Douglas Howe: February 2007 Archives

Big awards shows show us the human side of stars as they navigate spontaneous moments that can even make them nervous. That's why we like Oscar night, which is the biggest of these. While the show itself may not have won huge ratings points, I found more inspiring and touching moments in this year's show than usual:

• The many, many winners who wrote speeches because they knew they'd be too flustered to remember everyone, and the many, many winners whose hands were so jittery they could barely read their notes;
• Jennifer Hudson's authentic and natural expression, "Look at what God can do," and also "My grandmother... she had the passion for it, but she never had the chance."
• 73-year old Alan Arkin freely setting his statue on the ground, perhaps a first in Oscar history;
• Clint Eastwood in the role of translator, handling Italian for his friend who won the special award;
• The moment each year where tribute is paid to those who've passed, inviting each of us to consider our own legacies and what awaits on the other side;
• Seeing new art forms (at least new for us) in the gymnasts who formed the wonderful real-life figures behind the white screen, as well as the sound-effects orchestra called "The Hollywood Film Chorale Sound Effects Choir."
• Any time we get to hear James Taylor sing;
• Helen Mirren, who gave her poised speech with no notes and one of her earrings in her hand;
• Nominees Leonardo Di Caprio, Ryan Gosling, and Will Smith standing for an extended time in honor of the Best Actor who'd just won over them, Forrest Whitaker;
• Mr. Whitaker's impassioned speech about the light inside of each of us and how, through acting, he's been able to reach his goal of connecting to "everyone,"
• The kind of loose hooting and hollering (for Scorsese's win) usually reserved for other shows but not the Oscars;

Two other mentions: My least favorite moments were every time the band was cutting people off, especially the second or third writing or backroom partner who'll never get another chance to thank his wife and love on his kids. And, some kind of special award has to go to Al Gore's agent or manager for his unbelievably high profile at the Grammys and Oscars. He's been funny, human, warm, and well-disciplined. He's doing wonders for our environment--which is needed--and he could probably announce his bid for president, but why would he want to? This has got to be more fun for him!

Being an Oscar host is a difficult thing. I've never done it, but I've met two of the three most successful ones ever, and they both told me it was among the hardest gigs they'd ever done. There've been a lot of underwhelming performances by talented people over the years, and Ellen's, I'm sorry to say, was another one. She wasn't bold, funny, or controversial, though I'll grant that she was sincere. She had some cute bits in the audience with Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood, but as the show got longer I wished she'd have gotten shorter. She had one decent line: "If there weren't blacks, Jews and gays, there'd be no Oscars. Or anyone named Oscar."

While hosting has proved difficult, there've been some great one-liners by hosts through the years:

• "So much mud was thrown this year, all the nominees look black." --Whoopi Goldberg.
• "It's so good to see so many new faces, many of them on the old faces." --Johnny Carson.
• "Welcome to the Academy Awards or, as they're known at my house, Passover." --Bob Hope.
• "Good evening, Hollywood phonies." --Chevy Chase
• "Probably the only laugh that man will ever get is for stripping and showing his shortcomings." –David Niven, after a streaker ran across the stage
• "We have black people, white people, Asians, Hispanics, Jews, Christians, all working together. All because of a single common love: publicity." –Steve Martin

Last night Ellen joined a long list of hosts who've tried and not necessarily succeeded at being a comedic host. Jon Stewart wasn't bad last year, but the "Brokeback Mountain" jokes got old in the first hour and got tired by the end. Chris Rock was decent, but it obviously was a much tamer atmosphere than he was used to. David Letterman is famous for how badly his "Ooooooomah, Ohhhhhprah" gad went. I think the worst years were when Oscar tried to put groups of people together called "Friends of Oscar."

Who were the best Oscar hosts of all time? Well, I'd say it's these:

• Bob Hope, who hosted 18 times from 1939-1978, kept it light, made it funny and (most important of all) moved it along.

• Billy Crystal, with the curious off-and-on reign of 1990-93, '97-'98, 2000 and '04; he made the opening film segment and opening song medley a true art form, combining overture and expectation creation with humor and music.
• Johnny Carson, who hosted 5 of 6 years from 1979-1984, calling it "two hours of sparkling entertainment stretched into a four hour time slot."

I think Johnny, Billy, and Bob succeeded where others have failed came in the freedom to be authentic. We're all at our best--physically, mentally, socially and spiritually--when we can be real, where we can be ourselves. Ellen wasn't. Chris Rock wasn't. David Letterman wasn't. Chevy Chase wasn't. Robin Williams wasn't. I don't understand why Oscar producers pick hosts that have succeeded with a certain style that has to be tamed down on Oscar night. I hope they'll keep that in mind when they make their next choices.

No blog posting on this would be complete without mentioning the noble efforts of Jerry Lewis, who tried to fill 20 minutes of empty time after the show ended early, as well as Agnes Moorhead, the first woman host. Perhaps a miracle will someday happen and they'll return to the format of the first show, when Douglas Fairbanks and William DeMille handed out all of the awards in about 20 minutes. Until we get back to that, I'm hoping Billy Crystal will come back, or some new star will arise. I don't think it'll be Ellen.

“Law & Order: Criminal Intent” is not a regular show for me, but when Michael Kress, our Idol Chatter editor, told me about the “Brother’s Keeper” episode last night, I was inclined to watch, even though the "televangelist has secret life and people close to him get hurt but his handlers look the other way while the money rolls in" storyline sounded old to me. I tuned in hoping for something deeper and more meaningful than the kind of caricatures that have fueled entertaining parodies from Leno to Letterman to (going back a bit here) SNL to Fletch to Phil Collins/Genesis.

I was hoping for a show that could portray something new and interesting about evangelical Christians and their leaders, a group that makes up 25 to 45 percent of our nation’s people (depending on which study you use and whose theology you trust). I think it would be awesomely wonderful if primetime shows could show and reveal more about the real Christian faith and sincere attempts to live it out among the millions of people who are serious about it.

So I was willing to endure the tired (if not trite) themes rolled out early in the show, with Tom Arnold playing television preacher Calvin Riggins (and he tried to do it with a straight face!) and belting out the need to “accept the Lllllooohhhhrrrrdd” and “submit to Ggggaaawwwwwwdddd’s will.” Pastor Cal is a clueless guy who somehow has risen to pastoral fame while discussing his wife in terms like “she’d rather be dizzy than stupid.” After her death, Pastor Cal’s handlers posed her hands in prayer for the post-mortem photos. A main character debated “Creationism v. Evolution.” Riggins was called by opponents “just another big phony.” He pursued a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, had a $100 million evangelical institute called the Light of Heaven Evangelical Institute, and convinced his staff that his credit card bills at massage parlors were the work of old imps (devils) who were cloning his identity.

His closest attempt at fake repentance sounded something like “I knew that God was going to punish me for what I was doing because I knew that it was wrong, but I couldn’t stop.” I don’t know of a single Christian or church that would indulge that kind of thinking.

The most interesting stuff came from the intelligent questions of the decidedly non-believers in the show:

• The mother of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Detective Robert Green asks why he’s crying about his wife’s death: “He’s supposed to be a believer--he’s supposed to believe that God had a reason for her death. So why is he crying?”
• The television opponent of the preacher says, “If inflicting unbearable pain is how your God tests faith, then He’s a vindictive (expletive).”
• And Green’s brothers shows up at the evangelist’s studios, complete with new faith and strong words, but with no coat or real hope for life. The church “cleaned him up” but it’s D’Onofrio who gives him a coat.

In the end, I fear that too many people have been given the wrong impression about what Jesus said and what Christianity is all about. In this show, the detectives were smart, warm and compassionate, while the Christians were goofy, lazy, and whimsical, not to mention immoral.

But in the scriptures, it’s Jesus who told the parable of The Good Samaritan, and it was he who said “come unto Me all who are weary, and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

I hope more shows will show that side of evangelical Christianity in the future. It’s more the norm, notwithstanding the missteps of a handful of high profile leaders and the stereotypes sustained by the news media and entertainment world.

Just when I thought "Boston Legal" was going to forever fade into the kind of redundancy that was starting to plague this entire season, it took a nice break from some of the whimsical hijinks and sexual politics that have hurt the show this season and returned to the kind of compelling moral dilemmas that occasionally give the show a spiritual base, including:

James Spader’s “Alan Shore” defending a woman who liberated her father’s plastinized (muscle-organ-filled skeleton) body from a museum exhibit;

Shore’s surprise opponent being none other than his old friend (and project) Jerry Espensen as Shore protects the employment rights of a UFO-believing therapist while being forced to choose between the success of his friend or his case;

“Clarence Bell,” the character who finds confidence in dressing and acting like a woman, being invited to deeper relational intimacy by his boss;

Main characters “Denise Bauer” and “Brad Chase” attempting to move from their friends-with-benefits relationship towards the longshot of marriage and ending up in an insults-turned-sincere discussion of gender roles in modern marriage;

William Shatner’s “Denny Crane” attending temple and defending Lutheranism (sort of) as part of his own spiritual reflection.

Yes, "Boston Legal" is a show that makes mockery seem mundane and whimsy seem well-mannered, but this list is a lot for a one-hour show to accomplish, and this one came through.

Crane’s visit to temple borders on insulting to the Jewish audience, but his admission that “to us Christians, Temple is a, uh, college” is actually fair satire because too few Christians know enough about the Jewish faith to treat it as they do. Further, too few Christians know enough about their denominations, illustrated by his statement “I know what we Lutherans believe; we believe in... Luther.”

Chase’s case that many successful working women actually would love to stay home and nurture healthy children seems so dramatically retro that it borders on insulting to Denise, but when he shares with candor “you’re lost,” her response is healthy and honest: “I’m scared.”

The plasticity case pointed out the absolute dangers of alcoholism by visually depicting how ugly a ruined liver looks while gently proclaiming “promiscuity heightens the odds.”

And as usual, the deepest reflections came from Shore, who beat his friend by beating him up, hence the show’s title of “The Good Lawyer.” Shore was good at his job but he wasn’t good to his friend, the all-too-often choice of litigators.

“I want so badly to believe in God, not because of any words in the Bible or claims made by gospels, but because I suppose with our planet being polluted into extinction while country after country develops nuclear bombs coinciding with an unprecedented escalation in hatred while an entire continent is dying from AIDS and starvation as the rest of the world pretends not to notice, it’s just not that easy these days to have faith in man,” says Shore, the decided agnostic, before going on: “I’m not sure I if do believe in God, and even if I did, I’m not sure he’d be the same God who you believe in. But in the throws of doubt, I still do believe in man. I believe in man’s innate sense of humanity, his potential for compassion, for reason, righteousness in his heart.”

Now if we could just get the producers to help him realize that that ability for compassion, reason, righteousness and heights of humanity comes from God alone, then we’d really have ourselves a show!

In the end, Shatner’s Crane articulates a position probably held by all too many Christians who won’t admit it but whose life hypocrisy reveals it:

“Because if you believe in God and it turns out there’s no God, then there’s no harm, no foul. But if you don’t believe in God and it turns out there is one... you’re screwed.”

“Why then,” says an intelligent Shore, “does He allow for all of this suffering that goes on?”

Hence the end of an admittedly risqué show that comes far closer to asking the kinds of compelling questions than many church services and bible studies lack, but were par for the course when Jesus walked the planet.

...and that's a good thing!

The National Basketball Association and the City of Las Vegas’ tourism bureau went prime-time on TNT on Sunday night, and we found out that these players are clearly gifted for high levels of competition, but far less gifted at show business. It’s actually a compliment to them that, well, they don’t know how to fake it. The NBA is among the best reality shows in television, with real people competing against motivated opponents at the heights of their skills according to the rules of the game. However, the All-Start game--while good for tourism--looks a lot like the rest of what passes for “reality TV”: it’s over-produced and less than authentic. I’m glad the “real” season still lies ahead on TNT.

First, the players had to stand still and look comfortable during introductions amidst fireworks, cabaret bands, and Wayne Newton singing “Dankeshane” while keeping a straight face. The players looked as natural in that setting as Rocky doing commercials in "Rocky II."

As the beautiful blimp shots of the lighted city faded and the cameras went indoors to the start of the game, things got more awkward. The NBA All-Star game, you see, is designed to showcase the NBA’s biggest talent in prime time, and there’s an unwritten rule that no defense is played in the first three quarters. It doesn’t look anything like a real NBA game, but more like a show. I think these guys are better at competing than acting, and that’s a good thing.

Not even all of the cut-away shots of Ahnold, Maria Shriver, P. Diddy, Barry Bonds, Prince, Dave Chapelle, and the Mayor of Las Vegas could hide the fact that these guys just aren’t used to going half-speed and trying to make each other look good. More shots of Beyonce, Chris Tucker, Jayzee, Adam Sandler, Gabrielle Union, Eva Longoria, and Mary J. Blige were also nice, but it was interesting that the entertainers were in the audience while the stage-players were uncomfortable in their roles.

Shaquille O’Neal missed three dunks with nobody guarding him. Lebron James tried to pass and set-up his teammates but they thought it was his cue to show off. Several players threw wonderful and ballet-like behind-the-back passes to... the other team! At one point, five defensive players stood motionless while Shaq fumbled the ball out of bounds, got it back from the refs, got it again on a rebound and dunked it home while five defenders watched. In returning the favor at the other end, five opponents watched superstar Kevin Garrett miss two uncontested lay-ups before taking the ball and heading the other way, where O’Neal missed another lay-up and then followed up with a dunk against the red carpet non-defense. The West players were feeding Kobe Bryant as if the script said he was supposed to be the MVP, but he missed three easy early shots with no one guarding him and dropped two passes.

Thankfully, professional entertainers like Christina Aguilera, Toni Braxton, and the Cirque de Soleil team were ready to perform a real show at halftime. (I still can’t believe that they actually showed “instant replay” of Wayne Newton’s lip-sync!)

By the time it was over, the West beat the East, 153-132, and Kobe Bryant was the game’s MVP. Las Vegas tourism won big and the rumors of a potential NBA team in Las Vegas were fueled. And the fourth quarter was the best, because show cues were over and all that was left was basketball.

It was a night for unity and positivity at the Grammys--except for one glaring omission!“The Police” got back together. African-American-Old-Guy Stevie Wonder won with Older-White-Guy Tony Bennett. Justin Timberlake’s “What Goes Around” featured a white guy singing with a largely...

The national reality show that is our national political stage plays on several cable news shows and network news and newsmagazines. There was a great plot twist--and the deepening of a main character's character--that went largely overlooked last week, which...

When economics meets the spiritual journey, economics wins--at least as far as the NFL and its lawyers are concerned. And that’s a shame. The Bears-Colts match-up included a wonderful and historic storyline, as the first Super Bowl ever to have...