Rosenbaum's New TV Family....A Night with Beautiful Men...

[dawnybee]

In keeping with my fine tradition of not reading things closely, I was rushing about trying to get out of the office in order to get to the Culver City Studios for the taping. My coworker asked me if I wanted to go with her to pick up lunch from Ralph’s (grocery store) and I checked the time and figured fifteen minutes wouldn’t kill me. I go to her office and she starts showing me things on Facebook and then she starts talking to me about something else and the entire time I’m eyeing the clock thinking, “You’re talking yourself out of my company. I must leave now.” But I go with her anyway. We’re in Ralph’s talking and ambling along because I still haven’t broken down and told her I was going to a taping because I knew she’d laugh (instead when I finally told her I was going to the taping because Michael Rosenbaum of “Smallville” was in it, she gave me her best Jack Benny ‘oh, dear’ face. I told her plaintively, “You know I have to support my “Smallville” actors!!!”) and I see Matt Dallas walking around with those big, blue seemingly vacant eyes. It’s like he’s a newborn baby and he’s taking everything in for the first time; “Woooow, what’s this? Oooh! Look!” Still very pretty though. He was wearing jeans with the cuff rolled up and a white shirt with a blue flannel one over it. He was swinging the basket in his hand like I would do if I wasn’t so afraid of knocking over displays. I was waiting for him to knock someone in the face with it, but what would they do about it? They’d get lost in his damn blue eyes.

This whole thing just goes to explain that I was in a mad rush to get to the studios by 3’o clock for the check-in. I had my original ticket from the 29th which the email stated would still be valid for the rescheduled taping. Then I printed out another email that I assumed was a duplicate just for added verification. I was blocks away from the studio when I pulled out the email and saw that the time was different from what was original stated. I had only been focusing on the date since that was the thing in contention, but never the time. The check-in time was now 5 o’clock for a 6’o clock taping. And the really stupid thing that I wanted to kick myself over was that there was a woman on Twitter who books audiences for tapings and she was promoting the taping and her tweet even said from 6 o’clock to 11pm and stupid me really thought that perhaps they were going to shoot twice and my group was from 4 to 6pm. Really, had I thought about it for more than a minute I would’ve realized that wasn’t possible. I have only been to two sitcom tapings. I don’t remember how long the first one shot for because I was a little kid, but I went to a “Married with Children” taping and it ran five hours long.

I arrived at the studios and asked security which time was correct and he confirmed that the taping was really set for 6pm with a 5pm check-in (the pilot taped at the same studio as “The Bonnie Hunt Show”). I figured I’d walk next door and go to the movies since I had nearly two hours to kill, but everything started after 4pm, so I just went to Coldstone and talked on the phone and enjoyed the afternoon.

***

Taping Time:

I had my cell phone off and didn’t dare turn it on to check the time and I didn’t even think, at the time, to check my iPod, but I think it actually began shooting closer to seven or seven-thirty. Their warm-up guy, which to me is the worst thing about any taping, was a magician as well. I died a little inside when he said it. Thankfully there were a bunch of Marines who were there (I’m guessing since Carson Daly isn’t doing a traditional taping right now (any more?) this was the second best thing for them. Anyway the Marines were raucous so it didn’t really make the warm-up guy’s job any easier but it was certainly entertaining. Sometimes more so than the actual show. BURN.

The set floor was teeming with people. More so than a normal taping because you had the network suits and the writers/producers all clamoring around. Saw Mitchell Hurvitz standing around the kitchen set. Then I noticed Michael in black track pants and a black w/ white stripes track jacket (he still looks like Jack Cooper) talking to two guys; one an older guy dressed like a cowboy. And I just imagined that this guy must be named Whitey or Rusty Bob and he could regal everyone with tales of a more decadent Hollywood and how he walked in on Doris Day, Tony Randall and Rock Hudson having sex on the set of “Send Me No Flowers”. And I thought, “Oh, Rosenbaum, you just want us to see you.” Minutes later I distinctly hear a strumming of a guitar and singing. “Spaaace. Spaaace”. And he’s singing this song about space and ‘human race’ and ‘tie your shoelace’ and then it ends and you can hear Michael say, “Did we get it?” And they agree and all of us applaud and I’m like, “Yep, Michael “One Take” Rosenbaum”. He walks past the bleachers and says, ‘It’ll mean something later.”

Basic plotline of the pilot is that the baby of the family, (Allison Munn’s whose character name I am blanking on) is dating a sweet barrista named Paul. She invites him to her brother Derek’s (Michael) birthday dinner so that he could meet her family for the first time. There’s Vanessa and Charles (Missi Pyle and John Michael Higgins) his girlfriend’s perfectionist sister and brother-in-law. Flighty brother Derek (Michael Rosenbaum) and his supportive wife Jillian (Joanna Garcia) and their father (whose name I’m also blanking on) who is in a game of one-upmanship with Charles from who has the tallest flagpole and who has the better fake pond.

Paul who was warned by his girlfriend to impress her family because they are judgmental, finds himself at odds with Vanessa and Charles over wealth (turns out Paul left behind a potential career in business to become a barrista) and unwittingly gives Derek doubts about adopting a child.

There were some really funny moments. There’s a scene where Paul “meets” Henry Winkler’s character for the first time over the phone. Another point of contention between he and his son-in-law, Charles is his swan that he has asked Charles to look after. Winkler’s delivery was impeccable and I laughed so hard that I cried. But that was, for me, the only real laugh out loud moment. I think the show wants to be more than a garden variety family sitcom, but it falls into those same notes that are kinda outdated. To me the big problem with traditional camera sitcoms taped in front of an audience is that the beats and rhythm of the comedy is set up for the audience. They need the live audience to respond in the right places. With single camera-ed/no audience comedies you can just write what’s funny and still have the beats, but you’re not playing it for a laugh here at this exact moment or a laugh there at this exact moment. It’s a bit freer because I know there are things I find funny that others don’t. There was a scene in the pilot where I kept laughing when Henry Winkler brought up the swan and I was the only one who laughed, or at least one of a handful who laughed. I think that was really supposed to be laughed at, but it fell up against the real set-up of the joke so when the few of us laughed, we missed the rest of what he was saying. And I think that’s why traditional sitcom shoots are so frustrating to me now. There really is an wash/rinse/repeat feel to it.

Random Things
*It’s great seeing Rosenbaum with his new TV family (or at least they will be if it gets picked up), but Nick D’Agosto is very touchy-feely with Michael. Michael walked behind him as they were setting up a shot and just slid his hand across Nick’s back to get his attention and Michael sat in the “directors” chair in front of him. Then Michael got up and crouched down to watch them set up and Nick tickled/scratched Michael’s back briefly. I wanted to run up to Nick and beat my fists against his chest and cry, “You ruiner! Only Tom is supposed to touch him like that you-you-Misha Collins you!”

They were standing around the living room scene and he shook Nick’s hand and said in a deep voice, “That’s a firm handshake you have, Nick.”

*After Michael and Joanna’s initial scene (they arrive at Vanessa and Charles’ house and Jillian (or Jilly as he calls her) is warning him that he has to support her against his sister. He replies, “Duh!” and we realize that the crux of the problem is that Vanessa is the controlling big sister of the siblings. In this scene she gets Derek to take off the sweater vest Jillian bought him to put on the one that she (Vanessa) had bought him for his birthday; suggesting that Jillian returns it. Joanna looked so down after the scene. Either she wasn’t happy with her performance or felt she didn’t get the laughs she expected, but she definitely looked bummed.

*Michael is still very tactile. He would hug Joanna, Henry, the slew of people who came up to him during their set-ups.

*Nick D’Agosto is very cute. I’m so glad I didn’t know he was this sweet or I’d see that horrendous “Fired Up” film. He’s like Adam Gregory in build, but Brandon Routh in sweetness. His “Fired Up” costar Eric Christian Olsen was there to support him. When he saw him in the bleachers he ran over and looked like he just opened up a box full of puppies and cupcakes. My one problem with Nick though is that he rarely changes his delivery in retakes. Maybe he thinks he got it just the way he wants it, but everyone else would do something different in their retake, but he kept the same expression and almost always the same inflection. The one time he changed his inflection I was pissed because I thought the first delivery was excellent.

I firmly believe that Jason Ritter would’ve been perfect in the role because Nick is basically playing Jason’s character in CBS’ “The Class” (which was the most underrated, finest comedies in recent years).

*The one scene they had to do over a lot. Maybe five times was the singing scene. Derek I”s writing a rock opera about space. Michael taped the recording before shooting and he was also going to sing live during the shoot, but they had it on playback in case they needed it. They ended up using the playback because the scene takes place where he’s in the bathroom (during his freak out over adopting a baby) and so Michael couldn’t see the actors on the other side and didn’t know when to do his line. The director said, “Rosey, play under their dialogue" but he couldn’t really tell whose cue was whose. Then the director came up with the suggestion that he’d standby to give Michael his cue to do his dialogue so Joanna and Nick do their lines and then there's a lengthy silence and Michael says, “Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t see you.” The live version lyrics changed up a bit and he’d put a vibratto in. Then he hit a sour note and said, “Sorry, I’m not a singer.” Then Joanna wanted to do a retake because she didn’t like her delivery (I agreed, it needed a retake) Then Nick missed his cue. As they were getting it together Michael called out, “I can keep doing this until we all kill ourselves”. When they finally finished he said, “You’ll all be singing this in your sleep.” They even played it as we were leaving.

*There were minor rewrites after some scenes: some for better, some for worse. For worse is the scene where Derek and Jillian comes to Vanessa remarks on Jillian’s looks-I wish I could remember that exact line. But it was something in the vein of “Jillian, are you sick” “No” “Hmm, well that doesn’t explain the puffiness.” I just mottled the joke, but the “that doesn’t explain the puffiness” was funny. They redid it and instead Vanessa responds, “It must be the lights in that room.”

For better was when they dropped a line about Derek’s antifungal feet cream. His father tries to calm him down about being a parent and Derek explains that he can’t be a dad because he had a toe infection and he let it go and now he no longer has a little toe. And Henry Winkler said, “But when you got another one, you took care of it.” And then later, “We can figure out how you get all of these toe infections later.” So they did a call back to that issue later and it just clunked. So they redid it where Henry went from having all of these lines to maybe one line. They just cut the whole thing. Whether for time or because it wasn’t moving, I don’t know.

Even Michael did a wrong change IMO. It’s established that Derek smokes weed. At the end when everything falls into place and he decides can be a father and they’re all going to the airport to pick up their baby in China, Derek goes to Paul with awe in his voice (because it seems that Derek admires Paul because he is so unlike his family and finds a kindred spirit in him) and thanks him and ends up saying, (something to the effect of) “I want you to walk my bag through the security checkpoint for me.” And the way he says it is in such a grateful voice that you could see Paul thinking, “How nice of him?!” And that was hilarious. But they redid it and it ends with Derek putting his arms around Paul, walking out of the house saying, “I want you to walk my bag through security for me.” But this way makes Derek seems like a jerk. It’s a weird distinction, but IMO the two actions changed the scene. In the first one Derek is being a charmer and the second it seems like he’s setting him up purposely. But Derek is definitely Gob and Paul is Michael and Derek and Jillian are Tobias and Lindsay because they seem to searching for something.

*Missi Pyle is a much better choice than Leslie Bibb. Leslie Bibb seems too young to play big sister to Michael and Allison, but too young to be John Michael Higgins’ wife and I don’t think she could’ve matched Higgins’ comedy. Missy and John are perfect together.

*No Jill Clayburgh in the pilot. The way they set it up seems to me that Mom is absent, whether by death or abandonment, it’s not said or even intimated. There’s a scene where Allison Munn’s character is telling Vanessa that she acts like mom and sister when she only needs a sister. And earlier they said that their father sleeps with his swan-not have sex with it or anything, you sickies.

*I sensed some tenseness twice in the shoot. The warm-up guy kept telling us to laugh like it’s the first time we’ve seen it, only it’s ten times funnier and Michael called out, “Liar!” And the warm-up guy turned around and said, “What’s not funny” “Or maybe just “What?” Like “I’m not funnier or the show isn’t funnier?” and Michael stopped and shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” This was perhaps earlier in the taping where it wasn’t flowing as well.

Then towards the end and it was rapidly approaching 11pm, they asked for one more take of the final scene and Henry Winkler said, “Why? What’s more to get? If I had it, I lost it by now.” (at this point they had done the scene maybe three times). He didn’t say it angrily (I have a hard time seeing him getting angry) I think he was just tired and felt they should move on. Just venting. But when they called for a “Rolling” he said, “I got it back.” And did the scene.

*I saw a guy in a sweater vest walking around and I thought, “How did Michael get over there?” It was Eric Rosenbaum. The sweater vest looked like the exact same one “Derek” was wearing.

*Michael is still Michael. The director asked Henry, Missi and John to “cluster together” in a scene so that they could all get in the shot and Michael yelled out, “Cluster yourselves!” He began eating the food in one scene and randomly said, “These pickles are dill.” Then when they had the dinner scene he asked “Is this edible? Can I eat this?” The answer was no. But he showed he has the guts to do whatever it takes to make a scene work. The dinner scene were, spurred on by Paul’s speech, decides he can’t be a parent and that it’s “Too much”, he runs out of the scene yelling how “it’s too much” . That good some okay laughs, but not a lot. They redid the scene and this time as he runs out he falls down and everyone laughed/let out shocked gasps and he jumped right up and said, ‘Too much!” and ran out the scene. It was a prat fall! It looked like he bit it majorly, but it picked the scene up considerably. Afterwards Henry, Missi and John all took turns hugging him.

The taping finally ended just a tad bit after 11 or maybe right at 11 (I’m sure they didn’t want to pay the hot ass IATSE workers overtime. There was a hot ass IATSE stage worker that I had my eye on. He had duct tape hanging from his belt and I was thinking we could get a few Marines, borrow a camera, take that duct tape and do some things. Sell it to Active Duty.com. )

The warm-up guy did cast call and we applauded for everyone and afterwards a few people went over to get autographs and take pictures with Michael (cameras were forbidden, but this chick somehow got through security, security scanners and the walk through security with it, so more power to her).

I don’t know what to think of the prospects for the pilot going to series. The cast is great and the dynamics are certainly interesting, but the writing needs to be much better. But hey, “Parks and Recreation” is a series and I don’t see how that could be even called a comedy when there is nothing funny about it.

~Wednesday night was

“Next Day Air” premiere. A really wonderful night because of all the great actors who were there. Chi McBride, Donald Faison, MuMs (Poet from “OZ”), Eva Marcelle and Lance Goss looking too damn gorgeous for words as usual, Robert Townsend. It was just fantastic seeing all of these remarkable entertainers in one room.

Richard T. Jones was sooo dapper. He was wearing a black textured knee-length duster. I haven’t seen a man in a knee-length duster since the Victorian era or Prince in the “1999” video. I couldn’t date this man, he’s a dreamboat but he’s too stylish. He wouldn’t want me cramping his style.

I told him I loved the TSCC but didn’t go as far as asking if he knew whether it was returning or not.



Omari Hardwick. Costar in the film. I’ve never seen him before but he is a terrific actor. And in the movie he is hot as hell! Dang. But I noticed that in scenes he had to look up to talk to the other actors and sure enough I go to talk to him and he’s tiny. And he looks really buff in the film, but that’s Hollywood magic. They just put him in tight shirts and coats. He’s small. That was a little disappointing, but he’s still hot.



This is how he looks in the film, but hotter. Did I mention he’s hot in that movie?



When I was getting a picture with him, Robert Townsend came over to say goodbye and they hugged and Townsend was telling him all of these great, affirming things about sticking in and doing your job and this is great chance for him. And Omari was very touched by it. I shook Townsend’s hand because “Hollywood Shuffle” is a classic. Like rappers and rockers all love “Scarface”, “Hollywood Shuffle” is the PoC performers or lover of perfomers “Scarface”.

Mike Epps. Who seemed (IMO) to be trying to flirt with Eva Marcille right in front of his date's face and Lance Goss’. Poor Lance was just laughing like, “That’s just Mike!” I’m thinking, “That’s just Mike is going to take your woman.”



*The great Keith David. You may think, “He doesn’t work a lot.” But the thing that many people don’t realize about Keith David and also Edward Herrman (“The Lost Boys” for that matter is that they are two of the most utilized commercial voice-over artists. Those guys don’t have to ever work in front of the screen if they choose not to. They make their millions in voiceover work.

Keith David



I asked Malik for a picture and he said, “Don’t you want to get in this too?” And I said, “You know I do.” And he was calling a friend of his over to take the picture when Leon came over and he was going to ask Leon to take the picture and I stopped that real quick. I told them I’d much have a picture of the two of them together. This is LEON! Leon even said that he doesn’t ‘do this a lot’ , meaning premieres. Leon is like Hailey’s Comet. You see him every 76 years. He wanted to give Malik his number so Malik was patting himself down for a pen and I was going to offer my pen somewhere, but he pulled out his iPhone. I had to stop myself from leaning over and looking at who he had in his contacts.

Charles Malik Whitfield and Leon



~SPN interview w/ Ben Edlund. Spoilers