Q&A: Small Screens & Sex Workers
Saturday, November 26, 2011 at 9:00AM Since there were so many television centric questions in last week's "Ask Nathaniel" insert, I figured we'd have to give them their own Q&A post. We'll get to the movie questions on Tuesday. But for now let's handle all these questions involving smaller screens than we usually go for.
BENSUNCE: Like George Clooney, which current television actors would you see having a successful career on the big screen?
Expecting anyone to have Clooney-sized silver screen success after switching from the small screen is, well, a recipe for disappointment if not disaster. He's a 1%er. Most of the people I enjoy on TV now already had their movie shot and have gone small screen for better / bigger roles than they were getting at the movies. But the current small screen actors I think absolutely deserve and would ace major big screen opportunities are Christina Hendricks and Jon Hamm (Mad Men). On a riskier pipe dream note I hope Harry Shum Jr (Glee) gets at least one romantic comedy opportunity both because he's adorable and because Hollywood really needs to end their strange delusion that Asian men can't be romantic leads... or leads at all.
SEAN D: If you were in charge of the Emmy awards how many nominations/wins would Buffy the Vampire Slayer have received?
I knew talking about Buffy earlier this month would get send us all spinning back in time to Sunnydale. It's always difficult to answer questions like this because so much of what should have been nominated and won in any given year in any given artform is contingent upon the competition that year. But I will say that I think Buffy's second, third and sixth seasons had no business whatsoever not being nominated for Best Drama Series and I think they should have won the Best Series Emmy at least once for Season 3. I'd probably have nominated the show itself for seasons 2 through 6 consecutively though I get why people have issues with seasons 4 through 6. But the standard lines of complaining about those seasons are wrongheaded ("it should have stayed in High School") and short sighted ("it got too depressing!"). In the first short season Buffy The Vampire Slayer was merely finding its footing and establishing its identity and the last season was a badly paced mess with a couple of wonderful moments but the rest is gold. As for writing Emmys, it's inexcusable that "The Body" and "Once More With Feeling" didn't have writing and directing nominations and in both cases you could make strong arguments for actual winged statues, too.
Shouldn't "Doppelgangland" have secured Alyson Hannigan an Emmy nod?For acting the show deserved the following nominations at least (Season #)
Actress, Drama
Sarah Michelle Gellar (2, 4, 6)
Supporting Actor, Drama
James Marsters (2), Anthony Stewart Head (6)
Supporting Actress, Drama
Allyson Hannigan (3,4), Emma Caulfield (5, 6)
Guest Actress, Drama
Juliet Landau (2), Eliza Dushku (3)
Guest Actor, Drama
Harry Groener (3)
TOM M: Which recent film would make the leap to television and prove a MASH-ing success? And which television series has the bones to make a great film?
Crazy difficult question. The mediums are so different despite all the crossover these days. I don't know about M*A*S*H* level success ratios for anything but I would love love love or should I say I would ♥ a series based on I ♥ Huckabees that focused on the existential detectives Vivian (Lily Tomlin) and Bernard (Dustin Hoffman). I would fill my DVR with that nonsense and delete every other show taking up too much room. I could see a series based on Inception working fairly well and I think Scott Pilgrim vs. The World should have been a TV series to begin with.
Nathaniel's dream television series
The other way doesn't work for me because I think the best television series are always the ones that understand themselves as serials whereas movies are short complete stories... or should be.
TERENCE: You're cast in a film version of American Horror Story and you have to choose a famous male actor from this past decade to be a ghost who will possible have sexy time with you, who would you cast? Lol
Wait, what do you mean "possibly?". That's such a cocktease. But, trust, nobody wants to see me acting. I've only tried it twice (high school) and I was horribly wooden. Unlike many bad actors, I thus removed myself from the acting equation because the performing arts are too sacred to have untalented people taking up space!
MARTHA: From all the CW shows, what's your favorite?
My best friend from Puerto Rico likes to call all of their shows "Pretty White People With Problems". I literally don't know their shows because almost nothing bores me more than television shows with big casts of interchangeably attractive actors of no discernably special acting talent (Life is too short to settle for competence!), That said, I enjoy Ringer because it is all SMGellary and nighttime soap cheesy though it's way more of a guilty pleasure than a pleasure. I'm having this uncharacteristic experience enjoying the huge chasm between how good it could be given all the issues it keeps raising up and it's seemingly total lack of self awareness about its veritable goldmine of identity crises drama potential. This is especially true when it comes to the sex or lack thereof. Ringer is strangely asexual in tone given its premise and its multiple story threads that involve sex; quite tellingly, almost all of the sexual storylines deal in past-tense or implied future sex but almost never with actual in-the-moment sex.
LESTER: You just got the greenlight to cast and start filming your TV Comedy Pilot about a girl starting college and have to cast an actress in the leading role who would you cast that definitley needs an career boost?
Such a narrow range of famous actresses that would be needing a career boost at 18/19. Hmmmm. Hallie Kate Eisenberg (Jesse's little sister)? She was so funny as a child actor but she hasn't been working very often these past few years and she's 19 now. Surely her talent didn't vanish with puberty if big brother is any indication. She'd be my first choice off the top of my head. Otherwise, I don't know how she is with comedy but the career of 21 year old Rachel Hurd-Wood isn't quite what I was expecting after that terrific debut in Peter Pan. Those were two that came to mind but you could always just give Sarah Hyland a college spin-off once she leaves the House of Dunphy on Modern Family.
CAST THIS!
DANIEL: You have been given the greenlight to cast a gritty 1 hr Showtime series following the lives of 3 Las Vegas sex workers and their jaded, tough-as-nails former call-girl boss. Cast the ladies!
The cliché answer here would involve Gina Gershon but I don't want to be that obvious even though we always support using Gina Gershon in entertaining ways... so I think I have to have either Daryl Hannah (who needs a great role post Elle Driver) or another blonde 80s icon Elisabeth Shue in the lead role. Shue would be both an against type casting coup and a Leaving Las Vegas homage coup. And yes the tough former call girl boss is the lead role! I wouldn't have it any other way.
I want to leave the three younger supporting or co-lead ladies up to readers in the comments, though I think one of them needs to be Lizzy Caplan (I really do). So CAST THIS! You know you want to.
• Who would yo have as the three younger Vegas hookers?
• How many Emmy nods would you have given Buffy... and for which seasons?
• And which movie has your vote for "Ideal TV series transfer"?
Reader Comments (26)
I still can't believe Buffy couldn't manage even a smidgen of those Emmy nods. UGH, it hurts me and makes me mad all at the same time!
I would cast Sharon Stone as the boss and
Claire Danes
Dakota Fanning
Megan Fox
as the younger call-girls :)
Demi Moore would also make a good tough Madam
kinda off-topic, but I remember you not liking Ricky Gervais being the GG host again, but I really like what Richard Roeper said about it:
http://www.richardroeper.com/reviews/gervaistohostglobesagainexcellent.aspx
I totally agree. And I think Billy Crystal at the Oscars is so boring. Maybe entertaining, yes, but can we please get someone who hasn't done it a million times?
I think Buffy's best season was probably 2. It's funny because a show like Vampire Diaries has been paced exceptionally well and it's also set in high school, but it's not the centerpiece. In fact, the characters are rarely seen in school.
As for TV actors crossing over, I was expecting Hamm to have gotten further than he has at this point. I heard he really got held up with this recent season being put on hold. Apparently, he was also on hold and missed out on some film opportunities. He needs a showy supporting role in a real prestige pic to get going. He would've been great in this new Tarantino film, Django.
I think Buffy's best season was probably 2, 3, or 6.
I don't understand how an episode like Once More, With Feeling couldn't get a writing or directing nod even though the praise from Hush allowed that episode to break through. Ugh.
I could've sworn that Daryl Hannah picture was of Jennifer Coolidge for a minute or so... freaky.
It seems like you're always looking down on television in your posts. Frankly, I'll take television any day of the week over the shitty offerings on film these past years.
Elisabeth Shue is replacing Marg Helgenberger on "CSI." Isn't the world a sad place?
Actually, I think I'd like No Country for Old Men to be a series, because Tommy Lee Jones's world-weary sheriff is about the only procedural I think I could watch. And you could have him mostly not solving the cases and the system getting nowhere and being cruel, like in actual police stations. And you could get some Chigurh/sheriff interaction through the first season, which would have been interesting.
And Celia Weston for the madam.
Everytime I'm watching Ringer and trying to remember, why is Poor Twin doing this again? Ioan Gruffyd walks into the frame, and it's oh of course, you get HIM. Now what is the sexy talented Ioan doing on TV? Is he trying to establish himself as an 'American' actor like Hugh Laurie? What's wrong with his agent?
It also discourages me to see Zooey Deschanel and Kat Dennings on TV. Are ther really no roles for Zooey, Kat, and Ioan in movies?
It's interesting that you nominated James Marsters as a supporting actor for season two, even though he didn't really join the cast until season four. Also interesting that you didn't nominate for Alyson Hannigan for season 6 during her whole "junkie" phase. Alyson Hannigan was excellent, possibly even perfect in the last few episodes. But I do agree, Dopplegangland just might be the greatest thing Alyson Hannigan will ever do with her career.
The biggest Emmy crime is definitely Sarah Michelle Gellar. She would get acting nominations for me for seasons 2 through 7, and she would get wins from me for 2, 3 and 6.
I can't believe you didn't nominate Gellar for season five. Her work in "The Body" and "The Gift" were her two best episodes throughout the entire series!
But this is also from a guy who considers season 5 to be his favourite (closely followed by 3, 2 and 6)
How could you not give Smidge a nod for Season 5!? The Body is her greatest hour of television ever!
Lem -- hmmm. what did i say about TV in this post that was "looking down" at it?
Barry -- i was trying to think of general arcs in terms of the various seasons. I haven't watched Buffy all the way through for like 3 or 4 years so i may start again.
Ryan -- and I did say "at least" as far as the acting nominations go ;)
I'd been thinking about a classic TV series I'd like to see as a feature film when you posted this: The Big Valley, with Barbara Stanwyck as a Western matriarch. I just checked at IMDb and guess what? It's in post-production. Jessica Lange is playing the matriarch, which is fine, but I was fantasizing Christian Bale, Michael Fassbender and Ryan Gosling as the three brothers (two legitimate, one bastard). The actual cast looks weird. Interesting (John Savage, Bruce Dern, Aidan Quinn, Richard Dreyfuss) but weird.
Oh--Vampire Diaries. The CW at its best.
I think Season 3 is my least favourite in terms of Buffy seasons only because it has the two worst episodes in the entire series: Dead Man's Party(?) and The Zeppo. Just awful.
Elisabeth Shue replacing Marg Helgenberger on CSI—after...what, 12 seasons?—is almost as depressing as Angela Bassett's joining ER's past-its-prime swan song. Come on, if you're going to segue to TV, at least aim high doing a basic or pay cable series where you *own* the joint. (Although maybe CSI is a calculated move on her part, a sure-thing way to gauge the rigors of a TV series without shouldering the weight of one initially? That's possible.)
Anyway, I've long thought 'Catch Me If You Can' could make a great serial given, duh, the serial nature of Frank Abagnale Jr.'s exploits. I wonder, too, if the small screen might be the right venue to blow out a half-baked high concept like 27 Dresses, with the breathing room TV affords for the conducive development of a lived-in, loveable neurotic character like Katherine Heigl...er, Jane. It's a scenario I'm sure others are not chomping at the bit.
I would love to see Olivia Williams as a Vegas madam. She has such a perfect combination of sex appeal, poise, and charisma that would be perfect. As for the 3 call girls, lets go with Rooney Mara as a co-lead with Olivia Thirlby and Aubrey Plaza in main supporting roles.
Mareko -- no, that totallly makes sense to me... 27 dresses probably WOULD have worked better as a television show.
Barry - you're breaking my heart. season 3 is THE best. it's got The Mayor, Faith, Doppelgangland, graduation from high school. the introduction of Anya. it's just bliss.
freelance writer
I'm not a huge fan of Buffy, but it still deserved some Emmy love for its best stuff. I'd say:
Best Drama nomination for seasons 3 and 5.
Sarah Michelle Gellar, Drama Actress for season 5
Harry Groener, Drama Guest Actor for season 3
and Anthony Stewart Head for Drama Supporting Actor for every season eligible.
I would SO watch a rom-com with Harry Shum Jr., (YUM) even if they pair him with some chick like Vanessa Hudgens.
As for the hookers: Rachel Taylor, Anie Ilonzeh and Minka Kelly. What, they're available and it's not much of a stretch from their old gig.
Lalaland -- LOL. good one.
landshark -- see. that's what i'm talking about. nice to hear from non-obsessives who still get that there is worthy stuff in there. Emmy was so blind. ugh.
My favorite Buffy seasons are 2,3,5,and 6. Six is my favorite because it got very dark- and anyone who likes Dexter, Battlestar Galactica etc. is going to appreciate dark in there comedy.