I’d be pumped for anything from David Janollari and Craig Wright — their mutual previous credit is Six Feet Under, so I trust them to create a thoughtful, unique family drama. But I’m particularly excited to see some religiosity play out on TV because I think it’s underexplored — most religious people aren’t 7th Heaven’s Camden family, you know? I remember seeing the pilot for Friday Night Lights and being so struck by scene where the Panthers say a prayer with the pee wee kids. I can’t remember seeing other characters pray on TV before, and it obviously stuck with me.
(watch 3:15)
While shows like “Seventh Heaven” and “Big Love” focus on families whose religious faith is central to their lives, I’m with Lyons — very interested to see a thoughtful portrayal of a family with sincere religious conviction who struggle with the application of those views to their life decisions.
So just how does a wide-eyed sponge who refuses to be snarky or cynical or topical win over the cable-wired world? How does it happen that, in Thompson’s words, the global “territory that had once been dominated by Mickey Mouse was now being rehabitated by SpongeBob SquarePants”?
Hillenburg — whose Nickelodeon office sign has read: “Have Fun or You’re Fired” — believes the success is anchored by SpongeBob’s sincerity and purity. Some businesses tout their Commitment to Excellence; Hillenburg and his creative team insist upon a Commitment to Innocence. “He’s an innocent who’s an oddball,” the creator says.
Partly, “I think ‘SpongeBob’ is born out of my love of Laurel and Hardy shorts,” says Hillenburg, citing the kidlike relationship between SpongeBob and sidekick Patrick the starfish as the show’s comedic core. “You’ve got that kind of idiot-buddy situation — that was a huge influence. SpongeBob was inspired by that kind of character: the Innocent — a la Stan Laurel.
Is your family madly searching the Disney channel to find an orange life vest, a bottle of blue dye, and a blood pressure cuff?
Then you must be participating in the very popular Disney Scavenger Sweepstakes!
The list of required items is here. Good luck!
The Parents Television Council condemned Burger King, Carl’s Jr., and Hardee’s for a rash of new advertisements that are taking sexual innuendo to the next level. PTC slammed the companies for their gross irresponsibility and for insulting their own customers by using sex to sell fast food.
Hardee’s has enlisted the help of their patrons to name their new “biscuit holes” and is using the inappropriate names — such as “A-holes” and “bis-ticles” referring to a part of the male anatomy — to market them. Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., after using half-naked women to market their hamburgers on TV, are now calling all “hot chicks eating burgers” to submit sexy videos for the opportunity to win cash, a trip to Vegas and a role in a new marketing campaign.
Last but not least, Burger King shredded the envelope with a print ad that is running in Singapore and is available on the Internet for a “Super Seven Incher” sandwich that’ll “blow your mind.” The image shows a woman with hot red lipstick opening her mouth wide for the “Seven Incher.” According to the PTC, corporate responsibility shouldn’t have varying standards based on geography.
A forthcoming book and documentary about Gertrude Berg tell the story of this pioneering broadcaster, producer, and actress. According to a story in Flow Magazine,
Gertrude Berg was the founder of the family situation comedy on radio and television. She was Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz rolled into one, a business genius and negotiator as well as performer, writer, director and auteur of her own show — and this during an era when women in up-front power positions were rare. She was known as “Molly Goldberg” on her show The Goldbergs, which ran from 1929-49 on radio and from 1949-56 on television. Kempner’s film gives a fascinating multi-sided portrait of Gertrude Berg, the demons that drove her and the undeniable imagination and talent that made her such a prolific writer-producer and star of early television. Gertrude Berg had extraordinary powers of observation, love for her grandparents’ generation, and an innate drive to write and perform evident from her teenage years when she entertained the children of guests at her father’s Catskills hotel.
Berg came from the vaudeville-era tradition of ethnic comedy, but she avoided caricature and created a warm and affectionate portrait of a three-generation Jewish family living in the Bronx.
On one side of Molly Goldberg and her husband Jake was the first-generation “Uncle David,” with the characteristic shrug of the shoulders and Yiddish theater inflection that made him endearing. On the other side were the third-generation “kids” who were becoming fully American. But it was Molly Goldberg herself, placed squarely in the middle, still speaking the Yiddish-inflected language of the Bronx when she moved to the suburbs years later, who created the central vitality of the show as she opened it each week from her window in the Bronx.
In an era when women and Jews were seldom given opportunities in business of any kind and almost never in television, Berg was so successful that her radio program was broadcast simultaneously on all three networks. Kempner’s new documentary bills itself as the story of “The most famous woman in America that you never heard of.” Kempner, the creator of the award-winning 1998 documentary about Hank Greenberg, is the ideal film-maker to tell this story and I look forward to seeing it when it opens later this month.
