The Unreal Side of Reality TV 8/20/11

With the exception of everyone working in reality TV, most people in the industry will tell you that the genre is the death of serious drama, documentary, news, et al.

It makes stars of mediocrities, glamorises the inane and takes advantage of the stupid.

And why? Because it’s cheap.

The difficulty arises when you look at the reasons – or, rather, reason - behind the ongoing success of reality TV: it is, quite simply, hugely popular. Katie Price, Peter Andre, Kerry Katona and The Only Way is Essex crew in the UK; the Kardashians, Paris Hilton and all the Real Housewives Of . . . clans in the US – like them or loathe them; this is what audiences want to watch.

The reason why is a more difficult one to understand. Why would anyone want to watch Kerry Katona in yet another reality show? Has there ever been a woman who has achieved so little and yet made so much money from her mistakes? If she really is bi-polar, then it is serious medical help she needs, not more stints in the public eye, exposing her every word and action.

I feel the same about Katie Price. Never mind that her new love Leandro has a limited grasp of English; so does she.

In the States, I recently tried to go a day without hearing or seeing the surname Kardashian; it was impossible. It was like deciding to go to Iceland and vow not to see any snow. The family really is inescapable – in their own shows, on news items, showbiz reports, on the net. Ubiquitous doesn’t even begin to cover it.

I’ve been more of a fan of The Real Housewives of . . . series, but that’s because a group of women bitching amongst themselves always makes for good viewing (it’s as true when this happens in soap as in reality TV).

This week, however, the reality behind reality TV and, in particular, this series, came to the fore when the estranged husband of one of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills committed suicide.
On Monday, Russell Armstrong, father to two sons by previous relationships and also five year old Kennedy with his BH wife Taylor, was found hanging in the friend’s house where he had been staying since separating from his wife. He had not left a note.

The papers have reported that in recent months he had claimed that The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills had destroyed his life: that any problems he and his wife had had were exacerbated by the public exposure.

It has since emerged that he was in debt, having struggled to keep up with the outward expressions of wealth demanded by the show, and that he allegedly physically and emotionally abused his wife.

A report also surfaced that he had sent an aggressive letter to Camille Grammer, another of the Housewives and ex of TV star Kelsey, after Taylor confided in her about her husband’s abuse. According to these reports, Taylor had to have reconstructive surgery when filming began, so badly beaten was her face.

It is also claimed that a book revealing Russell’s bisexual proclivities was about to be published.

Now it is claimed that Russell’s family are considering suing Bravo TV, which makes the programme, and especially if they show so much as a frame of Russell.

But is it fair to blame Bravo for his death?

Russell was an adult who, for all the pressure he might have come under from his wife to appear in the show, could, quite simply, have said No. Every reality show always throws up people who claim to have been “destroyed” by it afterwards, yet they always seem to be the people who have not made as much money as everyone else who has appeared.

The difficulty of appearing in front of any TV camera, whether it be on reality TV or in a proper job (yes, I am making a clear distinction), is that it changes you; it has to, in order for you to be able to do the job well. You are not in the pub, chatting with a few mates, with half a Stella spilling out of your mouth and down your front; you are inviting people into your world, for better or worse, and asking for their opinion on how you live your life.

And, to that end, you are always on show and trying to portray the person you want them to see, rather than who you actually are - yet it is that, ironically, that reveals the truth you are often trying to hide. That's because you have to be a bigger personality for the small camera and that means that every aspect of you, good and bad, is magnified tenfold.

I’ve been in front of the camera a lot of times. I was an extra in Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein and was demoted from grieving widow in warm church to starving, freezing peasant in courtyard, because I was considered too short to be a widow (“But short people can be widowed!” I complained, to no effect).

I filmed a series called So You Think You Want a Healthy Lifestyle? for Channel 4, when they left me with a camera to film myself, if and when I had something to say. They had to bring eight hours’ worth of extra tapes on day one, after I filled up the initial batch on the first night.

I appeared regularly on daytime TV for many years and had to be “on” as they say in theatrical terms all the time. For those presenters doing two hour stints of live TV every day, I have nothing but admiration. My own ten minute slots were stressful enough; performing for long periods really is like playing a part in a multi-faceted play in which you are never offstage. You cannot help but reveal aspects of your true and often not so pleasant self.

I could go on. The camera brings out your inner egotistical monster and, in the case of Russell, I suspect it released demons he was already, at best, trying to keep under control. But reality TV is not the perpetrator of the crime - only the key to setting free what is safer locked up.

With or without the show, Russell might still have taken his own life – many abusers do; it is the ultimate act of violence. It is desperately sad that he has left a grieving family, including three children.

But let’s not lay blame at the door of reality TV.

That’s too easy a copout for what was obviously a complex, tortured soul whose problems off camera always threatened to overwhelm him.

Collared By The White Collar Audience 7/7/11

Where have White Collar’s opening titles gone?

Where is the energetic music and cheeky grins of Neil and Peter?

I am in mourning.

White Collar (USA Network) is one of my favourite shows on television. The chemistry between Matt Bomer (ex-con Neil) and FBI agent Peter (Tim DeKay) makes them one of the best double acts in the history of crime drama. With the exception of some of the external shots (allegedly New York, but which High Definition turns into something resembling your old kitchen), it looks, sounds and feels fantastic.

But I am in mourning for the old titles.

What they did was set up the very spirit of the show and the relationship between, and characters of, Neil and Peter. The new music is dull and creates no sense of tension of the drama to come. The boxes featuring the characters are a throwback to Sixties titles but have been given a modern twist that is out of kilter with the almost quaint elements that follow. They don’t work because they convey a sense of disconnectedness between the various elements of the show.

If I had never seen White Collar, I would have no idea as to what I might be about to see and, in the time it took me to work it out, I would be reaching for the remote.

So many fans have complained about the new sequence that USA executives have decided to let viewers decide on whether the show should revert to the old sequence and music. Voting opens tomorrow afternoon (Friday 8th July); the choice will take effect in two weeks and continue all season.

It is a brilliant piece of marketing and one that would be inconceivable in the UK, where viewers’ opinions are less respected than they are here. I recall when Dallas replaced Barbara Bel Geddes as Miss Ellie, such was the outcry against her successor, Donna Reed, that Ms Geddes was reinstated. Likewise, the outcry when the show killed off Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) and resurrected him as having been part of wife Pamela’s dream. Unfortunately, over on the sister show, Knot’s Landing, they continued to mourn him long after Pamela (Victoria Principal) had woken up.

I am very admiring of a network that listens to viewers who, are, essentially, paying the wages of everyone in the organisation. Executive producer Jeff Eastin is a keen Twitterer, and his updates about the show, its characters and plots, also help to engage the audience. If I have to record White Collar, I can’t go on Twitter until I have watched it, such is the enthusiasm of followers who cannot help but give away the plot.

I’m as involved as anyone in this latest off screen drama and will be casting my vote tomorrow – in favour of the old sequence, old music (versus new sequence, new music – you can’t mix and match). I’ll also be trying to catch another criminal on the White Collar website and drooling over the wonderful Mr DeKay and pretty Mr Bomer.

And here’s my prediction for the vote: overwhelmingly in favour of the old titles and music.

Watch this space.

Fathers - at LIfe, Death and a Bit on the Side

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Grouponism: The 12 Step Cure 4/1/11

My name is Jaci and I am a Groupoholic.

And I didn’t even know I was an addict until I found myself waking up halfway through the night and going to my computer, for fear of having missed a bargain while I was sleeping.

Grouponism.

It started out like any other addiction. At first, a small pleasure, with me innocently signing up to what appeared to be a great bargain. A mere $35 for a $60 meal? What could go wrong? A $40 facial for $20? All the things I loved, suddenly at my fingertips, for considerably less money.

Then there were deals for things I didn’t even know I needed until Groupons came into my life. Boot camp! Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of it before! Six $80 sessions down to the bargain price of $25! I’ll take it!

More things followed. Rally driving. Golf. Rambling. Scuba diving. Infra-red sauna treatments. Microdermabrasion (whatever that was). Tattoos. If it was a bargain, I wanted it. And, down to three hours’ sleep a night and needing to grab the best Groupon deals before everyone else, I invariably got it.

Incredible. I was rich, and the more I spent, the richer I seemed to become.

I was living a double life and loving it.

I had easily been able to segregate my Groupon life from what I called my normal life. My own Grouponism was a guilty secret - I Grouponed alone, I hid my Grouponism from friends and family – but I carried on with my Groupon-free existence, never wishing to openly acknowledge what was happening in that dark place.

The hotels and bars I frequented were Groupon-free zones, where I laughed at people afflicted by Grouponism. How I sneered at their desperation and their sweaty little hands, frantically waving their pieces of paper proclaiming the deal, and making demands upon staff whose eyes you could see burning with Groupon hatred.

Now, it’s all gone horribly wrong; suddenly, Grouponites are everywhere.

In all my once Groupon-free zones, there are dozens of people, sheafs – reams - of paper scrabbling for air space, and customers demanding why they can’t use their Thursday Groupon on a Friday, and why the sliders have lamb rather than beef fillings, and why you can’t use the Groupon for a Martini instead of a glass of wine.

Having got the bargain, they have to find something wrong with it and are never happy. I also notice that Grouponites never tip. The deal spells it out: you have to tip the staff, as tips are not part of the Groupon; but the Grouponites are so intent on landing a bargain, they ignore the small print of the deal.

I now feel permanently incensed on the staff’s behalf – at least, once I pick myself up off the floor after being trampled on by a hoard of Grouponites. It’s heartbreaking. All my favourite places have been turned into scenes from the Alamo.

Suddenly, I don’t want to be associated with these people, but have I left it too late? Has my addiction already taken too strong a hold? I have begun to loathe the very sound of the word.

Groupon. The monster that is Groupon.

Is there a Dr Groupon in a dark office, wondering, like me, how his wonderful creation got so out of hand? How all of us, wanting a bargain and signing up for our discounts, have turned so resentful, owing to the fact that now, when we go to our favourite social destination, we have to hack down fellow Grouponites who stand in our way?

Having resolved to wean myself off, however, I discovered that there was no help available, no known cure: no counselling groups, no programmes, no newspaper articles revealing how we might dig ourselves out of this mire. And so I set about devising my own 12 Step Programme that I hope may be of use to those finding themselves in the grip of the same addiction and wishing to step off the Groupon ladder once and for all. So, WE:-

1. Admitted we were powerless over Groupons – that our lives without bargains had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power lesser than our consumerist selves could restore us to sanity – Debt.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Debt, as we understood It.
4. Made a searching and fearless financial inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to Debt, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our Groupon inclinations.
6. Were entirely ready to have Debt remove all these defects of consumerism from our weak and feeble characters.
7. Humbly asked Debt to remove the word Groupon from our computers and to block all invitations from future Groupons.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed in our fight to beat them to a bargain, and became willing to make amends by returning all gifts purchased by Groupons.
9. Made direct amends to such people, wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them even more than we already had, when we trampled them while rushing to the discounted Martini.
10. Continued to take personal inventory of our bank accounts and, when we noticed our savings mounting up, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with Debt, as we understood It, praying only for knowledge of Its will for us and the power to carry that out in getting our bank accounts back into the red.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other Grouponites, and to practise these principles in all of our financial affairs.

My book on the subject will soon be available on Amazon, by the way, price $29.99. $10 with a Groupon.

Grief Encounter 3/30/11

Sometimes, you just have to accept that there are people whose sole purpose on Earth is to give other people grief.

Invariably bitter about the lot they have been dealt themselves, their strategy lies in the hope that in making others miserable, they will somehow feel better about themselves.

It never works, and they never learn that it never works; the poison just keeps eating away under the illusion of power.

I’ve had the misfortune to meet quite a few of these people in my time here; in fact, one of the reasons I have not been writing this blog regularly is that some of the individuals in question have made me physically ill. I have met many wonderful people in the two years I have been here, in particular those working in the film and TV industries, which were the reason I came in the first place; but this little pocket of nastiness has left a bad taste in the mouth.

With escalating blood pressure, for which it now seems I will have to go on medication, I went to a bookshop to see if there was anything that might help me deal with the problem in different ways.

There was the Bible of course – be good to them who hate you, love your enemy, turn the other cheek – but I wasn’t quite that far along the forgiveness route at that point.

Then, I happened upon a book titled Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff – and Most of it is Small Stuff. It explains how most things that keep us awake at night, worrying, don’t really matter, and offers some techniques to help you deal with the difficult people you encounter in life.

One idea is to think of the bad people in your life as babies, long before evil struck them down. So, that’s what I tried to do with my detractors. Bonnets, dummies, toys. I thought of them as young children, innocently playing in the park. I focused on the things beyond their control that turned them into the bullying adults they have become.

This technique was sort of working, until the baby images were quickly dispelled from my mind and replaced by something that made me see right to the heart of my enemies in an instant: the Addams Family.

Forget all those nice little babies; the Addams Family was much closer to the reality. A TV show that was a satirical inversion of the ideal American family, it featured an eccentric, wealthy clan, who delighted in the macabre and were unaware that other people found them bizarre or frightening.

In real life, I had found my own Morticia (well, more like Morticia’s less attractive elder sister - and without the charm): a woman with only occasional wit, and a deathly disposition.

I had also found my Lurch, another member of the group, a man of few words, but regular grunts, sighs, or simply gesticulations. I endured only tenuous connections with the extended posse, with whom Morticia was regularly falling out, although more than one of them sounded as if they could have been a spiritual, emotional and body double for the African Strangler, the Addams' family’s man-eating plant, Cleopatra.

The hypnotist Paul McKenna once tried to help me overcome my fear of clowns by transforming their faces in my head into something more pleasant. I managed to do the transformation work with my Morticia and Lurch, although when you consider that the Addams Family was the surrogate family I replaced them with in my head, it gives an indication of the hell they put me through.

It still astonishes me that you can be incredibly kind towards people, support them through their woes (in Morticia’s case, a lot), and then they treat you poorly, cruelly, unfairly, and often, where finances are concerned, dishonestly.

How do such people sleep at night?

Are they sick, disillusioned, or just plain stupid?

Or just not very nice people?

I come from a culture where I was brought up to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, unless proven otherwise, and I have a long record in being fair and kind, both professionally and personally.

But when I came to LA, people warned me not to be as trusting as I had always been, and it’s true that I have often been disappointed, when what appeared to be one thing on the surface turned out to be the opposite.

I suppose that’s just life: it’s a cliché, but we really do live and learn. The weird thing is, that when I first met the Addams Family, all of my instincts said Run! I thought I should listen to my head rather than my heart, and it’s not the only time I got that wrong in LA.

City of Angels? There are quite a few here. But when you watch them fly too close to the sunny illusion, their wings, like those of Icarus, turn out to be a great deal less substantial.

So, having learned that, I’m trying not to sweat the small stuff and will be returning to writing on a more regular basis.

Some people, at the end of the day, are just liars, thieves and bastards. One day, they may wake up and realise that the rotten lot they have been handed in life is of their own making.

Yes, they were once all somebody’s baby.

It’s just bad luck that in my case, they happened to be Rosemary’s.

Naked Ambition And AADD 3/2/11

Which came first? The Adult Attention Deficit Disorder, or the desire to be a porn star?

It was the question I was left pondering the most, as I watched Sunday night’s Oscars in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

I did not know that my New Best Friend, to whom I had just been introduced, either had AADD, nor was into acting in porn films. She told me of the former herself and, when she left, another member of the group asked me if I was okay with her chosen career.

To be honest, I had no way of knowing if it was true, and nor did I care; she was fabulous company, and the great thing about someone with AADD, I discovered, is that it really takes the heat off your having to contribute too much to the conversation when you’re tired.

It was a relatively quiet Oscar week for me. On Friday night, I bumped into old friends at Soho House and also made some new ones. I stayed in on Saturday, in preparation for the big day, and had a drink in Beverly Hills’s Villa Blanca before moving onto the hotel.

Villa Blanca is owned by Ken and Lisa Vanderpump, the Brits who have become TV celebrities after their appearances in The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Both Ken and Lisa (who handled herself with immense grace, dignity, wit and charm throughout the series) can regularly be seen in the rather exquisite white décor of the restaurant, which is now packed. It was pretty full before, but now it’s a TV tourist hot-spot it’s seriously crammed all the time; at mid-day on Sunday, I managed to get the restaurant's only available seat - at the bar.

But back to the Polo Lounge. The main barman, Greg, was presiding over all with his characteristic friendliness, which is extended to everyone, locals or strangers. He has an uncanny knack of remembering an awful lot about his customers, irrespective of how long it has been since their last visit.

I first met him when I arrived for a holiday in LA in November 2008, shortly before moving here in April 2009 (I can still hardly believe I have been here nearly two years). His effusiveness and calm in a crisis (he managed the crowded bar single-handedly for several hours on Sunday) makes the place one of the most pleasurable social venues, especially for women on their own who don’t want to appear like hookers (not something that can be said for all the hotel bars).

The ceremony was showing on a single TV screen, but I still managed to miss most of it, owing to the noise from customers. Nobody, unsurprisingly, was going to shout “Shssssh!” when the shortlist for Sound Mixing was announced, but for the biggies (actor, actress, director and film), there was practically a riot if somebody breathed over the announcement.

There were cheers from a few Brits for Colin Firth, who won for his portrayal of the stammering George VI in The King’s Speech, and although I was not a huge fan of the film, I adore Colin. Not only is he a lovely man and a terrific actor, he got his shirt wet in the 1995 TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and livened up the review I wrote about it no end.

I wasn’t too bothered about missing any of the big parties when I saw who had attended them. Katie Price was reported as having been all over some Argentinian model at Elton John’s post-awards bash, and anywhere within a mile of that woman is still 1760 yards too close for me.

I almost ventured up to Chateau Marmont, where the Weinstein bash was taking place, but no sooner did the thought enter my head than I fell asleep with jet-lag in the Polo Lounge – not before I had given the porn star some tips, obviously.

So, awards season is at an end and we can get back to talking about what we were wittering about before it all began – Charlie Sheen’s apparent meltdown. It’s now the biggest real life soap opera in LA, out-eclipsing even The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills as THE show to watch.

Charlie also has a porn star as one of his entourage, albeit not the same one as I have. She’s in the papers as much as he is, not only kissing him but fawning over his twin boys, who yesterday were removed from the house.

Where must your career be if you see the ranting, bizarre behaviour of Charlie Sheen as a step up the ladder? You’d have to have a serious case of AADD first to think that, and then to follow through with it.

Which brings me back to my opening question: which comes first, the porn or the AADD?

Who knows. But where Charlie Sheen’s wallet is concerned, neither ever seems very far behind.

Anyone For Charlie Sheen's Tennis Balls? 2/5/11

The whole coke scene has never been something that has interested me, but if the papers are to be believed, LA is under a veritable storm of the stuff.

It’s been reported, for instance, that Charlie Sheen went on the three-day bender with five porn stars and was witnessed diving into a pile of coke the size of a tennis ball.

I’m a bit of an innocent in these matters, so is that a lot of coke or not very much? Does the tennis ball go in one nostril, or is it split between two (a sort of Deuce!)?

One report said that he took it in a pipe. Can you fit a tennis ball in a pipe?

If it’s consumed a few grains (is that what it’s called, or granules, like gravy?) at a time, wouldn’t he still be there, with a teaspoon?

And why has it made his teeth fall out? Maybe he’s chomping a bit too hard on the tennis balls.

Like I said. I’m an innocent in these things.

Now, to the five porn stars. Five! Isn’t that a bit greedy? And surely once you’ve seen/had one porn star, you’ve seen/had them all. One suggested that Charlie was on a suicide mission; well, if anything fatal had occurred and the woman then confessed to having thought that, yet did nothing to prevent it, I’d say that she was on a manslaughter mission – and one without much man’s laughter (geddit?), to boot.

The porn stars worry me even more than the tennis ball. Were they of the kind provided by the madam who now claims Charlie likes fetishism and spanking? How do those fetishes manifest themselves? Do the women Charlie allegedly hires take it in turns? There’s not that much to hang on to on a bloke, so let’s say that one gets the ears, one the mouth, one the bum, and one the penis, what does the fifth one do?

Maybe she’s the ball girl, running back and fore to the bathroom to get more tennis balls. Or maybe the fifth one gets to do nasal sex when there’s not a tennis ball blocking the airways of the only orifice not being taken up by the other four "stars".

As you can tell, I have given over much valuable thinking time to these matters, and as I am totally addicted to Two and a Half Men (although not in a tennis ball kind of way), I can’t reconcile the brilliance of Charlie Sheen as an actor with the mess that seems to be constantly paraded before us in the papers, even though his character bears more than a little similarity to his real life persona.

I actually feel very sorry for him. Yes, people choose to take drugs, drink, sleep around, and embark on all sorts of destructive behaviour; but the reasons why they do so are complex and vary hugely from individual to individual.

He has been criticised for choosing not to go into rehab, but be treated at home, and I say good on him. Rehab hasn’t worked for him; it doesn’t for many people – you only have to witness the number of celebrities being readmitted time after time to see that. It hasn’t worked for Sheen five times now.

If you crashed your car five times, wouldn’t you stop and think . . . Hmm, maybe this car thing’s not for me. Maybe I should take a bus.

Rehab is big here. Huge. Big subject, big business. It’s part of their tourist industry. On one Hollywood tour, the open-top bus stops outside Michael Jackson’s house and plays the 911 call that was made to the emergency services on the day it is claimed he either took or was administered a fatal overdose. Pretty horrific, by any standards, but even more so when there is a man facing trial for his alleged part in the star’s death.

There is a ghoulish sense of impending doom about Sheen, but to me, being looked after in his own home might do him a darn sight more good than being wheeled off to yet another 12 step programme that, in my experience, has worked for only a very small minority – and there is one argument that says that of the small percentage it works for, they would, by the law of averages with any illness, have recovered on their own.

That’s for other people to argue, and if something works for you when you’re rock bottom, then all well and good; but there is not one pill for every ailment, and if Sheen now wants to try something different, he deserves support, not more criticism for having chosen a different route. He is a huge talent and I wish him well in his recovery and hope finds peace.

The whole thing has certainly put me on my guard here. The next time somebody calls out “Anyone for tennis?” I’m going to think twice.

“New balls, please”? No, thanks.