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Television and...Twitter has a bizarre meltdown
1. Considering seeing "Indiana Jones and Dial of Destiny" sometime in the next four days. (Taking Monday and Wednesday off. Just have to clean out my fridge and do laundry somewhere in there. Also Wales is making noises about taking a day trip somewhere by car. I won't see the movie with Wales, for two reasons - 1)it's not her type of movie, and 2) she can't handle loud movies, TAR gave her issues. She's not a person I want to see movies with - she can't sit still.)
2. Finished The Diplomat on Netflix. Highly recommend. It's just eight episodes. Excellent cast. And ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger. Also a witty sexy political thriller. It's a workplace drama - which is my favorite, with all of the conflict stemming from the workplace. The lead characters are career diplomats. And I love everyone in the show. (Rare thing that.) It's been renewed for a second season.
Now on to the Night Agent.
3. The Bear S2 is available on Hulu now. I watched the first four episodes of S2. It's excellent. I think my favorite character is the pastry chef in Amsterdam. It's a lot of fast dialogue and banter in various scenes. The better scenes are the ones that focus on just one character. I like all of them, and they all have interesting and complex arcs. Also, it like the Diplomat are my favorite type of drama - the workplace drama. I love workplace dramas.
4. Somebody Somewhere S2 - is available on HBO - which I've caught the first two episodes of. It's a semi-autiobiography of comedienne, alt-cabret, and actress Bridget Everett's upbringing in Manhattan, Kansas. And basically goes in the direction - of what if she'd not moved to NYC and become a stand-up comedienne and actress, and instead moved to Lawrence, Kansas and become a bartender before moving back home to Manhattan, Kansas to take care of her ailing sister. The story picks up after her sister has died. The comedy subverts expectations in that her friends are homosexual and transgender, and the show depicts very little to no homophobic interactions. Drag King Murray Hill plays transgender Frank, a professor of agriculture at Kansas State University. But the main relationship in the series is between Sam Pire (Bridgette Everett) and Joel (her gay best friend), and it is both charming and deeply moving.
It's a relationship dramedy, without any romance. Which is a rarity nowadays.
5. Having digestive issues again. Also, I think I must have pinched a nerve in my neck since I have pain from my left shoulder all the way down to the fingers of my left hand. Feels a little better after icing it for a bit, and putting heat on it. (Probably need to stay off my cell phone - that may be the cause - too much time on Twitter, FB and playing Redecor?) OR it's just tension. Don't know.
But at least I managed to switch out my spring clothes for my summer clothes, and put the ones I'm not wearing any longer in bags to take down to the basement. I take stuff down there - and it goes away.
6. Did I tell you my niece is having a blast playing Park Ranger in Sequoia National Park? She's enjoying her job - which consists of telling people to put out their campfires, and chasing bears out of camp sites. The nearest town is two hours down the mountain. She did get sick for a bit - and had to go down to an urgent care to get antibiotics.
7. I'm almost done with "Moonlighting - an Oral History" - we're in the third season, and things are not going at all well. Part exhaustion, part personality clashes. I can't tell if Cybil Shepard was an entitled diva or struggling as one of four women in a heavily sexist male environment. Possibly both. It was the 1980s. The 1980s were bad. They could do whatever they wanted back then and no one cared. I mean, just look at the content? At any rate, neither Willis nor Shepard wanted the show to be renewed after the first season and got stuck. And they did not get along. The crew and writers loved Willis, but had issues with Shepard, which did not help. The writer of this book is going out of his way to avoid talking about the friction between the stars on set - but it's there.
The book does explain why we can't see any reruns of Moonlighting anywhere - also why various television shows are not really using pop songs any longer as part of their scores. Because of the heavy use of pop songs - Moonlighting can't do reruns. And no, they can't remove the music or replace it, it's not possible. Has to do with the copyrights -- the rights holders provide one time use and possibly for reruns within the year or five year period on ABC, they did not allow for streaming rights (which didn't exist at the time) or DVDs (also didn't exist).
Music rights are a pain. And they have tracking on them. If you are a vidder be careful with music rights, they track each time you replay, remaster or reuse a song.
Al Jarreau and Billy Joel wrote songs specifically for Moonlighting. Although Billy Joel did not like the episode that featured his song, "Big Man on Mulberry Street" - it was also the title of the Moonlighting Episode (which featured a dance sequence). Joel hated the episode and refused to give them rights to include his song on an album that came out, associated with the show.
I think Buffy did a better job of grabbing DVD and streaming rights to the music used in its episodes as did other series that premiered in the late 90s and early 00s. Moonlighting was in the 1980s before any of that existed.
8. Twitter is having a bizarre meltdown after EM started temporarily limiting their tweets to 800 or something. I think people on Twitter have an abusive relationship with well Twitter.
[ETA: found it -
I don't understand it. But I've never understood how that app worked.]
IDK. I'm not experiencing it at all. But I'm not on it that often.
There are folks going to Blue Sky, but it only has invites. Spoutible, Mastodone. I signed up for both Spoutible and Mastodone. But I can't find anyone that I was following on Twitter. Also not sure I care? I have more interaction and better interactions here and on FB, frankly.
What's interesting is how many lonely disconnected folks there are out there - whose only connection with people is Twitter.
2. Finished The Diplomat on Netflix. Highly recommend. It's just eight episodes. Excellent cast. And ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger. Also a witty sexy political thriller. It's a workplace drama - which is my favorite, with all of the conflict stemming from the workplace. The lead characters are career diplomats. And I love everyone in the show. (Rare thing that.) It's been renewed for a second season.
Now on to the Night Agent.
3. The Bear S2 is available on Hulu now. I watched the first four episodes of S2. It's excellent. I think my favorite character is the pastry chef in Amsterdam. It's a lot of fast dialogue and banter in various scenes. The better scenes are the ones that focus on just one character. I like all of them, and they all have interesting and complex arcs. Also, it like the Diplomat are my favorite type of drama - the workplace drama. I love workplace dramas.
4. Somebody Somewhere S2 - is available on HBO - which I've caught the first two episodes of. It's a semi-autiobiography of comedienne, alt-cabret, and actress Bridget Everett's upbringing in Manhattan, Kansas. And basically goes in the direction - of what if she'd not moved to NYC and become a stand-up comedienne and actress, and instead moved to Lawrence, Kansas and become a bartender before moving back home to Manhattan, Kansas to take care of her ailing sister. The story picks up after her sister has died. The comedy subverts expectations in that her friends are homosexual and transgender, and the show depicts very little to no homophobic interactions. Drag King Murray Hill plays transgender Frank, a professor of agriculture at Kansas State University. But the main relationship in the series is between Sam Pire (Bridgette Everett) and Joel (her gay best friend), and it is both charming and deeply moving.
It's a relationship dramedy, without any romance. Which is a rarity nowadays.
5. Having digestive issues again. Also, I think I must have pinched a nerve in my neck since I have pain from my left shoulder all the way down to the fingers of my left hand. Feels a little better after icing it for a bit, and putting heat on it. (Probably need to stay off my cell phone - that may be the cause - too much time on Twitter, FB and playing Redecor?) OR it's just tension. Don't know.
But at least I managed to switch out my spring clothes for my summer clothes, and put the ones I'm not wearing any longer in bags to take down to the basement. I take stuff down there - and it goes away.
6. Did I tell you my niece is having a blast playing Park Ranger in Sequoia National Park? She's enjoying her job - which consists of telling people to put out their campfires, and chasing bears out of camp sites. The nearest town is two hours down the mountain. She did get sick for a bit - and had to go down to an urgent care to get antibiotics.
7. I'm almost done with "Moonlighting - an Oral History" - we're in the third season, and things are not going at all well. Part exhaustion, part personality clashes. I can't tell if Cybil Shepard was an entitled diva or struggling as one of four women in a heavily sexist male environment. Possibly both. It was the 1980s. The 1980s were bad. They could do whatever they wanted back then and no one cared. I mean, just look at the content? At any rate, neither Willis nor Shepard wanted the show to be renewed after the first season and got stuck. And they did not get along. The crew and writers loved Willis, but had issues with Shepard, which did not help. The writer of this book is going out of his way to avoid talking about the friction between the stars on set - but it's there.
The book does explain why we can't see any reruns of Moonlighting anywhere - also why various television shows are not really using pop songs any longer as part of their scores. Because of the heavy use of pop songs - Moonlighting can't do reruns. And no, they can't remove the music or replace it, it's not possible. Has to do with the copyrights -- the rights holders provide one time use and possibly for reruns within the year or five year period on ABC, they did not allow for streaming rights (which didn't exist at the time) or DVDs (also didn't exist).
Music rights are a pain. And they have tracking on them. If you are a vidder be careful with music rights, they track each time you replay, remaster or reuse a song.
Al Jarreau and Billy Joel wrote songs specifically for Moonlighting. Although Billy Joel did not like the episode that featured his song, "Big Man on Mulberry Street" - it was also the title of the Moonlighting Episode (which featured a dance sequence). Joel hated the episode and refused to give them rights to include his song on an album that came out, associated with the show.
I think Buffy did a better job of grabbing DVD and streaming rights to the music used in its episodes as did other series that premiered in the late 90s and early 00s. Moonlighting was in the 1980s before any of that existed.
8. Twitter is having a bizarre meltdown after EM started temporarily limiting their tweets to 800 or something. I think people on Twitter have an abusive relationship with well Twitter.
[ETA: found it -
I don't understand it. But I've never understood how that app worked.]
IDK. I'm not experiencing it at all. But I'm not on it that often.
There are folks going to Blue Sky, but it only has invites. Spoutible, Mastodone. I signed up for both Spoutible and Mastodone. But I can't find anyone that I was following on Twitter. Also not sure I care? I have more interaction and better interactions here and on FB, frankly.
What's interesting is how many lonely disconnected folks there are out there - whose only connection with people is Twitter.
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I've been told academics are very busy? But as far as I can tell all they do is tweet all day long. Same with professional novelists. All they appear to do is play on social media 24/7.
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In Moonlightning, I feel that CS was a diva, definitely, but some of her requests made total sense, and she had legitimate grievances, but she had no goodwill left from the cast and crew. As I understand, she was a good sport in season 1, did everything they asked her, etc, but after that they were overtired, and all the fame and accolade went to Willis.
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A lot of people on Twitter (mainly the people posting constantly) - say that Twitter isn't the same as it was before. (I'm not sure what they mean - before the crazy-ass politicians got on it? Or before Musk took over? I honestly don't see much difference.)
I don't use Tumblr. I tried ages ago when it first was created - and gave up. I can't read the responses. Also it kicked me out for being inactive.
Regarding Moonlighting?
Cybil Shepard has a reputation for being a Diva on television sets. (Her show Cybil ended because of that, actually. Christine Baranski couldn't stand her - Cybil's jealousy of Baranksi was problematic throughout.) Her problem was partly that she was used to film - and television isn't the same beast.
However, I'm picking up things from this oral history that for the first time has made me question how much of her behavior was due to being a diva, and how much was due to being pregnant with twins, over-tired (they had 12-15 hour days and often went into overtime and hired new crews to complete the work) and having to deal with a sexist male crew, male centric writing team, and lead. It was the 1980s, they could get away with behavior back then that they can't now - and it is still bad in places now. Also there were only two-three women in the writing team, cast, and crew combined. And Cybil was beautiful - to the men, and objectified.
I think that had an effect? I know Charisma Carpenter had a similar experience on Angel. At the time, she was accused of diva-ish behavior, but now, I'm not so certain. Same with Sarah Michelle Gellar on Buffy - again, now, not so certain. Also happened with Susan Lucci on All My Children. But male leads, who were notorious for doing similar things - didn't get this rep.
So that's making me question a few things, along with the narrators.
There's a bit in the book - where Cybil walks off pissed after they deliver a joke at her expense.
We're never told what the joke is. There's this interesting subtextual undercurrent - in the storytelling, of - oh yes, this probably happened, but I'm not going to really talk about it happening.
And the show-runner was a bit nuts - he did things that you aren't supposed to do in television. Such as 12-18 hour working days. Going over into weekends. They did refuse to work on Sunday at least. Cutting out meal hours - although the actors insisted on eating. (It sounds like they are being unreasonable to the crew - except what the narrator isn't telling you is - the actors sit around and do nothing most of the time. They set up the shot, the actors deliver their performance, but the lightening guy was off. They do it again. This time the camera angle is off. They do it again. This time the director wants an overhead shot. They do it again. Then they ask the actors to step off to the side, while they discuss it, rearrange it, then they do it again. By the way - the shot they are doing again and again and again is basically two lines, maybe one. They may spend an entire day doing nothing more than one to two pages of dialogue. Cybil may be asked to walk down a flight of steps all day long, so they can get the shot from multiple angles. So basically, you are being asked to say lines, stand, walk down stairs, over and over again - but not given time to eat lunch?)
The difficulty with Moonlighting - is Cybil Shepard signed on for a romantic comedy/detective series. The Show-Runner got bored and decided to attempt to push the boundaries of television - which fun for the viewer - but...it wasn't what everyone signed on for. This was Bruce Willis's first role - so he was willing to do anything they wanted. This was supposed to be a bit of a comeback for Cybil Shepard, who had a major film career, and she was not willing to do anything they wanted and pushed back. Only to discover, she had no power or control and was stuck for five years.