBO series “The Deuce.” “It was a cosmic sign of a good move,” he said.Elsewhere in the WarnerMedia empire, plans for a “Sopranos” film were starting to come together. David Chase, the creator and mastermind of the original HBO drama, said that Warner Bros. gave him no restrictions on the scope of this film. So he and his co-screenwriter, Lawrence Konner, decided to focus on the show’s 1960s and ’70s prehistory — particularly on the character of Dickie Moltisanti (father of Michael Imperioli’s character, Christopher Moltisanti), who had been referenced on the TV series but never fleshed out.“We wanted to make a gangster film, more than anything else,” Chase said. “And we wanted to have a credible, believable, realistic member of La Cosa Nostra. And right there for the taking was Dickie Moltisanti.”The prequel story also allowed the screenwriters to show Tony Soprano in boyhood before he has committed to pursuing a life of crime.“We certainly didn’t want to depict him as the schoolyard rat or punk,” Chase said. “He was up to no good, in certain cases, even as a 9-year-old. But then, what boys aren’t, except the ones you want to beat up?”But as the filmmakers looked to cast the role of the adolescent Tony, they were unsatisfied with the actors they saw. As the start of production drew nearer, Chase and his wife, Denise, happened to be having lunch with Michael Gandolfini, whom they’d known intermittently when Michael was growing up.Father and son on a Jersey Shore family vacation in 2004.Brian Ach/Getty ImagesChase said he expected a boy to sit down with them but he looked across the table “and there was an entirely grown man.”During their casting dilemma, Chase said he remembered that lunch. “I just thought, that’s going to be the guy,” he said. “That’s the guy. It has to happen.”Gandolfini was not nearly as certain that he wanted the role. He knew it would require him to immerse himself in the life of his father, whose painful absence he is constantly reminded of.“I had spent so much time thinking about my dad, the last thing I wanted to do was think about my dad,” he said.Even so, Gandolfini agreed to an audition, if only in hopes of impressing the film’s casting director, Douglas Aibel, and landing other roles with him later on.To prepare, Gandolfini studied “The Sopranos” at length for the first time. Before, he’d only caught glimpses of the pilot, but now he watched the entire 13-episode first season, by himself, knowing it would be an emotional process. “It was hard to watch my dad alone and then having no one to lean onto,” he said.As he watched his father play the character, Gandolfini realized that his unique connection as a son had taught him nothing about being Tony Soprano. “Maybe I could know how to play my dad,” he said, “but I don’t know how to play Tony. I have to create my own Tony from my life and still play the things that made him Tony.”And he was utterly fascinated with the multifaceted Tony — “a character who will cry, become angry at himself that he’s crying and then laugh at himself all in one scene,” he said.Gandolfini was determined to assimilate the physical quirks and tics that he saw in his father’s performance: Tony’s lumbering walk and hunched posture; the way he bit his lip when he smiled and clenched his fists in his therapy sessions.After a weekslong audition process, Gandolfini came away with the role and a new appreciation for his father. “He so was not Tony,” he said. “The only insight that I think I gained was deep pride in him. I’m exhausted after three months — you did that for nine years?”Gandolfini in “The Deuce,” which he booked the first year he was also studying at New York University.Paul Schiraldi/HBOOnce Gandolfini won the “Many Saints” part, he realized, “Maybe I could know how to play my dad, but I don’t know how to play Tony.”Warner Bros.Alan Taylor, the director of “The Many Saints of Newark,” said he had some wariness about having Gandolfini try the role. “I’d never really seen him act,” Taylor said. “It was not knowing if he was up to it and not knowing if was the right thing, emotionally, to ask him to do. Because it’s such explosive territory to ask a young guy to go into.”But Taylor, who directed several episodes of “The Sopranos,” said he was won over by Gandolfini’s carefully prepared audition — and by remarks that Gandolfini made to his colleagues at a dinner just before filming started.As Taylor recalled, “He stood up and said, ‘I want to thank everybody here for giving me a chance to say hello to my dad again and goodbye again.’ From that point on, I never questioned it.”In the weeks before production, Gandolfini spent time getting to know Alessandro Nivola, who plays Dickie Moltisanti, as they went to diners, talked about life and watched “Dirty Harry” together.These exercises were necessary, Nivola said, because the film is so unsentimental in how it depicts the relationship between Dickie and Tony. “We don’t talk about how much we love each other,” he said. “So that feeling had to exist without our needing to put it in words.”Nivola said that it was easy to bond with Gandolfini over the important opportunity that the movie represented for both of them.“He being at the beginning of his career and knowing that he was going to be defined so early by this role that was originally his father’s, me because I was late in my career for a break,” Nivola said. “He was incredibly humble and told me, somewhat unnervingly, that he was relying on my expertise to guide him.”What impressed him most about Gandolfini, Nivola said, “was his ability to completely remove the sentimental, personal, genetic connection that he had to his dad and the legacy of the role and approach it forensically, the way that you would any other role that you were cast in.”With a chuckle, Nivola added, “You could say that kind of compartmentalization is the quality of a psychopath, but also people who are able to perform in these kinds of situations.”Jon Bernthal, who plays Johnny Boy, said that he and Gandolfini had spoken before filming about the burden they felt to live up to James Gandolfini’s standards — one that disproportionately falls on Michael’s shoulders.“He had talked to me about this mission he had been on, to get to know his dad better,” Bernthal said. “To try to fill the shoes of Mike’s dad, it’s an impossible task for all of us but especially for him. And Mike did that the whole time, with the rigor of his work and how much he put into it.”Despite their being from different generations, the 45-year-old Bernthal said he was surprised at how easy he found it to bond with Gandolfini as a peer and a friend.“His dad was my favorite actor and I think he’s striving enormously to be the kind of artist his dad was,” Bernthal said. “Similarly, so am I. We hold each other accountable to that. It’s remarkable that I can go to this man, who’s half my age, for advice just as much as he goes to me. He’s wise beyond his years and a committed and gifted actor.”Though Gandolfini has also worked with the directors Anthony and Joe Russo (on “Cherry”) and Ari Aster (on the upcoming “Disappointment Blvd.”), he is hardly a star and has enjoyed his low profile up to this point. But whatever reception greets “The Many Saints of Newark,” he knows his inconspicuousness won’t last long after its release.“I love my anonymity,” he said. “I get recognized from time to time and it gives me definite anxiety.” He said he still had a few remaining safeguards, though: “My beard helps.”As he steps into a world beyond Tony Soprano and the shadow of his father, Gandolfini also has a personal philosophy that is neatly distilled into a tattoo on his left arm: the word “faith” underlined above the word “fear.”Gandolfini explained, “You can live your life in fear and I mostly do,” he said, rattling off the self-criticism that runs constantly through his mind: “I’m not right for this. Don’t hire me. This is a bad idea.”He continued, “Or, because it’s all hypothetical, you can live your life with some faith that it’ll work out: ‘It’s going to be good.’ ‘I am right for this.’ ‘Someone knows what they’re doing.’”Gandolfini flashed a familiar smile and said, “If it’s not up to me, why not have a positive outlook?” More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      A Hollywood Producer and a Master of Adaptation

      by

      Freedom, Maine, population 722, is about as far away from Hollywood as you can get. So when Erin French, who runs the uber-popular Lost Kitchen there, had boldface names flocking to her virtual doorstep looking to buy the film rights to her best-selling memoir, she approached them with a lot of trepidation and a bit of awe.“It was intense,” Ms. French said of the experience of selling her personal story of food, addiction and abuse, told in the 2021 book “Finding Freedom: A Cook’s Story; Remaking a Life From Scratch.” “Here you are, sitting in the middle of nowhere, a girl who felt like she had grown up a nobody, and then all of a sudden you’re having Zoom calls with Blake Lively. It was definitely a wild time.”In addition to Ms. Lively, Ms. French and her husband, Michael Dutton, met with others like MGM and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment. In the end, Ms. French and Mr. Dutton sold the rights to Bruna Papandrea and her four-year-old company, Made Up Stories. The couple said they were won over by Ms. Papandrea’s passion for the project, her clear vision of how to turn it into a movie and her track record for finding the right talent for projects.“We’re heading into what’s referred to as ‘Shark Territory,’ getting into this whole world of Hollywood-ness,” said Ms. French, “and we felt like Bruna’s a fighter and Bruna was going to always protect us and keep pushing forward.”Erin French, center, sold the rights to her book to Ms. Papandrea, who she felt had a clear vision of how to turn her story into a movie.Stacey Cramp for The New York TimesFor decades, Ms. Papandrea, 50, toiled in the entertainment business shadows of more famous collaborators, most notably Reese Witherspoon. Together, they produced hit adaptations like “Wild,” “Big Little Lies” and “Gone Girl.”With Made Up Stories, though, Ms. Papandrea has stepped firmly into the spotlight. Her latest series, “Nine Perfect Strangers,” which stars Nicole Kidman and Melissa McCarthy and concludes Wednesday, is Hulu’s most-watched original series, according to the streaming service, beating the audience numbers for acclaimed shows like “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Act.” Like “Big Little Lies,” it was adapted from a book by Liane Moriarty.The show’s success, according to those involved, is proof of Ms. Papandrea’s tenacity. “She’s hard to say no to,” said Craig Erwich, president of Hulu Originals and ABC EntertainmentShut down in Los Angeles by the pandemic, Ms. Papandrea and her team quickly shifted the entire production to Byron Bay in New South Wales, Australia. Ms. Papandrea persuaded the brand-new Soma meditation retreat to open its doors to the production before opening to the public.“I was like, listen, I made a show called ‘Big Little Lies,’ I’m telling you it just makes your property more, it brings it a lot of attention,” she said with her clipped Australian accent.Sitting outside at a beach cafe in Santa Monica, Calif., last month, Ms. Papandrea spoke with a machine gun cadence, dropping words at the ends of sentences as she toggled between topics. It’s a pace mirroring the frenetic schedule she’s managing as she prepares some seven productions for five streaming platforms — all movies or television shows centered on complicated female protagonists.In the next year alone she will debut one movie and two television shows for Netflix, including the long-gestating adaptation of the best-selling novel “Luckiest Girl Alive”; a series for Spectrum Originals and BET on women’s college basketball; an anthology series for Apple TV+ titled “Roar”; an Amazon original series starring Sigourney Weaver; and a romantic comedy series for Peacock that stars Josh Gad and Isla Fisher.Melissa McCarthy stars in “Nine Perfect Strangers,” a series on Hulu by Made Up Stories.Vince Valitutti/Hulu, via Associated PressIt is a sign of how Ms. Papandrea, known for her penchant for finishing novels in one sitting, is uniquely suited for a moment in the entertainment industry when the number of major companies able to buy content is shrinking but the need for compelling shows that will draw audiences continues to grow.“I’m watching it all curiously because it doesn’t matter what network you run or what streaming platform you head, you have to have curators, you have to have people who have taste,” she said. “The hardest thing in the world is to find something someone wants to make, and that’s my skill.”Ms. Papandrea teamed with Ms. Witherspoon for three years, shepherding projects like “Gone Girl” and “Big Little Lies” to the screen and racking up accolades along the way, including best actress Oscar nominations for both Ms. Witherspoon (“Wild”) and Rosamund Pike (“Gone Girl”). The two went their separate ways in 2017. Ms. Witherspoon formed Hello Sunshine, which was just sold to a new company backed by the investment firm Blackstone Group for $900 million.Ms. Papandrea took the company’s two former employees and with her husband, Steve Hutensky, started Made Up Stories. The company now has 12 employees and offices in Australia and Los Angeles.She attributes the split to the two women wanting different things and having “slightly different tastes.”“Ultimately, she built a big company and I built a big company,” she said with a chuckle.Ms. Witherspoon declined to comment for this article.To finance her new operation, Ms. Papandrea sold a passive minority stake in her business to Endeavor Content, the production arm of the entertainment and sports conglomerate Endeavor. The companies also formed a joint venture — renewable every calendar year — that allows both to serve as co-studios on all Made Up Stories television projects and some Made Up Stories films. The two share the economic risk of their entire TV development slate, but Endeavor does not pay for Ms. Papandrea’s overhead costs. She and Mr. Hutensky maintain independence over all creative decisions.Ms. Papandrea, with Reese Witherspoon, produced hit adaptations like “Big Little Lies,” seen here with some of the cast.Christopher Polk/Getty Images for the Critics’ Choice Awards“I just love being independent. I love it,” she said. “This path has given us the freedom and resources to compete in the marketplace for top material and writers, to bet on up-and-coming creators, to find the right path for each project and to choose the best homes for distribution among the many platforms.”Made Up Stories is one of many companies with a partnership with Endeavor Content.“We are platform agnostic, so we can sell her shows and our shows and other people’s shows to any platform,” said Graham Taylor, a co-president of Endeavor Content. “We’ve kind of built a United Artists 100 years later that we supply shows to every outlet.”The job of a producer has never been easily defined. There are those who take on the title simply because they contributed some money along the way. Others, like Ms. Papandrea, work tirelessly from book option all the way to postproduction and marketing to ensure that the promises they made at the beginning of what is an often long and tortuous process will still be met at the end.“It’s a problem. Producing credits are passed out like lollipops,” said David E. Kelley, the prolific writer and producer, who has worked with Ms. Papandrea on five projects including “Nine Perfect Strangers.” “What we just did in ‘Nine Perfect,’ for example, that’s kind of a miracle. Bruna had to blaze so much trail with the government just to get people into the country in order to shoot. It’s hard work, and it’s a lot of work.”Ms. Papandrea works tirelessly from book option all the way to postproduction and marketing.Phillip Faraone/Getty Images For Stella ArtoisMs. Papandrea, the third of four children, was raised by a single mother in a housing commission flat in the working-class neighborhood of Elizabeth, South Australia. She dropped out of college twice: once after starting a commerce law degree at Melbourne University and later bailing on an arts degree at Adelaide University.She tried her hand at acting. That didn’t stick.She then got a job working as the assistant to the Australian cinematographer Dion Beebe, an opportunity that led her first to being a producer of commercials and then films. Her big break, she said, came when she started working for the directors Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack.The job took her to London and then to Los Angeles, where she learned the art of adaptation from two of the best in the business.According to Ms. Papandrea, Mr. Minghella hired her because she was smart and she made him laugh. He taught her how to treat creative people with respect and to never work with anyone she didn’t want to have a meal with.She held on to those early lessons and has vowed to pay it forward by hiring only young talent with no Hollywood connections.“When we hire people now, we make sure they’ve had no access to the business. We won’t hire someone off a desk,” she said. “We try and find people who have come up with no experience, because how else do you break those people in?”Jessica Knoll was one such author. Ms. Papandrea worked with her to turn her novel “Luckiest Girl Alive” into a feature film. The two first came together seven years ago, just after “Wild” was made. But executive shuffles, changing tastes and other challenges kept the film in development for years. All the while, Ms. Papandrea stuck with Ms. Knoll as the film’s only writer — a feat in modern-day Hollywood.“She was just so fierce in terms of how much she championed writers and how much she protected them and their stories,” said Ms. Knoll, who had never written a screenplay before adapting her own and recalls Ms. Papandrea giving her Mr. Minghella’s memoir “Minghella on Minghella” and coaching her through the process.“I want to be in business with her forever. The room is a brighter room when Bruna Papandrea is in it.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Seth Meyers Does His Best Tucker Carlson Impersonation

      by

      Meyers mimicked the Fox News host on Monday night, saying Carlson could have a career in improv.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Breaking Conspiracy TheoriesSeth Meyers pointed to some of Fox News’ latest contradictions on Monday night, citing a recent poll finding a majority of viewers are in support of Covid precautions that differ greatly from the network’s Covid-19 talking points.“One way you can tell that the Republican Party is intellectually bankrupt is that they spend very little time talking about policy and a lot more time talking about bat [expletive] conspiracy theories they concocted out of nowhere,” Meyers said on Monday.“It’s so hard to keep up with the right-wing rumor mill that sometimes I’ll only find out about one after it’s been debunked. Yesterday I was scrolling through Twitter and saw a Snopes headline that said, ‘No, Joe Biden is not a Westworld Robot Created by George Soros to Steal Your Hamburgers,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, right, I forgot to tape “Judge Jeanine” last night.’” — SETH MEYERS“So, the left is focused on trying to pass a far-reaching bill that would transform child care, expand the social safety net and tackle climate change, among other things, and what’s the MAGA crowd doing? Are they offering any alternative solutions? Or are they asking Eric Trump about Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend’s swollen balls?” — SETH MEYERSThe “Late Night” host pointed to Tucker Carlson’s alarmist delivery and did an inspired impersonation.“I will say this, though: If cable news ever gets boring for Tucker, he’d make a hell of an improviser because my man knows how to heighten. [Imitating Carlson] If they can force you take a vaccine, what can’t they force you to do? Can they force you to take psychotropic meds? Make you wear a seatbelt? Make you put your shoes on at Olive Garden even though they tell you, ‘When you’re here, you’re family?’ And then when you try to fill a briefcase with unlimited breadsticks, can they call security?” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Half a Shot Edition)“Big news today, as Pfizer announced that a low dose of its vaccine is safe and effective for kids ages 5 to 11. It’s great news until you hear a 6-year-old say, ‘I want to do my own research first.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Meanwhile, 4-year-olds are like, ‘Yeah, don’t mind us; we’ll just keep Clorox-wiping our Legos, OK?’” — JIMMY FALLON“According to a Pfizer board member, a vaccine for children could be available by the end of October. Well, I know what I’ll be handing out for Halloween — a fun-sized Pfizer.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Yeah, it’s a version of the Pfizer vaccine that’s much, much weaker, so they’re calling it Johnson & Johnson.” — JIMMY FALLON“Of course, a lot of kids will get the vaccine while a small minority will insist on taking pony dewormer, because they’re children.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingTrevor Noah announced the nominations for this year’s Pandemmy Awards on “The Daily Show.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightBob Woodward and Robert Costa will pop by Tuesday’s “Late Show” to talk about their new book, “Peril.”Also, Check This OutJosh O’Connor won an Emmy for his turn as Prince Charles in “The Crown.” The Netflix series won several awards Sunday night.CBS“The Crown” swept this year’s Emmys, winning several awards, including Best Drama. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      Irma Kalish, TV Writer Who Tackled Social Issues, Dies at 96

      by

      A female trailblazer in the TV industry, she and her husband took on topics like rape and abortion in writing for sitcoms like “All in the Family” and “Maude.”Irma Kalish, a television writer who tackled abortion, rape and other provocative issues in many of the biggest comedy hits of the 1960s and beyond as she helped usher women into the writer’s room, died on Sept. 3 in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 96. Her death, at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home, was attributed to complications of pneumonia, her son, Bruce Kalish, a television producer, said.Ms. Kalish’s work in television comedy broke the mold for female writers. What women there were in the industry around midcentury had mostly been expected to write tear-jerking dramas, but beginning in the early 1960s Ms. Kalish made her mark in comedy, notably writing for Norman Lear’s caustic, socially conscious sitcoms “All in the Family” and its spinoff “Maude” in the ’70s.She did much of her writing in partnership with her husband, Austin Kalish. They shared offices at studios around Los Angeles, usually working at facing desks producing alternating drafts of scripts.“When I became a writer, I was one of the very first woman comedy writers and later producers,” Ms. Kalish said in an oral history for the Writers Guild Foundation in 2010. She added, referring to her husband by his nickname, “One producer actually thought that I must not be writing — I must be just doing the typing, and Rocky was doing the writing.”To combat sexism in the industry, she said, “I just became one of the guys.”Ms. Kalish moderated an event sponsored by the Writers Guild in Los Angeles. She made a mark writing for Norman Lear’s topical sitcoms “All in the Family” and “Maude.”  Richard Hartog/Los Angeles Times via GettyWriting for “Maude,” Ms. Kalish and her husband, who died in 2016, worked on the contentious two-part episode “Maude’s Dilemma” (1972), in which the title character, a strong-minded suburban wife and grandmother in her late 40s (played by Bea Arthur), had an abortion. When it was broadcast, Roe v. Wade had just been argued in the United States Supreme Court and would be decided within months, making abortion legal nationwide. Controversy over the episode rose swiftly; dozens of CBS affiliates declined to show it.Mr. and Ms. Kalish earned a “story by” credit, and Susan Harris was credited as the script writer; Mr. Kalish said in an interview in 2012 that he and Ms. Kalish had come up with the idea for the episode.Lynne Joyrich, a professor in the modern culture and media department at Brown University, called the episode a watershed moment for women’s issues onscreen. “Maude’s Dilemma” and episodes like it, she said, demonstrated “the way in which the everyday is also political.”The Kalishs’ takes on social issues also found their way into “All in the Family.” One episode centered on Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton), the wife of the bigoted Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), weathering a breast cancer scare. Another focused on the couple’s daughter, Gloria (Sally Struthers), as the victim of a rape attempt.The topical scripts “elevated us in the eyes of the business,” Mr. Kalish said in a joint interview with Ms. Kalish for the Archive of American Television conducted in 2012.Mr. and Ms. Kalish were executive producers of another 1970s hit sitcom, “Good Times,” about a Black family in a Chicago housing project, and continued to write for that program and numerous others.Ms. Kalish’s career spanned decades, beginning in the mid-1950s, and included writing credits for more than three dozen shows, many that would make up a pantheon of baby boomers’ favorite sitcoms, among them “The Patty Duke Show,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “My Favorite Martian,” “F Troop,” “My Three Sons” and “Family Affair.” She also had producing credits on some 16 shows, including “The Facts of Life” and “Valerie.”Ms. Kalish’s work laid a track for other female sitcom writers to follow. As she said to the comedian Amy Poehler in an interview in 2013 for Ms. Poehler’s Web series, “Smart Girls at the Party,” “You are a descendant of mine, so to speak.”Ms. Poehler, beaming, agreed.Irma May Ginsberg was born on Oct. 6, 1924, in Manhattan. Her mother, Lillian (Cutler) Ginsberg, was a homemaker. Her father, Nathan Ginsberg, was a business investor.Irma attended Julia Richman High School on the Upper East Side and went on to Syracuse University, where she studied journalism and graduated in 1945. She married Mr. Kalish, the brother of a childhood friend, in 1948 after corresponding with him while he was stationed in Bangor, Maine, during World War II.After the couple moved to Los Angeles, Mr. Kalish became a comedy writer for radio and television. Ms. Kalish worked as an editor for a pulp magazine called “Western Romance” before leaving to stay home with their two children. Her first writing credit, on the dramatic series “The Millionaire,” came in 1955.She joined the Writers Guild in 1964 and began writing with her husband more consistently. The Writer’s Guild Foundation, in their “The Writer Speaks” video series, called them “one of the more successful sitcom-writer-couples of the 20th century.”Ms. Kalish was active in the Writers Guild of America West chapter and in Women in Film, an advocacy group, serving as its president.The couple’s last television credit was in 1998, for the comedy series “The Famous Jett Jackson,” which was produced by their son, Bruce. They wrote a script dealing with ageism.Along with her son, she is survived by her sister and only sibling, Harriet Alef; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Her daughter, Nancy Biederman, died in 2016. In the interview with the Archive of American Television, Ms. Kalish expressed her desire to be known as her own person, not just Austin Kalish’s wife and writing partner.“Sure, God made man before woman,” she said, “but then you always do a first draft before you make a final masterpiece.” More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      Watch These Two New Shows Starting This Week

      by

      Fall TV is back, and our critic recommends a thoughtful reboot and a new scripted series about reality shows.This is the web version of our Watching newsletter, in which Margaret offers hyper-specific viewing recommendations like these every Monday and Friday. Read her latest picks below, and sign up for Watching here.Dear Watchers,The Emmys were last night. You can catch up on all our coverage here.Have a beautiful week.I want something new.Simone Recasner, left, and Ser’Darius Blain in a scene from “The Big Leap.” Sandy Morris/Fox‘The Big Leap’When to watch: Monday at 9 p.m., on Fox.This new light drama is set behind the scenes of a reality show, also called “The Big Leap,” which means the series gets to have it both ways: We get the contrived but alluring arcs of a reality competition with some of the more earnest, more textured parts of a feel-good scripted show.Scott Foley stars as the scheming producer of a new competition show that casts amateur dancers in Detroit and stages a nontraditional production of “Swan Lake.” (Would watch!) Our heroine is Gabby (Simone Recasner), a young woman who decides to audition for the show and whose dancing dreams were derailed when she had her son right out of high school. Recasner is easily the breakout star of this TV season, so Gabby burns a bit brighter than all the other characters.After the scathing, glorious first season of “UnReal,” I was hoping we’d get more scripted shows about reality shows — it just seems like such a fertile premise, especially given how familiar we as viewers are with the standards and styles of unscripted series. “The Big Leap” is nowhere near as prickly as “UnReal,” but it, too, definitely sees “reality” production as sleazy and manipulative. The difference is that in “The Big Leap,” the overall tone is a sunnier one.There’s a corny predictability afoot, but that didn’t really bother me — that’s a foundational comfort of shows like “So You Think You Can Dance” and “The Voice.” We know what will happen; it’s not the what, it’s the who, and sometimes the when. That can be trickier on scripted serialized dramas, but if you still think the pilot of “Glee” was good (it was), watch this.Uh, something else new, but also sort of less new.Dulé Hill in a scene from the reboot of “The Wonder Years.”Erika Doss/ABC‘The Wonder Years’When to watch: Wednesday at 8:30 p.m., on ABC.Few shows arrive as fully hatched as this reboot of “The Wonder Years,” still set in the late 1960s but this time centering on a Black family in Alabama. Dean (Elisha Williams) just turned 12, the age when “a boy starts smelling himself,” according to grown-up Dean’s narration (provided by Don Cheadle).The show of course feels like “The Wonder Years,” but it also feels a lot like “The Young Rock,” “The Goldbergs,” “Fresh Off the Boat” or “Everybody Hates Chris,” family shows set in the past, maybe with a knowing voice-over from a famous actor, with a habit for communicating sage lessons about growing up. This is on the richer, more dramatic side of the spectrum rather than the strictly comedic one.You already know if you like shows like this; if you do, you will.Also this weekA scene from the final season of “Dear White People.”Lara Solanki/Netflix Two seasons of “Drunk History Mexico” are now on Paramount+.“9-1-1” returns for its fifth season Monday at 8 p.m. on Fox.Season 30 of “Dancing With the Stars” begins Monday at 8 p.m. on ABC.“The Voice” starts its 21st season Monday at 8 p.m. on NBC.“Star Wars: Visions,” an anthology of “Star Wars” anime shorts, arrives Wednesday, on Disney+.The season finale of “Nine Perfect Strangers” arrives Wednesday, on Hulu.The final batch of episodes of “Dear White People” arrives Wednesday, on Netflix.The ninth season premiere of “The Goldbergs” airs Wednesday at 8 p.m. on ABC.The season finale of “The Other Two” arrives Thursday, on HBO Max. So far the show has not been renewed for a third season, which is outrageous — this is the most dazzlingly biting show on TV right now, funny and naughty and great.The season finale of “Holey Moley” airs Thursday at 8 p.m. on ABC.“Law and Order: SVU” returns for its 23rd season Thursday at 8 p.m. on NBC. More

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      2021 Emmys: Best and Worst Moments

      by

      Streaming services dominated a ceremony that suggested that for all of TV’s evolution, some aspects of the Emmys will always be with us.The Emmy Awards were back to being mostly in person after last year’s virtual ceremony, with TV’s best and brightest amassing in a classed-up event tent with banquet-style seating reminiscent of the Golden Globes.It was a more informal approach to TV’s biggest night, one that was not appreciated by all attendees as the Delta variant rages on. (“There’s way too many of us in this little room,” said Seth Rogen, the night’s first presenter.) But the new format was apt for a night that perhaps heralded a new chapter of TV history, or at least the official recognition of the streaming-dominated era most of us already take for granted.For the first time, streaming services won all of the major series awards, with Netflix’s “The Crown” winning top drama and “The Queen’s Gambit,” also on Netflix, taking best limited series. “Ted Lasso,” on Apple TV+, was named best comedy. These shows and a couple of worthy challengers — “Hacks” on HBO Max, “Mare of Easttown” on HBO proper — dominated the categories.The result was an awards ceremony that both signaled new beginnings and announced a handful of titles over and over and over. In the time between, it suggested that for all of TV’s evolution, some aspects of the Emmys — dud bits, overlong speeches, occasional moments of true inspiration — will always be with us. JEREMY EGNERCedric opened with a tribute to TV … and Biz Markie.Cedric the Entertainer opened the Emmy Awards broadcast with a riff on the Biz Markie song “Just a Friend.” CBSCedric the Entertainer promised that with him as the host, the Emmys broadcast would be a little different this year. Different how? The first hints arrived immediately, when Cedric put off the traditional opening monologue in favor of a song that immediately infused the show with energy.“TV, you’ve got what I need,” he sang, riffing on the song “Just a Friend” by Biz Markie, who died this past July. Rita Wilson, LL Cool J, Lil Dicky and others joined in with verses of their own.Cedric did eventually offer a traditional monologue after the first two awards, variously skewering The Met Gala, Nicki Minaj and Billy Porter. “Look at this room, man, so many talented people in here,” Cedric said. “Matter of fact, lock the doors — we’re not leaving until we find a new host for ‘Jeopardy!’” MATT STEVENSIs there an echo in here?“Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” won two awards on Sunday night, one of just a handful of shows that combined to gobble up a big share of the wins.CBSIn the first hour of the show, the first two awards went to “Ted Lasso,” the second two to “Mare of Easttown,” the next four to “The Crown” and then the next two to “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.”I’m not saying these aren’t good shows — some of them are great shows! But there’s a lot of variety on television, more than the Emmys seem to know about. Monotony is a vice. MARGARET LYONS‘Hacks’ gave ‘Ted Lasso’ a run for the money.Jean Smart won best actress for her role in the HBO Max showbiz comedy “Hacks.”CBSThe relentlessly optimistic Apple TV+ comedy “Ted Lasso” was expected by many prognosticators to clean up in the various comedy categories on Sunday. But after a couple of hours, the night had evolved unexpectedly into a two-horse race between that show and the more acerbic HBO Max showbiz comedy “Hacks.”“Ted Lasso” started strong, taking home top honors in three of the four comedic acting categories, including a best actor Emmy for Jason Sudeikis. The show was also nominated for best comedy writing and directing, but in something of a surprise, both of those awards went to “Hacks.”The HBO Max series picked up its third straight award when Jean Smart won for best comedic actress. Suddenly, the best comedy category, which had seemed like a lock for “Ted Lasso,” got more interesting.But only for about an hour. In the end, “Ted Lasso” took the top trophy, as expected. The suspense was fun while it lasted. SARAH BAHRyyyyYEAAAHHH!Cue the “Ted Lasso” music … again. CBSI love “Ted Lasso,” but this is too many times to hear the opening bars of its theme song.Perhaps next time a show is nominated multiple times in multiple categories, the nominee clip segments can use a variety of music from the show, and not just the same 1.5 seconds over and over, and then maybe when people from that show win, we can also shake up some of the music design. MARGARET LYONSDebbie Allen won the Governor’s AwardDebbie Allen, receiving the Governors Award, a de facto lifetime achievement honor.CBSDebbie Allen, the actor, writer, director, choreographer and producer (among other things), was given this year’s Governor’s Award. It is a de facto lifetime achievement honor, but Allen is still plenty productive — last week she won two Creative Arts Emmys for her work on “Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square,” for Netflix.“It’s taken lot of courage to be the only woman in the room most of the time,” Allen said in a pointed speech that paid tribute to all women, all over the globe. “Let this moment resonate with women across this country and across the world, from Texas to Afghanistan.”She continued:Young people who have no vote, who can’t even get a vaccine — they’re inheriting a world that we leave them. It is time for you to claim your power, claim your voice, say your song, tell your stories. It will make us a better place. Your turn.It was a good reminder that while much of TV looks far different than it did even a few years ago, some of its most transcendent talents have been at this for decades. JEREMY EGNERMichaela Coel won her first Emmy.Michaela Coel addressed her acceptance speech to all the writers listening and dedicated her series “I May Destroy You” to “every single survivor of sexual assault.”CBSAfter it was snubbed by the Golden Globes, the HBO limited series “I May Destroy You” received some measure of awards justice when it received six Primetime Emmy nominations.And on Sunday night, Michaela Coel — the show’s creator and star, as well as a writer and co-director — won her first ever Emmy Award, for limited series writing. That also made her the first Black woman to win in that category. In her acceptance speech, Coel told the audience to “write the tale that scares you, that makes you feel uncertain, that isn’t comfortable.”“I dare you,” she continued. “Visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success. Do not be afraid to disappear from it, from us for a while, and see what comes to you in the silence. I dedicate this story to every single survivor of sexual assault.” LAURA ZORNOSAConan won only our hearts.Conan O’Brien, who wrapped up nearly 30 years as a late-night host in June, didn’t win any awards on Sunday night. But perhaps no one had more fun.He mugged for the cameras when John Oliver — who once again won the variety talk Emmy — paid tribute to him during his acceptance speech. He enlivened the annual energy vacuum that is the address from the Television Academy president. And when “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” won for best variety special, for its live election show, O’Brien bounded onstage with the show’s contingent.“Most of the people behind me really deserve this Emmy right now,” Colbert said. But O’Brien deserves our appreciation for inserting a note of chaos into a long night of predictable self-congratulation. JEREMY EGNER‘Mare of Easttown’ put ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ in check … but not for long.Kate Winslet won best actress in a limited series for her role in the gloomy HBO murder mystery “Mare of Easttown.”CBSAs has often been the case in recent years, the best limited series trophy seemed the most up for grabs among the top awards heading into Sunday night. The picture grew sunny early for the somber HBO murder mystery “Mare of Easttown,” after the supporting actress and actor awards were snatched up by Julianne Nicholson and Evan Peters.The series, which garnered praise for the way it nailed the look, feel, sound and salty attitude of the people of Delaware County, Pa., became appointment viewing last spring. Its odds for winning the top prize seemed only to increase when Kate Winslet also won best actress for her role as the title character, Detective Mare Sheehan.Like Anya Taylor-Joy’s drug-addled chess champion, however “The Queen’s Gambit” was not easily vanquished. Though it came up short in the acting categories, it won big on look and feel — 11 Emmys total, including for direction, cinematography, editing, costumes, makeup and music — and went on to win the top limited series prize. SARAH BAHRRobin Thede melted down.HBO’s “A Black Lady Sketch Show” may not have won an Emmy against the perennial hardware-collector “Saturday Night Live.” But in a few seconds, its star Robin Thede showed why she’s one of the biggest talents in TV comedy right now. Her comically incensed response to the announcement was a sketch in itself, testimony to the outsized characters she embodies on her own show. Maybe before long that’ll take her all the way to the acceptance podium. JAMES PONIEWOZIKHamilton Is Not TV.The “Hamilton” streaming on Disney+, which is a filmed version of the Tony-winning stage musical, won for best prerecorded variety special.CBSThe Revolutionary War musical, which won the Emmy for prerecorded variety special(!), is a remarkable work of theater. It deservingly won Tonys for that. That it was captured on camera does not make it television — at least not the kind of TV art the Emmys should reward over the likes of Bo Burnham’s “Inside,” a stunning and original treatment of isolation and digital overload in a year much of its audience spent bouncing off the walls. JAMES PONIEWOZIKOlivia Colman started a new royal tradition.Olivia Colman won best actress in a drama series for playing Queen Elizabeth II in “The Crown,” the second actress to win that award for that role. Television Academy, via Associated PressOlivia Colman’s Emmy win for best lead actress in a drama for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II on Netflix’s “The Crown” created an unusual situation on Sunday. Two different actors have now won that award for playing the same role in the same series.Colman took over the role for the third and fourth seasons of the popular Netflix series as part of a broad, preplanned change over of the show’s principal characters meant to help better reflect their advancing ages.And so now, away goes Colman after her two-season turn as queen. And in will step Imelda Staunton for Seasons 5 and 6. We won’t know until next year whether she will complete a royal Emmy trifecta. MATT STEVENSScott Frank might still be up there.No one plays Scott Frank off the stage.  CBSBeth Harmon spent less time on many victories than Scott Frank did on his victory speech.The co-creator of “The Queen’s Gambit,” who won an Emmy for directing in a limited series, defied the play-off music not once, not twice, but three times as he read from his acceptance essay. Twitter, as is its wont, noticed.The series may be limited but a creator’s self-regard? Maybe not. TV keeps on changing but the Emmys are eternal. JEREMY EGNER More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      Michaela Coel Wins Her First Emmy Award

      by

      After it was controversially snubbed by the Golden Globes, the HBO limited series “I May Destroy You” received some measure of awards justice when it received six Primetime Emmy nominations.And on Sunday night, Michaela Coel — its creator, writer, co-director and star — won her first ever Emmy Award, for limited series writing. That also made her the first Black woman to win in that category.In her acceptance speech, Coel told the audience to “write the tale that scares you, that makes you feel uncertain, that isn’t comfortable.”“I dare you,” she continued. “Visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success. Do not be afraid to disappear from it, from us for a while, and see what comes to you in the silence. I dedicate this story to every single survivor of sexual assault.”Immediately after Coel won, she was congratulated by Cynthia Erivo, one of her former co-stars on her first series, “Chewing Gum.” Olivia Colman, who starred in “The Crown,” later saluted Coel in her own acceptance speech for best lead actress in a drama.“I May Destroy You” had racked up all of its nominations in the stacked limited series category: best limited series and best actress (Coel), supporting actor (Paapa Essiedu), writing (Coel) and two nods for directing (Coel and Sam Miller for the “Ego Death” episode and Sam Miller for “Eyes Eyes Eyes Eyes”).“‘I May Destroy You’ is a coming-of-age story, a generational snapshot and a tart, tender salute to the primal value of friendship when you’re young and underemployed,” wrote the New York Times TV critic Mike Hale in June 2020. “Its plot is built around a hazily remembered rape (based on Coel’s own experience), and the processes of recovery and investigation that follow. But the show is never just about that.” More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Big Leap’ and ‘The Wonder Years’

      by

      A new comedy series on Fox follows a group of people auditioning for a TV dance competition . And a reboot of “The Wonder Years” debuts on ABC.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Sept. 20-26. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE BIG LEAP 9 p.m. on Fox. Monday night will bring the premiere episodes of two new shows that Mike Hale, the New York Times television critic, included in his list of 31 television shows to watch this fall. First up is Fox’s “The Big Leap,” a scripted comedy from Liz Heldens (“Friday Night Lights,” “The Passage”) about a group of people auditioning for a TV dance competition. Next, at 10 p.m., NBC will debut ORDINARY JOE, a drama that follows a man (James Wolk) who is faced with a life-changing decision. We see him live three parallel lives that result from his choice. In one, he’s a doctor. In another, he’s a police officer. In the third, he’s a rock star.TuesdayFrom left, Warren Stevens, Leslie Nielsen, Richard Anderson and Jack Kelly in “Forbidden Planet.”MGMFORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) 6:15 p.m. on TCM. When this science-fiction classic debuted in 1956, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer screened it at the Globe (now the Lunt-Fontanne Theater) on Broadway. That audiences viewed “Forbidden Planet” at a venue which shared its name with the Elizabethan playhouse where Shakespeare debuted many of his plays is fitting: The film shares more than a little DNA with “The Tempest.” It stars Leslie Nielsen as the commander of a spacecraft sent to investigate a colony of scientists left on a far-off planet years before. There, he finds that Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) and Altaira, the doctor’s daughter (Anne Francis), are the only survivors of the colony. As the film goes on, he (and the audience) begin to learn why. The Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote that the movie offers audiences “the gaudiest layout of gadgets this side of a Florida hotel.” It would have more competition these days, of course, thanks to the decades of gaudy sci-fi films that have come out since — and which “Forbidden Planet” helped inspire.UP (2009) 5 p.m. on Freeform. The actor Ed Asner died late last month at 91. Whether you associate him with “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” on which he played a crotchety journalist, or with Pixar’s “Up” may depend on your date of birth. For some, he’ll forever be associated with Carl Fredricksen, the widower from “Up” who attaches about one hundred birthday parties’ worth of balloons to his house, then sets off for South America without realizing that there’s a young stowaway on his vessel. For another do-it-yourself tribute tied to an August celebrity death, leave “Up” on for the kids and go to the next room to hear the Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, who died in late August at 80, in Martin Scorsese’ THE DEPARTED (2006), which airs at 7 p.m. on Paramount Network and opens with the Stones’s “Gimme Shelter.”WednesdayElisha Williams in “The Wonder Years.”Erika Doss/ABCTHE WONDER YEARS 8:30 p.m. on ABC. The Times television critic Mike Hale included this ABC reboot in his list of 31 television shows to watch this fall. The show is based on the coming-of-age series of the same name, which starred Fred Savage and ran for six seasons beginning in 1988. Like the original, the new version opens in the late 1960s and centers on a boy (Elisha Williams) and his family. This time, though, that family is Black and living in Montgomery, Ala., which has been transformed by the Civil Rights Movement. Don Cheadle narrates.ThursdayKENNY ROGERS: ALL IN FOR THE GAMBLER 9 p.m. CBS. This tribute concert for the country star Kenny Rogers was recorded before Rogers’s death last year. It includes performances from Dolly Parton, Chris Stapleton, Lady A, Lionel Richie, Reba McEntire and more artists, who play songs and tell anecdotes about their own connection with Rogers and his music.FridayTHE SHOW (2021) 9 p.m. on Showtime. Every Super Bowl halftime show requires a dizzying amount of planning and preparation, but the Weeknd’s performance this year called for a special kind of choreography: dancing around pandemic-era limitations. This documentary covers the planning and execution of that performance.SaturdayIn “Promising Young Woman,” Carey Mulligan plays a woman set on avenging the sexual assault of her college best friend.Focus FeaturesPROMISING YOUNG WOMAN (2020) 8 p.m. on HBO. Emerald Fennell won an Academy Award for her screenplay for this dark revenge thriller. Perhaps more important, she prompted a lot of discussion about sexual assault and accountability through the story of Cassandra (Carey Mulligan), a woman set on avenging the sexual assault of her college best friend years before. Cassandra’s trajectory is briefly altered after she reconnects with a former classmate (Bo Burnham) — but then ramps up to an intense finale. In her review for The Times, Jeannette Catsoulis praised Mulligan’s performance but found the movie itself to be less effective. “Mulligan lends depth and sensitivity to a character that’s little more than a vengeful doll,” Catsoulis wrote. “Supporting performances from Laverne Cox, as Cassandra’s sardonic boss, and Alison Brie, as a former school friend, add snap and texture to a movie that’s too tentative to sell the damage at its core.”SundayTHE TONY AWARDS PRESENT: BROADWAY’S BACK! 9 p.m. on CBS. The Tony Awards are on Sunday night. You’ll need an internet connection to watch most of it: The live ceremony is being shown exclusively on the streaming service Paramount+ beginning at 7 p.m. At 9 p.m., both CBS and Paramount+ will show a special, “Broadway’s Back!,” in which three key awards will be presented: best play, best revival of a play and best musical. The special will also include performances of Broadway classics and songs from a few of the musicals that are up for the best musical awards, including the night’s most-nominated show, “Jagged Little Pill.” More