Bartlet4America News Archive

Return to yesteryear: Series dabble in live broadcasts

'Will & Grace' prepares to bare all before viewers, while 'West Wing' might do same with a debate.

By Valerie Kuklenski
Los Angeles Daily News

Since the '50s, TV producers have rejoiced with each technical advancement that made it easier to put out a more polished, perfectly timed series episode. Better editing and transmission equipment meant -- whew! -- they didn't have to air live.

Yet this season, more producers are daring to go live before millions of viewers, turning their casts and crews into circus performers working without a safety net for the first time ever. "Will & Grace" makes its eighth-season debut on NBC at 8:30 p.m. today with an episode performed once for the Eastern and Central time zones, with a second staging for the Pacific time zone.

"This will be like the classic golden era of television that I was weaned on, where the audience sees everything," says James Burrows, veteran director and an executive producer on the NBC sitcom. "Directing a live broadcast will be a first for me, and as long as I have been in the business, there are very few firsts."

But there are mixed emotions among the actors. One person's exhilarating adrenalin rush is another's fight-or-flight trigger.

In a recent group interview, Sean Hayes (Jack) suggested he's hoping for cue cards. Debra Messing (Grace) gasped loudly when it was pointed out to her that the technical demands of going live would mean Burrows would be up in a booth instead of on the floor.

But Eric McCormack, a stage veteran who plays Will, seems to be ready for whatever happens. "It keeps it interesting for us. It stirs it up. It gives us a new way to do it."

Messing expresses concern about her three costume changes in the 22-minute show.

Megan Mullally (Karen) says the "Will & Grace" writing team is notorious for tinkering with the script's laugh lines, even during taping. She hopes they'll resist that urge for the live episode, but Messing is not sure they will.

"I have a gut feeling that, like, 10 minutes before we go they'll be like, 'Oh, no, no, you know what? Change this line to this. Now we're locked -- o,' " Messing says.

There's talk that "The West Wing" also will beam live once this season.

NBC and Warner Bros. Television this week still refused to confirm it, but Jimmy Smits and Alan Alda, the actors who would star in it, have been openly enthusiastic about the concept.

Smits, who plays Democratic presidential candidate Matt Santos, last spring disclosed plans for a live show during November sweeps, done as a televised debate between his character and Alda's Republican Sen. Arnold Vinick. Alda says he's in favor of it.

"I love that sense of danger," Alda says.

"So the opportunity to do a presidential debate, although it's scripted, it'll be live, and there'll be a certain amount of uncertainty -- my blood is up for that."

A live debate with the leads planted at podiums and at least a portion of the script on TelePrompTers could actually be an easy production compared with a regular "West Wing" episode. The production team for "The West Wing" would be able to draw on the institutional memory of the highly rated 1997 "ER" live episode, which also was produced by John Wells for Warner Bros. Television. The "ER" episode was performed twice for East and West Coast time periods, so it is likely "The West Wing" would do the same.

Alda is mindful that live performing is not only thrilling, it can be dangerous.

"I've almost died on the stage several times," he says. "Maybe I should be more sensible."

THE WEST WING SET TO GO LIVE WITH PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

http://www.contactmusic.com

Hit political drama THE WEST WING is set to go live in November (05), with a presidential debate between ALAN ALDA and JIMMY SMITS.

Smits, who plays Democratic presidential candidate MATT SANTOS on the show, is gearing up for a televised debate between his character and Alda's Republican Senator ARNOLD VINICK.

And while bosses of the show have yet to confirm the plans, Alda and Smits are very enthusiastic about it.

Alda says, "I love that sense of danger. The only training I had as an actor was as an improviser. It kind of fits with my aspiration to be as spontaneous as I can be.

"In fact, when I was a young man on the stage, if another actor missed an entrance and I was alone on stage, I thought, 'Oh boy, is this great? I can make up my own play now!'

"So the opportunity to do a presidential debate, although it's scripted, it'll be live, and there'll be a certain amount of uncertainty - my blood is up for that."

29/09/2005 02:44

Smits, Alda to battle for weeks on 'West Wing'

Associated Press

Associated Press
Sept. 23, 2005 08:35 AM

WASHINGTON - It's going to be a while before we find out whether Jimmy Smits or Alan Alda will be the new president on "The West Wing."

Smits says the fictional campaign will play out like a real one.

In a radio exclusive, Smits tells AP Radio News that they even plan for a live one-hour debate between him and Alda. advertisement


Since Smits' character is a Democrat like the outgoing president, shouldn't that give him an edge over Alda?

Smits laughs and says, "I don't know, don't count the "MASH" guy out."

The West Wing returns Sunday night on NBC.

Just like men, actu

by Stephen Matchett
The Australian

September 17, 2005
WANT a lady in the Lodge, a woman in the White House? If popular culture is any predictor of political trends, it will not be long now. This month sees the US television premiere of Commander-in-Chief, starring Geena Davis as the president of the United States.

Women have been a heartbeat from the Oval Office before. In 1997, in Air Force One, Glenn Close played a vice-president who kept the military commanders under control to save the president, Harrison Ford, on the hijacked presidential jet. In 2000, Joan Allen starred as vice-presidential nominee Senator Laine Hanson in The Contender.

Now Geena's got the job. So that's that, and antediluvian affirmative action activists can stop grumbling about screen sexism.

Not quite. Because if C-in-C runs true to form it will present women in politics as policy paragons who do not lust for power and run their offices like a book club. And ask Congress to impeach people for not being nice.

This is mostly Aaron Sorkin's fault. When it is not Rod Lurie's. Sorkin wrote The American President (1995) and many of the best episodes of The West Wing, which has been running on TV so long that Martin Sheen's President Josiah Bartlet is at the lame-duck stage of his second term. Lurie wrote and directed The Contender and now C-in-C.

In all these productions women in public life have the political and policy smarts to implement agendas that are heavy on social justice and light on economics. They are always elegant, with the occasional eccentric habit more endearing than irritating.

If not actual saints, they are close to canonisation, at least for left-wing Democrats. Because they are always Democrats. (Except, of course, assistant White House counsel Ainsley Hayes in earlier episodes of The West Wing, who was a Republican, but from the well-educated and elegantly attired wing, the one that is indistinguishable from the Democrats.)

Perhaps the two film-makers think the way they present women will place them high on Emily's List by showing voters how much better politics would be with lots of strong women in power.

But they do no such thing. Julia Baird explains why, at least in the local context, in Media Tarts (2004), her book on the way the media seeks to shape the image of Australia's female politicians.

Baird warns of what can happen to women in politics if they adopt, or are attributed, roles for and by the media. They can lose their intellectual independence and be hammered by the press if they step outside the character - glamour puss, earth mother, iron lady, or whatever - they invented or accepted.

"One by one, these woman became caricatures - hyped, sanctimonious saints, heroines, ambitious bitches, shallow party girls - and eventually their work was obscured by a cult of personality over which they had very little control," Baird writes. Sadly, her case is diminished by some of her selections of supposedly talented women poisoned by the reptiles of the press. The real reasons women in politics fail are the same as why men do: bad luck, few factional friends and no policy nous.

But while Baird overdoes the martyrdom of some spectacular political duds who happened to be women, her overall argument makes sense. The way women in politics do well is by working hard, keeping their private life precisely that, not playing dress-ups and being very careful about saying they are being treated according to their sex, especially when in trouble.

The ones who do make it tend to ignore the role play, generally because they are too busy with policy development. No one ever paid much attention to Meg Lees's hair. And it is a fair bet people are much more interested in what Julia Gillard plans for health, as long as she keeps out of her kitchen, and what Helen Coonan will do with Telstra, rather than what she will wear to the company's Christmas party.

But if Sorkin or Lurie made a movie about a minister selling a phone company, there would be a running joke about her dress sense, plus dialogue demonstrating what a compassionate person she was. And none of their characters ever let politics get in the way of their principles.

The heroine of The American President, Sydney Ellen Wade, is a beautiful, brilliant environmental activist who abandons her presidential paramour when he does what politicians do to get legislation through: a deal. In The Contender the vice-presidential nominee refuses to refute rumours about her private life. Although this could easily be done, she stays silent because it is better to abandon great power than compromise a principle.

And in The West Wing, it is the women who believe that the truth of politics is more about principles than power. Like Amy Gardner, who believes social-justice issues can win votes, and like White House spokeswoman Claudia Jean Cregg, whose political judgment can be better than that of the boys.

In none of these naive statements of the transforming power of women in politics is there a bad woman. Certainly, The West Wing's national security adviser Nancy McNally (played by Anna Deavere Smith, who was promoted from The American President, where she played press secretary Robin McCall) proposes tough policies. But only to set up scenes where a black woman can be tougher than a bunch of white generals.

In all three dramas women are on the side of virtue and make politics better for their presence. And the baddies are all blokes. Conservative blokes to boot. In The American President, a rotten Republican presidential candidate plays politics with Sydney's standing as a single career woman and her right to go out with whoever she likes.

In The West Wing the first lady, a brilliant medical practitioner, is denied her right to practise because she put family first and did not report her husband's multiple sclerosis.

The villain in The Contender is a congressman who is trying to block Senator Hanson's nomination by calling her sexual past into question. Additionally demonstrating his villainy, he eats steak and smokes cigars.

And the information on C-in-C is that the machine men try to stop Veep Geena from taking the top job after the president dies, because she is politically independent. But with the help of a brilliant speechwriter - a woman, naturally - she delivers a cracker of a speech that unites the country.

It is all fantasyland feminism, which has nothing to do with the way women in politics, at least those who want to implement their agendas, really behave. Like men.

DULE HILL LEAVING THE WEST WING

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Actor DULE HILL has announced he's leaving THE WEST WING.

The 31-year-old actor, who plays CHARLIE YOUNG on the Emmy-winning series, is now preparing to shoot a pilot for PSYCH, which he hopes will prove to be another TV success.

He says, "I'm leaving. I'm doing five episodes this year, then I'll be headed out."

Hill has yet to find out how his character will be written out of the show.

16/09/2005 20:47

'West Wing' speechwriter addresses celebrity politics

By ALAN PERGAMENT
Buffalo News

He may be best known as White House staffer and speechwriter Will Bailey on NBC's "The West Wing," but Joshua Malina has a second career as a speech maker.
On Monday, he'll address the annual United Jewish Fund Kick-off Community Dinner at the Hyatt Regency. Malina gives at least one speech a month. He began doing them regularly in 2001 (before he joined "West Wing") after his experience as one of three "celebrities" attending a Jewish Federation Rally in Los Angeles in support of Israel.

"Even the celebrity sign-in people didn't know who I was," said the self-deprecating Malina in a telephone interview. He wasn't offended but he was surprised to discover that he, the mayor of Los Angeles and musician Peter Himmelman, were the celebrities at the event.

"I thought, "This is the best they can do in Hollywood with so many famous Jews?' "

When he told one of the event's organizers that, he was told: "When it has to do with Israel, nobody will show up."

"The impression I get is it is considered a controversial topic, and people don't feel comfortable coming out for Israel," Malina said. "The rally was completely apolitical. It was Israel has the right to exist. (For that) to be a controversial issue for Hollywood Jews, American Jews, to me is a disgrace. And it became a little bit of an obsession for me."

After he was interviewed by a small Jewish publication in Los Angeles, Malina started to get a flood of reaction, e-mails and invitations. He says he'll talk Monday about his Jewish background, his acting background and how the two recently started to intersect.

In the past, he had been disinclined to voice his political opinions because he didn't think anyone would or should care what an actor thinks.

"I started to realize for better or worse, that's the way it is. So if I can something positive on behalf of Israel, why not?"

Will Bailey even got into the act. Malina's character is fervently pro-Israel. The actor suspects that might have resulted from a conversation he had with writer-producer John Wells.

Bailey doesn't jump out as a Jewish-sounding name, nor is it supposed to. For that matter, neither does Malina. "Most people think I'm Latino," he said. "In fact, Malina is Polish for raspberry."

Malina remembers when his good friend, "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin, called him to join the cast. After describing Bailey and the story arc, Sorkin got very serious.

"He said, "there is one thing I have to tell you,' " Malina said. " "Will is not going to be Jewish.' " As if I was going stand up, storm out and say "no deal.' I said, "Aaron, I'm an actor. I can play non-Jews.' "

Sorkin has been employing Malina for two decades, first in the Broadway version of "A Few Good Men," then for the movie, "The American President" and the ABC series, "Sports Night."

Their friendship started over a twice-weekly poker game in the late 1980s at Sorkin's Manhattan residence. Malina has parlayed his love of poker into a third career as the co-creator and co-producer of Bravo's "Celebrity Poker Showdown."

Still, he won't give any odds on whether Republican Arnie Vinick (Alan Alda) or Democrat Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) will replace President Jeb Bartlet (Martin Sheen) on "West Wing."

"I think they've done a good job of writing two very viable candidates," said Malina. "Vinick is a Republican I could vote for, which would be a first for me. Nonetheless, I think I'd have to go with the young, idealist Latino."

Malina has heard the criticism that "West Wing" hasn't been the same since Wells took over for Sorkin three seasons ago.

"I can understand that kind of reaction," Malina said. "But I think people underestimated or were under uninformed about John Wells' background. Not only has he produced some great blockbuster shows, but he is a great writer."

"If you are an Aaron Sorkin fan, and I am, I understand always lamenting his departure. But I also think it is a tribute to Aaron that he created a situation and these great characters that are so solid that with good writers taking them over they still are viable and compelling."

From that answer, clearly Malina could have a fourth career as a diplomat.

'West Wing' actor speaks up on behalf of Israel

By Shari Rudavsky
Indianapolis Star

A Q & A with a person of noteWill Bailey, the character Joshua Malina plays on "The West Wing," exudes an unflappable calm. Even in a crisis, he peppers his speech with humorous zingers to defuse tension.

Off-screen, Malina shares Bailey's interest in politics, especially the Middle East. He's been traveling the country, speaking to Jewish communities about the importance of Israel. Malina will be in Indianapolis Sunday to speak at a fundraiser for the Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis.

He spoke with The Star in a telephone interview earlier this week.

Question: How did you start down this path?

Answer: The whole thing came out of a rally that the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles put together in 2001 in support of Israel. The mission statement of the rally was that Israel has a right to exist, that's it. I thought it's pretty easy to get behind this. But the celebrity turnout was virtually nonexistent. I thought it was disgraceful that in a town with so many prominent Jewish people, you couldn't get people to show up for a rally saying Israel has a right to exist.

When I was in a "Few Good Men" off-Broadway, playing a Marine, the first Gulf War broke out. The press waiting at stage door, wanting to know our opinion. It seemed so silly. I always declined to comment.

Now, I've realized it is silly, but if I'm going to have an opportunity to say something positive about Israel, a country I care very much about, I'm going to take advantage of that opportunity.

Q: Have you visited Israel?

A: I've been there three times, most recently in June with my dad. My wife and friends were nervous about my going. I kept saying, "Believe me; it's not what you're picturing." There was less military presence than I recalled the last time I was there, 11 years ago. I felt completely safe the entire time.

Apparently, "Beit Halavan" -- the "White House" -- is popular there. A lot of people came up to me.

Q: Your character Will Bailey is not Jewish, right?

A: When Aaron Sorkin, a very good old friend of mine, first got together with me to discuss this role, he described the whole character arc.

Then he got really serious and in hushed tones, he said, "There is one thing I have to tell you." I thought he was going to tell me I wasn't going to get paid.

He said, "The character's not going to be Jewish."

I said, "Aaron, I'm an actor. You think I only play Jewish characters?" It made me laugh that Aaron would think that might be a serious drawback.

Even though Will Bailey's not Jewish, he is fervently pro-Israel. One day I was speaking to John Wells [a producer of the show] and mentioned that I was going to speak at a Jewish Federation. When I got the new script, Will Bailey, the Zionist, was born.

Q: Have you ever had trouble reconciling your faith with your work?

A: I've had several instances where I've been asked to work on days that I'm not willing to work but I have always been accommodated. Still, it's disappointing because in almost all of these projects, Jewish people were involved. You'd think, Gee, they would have thought about it, looked at a calendar. It's not anti-Semitism, just insensitivity.

I went to an open-call audition during Passover [when observant Jews do not eat leavened bread]. I stood on this line for about two hours and then, to my horror, discovered that you had to eat pizza for this audition. I attempted to eat air pizza and told them I was an actor. They said, "Oh, if you can't eat pizza, you can't do this."

Q: Have your travels changed how you see the Jewish community in America?

A: I'm usually in and out so I don't get to see these communities in their context. Wherever I go, at least I'm meeting people who are incredibly committed to leading substantive Jewish lives and being part of tikkun olam, repatriation of world. It's very heartening to see there are thriving, Jewish communities around, even when they're small.