Tag Archive for 'HBO'

Would anyone have thought that a year ago Kathryn Bigelow would be directing a hot pilot for HBO?  Not me.  No way.

Here’s the breaking news headline I got in my box Sunday from The Hollywood Report:

HBO snags Kathryn Bigelow:
HBO has snagged the hottest film director at the moment, Oscar nominee for “The Hurt Locker” Kathryn Bigelow.

Hottest Film Director of the Moment- and they are talking about a women!

Seems that she is venturing out of her comfort zone (i.e. no action) and directing the light drama Miraculous Year by John Logan which is: “an examination of a New York family as seen through the lens of a charismatic, self-destructive Broadway composer.”

This is her third venture to into TV having directed some episodes of Homicide and Karen Sisco.

What a difference a year makes.

HBO Snags Kathryn Bigelow (Hollywood Reporter)

HBO seems to be on a great track.  Based on her Golden Globe winning and Emmy nominated performance as Katherine Harris in Recount, HBO wanted to get into the series business with Dern.  But she wanted to wait for the right vehicle

Enter Mike White (Year of the Dog, School of Rock).  He has written the script for Enlightened in which Dern star.

The show is about a:

“formerly self-destructive woman who, after having a spiritual awakening, becomes determined to live an enlightened life, wreaking unintended consequences.”

They hope to shoot the script by the end of the year.  If all the shows in development work out, HBO would be my favorite network EVER.

Laura Dern seeks enlightenment at HBO (Hollywood Reporter via Yahoo)

I still miss Men in Trees but I am glad that Anne Heche is back on TV.  This past Sunday the NY Times Magazine did a profile of Anne Heche who is appearing in the show Hung and the upcoming movie Spread.   I thought Heche came off great in the piece.  Way more normal and thoughtful that I expected.

It was interesting to note that she lost out on her potential to become a “leading lady” after she fell in love with Ellen DeGeneres.  I love how Hollywood is so progressive but would quickly throw anyone under the bus who doesn’t conform to the “norm.”  I bet it was even a bunch of gay guys who wouldn’t hire her.

The romance actually destroyed her prospects as a leading lady; the deal for “Six Days, Seven Nights” was the last one made as the affair became public, and no more were offered.

But the quote that has everyone freaking out is from the executive producer and co-creator of Hung Colette Burson where she stated:

“We auditioned a lot of people,” says Colette Burson, the co-creator of “Hung.” “It is incredibly difficult to find beautiful, talented, funny women over 35.”

Burson seems to have pissed a lot of people off with the remark.  Having had recently interviewed her I couldn’t believe she said that and sure enough last night I I got an email from her looking to set the record straight.

Here’s what Burson had to say about the situation (by phone):

I do think it’s always hard to find pretty and funny.  It’s a difficult combo and it’s something that’s talked about in Hollywood.  Blonde and funny.  And that is definitely true with Anne.  She’s very funny and real and she’s blonde and she’s pretty.  And this role happens to be for a beauty queen who needed to have serious emotional acting chops and at the same time was funny.

In terms of the quote: it is such a shame that I was either too tired to express myself correctly on the issue or part of my quote was left out because it is something that I think about a lot and I actually consider myself a warrior on front lines of this issue.  It’s something I am actively involved in on a daily basis in a way that most people are not.  Nevertheless I do think that the part that I would have added or the part I hope I did add was that it is difficult to find an actress over 35 or over 40 who is funny and talented and is still working and has not quit the business (emphasis mine).

And by difficult I mean harder than you think.  There are not hundreds of people who show up for the auditions because you need someone who has been working, and you need someone whose agent sends them.  In my personal experience I know five actresses off the top of my head if not 10 who are around the age of 40 who no longer go on auditions anymore because they are too fucking bummed out by how few roles there are.

Just to illustrate: Dmitry (Lipkin her husband and co-creator of Hung) and I went into CAA and we were talking about all the different roles and I said what we are really going to be looking for is an actress around age 40 who is talented and funny and yet can really act.  They seemed to not want to address my question so I brought it up again and they said what about x? (a well known 45 year old film actress)  I said no, we don’t want to cast celebrities.  We want to cast real women and this is a rare opportunity.  We don’t want you to send us your beautiful starlets.  Send us real women with real bodies who can act and who can be comedic.  And he looked sort of sheepish and said I’m really ashamed to tell you we don’t have anyone like that on our list.

I said you mean to tell me that you this huge agency can’t send us a woman who is 40 and they said no.  And he said I know it’s horrible but it’s the state of the business that they really aren’t a lot of roles for them.

It’s such a bummer.  When you cast a role, casting agents will send you who has been working.  My friends who haven’t had a job in five years who quit because it was such a fucking bummer they are not sent out because they don’t have managers anymore.  They are not in the game anymore and it’s not because they aren’t talented.  Of course they’re talented.

So what I am saying is that it’s hard and the situation is more complex than you would think.  Because we are one of the few shows that frequently has these types of roles open…like the role of Tanya.  How often does that type of role occur?  Jane Adams is this gem and people say why don’t we see her working more?  And the answer is because there haven’t been that many roles for her.  We actually wrote a role for a failed poet who is over 40 and she is not ms fabulous.  She doesn’t wear clothes from Neiman Marcus  or Fred Segal.

So I hope the message will get out there.  Maybe I was tired, maybe I was a dumb ass but I feel so passionately about the issue.  But that aside our actions on a daily basis is that we fight this issue.  We conceive of characters that are women over 35 of all body types.  We debate them and we fill them out in the writers room.  So please forgive me for the asinine quote but look at what we are actually doing because we passionately care about this issue.

Do you think that clarifies the issue?

Here’s another interesting tidbit.  The first couple of episodes were written before Heche was hired.  So as of this week they started writing for Anne. Burson was effusive in her compliments about Heche.

As it (the season) continues we begin to write to her more frequently because she hits it out of the park with whatever she gets.

Anne Heche is Playing it Normal Now (NY Times)

All of a sudden HBO seems to have gotten the feminist bug.  First they commissioned Theresa Rebeck to a do a pilot for Julie White called Women’s Studies, and now the team of Marti Noxon and Dawn Parouse Olmstead are writing a pilot for Diane Keaton to play a “Gloria Steinem” type editor who tries to reignite feminism by starting a porn magazine.

I personally don’t think starting a porn magazine would reignite feminism but Diane fucking Keaton in a TV show?  Another nail in the coffin for movies cause if Diane abandons there is only Meryl Streep left and she can only make so many movies a year.

But seriously, I love Marti Noxon (not that we know each other).  She recently worked on Private Practice and Grey’s Anatomy as well as Mad Men and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  She is an incredible writing talent and Keaton is very lucky cause I guarantee that script will be way better than some of the movie ones she has been in lately. The article stated that once Keaton signed on they decided to incorporate some of her personality in the character. I just hope the character doesn’t wear gloves ever except on a winter day, shows her neck, and wears other colors besides white cause I can take that in one or two films but in a whole series, please.

The only thing I’m concerned about is whether HBO would move ahead on two similarly themed shows.  I want both those shows on the air.   How cool would it be if there were feminist shows on TV with both Julie White and Diane Keaton.  I’d just pee in my pants with excitement.  I wish I could get this excited about some of the upcoming movies.

Noxon, Olmstead set Grady Twins slate (Variety)

h/t Rebecca Traister

Update: There was an article in the HR about this too and I have to say I’m disappointed with both women’s quotes.  First, Parouse Olmstead says:

“There seems to be a new evolution of what women are sexually. Women are acting more like men sexually.”

then Noxon adds:

“We’re attracted to genres, horror and darkness, and we wanted to make sure we reminded each other that we won’t become Vagina Prods.,…Our goal to make scary shows for television.”

I hate both quotes so much!  What is all the crap about women acting more like men sexually?  Isn’t it just that women are actually talking about sex more and more comfortable talking about it more and that TV and films are exploring it more?  We’ve come a long way from Lucy and Ricky having one foot on the floor.

Maybe to some it seems like men are the norm that everything is based on, but I don’t operate in that universe.  Women are not little men.  We react differently to drugs, radiation, commercials etc.  Just because something is about women doesn’t mean that all women want to talk about is their vagina or their feelings or their laundry or god forbid their cats. Give me a break.  Have you watched Saving Grace or In Plain Sight recently?  Those women.  Tough.  Scary.  Intense.  Real.  That’s how I like my TV.

I beg you ladies, don’t buy this crap.  If you make a strong show about women being women we will watch.  If you write a show about a woman who wants to be a man we won’t.  It’s pretty simple.

Diane Keaton Set for HBO Comedy (HR)

Hung creators Dmitry Lipkin and Colette Burson

When I first read that HBO was going to air a show called Hung my first reaction was huh?.  Why would I want to see a show about a guy’s dick?  But since I had once spoken on the phone with the show’s co-creator Colette Burson and thought she was great, smart and feminist and since HBO shows are usually awesome, so I figured I’d give it a chance.  And I was right.  I really like Hung.

In case you don’t know, the show is about Ray (Thomas Jane) a former pro athlete and high school teacher and coach whose life is in the shitter.  He’s broke, his house has basically burned down, he has no insurance so he is living in a tent in the backyard and it’s cold, his kids have moved in with with ex (Anne Heche) and he is all around miserable.  But he does have one thing going for him…he’s really well endowed.  Jane Adams plays Tanya the woman who encourages him to use his gift to make other women happy.  So she becomes his “happiness consultant” aka pimp.  Jane and Adams both rock.  I especially like watching Adams gain self confidence as she gets better and better at her job.  While the show is about prostitution and sex work it does not glorify it and the women who use Ray’s services are treated with dignity and are given back stories that are interesting.  I’m excited to see where the show goes.

Hung airs on HBO on Sunday evenings.  Check you local listings.

Women & Hollywood spoke with Burson about the show.

Women & Hollywood: How did you come up with the concept of Hung?

Colette Burson: We (she and her co-creator and husband Dmitry Lipkin) were looking for a male character that would be interesting to write.  We felt that violence was tired and we wanted to create a character that was very masculine yet not violent.  Ray comes across as extraordinarily masculine and by that I mean not only having masculine sex appeal and a masculinity that hangs on him like a perfume, but I also think he presents a masculine perspective as he goes through the world of women.  The show does not emasculate him nor does it feminize him.

W&H: Talk about why Thomas Jane is so good as Ray.

CB: As writers, and for me as one of the female creators I felt that Ray was sexy being imperfect.  There is something in women that really responds to a man who is imperfect and struggling.  The female mind turns off when they are imperfect and not giving a shit about it.  But something deep happens in the female psyche when they are trying to keep their head above water whatever their problem is.  We really root for them.  And so Ray is not perfect.  He’s beautiful but flawed.

W&H: And the other characters? The kids are not typical TV kids.

CB: We wanted the kids to be real.  Our goal is to make all of our characters real as well as idiosyncratic.  So I was not interested in the eye rolling teenager.  I was not interested in open defiance because I have seen it on TV.  My best friend in high school was very passive and stoic.  Her parents were going through a divorce and she was really my inspiration for these characters.

W&H: And Jane Adams as Tanya?

CB: There is this whole thing about how everyone wants to be a writer and that connects to the fact that in most everyone is a well of creativity that could come out in all sorts of ways.  I do feel that a lot of creative people through geography or fate or fear are trapped in uncreative places.  There is such a level of being trapped as a creative person in a world that does not value creativity.  There was a line in the pilot – “it’s not my fault that things that should be valued and cherished aren’t valued and cherished.” (some version of that).  Saying it’s not my fault that creativity means nothing in this world.  She’s not a conquer the world type.  So when we write Jane’s character we really feel like we are writing to the secret creative longings of people everywhere and particularly those in the mainstream.

Continue reading ‘Interview with Colette Burson, co-creator of Hung’

Megan and Pinki go to the Oscar

It’s hard to watch Megan Mylan’s Oscar winning short film Smile Pinki without having emotions.  At the beginning it was sadness, but by the end you can’t stop smiling as much a Pinki the young Indian girl whose life is totally changed through the surgery to correct her cleft lip.  Pinki is an amazing girl with adorable pony tails and a loving dad.  She can’t go to school and is ostracized because of the way she looks.  Luckily, she meets Pankaj a social worker from G.S. Memorial Plastic Surgery Hospital whose job is to travel to different villages and find children who need the surgery.  This meeting changes her life forever.

The people who do this are amazing and I don’t think I will ever see those Smile Train commercials in the same way anymore.   The hospital performs about 3,000 of these surgeries a year with a 100% success rate.  The problem is that there are so many kids who need the surgery with 35,000 children born annually with clefts in India.  Smile Train operates in 76 developing countries and this year will have helped its 500,000 child.  Wow.

Megan Mylan is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker and Guggenheim Fellow.  Her film Lost Boys of Sudan, co-directed with Jon Shenk, won an Independent Spirit Award and was nominated for two national Emmys.

Please check out Smile Pinki starting this Wednesday, June 3 at 7pm on HBO.  Other HBO playdates:  June 7 (3:15 p.m.), 9 (9:45 a.m.), 13 (11:15 a.m.) and 22 (3:15 p.m.) HBO2 playdates:  June 5 (1:15 p.m.), 7 (6:00 a.m.), 16 (5:30 p.m.), 20 (4:45 p.m.) and 24 (9:15 p.m.)

Megan Mylan answered some questions about her film:

Women & Hollywood: What about this topic moved you to want to make a film about it?

Megan Mylan: I enjoy telling stories of compelling people going through life transforming moments, and Pinki’s story definitely had that.   I’m also attracted to stories of people making a positive impact in the world, and Dr. Subodh and the incredible work of the Smile Train sure fit that.  I loved the idea of being with a young child and their family when they find out that something that has so devastatingly defined their young life can be easily and completely cured.  Journey stories are also always fun to tell, especially one set in a region as culturally and visually rich as Uttar Pradesh, India.

W&H: How did you pick the two children you would highlight?

MM: It was very important to me that we capture the first moment when the social workers meet the children and their families.  Unfortunately I didn’t have the budget to have the meter running while we traveled the countryside hoping to meet up with a character strong enough to carry the film.  The solution I found was working with a great Indian field producer named, Nandini Rajwade who went out ahead of time with Ravi Anand, one of the social workers from Banaras under the guise of being generic health workers to scout potential characters, they talked with several children with clefts, but didn’t reveal anything about the surgery program.  Nandini sent me photographs and character sketches of about a dozen children.  Pinki and Ghutaru both jumped off the page, there was a great sparkle in their eyes.  Pinki’s special closeness with her father and the strength of Ghutaru’s mother were evident right away. Then when I arrived with the crew we went out in the field with Pankaj in the area where the children lived, but let him find them as he naturally would, handing out flyers, visiting schools and asking folks along the way.  Casting is so important for character driven films, but  it’s always a lot of gut and a lot of luck getting it right.  As soon as I met Pinki and Ghutaru, I was relieved and excited that we had made the right choices.

W&H: What did you learn most from these children and their families?

MM: There is really a different life rhythm in Banaras and the surrounding rural areas where our characters come from.   The hospital while it was doing a dozen surgeries each day and receiving new patients 24 hours a day,  was such a serene and nurturing place where doctors and social workers alike took the time to sit and listen. I am trying to incorporate a bit more of that calmness into my life.

W&H: Why are you interested in making films about social justice issues?

MM: They are  issues and people who grab my heart and my head.

W&H: What role does the documentarian have now in light of the fact that news organizations have cut back so much in covering issues and topics of people like the ones covered in your film.

MM: It makes me sick all of the cut-backs in international and community reporting, we’ll be a much poorer world for it and I’m not sure documentaries can fill the news void. Unlike news reporting,  I make films that leave people a lot of space to come to their own conclusions. What I love about verite or observational-style filmmaking is its ability to pull an audience into a reality that may be very different from their own.   I’m inspired by the simple idea that the better we know each other, the better this world is. Hopefully people come away from the film emotionally satisfied, having learned something, curious to find out more and thinking about their own life in a slightly different way.  But it’s not news.

W&H: Women direct far fewer fictional films than docs.  Why do you think
women are so more successful in documentaries?

MM: Maybe egos are smaller in the documentary world, it attracts a lot of great women and men who tend to say “we” more than “me.”  One of the best things about working in documentary is all of the fabulous people I get to call colleagues.  I love that most of the “big cheeses” in the industry are women.

W&H: What advice would you give to women who want to get into documentaries?

MM: The same advice I give to anyone interested in documentary.  Find someone whose films you love and who you respect as a human being and do whatever it takes to work with them.

W&H: What’s next for you?

MM: I’m directing a film on race relations in Brazil.

Alison Pill

Loved this NY Times piece this weekend about actress Alison Pill and writer Sarah Treem.  Smart, self-sufficient and in sync, these two women who not coincidentally spend a lot of time in the theatre are making a big difference working together on the HBO series In Treatment.  I for one love Pill and have been awed by her work on stage.  She always comes off much older and more mature than she is.

“Alison kept reading the scripts, saying, ‘You’re writing my life,’ and I was like, ‘No, actually, I’m writing my life,’ ” Ms. Treem said during a recent joint interview with Ms. Pill. “We just hit a perfect storm of personality and art. It will probably never happen again.”

Sarah Treem

In a rapid-fire back and forth the two women discussed how anger in “so-called perfect women” (to use Ms. Pill’s phrase) makes people uncomfortable. And not just anger: emotions in general. “Emotions are irrational and illegitimate, and you’re not supposed to have them or show them,” Ms. Pill said heatedly — and then laughed at herself.

The perfect storm of personality and art.  Great comment.

I am so glad these young women found each other and are working together.  I can’t wait to see what they do next.  I’m sorry I missed Sarah’s play A Feminine Ending directed by Blair Brown last year.   I also will now probably take a look at In Treatment.

Co-posted on wowOwow.com

“Grey Gardens” premieres April 18 on HBO, and before you watch it, read what Executive Producer Rachael Horovitz says about stars Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore, the Kennedy family and the enduring women behind the legacy. Horovitz, whose film-producing credits include the movies About Schmidt, State and Main and Next Stop Wonderland opens up to Melissa Silverstein, wowOwow’s correspondent and founder of the website Women & Hollywood.

MELISSA SILVERSTEIN: You use the Maysles’s 1975 cult documentary “Grey Gardens” as the frame for this version. Can you explain why it was so important?

Rachael Horovitz and Michael Sucsy (writer-director, Grey Gardens)

RACHAEL HOROVITZ: I feel like I was completely raised on that film. My mom had gotten me to see it when it came out and she had a great sense of irony. She passed away over 20 years ago and it was one of these things that we shared. It was completely her idiom, as far as the poetry of it, the humor and the zaniness. And my brothers and I really grew up knowing lines from the movie, and quoting them to one another. The documentary was just a beloved favorite film.

The backstory on this film starts with Michael Sucsy (the film’s director) who had written a script that predated my knowing him. It was a chronological, very rich, very ambitious period piece that started with the ’30s and went in order through Big Edie’s death. It included the full debutante ball, and the Inauguration of JFK in Washington. It would have definitely cost a lot of money. Also [Michael] hadn’t gotten the rights to the documentary, and so his script skirted the documentary. Coincidentally, I was trying to get the rights to the documentary. I knew Albert Maysles and we were talking very seriously about making a deal together to do a film based on the documentary, when I learned about the other project.

MS: OK.

RH: So we decided — in the aftermath of the two Capote films and the terror of having that same experience — to “get married.” I brought the documentary rights and they brought their script and we redesigned his script by patching the documentary into it.

MS: Did you have any intentions of having it be a theatrical release?

RH: Many. That was the plan, but we felt that either way we would be very, very lucky. Unfortunately, the theatrical arm (of HBO), Picturehouse, was shut, as was Warner Independent, which was the in-house Time Warner company. I actually started my studio-career working at Fine Line, which was the precursor to Picturehouse. I definitely brought to this production team almost too much knowledge of how easy it is to flame out in the specialized theatrical market. And I was really, really pushing for making the film with HBO, because I thought that if we did have to give up theatrical, that the trade-off would be fantastic.

MS: That’s very smart.

RH: And probably more people — and this has now become a cliché to say this — but more people would see it on HBO than would see it in five or six art-house cinemas around the country.

MS: What is it about these women that is so endearing?

RH: Well, I don’t know that I can answer it for everyone. But if I answer it for myself maybe it’ll be universal. They really feel like family. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a relative whom they dearly love, who also embarrasses them and who’s painfully at odds with the outside world. And if not a relative, then a friend or an in-law. I think a lot of people relate to this story directly. And while I don’t feel that I relate to it directly, it’s not an accident that my mother adored this movie. She had a lot of the Edies in her. She never had a job. She was a true artist in her soul.

She was incredibly intuitive, verbal and clever, and she was actually a very talented painter. I think that what makes the documentary so irresistible and so memorable is that they’re just completely charming and unique characters. And the words that come out of their mouths are as sophisticated and entertaining as anything in theater — and I go all the way to Shakespeare now.

Continue reading ‘Interview with Rachael Horovitz, Executive Producer of Grey Gardens’