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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Feb 12, 2021 13:10:03 GMT
A fascinating article/interview with Shelley Duvall:
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Post by kds on Feb 26, 2021 18:01:35 GMT
This is somewhat along the lines of the trend of remakes and reboots in movies and TV.
After the success of movies like Malificent and Joker, it seems one of the new things is stand alone movies or shows devoted to one character. Cruella Deville is getting her own movie and Wednesday Addams is getting a TV show.
I guess this is slightly more original than an 11th Halloween movie or reviving Frasier, but I wonder how many more we'll see. Personally, I think elaborate origin stories for villains isn't a great idea as it sort of takes away some of the mystery and intrigue about them. That's one of the reasons that I didn't like Hannibal Rising. The story was good, and the book and movie were each well done, but I think it makes the audience identify and sympathize a bit much for somebody who's supposed to be an antagonist. Although, Hannibal Lecter is probably more of an anti hero since he's never tried to harm anyone that we're supposed to care about.
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Post by Kapitan on Feb 26, 2021 21:52:59 GMT
I've been thinking about this and when it has worked.
I think you see it most successful in TV sitcom spinoffs, where popular characters have led to other shows with some success (and lots of failure). Many are named after those characters.
- Fraser spun off Cheers to huge success in the 90s and 00s.
- Rhoda was a reasonably successful show in the 70s (and spun off the Mary Tyler Moore show, based on that character). - Jackee spun off 227 with moderate success in the late 80s.
- Maude spun off All In The Family in the 70s with some success.
You also have A Different World following Denise Huxtable, Just the 10 of Us following the coach from Growing Pains, Facts of Life following Mrs. Garrett from Diff'rent Strokes, and many others.
In serious media, has it ever really worked? Not sitcoms, not superhero movies... I can't think of any great examples in that universe. Maybe some of J.D. Salinger's books and long stories about the Glass family, but they weren't in some initially successful novel or anything. In fact I believe the first appearance was one character, Seymour, in a short story (Perfect Day for a Bananafish). After that, there was Franny and Zooey, Seymour: An Introduction, Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters, etc.
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Post by kds on Mar 1, 2021 13:37:26 GMT
I honestly can't think of any examples in serious media.
I don't even know how much I'm into it with escapist entertainment. As much of a Batman geek as I am, I'm very lukewarm on the Joker movie. The previews sort of look like "Taxi Driver, but the Joker." I don't feel like I need Cruella Deville's backstory either.
I guess at the end of the day, I'm far more interested with reboots and remakes, depending on the source of course. I loved Full House as a kid, but struggled to get through one episode of Fuller Blouse.....er....um...House (How rude!!). I have zero interest in Punky Brewster. I might check out Frasier, but without John Mahoney, I can't imagine it'll be nearly as good.
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Post by kds on Mar 3, 2021 19:02:57 GMT
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 4, 2021 13:52:29 GMT
The original cast of the inaugural Real World has gotten back together and a reunion series will run on Paramount+ / CBS All Access. I watched it in real time and remember that series well: it was very unusual, ahead of the reality TV craze.
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Post by kds on Mar 4, 2021 14:10:09 GMT
And I remember back in the late 1990s when network TV starting filling their schedules with reality TV. I remember thinking "this tread won't last long." Oh, what a fool young KDS was.
Another blight on pop culture that we can thank "M"TV for.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 4, 2021 14:20:39 GMT
You know what, though? I actually thought the Real World was GREAT ... for a few seasons. And it was still relatively unique for a few seasons. Then Road Rules entered the picture. Then Real World-Road Rules Challenge. Everyone on these shows realized they could become celebrities despite not being particularly good at anything--famous for being famous.
I always blamed labor disputes for the burst of reality TV, though. I don't think the Writer's Guild striked in the late 90s, but there was something along those lines going on at the time, and the networks and production companies all just seem to have simultaneously realized, wait, we can save a TON of money by just filming a bunch of young, attractive, drunk, slutty 20somethings for a while and editing it together later into semi-coherent storylines. And they did.
On the positive side, I think that same situation spawned the quality TV that eventually came about on HBO and elsewhere. People wanted an alternative to reality garbage, but didn't want to revert to the horrible sitcoms that had dominated up to then. By the mid 00s there was a real renaissance.
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Post by kds on Mar 4, 2021 14:25:58 GMT
It's a concept that I just never got into. Not even the Real World.
In addition to the Writer's Guild, the salaries for actors on scripted shows were going through the roof in the late 1990s. So, I definitely get the fiscal appeal of reality TV. I'm still partly surprised that some of the original shows have lasted as long as they have.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 4, 2021 14:41:53 GMT
Yeah, the hit scripted shows were definitely paying insane amounts. The Seinfeld final season, Friends, and presumably others I've forgotten. Meanwhile (as always) many-to-most new sitcoms and dramas were being canceled, often in their debut seasons!
To that end, I look back at what I think was one of the greatest shows of my lifetime, and it only lasted one (abbreviated and often interrupted) season: Freaks & Geeks. You've got Judd Apatow and Paul Feig overseeing it, great writers, plus Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jason Segel, Linda Cardellini, Busy Phillips, Martin Starr, the legendary Joe Flaherty, Samm Levine, Dave Allen...
But that was probably the peak era of reality TV, all the time, everywhere. Not just those MTV shows, but you start getting all those dating shows and survival type shows EVERYWHERE. And so Freaks & Geeks gets shuffled around from here to there and unceremoniously disappears. It's my biggest grudge of television maybe of all time: that show can't find a network home, can't get promoted, can't be shown to a big audience?
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Post by kds on Mar 4, 2021 14:47:10 GMT
In the late 00s, IFC (I think) started showing reruns of Freaks and Geeks. I watched it, and probably caught most of the series since it had a very run short, despite my being a fan of much of the talent involved (despite what Mr. Feig did to my beloved Ghostbusters), I really couldn't get into it. I will say that I'm a little surprised it hasn't gotten more of a following over the last 20 years.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 4, 2021 14:53:42 GMT
You didn't? Interesting.
For me, it hit all the right notes. Nostalgia, but not JUST nostalgia. A certain amount of the real awkwardness of high school. Funny. A deep enough cast to keep multiple storylines going all the time. And maybe best of all, the cast didn't really have any "good guys" and "bad guys." There was nobody in it who wasn't flawed, yet nobody in it who wasn't shown in a good light, either. Everyone was treated sympathetically. It's hard to do that, especially in a comedy. (Dramedy, maybe.) Especially in those years, most TV showed far simpler characters than that.
I really liked it. (Obviously.)
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Post by kds on Mar 4, 2021 15:04:35 GMT
You didn't? Interesting.
For me, it hit all the right notes. Nostalgia, but not JUST nostalgia. A certain amount of the real awkwardness of high school. Funny. A deep enough cast to keep multiple storylines going all the time. And maybe best of all, the cast didn't really have any "good guys" and "bad guys." There was nobody in it who wasn't flawed, yet nobody in it who wasn't shown in a good light, either. Everyone was treated sympathetically. It's hard to do that, especially in a comedy. (Dramedy, maybe.) Especially in those years, most TV showed far simpler characters than that.
I really liked it. (Obviously.)
I'd have thought the mix of 80s nostalgia and the talent involved would've pulled me in. And, I can't fully explain why it didn't. I was sort of hoping it would be on par with The Wonder Years, and maybe it was unfair for me to make that comparison, but it just didn't do it for me, and when IFC stopped showing the reruns, I just had no desire to seek it out (and we're talking around 2009 here when I was single and childless).
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Post by kds on Mar 4, 2021 19:40:13 GMT
I'm not sure if anyone on here watches Rick and Morty. I tried a couple of time, but wasn't my thing. However, I've noticed that their fans seem to have become some of the more infamous on the internet. I recently had an encounter with one on a baseball forum of all places. When I said I didn't like Rick and Morty, the response was "It's genius. You might not like the show, but to not recognize it as genius is disrespectful. It's like Picasso. I might not appreciate it, but it's probably because I don't have the intellect to process it." I did not reply. www.newsweek.com/whats-wrong-rick-and-morty-fans-how-adult-swim-nerds-became-meme-824581As this article states, this isn't new, and nowadays it's hard to determine if something is actually an insufferable fan or faking the piss at their reputation, but this is interesting to me.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 4, 2021 19:47:11 GMT
I never watched it. And once it started being talked about as essential, that honestly turned me off even more, making me less likely to ever watch it. I can't stand being told that I HAVE TO watch/listen to anything.
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