The Valley Wire Column - 9/19/2008

Hollywood Falls for the New TV Season
By Mary Beth Gentle

It’s over! It’s over! No more re-runs! No more retakes on Japanese Game Shows! No more bad summer TV! I don’t know about the rest of you, but those of us in the Hollywood cubicles are beside ourselves with excitement at the prospect of new TV to watch. Because it is finally that time of year again, summer is over, school is starting and the Fall TV season is upon us. Old favorite shows return and new ones try to capture an audience. And we, the audience, are ready to leave behind the drudgery of summer re-runs and settle in on our couches for our weekly favorites.

The line-ups have been set and the Networks are busily analyzing the rating numbers of the shows that have already premiered and trying to predict the numbers of the shows yet to begin. It’s a busy time of year. And not just for the networks, it’s busy in the Hollywood cubicles. And by busy I don’t mean the work that goes into the creating, posting and promoting the shows. I mean busy in the watching of the shows.

When you work in a Hollywood cubicle it’s important to watch, monitor and predict the success and failure of the fall season. I guess it is not that much different than working on Wall Street and keeping up on the latest hot stocks. Or any business for that matter, it’s important to know the product if you are going to predict it’s future. The only difference here, I have a DVR that is about to explode.

Returning favorites that cannot be missed include; Heroes, Chuck, Gossip Girl, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles to name just a few. The shows have had their premiere parties, their new season cast photos have been distributed to all the magazines and the recap episodes are all available on-line. Maybe it’s another sign that I may never run with the Hollywood Hipsters, but I for one can’t wait to see what villains the writers of Heroes have in store for us this season. Not to mention what the ladies of Wysteria Lane and the popular kids of Gossip Girl are going to get up to.

New shows that have been hyped just enough to peak my interest include; Worst Week, 90210, Fringe, Gary Unmarried, Kath & Kim, and Life on Mars. This is the first year in awhile that there are more than a few new sitcoms that hold some potential. Worst Week, based on a BBC series, follows hapless magazine editor, Sam Briggs, as he bumbles thru his week trying to impress his girlfriend and his future in-laws. Re-vamping a BBC show worked for The Office, here’s hoping it works for this one too. Gary Unmarried stars Jay Mohr as newly divorced dad of two traversing his way thru the changes in his life – basically the draw here is the humor of Jay Mohr. And who can resist tuning into the soapy retro fun of 90210 to see what has happened to Brenda and Kelly. These are a few of the new shows that are going to make it onto my ‘record list’- at least for the first few episodes.

Some of these shows are already a few weeks into the new season, which means that by the time I add in returning reality shows like Survivor, Dancing with the Stars and Amazing Race and cable shows like Entourage, Tru Blood or The Tudors. I’m looking at a DVR that will quickly be reaching maximum capacity. But, I guess if I am going to try to stay ahead in the Hollywood cubicle I need to stay on top of all that TV watching so I can throw my two cents in when the hallways turn to talk of which shows will make it and which shows will be cut. It’s like I’m my own little network!

The Valley Wire - 8/29/2008 Column

Hollywood is Crazy for Sports
By Mary Beth Gentle

Hollywood has always been crazy for sports, some might even say it’s a bit of an obsession. Right now in Hollywood, everyone from the lowly cube dwellers to the senior studio executives are in recovery mode after all the late hours spent watching Team USA night after night pursue Olympic glory. The struggles and hardships that many Olympic competitors had to overcome on their road to the medal podium was captivating, exciting and inspirational. All of which was a constant reminder as to why Hollywood loves making a good sports movie, its heroes are bigger than life and their stories touch something in all of us.

One of the first Hollywood sports movies that falls into this category would have to be 1942’s The Pride of the Yankees starring Gary Cooper as the great Lou Gehrig. It is not praised for its baseball playing accuracy, but it’s touching tale of the baseball great from his New York Childhood to his famous ‘Luckiest Man’ speech set the standard for heartfelt sports movies. The themes in this movie are the same as they are today. At the core of any good sport movie is love, friendship, compassion and heroism.

Another movie that has to be mentioned is 1976’s Rocky starring Sylvester Stallone. And when I say Rocky, I mean the original not the many mediocre films that followed in the series. The Original Rocky not only won best picture that year, but it won the hearts of millions as it told the story of the struggling, small time boxer Rocky Balboa. We watched as his training routine had him pummeling sides of beef in the meat factory, we watched as he won the heart of shy pet store worker Adrian Pennino and we watched as he put everything he had into going the distance against champion Apollo Creed. Rocky was the hero that the ‘everyman’ could relate to.

And my personal favorite is a slightly different sport movie, the 1989, Field of Dreams starring Kevin Costner. When Iowa farmer, Ray Kinsella hears a voice from his cornfield bidding him, ‘If you build it, he will come’ he is compelled to tear out part of his crop to build a baseball field. What he thought was going to be a ball field for disgraced White Sox baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson and his teammates quickly became more of a quest to give second chances to people who sacrificed what might have been. Ray ends up on a journey of self-discovery as he helps a disillusioned writer and an old Doctor find joy in their own baseball dreams again.

But, at the end of the day Ray gets a second chance of his own when someone close to his heart comes to the ball park for one final ‘throw’. The love of baseball is what draws all these characters to this small field in Iowa, but at the core of this movie is a lesson to be learned about holding onto your dreams.

There have been many more inspiring sport stories over the years; Hoosiers, The Natural, Rudy, Miracle and Remember the Titans to name a just a few. It doesn’t matter what your goals are, it doesn’t matter if they are even sports related, these movies are filled with enough inspiration and heart to go around. And for a struggling writer sitting in a Hollywood cubicle, I will take inspiration wherever I can get it.

The Valley Wire - 8/8/2008 Column

Hollywood and the Musical
By Mary Beth Gentle

Hollywood and the musical have had an on again, off again, relationship for years now. And I for one am thrilled that this summer the Hollywood musical is back on. This is the summer of Mama Mia!. And not only has it had more than steady box office returns it is downright fun.

The Hollywood musical has been around from just about the beginning. Basically, as soon as movies managed to get sound, they got music. It all began back in 1929 with Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. By the 1930’s the Hollywood musical had become a box office force to be reckoned with. From Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers to Judy Garland, there seemed to be no stopping them. By the 1950’s and 1960’s the musical had become a cinematic event with movies like; Guys and Dolls, The King and I and The Sound of Music.

Then came the Seventies and Disco and the face of the Hollywood musical changed. The only musicals that were allowed came to us from the theatre first and foremost. Once they had been tried and tested on the stage, the Studios were willing to take a risk, not many of which paid off financially. When we hit the late Eighties and Nineties, thanks to Disney, the musical was saved. Of course, they were only accepted if they were animated.

And now, today, there may be hope for the musical again. Last year we had Enchanted and Across the Universe. And this year we have Mama Mia!. Mama Mia! is a feature film adaptation of the hit stage production based on ABBA’s music. The all star cast includes; Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper in the story of a mother, a daughter and her three possible fathers.

The movie opens with twenty-year-old Sophie (Seyfried) preparing to marry her boyfriend Sky (Cooper) at her mother's (Streep) hotel on a tiny Greek island. Her deepest wish is to be given away by her father at her wedding. By reading her mother's diary she discovers that she has three possible fathers (Brosnan, Firth and Skarsgard). Sophie secretly invites all three men to the wedding. But, not all goes according to plan and old loves are re-kindled as Sophie risks everything to discover the true identity of her father.

Combine the cast and the performances with the already widely popular stage play and Universal has a built-in formula for a hit. Which is exactly what this movie is. You may ask why a Hollywood Cube dweller like myself is going on and on about a musical amid a summer of superhero blockbusters and all I can say is that it has been the best surprise of the summer.

In two weeks time, Mama Mia! has already grossed over 75 million dollars. And in the summer box office world of movies that contain no explosions, no flying superheroes or villainous bad guys that is a very good start to what will be classified as a bone fide hit by the end of the summer. It won’t hit The Dark Knights numbers, it won’t even come close, but its production budget was far less, so they don’t have to make as much to find themselves out of the red and into the black.

So, take it from a Hollywood Cube Dweller who has seen all the big summer blockbusters, this is my new pick of the summer. And as I crank up the soundtrack a little louder in my cube, I can only hope the musical is on it’s way back for good.

The Valley Wire - 7/18/2008 Column

Hollywood Goes to the Comics
By Mary Beth Gentle

Every summer without fail Hollywood gets their ‘geek on’ and goes to the Comics. The biggest movies of the summer are usually based on one comic book character or another. What was once considered light reading for children or a favorite pastime for the geek-at-heart has become a mega-million dollar business, a business which Hollywood has always been only too happy to capitalize upon. This summer alone we have Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and, of course, Batman.

And nowhere are these comics bigger or their fans more serious about their Comics, their Movies and their TV than at the San Diego International Comic-Con. This is an annual event held every July in the San Diego, California Convention Center. For those of you that have not heard of it, you might think, hmmm…a comic book convention and immediately picture a bunch of geeks reading, buying and trading comics.

Well, it may have started out that way back in the seventies when the attendance was around three hundred people, but today it is one of the largest conventions in America with last year’s attendance topping around 127,000 people. It is one of the biggest arenas for the large and small Hollywood Studios to not only pitch and promote their latest line-ups, but to search out known and unknown comic book artists and writers in hopes of finding the next big summer hit.

And it affects even those of us sitting in the Hollywood cubicles. In the months leading up to Comic-Con, Studio Publicity Departments and the Filmmakers are busy planning out their Booths, their Panels and their Clip Reels. And by booths, I don’t mean a small table with a pile of posters on it, the Hollywood majors go all out.

At last years Comic-Con, Walt Disney Studios built a replica of the front of the Pirate ship from Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End that the fans could walk through to see a display of costumes and props from the movie. NBC Studios brought an entire set from the TV Show Heroes to put up in the middle of the convention center. I can tell you right now, they don’t do that at Cannes.

The biggest events at Comic-Con are the Film and TV Cast Panels. This year they will have talent there from; Lost, Stargate, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Twilight, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Battlestar Galactica, Pushing Daisies and those are just to name a few. Not to mention that the official name of Friday at Comic-Con is ‘Star Wars Day’. There are four days of panels, screenings and events that are for the most part already sold out.

Over the years, the level of talent that has come to Comic-Con could compete with that of Cannes or Sundance. But, the focus here is comics, so it will never get the critical acclaim or media coverage of those other big events. But, who cares about critical acclaim, this is Comic-Con. This is where the ‘geek’ gets to be a king for a few days every year. And take it from one big Movie, TV and okay…Comic Book Geek…there is nothing like it. Sundance may be where the cool kids go, but I’m telling you right now, Comic-Con is where the party is.

The other big event at Comic-Con every year is a little thing called, “Trailer Park”. This is where the Studios, big and small, premiere all their new trailers for upcoming movies. They take one of the largest rooms at the Convention Center and hang rows of giant screens so that no matter what seat you end up with, you can still see all the action.

The Studios may act like they don’t care about anyone but themselves the rest of the year, but once a year at Comic-Con they do remember the most important thing; the Fans. And the Fans are the reason those people sitting in the big offices and those of us in the Hollywood Cubicles have jobs. And I for one am glad that Hollywood has gone to the Comics.

The Valley Wire - 6/20/2008 Column

Hollywood and the Summer Intern
By Mary Beth Gentle

It is that time of year in Hollywood that Summer Interns take their first steps into the exciting and glamorous world of the entertainment business. And those of us in the Hollywood cubicles are doing one of two things this time of year, we are either reminiscing about our own internships or we are stacking up dusty piles of long forgotten paperwork for the new intern to sort thru and file. Depending on how fondly we all remember our own internships will determine how high the pile of filing will be.

For me, my Internship was spent in a Producer’s office located at Raleigh Studios. Raleigh Studios is a small independent Film Studio in the heart of Hollywood. They opened back in 1915 as the Famous Players Fiction Studios. Silent film era icon, Charlie Chaplin, was one of the owners and filmed many projects there.

For a kid from nowhere’s-ville USA, it was a dream come true. I was going to work for a Producer on a historic Hollywood Studio lot, right across the street from Paramount Studios. It was a coveted internship and it was mine. I couldn’t wait to be a part of the Industry that I had spent a lifetime (all twenty-two years) reading about, studying obsessively and absorbing every detail I could get my hands on. This was going to be amazing I was going to be right in the middle of it, working in a Producer’s office, making movies.

Instead, I spent three months making all new files for the entire office and learning the in’s and out’s of the fascinating world of copy machine operation. The only time I saw the Producer was to get her a glass of water one day. I don’t think she actually knew who I was or why I was there, but she was thirsty and I was handy. Welcome to Hollywood. I wasn’t exactly sure how this internship was going to move me closer to my goals or how I could somehow spin this to make it sound really exciting to the folks back at home.

But, as with anything in life, it is what you make it. And I made the most of those three months that I could. I made files. I made the best darn files that were ever made. I took that simple task and I set out to impress anyone that would take notice. And in my case, and the case of my impressive files, it was the Producer’s Assistant. She had the all-encompassing job of managing the ever-ringing phone lines and Calendar for the Producer. And as busy as she was, she took the time to give a kid a break and she shared what she knew about the business.

Every day I would go to lunch with that Assistant. We would walk across the street to the Paramount lot and she would introduce me to the guys delivering the mail, to the security guys guarding the Sound Stages and to other Producer Assistant’s hanging out in the commissary and somewhere along the way I realized that it didn’t matter what title someone had or how high up the Hollywood ladder they were, everyone had a story to tell and all I had to do was listen. So, I listened and I learned a lot that summer.

This year, my fellow Hollywood Cubicle dwellers and I have an intern of our very own. His name is Mike, Mike the Intern, and he comes to us all the way from Georgetown University. The week before he started, I could see my co-worker’s minds working overtime and their fingers furiously typing lists of things he could do for them. They were like kids making out their lists for Santa.

I asked Mike the Intern what this experience meant to him. “This internship means one thing to me, and that's opportunity. I am at ground zero of the largest production company in the world and am looking foreword to not only a great summer, but to set the stage for a future career in the industry.”

I also asked him what he hoped to learn this summer that would help him achieve his career goals. “This summer I want nothing else, but to learn as much as I can about the industry. I want to have a firm grasp on every gear and axle that makes up the entertainment machine. Not only to narrow down my full time job, but to be knowledgeable about the entire process, so I can better understand how my role fits in the overall context of the industry.”

Mike the Intern has been working with us for a few weeks now, and yes we have had him sort thru piles of old paperwork and okay maybe we have had him make a file or two, but we have also made it our mission to show him as much as we can about the movie making process. In a few short weeks he has been to the film processing lab, he has been to a dubbing stage and he has had the opportunity to observe a day of shooting on a sound stage. Because luckily for him, we all do remember what it was like to be young, eager and an intern.

The Valley Wire - 5/16/2008 Column

Hollywood Dreams of the Blockbuster
By Mary Beth Gentle

Did you ever have a dream that you wanted so bad you could taste it? Feel it in your soul? Make your head ache just thinking of it? For me that dream was and in many ways still is, Hollywood. It started as something far away and intangible, something that other people went on to do, certainly not something a quiet, shy kid from No-where’s-ville, USA would ever be a part of.

Sometimes I wonder where my dream of a life in Hollywood all began, where and at what moment I was hooked. Maybe it was the Saturday Matinees at the little theatre on our small town’s Main Street, where they would play old Disney movies while we ate our popcorn and slurped our sodas. Maybe it was the Sunday afternoons spent watching old black and white Cary Grant movies with my Grandmother. Or maybe it was the seventh grade field trip to the local TV station where I got to see the cameras and lights close up.

I think all those things helped nurture the dream, but the more I think about it the dream for me was created by the Hollywood Summer Blockbuster. These are the big budget movies that every Studio spends all year prepping, shooting and posting to get on screen for Memorial Weekend through Labor Day Weekend. For me, that was my summer vacation, I had it planned from the moment school let out to the moment it started back up in September. I knew which ones I had to see and which ones I would see over and over again.

And I am still the same way. My summer is not planned out by elaborate vacation plans to some great escape or a tropical get away. It’s planned out by what movie opens on what weekend, how early I am going to buy my tickets and where I am going to see it. And for me this summer is a true flashback to the days of my youth. This is the summer of one of the ultimate blockbusters, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was the movie that really cemented the dream in place for me. The movie opened on June 12, 1981 and I think I saw it five times that summer, if not more. It was the wildest movie ride I had ever been on. It was a movie that had it all; it had non-stop action like we had never seen before, a classic American Hero to root for and truly bad guys to fear. It was and still is everything a blockbuster should be; it is why we go to the movies, buy our popcorn and smile as the rare hush falls over the audience the moment the first frame of action lights up the screen.

I have already watched the trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull countless times. I get a little giddy just thinking about it. And I am supposed to be a cool, jaded Hollywood Hipster. Well, I hate to break it to everyone, but when it comes to Indiana Jones, I am simply a movie geek who works in a Hollywood cubicle. And trust me, I am proud of it.

There are other movies out this summer; Wall-E, Prince Caspian, Iron Man, The Dark Knight, The Incredible Hulk to name a few. And I will see them all, but I can already tell you that none of them will compare to Indiana Jones. Because none of them hold the same sense of nostalgia, none of them come close to the level of pop culture status that Indiana Jones has and none of them can be counted as having sparked a far off dream in the mind of a young girl from No-where’s-ville, USA.

So, even when I have weeks like this past one, where I have worked a seventy-hour week and I’m not sure if any of the powers that be care or recognize my efforts, I still smile a little at the thought that I’m actually here, living my dream. And at least for one moment, during one movie this summer, I will be that kid again, standing on a long line waiting to be one of the first to see the ultimate Summer blockbuster, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

The Valley Wire - 4/18/2008 Column

Hollywood on Location
By Mary Beth Gentle

It used to be that kids dreamed of running away to join the Circus; the big tent, the lights and the lure of a life filled with excitement. Well, I think in our day and age, the Circus has been replaced by ‘Hollywood on Location’. There is nothing more exciting then when the ‘circus’ that is Hollywood comes to town. It’s good for revenue, it’s good for morale and it’s guaranteed to capture the hearts and imagination of anyone harboring a secret dream of working in the movie business.

Hollywood goes on location for one big reason, there is no sound stage or studio back-lot that can create the look and feel of the real thing. If their story takes place in Chicago, then they need to shoot in Chicago. They need the audience watching their movie to feel like they are actually there. The town in the script is not only a backdrop for the story being told, it helps set the scene and define the characters. John Hughes’ movies and characters would not have been the same if they had been shot anywhere else.

When the camera and equipment trucks roll into town they bring with them the allure and excitement that is Hollywood, but they also bring entire crews of people that put their day to day lives on hold to do a job. They say goodbye to their families for weeks or months at a time. They hire pet and house sitters, they find friends who are willing to collect their mail and overnight it to them once a week and they pack as much of their lives in to bags and boxes to set up ‘home’ wherever they end up.

Production crews dream of being on the movie that shoots on some tropical, sun-splashed beach, but more often than not, they end up in small towns like Vernal, Utah. These crews curse their luck and quickly go on the internet to see exactly what they are facing. What they read frightens them to their core, a city of maybe eight thousand people that is famous for a large pink dinosaur welcoming them to town. This is enough to frighten these crew members into contemplating another career, but they quickly remind themselves that they have bills and a mortgage to pay and it is only six weeks or so of their lives.

Of course, what they discover when they arrive, is a town filled with genuine, nice people in a city that is surrounded by the beauty of the Flaming Gorge National Park. For one such crew member, assistant editor, Christopher Marino, working on the movie Chill Factor in Vernal, Utah, that was exactly the experience he had. Of all the locations he has worked in, that one holds some of the fondest memories for him. Not because of the time spent seeing the sights, but for the people.

To this day, he speaks of their kindness and generosity. “I still haven’t gotten over how, at Halloween, when my wife came for a visit, we couldn’t find a pumpkin anywhere. (Vernal loves it’s holidays!) When I asked a local waitress where we could find a pumpkin, she told me that she had an extra and would have her sister bring it to the restaurant. My wife and I were just happy to have even the smallest reject-pumpkin at this point. At the end of the meal, in comes a woman carrying a twenty-pound pumpkin! My wife and I reminisce about that Halloween every year.”

Most of the people on a movie crew come to town with the Production. But, they always wait and hire the most essential crew member when they arrive on location, the Production Assistant (“PA”). This is usually someone young, eager and happy to race around town running errands and getting lunch. What the crews gets, is a person who knows the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of the area. What the entertainment industry gets, is another convert. The cubicles and production offices in Hollywood are filled with people who started their careers working as a PA on the movie that shot in their hometown.