Emmy Race 2012: It's On...
~The Critics’ Choice Television Awards nominations were announced a few days ago and (surprisingly to me since I’ve felt this season hasn’t lived up to its true greatness) “Community” garnered six nominations for Best Comedy Series and in the acting categories.
BEST COMEDY SERIES
The Big Bang Theory
Community
Girls
Modern Family
New Girl
Parks and Recreation
BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Don Cheadle (House of Lies)
Louis C.K. (Louie)
Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm)
Garret Dillahunt (Raising Hope)
Joel McHale (Community)
Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory)
BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
Zooey Deschanel (New Girl)
Lena Dunham (Girls)
Julia Louis Dreyfus (Veep)
Martha Plimpton (Raising Hope)
Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation)
Ashley Rickards (Awkward)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Ty Burrell (Modern Family)
Max Greenfield (New Girl)
Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation)
Danny Pudi (Community)
Jim Rash (Community) (dawnybee: He’s only nominated because he’s an Oscar winner now)
Damon Wayans Jr. (Happy Endings)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY
Julie Bowen (Modern Family)
Alison Brie (Community)
Cheryl Hines (Suburgatory) (dawnybee: Love the show, love her character)
Gillian Jacobs (Community)
Eden Sher (The Middle)
Casey Wilson (Happy Endings)
BEST GUEST PERFORMER IN A COMEDY SERIES
Becky Ann Baker (Girls)
Bobby Cannavale (Modern Family)
Kathryn Hahn (Parks and Recreation)
Justin Long (New Girl)
Paul Rudd (Parks and Recreation)
Peter Scolari (Girls)
BEST DRAMA SERIES
Breaking Bad
Downton Abbey
Game of Thrones (dawnybee: Give it up, other shows!)
The Good Wife
Homeland
Mad Men
BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad)
Kelsey Grammer (Boss)
Jon Hamm (Mad Men)
Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy)
Damian Lewis (Homeland)
Timothy Olyphant (Justified)
BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Claire Danes (Homeland)
Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey)
Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife)
Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men)
Emmy Rossum (Shameless)
Katey Sagal (Sons of Anarchy)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) (dawnybee: I hope he gets it but Neal McDonough was awfully good in “Justified”)
Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad)
Neal McDonough (Justified)
John Noble (Fringe)
Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad)
John Slattery (Mad Men)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Christine Baranski (The Good Wife)
Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad)
Christina Hendricks (Mad Men)
Regina King (Southland)
Kelly Macdonald (Boardwalk Empire)
Maggie Siff (Sons of Anarchy)
*It’s a travesty that Joan Cusack wasn’t up in this category. What she does on “Shameless” is a thing of beauty.
BEST GUEST PERFORMER IN A DRAMA SERIES
Dylan Baker (Damages)
Jere Burns (Justified)
Loretta Devine (Grey’s Anatomy)
Lucy Liu (Southland)
Carrie Preston (The Good Wife)
Chloe Webb (Shameless) (dawnybee: DESERVED)
BEST MOVIE/MINISERIES
American Horror Story
Luther
Sherlock (dawnybee: “Scandal in Belgravia” alone should be the reason why it wins in this category.)
Page Eight
The Hour
Game Change
BEST ACTOR IN A MOVIE/MINISERIES
Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) (dawnybee: Will Benedict have his chance at justice since losing the BAFTA to Dominic?)
Bill Nighy (Page Eight)
Woody Harrelson (Game Change)
Idris Elba (Luther)
Dominic West (The Hour)
Kevin Costner (Hatfields & McCoys)
BEST ACTRESS IN A MOVIE/MINISERIES
Jessica Lange (American Horror Story)
Gillian Anderson (Great Expectations)
Julianne Moore (Game Change)
Patricia Clarkson (Five)
Lara Pulver (Sherlock)
Emily Watson (Appropriate Adult)
BEST REALITY SERIES
Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations
Hoarders
Sister Wives
Kitchen Nightmares
Pawn Stars
Undercover Boss
BEST REALITY SERIES - COMPETITION
The Pitch
Shark Tank
So You Think You Can Dance
The Voice
Chopped
The Amazing Race
BEST REALITY SHOW HOST
Tom Bergeron (Dancing with the Stars)
Nick Cannon (America’s Got Talent)
Cat Deeley (So You Think You Can Dance)
Phil Keoghan (The Amazing Race)
RuPaul (RuPaul’s Drag Race)
BEST TALK SHOW
Conan
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
The View
BEST ANIMATED SERIES
Archer
Adventure Time
Bob’s Burgers
Family Guy
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
~Yet another award nominations were announced. This time for the Television Critics Association.
Individual Achievement in Drama
Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad,” AMC)
Claire Danes (“Homeland,” Showtime)
Peter Dinklage (“Game of Thrones,” HBO)
Jon Hamm (“Mad Men,” AMC)
Jessica Lange (“American Horror Story,” FX)
Individual Achievement in Comedy
Louis C.K. (“Louie,” FX)
Lena Dunham (“Girls,” HBO)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Veep,” HBO)
Jim Parsons (“The Big Bang Theory,” CBS)
Amy Poehler (“Parks and Recreation,” NBC)
Outstanding Achievement in News and Information
“Anderson Cooper 360” (CNN)
“The Daily Show” (Comedy Central)
“Frontline” (PBS)
“60 Minutes” (CBS)
“The Rachel Maddow Show” (MSNBC)
Outstanding Achievement in Reality Programming
“The Amazing Race” (CBS)
“Dancing with the Stars” (ABC)
“The Glee Project” (Oxygen)
“So You Think You Can Dance” (Fox)
“The Voice” (NBC)
Outstanding Achievement in Youth Programming
“iCarly” (Nickelodeon)
“Phineas and Ferb” (Disney)
“Sesame Street” (PBS)
“Switched at Birth” (ABC Family)
“Yo Gabba Gabba” (Nick Jr.)
Outstanding New Program
“Girls” (HBO)
“Homeland” (Showtime)
“New Girl” (Fox)
“Revenge” (ABC)
“Smash” (NBC)
Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries and Specials
“Downton Abbey: Masterpiece” (PBS)
“Game Change” (HBO)
“Hatfields & McCoys” (History)
“Hemingway & Gellhorn” (HBO)
“Sherlock: Masterpiece” (PBS)
Outstanding Achievement in Drama
“Breaking Bad” (AMC)
“Game of Thrones” (HBO)
“Homeland” (Showtime)
“Justified” (FX)
“Mad Men” (AMC)
Outstanding Achievement in Comedy
“The Big Bang Theory” (CBS)
“Community” (NBC)
“Louie” (FX)
“Modern Family” (ABC)
“Parks and Recreation” (NBC)
Career Achievement Award
Dick Clark
Andy Griffith
David Letterman
Regis Philbin
William Shatner
Program of the Year
“Breaking Bad” (AMC)
“Game of Thrones” (HBO)
“Homeland” (Showtime)
“Mad Men” (AMC)
“Downton Abbey: Masterpiece
Heritage Award (a kind of career achievement for shows)
“Cheers” (NBC)
“Lost” (ABC)
“Saturday Night Live” (NBC)
“Star Trek” (NBC)
“Twin Peaks” (ABC)
**“Star Trek” deserves this award was revolutionary in its way and deserves this but while I’ve and/or many enjoyed those shows in the moment, I wonder how many people actually care about them now. Let’s just look to the alums of “Star Trek” if we’re talking about staying power
*The TV captains came together recently at a con
*George Takei has Green Lantern thoughts.
*A semi-oldie. Nichelle Nichols and Mr. President
To go back to which show deserves the Heritage award and the lasting power of media.
Leonard Nimoy giving the Commencement speech at the College of Fine Arts
*The new generation of Trekkers wrapped filming on the second movie. After a few set pictures were leaked, JJ Abrams and the studio made sure the set was protected from photographers. Only after it wrapped did the cast start posting their pictures.
Like Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg and Benedict Cumberbatch and Chris Pine.
At Hooters? Of all places. Though their fries are good.
The morning after
Why did the guys make that...wait for it...trek to Hooters? Let Simon explain.
We were all up near Oakland shooting at a facility called the National Ignition Facility. So we were all recording on location, which meant we were together to hang out. When we’re shooting in LA, everybody lives all spread out - up in West Hollywood or Los Feliz or whatever. I was living on the West Side. One night the Mayweather fight was on and [Chris] Pine wanted to watch it. The only place it was screening, because it was a Pay Per View, was a Hooters. So the whole cast and crew went to Hooters to watch this boxing match, which was hilarious. Then Zach [Quinto] said “Why don’t we go to San Francisco?” So me, Chris, Benedict [Cumberbatch] and Zach got in my car and we drove to San Francisco at 10pm and had this awesome night in the dark heart of the city. It was great! At one point we were listening to “Make Some Noise” by the Beastie Boys because Adam Yauch had just died. It was our in the morning and we were banging up Broadway in San Francisco after this amazing night out. It was so much fun.”
*Meanwhile, the future awaits James Tiberius Kirk
Anton Yelchin for Interview Magazine
~Back to TV. We’re in the beginning of awards season and the For Your Consideration ads are rolling out. The WB has their selections posted on a site http://www.wbfyc.com/. Some studios are attaching DVDs to the trades. In Emmy Magazine CBS submitted a disc with “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race”, while ABC sent out a disc with select episodes of “Dancing with the Stars”. A&E provided a disc of “Paul Simon’s Under African Skies” concert film. WB inserted iPhone and iPad skins with “Carry On and….” Phrases for their various productions.
USA Network had a large fold out with their stars. It was odd who made the cut. The only person from “Psych” photographed was James Roday while nearly everyone from “Suits” was in the insert.
Speaking of “Suits”, I caught up on the season and I really like it. I can’t wait for its return.
But know what I found out that blew my mind? Gabriel Macht’s dad is Stephen Macht who played the dad in “The Monster Squad”!
Stephen with his “Monster Squad” children Ashley Bank and Andre Gower then
And now
Gabriel with his brothers
Young Gabriel on “90210”
Even younger Gabriel and his costar Patrick J. Adams
*Also Emmy Magazine and The Hollywood Reporter ran portraits of potential nominees like
The cast of “Sons of Anarchy”
Charlie Hunnam, twink no more
Hollywood Reporter gathering
“Why won’t anyone talk to me? I’m the prettiest man in Westeros!
“Justified”s Walton Goggins
Mayim Bialik
Michael Pitt
His body language is so standoffish. He’s so separate from everyone.
But I went to a Q&A with Michael Pitt and he can actually laugh and smile! Huge shock to me. I just always felt he was this emo weirdo.
Like so
really stuck on himself person but he seems very open. I think he’s that rare actor who doesn’t like to talk about himself and just doesn’t know how to fit in with other actors outside of the work. He doesn’t seem like the type who’ll go to every industry event. He doesn’t look like he wants to do spreads for Generic Magazine USA. He’s more at ease with talking shop. So I think these shoots unnerve him.
Michael Pitt Q&A
The moderator was Stacey Wilson of The Hollywood Reporter. They screened Pitt’s final episode “
Mod: I’m glad to see you’re well and living. Before I get into Boardwalk I want to start from the beginning---when you decided you wanted to be an actor.
Pitt: I’m a little nervous. Are you all actors?
Mod: Pretty much.
Pitt: Thank God!
Mod: Were you quite young when you knew this is what you wanted to do or did you have someone in mind? An icon or a career model?
Pitt: I was always performing whether I knew it or not, I was always performing. I knew---it sounds really cheesy---but yeah, I knew pretty young I wanted to do that. I would just stare at the television and watch movies at a very young age that were weird movies, I guess, for a young child to watch. One of them was “Lawrence of Arabia”. I was really mesmerized by it.
Mod: Did your parents encourage you to watch the classics? Is that how you were exposed to it early one?
Pitt: Yeah. They were classics and also horrible movies that we watched. When I was in front of the television I wasn’t talking (laughs). I think that was….(the reason they encouraged it)..I wasn’t bouncing off the walls. that.
Mod: What were your parents like? Were they creative people? Performers?
Pitt: My parents are…my father is a mechanic He works at an auto shop with his brothers. And my mother worked for my grandfather’s business in Jersey. He had a restaurant-a pizzeria. I got the pizza paddle (mimicking a swat) when I was bad (laughs).
Mod: Did you voice your desires to them? “This is what I want to do Mom and Dad?” That you wanted to act?
Pitt: I did, I did at a young age. It was a big family; they didn’t make a lot of money. They were tired, y’know? I was the last one. My pops was kind of….I would say, “I want to perform. I want to sing. I want to dance.” And he (would be like) “I don’t know what to do with you.”
Mod: Did you have an outlet? Were you in school plays? Did you have friends in the same mindset.
Pitt: I would do plays in neighboring towns. I didn’t want to do it in my town because there was a danger of being beaten (chuckles). It was kinda a double life, literally. There was a Jewish community theatre that took me in pretty young under their wing. That was certainly an outlet for me.
Mod: Did you see yourself becoming more of a theater actor or did you inspire to be in film?
Pitt: I moved to New York when I was (pauses) I’m right in the middle of doing a character right now so as I’m talking to you I’m trying really hard to get rid of my East Coast accent …just so you don’t think I’m nuts.
Mod: No, keep it.
Pitt: I moved to New York and my first job when I made it in my mind was I got a play off-Broadway, downtown New York at New York Theater Workshop. I think I was 19 when I’d got the play. I had been out of school since I was 15. I moved to New York saying that, “This is what I want to do.” It was hard. I had no education. I was going up against people with more means, more money, more time, more education. In my mind, back then, probably because I was real young (I thought) if I give myself a fall back I’m going to fall back on it, so I’m not going to give myself that.
Mod: How did you support yourself? Did you have a job?
Pitt: Yeah, I had a million jobs. I was a bike messenger. That was a horrible job. I was on a BMX. I would peddle downhill..it was a horrible, horrible job. And I was so young everyone thought I was trying to buy a Nintendo when I’m trying to make rent. I had bills. I did do extra work for maybe two full years. That was actually great. It was a great job. You could be around actors. It was degrading at times, but I was able to pay my rent with that. I joined SAG doing that. Everyone wanted to be SAG but no one could afford it once you got there (the audience laughs knowingly). I really just wanted the health insurance.
Mod: Did you have anyone advising you? Helping you make decisions? Or were you just going where the auditions took you?
Pitt: I had an amazing teacher that I met at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I sorta crashed these courses they were doing on the weekends. A friend of mine was going and I went with her and I sat in on the classes, but I didn’t pay and I didn’t have money to pay. The teacher let me stay there for a couple of weeks (then) kept me after and said, “Are you going to pay?” I don’t have it. I don’t know if he paid for me or just didn’t report it and he sorta became my mentor. I actually rented a room from him. We would read Shakespeare. He taught me how to read Shakespeare which changed my life. I got a play off-Broadway and I thought I was going to do that for the rest of my life. I was completely content and happy with doing that work. I couldn’t imagine a better feeling than being able to take that check---I think it was $250 a week or something --- from that play and go to the supermarket and buy my groceries and have a place. It was really special to me. But a lot of people might not know that, y’know? They assume when you see yourself on the big screen that that’s when you felt you made it. But (earning money in that first play) in fact, actually that was the time I looked at myself in the mirror and I was happy with what I had done and accomplished. It’s a really hard, brave, silly thing to do (setting out to be an actor).
Mod: So “Dawson’s Creek”. How did you book that? What were you hoping it would be for you> Did you want to be in television?
Pitt: (laughs) Wboa, we’re doing like a whole….
Mod: We’ll get to Jimmy (Darmody) later. You’ve done a lot of serious, dramatic work many people would be surprised that it was the show that launched you. It was huge. And you look at everyone from that show and they’re all huge actors now so it clearly worked for everybody. How did you audition?
Pitt: I had a manager, her name was Carolyn Anthonys and she had a little office mid-town. She had (repped) a lot of soap work, theater, commercials. I worked in that office for her cleaning up and stuff like that. I had got that play. My skills got so sharp after the play that I started looking at everything I did like an exercise. I got to the point where everything has to be a challenge. “Can I give them (casting agents) what do they want?” “What do they want from this piece of paper? From these sides, what do they want?” I got the sides for “Dawson’s Creek” and I did it. I recorded it on tape and I sent it in. They called us office and they (on the phone) were like (adopting a dramatic voice), “You’re life is going to change from this moment on.”
Mod: How far into the show was it? Was it in the middle of the first season?
Pitt: I don’t know. I hadn’t seen it. I had seen billboards, but I hadn’t seen the show. I don’t think I had a TV at the time. I rented a room from a woman who was obsessed with it. My room was in the middle of her house and that’s all I knew of the show. But yeah, so they call back and say “your life is going to change from this moment forward. We want to sign you to a four-year contract and we want to pay you what would be equivalent to possibly a million five.” And my manager at the time was like “What do you want to do?”, to her credit. And I was like “I just came off this play. I’m an actor. I don’t want to be on a teenage soap-opera.” So I said no. And we sat there in that office for, I think like, 45 minutes and we didn’t speak. Just sitting there (hunched over staring at an invisible phone) like “What the fuck did you just do?” And then they called back and we fumbled for the phone and they said, “Well, what does he want?” I said I didn’t want to be tied into something where I hadn’t met everyone and I didn’t know what the work would be like. So I think they agreed to do, like a guest starring thing where they paid me like $2 (laughs) with the idea that I would love it there and I wouldn’t want to leave. I guess I realized in that moment the power that you have when you say “no”. I think as an actor I think that it’s important to know that. Because I think there are times when actors have more power than they may think. And I certainly think I made decisions that weren’t the best because I felt like I couldn’t say no or I didn’t think it was my place to say “no”. So yeah, I did that television show. It was very strange.
Mod: Your life didn’t change?
Pitt: Honestly, yes, things did change. The biggest thing that changed was that before that I couldn’t get into the room for the things I liked. I couldn’t get into the room to audition for things I wanted to. That helped that. I could now get inside the room and that was really helpful. But it was weird. I got chased on the subway. School was out. It was very strange. Very, very strange.
Mod: Is that a feeling you didn’t like about acting?
Pitt: I got really used to doing a show (a play) and then having people come up after the show and talk to me about characters and what they liked or didn’t. I really got into that. There wasn’t any of that (with “Dawson” fans) and that was what was unfulfilling for me. But I also learned a lot doing it. I learned what rewrites were. They come in different colored pages and I was getting all of these blue pages and red pages and I started throwing them out. “I have the script already (mimes tossing paper over his shoulder). Why do they keep sending me the same script over and over and over and over again?” And on my first day of work I started doing the scene and it was not the scene anymore.
Mod: You did a lot of movies after that. What movie did you get thanks to that exposure. Was “Finding Forrester” shortly after that.
Pitt: The film I picked after that….after I did the television show there were a lot of teen, hearttthrob movies that was offered to me and a lot of money. And I was like, “This is not me. This is not how I want my career to go and I have to make a drastic choice.” And I did “Hedgwig and the Angry Inch”. (applause)
Mod: Did you read for John Cameron Mitchell? Did you know him?
Pitt: I read for him several times. I think I got paid $2,000 for the film. It was considered career suicide to a lot of people. But I had a good, strong family around me and good friends and a good manager. It’s harder to make those decisions than you think.
Mod: That movie too. That was not a commercial movie, low budget.
Pitt: It was amazing. We were in Toronto and he (John) was in full-drag (directing) “Move the trucks over there!” It was pretty amazing.
Mod: You did a lot of small indie films after that. Maybe people say you in “Hedgwig and the Angry Inch” and thought you were the indie guy?
Pitt: I had made Hedgwig and Larry Clark’s movie (the grimy, yet riveting Bully”) right around the same time and they were released about the same time which was kinda amazing because people saw two really drastically different characters, so it was good.
Mod: After that you worked with Gus Van Zant (“Last Days) and Bernardo Bertolucci (“The Dreamers”).
When “Boardwalk Empire” came into your fray was there a part you really wanted or did they know who they immediately wanted you for?
Pitt: I hadn’t made a movie in three or four years. I was composing music, I had took some time off to do that. I went to a cattle call. There were 400 people. It was like, if you had an agent (they sent you out for that show). I made a tape for it. I didn’t think anything of it. They said “Terry (Terrence) Winter wants to meet you in California.” So then I met with Terry. I told Terry I was from Jersey and my grandfather was Italian. I was asking him a lot about “The Sopranos” (Terrence was a writer on the show) and I said, “The first time I saw it I thought ‘Somebody’s dead’ To have someone writing this? He really liked that. He thought that was a big compliment.
Mod: You mean that someone was going to die? (dawnybee: She was a bit dense.)
Pitt: In other words they had someone writing it…they got it (the tone) so good. So good.
Mod: After meeting Terry how long until you secured the part?
Pitt: They were trying to push me out of the room (at that point) which happens often. Aggressive agents micromanage. So about a month later I met Marty (Martin Scorcese, the shows executive producer) at the Waldorf Astoria. I auditioned for him there. It was amazing meeting Scorcese. He is…
Mod: He’s brilliant.
Pitt: He really is.
Mod: Was he familiar with your work?
Pitt: Yeah. He wanted to talk about Bertolucci the whole time. It really was…I…to tell you the truth at that point I lived in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn. I lived there…it’s a great neighborhood, my block is great. I live there because the rent’s cheap and I don’t like my rent to affect my work, what I do. I was going to have to move out, that’s how broke I was right before I met Marty. It meant a lot that he had noticed these hard decisions I made early on in my career and it’s really amazing because it’s really few and far between (to get these opportunities). It’s really difficult seeing your contemporaries, your peers buying mansions.
(The mod tried to make some point about L.A actors vs. NY actors and the flashiness of L.A. I don’t know what she was trying to say. But Michael politely hopped on her going nowhere train and talks about how he’s unuse to the L.A way of casting calls)
Pitt: I’ve never lived here. I do know I was out here once to meet a director and I was standing in line with about fifty actors who all kinda looked like me and I was like, “Oh, shit.” I didn’t even have headshots. I thought, “I should’ve come here (to L.A) sooner. My career is really going down.” Then I get a call saying I was at the wrong audition. (person on the phone) “What are you doing?” I’m talking. There’s ten guys ahead of me. “You shouldn’t be waiting. It’s just you and the director.” I do think New York is a good place to be an actor. I don’t know because I’ve never lived here and I haven’t really…this isn’t where I made it. But I feel you kinda have more dignity when you’re not working, which I think is really important.
Mod: Your downtime.
Pitt: Yes. You’re not surrounded by the industry, there’s other problems. That said, it’s beautiful out here. It’s a beautiful place.
Mod: So you get “Boardwalk” and season one is amazing. It’s the big new show. And season two when Terry started writing the arc of Jimmy…Terry told me last month that you had gone up to him and said you had sensed an impending doom for him. He said that you asked him “Are you going to kill Jimmy?”
Pitt: I called him the first day of the second season. There were always talks about it. There were talks about it at the end of the first season. Which to tell you the truth wasn’t (pause. And this begins the series of pregnant pauses from Michael. I’m talking pauses that are the length of an elephant’s pregnancy. One could tell that he was trying to be diplomatic ) You know I could’ve…that.. that was an amazing job, it was an amazing character and it was amazing to work with Martin Scorcese and it was amazing to work with all of those actors. But six years of the same character? You know, that’s…I don’t know.
Mod: It’s a commitment.
Pitt: Yeah, it’s a big commitment. And to their testament it was the only time that I signed that. It was the only time that I signed that piece of paper.
Mod: When they said that you’re going to be…
Pitt: In other words you have to sign before you get a job like that, you sign….
Mod: So you sign it at the beginning?
Pitt: Yeah, oh, yeah. Sometimes you have to sign it before they’ll even audition you.
Mod: Sign that you’ll be okay with killing you off (dawnybee: At this point I wondered what she covered at THR? Was she writing the Hitched and Hatched section. Who the hell doesn’t get what he’s saying about signing a series contract?)
Pitt: “Killing you off the show?” Oh, no, no. You have to be okay with staying for a long time.
Mod: So when you did find out that was where the character was heading (she mentions that Terry told her about the conference call in which they were breaking the news to Michael and his phone kept dropping out) what was your first thought?
Pitt: Well it wasn’t a surprise. It wasn’t a surprise. We talked about it and it was also a suggestion from me. I also suggested it.
Mod: What point did you suggest it?
Pitt: Mid-season season two. But again, I was so happy to have worked on it. So happy.
Mod: When you got the final script was your approach in that episode different now that you had the character’s whole story at your disposal.
Pitt: I was really adamant before I took the job. I work with Playback. In other words…in my generation I’ve always been able to look at what I do. Some actors don’t like doing it. But it’s essential for me to do my job, so that was one thing I insisted on. And that was a hard conversation to have ‘cos it was with Marty. So they agreed to that. I also said, “I have to have the script.” Some of the actors don’t get the script. They just get their sides. So there was a lot of information that I did have. But as far as approaching it? I didn’t approach it differently. It was just another day at work.
Mod: When you wrapped your last day, how did it feel?
Pitt: I was the person who should’ve been upset and I was cheering everyone else up. Everybody!. The crew, the actors---one of the Teamsters started crying in my arms, (saying) “They’re gonna get it! They’re gonna get it!” That was really amazing to see that. I was really attached to the character, too.
Mod: You loved the show, but were you relieved that you are now able to move on to do another things
Pitt: It’s a little difficult---it’s a bit difficult to not know where the character is going. I was once in a position where there was a line that was being said and it was really difficult for me to say. It seemed really out of character. ** It seemed racist. It was very difficult for me to say. And I kinda said, “This is really difficult for me to say and I really don’t want to say it.” And they said, “You don’t have to say it. We can ADR someone else saying it.” (gasps from the audience). (taken aback) “Okay”. I understand. From their point of view it’s a big machine and they need to keep it well-oiled and they need to keep it flowing. If everyone put out their opinions it could be a tragedy. But that being said….that’s difficult. That’s difficult because I take a lot of thought in my choices and what they mean and what they mean to me and what it’s about. When I’m clear on that, that’s when I accept (the story). When you’re at the mercy of that which you don’t know that’s (a hard thing).
*(dawnybee: In the Hollywood Reporter showrunner roundtable Terence Winter talks about the abortive phone call he and Scorcese had with Michael about killing off Jimmy. Michael was on a fishing trip and couldn’t get reception and each time they’d call him the call would drop. Terence ended up emailing him and Michael’s response was, “Obviously I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to stay on the show, but this is the best way we could do it.”)
Mod: And it’s contrary to the way you started your careers in which it was the short turnaround plays or punchy, passionate projects and then you move on to the next project.
Pitt: Yeah. I approached the whole first season the way I approach a film. I worked every day for a year. I changed everything about myself: I changed my diet, I changed the way I walked, the way I talked. Every day off I was researching. I did that every day for a year and a half because that’s how I approach a film. You start with your prep and then you just work, work, work, work until it’s done. Then you shave your head trying to shake your character.
Mod: What did you find out about yourself as an actor and an artist that you learned from working on the show that surprised you?
Pitt: I did learn a lot…for the same reason that it was difficult, were the things that I learned. I did receive, sometimes things that I felt was really out of character for the character and that were really difficult You can receive a two-page monologue two days before. You’re filming something that everyone is going to see: your friends are going to see, your kids are going to see. It’s going to be burnt into history and you only have a couple of hours to prepare. That anxiety did up my skills as far as being able to make something presentable very quickly, So for that it was really good.
Mod: Good muscle to have.
Mod: When you turned down roles early in your career were you worried the roles you wanted weren’t going to come?
Pitt: Yes. Yes.
Mod: What instances did you say, “Wow, I can’t believe I turned that down.”
Pitt: I never felt that. There was maybe one film. Then I saw the film and I didn’t (care). I’ve never regretted turning them down. But I have many times doubted my sanity just financially. But nothing’s free. That’s a line in “Boardwalk” and it’s really true. Nothing comes without a price.
Mod: What one thing do you know now that you wish you had known starting out?
Pitt: (sitting up) That’s a good question! I don’t know. But it’s a good question. Um..what about you? I’m just trying to see (how to answer it. The questioner says she’s learned patience while being on cattle calls and doing background work which was thankless. She’s learned to be true to herself. He asked her what has she worked on and she answered “Casino”. He said, “Ah, that’s an amazing movie.”)
Mod: We can reframe it to what advice would you tell your 19-year old self when you were starting out?
Pitt: I don’t know. (Thinks….thinks…thinks. And thinks some more. I even thought he was going to pass on the question). I think…I don’t know if this is answering the question. But I had a group of friends and artists. We didn’t have a lot, everyone was very super brilliant. We were super close. If you had a slice of pizza you’d split it down the middle. We were all in New York trying to do what we wanted to do. When I started become successful it became really difficult for some of my dear friends. I don’t think this is answering your question , but I just wished…I think the harder I tried to pull them in (to my world) the harder it made it. I wish I knew that. That was something I didn’t think about.
Question from an audience member: Is there something in your technique that helps you with this role?
Pitt: Well, theater helps with everything, I think. I know that sounds cliché, a lot of actors say that. But being able to do what you do when there’s no set, no costume. Being able to make something out of nothing-make a performance out of absolutely nothing is only going to strengthen your skills.
Question: Is there a difference between film acting and theater acting?
Pitt: Absolutely. They’re very different. There’s a lot of theater actors that are brilliant on film. It’s never the other way around. I want to direct at some point and when I’m working with an actor who is a theater actor it’s as simple as saying, “You’re on 11 right now. You should come down to a 7 because there’s a film camera right there. It sees everything. You don’t have to play to the back of the room.” Usually when you make that adjustment and it’s great. Something I learned in a play I did…I wasn’t getting it right. I didn’t know why. And the director said, “You’re trying to feel it.” And I was like, “Yes, I’m trying to feel it..” And she said, “Stop trying to feel it.” I thought that was really peculiar thing to say to an actor. But she said, “You can’t feel it seven nights a week or eight (matinee). You can’t feel it every time. You have to come up with a way so that it looks like you feel it. That way when you do feel it it makes it more powerful.” That’s a really strong weapon to have as an actor. Certainly in film. You have people who aren’t feeling it and when they don’t they don’t know what to do.
Question: It was your fault I couldn’t watch “Luck” (Michael laughs). We were so devastated (by Jimmy’s death). Did you go to HBO’s website to see the reaction people had? There was swearing,
“We’re going to blow you up, HBO” “What were you thinking?”
Pitt: I love it.
Question: Did you read any of that stuff.
Pitt: I didn’t.
Question: You should.
Pitt: All right. Maybe I should. I worry about looking on the internet too much because I worry about being too conscious of what’s going on there. Because you can’t take any of the good seriously because if you take the good seriously than you have to take the bad seriously, and the truth is you probably shouldn’t take either one too seriously. I heard that people were outraged and to be honest it felt really good. It felt good. And people stop me sometimes in the streets of New York and they’re upset! (laughs) I think they connect to….I worked my ass off on that show…
Questioner: It shows.
Pitt: Thank you. So it feels good.
Questioner: Thank you.
Pitt: Thank you
Mod: Unfortunately that was all the time we have. Thank you.
*The Q&A ended quickstyle. I think even Michael was shocked. He sat there for a moment like “What now?” I think he thought it was going to be like a Paley fest thing where you can come up and get autographs and take pictures.
I waited around until he was outside. He was standing around chilling with his publicist or whoever, smoking a cigarette. People were coming up to him and getting autographs and taking pictures. Security asked if he was okay and he said, “Yeah”, so they left because he wasn’t leaving anytime soon. I was trying to think of what to say to him other than “I love your work”. I told him how much I loved him in “Bully” (such a messed up film), he thanked me. Told him that I awaited all the great work he was going to do. After the fact I realized I should’ve asked him if he was going to do theatre any time soon. That really seems to be where his passion lies.
But all things end and so with Jimmy gone, I hope there’s more Owen Slater and Richard Harrow
I loved his Q&A but re: his response to Jimmy being OOC, that is where I come in disagreement with Pitt. He obviously is conscientious not only about his character but as for himself the person delivering these words with full awareness of what weight they hold. But this is where the question of who owns the character comes into play? Does Jimmy belong to Pitt who has lived in his skin for two seasons or does he belong to Terrence Winter who created the characters? The actor and the writer share the character but ultimately when it comes down to it, who has the right to dictate where the character goes? And as much as the actor may hate it or fans, IMO it’s the creator. So if the showrunner isn’t the creator but is tasked with carrying on the creator’s vision then they should be able to take that character where they want he/ she to go.
There’s always room for discussion in any situation but if the writer/creator wants to hold true to their vision then so be it. I think Michael is confusing Jimmy with how he views Jimmy versus what we’ve seen onscreen. Does he really think Jimmy-- a man who was raised by and amongst the criminal underbelly of Atlantic City, a man who fought in a war, a man who was living in the 1920s where immigrants were treated with open and lawful disdain-is someone who wouldn’t use racial invectives… ever?? And unless there was something I missed, Jimmy didn’t hurl them at people. IIRC it was only when he and Capone were talking about their spouses being Italian and Polish. Which is bad enough, but it was him talking in the terminology of the time. Now maybe those scenes were the ones he could bear to get through and there were other, worse ones that he asked to be removed. But if he can’t reconcile that the writers are going to take the characters where they need to take them and just relax and enjoy the ride, then he should stick to theater and films where the character’s course has a finite beginning and end.
In a showrunner’s Q&A in The Hollywood Reporter talk of killing off characters came up and the showrunner for “The Walking Dead” said that Jon Berenthal tried to talk them out of killing his character even though his character dies in the graphic novel. I don’t fault Jon for trying to save his job and characters canon can be changed around (ask the fans of the “Game of Thrones” books who are upset at the deviations the show made from the source material) but writers need to be allowed to do what needs to be done creatively.
Bits from the THR Roundtable (that I haven’t fully read yet)
Glen Mazzara (Walking Dead EP): ….Jon did not want to go. He kept calling: “How about this? How about that?” I have an open-door policy, but ultimately I needed that to be about our main character. I had to stick the landing. I’ve had other people on the show who think it’s punitive when they are killed off, and it’s like, “Well, you signed up for a zombie show!”
Vince Gilligan (Writer/creator “Breaking Bad”) : (on killing off one of the characters): We went through the 12 steps of grief-the writers all season long saying, “Does (the character) have to go? (they’re) a wonderful human being, great performer, and people love this character”. But I take all my cues from “Highlander”: There could be only one at the end. (Vince also said that they shot across from “The Avengers” and that he heard the entire script had leaked onto the interwebs and Joss Whedon had to rewrite the ending.)
On what their other career aspirations are
Shonda Rhimes (writer/creator “Private Practice” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal”) About once a year, I announce to my sisters that I’m going to get my master’s in library science. I’m very serious about it. The idea of being a librarian is like the happiest job I can think of. My sisters laugh at me every single time, and they’re like, “It’s not going to happen, let it og.” But one day I’m going to have a library in Vermont somewhere.
Howard Gordon (writer/creator “Homeland”): I’ve had on my desk a couple of applications to grad school. I haven’t filled them out, but I’ve actually done the research to see what it would take. Public diplomacy is one. International relations, I mean, I’ve always been interested in that and briefly considered a career in the state department until I saw the entrance exam.
~Another writers roundtable-a much better one, just a gem of a read, is GQ’s roundtable with Vince Gilligan, “Mad Men”s creator Matt Wiener and “Deadwood” creator David Milch. They talk of writer’s ego and the business. Wiener, I have no real opinion on. What I know about him is mostly through when he was holding out for a better budget and salary for “Mad Men”, which impacting “Breaking Bad”s budget. But Giligan and Milch have wonderful minds, very insightful men.
Take this bit:
GQ: Why is that still true (that TV is the bastard child of film), when it's obvious that some of the best work is being done on TV?
David Milch: The symbol retains its hold long after the substance which the symbol is supposed to represent has lost its real basis. Look. [pulls a stack of scratch-off lottery tickets from his pocket] I just stopped and got gas, so, like an idiot, I bought a bunch of scratch-offs.
[He distributes the tickets. Feverish scratching ensues and continues throughout lunch.]
Matthew Weiner: If we win, what happens?
David Milch: You keep the money. Please do. What I'm trying to illustrate is that none of us, thank goodness, needs $10. And yet we willingly submit to the hold the symbol has on us, associated with luck. In the same way, the mystique of the film writer holds long after the substance-in which films were a more powerful medium. That's not true anymore, but the symbol still has its own autonomous reality.
Weiner on the other hand. I don’t know if I can get behind his way of thinking. He’s like the Kurt Sutter of the gang but with less bitterness and misogyny.
GQ: Given all the time in the world, would you choose to work this way on your shows, or would you prefer to write everything yourself?
David Milch: That's a good one. All the time in the world? The "B" answer is, I'd write it all myself. Which is to say that in my vanity and egoism, I would think that that would be the way to proceed. And I know deep down that the better answer is: Even having all the time in the world, it's better to collaborate with your brothers and sisters. It's ultimately the richest experience. But there's a kind of intolerant economy that happens: "Just let me do the fucking thing myself."
Matthew Weiner: And it's wrong.
GQ: To feel that way?
Matthew Weiner: Yeah. What I find at this point is that the room generates story. But the actual writing and the consistency of it-in the end, I will probably have to do it myself. And I want to. And I think they want me to. I think it's demoralizing, on the one hand, to not see a lot of your stuff shot, but I keep telling them, when I was [a writer and executive producer for] The Sopranos, nine times out of ten somebody would come up to me and say, "That line was so great." And I'd say, "That's David Chase." It's hard for writers to understand that when you sign off on an outline, they feel it's finished. And you know it's just a stab at it. Actually, I don't think they could even work if they knew how unfinished you know it is.
GQ: What makes a toxic writers' room?
Matthew Weiner: People fighting for control. People fighting for Daddy's attention. I write about it all the time. We have that scene in the episode "The Suitcase" with Don yelling at Peggy for complaining about not getting enough credit. I tried to explain to people that I was both of those people.
GQ: I thought that scene was specifically about the question of putting your name on so many Mad Men scripts, which has been somewhat controversial.
Matthew Weiner: I don't know why anyone would want their name on something that they didn't write. I don't want to discredit somebody for taking the first swing at something, because that's huge. Even if I throw out the whole thing, they've helped me. But over 80 percent of it is rewriting and I'm going to put my name on it. If I keep more than 20 percent of your script, I'll leave your name alone. Basically, it's a question of ego. I can't stomach the idea of someone not knowing that I was involved in it. For the well-being of my daily interaction with the people I work with, I felt it best not to have to watch somebody go up and get an award for something I had written every word of. I'm not Cyrano de Bergerac.
GQ: The counterargument is that your involvement is implied by the show-runner position.
Matthew Weiner: I am breaking with tradition on some level. And immediately I'm defensive. David did do it on The Sopranos. He did it less than I do, but he did do it. And I felt it was better for our relationship. I tell my staff that my response wasn't "Well, he's just going to rewrite what I do anyway." It was "I'm going to write a script that he will not be able to change." And I got there.
GQ: Do you other guys put your names on scripts you've done extensive rewrites on?
Vince Gilligan: Not typically.
David Milch: Not typically.
Matthew Weiner: They're classier than me.
Vince Gilligan: But that said, every single thing Matt just said is bulletproof. I guess I don't do it because Chris Carter didn't do it, and I learned everything I know from working with Chris on The X-Files. But I recall times when I would rewrite someone else's script and I would miss out on some money but, worse, know that the world wasn't going to know the work I'd done. If you're going to stick to tradition and suffer in silence and it's going to give you an early heart attack, why do it? So I'm impressed. Hats off to you, Matt.
~Another topic of writers was addressed in the Vulture’s take on why Dan Harmon’s contracted wasn’t renewed for the fourth season of “Community”. In short it came down to the show not being profitable enough for the studio to put up with his behind-the-scenes issues. The article talks about notorious showrunners like Aaron Sorkin (remember when he was busted for possession of ‘shrooms and crack?) who are difficult and run over budget (though in Harmon’s defense he even said at one of the Paley fests that they do an over/under where they go over the episode budget for one, so they balance it out by coming in under budget for the next. That’s how we got great bottle episodes like the monkey stealing Annie’s pen and the Dungeons and Dragons ep), but their shows are ratings successes so the network puts up with them.
~
Tonight on NBC watch Lois Lane and Hawkman save lives or some ish on “Saving Hope”!
*Justin and Booster Gold (and Galen Gerhing) was photographed by a fan
*Alan Ritchson may have another series. His pilot “Super Fun Night” was passed on by CBS but is now under consideration by ABC. But ABC is tweeking it. I’m hoping it’s a simple change of going from three-cameras to a single cam shoot and not dropping his character.
*Michael McKean is out of the hospital following being hit by a car. He took an introspective moment on Twitter.
Here Molly Ringwald tweets about Michael’s burgeoning romance with Annette.
~I leave
Clark allowing Lex to live out his fantasy of strange men ripping off his clothes
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of Clark. We all have that hidden desire to be dominated.”
BEST COMEDY SERIES
The Big Bang Theory
Community
Girls
Modern Family
New Girl
Parks and Recreation
BEST ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Don Cheadle (House of Lies)
Louis C.K. (Louie)
Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm)
Garret Dillahunt (Raising Hope)
Joel McHale (Community)
Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory)
BEST ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES
Zooey Deschanel (New Girl)
Lena Dunham (Girls)
Julia Louis Dreyfus (Veep)
Martha Plimpton (Raising Hope)
Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation)
Ashley Rickards (Awkward)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES
Ty Burrell (Modern Family)
Max Greenfield (New Girl)
Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation)
Danny Pudi (Community)
Jim Rash (Community) (dawnybee: He’s only nominated because he’s an Oscar winner now)
Damon Wayans Jr. (Happy Endings)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY
Julie Bowen (Modern Family)
Alison Brie (Community)
Cheryl Hines (Suburgatory) (dawnybee: Love the show, love her character)
Gillian Jacobs (Community)
Eden Sher (The Middle)
Casey Wilson (Happy Endings)
BEST GUEST PERFORMER IN A COMEDY SERIES
Becky Ann Baker (Girls)
Bobby Cannavale (Modern Family)
Kathryn Hahn (Parks and Recreation)
Justin Long (New Girl)
Paul Rudd (Parks and Recreation)
Peter Scolari (Girls)
BEST DRAMA SERIES
Breaking Bad
Downton Abbey
Game of Thrones (dawnybee: Give it up, other shows!)
The Good Wife
Homeland
Mad Men
BEST ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad)
Kelsey Grammer (Boss)
Jon Hamm (Mad Men)
Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy)
Damian Lewis (Homeland)
Timothy Olyphant (Justified)
BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Claire Danes (Homeland)
Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey)
Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife)
Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men)
Emmy Rossum (Shameless)
Katey Sagal (Sons of Anarchy)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES
Peter Dinklage (Game of Thrones) (dawnybee: I hope he gets it but Neal McDonough was awfully good in “Justified”)
Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad)
Neal McDonough (Justified)
John Noble (Fringe)
Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad)
John Slattery (Mad Men)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES
Christine Baranski (The Good Wife)
Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad)
Christina Hendricks (Mad Men)
Regina King (Southland)
Kelly Macdonald (Boardwalk Empire)
Maggie Siff (Sons of Anarchy)
*It’s a travesty that Joan Cusack wasn’t up in this category. What she does on “Shameless” is a thing of beauty.
BEST GUEST PERFORMER IN A DRAMA SERIES
Dylan Baker (Damages)
Jere Burns (Justified)
Loretta Devine (Grey’s Anatomy)
Lucy Liu (Southland)
Carrie Preston (The Good Wife)
Chloe Webb (Shameless) (dawnybee: DESERVED)
BEST MOVIE/MINISERIES
American Horror Story
Luther
Sherlock (dawnybee: “Scandal in Belgravia” alone should be the reason why it wins in this category.)
Page Eight
The Hour
Game Change
BEST ACTOR IN A MOVIE/MINISERIES
Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) (dawnybee: Will Benedict have his chance at justice since losing the BAFTA to Dominic?)
Bill Nighy (Page Eight)
Woody Harrelson (Game Change)
Idris Elba (Luther)
Dominic West (The Hour)
Kevin Costner (Hatfields & McCoys)
BEST ACTRESS IN A MOVIE/MINISERIES
Jessica Lange (American Horror Story)
Gillian Anderson (Great Expectations)
Julianne Moore (Game Change)
Patricia Clarkson (Five)
Lara Pulver (Sherlock)
Emily Watson (Appropriate Adult)
BEST REALITY SERIES
Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations
Hoarders
Sister Wives
Kitchen Nightmares
Pawn Stars
Undercover Boss
BEST REALITY SERIES - COMPETITION
The Pitch
Shark Tank
So You Think You Can Dance
The Voice
Chopped
The Amazing Race
BEST REALITY SHOW HOST
Tom Bergeron (Dancing with the Stars)
Nick Cannon (America’s Got Talent)
Cat Deeley (So You Think You Can Dance)
Phil Keoghan (The Amazing Race)
RuPaul (RuPaul’s Drag Race)
BEST TALK SHOW
Conan
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
The View
BEST ANIMATED SERIES
Archer
Adventure Time
Bob’s Burgers
Family Guy
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
~Yet another award nominations were announced. This time for the Television Critics Association.
Individual Achievement in Drama
Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad,” AMC)
Claire Danes (“Homeland,” Showtime)
Peter Dinklage (“Game of Thrones,” HBO)
Jon Hamm (“Mad Men,” AMC)
Jessica Lange (“American Horror Story,” FX)
Individual Achievement in Comedy
Louis C.K. (“Louie,” FX)
Lena Dunham (“Girls,” HBO)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Veep,” HBO)
Jim Parsons (“The Big Bang Theory,” CBS)
Amy Poehler (“Parks and Recreation,” NBC)
Outstanding Achievement in News and Information
“Anderson Cooper 360” (CNN)
“The Daily Show” (Comedy Central)
“Frontline” (PBS)
“60 Minutes” (CBS)
“The Rachel Maddow Show” (MSNBC)
Outstanding Achievement in Reality Programming
“The Amazing Race” (CBS)
“Dancing with the Stars” (ABC)
“The Glee Project” (Oxygen)
“So You Think You Can Dance” (Fox)
“The Voice” (NBC)
Outstanding Achievement in Youth Programming
“iCarly” (Nickelodeon)
“Phineas and Ferb” (Disney)
“Sesame Street” (PBS)
“Switched at Birth” (ABC Family)
“Yo Gabba Gabba” (Nick Jr.)
Outstanding New Program
“Girls” (HBO)
“Homeland” (Showtime)
“New Girl” (Fox)
“Revenge” (ABC)
“Smash” (NBC)
Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries and Specials
“Downton Abbey: Masterpiece” (PBS)
“Game Change” (HBO)
“Hatfields & McCoys” (History)
“Hemingway & Gellhorn” (HBO)
“Sherlock: Masterpiece” (PBS)
Outstanding Achievement in Drama
“Breaking Bad” (AMC)
“Game of Thrones” (HBO)
“Homeland” (Showtime)
“Justified” (FX)
“Mad Men” (AMC)
Outstanding Achievement in Comedy
“The Big Bang Theory” (CBS)
“Community” (NBC)
“Louie” (FX)
“Modern Family” (ABC)
“Parks and Recreation” (NBC)
Career Achievement Award
Dick Clark
Andy Griffith
David Letterman
Regis Philbin
William Shatner
Program of the Year
“Breaking Bad” (AMC)
“Game of Thrones” (HBO)
“Homeland” (Showtime)
“Mad Men” (AMC)
“Downton Abbey: Masterpiece
Heritage Award (a kind of career achievement for shows)
“Cheers” (NBC)
“Lost” (ABC)
“Saturday Night Live” (NBC)
“Star Trek” (NBC)
“Twin Peaks” (ABC)
**“Star Trek” deserves this award was revolutionary in its way and deserves this but while I’ve and/or many enjoyed those shows in the moment, I wonder how many people actually care about them now. Let’s just look to the alums of “Star Trek” if we’re talking about staying power
*The TV captains came together recently at a con
*George Takei has Green Lantern thoughts.
*A semi-oldie. Nichelle Nichols and Mr. President
To go back to which show deserves the Heritage award and the lasting power of media.
Leonard Nimoy giving the Commencement speech at the College of Fine Arts
*The new generation of Trekkers wrapped filming on the second movie. After a few set pictures were leaked, JJ Abrams and the studio made sure the set was protected from photographers. Only after it wrapped did the cast start posting their pictures.
Like Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg and Benedict Cumberbatch and Chris Pine.
At Hooters? Of all places. Though their fries are good.
The morning after
Why did the guys make that...wait for it...trek to Hooters? Let Simon explain.
We were all up near Oakland shooting at a facility called the National Ignition Facility. So we were all recording on location, which meant we were together to hang out. When we’re shooting in LA, everybody lives all spread out - up in West Hollywood or Los Feliz or whatever. I was living on the West Side. One night the Mayweather fight was on and [Chris] Pine wanted to watch it. The only place it was screening, because it was a Pay Per View, was a Hooters. So the whole cast and crew went to Hooters to watch this boxing match, which was hilarious. Then Zach [Quinto] said “Why don’t we go to San Francisco?” So me, Chris, Benedict [Cumberbatch] and Zach got in my car and we drove to San Francisco at 10pm and had this awesome night in the dark heart of the city. It was great! At one point we were listening to “Make Some Noise” by the Beastie Boys because Adam Yauch had just died. It was our in the morning and we were banging up Broadway in San Francisco after this amazing night out. It was so much fun.”
*Meanwhile, the future awaits James Tiberius Kirk
Anton Yelchin for Interview Magazine
~Back to TV. We’re in the beginning of awards season and the For Your Consideration ads are rolling out. The WB has their selections posted on a site http://www.wbfyc.com/. Some studios are attaching DVDs to the trades. In Emmy Magazine CBS submitted a disc with “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race”, while ABC sent out a disc with select episodes of “Dancing with the Stars”. A&E provided a disc of “Paul Simon’s Under African Skies” concert film. WB inserted iPhone and iPad skins with “Carry On and….” Phrases for their various productions.
USA Network had a large fold out with their stars. It was odd who made the cut. The only person from “Psych” photographed was James Roday while nearly everyone from “Suits” was in the insert.
Speaking of “Suits”, I caught up on the season and I really like it. I can’t wait for its return.
But know what I found out that blew my mind? Gabriel Macht’s dad is Stephen Macht who played the dad in “The Monster Squad”!
Stephen with his “Monster Squad” children Ashley Bank and Andre Gower then
And now
Gabriel with his brothers
Young Gabriel on “90210”
Even younger Gabriel and his costar Patrick J. Adams
*Also Emmy Magazine and The Hollywood Reporter ran portraits of potential nominees like
The cast of “Sons of Anarchy”
Charlie Hunnam, twink no more
Hollywood Reporter gathering
“Why won’t anyone talk to me? I’m the prettiest man in Westeros!
“Justified”s Walton Goggins
Mayim Bialik
Michael Pitt
His body language is so standoffish. He’s so separate from everyone.
But I went to a Q&A with Michael Pitt and he can actually laugh and smile! Huge shock to me. I just always felt he was this emo weirdo.
Like so
really stuck on himself person but he seems very open. I think he’s that rare actor who doesn’t like to talk about himself and just doesn’t know how to fit in with other actors outside of the work. He doesn’t seem like the type who’ll go to every industry event. He doesn’t look like he wants to do spreads for Generic Magazine USA. He’s more at ease with talking shop. So I think these shoots unnerve him.
Michael Pitt Q&A
The moderator was Stacey Wilson of The Hollywood Reporter. They screened Pitt’s final episode “
Mod: I’m glad to see you’re well and living. Before I get into Boardwalk I want to start from the beginning---when you decided you wanted to be an actor.
Pitt: I’m a little nervous. Are you all actors?
Mod: Pretty much.
Pitt: Thank God!
Mod: Were you quite young when you knew this is what you wanted to do or did you have someone in mind? An icon or a career model?
Pitt: I was always performing whether I knew it or not, I was always performing. I knew---it sounds really cheesy---but yeah, I knew pretty young I wanted to do that. I would just stare at the television and watch movies at a very young age that were weird movies, I guess, for a young child to watch. One of them was “Lawrence of Arabia”. I was really mesmerized by it.
Mod: Did your parents encourage you to watch the classics? Is that how you were exposed to it early one?
Pitt: Yeah. They were classics and also horrible movies that we watched. When I was in front of the television I wasn’t talking (laughs). I think that was….(the reason they encouraged it)..I wasn’t bouncing off the walls. that.
Mod: What were your parents like? Were they creative people? Performers?
Pitt: My parents are…my father is a mechanic He works at an auto shop with his brothers. And my mother worked for my grandfather’s business in Jersey. He had a restaurant-a pizzeria. I got the pizza paddle (mimicking a swat) when I was bad (laughs).
Mod: Did you voice your desires to them? “This is what I want to do Mom and Dad?” That you wanted to act?
Pitt: I did, I did at a young age. It was a big family; they didn’t make a lot of money. They were tired, y’know? I was the last one. My pops was kind of….I would say, “I want to perform. I want to sing. I want to dance.” And he (would be like) “I don’t know what to do with you.”
Mod: Did you have an outlet? Were you in school plays? Did you have friends in the same mindset.
Pitt: I would do plays in neighboring towns. I didn’t want to do it in my town because there was a danger of being beaten (chuckles). It was kinda a double life, literally. There was a Jewish community theatre that took me in pretty young under their wing. That was certainly an outlet for me.
Mod: Did you see yourself becoming more of a theater actor or did you inspire to be in film?
Pitt: I moved to New York when I was (pauses) I’m right in the middle of doing a character right now so as I’m talking to you I’m trying really hard to get rid of my East Coast accent …just so you don’t think I’m nuts.
Mod: No, keep it.
Pitt: I moved to New York and my first job when I made it in my mind was I got a play off-Broadway, downtown New York at New York Theater Workshop. I think I was 19 when I’d got the play. I had been out of school since I was 15. I moved to New York saying that, “This is what I want to do.” It was hard. I had no education. I was going up against people with more means, more money, more time, more education. In my mind, back then, probably because I was real young (I thought) if I give myself a fall back I’m going to fall back on it, so I’m not going to give myself that.
Mod: How did you support yourself? Did you have a job?
Pitt: Yeah, I had a million jobs. I was a bike messenger. That was a horrible job. I was on a BMX. I would peddle downhill..it was a horrible, horrible job. And I was so young everyone thought I was trying to buy a Nintendo when I’m trying to make rent. I had bills. I did do extra work for maybe two full years. That was actually great. It was a great job. You could be around actors. It was degrading at times, but I was able to pay my rent with that. I joined SAG doing that. Everyone wanted to be SAG but no one could afford it once you got there (the audience laughs knowingly). I really just wanted the health insurance.
Mod: Did you have anyone advising you? Helping you make decisions? Or were you just going where the auditions took you?
Pitt: I had an amazing teacher that I met at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I sorta crashed these courses they were doing on the weekends. A friend of mine was going and I went with her and I sat in on the classes, but I didn’t pay and I didn’t have money to pay. The teacher let me stay there for a couple of weeks (then) kept me after and said, “Are you going to pay?” I don’t have it. I don’t know if he paid for me or just didn’t report it and he sorta became my mentor. I actually rented a room from him. We would read Shakespeare. He taught me how to read Shakespeare which changed my life. I got a play off-Broadway and I thought I was going to do that for the rest of my life. I was completely content and happy with doing that work. I couldn’t imagine a better feeling than being able to take that check---I think it was $250 a week or something --- from that play and go to the supermarket and buy my groceries and have a place. It was really special to me. But a lot of people might not know that, y’know? They assume when you see yourself on the big screen that that’s when you felt you made it. But (earning money in that first play) in fact, actually that was the time I looked at myself in the mirror and I was happy with what I had done and accomplished. It’s a really hard, brave, silly thing to do (setting out to be an actor).
Mod: So “Dawson’s Creek”. How did you book that? What were you hoping it would be for you> Did you want to be in television?
Pitt: (laughs) Wboa, we’re doing like a whole….
Mod: We’ll get to Jimmy (Darmody) later. You’ve done a lot of serious, dramatic work many people would be surprised that it was the show that launched you. It was huge. And you look at everyone from that show and they’re all huge actors now so it clearly worked for everybody. How did you audition?
Pitt: I had a manager, her name was Carolyn Anthonys and she had a little office mid-town. She had (repped) a lot of soap work, theater, commercials. I worked in that office for her cleaning up and stuff like that. I had got that play. My skills got so sharp after the play that I started looking at everything I did like an exercise. I got to the point where everything has to be a challenge. “Can I give them (casting agents) what do they want?” “What do they want from this piece of paper? From these sides, what do they want?” I got the sides for “Dawson’s Creek” and I did it. I recorded it on tape and I sent it in. They called us office and they (on the phone) were like (adopting a dramatic voice), “You’re life is going to change from this moment on.”
Mod: How far into the show was it? Was it in the middle of the first season?
Pitt: I don’t know. I hadn’t seen it. I had seen billboards, but I hadn’t seen the show. I don’t think I had a TV at the time. I rented a room from a woman who was obsessed with it. My room was in the middle of her house and that’s all I knew of the show. But yeah, so they call back and say “your life is going to change from this moment forward. We want to sign you to a four-year contract and we want to pay you what would be equivalent to possibly a million five.” And my manager at the time was like “What do you want to do?”, to her credit. And I was like “I just came off this play. I’m an actor. I don’t want to be on a teenage soap-opera.” So I said no. And we sat there in that office for, I think like, 45 minutes and we didn’t speak. Just sitting there (hunched over staring at an invisible phone) like “What the fuck did you just do?” And then they called back and we fumbled for the phone and they said, “Well, what does he want?” I said I didn’t want to be tied into something where I hadn’t met everyone and I didn’t know what the work would be like. So I think they agreed to do, like a guest starring thing where they paid me like $2 (laughs) with the idea that I would love it there and I wouldn’t want to leave. I guess I realized in that moment the power that you have when you say “no”. I think as an actor I think that it’s important to know that. Because I think there are times when actors have more power than they may think. And I certainly think I made decisions that weren’t the best because I felt like I couldn’t say no or I didn’t think it was my place to say “no”. So yeah, I did that television show. It was very strange.
Mod: Your life didn’t change?
Pitt: Honestly, yes, things did change. The biggest thing that changed was that before that I couldn’t get into the room for the things I liked. I couldn’t get into the room to audition for things I wanted to. That helped that. I could now get inside the room and that was really helpful. But it was weird. I got chased on the subway. School was out. It was very strange. Very, very strange.
Mod: Is that a feeling you didn’t like about acting?
Pitt: I got really used to doing a show (a play) and then having people come up after the show and talk to me about characters and what they liked or didn’t. I really got into that. There wasn’t any of that (with “Dawson” fans) and that was what was unfulfilling for me. But I also learned a lot doing it. I learned what rewrites were. They come in different colored pages and I was getting all of these blue pages and red pages and I started throwing them out. “I have the script already (mimes tossing paper over his shoulder). Why do they keep sending me the same script over and over and over and over again?” And on my first day of work I started doing the scene and it was not the scene anymore.
Mod: You did a lot of movies after that. What movie did you get thanks to that exposure. Was “Finding Forrester” shortly after that.
Pitt: The film I picked after that….after I did the television show there were a lot of teen, hearttthrob movies that was offered to me and a lot of money. And I was like, “This is not me. This is not how I want my career to go and I have to make a drastic choice.” And I did “Hedgwig and the Angry Inch”. (applause)
Mod: Did you read for John Cameron Mitchell? Did you know him?
Pitt: I read for him several times. I think I got paid $2,000 for the film. It was considered career suicide to a lot of people. But I had a good, strong family around me and good friends and a good manager. It’s harder to make those decisions than you think.
Mod: That movie too. That was not a commercial movie, low budget.
Pitt: It was amazing. We were in Toronto and he (John) was in full-drag (directing) “Move the trucks over there!” It was pretty amazing.
Mod: You did a lot of small indie films after that. Maybe people say you in “Hedgwig and the Angry Inch” and thought you were the indie guy?
Pitt: I had made Hedgwig and Larry Clark’s movie (the grimy, yet riveting Bully”) right around the same time and they were released about the same time which was kinda amazing because people saw two really drastically different characters, so it was good.
Mod: After that you worked with Gus Van Zant (“Last Days) and Bernardo Bertolucci (“The Dreamers”).
When “Boardwalk Empire” came into your fray was there a part you really wanted or did they know who they immediately wanted you for?
Pitt: I hadn’t made a movie in three or four years. I was composing music, I had took some time off to do that. I went to a cattle call. There were 400 people. It was like, if you had an agent (they sent you out for that show). I made a tape for it. I didn’t think anything of it. They said “Terry (Terrence) Winter wants to meet you in California.” So then I met with Terry. I told Terry I was from Jersey and my grandfather was Italian. I was asking him a lot about “The Sopranos” (Terrence was a writer on the show) and I said, “The first time I saw it I thought ‘Somebody’s dead’ To have someone writing this? He really liked that. He thought that was a big compliment.
Mod: You mean that someone was going to die? (dawnybee: She was a bit dense.)
Pitt: In other words they had someone writing it…they got it (the tone) so good. So good.
Mod: After meeting Terry how long until you secured the part?
Pitt: They were trying to push me out of the room (at that point) which happens often. Aggressive agents micromanage. So about a month later I met Marty (Martin Scorcese, the shows executive producer) at the Waldorf Astoria. I auditioned for him there. It was amazing meeting Scorcese. He is…
Mod: He’s brilliant.
Pitt: He really is.
Mod: Was he familiar with your work?
Pitt: Yeah. He wanted to talk about Bertolucci the whole time. It really was…I…to tell you the truth at that point I lived in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn. I lived there…it’s a great neighborhood, my block is great. I live there because the rent’s cheap and I don’t like my rent to affect my work, what I do. I was going to have to move out, that’s how broke I was right before I met Marty. It meant a lot that he had noticed these hard decisions I made early on in my career and it’s really amazing because it’s really few and far between (to get these opportunities). It’s really difficult seeing your contemporaries, your peers buying mansions.
(The mod tried to make some point about L.A actors vs. NY actors and the flashiness of L.A. I don’t know what she was trying to say. But Michael politely hopped on her going nowhere train and talks about how he’s unuse to the L.A way of casting calls)
Pitt: I’ve never lived here. I do know I was out here once to meet a director and I was standing in line with about fifty actors who all kinda looked like me and I was like, “Oh, shit.” I didn’t even have headshots. I thought, “I should’ve come here (to L.A) sooner. My career is really going down.” Then I get a call saying I was at the wrong audition. (person on the phone) “What are you doing?” I’m talking. There’s ten guys ahead of me. “You shouldn’t be waiting. It’s just you and the director.” I do think New York is a good place to be an actor. I don’t know because I’ve never lived here and I haven’t really…this isn’t where I made it. But I feel you kinda have more dignity when you’re not working, which I think is really important.
Mod: Your downtime.
Pitt: Yes. You’re not surrounded by the industry, there’s other problems. That said, it’s beautiful out here. It’s a beautiful place.
Mod: So you get “Boardwalk” and season one is amazing. It’s the big new show. And season two when Terry started writing the arc of Jimmy…Terry told me last month that you had gone up to him and said you had sensed an impending doom for him. He said that you asked him “Are you going to kill Jimmy?”
Pitt: I called him the first day of the second season. There were always talks about it. There were talks about it at the end of the first season. Which to tell you the truth wasn’t (pause. And this begins the series of pregnant pauses from Michael. I’m talking pauses that are the length of an elephant’s pregnancy. One could tell that he was trying to be diplomatic ) You know I could’ve…that.. that was an amazing job, it was an amazing character and it was amazing to work with Martin Scorcese and it was amazing to work with all of those actors. But six years of the same character? You know, that’s…I don’t know.
Mod: It’s a commitment.
Pitt: Yeah, it’s a big commitment. And to their testament it was the only time that I signed that. It was the only time that I signed that piece of paper.
Mod: When they said that you’re going to be…
Pitt: In other words you have to sign before you get a job like that, you sign….
Mod: So you sign it at the beginning?
Pitt: Yeah, oh, yeah. Sometimes you have to sign it before they’ll even audition you.
Mod: Sign that you’ll be okay with killing you off (dawnybee: At this point I wondered what she covered at THR? Was she writing the Hitched and Hatched section. Who the hell doesn’t get what he’s saying about signing a series contract?)
Pitt: “Killing you off the show?” Oh, no, no. You have to be okay with staying for a long time.
Mod: So when you did find out that was where the character was heading (she mentions that Terry told her about the conference call in which they were breaking the news to Michael and his phone kept dropping out) what was your first thought?
Pitt: Well it wasn’t a surprise. It wasn’t a surprise. We talked about it and it was also a suggestion from me. I also suggested it.
Mod: What point did you suggest it?
Pitt: Mid-season season two. But again, I was so happy to have worked on it. So happy.
Mod: When you got the final script was your approach in that episode different now that you had the character’s whole story at your disposal.
Pitt: I was really adamant before I took the job. I work with Playback. In other words…in my generation I’ve always been able to look at what I do. Some actors don’t like doing it. But it’s essential for me to do my job, so that was one thing I insisted on. And that was a hard conversation to have ‘cos it was with Marty. So they agreed to that. I also said, “I have to have the script.” Some of the actors don’t get the script. They just get their sides. So there was a lot of information that I did have. But as far as approaching it? I didn’t approach it differently. It was just another day at work.
Mod: When you wrapped your last day, how did it feel?
Pitt: I was the person who should’ve been upset and I was cheering everyone else up. Everybody!. The crew, the actors---one of the Teamsters started crying in my arms, (saying) “They’re gonna get it! They’re gonna get it!” That was really amazing to see that. I was really attached to the character, too.
Mod: You loved the show, but were you relieved that you are now able to move on to do another things
Pitt: It’s a little difficult---it’s a bit difficult to not know where the character is going. I was once in a position where there was a line that was being said and it was really difficult for me to say. It seemed really out of character. ** It seemed racist. It was very difficult for me to say. And I kinda said, “This is really difficult for me to say and I really don’t want to say it.” And they said, “You don’t have to say it. We can ADR someone else saying it.” (gasps from the audience). (taken aback) “Okay”. I understand. From their point of view it’s a big machine and they need to keep it well-oiled and they need to keep it flowing. If everyone put out their opinions it could be a tragedy. But that being said….that’s difficult. That’s difficult because I take a lot of thought in my choices and what they mean and what they mean to me and what it’s about. When I’m clear on that, that’s when I accept (the story). When you’re at the mercy of that which you don’t know that’s (a hard thing).
*(dawnybee: In the Hollywood Reporter showrunner roundtable Terence Winter talks about the abortive phone call he and Scorcese had with Michael about killing off Jimmy. Michael was on a fishing trip and couldn’t get reception and each time they’d call him the call would drop. Terence ended up emailing him and Michael’s response was, “Obviously I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to stay on the show, but this is the best way we could do it.”)
Mod: And it’s contrary to the way you started your careers in which it was the short turnaround plays or punchy, passionate projects and then you move on to the next project.
Pitt: Yeah. I approached the whole first season the way I approach a film. I worked every day for a year. I changed everything about myself: I changed my diet, I changed the way I walked, the way I talked. Every day off I was researching. I did that every day for a year and a half because that’s how I approach a film. You start with your prep and then you just work, work, work, work until it’s done. Then you shave your head trying to shake your character.
Mod: What did you find out about yourself as an actor and an artist that you learned from working on the show that surprised you?
Pitt: I did learn a lot…for the same reason that it was difficult, were the things that I learned. I did receive, sometimes things that I felt was really out of character for the character and that were really difficult You can receive a two-page monologue two days before. You’re filming something that everyone is going to see: your friends are going to see, your kids are going to see. It’s going to be burnt into history and you only have a couple of hours to prepare. That anxiety did up my skills as far as being able to make something presentable very quickly, So for that it was really good.
Mod: Good muscle to have.
Mod: When you turned down roles early in your career were you worried the roles you wanted weren’t going to come?
Pitt: Yes. Yes.
Mod: What instances did you say, “Wow, I can’t believe I turned that down.”
Pitt: I never felt that. There was maybe one film. Then I saw the film and I didn’t (care). I’ve never regretted turning them down. But I have many times doubted my sanity just financially. But nothing’s free. That’s a line in “Boardwalk” and it’s really true. Nothing comes without a price.
Mod: What one thing do you know now that you wish you had known starting out?
Pitt: (sitting up) That’s a good question! I don’t know. But it’s a good question. Um..what about you? I’m just trying to see (how to answer it. The questioner says she’s learned patience while being on cattle calls and doing background work which was thankless. She’s learned to be true to herself. He asked her what has she worked on and she answered “Casino”. He said, “Ah, that’s an amazing movie.”)
Mod: We can reframe it to what advice would you tell your 19-year old self when you were starting out?
Pitt: I don’t know. (Thinks….thinks…thinks. And thinks some more. I even thought he was going to pass on the question). I think…I don’t know if this is answering the question. But I had a group of friends and artists. We didn’t have a lot, everyone was very super brilliant. We were super close. If you had a slice of pizza you’d split it down the middle. We were all in New York trying to do what we wanted to do. When I started become successful it became really difficult for some of my dear friends. I don’t think this is answering your question , but I just wished…I think the harder I tried to pull them in (to my world) the harder it made it. I wish I knew that. That was something I didn’t think about.
Question from an audience member: Is there something in your technique that helps you with this role?
Pitt: Well, theater helps with everything, I think. I know that sounds cliché, a lot of actors say that. But being able to do what you do when there’s no set, no costume. Being able to make something out of nothing-make a performance out of absolutely nothing is only going to strengthen your skills.
Question: Is there a difference between film acting and theater acting?
Pitt: Absolutely. They’re very different. There’s a lot of theater actors that are brilliant on film. It’s never the other way around. I want to direct at some point and when I’m working with an actor who is a theater actor it’s as simple as saying, “You’re on 11 right now. You should come down to a 7 because there’s a film camera right there. It sees everything. You don’t have to play to the back of the room.” Usually when you make that adjustment and it’s great. Something I learned in a play I did…I wasn’t getting it right. I didn’t know why. And the director said, “You’re trying to feel it.” And I was like, “Yes, I’m trying to feel it..” And she said, “Stop trying to feel it.” I thought that was really peculiar thing to say to an actor. But she said, “You can’t feel it seven nights a week or eight (matinee). You can’t feel it every time. You have to come up with a way so that it looks like you feel it. That way when you do feel it it makes it more powerful.” That’s a really strong weapon to have as an actor. Certainly in film. You have people who aren’t feeling it and when they don’t they don’t know what to do.
Question: It was your fault I couldn’t watch “Luck” (Michael laughs). We were so devastated (by Jimmy’s death). Did you go to HBO’s website to see the reaction people had? There was swearing,
“We’re going to blow you up, HBO” “What were you thinking?”
Pitt: I love it.
Question: Did you read any of that stuff.
Pitt: I didn’t.
Question: You should.
Pitt: All right. Maybe I should. I worry about looking on the internet too much because I worry about being too conscious of what’s going on there. Because you can’t take any of the good seriously because if you take the good seriously than you have to take the bad seriously, and the truth is you probably shouldn’t take either one too seriously. I heard that people were outraged and to be honest it felt really good. It felt good. And people stop me sometimes in the streets of New York and they’re upset! (laughs) I think they connect to….I worked my ass off on that show…
Questioner: It shows.
Pitt: Thank you. So it feels good.
Questioner: Thank you.
Pitt: Thank you
Mod: Unfortunately that was all the time we have. Thank you.
*The Q&A ended quickstyle. I think even Michael was shocked. He sat there for a moment like “What now?” I think he thought it was going to be like a Paley fest thing where you can come up and get autographs and take pictures.
I waited around until he was outside. He was standing around chilling with his publicist or whoever, smoking a cigarette. People were coming up to him and getting autographs and taking pictures. Security asked if he was okay and he said, “Yeah”, so they left because he wasn’t leaving anytime soon. I was trying to think of what to say to him other than “I love your work”. I told him how much I loved him in “Bully” (such a messed up film), he thanked me. Told him that I awaited all the great work he was going to do. After the fact I realized I should’ve asked him if he was going to do theatre any time soon. That really seems to be where his passion lies.
But all things end and so with Jimmy gone, I hope there’s more Owen Slater and Richard Harrow
I loved his Q&A but re: his response to Jimmy being OOC, that is where I come in disagreement with Pitt. He obviously is conscientious not only about his character but as for himself the person delivering these words with full awareness of what weight they hold. But this is where the question of who owns the character comes into play? Does Jimmy belong to Pitt who has lived in his skin for two seasons or does he belong to Terrence Winter who created the characters? The actor and the writer share the character but ultimately when it comes down to it, who has the right to dictate where the character goes? And as much as the actor may hate it or fans, IMO it’s the creator. So if the showrunner isn’t the creator but is tasked with carrying on the creator’s vision then they should be able to take that character where they want he/ she to go.
There’s always room for discussion in any situation but if the writer/creator wants to hold true to their vision then so be it. I think Michael is confusing Jimmy with how he views Jimmy versus what we’ve seen onscreen. Does he really think Jimmy-- a man who was raised by and amongst the criminal underbelly of Atlantic City, a man who fought in a war, a man who was living in the 1920s where immigrants were treated with open and lawful disdain-is someone who wouldn’t use racial invectives… ever?? And unless there was something I missed, Jimmy didn’t hurl them at people. IIRC it was only when he and Capone were talking about their spouses being Italian and Polish. Which is bad enough, but it was him talking in the terminology of the time. Now maybe those scenes were the ones he could bear to get through and there were other, worse ones that he asked to be removed. But if he can’t reconcile that the writers are going to take the characters where they need to take them and just relax and enjoy the ride, then he should stick to theater and films where the character’s course has a finite beginning and end.
In a showrunner’s Q&A in The Hollywood Reporter talk of killing off characters came up and the showrunner for “The Walking Dead” said that Jon Berenthal tried to talk them out of killing his character even though his character dies in the graphic novel. I don’t fault Jon for trying to save his job and characters canon can be changed around (ask the fans of the “Game of Thrones” books who are upset at the deviations the show made from the source material) but writers need to be allowed to do what needs to be done creatively.
Bits from the THR Roundtable (that I haven’t fully read yet)
Glen Mazzara (Walking Dead EP): ….Jon did not want to go. He kept calling: “How about this? How about that?” I have an open-door policy, but ultimately I needed that to be about our main character. I had to stick the landing. I’ve had other people on the show who think it’s punitive when they are killed off, and it’s like, “Well, you signed up for a zombie show!”
Vince Gilligan (Writer/creator “Breaking Bad”) : (on killing off one of the characters): We went through the 12 steps of grief-the writers all season long saying, “Does (the character) have to go? (they’re) a wonderful human being, great performer, and people love this character”. But I take all my cues from “Highlander”: There could be only one at the end. (Vince also said that they shot across from “The Avengers” and that he heard the entire script had leaked onto the interwebs and Joss Whedon had to rewrite the ending.)
On what their other career aspirations are
Shonda Rhimes (writer/creator “Private Practice” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal”) About once a year, I announce to my sisters that I’m going to get my master’s in library science. I’m very serious about it. The idea of being a librarian is like the happiest job I can think of. My sisters laugh at me every single time, and they’re like, “It’s not going to happen, let it og.” But one day I’m going to have a library in Vermont somewhere.
Howard Gordon (writer/creator “Homeland”): I’ve had on my desk a couple of applications to grad school. I haven’t filled them out, but I’ve actually done the research to see what it would take. Public diplomacy is one. International relations, I mean, I’ve always been interested in that and briefly considered a career in the state department until I saw the entrance exam.
~Another writers roundtable-a much better one, just a gem of a read, is GQ’s roundtable with Vince Gilligan, “Mad Men”s creator Matt Wiener and “Deadwood” creator David Milch. They talk of writer’s ego and the business. Wiener, I have no real opinion on. What I know about him is mostly through when he was holding out for a better budget and salary for “Mad Men”, which impacting “Breaking Bad”s budget. But Giligan and Milch have wonderful minds, very insightful men.
Take this bit:
GQ: Why is that still true (that TV is the bastard child of film), when it's obvious that some of the best work is being done on TV?
David Milch: The symbol retains its hold long after the substance which the symbol is supposed to represent has lost its real basis. Look. [pulls a stack of scratch-off lottery tickets from his pocket] I just stopped and got gas, so, like an idiot, I bought a bunch of scratch-offs.
[He distributes the tickets. Feverish scratching ensues and continues throughout lunch.]
Matthew Weiner: If we win, what happens?
David Milch: You keep the money. Please do. What I'm trying to illustrate is that none of us, thank goodness, needs $10. And yet we willingly submit to the hold the symbol has on us, associated with luck. In the same way, the mystique of the film writer holds long after the substance-in which films were a more powerful medium. That's not true anymore, but the symbol still has its own autonomous reality.
Weiner on the other hand. I don’t know if I can get behind his way of thinking. He’s like the Kurt Sutter of the gang but with less bitterness and misogyny.
GQ: Given all the time in the world, would you choose to work this way on your shows, or would you prefer to write everything yourself?
David Milch: That's a good one. All the time in the world? The "B" answer is, I'd write it all myself. Which is to say that in my vanity and egoism, I would think that that would be the way to proceed. And I know deep down that the better answer is: Even having all the time in the world, it's better to collaborate with your brothers and sisters. It's ultimately the richest experience. But there's a kind of intolerant economy that happens: "Just let me do the fucking thing myself."
Matthew Weiner: And it's wrong.
GQ: To feel that way?
Matthew Weiner: Yeah. What I find at this point is that the room generates story. But the actual writing and the consistency of it-in the end, I will probably have to do it myself. And I want to. And I think they want me to. I think it's demoralizing, on the one hand, to not see a lot of your stuff shot, but I keep telling them, when I was [a writer and executive producer for] The Sopranos, nine times out of ten somebody would come up to me and say, "That line was so great." And I'd say, "That's David Chase." It's hard for writers to understand that when you sign off on an outline, they feel it's finished. And you know it's just a stab at it. Actually, I don't think they could even work if they knew how unfinished you know it is.
GQ: What makes a toxic writers' room?
Matthew Weiner: People fighting for control. People fighting for Daddy's attention. I write about it all the time. We have that scene in the episode "The Suitcase" with Don yelling at Peggy for complaining about not getting enough credit. I tried to explain to people that I was both of those people.
GQ: I thought that scene was specifically about the question of putting your name on so many Mad Men scripts, which has been somewhat controversial.
Matthew Weiner: I don't know why anyone would want their name on something that they didn't write. I don't want to discredit somebody for taking the first swing at something, because that's huge. Even if I throw out the whole thing, they've helped me. But over 80 percent of it is rewriting and I'm going to put my name on it. If I keep more than 20 percent of your script, I'll leave your name alone. Basically, it's a question of ego. I can't stomach the idea of someone not knowing that I was involved in it. For the well-being of my daily interaction with the people I work with, I felt it best not to have to watch somebody go up and get an award for something I had written every word of. I'm not Cyrano de Bergerac.
GQ: The counterargument is that your involvement is implied by the show-runner position.
Matthew Weiner: I am breaking with tradition on some level. And immediately I'm defensive. David did do it on The Sopranos. He did it less than I do, but he did do it. And I felt it was better for our relationship. I tell my staff that my response wasn't "Well, he's just going to rewrite what I do anyway." It was "I'm going to write a script that he will not be able to change." And I got there.
GQ: Do you other guys put your names on scripts you've done extensive rewrites on?
Vince Gilligan: Not typically.
David Milch: Not typically.
Matthew Weiner: They're classier than me.
Vince Gilligan: But that said, every single thing Matt just said is bulletproof. I guess I don't do it because Chris Carter didn't do it, and I learned everything I know from working with Chris on The X-Files. But I recall times when I would rewrite someone else's script and I would miss out on some money but, worse, know that the world wasn't going to know the work I'd done. If you're going to stick to tradition and suffer in silence and it's going to give you an early heart attack, why do it? So I'm impressed. Hats off to you, Matt.
~Another topic of writers was addressed in the Vulture’s take on why Dan Harmon’s contracted wasn’t renewed for the fourth season of “Community”. In short it came down to the show not being profitable enough for the studio to put up with his behind-the-scenes issues. The article talks about notorious showrunners like Aaron Sorkin (remember when he was busted for possession of ‘shrooms and crack?) who are difficult and run over budget (though in Harmon’s defense he even said at one of the Paley fests that they do an over/under where they go over the episode budget for one, so they balance it out by coming in under budget for the next. That’s how we got great bottle episodes like the monkey stealing Annie’s pen and the Dungeons and Dragons ep), but their shows are ratings successes so the network puts up with them.
~
Tonight on NBC watch Lois Lane and Hawkman save lives or some ish on “Saving Hope”!
*Justin and Booster Gold (and Galen Gerhing) was photographed by a fan
*Alan Ritchson may have another series. His pilot “Super Fun Night” was passed on by CBS but is now under consideration by ABC. But ABC is tweeking it. I’m hoping it’s a simple change of going from three-cameras to a single cam shoot and not dropping his character.
*Michael McKean is out of the hospital following being hit by a car. He took an introspective moment on Twitter.
Here Molly Ringwald tweets about Michael’s burgeoning romance with Annette.
~I leave
Clark allowing Lex to live out his fantasy of strange men ripping off his clothes
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of Clark. We all have that hidden desire to be dominated.”
