In Search of Lost (Real) Time

I got a TIVOesque device a few weeks ago, and I'm beginning to weigh the pluses and minuses. Plus — the interface is remarkably easy to use. Minus — You can't scroll ahead and watch a program that airs next Wednesday. (Colleagues have assured me that this is an unreal expectation for the technology, but still...it would be a neat trick, wouldn't it?) Plus side — I no longer worry about falling asleep in the middle of The Daily Show or Mad TV. Biggest plus — I can now catch episodes of Action, one of the finest TV shows ever produced, and certainly the finest piece of satire, so dripping with acid that you wonder how the US could have birthed such a bastard — and network TV, at that. Action was developed by Fox in 1999 to try and compete with the cable market, and 13 shows were shot (of which 12 were aired). Comedy Central airs episodes from time to time, in no particular order, usually in the 3:30-4:00 am timeslot. The show follows the trials and tribulations of a Hollywood producer, Peter Dragon (played by Jay Mohr), who is searching for love and acceptance in an uncaring world, and who is handicapped by his complete lack of anything resembling human feeling. (For instance: his trophy wife leaves him for a bald gay mogul clearly modelled after Barry Diller, and allows the Diller character to claim paternity for her and Dragon's unborn child, even though Diller has obviously never ever been near a vagina.) Other cast members include his uncle/chaffeur (played by Buddy Hackett in a fit envoi to a career worth remembering), Jack Plotnick as his gay toady assistant, Jarrad Paul as the Jewish writer, and Fab Filippo as the hot young actor who has trouble managing his heroin habit. Best of all is Illeana Douglas, one of this country 's best and least appreciated actresses, and granddaughter of Melvyn Douglas and Helen Gahagan. (There's a lot of talk these days about the deracination of religion from American history, but I suspect a similar gripe can be made by the intellectual left in this country as well. Ah, well.)

Douglas is hired as Dragon's VP in the first episode. Her career follows the usual Hollywood formula: she starts out as a child actor, gets messed up with alcohol and drugs, does rehab a few times, scores some gigs in some exploitative TV roles, begins to make some real money as an expensive call girl, and finally winds up as a movie executive. She first meets Dragon when her fur coat gets caught in the door of his limo, and he drags her for several blocks before he even notices. They spend a weekend together, and Dragon realizes that she's a good script reader as well. He goes to her home to offer her the job, and discovers a Disney exec on all fours scrubbing her floor, wearing nothing but a French maid's hat and apron, and Douglas standing over him in black leather drag. He offers to double what she's making in prostitution, until he learns she's pulling in $250K a year. (Dragon looks at the Disney exec and screams: "If Walt could see you now, he'd roll over in his grave!") When Dragon introduces her to his assistant Plotnick, Plotnick screams: "But she's a whore!" "No, you're a whore! She's a prostitute! Big difference!" (Everyone screams in this show.) In another scene, she and Dragon are at a premiere sitting next to Keanu Reeves. While Dragon tries to talk Reeves into making a movie with him, Douglas is not so subtlely giving him a handjob. In the scene, Dragon comes off as much the sleazier of the two.

The entire season is devoted to Dragon's making an action film, Beverly Hills Gun Club. While we never see any finished footage, we know that it will include 12 naked lesbians tobagganing down Mr. McKinley and a gang shootout in the Los Angeles Zoo in which most of the animals are killed by automatic gunfire. Dragon is trying to cast an Arnold Schwarzeneggerlich actor to play the lead. Unfortunately the actor he wants is struggling to come out of the closet. Dragon's job is to convince the actor that staying in the closet is the most courageous thing he can do, and in persuading him, Dragon intimates that he himself is gay, and the two end up having sex together. (The look on Mohr's face is that of a man who will do anything to bring a film in on time and under budget.) The Arab princes who are financing the film — together with Douglas' former pimp — cool on Arnold, thinking him not quite macho enough. (They are unaware of just how not quite macho he is.) But it's just business, not homophobia. One of the emirs expresses a great interest in buying some of "Mr. Ricky Shroeder's time," which Dragon gladly sells him. Arnold goes on to star in a Broadway musical, and as this episode ends, he's on one of the late night talk shows coming out of the closet, and dragging Dragon with him. Dragon is in bed with Douglas watching the show, and just has that put-upon Joe Btfsplk look, but Douglas is completely unfazed: "You know, my brother's interested in getting in the business. You should meet him." So it's not just that everyone in Hollywood is a whore prostitute, but they're all pimps as well.

The show I snagged last week was the 13th unaired episode. In the 12th episode, Dragon has a massive heart attack on the set of Beverly Hills Gun Club and is proonunced dead and one of the EMT guys steals his watch. In the 13th, Dragon has miraculously survived, and is trying to eliminate stress from his life. There are some choice bits here. While reviewing rushes of a three-way sex scene, Dragon is appalled by the leading actress's breasts. "I saw better tits in Schindler's List! I want perfect breasts! Jane Fonda in Barbarella breasts!" And we see Filippo inappropriately licking his iguana. But the highlight is Lee Ermey, who played the gunnery sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, here playing the director, a cross between John Huston and Hunter Thompson, who's been tasked with keeping Filippo straight. He and Dragon are having lunch, and Ermey downs a half a bottle of wine in one shot. "I thought you were clean and sober?" "Clean, yes! Never sober! Why, I never had a problem with alcohol! It was the crack and coke I couldn't handle!" Anyway, Ermey comes home and finds Filippo and Ermey's young wife high on smack fucking in the hot tub, and through circumstances not clearly explained, winds up floating face down in his own swimming pool. Filippo calls Dragon. "You're going to be so made at me!" Dragon comes over, and immediately calls his publicist to "clean up" the scene. She comes over, channelling Harvey Keitel from Pulp Fiction, dons gloves and wades into the pool, ascertains that the man floating face down in the pool for the last several hours is in fact dead, and then lays out a scenario for "what happened." Dragon probably pays her the ultimate Hollywood compliment: "I don't know what I'm paying you, but it's obviously not enough!" The episode ends on a happy note when, at Ermey's funeral, Dragon realizes his widow has Barbarella breasts.

I suppose the ultimate minus for my TIVOesque device is its subversion of real time. What I like best about live TV and radio — especially radio — is that they represent real people in real time; you are aware of actual time passing. When I bought my first VCR, I plowed through every film ever made — every musical ... every Hitchcock ... Berlin Alexanderplatz — but I bought or rented every one, and I was on a mission. The DVR is far more insidious. Even with 400 channels, occasionally there is nothing on; or more accurately, nothing more distracting than the real world. The DVR eliminates that final temptation to tune in. Mine is already loaded up with, besides that Fellini documentary and the last Godard flick, reruns of NCIS and Crossing Jordan, mindless but painless films like 13th Warrior ..... now, there's always something to see. Damn TIVO and TIVOesque devices!